Gates of Hell

by J. F. Penn

  He slipped away, walking softly on the cool stone floor, his lips moving as he counted silently. Morgan took a deep breath and followed him, trying to ignore the men at the other end as they spread out slowly amongst the worshippers. They didn't know her or Jake by sight – they hadn't been clearly visible in the dark of the Alhambra, and Kadmon's men had no reason to suspect anyone else was here looking for the code.

  She counted to pillar 140 and searched it, her fingers running over the smooth marble. Nothing. She closed her eyes for a second, considering Santiago's state of mind. What would he have been thinking as he tried to hide his tracks?

  Slow footsteps echoed in the row of columns nearby, and Morgan turned to face the nearest shrine, walking quickly to kneel before the candlelit image of Saint Eulogius, one of the martyrs of Córdoba. She bent her head as if in prayer as the figure passed close behind her. The polished metal of a giant candelabra caught a glimpse of his profile and she saw that it was Adam Kadmon, his face concentrated on counting as she had done. Her hand snaked to her gun in the small of her back. All she had to do was turn. She had a clear shot.

  She stood and quietly moved behind one of the pillars, heart pounding as images of her father's face came to mind. Kadmon was still clearly in view. She pulled her Barak SP-21 pistol, sighting on his head, finger tightening on the trigger.

  At the last moment, she sensed someone behind her. As she began to turn in defense, he pulled her against his body, her back against his chest, his strong hands holding hers over the gun. She struggled, arching away from him, ready to fight.

  "Morgan," Jake whispered next to her ear, her name a caress. "You can't do it here. There are too many men with him. What good is killing Kadmon to revenge your father if you're gone as well? He wouldn't have wanted that."

  Morgan relaxed a little, letting Jake hold her tight for a moment. She could feel his heartbeat thud and the strong length of him against her back. The rage within her wanted to throw his arms off and finish Kadmon, whatever the consequences. A darker need, an edge of the forbidden, made her want to press back against him, tease him until he groaned, but this was really not the time for such distraction.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Jake was right, Kadmon would keep. They were both hunting for the Key to the Gates of Hell, after all, so there would be another time. Jake relaxed his arms and Morgan reluctantly pulled away from him, putting her gun back and hiding it within her jacket. The footsteps of Kadmon and his men were moving towards the back of the cathedral now, perhaps beginning a new count.

  She looked towards the paintings of the saints around them, noting the scenes of judgement and remembering her father's teaching. For Christians, Hell was the place the wicked were sent but for Jews, that place was known as something else. Santiago might have used the same word for his coded reference to Hell. Pulling out her smart phone, Morgan quickly calculated the gematria for Gehenna, a site outside of ancient Jerusalem where followers of Moloch had sacrificed children to their gods millennia ago. It was worth a try.

  "Pillar 106," she whispered, pointing. "Back that way."

  They stole through the forest of columns, their movements economical, using the dense pillars as shields. There were still a few faithful worshippers within the church, but most had hurried away at the threat of violence so there was more chance of being spotted.

  Counting backwards through the church, they made their way to 106 and almost immediately, Morgan found the coded square chiseled near the bottom of the column. She frowned. The square also added up to 106 in all directions, numbering the pillar the same as the position it stood in. Strange. She had been expecting a different code, one that would direct them to the next location, but this was all they had. Morgan took a picture with her smart phone and together, she and Jake slipped from the cathedral, leaving Kadmon's men behind. Even if they had to search each pillar individually, they would have the code themselves within a few hours. Morgan tapped on her phone as they walked through the corridors, sending the photo to Martin Klein back at ARKANE. They only had a short window of opportunity to get ahead of Kadmon.

  Once outside, Morgan and Jake slipped into a tourist group heading for the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, the royal palace and one of the primary residences of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille, architects of the Reconquista. Morgan knew the Alcázar had also been used as the headquarters of the Inquisition in this area. Its Arab baths, designed for sensual pleasure, had been turned into chambers for torture and interrogation. Morgan definitely didn't want to go in there, and once they were far enough away from the Mezquita, she ducked into a little cafe in a side street. Jake followed, buying two cups of strong black coffee and waiting until Morgan had taken a sip before speaking.

  "I'm not sorry for stopping you back there," he said. "We wouldn't have made it out of the church even if you had killed him. There were too many men."

  Morgan took another sip and looked at him, the violet slash of color in her right eye a vibrant glow. She knew Jake was right, but the lust for revenge still burned in her.

  "Don't stop me again." Her voice was cold steel.

  Jake nodded, taking a sip of his coffee.

  "What's the code this time?" he asked, after a moment's silence.

  Morgan pulled out her phone, opening the picture of the carved square grid. "The number 106 represents Gehenna, the Jewish equivalent to Hell, which is how I worked out where the code was. But look, the numbers in the square also add up to 106." She held the phone up for Jake to see.

  "Maybe it's a double again?" he said. "So it's 212, rather than 106."

  Morgan shrugged. "It could be that, or so many other variations on a theme. I never understood the logic my father applied to his Kabbalah studies, but Martin can plug all the options into the gematria matrix and see what he comes up with." She took a longer sip of her coffee. "I've been thinking about this Key, trying to work out what it could be. A physical object, or maybe just another code?"

