Authors: Michael Byrnes
Now Charlotte had to fight the urge to smirk. This was crazy talk.
“If you don’t believe me,” he said, “put your hand on the box.”
“Put
your
hand on the box,” she retorted.
He shook his head. “You still don’t understand.” Cohen signaled to the men and they grabbed her to bring her closer.
“Hey!” she protested, shaking her arms free. “No need to get rough. I’ll touch it.”
The rabbi motioned for them to back away.
“Fine,” Charlotte said. “I’ll play your game.” Stepping up to the table, she couldn’t help but admire the relic’s craftsmanship. The scientist in her found herself peeking around its sides for hidden wires that might have activated the light show she’d witnessed. Yet something else stirred in her when she found nothing.
Stretching out her hand, she could see the men backing away on the periphery of her vision. The rabbi himself seemed to be holding his breath.
Time for the big show,
she thought. Very slowly Charlotte lowered her left hand over the golden lid.
When Amit finally reached the rear service door, he’d waited a full two minutes behind the van, deliberating on how to proceed. In his head, various scenarios were playing out, and every one of them featured lethal Mossad contractors exiting the building and engaging him in a blazing gun battle. That had him thinking of what it would feel like to be shot a few times without the luxury of a bulletproof vest. Couldn’t be pleasant, and he wasn’t curious enough to want to give it a try.
Nevertheless, what Rabbi Cohen had gone to such great lengths to protect was most likely sitting in the IAA’s conference room. No doubt it was Amit’s discovery at Qumran that was the cause for Cohen’s hasty trip to Egypt. And Amit was willing to wager his genitalia that the very same relic that had once resided within the heart of Solomon’s temple was now inside this building.
But it was the thought of the bullet that killed poor David, and the second one that almost erased the first genuine connection he’d had with a woman since God knew when, that finally got him moving closer.
Yet after all that consideration, when the last ever-so-carefullyplaced steps brought him right up to the door in perfect silence—the gun hand ready to respond, the right hand grasping the doorknob and preparing for a three-stage disengagement of the door latch—the door was locked.
Locked?
“Shit,” he spat with little regard for silence.
He did his best to listen for any activity coming from inside, but the
thick door wasn’t exactly the off-the-shelf variety. There could be someone standing right behind it yapping away and he might not hear it.
Setting the gun in the waistband of his pants at the small of his back, he dipped his fingers into his inside vest pocket to retrieve his Gaza lock-buster set. The flat tension wrench slid into the keyhole with barely a whisper, and he turned it clockwise. The hook-ended fisher slid in beside it. Ten seconds of hunting and twisting popped the lock.
Still got it.
Smoothly withdrawing the tools and returning them to his pocket, he took up the gun and reached for the knob. His eyes had a momentary standoff with the circular casing of a second lockset—the dead bolt above the knob. If he had to open that one too, things could get a lot noisier.
Biting his lip, he started the steady three-step turn. “Come on”—a little resistance—“give it up”—a little more—“you nasty—”
Tickunk.
Exhale.
Pause. Regroup.
The next motion was all or nothing.
Another breath and he went for the pull.
Staying low, Amit cranked the door open and trained the gun straight out, fully prepared to take a bullet. But the corridor beyond was dark and empty. And thankfully, no after-hours alarm seemed to have tripped. Cohen had most likely turned it off when he’d entered the building. The guy seemed to have the password to all of Israel—and apparently some obscure precincts of Egypt too.
Amit stepped inside. He slipped off his obnoxiously squeaky rubber-soled shoes and carried them in his right hand as he penetrated deeper into the building.
The box’s golden lid felt warm and tingly under Charlotte’s fingers— similar to the sensation she recalled from Evan’s injection, which had shot the sacred DNA into her bloodstream. There certainly was an energy stored up inside this vessel, she thought—though probably not one that could be measured in volts.
She actually heard a couple of the men gasp. They’d certainly been harboring some doubts that she was the Chosen One, because they seemed fully prepared to be dragging a flame-broiled carcass out of the room.
