Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3

by Benjamin Laskin

  “I came here,” he continued. “I grabbed two lightning sticks from the shed and began to exercise with them. I thought I was going to pass out, but I pressed on. I could barely generate a few spitting sparks.

  “Then, slowly, I began to feel a tingling energy from the handles move up my arms. I noticed a corresponding flare from the whips. The heat intensified. It crept down my legs and up my torso. My movements became more fluid, and the lash of the lightning sticks grew as I spun and danced, an ecstatic joy in my heart and praise on my lips. I was healed, Kohai, like you were, and I’ve never felt stronger.”

  I nodded. I knew exactly what Virgil was feeling. “I’m thrilled for you, Virge. Do you have an explanation?”

  “No, Kohai. That’s your department.”

  “Determination,” I said. “I think HaShem likes grit.”

  “Well, why didn’t He just say so?”

  “‘Cuz then it wouldn’t be grit, Virgil. Any wimp will follow an order if he knows doing so will get him what he wants. HaShem wants us to see what we’re made of.”

  “Are you calling me a wimp?” Virgil said, mock indignation on his face.

  “Aren’t you?” I teased.

  Virgil tossed me one of his lightning sticks. “En garde!”

  I laughed and cracked my stick open with a resounding, “Opa!”

  A bright blue cord uncoiled around me. Not wanting to kill one another, we consciously willed the lightning down from ruby red to blue. It would sting, but that’s about it. I danced playfully around and sent a well-placed streak to Virgil’s armpit.

  “Tickle, tickle, tickle,” I said.

  “Cut it out,” Virgil laughed. He dropped to one knee and shot a long, arcing strand that came up from behind and bit me on the butt.

  “Ow!” I laughed all the harder, wiping the sting with my hand. “Take this…!”

  We carried on this way for a while and then got down to business.

  I told Virgil that I had met with Sett. I said that I thought Sett was on the fence, and that with a little shove by Captain Volk he might be ready to join us.

  “That’s great news, Kohai!”

  “Yeah, but even if he does, we’re still just a handful, and you saw what we are up against. We’re not nearly ready, Virge. We’ve got to train harder.”

  “Then let’s get to it. Race you to the obstacle course!” He shoved me to the ground and took off running.

  “Cheater!”

  37

  Cliff Hangers

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Malkah asked. “I’m just not ready to go home.”

  “Of course not,” Gideon said. He looked into the retina scanner, punched in a code, and pushed open the door to his 10th story apartment. On his way in he touched the mezuzah on the doorframe and kissed his fingertips.

  “I still can’t believe what happened,” she said in the way of an apology, following him in.

  “Malkah, it’s okay.” He flicked on the lights and brought his tidy apartment into view.

  “But…” She was looking at the leather sofa that faced the large plasma TV. In front of it sat a glass coffee table, and to one side stood a recliner and a small stand with a lamp and tablet computer on top.

  “The sofa pulls out into a bed,” Gideon said, anticipating her concerns about sleeping arrangements. “It’s comfortable.”

  “I didn’t mean…anything.” To hide her blushing she walked to the window and peeked between the drawn curtains to the balcony and city lights below. “Nice view.”

  Gideon walked into the adjoining kitchen. “Drink?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Something strong, I suppose,” Gideon said. “All I have in that department is Scotch or Japanese shouchu. Ever try it?”

  “No.”

  “I mix it with green tea. It’s called ocha-wari.”

  “Okay,” Malkah said. “Arigato.”

  “Do itashi-mashite.” You’re welcome. He set to fixing their drinks.

  “Mind if I look around?”

  “There isn’t much to see, but make yourself at home.”

  Malkah wandered past the kitchen and peeked into the hallway bathroom, observed that it was clean, and then continued to the end of the hall.

  On the right, she found the master bedroom. It too was shipshape. A king-size bed and a leather recliner in front of the large window took up most of the room. Houseplants hung from two corners of the ceiling, and others adorned the bookshelves along one of the walls. Inside to the right was the master bathroom. She peeked in and noted the Jacuzzi tub and shower next to a large window.