  "Or a person?" Jake mused. "Someone who knows something that Santiago and your father wanted to protect."

  Morgan's phone buzzed with a text. "Wow, that was quick. Martin must have optimized the gematria search."

  She scrolled through the page of options. "Using 212, our destination could be Hong Kong or Canberra in Australia."

  "Neither is particularly Jewish," Jake commented, his eyebrows lifting.

  Morgan smiled. "And to be honest, I never want to visit Canberra again. It's one of those constructed cities with no soul, just bureaucrats and fake water features. It might be a version of Hell, but I don't think the Key to the Gates would be there. It doesn't have enough history. Hong Kong is a different matter though – it's one of those cosmopolitan places where you can find anything."

  A second text came in and Morgan's face paled as she looked at it.

  Chapter 14

  "What is it?" Jake asked, reaching his hand out to touch Morgan's arm.

  "Safed," she whispered, her eyes wide. "The gematria number for where my father used to live in Israel is 106. The town of Safed is also the center of Jewish Kabbalah, one of the four holiest cities to Jews. It must be the right place."

  Jake pushed back his chair. "We need to get going then. Kadmon will eventually find that code and he won't be far behind us."

  Morgan sat motionless in the chair, her gaze fixed on a point in the distance, her mind whirling as she considered facing the city again. She still owned the tiny flat that her father had lived in at the time of his death. His murder, she corrected herself, rage burning again within her. She had left the flat in the care of the Rabbi who had officiated the funeral, and he occasionally emailed to ask what she wanted to do with the rent he collected on her behalf. She always donated it to whatever cause he suggested, and really, she had never thought she would return to the little town in the hills of Galilee. But it seemed that Israel kept pulling her back.

  Jake held his hand out to help her up, his dark eyes conc
erned. "I'll be with you. It's going to be OK."

  She smiled and accepted his hand, feeling the squeeze of pressure, the reassurance of his presence. But as she stood, she thought of Kadmon's face in the Mezquita, his determination matching her own. She didn't want to bring his brand of destruction to her father's beloved town, and yet, it seemed, she had no choice but to pursue the Key there.

  ***

  Five hours later, the pilot announced that they had crossed into Israeli air space and would soon be landing on a private airstrip near Safed. Morgan had spent the journey in turmoil, memories of her father bringing tears to her eyes even as rage bubbled within at the years of her father's life Adam Kadmon had stolen. Now she took a deep breath, readying herself to face the past. Her father had sent the letter knowing this day would come – she had to trust that he would have left clues she could follow.

  They landed and jumped into a taxi, driving towards the town. Morgan looked north to where flat white Mediterranean buildings reflected the sun, the green hills bringing the city into relief. Her father liked to say that Safed was a city on a hill, like Jerusalem, one of the high places closest to God. She caught glimpses of the narrow cobblestone streets winding around the dwellings, and imagined his footsteps walking there years ago.

  Eventually, Jake broke the silence.

  "I've never been here, Morgan. Maybe you could tell me a bit about it?"

  She shook her head, sighing a little. "Sorry, I know I'm distracted. This place brings back memories and I'm trying to think where the Key might be. Perhaps talking about the city will help, and it does have a hell of a history. Legend says that Safed was founded by a son of Noah after the great flood. The book of Judges recounts that the tribe of Naphtali dwelled here, and the city was mentioned in the writings of Josephus at the turn of the first century." She pointed out the window. "You can see some of the remainder of the ancient walls up there. It was a fortified city during the Crusades, taken first by the Christians, who were later wiped out by the Mamluk Sultanate, who turned it into a Muslim city. It's been fought over ever since, becoming primarily Jewish over time, but even now it's discussed in heated tones, like so many holy sites. It doesn't help that the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was born here, evicted with his family during the war." She smiled, shaking her head a little. "I don't think this land will ever be at peace. People have been fighting over it for millennia."

  Jake looked over at her, his eyes soft. "Because people love it … like you do. This land inspires passion that too easily spills into bloodshed, and there's both a blessing and a curse in that."

  Morgan nodded, silent for a second before she continued.

  "After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, some of the prominent Rabbis came here and Safed became a global center for Jewish learning. It had a printing press to spread the teachings and a vibrant community of synagogues. My father was part of the school of Lurianic Kabbalah, started by Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century. Luria is buried in the cemetery here, one of the tightly packed graves, all painted bright blue. It's a strange place …"

  Her voice trailed off as she visualized her father's grave in the corner of that same cemetery. The day she had buried him was the day she had sworn to end her life in Israel and begin again, an academic in Oxford far away from the blood and mayhem of this land. She had seen too much death in those years. Her husband, Elian, had died in a hail of bullets on the Golan Heights and other friends had perished in the unending conflict that Israel couldn't seem to escape. She had chosen another way and taken the path of academia – so why was it she was back here once more, ensconced in conflict, surrounded by death? Morgan imagined the ghosts that clung to her, the darkness that hid in her shadow. She pushed the thoughts aside.