“Ah!” Cohen joyously blurted, bringing his hands together with a clap. “See! Do you all see this? You are witnessing the fulfillment of a prophecy!” he said to the assemblage.
He kept on with it, but Charlotte had tuned him out, because there was something very strange happening over the veil’s sheer surface that the others weren’t picking up on. Something seemed to billow—a distortion that was invisible yet dynamic in its shifting. It could easily have been dismissed as a quick bout of blurred vision. But the interference was contained in only one spot—and when she tested it by shifting her eyes slightly sideways, it remained stationary. Frightened, she immediately withdrew her hand.
It went away.
What the hell was that?
“Don’t be afraid, Ms. Hennesey,” the rabbi said soothingly, stepping up to her and placing a hand on her shoulder.
She knew he wasn’t referring to what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen. It was her recoiling hand that had drawn his attention.
“What you feel is the Holy Spirit,” he explained. “Just as Jesus did when he laid his hand upon that very spot and it entered into Him—just as it entered into Moses atop Mount Sinai. The sacred blood is a gift,” he repeated. “A gateway into the one light that rules over all creation.”
“Then take the blood from your son,” she fumed. “If you say I healed him by using this power, then it must have transferred to him, right? Or just let me heal whatever ails you, then you can go and do whatever you want with the box, the blood . . .”
Shaking his head, he flatly stated, “It doesn’t work like that, Dr. Hennesey. If it were that easy, I wouldn’t need you.”
She noticed the rabbi’s eyes shift away as he said this.
“I’m not following you,” she said.
“You were chosen. Why, I don’t know. But question not the Lord’s plan.”
More eye shifting suggested that the rabbi was holding back. “You tried it already, didn’t you?”
The rabbi’s jaw clenched tight and his eyes burned with fury.
That’s when the truth hit her. “Your son’s hand,” she said accusatorily. “When you saw that he was walking, you brought him directly here, didn’t you? You had him touch the—”
Without warning, the rabbi’s hand flew through the air to connect firmly with Charlotte’s cheek.
“Silence!” he yelled.
What had happened to Joshua was a horrible thing. The smell of burning flesh still lingered in Cohen’s nostrils. He’d pulled the terrified boy away from the Ark almost instantly, yet the damage had already been done. A scream like no other had come from Joshua’s lips and he’d covered the boy’s mouth with his hand to suppress it. Joshua’s fingers had been broiled, curled into a tight claw. Yet while the rabbi sat there cradling him, he could actually see the flesh regenerating ever so slowly. By the time he’d composed himself and brought Joshua downstairs for presentation to the geneticist, the boy’s pain had already subsided; the hand was still on the mend. Gazing into his son’s eyes, he’d known immediately that another wound—a much deeper, irreparable wound—had been inflicted. The rabbi himself suffered as well as the extreme disappointment of a broken son—a broken legacy—returned. He’d asked Devora to cover the hand so that it wouldn’t detract from the message he needed to relay to Charlotte.
“After patiently waiting for centuries,” he replied, “nothing falls to chance. Unnecessary risk is unacceptable.”
Charlotte held a hand against the hot fire rushing into her cheek. She noticed that during this whole exchange, the rabbi’s wife had been standing in the shadowed corridor, listening. The rabbi himself, however, had not picked up on this. “And injuring your own flesh and blood is a necessary and acceptable risk?” she added. “You couldn’t have used yourself as the guinea pig?”
He stepped up so close that his nose practically touched hers, ready to strike again. His eyes were wild.
“You’re no savior,” she raged on. “You’re a coward—a coward who sends assassins to kill the innocent. A coward who is willing to sacrifice his son to save his own skin. How do you think God feels about that?”
“Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son. Even God sacrificed His own.”
He drew a cleansing breath and withdrew. “Enough of this,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “The time has come.”
“
What
time?” She knew ancient Jews were hugely amenable to making sacrificial offerings. Plenty of animals carved up on an altar came to mind, but she was sifting her memories for more prolific examples. Another quick glance at the doorway showed that the rabbi’s wife had already staged her retreat.
