Blood Rules (38 page)

blown apart … although as far as he could remember, nothing about that night had been sublime. But why mark the surnames?

He turned his attention to the other sheets of paper. These were the kind of jottings people made when trying to solve brainteasers. Rows of letters in Leila’s handwriting, with more letters written underneath them, and arrows pointing between the two rows, as if to establish a connection. Odd words: CHILLON, CLOUDLESS CLIMES, PROMETHEUS. A thought crossed his mind: it was as if Leila had been trying to unscramble a code.

Ridiculous! No, it wasn’t; if she had a lover and was worried about being detected, she might resort to code. His mind, made hyperactive by jealousy, leapt to this conclusion at the same moment as he recognized where the code came from: CHILLON, PROMETHEUS…

Byron.

“God damn,” he muttered. “God damn.”

He’d introduced her to Byron’s poetry. They had read it together, on park benches, over tea, in bed. Especially, often, in bed. Byron and bed went together.

He had seen the Byron only recently. He rushed out of the bedroom, downstairs, to the first-floor study. Yes, the volume was lying askew, on the topmost shelf of the bookcase. The pages were dusty at their outer edges, the jacket was worn and frayed, but he went at it as if it were indestructible. A quick flick through revealed nothing out of the ordinary, just a few penciled notes, but they were old. Then a message transmitted itself through his fingers: the dust jacket wasn’t sitting right. Something had been inserted between the jacket and the hard cover beneath.

Colin unfolded the jacket and yet another sheet of paper fell out. He recognized Leila’s writing, but this time it was hurried, not easy to decipher. Two rows of letters, with the by-now-familiar arrows. And then what must, could only, be a translation: HALIB YOUNG BARB PM.

Halib. Someone who hadn’t shown his face for five

years until today, but now was turning up everywhere he

looked

Colin was aware of sounds on two levels: the roar of city traffic and the fierce beating of his own heart, the one distant and the other ineffably near. Danger lurked all around him. Yes, he knew terror. Halib was here, no doubt of it; Leila was in touch with him, and whatever business brother and sister had to transact that required encoding,
Robbie lay at the heart of it.

The tallith was just a simple prayer shawl, but it seemed to hang heavily on Sharett’s shoulders. He kept picking at it. A yarmulke perched on top of his head, precariously kept in place by a bobby pin. He was exposed, out on a limb, with only a shawl and a cap and the ever-watchful eye of God to protect him, and it didn’t add up to enough.

The side hall of the synagogue was, he estimated, ninety percent full. What a turnout! Seven o’clock on a Thursday evening, when a man ought to be thinking about getting home to his family, and what did we have here? We had most of New York except the
arelim,
the unbelievers, come to watch little David Katz become liable for aliya, at a service specially organized just for him.

Or maybe come to die.

He walked up and down, never still, his gaze sweeping across the heads of the assembled worshipers. In the gallery, Aliza was standing very close to Stepmother. Sharett stared up with hatred in his heart and in his eyes. How radiant Leila looked, how vivacious. She was lovely, yes; he admitted that. Lovelier than Sara would have been, had she lived.

What was their plan? he asked himself over and over again, as the cantor began. He continued to pace restlessly up and down, keeping to the sides. Neeman was doing the same. Which of these people was in the plot to murder Moshe? A horde of strange faces, male, female … where were the killers?

The information he had was flawless in its detail—up to a point. He’d found out that there would be an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, that Halib Hanif was behind it, that the attack would come while Moshe was attending the Katz bar mitzvah in New York on strange territory, separated from the usual security precautions that cocooned him on Washington’s International Drive. So let Moshe be bait, that was the word he had spoken from on high; which would have been fine, if Halib hadn’t vanished off the face of the earth.

At four o’clock, after his inspection of the temple, Sharett had been forced to decide whether to turn back Moshe, even then on the road up from Washington, or let him come on. But he couldn’t admit to having been bested by a couple of stinking Arab terrorists. He couldn’t lose the chance of hitting Stepmother…

David Katz was being led up to the Torah by his father. The rabbi handed him a silver
yad,
and the boy approached the Torah, nervously clearing his throat. Throughout the synagogue could be heard not a rustle, not a murmur.