  "Luria was known as Ha'Ari, the Lion," she continued. "His disciples wrote down his teaching so it could be passed on. He's probably one of the most well-known Jewish mystics, considered to have spoken with the prophet Elijah." Jake raised an eyebrow at that and Morgan smiled. "Yes, well, he was an ascetic with plenty of secrets known only to his disciples. He was called to deliver Israel from the klipot, the husks of evil, and help souls to find tikkun – the restoration of the divine sparks of God scattered throughout the earth. Like any spiritual system, it has its quirks, but my father believed it as truth."

  The taxi pulled up at the end of the steep cobbled path, wide enough for pedestrians, thin carts pulled by donkeys, and the inevitable scooters. Morgan and Jake began to walk up past little shops with shutters painted in hues of the ocean. The colors were picked out of a palette made from the sky and the Sea of Galilee, across the hills to the southeast. They passed a pottery shop and then a painter's studio, where abstract canvases with Hebrew lettering hung on the white walls. The smell of turpentine wafted from the shop, pointing the way to a working artist's haven. The stone walls and streets around them were clean and fresh, cafes interspersed with green plants and blooming flowers. It was an oasis of calm directly opposed to the craziness of Jerusalem that they had visited together not so long ago on the hunt for the Pentecost stones.

  "The city has always attracted artists," Morgan said. "Particularly those with a spiritual side." They rounded a corner to find a crossroads with a little path that snaked steeply up the hill. "My father's place is just up here. Martin called the Rabbi who looks after it, and we're allowed in to have a look while the tenant is out for a while."

  They walked up a few hundred meters and Morgan paused in front of the door, her hand poised with the key in the lock. The door was painted in the same shade as her own blue eyes, the same as her twin sister and their English mother. The color had faded a little but she still remembered her father painting it when he had first moved here. He had been very much in love with her mother once, but had chosen Israel and archaeology over a stable family life in the wet winters of England. Leon Sierra had chosen independence and his own way of life, and perhaps Morgan had learned that from him. In a parallel universe, she would be happily married to Elian with a brood of children, her parents growing old together, her twin sister and niece by her side. Some of the Kabbalists believed in the multiverse, worlds between the light and darkness, shades of good and evil where events had turned out in a different way. But this was her only world, Morgan thought, and the choices her family had made were now her own.

  Morgan turned the key and pushed the door open, pausing on the threshold. For a moment, she expected the smell of her father's cooking to greet her. He had always baked when she visited on temporary leave from the Israeli Defense Force military base further south. It was just an excuse for him to enjoy rugelach, the rolled pastries of Ashkenazi origin filled with chocolate and nuts. She would nibble while her father tucked in, his eyes lively as she told stories of her latest work. But the scent in the air was only fresh with a hint of salt, the wind from the south blowing in through an open window.

  Jake walked in after her, and Morgan looked around the room. It was a humble space with a foldaway table for eating, a little kitchenette to the side and a bedroom one level above. Under the stairs was a study area where her father had probed the mysteries of the Torah and the Zohar, the Book of Splendor, as the letters of revelation spun before him. Morgan had never seen him engrossed in study, as he had always worked in private, but she had imagined him there. His spirituality had deepened over the years and the mysticism of the Kabbalists had become his obsession, as if somehow he could stop time and step into the space where the divine touched the earth. Regret welled up within her. Perhaps if she had insisted on knowing more about his quest, whatever this Key was, he would have told her of the Remnant. Perhaps she could have protected him, even saved his life.

  "It's a hell of a view," Jake said, looking out the window over the white rooftops to the rolling hills of Galilee and its inland sea beyond.

  Morgan came to stand next to him, so close she could feel the fiber of his shirt on her arms. Leon would have liked Jake, a man o
f action whom he would have trusted to protect his daughter. She smiled then, for her father had never really believed that she could look after herself physically, even when she had won national Krav Maga competitions. The Israeli martial art was only part of her skills these days, and she wondered what Leon would have thought of ARKANE and her role there now. He certainly would have understood the metaphysical side of what she had experienced.

  "Are you OK?" Jake said, turning to look at her. "You're quiet."

  All she needed to do was take a half step closer and she would be in his arms.

  "I'm just thinking," Morgan whispered. "It's been a long time since I was here." She stepped away, back into the center of the room. "None of this is my father's stuff though. It's like a new place with the old one beneath. I'm trying to put myself back into how it was when he was here."

  She turned towards the kitchenette, pointing to a space on the wall.

  "He always had a picture of me there, changing it every year as my career progressed." She touched the wall where the image had once hung, no trace of it now under the newer paint. "In the corner of the frame, he would tuck the latest picture of Faye that my mother sent annually. He used to send one back to her as I grew."

  "I don't think anyone would allow twins to be split up and raised separately these days," Jake said. "Didn't you find it strange without your sister?"

  Morgan shook her head. "Not really. My parents were unorthodox in their child-rearing, for sure, but you've met Faye. You know how different we are and our parents differed in the same way. Maybe they saw the same in us when we were young. I could never regret my childhood, the times I had with my father growing up. Faye had our mother and England and we were both loved. We had different lives, but like many broken families, something new was able to grow from the wreckage and create beauty in its wake."