The Day of Atonement

by Breck England

  “Is there any indication that the Monsignor moved from this position after he was shot?” Kane asked, indicating the tape on the floor.

  “None. No footprints in the dust, no blood trail. He fell here.”

  “So if the Monsignor had removed the icon,” Kane went on, “he did so before the shooting.”

  “The Monsignor could not have done so…at least not at that time. The two men were in here for only a few minutes before the shootings, and no sign of the icon has been found. Someone else must have removed the icon beforehand.” The diminutive man shrugged. Maryse wondered why so many Italians wore sunglasses even at night.

  Kane and Maryse walked to the front of the altar and examined the cavity in the wall where the Acheropita had hung. There was nothing now but a flat marble wall and a few rusted bolt holes. Whoever had taken the altarpiece had removed it with care; no scars, not even dust had been left behind. Maryse felt little emotion now. A leaden fatigue settled over her, but she shook it off and closely examined the stays for the bolts, which had clearly been unfastened without haste or violence. The thief had taken his time.

  She turned and looked toward the gate. From the altar the blood trail led directly to the Holy Stairs just beyond the gate. She envisioned that agonizing journey, the violent draining from the brain as blood pressure collapsed, the weak shout, and then nothing but the dark stairs. What final thoughts had crossed the dying mind of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church? What could have happened here?

  “What do you mean, ‘not at that time’?” Kane brought the man up short.

  “Well, the Monsignor had been in the chapel early this morning to prepare it for the service. He always went before His Holiness to ensure that all preparations were in place. If he indeed removed the icon, which I cannot believe, he must have done so then.”

  “Why can’t you believe it? If as you say the icon was here last night, and Chandos was the last person in this room who had an opportunity to take it, then why is it so unbelievable that he would have done so?”

  “But for what purpose?” the rabbity little official spread his hands. “He clearly intended to kill himself—that much is obvious. Why would he steal the Acheropita and then end his life a few hours later?”

  “For that matter,” Kane added, “why would anyone at all want to steal it? It could not possibly be sold on the underground.”

  “There are, as you know better than I, many collectors who are devoted to such objects as this and do not intend to part with them. How many illicit private collections have you yourself uncovered?”

  “Dozens,” Kane muttered. He turned again on the official. “How is it so obvious that Chandos killed himself? Are you completely certain no one else could have been in this room—a third person?”

  “It is not possible.” Another man in the group, who had been quiet until now, spoke up, his voice croaking. Maryse now recognized him as the policeman who had given a fumbling interview on television earlier in the day. He looked white-faced and chastened, but anxious to be heard. “I myself supervised the security arrangements. We swept the palazzo top to bottom early this morning and then closed it off. The Passionist sisters in charge of the sanctuary remained at the convent all day. When the Monsignor arrived to prepare for the service, the entire building had already been secured and surrounded.”

  “Signor Bevo,” Maryse asked, “the icon…was it in place when you swept the chapel this morning?”

  Bevo was startled that this woman spoke, and even more that she remembered his name. This was the question he had not wanted to hear. “I cannot tell you. Our officers simply do not recall anything out of order, which leads me to believe that the icon was in place. But no one can swear to it. It is usually, after all, somewhat obscured.”

  It was true. The icon had been kept for years under a protective frame, and only someone looking directly into the altarpiece would remark the blank space where it had hung. Maryse privately cursed the new electronic sweep tools that had lulled security people to the point that they no longer used their eyes.

  They were all silent for a moment. Around them, the clean-suited technicians continued their slow spiral of the room, photographing and examining every square centimeter, collecting minute particles of hair and dust—anything that might bring sense to a story that made no sense. Maryse knew that a nearly infinite number of possible scenarios had to be ruled out to establish the validity of the one that seemed inescapable: that his most trusted associate had unaccountably assassinated the Pope and then killed himself.

  Maryse saved a private satisfaction until she was about to leave. She looked up at the ceiling and saw again what had so startled and pleased her the first time she had visited this room. A medieval mural, its colors pale in the darkness, the symbols of the four Evangelists: a gigantic eagle, a lion, an ox, and a winged human figure, each guarding one of the four azure quadrants of the universe. As stoic and serene as the age that produced them, they presided like great angels over the papal chapel, unmoved for a millennium, secretive, stoical, hovering, and watching.

  Technion Center for Advanced Studies, Haifa, 2330h

  If they weren’t secure before, the gates of Technion are secure now, Ari thought as a fleshy, curly-headed officer ordered him at Uzi-point out of his car. He, Toad, and Miner instinctively lined up under a bright set of strobe lamps that made the hot night even hotter. Their credentials were studied with the kind of care usually reserved for the Scriptures.

