Gates of Hell

by J. F. Penn

  The sound of a plane flew low overhead and Morgan instinctively looked up.

  "If none of your father's things are here, how are we meant to find whatever the next code is?" Jake asked.

  "I didn't say they weren't here, just that there was nothing on show that was his." She headed towards the stairs leading up to the bedroom. "His stuff is in the attic."

  The sudden sound of footsteps outside made Morgan freeze. Jake turned at the noise and as the key in the lock rattled, they both drew their weapons, training them on the door as it opened.

  Chapter 15

  The door opened slowly and a man stepped through, awkwardly juggling his keys and two bags of shopping. His eyes widened as he saw Morgan and Jake, his gaze dropping to the two weapons pointed at him. There was a split second when Morgan saw him consider his options, an echo of how she would have behaved in the same situation. Then he gently put the bags on the floor, dropped his keys to the mat and raised his hands to show they were empty. He was tall, with black curly hair; his two-day stubble emphasized a prominent jaw. Morgan saw military experience in the ready stance of his fit, well-muscled body. He wasn't afraid of them, just curious.

  "I'm Mikael Levy and this is my home," he said, in Hebrew and then again in English with a slight accent, as he registered Jake's confusion.

  As Morgan covered him with her weapon, Jake moved forward and searched Mikael, patting him down swiftly. Mikael's eyes fixed on Morgan's and she felt a prick of recognition as she matched his gaze. Had she met him before? He was definitely younger than she was, but not by too many years. She struggled to think where it might have been.

  "He's clean," Jake said, and Morgan lowered her gun.

  "Of course I am," Mikael said. "I just went to the market." He bent to pick up the bags. "There was a text from the Rabbi, but I wasn't expecting you so soon. I presume you're here about Leon's things?"

  He walked slowly to the kitchen, still wary of them. "I have rugelach and coffee. Let me make you some." His dark eyes flicked to Morgan again and he smiled. "Your father told me all about you … I'm opening the drawer now." He pulled it open slowly and brought out a tiny photo frame. "He always had this with him, and so I keep it here as he would have wanted me to." Mikael handed it to Morgan and she saw her own face in the frame, frozen in a moment of happiness. She remembered the day it had been taken, at a wedding of a friend when she and Elian had danced into the small hours and Leon had laughed along with them. She placed the photo back down on the countertop.

  "Have we met before?" she asked, stepping closer as Mikael switched the kettle on.

  "A long time ago, but I was a new recruit and you were with Elian in those days." A hint of a smile danced at the corners of his mouth. "He was a hero to us younger men. The way he died …" He broke off, shaking his head. "I'm sorry. You lost your husband that day. But you should know that his leadership and bravery are still held up as exemplary. He is remembered."

  In the moment of silence that followed, Jake stepped forward, holding out his hand. Morgan could feel him bristling at this younger man's intimate knowledge of her past.

  "I'm Jake Timber, Morgan's professional partner." Mikael took the proffered hand and they shook with a firm grip. So firm that Jake's knuckles turned white.

  "How come you knew my father?" Morgan asked, breaking the tension of their masculine posturing.

  Mikael continued making coffee, putting the little pastries on a plate as he talked.

  "Like you, I did my time in the military but I became disillusioned with the never-ending spiral of violence. My wife …" He sighed. "She died after complications in childbirth and my son died soon after."

  "I'm so sorry," Morgan said, acknowledging his pain. Mikael nodded in unspoken thanks.

  "I came up to Galilee to hike, spending a lot of time alone during that time. I had no patience with religion, much to my parents' distress. I think they hoped I would find solace in the shul." Morgan smiled at that, understanding the Jewish parental pressure to attend the synagogue. "I met Leon in the hills behind Safed one day and there was something in his demeanor, a peace that I craved. I was angry with the world, but he began to teach me another way." Morgan felt a flash of jealousy that Mikael had been able to access a side of her father she had not been privy to. "After I left the military I moved up here to be closer to the Kabbalist community. I only had a few months with your father before he was killed."

