The sun was only a hint behind dark clouds two hours later when Marcus called the local police department. “Detective Russell, any new leads?”
“No, Mr. Marcus. Nothing new since you called last week?”
“I call every week because no one from your department calls me.”
“That’s because we don’t have anything new to tell you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s been almost two years.”
“Sometimes these things take more time. Something will break.”
“Detective, it only breaks when you break it. Every day that goes by the leads grow colder.”
“We had very few leads to start with, and nothing points in the direction of the killer. I assure you, we’re doing the best we can.” He sighed into the phone.
“That’s not good enough.”
“I’m hanging up now, Mr. Marcus. I understand your frustration, but—”
“But what! Some sick bastard killed my family. My wife and daughter are gone, forever. Do you know what it’s like to lose your family…not to a car accident or disease, but to another human being who made the decision to brutally end their lives?”
“I’ll call you if anything further develops.”
“Before you hang up on me, Detective, I promise you I will make it develop.”
“That would be a mistake, sir.”
“The mistake is to wait for somebody to do your job—”
The detective disconnected. Marcus slowly lowered the phone from his ear. He reached out to touch a framed photograph of Jennifer and Tiffany, which stood on the kitchen counter. In the picture, they were feeding hay to the horses, the evening sun soft against their faces, wide smiles and laughing eyes. The glass over the picture was cool to his fingertips. “I’ll find him….”
Marcus walked out onto his front porch and watched storm clouds descend over the mountains, darkening the valley and bending the treetops. A strong gust blew in from the west, shaking the wind chimes into a frenzy of sound and a string-puppet dance. Marcus stepped off the porch just when a second commanding gust blew in, catching a great horned owl in its squall. The owl fought the wind’s grasp. It beat its wings, flying to within a few feet of Marcus, one wing almost grazing his face. The owl’s unblinking yellow eyes stared at him for an instant, resembling two gold coins shining from the dark heart of a tornado.
FOUR
Jacob Kogen stepped back from the whiteboard, capped the marker in his hand and stared at the equation. At age sixty-eight, he was recognized throughout Israel as brilliant, the most dynamic mathematician in the nation. Students from around the world, those with a deep interest in engineering, science, space travel, and physics, took his classes. Today, he worked on a problem no one, not any of his colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had been able to solve.
He looked down at the handwritten notes drafted meticulously almost three centuries years earlier. “What were you trying to say, Mr. Newton?” he mumbled, his tired eyes rising back to the long equation across two thirds of the board. Jacob’s pale, narrow face reflected deep thought, a suggestion of internal quandary swirling in a mind wired to solve problems. His brown corduroy jacket hung from his lean frame, white hair uncombed beneath the kippah he wore on the back of his head. His eyes were the blue shade of swimming pool water, white eyebrows wild and tangled as barbed wire.
The phone on his desk buzzed. “Yes,” he said, picking up the phone without taking his eyes off the whiteboard.
“Dr. Kogen,” said the receptionist, “I know you asked not to be disturbed, but I have a call from Paris. The woman’s name is Gisele Fournier.”
“Did she say what she wants?”
“She says she has a gift for the university library. Shall I put her through, sir?”
“Yes.” Jacob lowered his eyes from the whiteboard, answering the call.
“Professor Kogen,” the voice had a slight French accent. “My name is Gisele Fournier. My grandfather, Philippe Fournier, attended a Sotheby’s auction in London. I think it was in 1936. He purchased some papers from the estate of Sir Isaac Newton.”
Jacob felt his pulse kick, the phone now warm in his moist hand. He gripped tighter. “Yes, yes — what do you have?”
“I’m not sure, really. My grandfather died. Before his death, though, he asked that we donate the papers to your university library because he read how you were searching for some clues possibly from the Bible, yes?”
“Correct. For years we have been researching the Newton papers we received from the Yahuda collection. We knew some were missing from the Sotheby’s auction in 1936. Maybe these are the lost Newton papers.”
“Perhaps you would find interest in adding these to your collection.”
“Oh yes, indeed, thank you. This is most generous of you. Perhaps the papers you have in your possession will give us some of the answers we have been seeking to find. Is there a cost associated with the acquisition?”
“It is a donation — a gift. I will send them to you.”
“Thank you, Miss Fournier. You are most generous.”
“Professor?”
“Yes?”
“My grandfather was a religious man, a good man. He dealt in antiquities and art sales. He believed he had purchased something very extraordinary…so extraordinary that he did not wish to sell it or even let others know it was in his possession.”
“I see. Did he offer any clues?”
“He read his Bible trying to learn what it was. He thought Isaac Newton had discovered something that he, Newton, took to his grave. As a little girl, I remember being at my grandparent’s house one summer night. My grandfather, after consuming a bottle of wine, was going to destroy the papers. He finally sealed the boxes and placed them in the attic. If you find something in these papers, something that has meaning, please tell me, and I will share it with my grandfather in my prayers.”
“Of course. Miss Fournier, I will give you our shipping number. Can you send these overnight? Perhaps these papers are the missing puzzle pieces.”
