The Brotherhood Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF

door.”
    Bohannon felt Manthey turn toward him.
    “Tom, you’ve got to talk about this,” Manthey said. “What happened over there? What’s changed you so much?”
    Stew Manthey looked a bit like Grizzly Adams. In the final year before his retirement, the Bowery Mission’s CFO defied the perception of his colleagues by growing a thick beard that was speckled with gray and nearly covered the lower half of his face.
    The change in appearance didn’t change the CFO’s effectiveness. For more than twenty years, Manthey astutely guided the Mission through seasons of financial change, challenge, and growth. Outside of his job description, for the last twelve years Manthey served as Bohannon’s mentor, the CFO’s integrity and character providing wise counsel for the mission’s VP of operations.
    It was counsel Bohannon desperately needed. And a listening ear he could trust.
    “I don’t know, Stew,” Bohannon said, running his hand through the curly, copper-colored hair that grew long on his neck. He stared out over the beds ofgeraniums and remembered planting the same kind of flowers with Alexander Krupp at his Bavarian estate after he, Joe, and Doc escaped from Jerusalem. That seemed so long ago, so far in the past. Yet only weeks had passed.
    “This whole experience has been so confusing. When we first found the mezuzah in Louis Klopsch’s safe and discovered the scroll inside, it felt like I was on such an adventure. That Charles Spurgeon had warned Klopsch about the importance of the scroll gave the quest a sense of gravity. Trying to understand the scroll, figure out its message, figure out the code it was written in was thrilling—like the adrenaline rush I used to get when I was in the middle of an investigative piece for the Bulletin . Even though we knew there was this group trying to prevent us from deciphering the scroll . . . well, you know . . . it felt like we were destined to be part of this. Remember? I felt like this was something God was instructing me to do. We were on a mission. It was so exciting . . .”
    Bohannon fell silent as he looked out over the garden. He loved gardens. Whenever he had dirt, he planted flowers and vegetables—anything to get him outdoors and in the soil that was his therapy. Normally, sitting among this living green landscape, the heady dankness of composted loam filling his nose, Bohannon would have felt a restorative peace. Not today. His face, imperfect but handsome, looked as if he had lost his best friend. His eyes, normally a glimmering blue, were lifeless and distant.
    “We felt we had to go to Jerusalem to see if the message on the scroll was true. I know I had to go. It was like a calling.” He paused, trying to sort and organize his memories with his feelings. “Then Winthrop was killed . . . murdered . . . when the car bomb blew apart his van outside the Collector’s Club.
    “How could we go on after that?” Bohannon asked the trees. “How come we didn’t just give it up . . . turn all the information we had over to the government and let them deal with it? Right now—I wish we had. Yet . . .” He bowed his head. “Yet, I still thought I had to go to Jerusalem. We all did.”
    A soft breeze rustled the leaves of the trees, caressing Bohannon’s cheek.
    “You were called,” Manthey said with a reverence often reserved for church buildings. “I have no doubt that God chose you to be part of this. I don’t know why. But I know it’s true just as much as we’re sitting here right now.”
    Bohannon rubbed his palms against the knees of his pants. “C’mon, let’s walk.”
    They strolled along the paths of the garden, past the seldom-used bocce court.
    “You know what I’m ashamed of?” Bohannon asked. “I’m ashamed that Ifelt like I was living a movie in Jerusalem . . . and I was loving it. I was Indiana Jones and James Bond and Jason Bourne all rolled into one. The hero beating off the bad guys in the name of world peace. And all the