The Sacred Blood

by Michael Byrnes

  Amit stepped inside. He slipped off his obnoxiously squeaky rubbersoled shoes and carried them in his right hand as he penetrated deeper into the building.

  60

  ******

  The box’s golden lid felt warm and tingly under Charlotte’s fingers— similar to the sensation she recalled from Evan’s injection, which had shot the sacred DNA into her bloodstream. There certainly was an energy stored up inside this vessel, she thought—though probably not one that could be measured in volts.

  She actually heard a couple of the men gasp. They’d certainly been harboring some doubts that she was the Chosen One, because they seemed fully prepared to be dragging a flame-broiled carcass out of the room.

  “Ah!” Cohen joyously blurted, bringing his hands together with a clap. “See! Do you all see this? You are witnessing the fulfillment of a prophecy!” he said to the assemblage.

  He kept on with it, but Charlotte had tuned him out, because there was something very strange happening over the veil’s sheer surface that the others weren’t picking up on. Something seemed to billow—a distortion that was invisible yet dynamic in its shifting. It could easily have been dismissed as a quick bout of blurred vision. But the interference was contained in only one spot—and when she tested it by shifting her eyes slightly sideways, it remained stationary. Frightened, she immediately withdrew her hand.

  It went away.

  What the hell was that?

  “Don’t be afraid, Ms. Hennesey,” the rabbi said soothingly, stepping up

  to her and placing a hand on her shoulder.

  She knew he wasn’t referring to what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen. It was her recoiling hand that had drawn his attention.

  “What you feel is the Holy Spirit,” he explained. “Just as Jesus did when he laid his hand upon that very spot and it entered into Him—just as it entered into Moses atop Mount Sinai. The sacred blood is a gift,” he repeated. “A gateway into the one light that rules over all creation.”

  “Then take the blood from your son,” she fumed. “If you say I healed him by using this power, then it must have transferred to him, right? Or just let me heal whatever ails you, then you can go and do whatever you want with the box, the blood . . .”

  Shaking his head, he flatly stated, “It doesn’t work like that, Dr. Hennesey. If it were that easy, I wouldn’t need you.”

  She noticed the rabbi’s eyes shift away as he said this.

  “I’m not following you,” she said.

  “You were chosen. Why, I don’t know. But question not the Lord’s plan.”

  More eye shifting suggested that the rabbi was holding back. “You tried it already, didn’t you?”

  The rabbi’s jaw clenched tight and his eyes burned with fury.

  That’s when the truth hit her. “Your son’s hand,” she said accusatorily. “When you saw that he was walking, you brought him directly here, didn’t you? You had him touch the—”

  Without warning, the rabbi’s hand flew through the air to connect firmly with Charlotte’s cheek.

  “Silence!” he yelled.

  What had happened to Joshua was a horrible thing. The smell of burning flesh still lingered in Cohen’s nostrils. He’d pulled the terrified boy away from the Ark almost instantly, yet the damage had already been done. A scream like no other had come from Joshua’s lips and he’d covered the boy’s mouth with his hand to suppress it. Joshua’s fingers had been broiled, curled into a tight claw. Yet while the rabbi sat there cradling him, he could actually see the flesh regenerating ever so slowly. By the time he’d composed himself and brought Joshua downstairs for presentation to the geneticist, the boy’s pain had already subsided; the hand was still on the mend. Gazing into his son’s eyes, he’d known immediately that another wound—a much deeper, irreparable wound—had been inflicted. The rabbi himself suffered as well as the extreme disappointment of a broken son—a broken legacy—returned. He’d asked Devora to cover the hand so that it wouldn’t detract from the message he needed to relay to Charlotte.

  “After patiently waiting for centuries,” he replied, “nothing falls to chance. Unnecessary risk is unacceptable.”

  Charlotte held a hand against the hot fire rushing into her cheek. She noticed that during this whole exchange, the rabbi’s wife had been standing in the shadowed corridor, listening. The rabbi himself, however, had not picked up on this. “And injuring your own flesh and blood is a necessary and acceptable risk?” she added. “You couldn’t have used yourself as the guinea pig?”

  He stepped up so close that his nose practically touched hers, ready to strike again. His eyes were wild.

  “You’re no savior,” she raged on. “You’re a coward—a coward who sends assassins to kill the innocent. A coward who is willing to sacrifice his son to save his own skin. How do you think God feels about that?”

  “Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son. Even God sacrificed His own.” He drew a cleansing breath and withdrew. “Enough of this,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “The time has come.”

  “What time?” She knew ancient Jews were hugely amenable to making sacrificial offerings. Plenty of animals carved up on an altar came to mind, but she was sifting her memories for more prolific examples. Another quick glance at the doorway showed that the rabbi’s wife had already staged her retreat.

  Cohen ignored her question and directed his attention to his entourage. Pointing to the relic, he said, “Place it back in the crate and load the truck. You know what to do with her. We’ll leave immediately.”

  The men came at her quickly, overpowering her, binding her hands behind her back, then gagging her mouth.