  “This is what I need from you people,” the sweating guard sneered in Hebrew with a little New York tinge. After individually checking off a list of prohibitions and signing an electronic clipboard, Ari’s team was finally admitted to the grounds of Israel’s Institute of Science.

  “Too bad they weren’t as vigilant a little earlier today,” Miner said as soon as they were safely out of earshot.

  “Ironic, isn’t it,” Ari answered without noting that it was their own agency that was responsible for protecting this place. Toad and Miner knew that as well as he did.

  They found the multi-story electronics research building. Getting in here was much easier; two men in white overalls met them at the door and accompanied them to the lifts. A special card opened the lift, which then took them to the level labeled “Nanoelectronics.”

  The lift door opened on a small group of scared-looking maintenance workers, also in white overalls. Over the corridor hung the curious atmosphere of death that Ari knew so well. A penetrating cold draft filled the hallway; the air-conditioning seemed to be overactive tonight. Past the workers, down long walls painted a dim gold inlaid with idealized palm trees, Ari could see a figure lying on the floor in a shimmer of dark blood. From the small pack he carried, he extracted three pair of white shoe-covers and the three policemen put them on.

  One of the workers found his voice. He was clearly frightened and excited at the same time. “We found the body when we opened the lift at around 2100. We didn’t know who it was, so we called Mr. Tempelman. He’s the security manager.”

  Ari knew Shimon Tempelman slightly. “Where is he now?”

  “He wants you to wait here for him.”

  Ari had higher orders than Tempelman’s, so he walked toward the body with Miner, warily examining each door in the windowless corridor. Miner began scanning floor, ceiling, and walls with a beam from a tiny instrument in his hand. As the minute particularity of each human cell had become traceable, no criminal could help leaving traces. Suddenly Miner turned and called to the workers, who were hurrying into the elevator, “When did you clean this area last?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. We clean every day,” the spokesman said, then disappeared behind the lift doors.

  “It’s freezing in here,” Toad murmured, shoving his hands in his pockets, staring down the corridor at the corpse almost without seeing it. In order to disturb the scene as little as possible, he made no move
toward the body. Ari checked each electronic door lock with a gloved hand, taking care not to step in front of Miner’s beam. He pushed the bar on the emergency exit stairway and it gave, but it was locked securely from the other side. At his signal Miner began a methodical scan of the exit door. At last he reached the end of the hallway and stepped carefully around the dead man lying face up, a thread of blood leading in a straight line from abdomen to chest to head.

  “He’s been hit in four places,” Ari said, pointing at each black wound. “One, two, three horizontally across the chest. And one, as they say in the movies, right between the eyes.” Toad and Miner looked meaningfully back at him. Then he turned to try the unmarked door at the end of the corridor, just beyond the body. Ari knew it wouldn’t open; a biometric panel hung next to the latch and an encrypted touchpad was concealed just beneath the panel. The instant he touched the latch an alarm screamed shrilly. Lights flashed around him.

  “Only one man in the world is allowed inside that door, and it isn’t you,” came a voice from behind him. The lift had opened and admitted Shimon Tempelman, who walked toward the body and looked it over with professional disregard. He shivered visibly, but Ari knew it was from the sudden cold, not from any aversion to death. Tempelman was a veteran of the Protective Service, an amiable English immigrant with an administrative face, the sort of policeman who knew how to manipulate procedure because he had helped write it. He had risen high: he was remembered as a competent and unlikable bureaucrat who knew how to sniff out choice assignments, like his ambassadorship to Interpol. Overseeing security for Technion was a comfortable bridge to retirement. In his blue knit slacks and golf cap, he looked like he had just stepped off the links.

  The alarms stopped when he pushed the button on a handheld device, and he shook hands briskly with Ari. “Happy New Year, Davan,” he said gravely, gesturing with his head at the body on the floor.

  “And to you. This is Inspector Kara and this, Inspector Sefardi,” Ari pointed at Miner and then Toad.

  “Ah, Kara,” Tempelman said, looking up at Miner’s imposingly tall figure. “I’ve heard of you. You’re the one with the extraordinary nose, the one they call the Miner. I’m Shimon Tempelman.” He ignored Toad. “Have you found anything yet?”

  Ari ignored the question. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Emanuel Shor. Doctor Emanuel Shor. Very well-known researcher, but not in electronics, so he is in the wrong building. His field is genetics; he has a lab and suite of offices both here at Technion and at the Rambam Center.”