  Malkah exited the bedroom and crossed the hall to the other side. Instead of a second bedroom, she found an exercise room with a heavy punching bag, some loose weights, training equipment hanging from wall racks, and a large exercise mat on the wood floor.

  She slid open the mirrored closet doors. Inside revealed a large armoire. She tugged on a handle but it was locked.

  “What’s in the big cabinet thingy back here?” she called out.

  “Toys.”

  “What kind of toys?” she purred.

  Gideon walked into the room and flipped up a panel on the cabinet. He tapped in a combination and opened the armoire.

  Malkah’s eyes bugged. She was staring at an arsenal of weapons: handguns, assault rifles, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, a Micro-Uzi, stun grenades, an assortment of knives and martial arts weapons, and two Kevlar vests.

  Gideon grinned. “What kind of toys were you thinking of?”

  “Are these legal?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, unconcerned. “Come on, I think you need that drink.”

  They stepped out of the room, but as Gideon turned right down the hall, Malkah turned left to the remaining room at the end of the hall.

  “And what’s behind door number three?” she asked.

  “My office,” he called back.

  Malkah opened the door to take a peek. She saw a large desk and computer, bookcases, and on one wall, two large white boards, a cork bulletin board, and a world map.

  “Now, this is interesting,” she murmured to herself, switching on the light and entering.

  “Nosy, aren’t you?” Gideon said, returning with their drinks. He handed one to Malkah.

  “You shouldn’t have told me to make myself at home,” she answered, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

  She took the drink, thanking him, and they clinked glasses.

  Just before the glass touched her lips, Malkah remembered the little blessing that Gideon had taught her earlier. She recited the words with ease, as if she had done so a hundred times, and without a trace of an American accent.

  “Amen,” he said, and repeated the blessing for himself. He took a sip and said, “You’ve been practicing.”

  “Mmm…tasty,” Malkah said, ignoring the compliment.

  She turned her attention to the wall and studied it more closely. Hand-scrawled notes covered the white boards: some in red marker, others in blue, and the rest in black. Pinned on the bulletin board were lists of names and pictures of various individuals. Dozens of white and black pins stuck out from the map.

  “So, what’s all this?” she asked.

  “Research.”

  Malkah took a closer look at the pictures. She didn’t recognize any of the faces in the numerous photos, most of which had been printed from a computer or scanned from newspapers or magazines.

  “Who are these people?”

  “My most wanted list,” he said, and then clarified. “Bad guys.”

  “They don’t look like bad guys.”

  Gideon said, “They are all highly respected individuals.”

  “So…?”

  “That is what makes them so dangerous.”

  She examined one of the white boards and pointed at a hand-drawn flowchart that connected names, places, and dates.

  “I don’t recognize any of these names either,” she said. “Do these names go with the pictures?”


  “Many of them do.”

  “And the maps, what do the pins stand for?”

  Gideon pulled a black pin from the side of the cork board and stuck it right into the very city they were standing in. “White is unconfirmed, black is confirmed,” he said.

  “Confirmed what?”

  “Lamed-Vavnik.”

  Malkah gasped. In a flash everything came together. The entire wall in front of her was Gideon’s investigation into the Lamed-Vavniks.

  “Saul? Saul was a Lamed-Vavnik?”

  “Only God could know that,” Gideon said. “But the man who thinks he’s God considered him one.”

  “This Alexander Rosso you talked about?”

  “Yep.”

  “Poor Saul…” A tear ran down Malkah’s cheek. “But he was good,” she whimpered. “Good to everyone!”

  “Exactly.”

  He took Malkah gently by the elbow and led her back into the living room. She huddled in one corner of the sofa, Gideon facing her in the other. He grabbed a box of tissues off the coffee table and set it on her lap.

