by Glen Craney
Marly saw him slide a magazine clip home. “Where’d you get that?”
“That cop we passed ten blocks back is strapping an empty holster.”
“You really think Cohanim is waiting for us in there?”
“At the moment, it’s not Cohanim I’m worried about.”
“Then who are you worried about?”
Cas looked around the corner, cautiously eyeing two black-robed Greek Orthodox monks who guarded the arched doors. “You got your Mace handy?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Cas, this is a church!”
“Yeah, but not just any church. That nave over there happens to be the most dangerous spot in all of Israel.”
She wondered if he had been smoking weed behind her back. “Which would make it the most dangerous place in the world. Yeah, sure.”
“I’m as serious as the Pope on Good Friday. Eight different monastic sects maintain the church, and they each have their own little corner of Heaven inside. If one oversteps the borders of the others, all Hell breaks lose. This time of year they do their spring-cleaning. Riots always break out.” He leveled a severe gaze at her. “Stay right behind me. And don’t look the monks in the eye. They’ll attack you for even thinking of invading their space.”
Before she could determine if he was just pulling her leg, Cas walked her into the small plaza that led to the main entrance and marched toward the door of the south transept. As they passed through the arched door, she saw a small plaque on the wall commemorating the dozens of pilgrims who had died in a stampede here in 1840. Suddenly, she became a believer.
Inside the old nave, she nearly choked from the smoke and incense that clogged the domed ambulatory. Bearded monks clad in a dizzying array of vestments and headgear glared at them with wariness as they hurried past. The two intruders crossed the steps to an altar dedicated to Mary Magdalene and entered the Chapel of the Holy Apparition on the right side of the rotunda, where a Franciscan friar was saying Mass for a half-dozen worshippers.
Cas plopped down in the front pew and motioned her to sit next to him. A bell rang, and the other congregants stood and lined up down the aisle to receive Communion. Cas waited to be the last in the queue. Turning from the altar to dispense the Sacrament, the friar saw him and dropped his silver paten, spilling the consecrated hosts. Distraught, the friar fell to his knees and hurriedly retrieved the fallen Eucharist. Hands shaking, he hissed at Cas through set teeth, “What are you doing here?”
Smiling like an altar boy at his first Mass, Cas kept his back turned to the other congregants and whispered, “I’d like to take Confession after you take your final bow in your little one-man show up here.”
The friar’s face drained whiter than his chasuble. Without answering that threat couched in a request, he stood and walked back to the altar.
When the service finally ended, Cas put a hand on Marly’s arm to keep her seated while the other worshippers walked out into the rotunda. As soon as everyone else had left the chapel, he stood from the pew and shut the door. Making sure they were alone, he grasped Marly’s hand and pulled her toward the confessional.
Marly tried shake him off. “What in the world—”
“Get in here with me.” Cas shoved her into the tiny booth and jammed himself next to her on the narrow bench. He pulled the doors shut. After an interminable minute, they heard the door to the confessor’s adjacent covey open and close. A green light above them blinked on, and the slat that covered the screen between them slid open.
Finally, a voice on the other side of the screen whispered, “I told you ten years ago, Fielding. I am out of the business for good.”
“You’ve got a pretty sweet gig here, padre,” Cas said. “Not bad for a witness-protection plan. Five years as an informant on Palestinian Christians. I hear the pension and retirement plans are top-notch. Particularly the after-life benefits.”
“Part of the deal was I’d never have to snitch again. Another part, specifically, was that I would never have to see or deal with the likes of you ever—”
“Don’t soil your hair-lined underwear. I’m not looking to recruit you for another round of Violate Your Vows. I’m done with that nonsense, too.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I need some theological inspiration.”
“You’re into Bible study now? A little late, isn’t it?”
“How well do you know Latin?”
The friar sounded hesitant. “Enough to fake my way through the old Mass.”
Cas leaned closer to the screen. “Immaculate Deceptio.” He heard nothing but silence from the other side of the screen. “That ring a bell for you?”