  The grief on his face was raw and in a flash, Morgan remembered where she had seen him before.

  "You were at his funeral," she said. "You stood at the back, away from those who gathered close."

  Mikael nodded. "I didn't know enough people at that point and I didn't feel as if I belonged. I knew how devastated you were, how much you had been through, first Elian and then Leon. I understand why you had to leave."

  "But why do you live here now?" Jake asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice at this man's familiarity. Morgan put a hand on his arm, feeling the tension there, trying to calm him. Mikael's eyes followed her gesture, noted the caution as he continued.

  "As I learned Kabbalah mysticism from Leon, he began to speak of a Remnant, an exclusive group of Rabbis from around the worldwide Kabbalist community who met once a year to meditate on the darkness in the world. They believed it was growing, spreading, taking root, and they worried that the balance was tipping away from the light. They were also getting old and I think that perhaps Leon wanted me to become a part of it." Mikael shook his head. "Some days I think I was wrong about that, but now I'll never know. After his death, I found no written trace of the Remnant, and I can't find anyone who will even acknowledge their existence."

  "That's why we're here," Morgan said softly. "The Remnant are gone, murdered, as my father was, by a man who hunts what they protected." There was no surprise in Mikael's eyes at her words. "You knew he wasn't killed by a suicide bomber?"

  Mikael nodded. "I suspected. He was frenetic in those last days, spending hours in study, reciting verses until he reached an almost shamanic state, an alternate realm of consciousness. He was truly a practitioner of the highest art. There are pages in the attic, reams and reams of notes he made while in trance, meditating on the letters of the Torah or the words of the Zohar. Most make no sense at all, but there are hints of what the Remnant were protecting."

  "I want to see them," Morgan said.

  Mikael nodded. "Of course." He poured coffee into three mugs, putting out non-dairy creamer and sugar on a plate next to the pastries. "I'll go and get the boxes."

  "Do you need help?" Jake asked. Mikael hesitated a moment and then nodded. The men went upstairs into the bedroom above and then into the loft space further up. Morgan could hear their muffled conversation, sounding each other out in their attempt to build a bridge. They both had military backgrounds but she knew that Mikael's spiritual side would make Jake uneasy. Together, they had seen things that would make the most eminent skeptic believe in something beyond the physical, but Jake had no patience with organized religion. Even many Jews would consider Kabbalism to be on the edge, however, a mystical dimension far from the confines of strict Hasidic law. Mikael seemed to blend the spiritual with the physical, and perhaps that was what they needed in their quest.

  Mikael and Jake soon came back down, each carrying two boxes that Morgan vaguely recognized from what had been left in the little house after her father's death. The local Rabbi had organized her father's effects, leaving her to mourn without the terrible process of sorting through his things. She had promised to come back when the immediacy of grief had receded, but of course, she had not returned. Was it now too late?

  "I helped the Rabbi pack Leon's work away," Mikael said. "His memory has been honored, Morgan."

  His dark eyes were kind and Morgan saw that Mikael had loved her father in his own way. Part of her wished she could have known him properly back then, maybe talked to him at the funeral. What would her life have been like if she had stayed here, made her home in this
hillside town?

  "All the boxes contain fascinating insights, but this particular one has some of the last pages Leon worked on in the days before he died."

  Mikael pulled a sheaf of loose paper sheets from the box. They were dense with drawings and Hebrew writing in black pen. There were faces in the margins, contorted figures, some human and some clearly demonic. Morgan reached for one of the pages, where a spiral vortex spun, misshapen figures crawling from a central pit, their claws reaching for the world above, jaws open to devour those who stood in the way.

  "His drawings got darker in the days before his death," Mikael said. "He was researching the demonology of Kabbalah and the klipot, the husks of evil in this world … Then there's this."

  He pulled a page from a clear plastic envelope that protected it from damage. It showed a Key, made of a skeleton lifting its bony hands to plead with the Heavens above. The etching was rough around the edges and there were Hebrew letters and symbols inscribed around it. The whole drawing was surrounded by a circle, as if the line could contain its dark presence. Morgan shivered as she gazed at the skeletal figure, interceding for a doomed mankind, a more detailed rendition than the rough sketch in Santiago's notebook.