  Malkah blew her nose and gathered herself. “Do you really think this Rosso guy was behind it?”

  “I do, but I’d never be able to prove it. Tomorrow I’ll interrogate the prisoners, but they won’t talk, not with the methods I’m allowed to employ anyway, and most likely they will be released within twenty-four hours.”

  “But they murdered a man!”

  “We have no witnesses.”

  “What about DNA, fingerprints, stuff like that?”

  “Even if there is something, the findings won’t see the light of day. If these men work for some Rosso underling, we’ll know it by their quick dismissal. I suspect that tomorrow we’ll learn that Saul was a shady fellow, and that he was not a victim of any crime but his own moral failings. Somehow he had it coming, you see.”

  “Oh, come on,” Malkah protested. “People aren’t that stupid. Really, Gideon, your cynicism must have some limits.”

  Gideon shrugged. “My cynicism has limits, but not people’s gullibility, nor Alexander Rosso’s power and deceit. People don’t know Saul from bupkis. They’ll swig whatever codswallop they are sold. I’ve seen it a thousand times. Just watch.”

  Malkah replied with a skeptical frown. She had a healthy cynicism herself, but knowing Saul, and after having seen his crumpled, blood-drenched body on the back steps of the restaurant, that the crime could be portrayed as anything but the brutal murder of an innocent man was impossible to imagine.

  “Those black pins in the map, they were all people like Saul?”

  “I believe so.”

  “But they are spread all around the world,” she said, staggered by the reach one man could have. “It’s all so sinister and crazy. No one would believe such a conspiracy.”

  “No, I don’t suppose anyone would. Even I don’t want to believe it.”

  “Those men in the pictures, and your flow charts, how long have you been at this?”

  “About ten years.”

  “Do you have enough evidence for a case?”

  “A court would consider my evidence as circumstantial. Also, I lack a motive. A mega-billionaire eliminating righteous people on account of an ancient legend? Who’d believe that? I’d end up the one standing trial.”

  “But if you’re right, these monsters are going to go on killing people—good, innocent people.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Then maybe you’re wrong. Maybe all this is just coincidence, or your imagination. I mean, that’s the simplest explanation, right?”

  “Sure, but it’s not really a matter of whether I believe in the story of the Lamed-Vavniks, it’s whether Rosso does. If he believes it—or, what is more likely, is inspired by it—then he is going to keep doing what he’s doing.”

  “How would he even know of such a story? It’s not a well-known tale. Few have ever heard of it. It’s not like aliens or Atlantis, Bigfoot or vampires, or other popular myths and legends.”

  “It’s a good question, and one I asked myself. I wondered if he could have heard of it the same way I had. I did some investigating and found that Rosso was not his real name. A few limbs back on the family tree his grandfather changed it from Rossberg. Originally from Eastern Europe, he came from a long line of distinguished rabbis.

  “Unfortunately,” Gideon continued, “Rosso’s grandfather, the lone son of the last rabbi, got swept up in the times, turned his back on the faith of his forefathers, and went as far off the derech as he could. He embraced Marxism and militant atheism, and never looked back.

  “I’m guessing, however, that although you can take the boy out of the yeshiva, you can’t completely take the yeshiva out of the boy. Great granddad Rosso probably heard the tales of the Lamed-Vavniks when growing up and passed them on to his equally radical, red diaper baby of a son, and then he to young Alexander, though probably only to ridicule those who held the belief.

  “I’m thinking that Alexander Rosso—who always fancied himself a brilliant philosopher—recalled the story, and in his madness and megalomania, thought perhaps there was something to it. Not in a spiritual way, mind you, because Rosso doesn’t believe in anything greater than himself.”

  “But why the killing?” Malkah asked. “How could he reach the crazy conclusion that such people needed to be eliminated? I don’t understand.”

  “I can only speculate, but I think that despite he and his father having poured billions of dollars, and then globals, into the pockets of politicians and crony corporatists, unionists and lobbyists, phony NGO front groups, academic institutions, and the media, he couldn’t understand why his globalist vision continued to elude him. No matter what he and his powerful cabal did, a small, but tenacious segment of the world remained determined to defy him and his plans. Despite decades of propaganda and indoctrination, too many people clung to their hard-wired desire for individual liberty.

  “This infuriated Rosso,” Gideon continued. “He couldn’t understand what was keeping the world from toppling over the edge, no matter how hard he and his kind pushed. Their politics of personal destruction, and the divisive and relentless incitement of class, race, gender, and religion had succeeded in winning Rosso and his commissars tremendous power, but there were still too many damn people willing to oppose them.”

  Malkah said, “If what you say is so, what was in the way?”

  “Exactly,” Gideon said. “After all, he and his fellow one-world demagogues had come to own most every influential person in politics and media, and in nearly every capital of the world. Of course, there were a few courageous souls who resisted Rosso’s ‘enlightened’ guidance. Rosso, through his political and media apparatchiks, singled out these persons who dared to sound off, to disagree, to oppose—unleashing upon them the tactics of ‘freeze, personalize, and polarize.’

  “One by one, they were silenced either through relentless smear campaigns, intimidation, costly lawsuits, a weaponized bureaucracy, or, if they persisted, unfortunate ‘accidents.’

  “And yet, to Rosso’s increasing bewilderment and frustration, the world held teetering at that same edge. All the shoulders of all the people with all the money and power couldn’t quite push the world over the intended cliff. It was as if a mighty finger had been placed before it, barring its imminent plunge. Someone or something seemed to be saying: ‘To here and no further!’

  “And then it must have struck him. From the deep recesses of his memory, he recalled the tales of the Lamed-Vavniks, the thirty-six righteous men required to keep the world going. He didn’t believe in the tale, of course, but in his twisted mind, the premise that common, unknown individual goody-goodies could create a social gravity that keeps the world together, struck him as intoxicatingly thought-provoking.

  “At that point, his delirium completely took over: the good and the righteous must go. They were standing in the way of social progress! He would continue to push his various agendas, but on the side
he’d begin implementing his version of the final solution.”

  Malkah shivered and rubbed her arms. What Gideon had depicted was indescribably mad and perverse. Could such a monster truly exist? But she knew the answer to that. History, after all, had always been her favorite subject. Mankind’s history was replete with monsters.

  “Those black pins, you say they represent Lamed-Vavniks?”

  “Like I said, I can’t know for sure, but they seemed to fit the description.”

  “And the hundreds of white pins, the unconfirmed?”

  “Not Lamed-Vavniks,” he answered, “but good, decent, righteous people all the same. Men and women who, until they were snuffed out, were living lives of quiet saintliness. As I said, Rosso doesn’t believe in the Lamed-Vavniks. He rejects anything smacking of religion or traditional morality. Concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous are anathema to him. He’s a relativist who considers himself an ‘enlightened pragmatist.’ The ends always justify the means—as long as they are his ends, of course. To Rosso’s misanthropic mind, the good and the righteous are slavish ignoramuses, and they are standing in the way of his utopia.”

  “How did they die? Why hasn’t anyone but you noticed?”

  “Very few were public figures. Only neighbors or the local community knew most of them. The majority met what was considered accidental deaths, or bad luck—being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They died in car and plane accidents, household fires and drowning accidents, during a mugging, or on a camping or fishing trip, and so on. Other deaths were as the victim of a supposedly random act of violence, written off as drive-by shootings, gang warfare, or ‘workplace violence.’ Many of the deaths were deemed suicides by local authorities. Some just disappeared never to be seen again.”

  Malkah said, “But maybe these incidents were exactly that, mishaps or bad luck.”

  “At first glance, they all were. But after investigating and taking into account all the circumstances, facts, characters, and history of the individuals those pins represent, the odds changed drastically. I suspect that there were double or triple the number that I could unearth.”