The friar finally admitted, “The Immaculate Deception.”
Hearing the friar pronounce an ‘n’ on the end of the word, Marly asked him, “What does that mean?”
“There’s a woman in there with you?” the friar protested. “Must you bring your debauched proclivities into a holy sanctuary?”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. All is forgiven. Now, back to the Latin.”
The friar sighed with disgust. “The ‘Immaculate Deception’ was a term coined by heretics over the centuries to denigrate the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
Marly leaned her mouth to the screen. “That’s the idea that Christ was born without Mary having sex, right?”
“Lay people make that mistake all the time,” the friar said. “You’re thinking of the Annunciation to Mary. The Immaculate Conception refers to the Virgin Mary’s birth without stain to St. Anne, her mother. The Blessed Mary had to be free of original sin so that she would not pass it on to Jesus. That’s why the Church promulgated the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Of course, various Protestant sects and heretical cabals reject the belief that Mary herself was conceived and born by supranatural means.”
“So,” Cas asked, “the Virgin Mary was born of a virgin, too?”
“No. It’s very complicated.”
“Give us the Cliff Notes version.”
The friar sighed heavily again, as if not wishing to get into this thorny issue. Finally, he explained, “Official Catholic doctrine does not believe that Mary was conceived virginally.”
“You mean ‘vaginally’? Cas asked, confused.
“No, I mean virginally. St. Anne was not a virgin.”
“Wait a minute,” Marly said. “I thought you just said that Mary was born without sin.”
Through the screen, they could see the friar press his hands together in prayer, as if petitioning the saints for the gift of clarity and patience. Finally, the friar tried again. “The Church teaches that the Holy Mother was blessed with a special, one-time dispensation of sanctifying grace, in order to be preserved from Original Sin during the birth process. Unlike Jesus, Mary was born naturally from a mortal father and mother, but she was free of all hereditary sin. That is what we mean when we pray, ‘Hail Mary, Full of Grace.’”
Cas boinged his head back against the confessional wall in exasperation. “The real miracle, padre, is how you papists have managed to sell this angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin rubbish for two thousand years.”
Marly, still confused, whispered to Cas, hoping the friar couldn’t hear. “Why would that murdered girl in Galilee care a whit about some arcane point of Catholic dogma? Bridget Whelan wasn’t even a Christian, let alone a Catholic.”
Cas thought for a moment. “Mary and Jesus … both born without sin.” He looked at Marly and whispered back to her, “What were the differences between these two biblical pregnancies, other than the fact that one was conjured up without a human father?”
She shrugged. “One baby turned out to be male. And the other female.”
“Yeah … a bull and a heifer.”
“Huh?” She pinned him with a quizzical look. “What are you getting at?”
“You remember what that creep at the stockyards told you about that new semen-sorting technology?”
“What about it?”
>
“Immaculate Deception,” Cas said, repeating the translated message that Bridget Whelan had left in acid. “Maybe our Texas witch was trying to tell someone, anyone, that Cohanim was deceiving the world with what only appeared to be an innocent and sinless birth.”
“Of cows?”
“You got a better explanation?”
Marly was at a loss. “What possible difference could it make if Cohanim is breeding heifers, bulls, or Power Rangers for the Israelis? He’s already got his red heifer ashes to rebuild the Temple. That’s what that girl in Llano told us.”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” Cas stood in the cramped booth. “But we need to find out. And fast.”
The friar cleared his voice to remind them that he was still trapped in the confessional. “Do you want absolution, or not?”
“That would be throwing pearls to swine. Or to be more accurate, swine throwing pearls to swine. But I’ll tell you what I could use.”
“Yes?”
“You got any extra bottles of Mass wine I could take for the road?”
They heard the friar snap the sleeves of his robes in disgust. “May God forgive you! Now, get out of my confessional!”
Cas didn’t budge. “You first, Holy Eminence. Simony before beauty.”
