Simantov

by Asaf Ashery

  If the Naphil himself did not scare them as much as he scared her, at least the warning about spilling blood and the instructions of their commanders would stop them from taking any rash step.

  As if on cue, Shamhazai took out a long tiepin with a pearl at its end and, grinning broadly, cocking his left thumb into a “thumbs-up” gesture, pricked himself with it.

  Jaws dropped at the sight of the rounded crimson dewdrop. How much angel’s blood could dance on a pinhead? Shamhazai presented the drop to the incredulous eyes of Abigail and her guards. It was in that split-second that she realized what had been wrong all along with the circle of guards. If there was blue fluorescent light inside the greenhouse, where did the bluish-purple haloes surrounding the silhouettes standing outside come from? Then, with one loud, synchronized whirr, the outer circle spread its wings and the soothing figures of the guards became looming silhouettes of Nephilim.

  They had been surrounded all along.

  Like an emperor in the Colosseum, Shamhazai turned his thumb down, letting the blood drip onto the greenhouse floor. Eddies of fury roiled the hitherto placid water of the covenant that existed between the Liliths and the Nephilim. The Nephilim flew through the glass walls, dragging hoses, irrigation devices and pots in their wake. They swooped down on Abigail and on the guards who had no chance to defend themselves. Seconds later, Abigail was hovering between sky and earth, captured in a net, which the Nephilim must have brought with them in order to avoid touching a contemptible daughter of Lilith with their exalted hands.

  Many bizarre thoughts ran through Professor Odem’s head, but two almost made her burst out into crazy laughter. One was associative: she was reminded of the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz, carried by the winged monkeys at the behest of the Witch of the North. Now the witch herself was lifted into the air, too scared to look down. The second thought was petty but all too human. Through this historic cataclysm she was witnessing, which could furnish her with material for many years of research into arcane Jewish lore, one uncontested fact emerged: she had been wrong.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Mazzy locked the door behind Yariv and herself and crashed into the nearest chair, stealing a few moments of quiet without the scathing criticism she surely merited on account of the mess Rachel had left behind. Her own self-criticism was enough. She knew she had screwed up.

  Following Rachel’s assault, there was no sense in detaining Almadon. The evidence against him was all circumstantial. The only possible clue they had in their investigation disappeared with Rachel. But Mazzy, instead of grilling her mother, which would have benefited the case, was busy settling old accounts.

  Yariv sat on a chair backwards, his arms hugging its back and his chin resting on the top. It was clear to Mazzy that he did not see the urgency; he was a conventional detective examining a clue. To him, it was only a matter of time; the hunt had just begun. Not so from her perspective. She saw how tense Rachel was. The silence was getting oppressive, so she broke it.

  “Do you have any new insights?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Would you care to share them?”

  “Not a good idea.”

  She gave him her bittersweet smile, with a hint of appeasement.

  “Biton, we’ve hit rock bottom. Couldn’t be lower than that.”

  “You sure?”

  “Dead Sea level, sweetheart, lowest place on the planet.”

  Her reference to the Dead Sea elicited a conciliatory smile. At the time when they had shared a police car and a bed, the two of them were unsuccessfully tailing one of Mandelbrot’s rivals, another gangster by the name of Almaliach. This was Mazzy’s first job undercover. When she returned from the stakeout and was asked how low her spirits had sunk, she coined the phrase Dead Sea level.

  Yariv took a deep breath and placed his hand lightly on her shoulder.

  “It’ll be all right.”

  The warmth scorched Mazzy’s skin. While she was waging a war against Rachel, other, distant emotions were sneaking in, and the only man who could pacify her in such situations was to blame. Mazzy refused to acknowledge those feelings; the walls of her heart had been fortified, the moat filled with water, the bridge hoisted.

  “No.”

  Yariv disengaged and returned to the back of his chair.

  “This is really out of place right now.”

  “Out of place?”

  Footsteps fell outside the door. Someone was either listening in or making up their mind whether or not to knock.

  “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe so.”

  “Be kind, rewind and we’ll both forget about the last thirty seconds, Okay?”

  “I thought you were no longer my radio.”

  “Haven’t been for a long time.”

  The door handle rattled, followed by a determined knocking.

  “I doubt your suggestion will work,” Yariv protested.

  “Yours will definitely not,” Mazzy said as she reached to unlock the door.

  Caught off balance, Elisha hurtled forward, his fedora askew, his side locks and tzitzit flying in all directions. Larissa made a more dignified entrance.

  “Well?” asked Mazzy.

  Their task was to decode the words that Rachel had whispered to Barak Almadon. That they had found something was clear from their faces. Larissa nodded graciously at Elisha, and he launched into his explanation.

  “There’s more than one method of gematria,” he said.

  “Gematria?”

  “Listen, Biton, you may even learn something,” Larissa said disdainfully.

  “Assigning numeric value to words. It’s my method for solving problems, and a bit like math. You identify an X, graph it, and then project the result onto the partial sums of the entire series.”

  Not being understood had never discouraged Elisha from continuing with an explanation.