  She took the page, the paper smooth on her fingers, and tried to imagine her father drawing something like this. Had he actually seen the Key? Or did he draw this while in one of his mystical trances?

  "My father wrote a letter to me," she said. "I don't know when it was originally written, but it was sent recently by another man, one of the Remnant." Mikael's eyes widened with hope. Morgan shook her head. "He was killed a few days ago, but in the letter, my father mentioned a Key. Perhaps this is it. Are there any indications of where it might be or what it opens in his papers?"

  Mikael shuffled through the pages.

  "I've been through them all, over and over. I can't find anything that points to where it might be, and it's certainly not here. Apparently the Remnant didn't actually have it, they only protected its location. I'm not even sure they wanted it found." Mikael paused and stood up, striding to the window to look out over Galilee. "I've been trying to follow Leon's path into Kabbalah mysticism, and I've seen glimpses of this Key in my own trance states."

  Jake's rapid exhalation made Mikael spin around.

  "Do you doubt the physicist who studies elementary particles in order to understand the cosmos?" he said, repressed anger in his tone. "Or the biologist who examines cellular DNA to fathom how the body works? DNA is just a code that makes up the sum of human life and in the same way, the Kabbalist uses letters of the Torah to understand the spiritual heart of the world. Don't judge what you don't understand."

  Jake raised an eyebrow at Mikael's outburst. "Oh, don't mind me, I'm ever the skeptic. What do you think, Morgan?"

  Morgan knew he wanted her to back him up, to make some flippant comment that would put her on his side against Mikael. But as she looked at the man her father had trusted, his pupil in the mystic arts, she found herself with a glimmer of hope that he might be able to help in their quest.

  "I'm not writing anything off at this point. We should consider all the angles."

  Jake looked back down at the papers, his shoulders slumping as he ignored them and began to read again.

  "I think we need to –"

  Morgan's words were cut off as a blast of hot air and the cracking sound of an explosion shook the flat, the low rumble of collapsing buildings following swiftly after.

  Chapter 16

  Mikael and Morgan dropped to the floor next to Jake and all three of them crawled quickly under the large dining table, sheltering in case of falling debris. Another explosion came from nearby and they could hear shouts of people in the street, along with running footsteps. A lone woman wailed, her cries of grief a sound that this land knew only too well.

  "Rockets from the north?" Morgan said, as it became clear the attack was over.

  Mikael shook his head. "I doubt it. It's been quiet here for a long time now, and it's too much of a coincidence that this would happen on the day you arrive." He crept to the window, peering out across the town. "There's smoke coming from the airfield, and more around the area of the synagogue Leon used to attend."

  "We need to get out of here," Jake said. "I should have let you finish that bastard Kadmon in Córdoba."

  Morgan checked her weapon and then tucked it into the back of her jeans. "There's still time for that," she promised with a dark smile. "But for now, we need to move. They'll come here next, for sure." She picked up the sheaf of her father's papers, the skeletal Key prominent on the top of the pile, then turned to Mikael. "Should we take anything else?"

  "Just a minute." Mikael went into the study and returned with her father's books of the Torah and the Zohar, the Book of Splendor. He put them in a holdall, along with a smaller bag he pulled from a cupboard under the sink, the familiar outline of a weapon inside. "OK, let's go. I've got a car parked at the bottom of the hill."

  Jake eased the front door open, and signaled the all-clear. Mikael sprinted out into the street, Morgan and Jake following right behind him. The sound of sirens filled the air and the scent of smoke blew on the breeze. There was a deadly calm about the people who moved through the streets. This was a city that understood the threat of attack. The people here had survived so much over the years that it didn't surprise them when their world was threatened again. Many expected it, retaining the perspective of living each day as their last, relishing each moment they could live on this precious land. I'm sorry, Papa, Morgan thought. I'm sorry for bringing this on your town.