Cohen ignored her question and directed his attention to his entourage. Pointing to the relic, he said, “Place it back in the crate and load the truck. You know what to do with her. We’ll leave immediately.”
The men came at her quickly, overpowering her, binding her hands behind her back, then gagging her mouth.
In the fire stairwell Amit set down his shoes and peeked out through the fire door’s small glass window. The red glow of the exit sign hanging above the door’s other side gave him about two meters of muddled visibility through the corridor extending left and right. But he heard the commotion before he saw what caused it.
First came a crate set on a dolly that a man was wheeling toward the elevator adjacent to the fire door. Another five armed men trailed closely behind, and between them was a very pretty woman bound and gagged. For Amit, the sight of her raised a whole new set of questions.
Finally came the morose master of ceremonies wearing all black and bringing up the rear.
Definitely not a favorable scenario for playing hero. But the rabbi
was
at the back of the line, and if Amit could somehow take him by surprise . . .
The compulsion to use the element of surprise was short-lived as he tried to imagine what Jules would say. Probably something along the lines of “Settle down, cowboy.”
The elevator doors opened and the bright light from its interior spilled into the dark hallway. Amit shrank back against the wall and listened as they all crammed into the elevator alongside the dolly. Once he heard the doors clatter shut and the gears engage high up in the shaft, he waited a few more seconds near the tiny window. Then he swung open the door, staying low and thrusting the gun forward. He was greeted once more by silence.
At the end of the dark corridor, however, he could see light coming from the conference room—the last door on the left. Instinct told him to check the room and see if anything had been left behind.
Easing the fire door closed, he slipped quietly down the hall in his socked feet. His two outstretched hands were wrapped around the Beretta, his left index finger hooked firmly around its cold trigger.
As he neared the folded-back doors, he slowed to a shuffle and took cover behind the closest one. He peeked through the thin gap separating the doorjamb. That’s when he spotted two people moving about inside, tidying up the room’s center. He noticed both of them immediately. The woman was Cohen’s wife, the Temple Society’s not-so-pleasant receptionist. Amit second-guessed his recognition of the boy’s face when he saw that he was actually up and about, not stuck in a wheelchair.
Joshua? What the hell?
Now a new opportunity presented itself. If he tried to simply follow the rabbi and his posse, there was a very good chance he’d get only so far. Amit could risk losing them altogether and not be able to pick up the trail until it was too late. But if he could somehow get advance information on what Cohen’s plan entailed . . .
Maneuvering around the door, Amit inspected the room more thoroughly to make sure it was only the two of them. Next, he stormed in with the gun trained on the rabbi’s son.
“Don’t scream or I’ll put a bullet in your head,” he said in a calm voice.
“Hello, Mrs. Cohen,” Amit said wryly. “A pleasure to see you again.” He held the gun straight out, trained on Joshua’s head. The wife’s arms dropped limply to her sides, the right hand still clutching the cloth she’d been using to buff the crate’s grimy streaks off the tabletop. “I see that your husband returned safely from Egypt.”
The woman remained silent, well composed. Her eyes, however, looked weary, lifeless.
“Seems he didn’t come back empty handed,” Amit said. “Care to tell me what he has in that crate?”
After studying the archaeologist for five seconds, she responded: “Why should you care?”
“Because whatever it is, he tried to kill me for it. Sent an assassin for me. And your husband had two of my friends murdered.” He turned his gaze to Joshua. “Including Yosi.” The boy had been fond of the old man too. Who hadn’t been?
“Yosi died of a heart attack,” Joshua insisted.
Devora had already figured out Amit’s real name shortly after she’d advised her husband of the man’s sudden appearance at his office, when he’d introduced himself as Yosi. When she’d explained what the visitor and his female companion looked like, her husband had immediately become alarmed. Playback of the Temple Society’s security recordings confirmed what he’d already suspected.
“No, Joshua. It wasn’t a heart attack that killed Yosi. And as we speak, another of my friends is in the hospital having a bullet hole in her side plugged up. All because of your husband,” he said to Devora. “So I care
very
deeply about what is in that box.” There were also selfish reasons for his interest, traceable to a culmination of years of research and the slim possibility that the Bible’s most cherished relic still existed.