  “You take the result of the gematria and compare it with a known sum and proceed slowly, from one link in the chain to the next, until you reach a solution.”

  “Do you have the answer to what Rachel said?”

  “Only the beginning. We’re looking for a seven. ‘For three things the earth is disquieted and for four which it cannot bear.’”

  “Seven what? Continents? Wonders of the world?” Yariv wanted to know.

  “Here comes the good part. You may still not understand it, but it makes sense,” said Larissa, like a mother proud of her child prodigy.

  “In gematria this verse equals 4225, which has the same value as ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have a holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you.’ It’s as if someone is trying to call me with a ram’s horn and I don’t hear it. I stand in front of a door but have no key. And then it hit me. This has to do with Rosh Hashanah, and the abductions started on Passover. Except that in Biblical times, Passover was the start of the year! The verse refers to the month of Nissan that used to be the first month of the year. Thus we find the answer at the end, not at the beginning, the last, not the first! So, I proceeded in the method of numerical intensification of the Proverbs, ‘There be three things which go well, yea, four are comely in going,’ which when taken in a row come to 1735. A quick calculation yields that it is equal to, ‘Which the clouds do drop and distill upon man abundantly.’ From the Book of Job.”

  “Do you mind telling us what all this means, instead of spouting numbers?” Yariv was getting impatient.

  Elisha ignored the lack of enthusiasm and became even more animated.

  “I’m getting to the meaning in a minute. So I take the sum of the first verse, 4225, and subtract the sum of the second verse, 1735. I deduct the end from the beginning.”

  “2490,” Yariv pronounced, surprising everyone. “Maths was kinda like a hobby when I was growing up.”

  “And the solution is also from the book of Job. Chapter Two, Verse One. ‘Again there was a day when the sons of God came to pres
ent themselves before the Lords, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord,’ which, as the Chief Inspector correctly deduced, equals 2490.”

  Nobody was particularly pleased with the conclusion. The references to God and the Prince of Darkness did not make them feel any better about the investigation. Larissa was the first to react.

  “It’s just like the cards we were reading. Seven again and again. Two of Cups, Two of Wands, Five of Wands and five of Cups – seven.”

  “And you’re excited because…”

  “The word seven in Elisha’s gematria is 372; this brings us to what everybody is thinking about Satan and his Boss, but nobody has the guts to say it.”

  The silence was deafening.

  “Apocalypse!”

  “So why are you so pleased?”

  “Either I’m going up to meet Borislav, or I’m going down to settle the account with whoever killed him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rachel had expected the Athaliah’s visit since the phone call. She tried to stay focused and recited verses to keep her mind from straying to forebodings about Mazzy’s situation. A pewter coffee pot simmered over a small stove, heavy curtains covered the windows, and chains of silver coins hung from a copper lamp that gave off soft, oil-fragrant light. On a low, finely carved table stood a rounded mortar filled with coffee beans and a long pestle. All the chairs were facing west, except the reader’s stool. A bold knock on the door heralded the visitor’s arrival.

  “Come in!”

  An elegant, dark silhouette stood at the door exuding self-assurance. Her bodyguards hung back.

  “Rachel.” The Athaliah’s mellifluous voice filled the room, echoing from corners and nooks. For all her apparent gentleness, the Athaliah offered no greeting, she summoned as if to a roll call.

  The Athaliah was in charge of hundreds of women placed, over the centuries, in positions of power, women who had learned how to maneuver intricate bureaucracies and to control the various branches of authority. Rachel’s life could be turned upside down if one day the tax authorities, Social Security, City Hall and the Land Deeds Registrar decided to take an interest in her.

  By way of an answer, Rachel stood and extended her arms in greeting.

  The Athaliah inspected the room at length while Rachel turned her back and attended to the coffee. She needed the Athaliah to understand this was Rachel Simantov’s domain, where she felt secure and unencumbered.

  She lifted the pot from the stove a second before the coffee boiled over. It was as if she had anticipated the exact moment of her guest’s arrival. The Athaliah sat down on the stool facing the door. Without turning to face her, and in a tone one uses to address a clueless child, Rachel said, “You’re sitting in my chair.”

  Wordlessly, the Athaliah moved to a worn rattan chair. Rachel poured the bitter beverage into porcelain cups, one for herself, one for the venerable Daughter of Lilith. Between them stood an empty saucer.

  “So are you going to tell me, or did I just drop in for coffee?”

  Rachel and her guest studied each other. The silence was becoming oppressive, like a dry desert wind. The Athaliah was getting restless.

  “This is not how it works.”

  Rachel kept her tongue.

  “I work with our Order and with people that we hire. Jobs exclusively tailored for our needs.”

  A strong smell of freshly ground coffee beans mixed with cardamom filled the air.

  “This time it’s different,” said Rachel finally.

  Sipping from her cup, she fixed her gaze on the Athaliah and her two smoldering charcoal eyes.

  “I can spare you time, money, and hassle. You are running around like a headless chicken, spreading fear in people’s hearts. But there are no bullets in your guns.”