  61

  ******

  In the fire stairwell Amit set down his shoes and peeked out through the fire door’s small glass window. The red glow of the exit sign hanging above the door’s other side gave him about two meters of muddled visibility through the corridor extending left and right. But he heard the commotion before he saw what caused it.

  First came a crate set on a dolly that a man was wheeling toward the elevator adjacent to the fire door. Another five armed men trailed closely behind, and between them was a very pretty woman bound and gagged. For Amit, the sight of her raised a whole new set of questions.

  Finally came the morose master of ceremonies wearing all black and bringing up the rear.

  Definitely not a favorable scenario for playing hero. But the rabbi was at the back of the line, and if Amit could somehow take him by surprise . . .

  The compulsion to use the element of surprise was short-lived as he tried to imagine what Jules would say. Probably something along the lines of “Settle down, cowboy.”

  The elevator doors opened and the bright light from its interior spilled into the dark hallway. Amit shrank back against the wall and listened as they all crammed into the elevator alongside the dolly. Once he heard the doors clatter shut and the gears engage high up in the shaft, he waited a few more seconds near the tiny window. Then he swung open the door, staying low and thrusting the gun forward. He was greeted once more by silence.

  At the end of the dark corridor, however, he could see light coming from the conference room—the last door on the left. Instinct told him to check the room and see if anything had been left behind.

  Easing the fire door closed, he slipped quietly down the hall in his socked feet. His two outstretched hands were wrapped around the Beretta, his left index finger hooked firmly around its cold trigger.

  As he neared the folded-back doors, he slowed to a shuffle and took cover behind the closest one. He peeked through the thin gap separating the doorjamb. That’s when he spotted two people moving about inside, tidying up the room’s center. He noticed both of them immediately. The woman was Cohen’s wife, the Temple Society’s not-so-pleasant receptionist. Amit second-guessed his recognition of the boy’s face when he saw that he was actually up and about, not stuck in a wheelchair. Joshua? What the hell?

  Now a new opportun
ity presented itself. If he tried to simply follow the rabbi and his posse, there was a very good chance he’d get only so far. Amit could risk losing them altogether and not be able to pick up the trail until it was too late. But if he could somehow get advance information on what Cohen’s plan entailed . . .

  Maneuvering around the door, Amit inspected the room more thoroughly to make sure it was only the two of them. Next, he stormed in with the gun trained on the rabbi’s son.

  “Don’t scream or I’ll put a bullet in your head,” he said in a calm voice.

  62

  ******

  “Hello, Mrs. Cohen,” Amit said wryly. “A pleasure to see you again.” He held the gun straight out, trained on Joshua’s head. The wife’s arms dropped limply to her sides, the right hand still clutching the cloth she’d been using to buff the crate’s grimy streaks off the tabletop. “I see that your husband returned safely from Egypt.”

  The woman remained silent, well composed. Her eyes, however, looked weary, lifeless.

  “Seems he didn’t come back empty handed,” Amit said. “Care to tell me what he has in that crate?”

  After studying the archaeologist for five seconds, she responded: “Why should you care?”

  “Because whatever it is, he tried to kill me for it. Sent an assassin for me. And your husband had two of my friends murdered.” He turned his gaze to Joshua. “Including Yosi.” The boy had been fond of the old man too. Who hadn’t been?

  “Yosi died of a heart attack,” Joshua insisted.

  Devora had already figured out Amit’s real name shortly after she’d advised her husband of the man’s sudden appearance at his office, when he’d introduced himself as Yosi. When she’d explained what the visitor and his female companion looked like, her husband had immediately become alarmed. Playback of the Temple Society’s security recordings confirmed what he’d already suspected.

  “No, Joshua. It wasn’t a heart attack that killed Yosi. And as we speak, another of my friends is in the hospital having a bullet hole in her side plugged up. All because of your husband,” he said to Devora. “So I care very deeply about what is in that box.” There were also selfish reasons for his interest, traceable to a culmination of years of research and the slim possibility that the Bible’s most cherished relic still existed.

  “He’s killed many others too,” Devora weakly replied, staring blankly at a Greek inscription glazed onto a ring of ceramic tiles just below the domed ceiling. She remembered her husband telling her it was a quote from Plato that was the oldest known reference to the study now dubbed “archaeology.” But perhaps Aaron had lied about that too. After all, she couldn’t read Greek—and she certainly couldn’t read him. “He’s done many things you may not like. But it is God’s will that—”

  “No,” Amit cut her off. “Murder is not God’s will. Now I’m running out of time. So tell me, what is in that box?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me.” Devora shook her head.

  “Try me.”

  But Devora stood her ground.

  It was the son who offered up the answer. “The Ark of the Covenant.”

  “Joshua!” the mother said in a warning tone, shaking her head.

  “Thank you,” Amit said with an air of vindication. But the confirmation brought even more anxiety.

  “It doesn’t matter now, Mother,” Joshua reminded her.

  Devora paused as she looked over at Joshua’s bandaged hand. What her husband had done to his own flesh and blood was unspeakable. Yet it was no surprise, since he’d never shown Joshua true love or respect. Being a son in the Cohen family was no small responsibility. Only the able-bodied could perform the duties of a priest. To Aaron, Joshua had become first and foremost a break in his genealogical chain. Crippled, the boy stood no chance of serving God as a kohen.

