The Sacred Cipher by Terry Brennan Page A

firewall, if you will.
     The author used Demotic not to pass along information but to hide information. We
     may have passed the first portal, but my instinct tells me there are more portals
     to come.”
    With a start, Johnson spun on his heel and took one long step to stand hovering over
     the two men who, up to that point, had been sitting comfortably in the leather chairs,
     enjoying Johnson’s performance. “Wait a minute . . . wait a minute . . . Tom, where’s
     the copy of that letter that accompanied the scroll?”
    Bohannon reached into the soft-sided, black computer bag he had brought along and
     pulled out a manila folder. He extracted a sheet of paper and handed it to Johnson.
    Expectation arm-wrestled with uncertainty as Johnson read the letter aloud. “You may
     place your absolute trust and confidence in Dr. Schwartzman of Trinity, a true friend
     of Christ and an able ally for your vital pursuit. Wire me with any revelations. May
     our Lord and Saviour hold you in His most faithful hands. Charles.”
    “It appears our English friend Dr. Spurgeon was also a man of portals and security
     devices,” Johnson said. “An able ally for your vital pursuit, eh? Spurgeon was telling
     Klopsch where to turn, where to get the information he needed to break the code of
     the scroll. He knew Klopsch didn’t understand Demotic, nobody did. But Spurgeon was
     sending Klopsch to someone who must have had some ability to understand the construction,
     the vertical columns and the meaning of the three and the seven. Dr. Schwartzman of
     Trinity—who is this person? That is our next task, who is this Schwartzman and what
     can he tell us, even when he’s likely been dead for more than a hundred years?”

9
    An overdue personnel evaluation rested on his cluttered desk, but this morning—more
     than any other Monday—Bohannon’s mind wandered at every opportunity. His head rested
     in his hands, his elbows propped against the desktop, his eyes closed. The challenges
     of running a residential recovery program for homeless and addicted men—a facility
     that provided over a quarter-million meals each year to the hungry of New York City—were
     far from his conscious mind.
    What in the world am I doing?
Tom wouldn’t admit it to Annie, but his near-death experience on Lafayette Street
     planted some serious questions in his mind. What was this scroll they’d found in Klopsch’s
     office? What did it mean? Why was Spurgeon so concerned for Klopsch’s safety? And—the
     question that had been eating at him for days—was it mere coincidence that he was
     confronted by two guys wearing the same amulet, one of whom nearly killed him with
     a runaway truck? If not, did it have any connection to their recent discovery?
    But each time his thoughts wandered over these questions, something even more profound
     lurked in the shadows of his mind.
What was this all about?
And more importantly,
Why me?
    He didn’t want to scare Annie with his concerns. Maybe he was just imagining things.
     And he was leery of his own judgment. Chasing down the meaning of the scroll awakened
     all the adrenaline rush of Bohannon’s career as an investigative reporter. He loved
     this kind of chase—the thrill of pursuing the unknown. He was certainly no neutral
     observer. So he turned to God for guidance.
    Bohannon had walked away from his family’s faith in his college years, decrying what
     he perceived as its hypocrisy but actually just wanting to serve his own rebellion.
     Two years before he met Annie, he ran into a guy, the father of one of his “loves,”
     who talked to him about faith, about the truth of the Bible. For two years, Bohannon
     had read the Bible like an explorer with half a treasure map, absorbing the obvious,
     searching for the hidden. After he and Annie married, he wasn’t ready to abandon his
     heathen living; it was too much fun. Annie, not long out of that place herself, gave
     him time and walked along with