  At the bottom of the hill, they reached a covered car park for the residents of the pedestrianized streets further up the slope. Mikael clicked a button on his keys as they jogged through the rows of cars, and a dusty green Jeep Wrangler flashed its lights. They pulled open the doors and jumped in, Morgan hopping in the back as Jake jumped in the passenger side.

  Mikael drove out of the car park, wheels screeching as they turned onto the main road, heading away from the city and south towards the Sea of Galilee. Morgan gazed out the back window, searching for any sign that they were being followed. It looked like they were free and clear, but then two 4WD vehicles zoomed out of the side streets, several men with weapons visible in each.

  "I see them," Mikael said, teeth clenched as he stepped on the accelerator. He wrenched the wheel to the right and headed into the scrubland. "We can't stay on the main road. They'll catch up and there are more towns up ahead." The Jeep bumped over the stony ground, hurtling Morgan sideways in the back. She struggled back to her seat and pulled on the safety belt just as the Jeep took some air. It flew over a bump and down into the ditch beyond. The jolt on landing slammed through her body and she glanced at Jake, wondering how his injuries were holding up to this rough treatment. His face was a little pale, but he showed no sign of pain.

  "They're flanking us," Jake said, his weapon ready. "I hope you know what you're doing, Levy."

  A volley of bullets flew at them from one of the vehicles and Mikael pulled the wheel sideways, but it was too late. The passenger side windows blasted apart, the safety glass collapsing inwards. Morgan pulled her sleeve up to protect her face. She saw blood on Jake's face as some of the glass cut him, but he fired back and the other vehicle pulled away. As it did so, the driver hit a large stone and the vehicle tipped sideways, its speed suddenly halted. It overturned, smoke pouring out the side as the men scrambled out, still firing after their escaping prey.

  Morgan turned her head to look at the other vehicle as they sped alongside it on a parallel track, navigating the scrubland on the outskirts of the city.

  "These guys look pretty upset about their friends," she said. "What's the plan?"

  "We might be able to lose them in the Limonim Forest," Mikael shouted above the din. He shifted gears and changed direction, pulling away from the other vehicle. "I know the tracks in there."

  Ahead of them was a patch of green, with some oak and
pine areas interspersed with new plantings. As the other driver turned into an intercept pattern, Mikael pulled off the track and drove straight into the forest. The muscles in his forearms stood out as he struggled to keep control of the wheel across the rutted forest floor.

  Morgan spun round in her seat as they entered, the dense trees now shielding the other vehicle from view. Mikael knew this area so they would have an advantage in here, but would the other vehicle even try to come in after them, or remain to ambush them on the routes out of the area?

  "It would be good to have a chat with one of these guys," Morgan said, as their speed slowed and Mikael guided them through the trees. The car engine was brutally loud in the calm of the natural surroundings. "I'd like to know where Kadmon has his base, what he's planning. What do you think?"

  Jake nodded, rubbing the blood from his head with his shirt sleeve. "I'd definitely like to have a few choice words with them."

  "There's an area up ahead where we could wait," Mikael said. "If they come in here, they'll have to pass us."

  "Just stop a minute," Morgan said. "Let's see if they're even following anymore."

  Mikael slowed and shut down the engine. For a moment, all Morgan could hear was their breathing, calmer now the immediate threat was over. Then she heard the sound of another vehicle revving as it tried to navigate the forest, the crunch of gears as the driver downshifted.

  "They're coming," she said, her voice determined. "Let's get to your spot quickly."

  They drove on a little way until they reached a clearing in the wood, a temporary shed standing in the corner.

  "There are tools in there," Mikael said. "Rope, axes, that kind of thing."

  "Park the Jeep next to it," Morgan said. "I've got an idea."

  Ten minutes later, the remaining 4WD vehicle rolled into the clearing, three men inside with guns at the ready. They stopped when they saw the empty Jeep next to the hut, parked carefully at the far side of the clearing. The man in the passenger seat spoke into a short wave radio, waited a second and then signaled for the two others to get out.