As David began to chant, Sharett knew a moment of the most profound loneliness he’d experienced since Esther’s death. That afternoon he had chosen to go on, not for sound operational reasons but because every other avenue was closed. So really you could say he had not chosen at all; whatever would happen would happen. And that was what David Katz seemed to be proclaiming, his high-pitched, scarcely broken voice echoing the judgment down from the roof above the Ark, where God sat watching.

Moshe sat watching in the front row.

Sharett’s gaze came to rest on a particular face. A cantor, gorgeously robed—but not the cantor who’d been vetted forty-eight hours previously. Sharett caught his breath. An unknown.

David finished reading—
maze! tov!—
and prepared to be honored with a procession around the synagogue. As it got under way, Sharett caught Neeman’s eye. They moved forward. The cantor remained where he was. Everyone’s attention was on the bar mitzvah. People were on their feet, clapping loudly, turning to follow the procession with their eyes: rabbi, Torah, David. Moshe had risen and pivoted toward the rear of the synagogue. The tensions of the past few hours seemed to have left him; he was smiling. Flanked by three large men, it would have been well nigh impossible for a marksman to pick out the vulnerable parts of his body; a bomb, on the other hand…

Sharett was running. Neeman the same. The cantor still had not moved, but his eyes were fixed on Moshe. As Sharett neared him he saw that this man was old and bearded, patriarchal. A man above suspicion.

Who would they have selected to kill Moshe?
A man above suspicion.

“Dear God,” he prayed, “let me be wrong. Just this one time.”

As he passed the ambassador’s group he spoke to the nearest bodyguard, not caring who heard or what they made of it: “Get him out,
now.”
Then the four of them were sliding along the pew, Moshe’s smile vanished, his face turned white; they reached the end of the row where Neeman stood poised on tiptoe to meet them, an intense deep-field defender; the atmosphere was changing fast as people’s attention was distracted from the procession; a woman cried out from the gallery and Sharett glanced up, afraid of seeing a grenade in Leila’s hands, the pin out

She stood gazing calmly down, and her hands were empty. The procession was coming back along the aisle now, but Moshe’s men, forcing a path in the other direction, did not care. They hustled their precious charge past the indignant rabbi. They were nearly out.

Raful wheeled around. By now the suspect cantor seemed to be aware that all was not well, for he was looking apprehensively between Sharett and Neeman. Oblivious of the rising tide of disquiet among the congregation they bore down on him and, before he could protest, were hustling him out to the robing room.

“Who are you?” Sharett snapped.

“I am Jacob Horowitz. I am a cantor.” The old man’s lower lip was trembling, but a spark of resistance flared in his rheumy eyes. “Who are
you?”

“What weapon are you carrying?”

“I am a
cantor,
I tell you.”

“No, you’re not.” Neeman took over. “We’ve vetted all the people here; you are not cleared. How did you get in?” “Who brought you here?” Sharett yelped. “When?”

“Where are they now? What orders did they give you?”

Neeman was frisking through the old man’s robes, pushing him ever backward until he ended up spread-eagled against the wall.

“Nothing,” Neeman said. He sounded dissatisfied. “Clean.”

“Fascists,” the old man hissed. “Nazis. Who let
you
in, eh? Into this place of God.”

“Mossad,” Sharett said, not taking his eyes from the cantor’s wrinkled face. “A man called Mankowicz was supposed to sing this evening.”

“Mr. Mankowicz fell sick lunchtime. Food poisoning. But seems the Mossad can’t find out about such a simple thing.” Horowitz was wheezing. He held a hand against his chest. “Get out of here, you swine, before the good God strikes you dead for your blasphemy. Mossad! Such things as are done in the name of
Ha’aretz!
Get out, or I will sue, and don’t think to keep me quiet just because I’m an old man.”

Sharett and Neeman exchanged swift glances. Somewhere between their respective eyes a thought crackled and spat its way into electrified life and they swiveled, heading for the door. Stupid,
stupid:
Horowitz was a blind!