  And given the gloomy prognosis for Joshua’s condition, a grandson had been considered an impossibility. Nor could Joshua’s corrupted genetics have supported artificial means of conception, even if it were to come down to that. The bottom line was that Joshua could never carry on the Cohen family name and the ever-so-precious pedigree that came with it—his yichus. Not to mention that Devora was able to bear only one child before a series of benign cysts strangled her ovaries so badly that they required excision. Since Joshua’s illness began, Aaron had not been able to reconcile how the imperfections of the next generation could run so deep. His obsession with genetics had grown even stronger. If there was any way to retain the bloodline, he was determined to find it.

  Though she hadn’t acknowledged it for many years, Devora had become aware that there was something wrong with her husband—something bordering on mania. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was capable of doing to others. And now that he’d achieved so many things and brought the Ark back to Zion, there was no telling what he’d do next.

  Amit’s gaze bounced from mother to son and back to mother. They were serious. “Is it real—the Ark?”

  Devora’s eyes were still locked on Joshua’s hand as she answered Amit: “The Ark is real.” There was defeat in her voice—decades of it. “The Ark is very real.”

  “My God,” Amit mumbled. Seeing that neither mother nor son posed a threat, he lowered the gun. Though his first inclination was to question her sincerity, there was something else playing out in the woman’s hurt gaze. With his guard down, he noticed a sleek safe case sitting on one of the chairs. He sidestepped closer to examine it—a fancy model with a digital combination lock. The rabbi’s attaché? Could the missing scrolls from Qumran be inside it? “What is this?”

  When Mrs. Cohen told him, his alarm heightened. He asked who’d be coming to pick it up. The answer wasn’t pleasing either. “When?”

  “Any minute now,” she replied. “They are in the building.”

  Amit moved the case further across the room and gave her specific instructions on how to handle the transaction. Keeping his attention, and the gun, on the door, he lowered his voice.

  “You need to save the Messiah,” Joshua blurted out.

  Puzzled, Amit asked, “Who?”

  “The woman ...Charlotte. The pretty one they are taking with them. She’s the Messiah.”

  Messiah? Amit looked back at the mother, hoping to see recognition that her son had a few screws loose. But much to his surprise, Devora nodded in agreement.

  “It’s true,” Devora conceded. “She is the Chosen One. Do you not see how my son walks now?”

  This was all a lot to take in. First the Ark, now the Messiah? Things were moving too fast. “She’s the Messiah,” he whispered to no one in particular. “So tell me about her. I also want to know what she has to do with the Ark—and I want to know what your husband is planning to do,” Amit insisted.

  63

  ******

  “Look at this fucking mess,” Kwiatkowski grumbled, unwrapping the blood-caked towel from his mangled forearm. Blinking sporadically, his bloodshot eyes were still tearing from the chemical burns. Leaning over the bathroom sink, he turned on the squeaky chrome spigots.

  Watching his ashen-faced partner peel away the final layer, Orlando cringed as the towel’s crusty twill pulled away some of the crescent-shaped scab. The raw, deep wound split like smiling lips, the skin surrounding it a gruesome shade of purple. Blood zigzagged down Kwiatkowski’s forearm muscles into the basin, turning the shallow water pink. “That priest really got you good.”

  As Kwiatkowski stuffed the bloodstained towel into the garbage can, his inflamed red eyes knifed into Orlando. “He just got lucky. That’s all.” An attempt at wiggling the bluish-purple digits produced good results for the pinky and ring finger, limited motion in the middle finger, and nothing in the other two. “Damn nerves are severed. Shit.”

  All told, it had been six hours since they’d slipped out of the Vatican dormitory and loaded the geneticist into the rented van. They’d easily rolled out the Petrine Gate as the Swiss Guard focused its attention on the fire alarm that had gone off in the dormito
ry. The priest had unwittingly made their escape easier. At Fiumicino, the woman had been transferred to the rabbi’s private jet. As Cohen had promised, diplomatic privileges allowed them to bypass all security. The man seemed to have more pull than the pope. The bumpy flight from Rome to Tel Aviv took less than two and a half hours. Once they’d landed, a transfer to a second van completed the last leg of the delivery to the Rockefeller Museum.

  Now it was time to collect final payment.

  Repulsion giving way to curiosity, Orlando stared at the wound more clinically. “Did he break the bone?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Could have been worse.”

  “Are you fucking kidding? This isn’t exactly like cutting myself shaving.” He bent over and held the grotesque arm under the running water. Chunks of the scab and oozing gore slid off into the drain. “As soon as we get the money you can drop me over at Hadassah. I’m going to need surgery.” “No problem,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. Big problem, actually. It was Kwiatkowski’s shooting hand. Clearly the best surgeon in Israel would have a difficult time restoring the reflex in his trigger finger. Which rendered the man useless. “You did good. There’ll be plenty of time to rest up after this job.” Plenty of time. He handed over a fresh towel.