“He’s killed many others too,” Devora weakly replied, staring blankly at a Greek inscription glazed onto a ring of ceramic tiles just below the domed ceiling. She remembered her husband telling her it was a quote from Plato that was the oldest known reference to the study now dubbed “archaeology.” But perhaps Aaron had lied about that too. After all, she couldn’t read Greek—and she certainly couldn’t read him. “He’s done many things you may not like. But it is God’s will that—”
“No,” Amit cut her off. “Murder is
not
God’s will. Now I’m running out of time. So tell me, what is in that box?”
“You wouldn’t believe me.” Devora shook her head.
“Try me.”
But Devora stood her ground.
It was the son who offered up the answer. “The Ark of the Covenant.”
“Joshua!” the mother said in a warning tone, shaking her head.
“Thank you,” Amit said with an air of vindication. But the confirmation brought even more anxiety.
“It doesn’t matter now, Mother,” Joshua reminded her.
Devora paused as she looked over at Joshua’s bandaged hand. What her husband had done to his own flesh and blood was unspeakable. Yet it was no surprise, since he’d never shown Joshua true love or respect. Being a son in the Cohen family was no small responsibility. Only the able-bodied could perform the duties of a priest. To Aaron, Joshua had become first and foremost a break in his genealogical chain. Crippled, the boy stood no chance of serving God as a
kohen
.
And given the gloomy prognosis for Joshua’s condition, a grandson had been considered an impossibility. Nor could Joshua’s corrupted genetics have supported artificial means of conception, even if it were to come down to that. The bottom line was that Joshua could never carry on the Cohen family name and the ever-so-precious pedigree that came with it—his
yichus.
Not to mention that Devora was able to bear only one child before a series of benign cysts strangled her ovaries so badly that they required excision. Since Joshua’s illness began, Aaron had not been able to reconcile how the imperfections of the next generation could run so deep. His obsession with genetics had grown even stronger. If there was any way to retain the bloodline, he was determined to find it.
Though she hadn’t acknowledged it for many years, Devora had become aware that there was something wrong with her husband—something bordering on mania. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was capable of doing to others. And now that he’d achieved so many things and brought the Ark back to Zion, there was no telling what he’d do next.
Amit’s gaze bounced from mother to son and back to mother. They were serious. “Is it real—the Ark?”
Devora’s eyes were still locked on Joshua’s hand as she answered Amit: “The Ark is real.” There was defeat in her voice—decades of it. “The Ark is
very
real.”
“My God,” Amit mumbled. Seeing that neither mother nor son posed a threat, he lowered the gun. Though his first inclination was to question her sincerity, there was something else playing out in the woman’s hurt gaze. With his guard down, he noticed a sleek safe case sitting on one of the chairs. He sidestepped closer to examine it—a fancy model with a digital combination lock. The rabbi’s attaché? Could the missing scrolls from Qumran be inside it? “What is this?”
When Mrs. Cohen told him, his alarm heightened. He asked who’d be coming to pick it up. The answer wasn’t pleasing either. “When?”
“Any minute now,” she replied. “They are in the building.”
Amit moved the case further across the room and gave her specific instructions on how to handle the transaction. Keeping his attention, and the gun, on the door, he lowered his voice.
“You need to save the Messiah,” Joshua blurted out.
Puzzled, Amit asked,
“Who?”
“The woman ...Charlotte. The pretty one they are taking with them. She’s the Messiah.”
Messiah?
Amit looked back at the mother, hoping to see recognition that her son had a few screws loose. But much to his surprise, Devora nodded in agreement.
“It’s true,” Devora conceded. “She is the Chosen One. Do you not see how my son walks now?”
This was all a lot to take in. First the Ark, now the Messiah? Things were moving too fast. “She’s the Messiah,” he whispered to no one in particular. “So tell me about her. I also want to know what she has to do with the Ark—and I want to know what your husband is planning to do,” Amit insisted.
“Look at this fucking mess,” Kwiatkowski grumbled, unwrapping the blood-caked towel from his mangled forearm. Blinking sporadically, his bloodshot eyes were still tearing from the chemical burns. Leaning over the bathroom sink, he turned on the squeaky chrome spigots.
Watching his ashen-faced partner peel away the final layer, Orlando cringed as the towel’s crusty twill pulled away some of the crescent-shaped scab. The raw, deep wound split like smiling lips, the skin surrounding it a gruesome shade of purple. Blood zigzagged down Kwiatkowski’s forearm muscles into the basin, turning the shallow water pink. “That priest really got you good.”
As Kwiatkowski stuffed the bloodstained towel into the garbage can, his inflamed red eyes knifed into Orlando. “He just got lucky. That’s all.” An attempt at wiggling the bluish-purple digits produced good results for the pinky and ring finger, limited motion in the middle finger, and nothing in the other two. “Damn nerves are severed. Shit.”
All told, it had been six hours since they’d slipped out of the Vatican dormitory and loaded the geneticist into the rented van. They’d easily rolled out the Petrine Gate as the Swiss Guard focused its attention on the fire alarm that had gone off in the dormitory. The priest had unwittingly made their escape easier. At Fiumicino, the woman had been transferred to the rabbi’s private jet. As Cohen had promised, diplomatic privileges allowed them to bypass all security. The man seemed to have more pull than the pope. The bumpy flight from Rome to Tel Aviv took less than two and a half hours. Once they’d landed, a transfer to a second van completed the last leg of the delivery to the Rockefeller Museum.
Now it was time to collect final payment.
Repulsion giving way to curiosity, Orlando stared at the wound more clinically. “Did he break the bone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Could have been worse.”
“Are you fucking kidding? This isn’t exactly like cutting myself shaving.” He bent over and held the grotesque arm under the running water. Chunks of the scab and oozing gore slid off into the drain. “As soon as we get the money you can drop me over at Hadassah. I’m going to need surgery.”
“No problem,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. Big problem, actually. It was Kwiatkowski’s shooting hand. Clearly the best surgeon in Israel would have a difficult time restoring the reflex in his trigger finger. Which rendered the man useless. “You did good. There’ll be plenty of time to rest up after this job.”
Plenty of time.
He handed over a fresh towel.
Kwiatkowski sighed. “The rabbi’s wife has the cash?” He glared at Orlando in the mirror.
“That’s right.”
“Euros, not shekels?”
“Right.” With a lightning-fast draw, Orlando pulled out his gun and fired once into Kwiatkowski’s left ear.
The giant rocked sideways and struck the wall where the round had cracked through the tiles. Blood and brain matter smeared as he crumpled to the floor.
Holstering his gun, Orlando made his way outside.
Orlando moved quickly down the corridor toward the light coming out of the conference room, the gun swinging like a pendulum in his right hand. “Mrs. Cohen?” he called out.
As he drew nearer the conference room, shadows moved across the light. Then the matronly Hasidic woman in her ankle-length dress seemed to glide out of the room, hands folded.
“Yes, in here, please,” she said in a lukewarm manner.
The assassin’s muscles eased up as he passed by her and cautiously entered the room with the gun drawn.
“Where is your partner?” she asked, coming in behind him.
“He went ahead to the hospital.”
“His arm?”
“An awful thing,” the contractor confirmed. “I’ll be handling matters on his behalf,” he firmly replied, his deadpan face clearly communicating that he shouldn’t be questioned any further.
A haunted expression came over his face when he saw the rabbi’s son across the room, standing next to the silver safe case. When he’d first arrived, the emaciated, ghost-white kid had been curled up in a wheelchair. Less than an hour after he came out of the room where the geneticist had been detained, he’d started rambling excitedly about his legs, how he could feel strange sensations. Then the kid had clumsily pulled himself up from the chair. It hadn’t been pretty, but the kid managed to stand, using the wall and the chair for support. But he was definitely up and about, crying like a baby, his cheeks flushed with rosy color. The circumstances seemed highly suspicious, so Orlando had immediately fetched the rabbi. The rabbi’s genuine astonishment had not been what he’d expected.
The boy’s condemnatory stare sent a freakish coldness over Orlando. He paced over to the case and ran his fingers over its small keypad.
“Don’t worry. Your blood money is all there,” Mrs. Cohen said.
The woman certainly wasn’t looking to win any popularity contests. “The code?” He tucked the gun into his underarm holster since he’d need both hands to open the case.
She gave him the sequence.
Orlando keyed in the numbers and the locks snapped open inside the case. Grinning, he unhinged the cover. The smile immediately faded when he looked down at the neat stacks of bills. “Shekels?” he grunted.
“It’s perfectly good money,” the wife confirmed.
“I specifically requested Euros, not this Jew money. Now where am I supposed to go to trade this at this hour?”
“So open a bank account in the morning,” she coldly replied.
“You think you’re funny?” he hissed. Pulling his gun, he swept it up at the son’s pale face. “I can be funny too.”
Without warning, the wooden panel covering the front of the table splintered open around a clean hole. At the same time, Orlando felt a wretched pain tear up through his abdomen and into his chest—an invisible spear impaling his body. “Wh—what . . . ?” Blood pulsed out in quick bursts from above his navel and sprayed onto the shekels. Absorbed in the absurdity of it, he hadn’t noticed the boy scamper off behind him. He backed up from the table, dazed. Delirious, he swung the gun side to side, squeezing off haphazard shots—at the table, at the ceiling, over his shoulder. “Fucking scumbags!” he slurred.
The gun’s ammo clip emptied quickly.
That’s when a broad man with a goatee sprang up from underneath the table and fired three more rounds into his chest.
Orlando crashed onto the conference table, blood spreading out smoothly over the freshly polished finish. He tried to curse them once more, but the words drowned in the bile and blood that gurgled into his throat. The rabbi’s wife came and stood beside the table, arms crossed tight in front of her chest. It was the first time he’d seen her smile.
He felt her spit strike his eye just as the darkness took hold.
By the time Amit got his shoes on, made it back downstairs, and bounded out the rear service door with gun drawn, the delivery van was gone. No surprise. Oddly, however, the flatbed truck had gone missing too.
The fragmented story that Mrs. Cohen had told him was almost too incredible to believe. Yet even if she’d embellished a half-truth, the implications of what Rabbi Cohen had in store for the Ark and the captive “Messiah” were shocking.
Immediately, Amit broke into a sprint to get back to the car. Midstride, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the send button. The call took three rings to connect. As always, Enoch was heedful about answering his call, no matter what the hour.
“Hey,” he said between heavy breaths.
“Are you having sex?” Enoch joked.
Under better circumstances, Amit would have laughed heartily. “I need”—
breath
—“your help. It’s critical.”
His tone instantly went serious. “Tell me.”
“Just a sec,” Amit said as he approached the car, ducked inside, and fumbled for the key. The Fiat’s engine turned over with a growl.
“Where are you?”
Amit told him as he threw the car into drive and peeled out along the curved road. He paused to regulate his lungs, then laid out the facts he’d confirmed with the rabbi’s wife—the abduction of an American geneticist,
the clandestine shipment flown back from Egypt.
“And where’s Cohen heading?”
“The Temple Mount.” When Devora had told him this, his heart had almost given out. “Something to do with the excavation in the Western Wall Tunnel. I’m not sure about that part.”
“What’s in the box?” Enoch had to ask.
“Something very dangerous.”
This made Enoch fear the worst, because some hard-core Zionists were considered religious extremists, even terrorists. The Mossad kept a very close eye on the select few considered credible threats. Yet somehow Rabbi Cohen had remained below the radar. “A bomb?”
Amit liked the way this proposition resonated with Enoch. So he went along with it. “That or something worse.” If it really was the Ark in that box, he wasn’t stretching the truth.
Along the straightaway below the Temple Mount’s eastern wall, he gunned the engine to swerve around a Toyota sedan moving sluggishly along Derech Ha’ofel. “I’m just about there now,” Amit told him. “You need to get over here immediately—the Western Wall Plaza. And call for backup.”