Sharett skidded into the body of the synagogue in time to hear Yehoshafat Katz pronounce the traditional blessing upon his son: “Blessed is the One who has freed me from the responsibility for this child’s conduct.”

The rabbi launched into
aleynu,
signifying the conclusion of the service.
“The Lord shall be acknowledged King of all the earth. On that day the Lord shall be One and his name One.”

Sharett looked around quickly, ensuring, to his almighty relief, that Moshe had truly gotten away. But then he glanced up and felt his heart contract; for the place that Stepmother had occupied was empty.

Colin stared at the piece of paper he’d found in Leila’s purse. He felt sick. He struggled to hold on to his sanity, because it would have been easy to give way. He wanted to give way.

Think,
he told himself; concentrate. It’s Byron. You know Byron, you’ve loved him nearly all your life.

HALIB YOUNG BARB PM.

HALIB, that was clear enough, PM could mean afternoon, and he’d seen Halib that very afternoon; so YOUNG BARB meant…? Byron, YOUNG BARB. A poem? No, it need not be a poem; what he was reading was a transliteration,
aided
by a poem. But
which one?

Something niggled inside his brain, like mental toothache. Young barb, young barb. A line of poetry … murder, dusty death, blood. But with piercing sunlight in it. Young barb, young barb,
young barbarian!

He snatched up the Byron from the floor, where it had fallen, and began to snatch his way through its pages. Young barbarians dum-da-dum, young barbarians dum-
da-play … to make a Roman holiday!

“The Dying Gladiator.”

He found the poem. A gladiator from a distant land, mortally wounded in the Roman arena, thinks not of the crowds delighting in his death but of his homeland beside the Danube:

The young barbarian must be their code word for Robbie. Why had they selected that? Was it simply because of the reference to a mother, meaning Leila? Or could it be on account of Robbie’s “sire” … who was going to be
butchered?

Keep calm, he told himself. Be very, very cool. Think it through.
One:
Halib Hanif, terrorist, fanatic, is in New York.
Two:
Earlier today, he tried to snatch your son.
Three:
Leila knew about it. Careful. Check the reasoning, check the evidence. Leave that one, come back to it later.

Four:
You and Robbie are alone in the house. You don’t know when or if Leila’s coming home and, if she does come, you don’t know any longer if she’s a friend.

Five:
Halib, for some reason, wants Robbie. He’s failed once. He’ll try again. He could be outside now. He and his helpers may be about to break in.

Colin jumped off his chair. Enough thought. Get the boy out, get out yourself—if Halib’s already here, poised to strike again, tough, end of story; if not, it’s only a matter of time before he comes.

He ran upstairs again and shook Robbie awake. “Get up, Robbie, don’t argue; grab a jacket and come with me.”

The boy looked at him through frightened, trusting eyes that racked Colin’s heart. He got off the bed and pulled on his sneakers. They went downstairs.

The atmosphere inside the house had undergone a subtle change. There was still plenty of daylight, but shadows had begun to accumulate in those corners where by concealment they could do most harm. The rooms seemed unnaturally silent. A stair tread creaked under Colin’s foot, and he realized that he’d unconsciously been trying to match the silence in the house with his own.

They reached the bottom step. Ahead of them they could see the front door. The lower half was solid wood; above that were two panes of glass separated by a central divide. As they walked toward it, Colin was forming a mental picture of where his car stood parked in relation to the house. Car keys—on the hall table. He picked them up as they passed.

Why go out? Why not telephone the police, have them come to him?

He hesitated. How could he make them come, with a

story like the one he had to tell? They’d think he was

some kind of nut. But if he phoned and then something

went wrong, if they never made it, there’d at least be a

record

“Dad.”

Robbie had spoken softly, but something in his tone jerked Colin out of his tortured reverie. He looked at the front door and saw a shadow outlined against the frosted glass.

The bell rang.

Colin took Robbie’s arm and gently pushed the boy against the wall, at the same time raising a finger to his lips. Robbie, breathing fast, nodded; then, in a strange, disturbing gesture, he used both hands to block his ears.