FIVE
Jacob Kogen paced the atrium in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Library, glancing through the glass door every minute or so. He saw his restless image in the reflection from the glass, almost like a weary traveler staring back at him.
The morning sun rose over Jerusalem, shimmering off the parked cars, chrome winking in the parking lot. Jacob thought about what Gisele Fournier had told him — the papers might have been one of the last things Newton wrote, because they were dated ten days before the famed scientist’s death in 1727. The rumble of a diesel engine broke Jacob’s thoughts. A FedEx truck stopped near the outdoor fountain pool. The driver wore dark glasses and shorts. He carried an electronic tablet on top of the cardboard box, perspiring as he entered the library.
“Over here,” said Jacob. “In this room. Please put it down on the table.” The driver followed Jacob into a small room lined with bookshelves and textbooks. The lighting was soft. The room carried the musky scent of very old paper, cloth and glass cleaner. He lowered the box to a wooden table. “It’s for Jacob Kogen”
“I am Jacob. I’ll sign for it.”
The driver nodded and left as a younger man entered. “Is that —?”
“Yes! Yes, it is,” Jacob said. His hand trembling, using scissors to open the box.
Samuel Bronner, broad-shouldered with dark rimmed glasses, raised his thick eyebrows. “Perhaps the remaining pieces to the mystery, Jacob?”
“We shall see.” He lifted the old papers from the box. “They have the ancient bouquet of time. Written so many years ago.” He lowered the handwritten notes down to the table, pulled out a chair and sat. He read silently for half a minute, his index finger, knotted from arthritis, tracing the words as if he were following a treasure map. Then he looked up, over his bifocals, his pale eyes now bright and alive. “These are indeed from the hand of Sir Isaac Newton.”
“Do you think somewhere in there Newton found what no man has found before — the hidden prophecies of God?”
“If it is God’s will. He may have allowed Newton, perhaps the greatest mind ever, to find the cryptograms of our forefathers, and maybe the fate of our children, our world, too.”
“We have had many of Newton’s papers since Abraham Yahuda donated them to the library and university in 1969.” Samuel touched his mentor on the shoulder. “I hope we can find something new here. However, perhaps even Newton, as smart as he was, could never understand all that is woven through the earliest texts.”
Jacob glanced at the pages faded after centuries of storage, the dark ink from the quill pen legible as the day when Newton wrote the words. Jacob said nothing, his eyes shifting through the sentences, glancing in the margins at the rows of numbers. His lips pursed, and he made a low whistle.
“He wrote quickly,” said Jacob, his voice above a whisper. “The man who invented calculus filled the margins of each page to their maximum. He appears to have written the equations very fast. What if his mind outdistanced his own hand while he deciphered codes pouring over verses from the Bible? He thought there was truth, an ancient wisdom in the world, first delivered in scriptures, and that knowledge was lost.”
Samuel grunted, shifted his weight and looked at the papers. “It is believed Newton spent fifty years of his life trying to decode the Bible, and now we’re trying to make sense of his final papers. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, Jacob, but what if he never succeeded? How can we interpret Newton? Since Einstein, there probably has been no greater scientist than Newton. He figured the laws of gravity, but he may never have discovered hidden prophecies in the Bible, if they do exist.”
Jacob smiled and looked up at his friend. “Samuel, would you mind making us some tea? I want to look over these documents. I’m longing to get in front of the whiteboard with a marker. I hope there is reason in these notes to do so.”
Samuel pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Tea sounds good.”
There were dozens of pages all handwritten in sentences of varying length. Some staccato. Disjointed. A few words were twice underlined. Some had exclamation points. Jacob read each word. He jotted down notes on a legal-sized paper. He murmured when he found something he recognized, his unkempt eyebrows lifting. He read aloud:
“Daniel, whose visions concern the things prefigured in the law, is bid to enclose the vision of the ram and goat. This again in his last vision where the angel comes to show him what is noted in the scripture of truth. He is to enclose the words and seal the book. This book of the scripture of truth sealed in the hand of God that is understood by him alone. It is written within and on the back side, within by hidden predictions of things to come, on the back side by open allusions to things past. The lamb now comes to receive and open when the prophecy is called the Revelation of Christ which God gave unto him, being a Revelation or opening of the scripture that has been sealed.”
Samuel returned with two cups of steaming tea. He set one down, careful not to get it too close to the old papers. “You look mesmerized. Find anything?”
Jacob was silent, reading the last few pages, his eyes locking on three words jotted in the margin, under a calculus equation. He sat back in his chair, his stare distant, and his thoughts far beyond the small study. “Newton went to his grave believing the Bible held truths beyond the obvious. Imagine if he’d had a computer. What would he have found or what did he find in the scriptures?”
“You are a great mathematician, Jacob, your colleagues are some excellent statisticians, and yet we only surmise Newton was on the verge of fully interpreting Bible prophecies. There is only a single box of papers here. Can they tell us what thousands of words before those have not revealed?”
“They already reveal something I have never before seen.”
“What is that?
“Look at this.” Jacob pointed to a name in a margin beneath the numbers: