Transgression

by R. S. Ingermanson

  Hana turned right. She was going to get away if he didn’t do something.

  Damien yanked out his gun and thumbed off the safety.

  He reached the corner and stopped, dropping into a shooter’s crouch. There she was, easily within his range. He sighted down his arm. Steady…aim…

  A drop of sweat rolled into his right eye.

  He swore and wiped his eye with his sleeve. He aimed again, switching to a two-handed grip to steady the gun, despite his heaving chest. Finally, he squeezed the trigger.

  Abruptly, she darted left, just before the pop of the silenced gun told him that he had fired.

  Missed!

  Frustrated, Damien fired again without aiming. Almost certainly, that was a miss, too.

  She disappeared down a side street.

  He safed the gun and trudged down the street after her, wondering how he could have got so out of shape. When he reached the corner, she was gone. No traces of blood marked the dust.

  He had missed twice. No great surprise. On TV, a guy running at full tilt could shoot from the hip and hit a moving target at fifty yards. But this wasn’t TV. In real life, even when you did everything right, even in natural sunlight, you couldn’t always hit a moving target.

  So Hana wasn’t going to take him to Rivka.

  Might Rivka be staying with that queer, Ari’s boyfriend?

  Possibly.

  And what about Ari? Was he also still in Jerusalem? Damien hadn’t seen him this afternoon, but that didn’t prove anything.

  If Ari were still here, with or without Rivka, it would be worthwhile to eliminate him. Even better to get them both.

  Damien patted his cloth belt. He still had the pick he had used to break into Ari’s lodgings the other night.

  He smiled to himself. Ari Kazan, if you’re still here in Jerusalem, you’re a dead man.

  * * *

  Baruch

  Baruch woke from a sound sleep all at once. Something felt wrong. Ari’s light snoring continued on an even rhythm.

  Baruch heard a scratching sound downstairs. That must be what he had heard just moments before, in his sleep.

  He silently rose and opened the door that led downstairs. He padded down on bare feet and studied the heavy wooden door leading to the street outside. A faint metallic scratching sound issued from it. Something clicked, and then he saw the door begin to move.

  Baruch sat down quietly on the stairway. Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who created the quarks and gluons. Blessed are you, who watches over your children…

  * * *

  Damien

  Damien finally felt the latch give. Excellent! He pressed on the door, and it began to move inward. He nodded and pulled his gun out. Releasing the safety, he then checked the street behind him. Silent and empty.

  Ari Kazan, ready or not, here I come.

  Damien quietly pressed forward on the door.

  It moved inward a quarter of an inch, then stopped. He pressed harder.

  No response.

  He pulled the door back and tried again. The heavy thud of wood against wood told him all he needed to know.

  This door now had a thick bar on the inside.

  Damien stepped back into the middle of the street to study the situation. The house had stone walls, a strong wooden door, and no decent windows. Nothing short of dynamite would get him in.

  He was not going to kill Ari tonight.

  Furious, he turned and stalked away. He had failed three times in one day, and that had to be some sort of a record.

  But never mind all that. Tomorrow, he would take on Paul of Tarsus. Paul didn’t have a weapon. Paul didn’t know what was coming. Paul would never know what hit him.

  Ari and Rivka had gotten lucky today. They had had the benefit of surprise.

  Tomorrow, that wouldn’t happen. Now that he knew they were still here in Jerusalem, he could plan for them.

  They would be watching for him—a white man wearing a modern Arab costume.

  And that’s exactly what they wouldn’t find. He would need a disguise, but that should be easy. He had money, he knew what he wanted, and he knew where to buy it. By the time Paul’s trial started, Damien West would look more like a Jew than Ari did.

  Chapter 26

  Rivka

  RIVKA SLEPT BADLY, DREAMING OF Dr. West firing bursts from an Uzi at every older man he met on the streets of Jerusalem. She awoke just at daybreak.

  “Sister Rivka!” It was the voice of her new friend Miryam. “Your friend is here to see you!”

  “Ari?” Rivka said. “I told him not to come until later. Tell him I’m sleeping.”

  “I cannot,” Miryam said. “You are not sleeping. And besides, it is not Brother Ari. It is Hana.”

  “Hana?” Rivka sat bolt upright. Hana was a late riser. She wouldn’t have come without a very good reason.

  “She is hurt and crying and very tired,” Miryam said. “She told me not to wake you. I have put her to bed in the other room and tended her wounds—”

  “Wounds?” Oh, God, please! No! Rivka jumped up and ran into the other room of the house, the one that led out onto the street.

  Hana lay huddled in a corner, shaking.

  Rivka ran to kneel beside her. “Hana! What happened?”

  Hana told her in bits and pieces. “…and finally, when I thought he was far behind me, something hit a wall near my face, and chips of stone sprang out and cut me.” Hana pointed at the gashes in her face.

  “From a bullet,” Rivka said.

  “I do not know what a bullet is,” Hana said.

  “The thing he poked you with is called a gun,” Rivka said. “It throws pieces of metal very fast. He could have killed you.”

  Hana’s face turned a shade paler. “He will kill you, Rivka. You must go back to your own country. Promise me you will go back!”

  “As soon as I can,” Rivka said. But Dr. West is going to try to kill Paul again. This proves it. I’ve got to stop him. She patted Hana on the shoulder. “You must be exhausted after staying up all night. Sleep for a while. I need to go out.”

  “You are in danger!” Hana said. “The voices said so yesterday. And now, they say…” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Don’t tell me,” Rivka said. “I don’t want to know.” She stood up and headed toward the door.

  “The voices say you are going to die,” Hana said.

  “Everybody is going to die,” Rivka said. “Tell me something new, please.”

  “They say you will die today,” Hana said. “Where are you going? Please…it is not safe out there.”

  “I’m going to buy a disguise,” Rivka said. “I can’t go back to my own country safely without a disguise, can I?”

  “You are lying,” Hana said. “Why are you lying to me, Rivka?”

  Rivka shivered. Hana had pegged her every time she had stretched the truth. Every time. It was…unnatural. “I am going to find a disguise. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve got one.” That was the plain and simple truth.

  Hana’s face relaxed a little.

  “Sleep, my friend,” Rivka said. She opened the door and peered out carefully. The sun had risen and the streets would soon be humming with activity. Good. In a crowd was an excellent place to hide. She fingered the coins Dr. West had given her. They should be enough to buy what she needed.

  She stepped out into the street and shut the door.

  * * *

  Damien

  Damien did not know what time the trial would be. Nor did he know where. But he knew exactly where Paul was staying. Sometime today, a squad of Roman soldiers would escort Paul out of the Fortress Antonia and take him to his trial before the Sanhedrin.

  At some point on his way to or from that trial, Paul would cross paths with a large, dark man in workman’s clothing. Lead would explode inside flesh and bone. History would be made. Or rather, history would be unmade.

  The dye on Damien’s arms felt itchy, and he had already begun sweatin
g inside his day-laborer’s costume. Never mind that. In a few hours, he could change into something more comfortable.

  The streets were already crowded, chaotic. That annoyed Damien. The history books didn’t tell you how cramped ancient cities were. This place was worse than Tokyo, worse than Hong Kong. It made planning difficult. By definition, you couldn’t control chaos.

  Which meant you needed a fallback plan. Damien had one. Several, in fact.

  He arrived at the gate to the fortress soon after dawn. The Antonia butted onto the northwest corner of the Temple Mount. A stairway led down to the street level right at a T-intersection. The two arms of the T pointed north and south; the leg pointed west.

  This intersection formed the hub of the busiest section of this city. Already customers thronged the shops lying here in the shadow of the Temple Mount. The tiny cubicles were crammed with merchandise. The real business took place out here in the street.

  Damien chose a likely position and stopped to wait for Paul. Maybe one hour, maybe six. Sooner or later, Paul would come out. He would have to pass near Damien. And that would be the chance of a lifetime—

  A string of gibberish cut in on Damien’s thoughts. A beefy, red-faced shopkeeper stood in his face, gesticulating at a tiny shop crammed with cloth. Silk. Satin. Linen.

  Damien shook his head. “Sorry, not interested,” he said in English.

  The shopkeeper scowled at him and made a gesture that could only mean, “Move along then and let the real shoppers in.”

  Damien nodded politely and moved down the street a little. No use alienating the locals. He needed to get along with them for just this one day.

  But it was the same story at the leather dealer in the next shop, and the ivory goods merchant in the next.

  Damien hadn’t counted on this. The street was a good twenty feet wide, but it had no place to loiter. You couldn’t simply smile and say, “Just looking,” as if you were in some Chicago boutique.

  Damien made up a Plan B on the spot. He had found the best possible general location, but he couldn’t stay standing in any one spot. He would just have to keep moving, ceaselessly drifting along with the foot traffic, walking up and down in front of the Antonia, waiting for the Romans and their guest.

  It was going to be a long day.

  * * *

  Ari

  Brother Baruch’s face shone with delight. “Explain to me again, Brother Ari, how HaShem made the universe from three colors of quarks. Have you seen these quarks?”

  Ari sighed. How could you explain quantum chromodynamics without resorting to mathematics and without discussing the experimental evidence—at least the parton model? He shook his head. “No, I have not seen the quarks. They cannot be seen, because they cannot be separated.”

  “But then how can you know they are three, and not one or five or twenty?”

  “I cannot see your bones, but I can feel that you have more than one.” It was a bad answer, but the best Ari could come up with.

  “But you could also remove my bones and count them,” Baruch said. “Why can you not remove the quarks?”

  The answer was that Ari did not know. The theory required quarks in a triplet representation, but nature apparently allowed only singlet representations to be stable—which required two or more quarks stuck together. And the reason was not clear, although you could make some plausible arguments. “It is a mystery of HaShem,” Ari said. “They are three and they are one, both at the same time. I do not know why.”

  Baruch gave him an uncertain smile. “Brother Ari, I think sometimes you are joking with me. It is not possible to be both three and one, is it?”

  Ari shivered. If Rivka heard him talking like this, she would be sure to make some absurd theological point.

  He looked at his watch. Almost 9 A.M.! Incredible! Where had the time flown? He should have gone to find Rivka an hour ago. This always happened when he discussed physics.

  “Brother Baruch, I am not joking with you, but I think I have told as much as you can hear for one day. Now I must go to find Sister Rivka.”

  Baruch nodded. “I will come with you, and you must explain this wonderful thing, that three can be one, and one three. Is it like this—that a box can have one weight, though it has height and width and length?”

  Ari stood and reached for the door latch. “It is like that, yes, but not quite.” He stepped out into the street.

  Baruch followed him and locked the door. “You must explain how it is not like a box.”

  Ari walked along in silence, trying to sort that out. Finally, he said, “Three dimensions, one weight. It is close enough.” Mass was a scalar, a singlet representation of the three-dimensional rotation group, whereas vectors lived in a triplet representation. Really, it was not a bad analogy at all—

  Ari’s ears perked up. From the direction of Miryam’s house, he heard a woman’s voice.

  Screaming.

  * * *

  Rivka

  Rivka had fully intended to keep her promise. When she finished buying her disguise, she meant to go back to Miryam’s house to check in on Hana.

  And yet she was afraid. Hana had told her she was going to die. Hana’s voices. Her protectors. Her truth-tellers.

  Rivka had put up a brave front, just as she had done yesterday when arguing with Ari. But when you got right down to it, dying was not likely to be pleasant.

  Dr. West was going to try to kill her.

  If she went back to Miryam’s house, Hana would argue with her, and Miryam also. And possibly Ari, if he came early.

  She could not argue with all three of them. Better not to think about it. Just pray.

  A public bathhouse for women stood near Miryam’s house. It served women who had finished their monthly niddah uncleanness. Rivka had just enough money to pay for a bath.

  She spent five minutes in the cool water, praying for strength and for courage. When she came out of the water, she felt clean and cool and terribly weak. She also knew that she had to stop Dr. West again. And she couldn’t tell Ari or Hana or Brother Baruch. They would try to talk her out of it, and they would succeed, because she was terrified already.

  She dressed herself in her newly purchased costume. It was a young woman’s white linen tunic, complete with a light cloak and a two-piece veil that covered both her face and her hair. She felt like one of the Iranian women she had seen on TV, except that she wore white, not black. This was the normal clothing worn by a young Jewish woman—a virgin who had never been married.

  Which Rivka was.

  Never mind that most girls in Jerusalem wearing this costume were under the age of fifteen. Nobody would know her age. Nobody would even notice her. And especially not Dr. West. At least not until she had stopped him. After that…she wasn’t going to think about what would happen after that. If she stopped Dr. West today, Paul would be home free, safely in the custody of Roman soldiers for the rest of his life.

  First she had to find out where the Sanhedrin met. The books were fuzzy on that. For much of its history, the Sanhedrin met at a place called the Chamber of Hewn Stone. At times, it may have met somewhere on the Temple Mount.

  Unfortunately, no historian knew the precise location.

  Rivka had been thinking about this while shopping, and she now had a plan. She knew the names of several of the men on the Sanhedrin, some of the great rabbis: Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Tsadduk. If she could find one of these men, she could simply ask him.

  But how to find one of them? Future generations would judge them as great. But did their contemporaries? Or were they relative unknowns in their own city?

  One of these men, Rabban Yohanan, worked as a merchant. Rivka guessed that he would run a shop near the Temple Mount. She had seen a long row of shops at the western foot of the Temple Mount, near the site where the Wailing Wall would someday be located. She also guessed that merchants wouldn’t be too fussy about talking to females. After all, if women did the shopping,
how could they communicate with male shopkeepers? So she would bet good odds that Rabban Yohanan would talk to her.

  Rivka headed for that shopping district. Somebody there had to know where to find the shop of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai.

  Fifteen minutes later, she stood before a small olive oil shop. Inside, she saw two slave girls arguing with a tiny man. The man had gray hair and a wispy gray beard and wore a black leather phylactery strapped to his forehead. A Pharisee.

  When the slave girls came out, Rivka went in.

  “Good morning, my daughter,” said the man. “What can I do for you today?” He had a kind smile, and the peace of God seemed to light up his face.

  Rivka immediately felt at home with him. “You are Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who sits on the Sanhedrin?”

  A look of puzzlement came over his face. “I am Yohanan, the son of Zakkai, but I am not called Rabban. I am not worthy for such a title.”

  He would be judged worthy, Rivka knew. He just didn’t realize it yet, and probably never would. “My father, you are a member of the Sanhedrin, am I correct?”

  He shrugged. “Only when that scoundrel Hananyah ben Nadavayah thinks to include me.”

  Rivka smiled. The high priest Hananyah—Ananias in English—had been written up as a first-class scoundrel in the history books. “My father, you have a meeting today. I wish to know where the Sanhedrin will meet.”

  He smiled indulgently. “My child, you are mistaken. I have not been invited to a meeting today. Why do you believe—”

  “Shalom, Yohanan!” A man’s voice boomed out in the street behind Rivka.

  She turned to look at him. He was a big man, built like a bear, with a thick gray beard and piercing eyes. The phylactery on his sweating forehead hung slightly askew.

  “Shalom, Shimon,” said Yohanan ben Zakkai. “What news?”