The Jerusalem Creed: A Sean Wyatt Thriller by Ernest Dempsey Page A

considered.
    Tommy closed his eyes and imagined the day of the abduction. Nehem would have been sitting here at his desk, working on a translation for the tablet. The abduction would have happened here because the kidnappers wouldn’t be so foolish as to try to take him with so many people in view at the dig site. It had to be here.
    He watched through his mind’s eye as the men came in and started trashing the place while Nehem just sat in his chair, patiently waiting until they snatched him up and took him away.
    At that moment, the solution struck Tommy as he felt the hard surface of the chair underneath him. He stood up and flipped it over. Stuck to the bottom of the seat was a sheet of paper held by a few strips of Scotch tape.
    He pulled on the paper’s edge, careful not to let the tape tear any of it. He stood up and looked at the image drawn on the paper. It was a drawing of the tablet, but it had some significant additions. Arrows had been drawn from the symbols at the bottom of the page, connecting them to certain spaces within the grid.
    Tommy’s mind raced. Nehem hadn’t left him with the translation of the riddle. Why? That would have made more sense. Instead, the man had left directions for something else, another way of figuring out the translation perhaps.
    His eyes probed the page for answers. The gears in his brain turned faster and faster. Then the realization hit him. Nehem wasn’t trying to give him the translation to the tablet’s code. He knew that Tommy would have already been able to figure that out with technology. Not only that, but if he’d left the translation under the chair and the kidnappers had found it, they would be that much closer to whatever it was Nehem was trying to keep hidden.
    Tommy’s eyes grew wide as the solution came to him in an instant. The tablet wasn’t just one code. It was two. The riddle was only half of the solution. Without deciphering the grid, finding whatever the tablet was linked to would be impossible. The symbols, the lines, the code, the grid, all of it became suddenly clear.
    “Sean,” he shouted, trying to contain his excitement, “I think I have something!”

9
    Dubai
     
    Cameras in two corners watched Nehem’s every move. He stared up at the one nearest him from the meager desk chair he’d been given. The workstation was little more than a rickety folding card table. The chair looked and felt like it was thirty years old, a relic from a rundown office that had long since closed down. The rest of the room was sparsely decorated, which was a major contrast to the opulence the rest of the mansion displayed. Nehem figured it must have been used for storage most of the time. It was one of the few rooms in the palatial residence that didn’t have a window. A narrow cot with a thin brown blanket and white pillow sat in one of the other corners.
    The only expensive item in the room was the laptop he’d been afforded for his research.
    Now, Nehem lowered his eyes and gazed at the vibrant, bright computer monitor. The glow of the screen illuminated his face and part of the wall, almost more than the solitary light fixture in the center of the ceiling. He’d bought himself another day. More importantly, he’d been able to make sure his daughter was safe. They could do whatever they wanted to him, but Nehem had to make sure she would be okay. Nothing else mattered now.
    His hope, his only hope, was that his friend in America got the email and was able to solve the code on the tablet. He knew that Tommy had the most sophisticated software on the planet, capable of deciphering nearly any complex sequence. If he was able to solve the riddle, there was a chance he would head to Israel. That all hinged on the assumption that he caught the last part of the email.
    There hadn’t been time to elaborate on what Nehem meant by his warning. The men were outside his apartment and on their way up. With only seconds to spare, he was able to get the email away to