The friar bolted and slammed the door behind him.
Still stuffed into the tight box with Marly, Cas snuggled closer to her, but she pushed him away. Pouting, he whimpered, “Now is that Christian love?”
“Just out of curiosity,” she said. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you knew a priest here? We could have asked him about Cohanim on the first day we arrived.”
“Padre Panhandler out there? He’s just a lowlife with a starched collar. I used to know a thousand of his ilk in every hole from Tel Aviv to Riyadh.”
“But if he’s an informant, he might have heard something on the street.”
Cas pointed his forefinger and thumb to his temple and turned them in a signal for her to start up the common-sense engine. “Southern-fried Come-To-Jesus types like Cohanim are a dime a dozen in the Holy Land. They run so many tours here from the States that it’s a wonder they haven’t turned the Temple Mount into an Alamo replica. Our friendly drive-through confessor wouldn’t have given the Llano Lightgiver a second thought. Besides, evangelicals think the Vatican is Satan’s whorehouse. Cohanim would never cross paths with a papist shill, let alone cross Crosses.”
“Well, when you put it so intelligently … ”
“By the way, sarcasm is one of the seven deadly sins. You’ll need another forgiveness session.” He glanced down at the top button of her blouse. “I’ve been told I have a spiritual gift for the laying on of hands.”
Marly had rolled her eyes so many times since first encountering him that day in her office that she feared it would become an unconscious tic. She threw open the confessional door, desperate for air in the thick incense and ripe fragrance of a man who had gone without a shower for two days.
Cas, shrugging off yet another rejection, followed her out.
An Israeli police officer stood waiting for them.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Police Headquarters, Jerusalem
A DETECTIVE FROM THE JERUSALEM DISTRICT of the Public Safety Ministry entered the interrogation room and pulled a clip credential from his shirt pocket. He slid his laminated ID across the table toward Cas and Marly.
“Mefake'ah,” Cas said with a whistle, repeating the detective’s rank in Hebrew. He tried to curry favor with a collegial nod, hoping to establish a mutual understanding of professional courtesy. “Did we violate some kind of a curfew, Inspector? Catholic confessions not allowed during Israeli National soccer games or something?”
The detective didn’t buy into Cas’s buddy act. He unlocked a storage locker along the wall behind him and yanked out two backpacks for their inspection. “These look familiar?”
Marly burned Cas with a glare that shouted, I told you so. Then, averting her eyes from the pilfered bags, she told the detective in a less-than-convincingly voice, “They’re not ours.”
Cas scooted out his chair, faking an assumption that the meeting was over. “But hey, thanks for thinking of us. We’ll let you know if we do lose any luggage on the rest of our holiday.”
“Sit down!” the detective ordered. “Of course they’re not yours!”
“Ease up there, pal,” Cas said as he slowly lowered back to his chair. “No need to spike your blood pressure.”
“You two find this little crime spree you’re on amusing, do you?”
Seeing that they were in it for the long haul, Cas kicked his feet up on the table. “So we borrowed a couple of backpacks for an hour. Good education for those kids. They shouldn’t be so trusting of strangers.”
“Do you have any friends in Israel?” the detective asked.
Cas glanced at Marly, wondering if she had any clue about the path this oblique line of inquiry was headed. When she shrugged, he turned back to the detective. “Everyone in Israel is our friend. We’re just a couple of spiritual seekers trying to find our lost souls in the Holy Land.”
The detective sat on the corner of the table next to Cas, near enough to land a punch. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Think hard. Anyone here you ought to reach out to?”
Cas put a finger to his lips in mock thought. “Uh, Uri Geller, maybe? I do have some bent spoons that need refurbishing.”
The detective walked over to a glass pane and rapped his knuckles on what Cas had already pegged as a one-way mirror. Seconds later, the door to the interrogation room opened, and a young man with black hair and a pasty face walked in.
Cas lost his smirk.