  The Athaliah sat unprovoked, maintaining her composure. Her breathing was regular; she did not sweat or swallow hard. She exhibited no signs of distress, yet Rachel knew she had hit the nail on the head. So did the Athaliah. The usual control methods and power games no longer applied.

  “So you are aware of our problems?”

  “Oh no. The hail and ash were just a coincidence. A barometric depression caused by an accident at a power plant.”

  “I see; you are not as naïve as the others. At least you keep your eye on the ball.”

  “You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Sure, I’m a good reader, but not so good that the Athaliah would drop everything and come visit me after one phone call. You also know that I am smart enough not to bother you with trivialities.”

  The Athaliah drank her coffee with deliberation, then handed the cup to Rachel who turned it upside down on the porcelain saucer, waited a few seconds, picked it up and examined the texture of the dregs, their thickness, roughness, the distance between the circles left by the black liquid, the patterns and the pictures that emerged. On the right side of the saucer she saw a drawn curtain, on the left a suitcase. The curtain indicated a desire to conceal, the suitcase suggested an urge to flee, disappear. The Athaliah might be trying to hide behind threats and imperial gestures, but in the bottom of a coffee cup there are no corners.

  “So you’d like to work for us again?”

  “As it says in the Bible, ‘man is born unto trouble…’”

  The Athaliah completed the verse in her head, “as the sparks fly upward,” and the association made her tense up.

  “How much do you know?”

  “I know who, and I know where and when.”

  The Athaliah scrutinized the woman before her. She was holding her cards close to her chest, and probably a few up her sleeve.

  “What’s your price? How much is this going to cost me?”

  “My daughter Mazzy. Even if later on she becomes important to you, I want you to keep her out of it, as far as possible.”

  “I have someone in the police. She’ll keep an eye on her, from a distance. But I need time. If something goes wrong, I have no control over her replacement.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t want her to know. Right now, you are on a collision course. I hope you can avert it, but I don’t want to find out later that she was injured because she was in the wrong place.”

  “I hope the whole business comes to an end soon. At any rate, she will not be part of the confrontation.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Just make sure you give us everything you’ve got.”

  “I know how to pick my enemies, the Athaliah. I’ve no intention of turning you into one.”

  From her pocket Rachel took out a note on which was written the name of the woman whose sketch had been earlier drawn by Ashling. She handed it to Lilith’s Daughter, sealing the deal.

  The Athaliah smiled without betraying any emotion, and was gone.

  Rachel gave herself five minutes, then checked the cushions, the flowerpots and the herbs in the yard for charms and listening devices.

  She picked up the phone and dialed only three digits. Someone answered immediately and it wasn’t the emergency services operator.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to speak with Israel.”

  A long silence, followed by a deep voice that sent shivers down her spine.

  “Hello, Sibylla. You got my message.”

  His use of her old nickname did not help steady her nerves.

  “Have you lost my number? Might have been easier like this, you know.”

  A long silence from his end prompted her to ask the more pressing question.

  “On a scale of one to ten, how much help do I need from you?”

  “It’s actually you who needs help. All the help you can think of, and then some.”

  Israel was able to evade even the simplest question. Her ex-partner’s answers had always been mysterious and evasive.

  “If it was so important that we talk, why didn’t you come to me? How could you be so sure I’d contact you?”

  “She’s your daughter, and she’s in the middle of all this.”

>   “My blood has to hold on. At the end of the world, it can let go.”

  “When the end comes, it won’t matter anymore. You know what they say about those who calculate the end of the world.” As soon as she said this, she knew what his response would be.

  “‘For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.’”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “This is the only version I know.”

  “If I come, will she be okay?”

  “If you come, she may have a chance.”

  “And until then?”

  “Until then we shall not rest.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The road zigzagged under the tires. Mazzy gripped the steering wheel, trying to tune in with the music blaring from the sound system. Like the singer, she found herself in a place she no longer wanted to be. Someone, a lover perhaps, was standing in her way. “Now who could that be?” Mazzy asked herself.

  Sometimes you have to dive into the pool, even if you’re not sure there’s water in it. The song ended, Mazzy reached home, killed the engine and sat in the dark.

  His cab arrived and Mazzy thought he looked tired, or just old, maybe both. The cab driver and Mazzy both sat and waited for something to happen, for someone to tell them where to go next. The babysitter came out of the house, fiddling with her cellphone and not noticing Gaby as he stood at the door to see her safely into the cab.

  One by one the lights in the house came on, as Gaby went through his ritual of making sure everything was in order. Mazzy gathered her strength and stepped up to the front door. She felt like a mechanical doll with a tightly wound spring. This night so far had been like a whirlwind that scattered her in all directions. Steadying her breathing, she found her key and unlocked the door. Ever-vigilant Gaby was waiting for her.

  “Hey there,” he whispered.

  “Hey,” she whispered back, although she knew Noga could sleep soundly through a heavy metal concert.

  Gaby stepped forward, nuzzling up against her but getting no response.