Avram Isserle, Mossad agent at large, came looming over him. “I thought I’d made clear my conditions for your release the last time we held a reunion. I guess I should have branded them on your dick in English capital letters, so you could remind yourself every time you took a piss.”
Cas quickly recovered his carefree façade. “Josh, ol’ buddy,” he piped, using Isserle’s birth name to throw him off his game. “You know, I suggested that very idea to a tattoo artist before I left Tel Aviv. He took one look at my anatomy suggested there was enough billboard space there to translate them into Hebrew and Yiddish, too. I just couldn’t decide which text font would be more attractive to the ladies. Arial tends to stretch well, but the serifs on Times New Roman–”
“Same comedian.” Isserle swiveled his glare of disgust from Cas to Marly. “I should have known you two grifters were bound to get tired of plane-jumping and petty theft. Murder is more exciting.”
Marly leapt to her feet. “Murder?”
Isserle shoved her back into the chair. Motioning for a file from the detective, the Mossad agent pulled out a document that held what looked like ridged ink blotches. He slid the evidence report across the table. “Your fingerprints were all over a body found at a northern kibbutz called Shaaba Farms.”
Cas scooted the report back to his old friend, not bothering to look at it. “Old news. That girl died months before we stumbled onto her.”
Isserle throated a smoker’s chortle. “Girl?”
“Yes, girl,” Marly said. “Seth Cohanim is behind all of this. The victim’s name was Whelan. Cohanim somehow manipulated her DNA and caused her to age fifty years in just a couple of days.”
Isserle shook his head in disbelief. “You two worms are really scraping the bottom of the Dead Sea for excuses this time. What’d you do, pick up a copy of World News Daily and read the freak section on the way over?”
“Just let me get to my carry-on in our car,” said Marly, remembering the lab report she had kept from the Hebrew University technician. “I’ll prove it.”
“And just to make it worth your while, Joshua,” Cas added, “I’ll stake a thousand bucks on it. If we’re telling you the truth, you don’t owe us a thing. Just arrange a little meet-and-greet for us with that Texas two-step pirate.�
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Isserle circled them. “What is it with you two parrots and Cohanim? First you claim he’s breeding glow-in-the-dark cows. Now you’ve got him murdering young women with home chemistry kits. What’s next? You gonna claim he’s trying to clone Danny Crockett?”
“Davy,” Marly corrected him.
Isserle turned on her with threat. “What?”
“Davy Crockett,” Marly told the Mossad agent. “If you’re going to use American pop-culture references, at least try to get them right.”
“I think he meant Daniel Boone anyway,” Cas said.
Marly shook her head. “Daniel Boone was from Kentucky, not Texas.”
“Actually, he was from North Carolina,” Cas said. “Man, I used to have one of those coonskin—”
Isserle slammed his palm to the table. “The body we found at the kibbutz! The one you two jokers pawed over like a couple of necrophiliacs!”
“You saw the platform shoes she was wearing, right?” Cas said.
“Yeah, so what? Maybe she liked the view from up there.”
“Come on,” Marly said. “Surely you got a better explanation than that?”
“That dead hag was as old as the Judean hills,” Isserle said. “She obviously suffered from dementia. We deal with these mania types here all the time. They get a little meshuggah and convince themselves that they’re the reincarnated Jesus or the Virgin Mary or some—”
“We didn’t kill her!” Marly insisted.
Isserle grinned at her emotional outburst. “I know you didn’t, Bonnie. I just wanted to get the full attention of you and Clyde here.”
Cas was furious. “Then what did happen to this Bridget broad, smart guy?”
“These delusional pilgrims always come crashing back down to reality eventually,” Isserle said. “And then a lot of them attempt suicide, usually in some grisly manner in a sick homage to some saint’s martyrdom. We’ve had more than a couple of these nut jobs even try to crucify themselves upside down, convinced that they’re St. Peter.”
“You found a suicide note?” Cas knew damn well the agent hadn’t.