  “Do you have any idea what happened here?”

  “None whatsoever. It looks to be a professional job.”

  “Yeah, three stopping bullets in commando order—one in the gut, one in the chest, and one in the head.”

  Tempelman nodded. Although now not much more than a facility manager, he had a clear memory of the operative’s world. “Whoever did it was no amateur.”

  “Why here? It looks like he was about to go in that door. What’s behind it?”

  Tempelman smiled. “My friend, I don’t think you’re intended to know that.” He appeared to be under no illusions about Ari’s instructions—nor about the tiny buttonhole camera peering at him from Ari’s collar. “So…what have you found?”

  “We’ve found nothing. It looks in perfect order—doors shut and locked from inside, no windows so no way in or out. The door to the exit stairway is open, but not from the outside. Whoever came in here did not come that way, although he certainly could have left that way. I trust your lift is secure.”

  “Who knows?” Tempelman laughed. “What does ‘secure’ mean?” He was clearly not the type to worry much. “We do what we can. But when you say you’ve found nothing, that’s relative, isn’t it?” He gestured at Miner, who was methodically examining a crevice between the floor and the wall.

  “He’s more like a vacuum cleaner than a miner,” Ari conceded. “But you’re right. We’re finding a lot more useful information in dust motes these days than we used to find in overturned chairs or smashed clocks.”

  Suddenly a familiar voice hissed in his ear. “Exactly. Now bring it home. You’ve done your job. Tell Miner to download his readings now.”

  “Affirmative,” he said quietly.

  Tempelman broke a smile. His head cocked forward, he peered into the tiny black eye of Ari’s camera, which was barely visible in his collar button. “Is that your mistress calling?” he asked, waving offhandedly into the camera. “Le-shanah tovah, you there.”

  “Tell that man you’ve finished,” the voice barked. “And get back here now. The scene investigators are on their way.”

  Ari was not satisfied. There were large stakes at play here, and he couldn’t just walk away. “Can you get those readings downloaded right away, Miner?” The big man nodded and stepped away to start the process. Reaching for his collar, Ari snapped off the camera.

  “What’s going on here, Tempelman?”

  “Here? In this corridor?”

  “Look, the office isn’t listening now. What do you know about this Dr. Shor?”

  “He’s the most eminent geneticist in the country, maybe in the world. Started out decades ago, picking up the bodies of blast victims on the street. He had a mission—to bury the Jewish dead respectfully and fully identified. That led him into forensics work and then into DNA study, and finally to Technion.”

  “So that’s nothing I couldn’t find out on Google. Why would he be on a restricted floor in the electronics research center on Rosh Ha-Shanah? And why would someone shoot him down commando-style?”

  “As to your second question, I have no idea. For your first question, it may have something to do with Nathan Levinsky.”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Levinsky is the top man in the world in his field—the high priest of Nanoelectronics. I told you that only one man has access to that door. No one goes in or out without being accompanied by Levinsky.”

  “What’s Levinsky got to do with Shor?”

  “Nothing you couldn’t look up on Google. They’re brothers.”

  Global eManager Headquarters, Plano, Texas, 1540h

  The office of Lambert Sable, founder, chairman, and CEO of Global eManager, consisted of a hexagon of 12-foot white viewscreens. One of the walls was mute but frantic with the news from Rome; another wall displayed minute-by-minute financials—sales figures, budget numbers, and one quivering line depicting earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation.

  Between these two screens, at a white enamel worktable as big as a desert mesa, Sable sat alone, uninterested in either display. He was studying—intently—an old Bible with red gilt edges. Occasionally he glanced up; on the desk a digital frame flipped through portraits of his late wife, even at sixty-five a Texas beauty with eyes and hair upswept as if by a whirlwind. He despised the cancer that had taken her, had spent millions to save her. Momentarily, a picture of himself as a Marine revolved past. Nearly forty-five years went by. Then came up a recent photo of his children by his first wife. That marriage had been over long ago. The children’s faces were remote and strained—he hadn’t seen them for months. Grown up and gone their own ways. Surprising how much money they could siphon from him without his knowing about it.

  Next to the digital frame was a small still photo of himself, twenty years younger and that many pounds lighter, in front of the new GeM store. He had started out impossibly, competing against Apple, Samsung, all the big players—but he had beaten them with the “Global eManager,” a cheap little razor-thin handheld that could do anything. Hovering in an animated frame on the wall was an image of the GeM that wiped out the credit card industry. People worldwide now used their GeMs for a trillion transactions a day; a microscopic percentage of each transaction flowed into Sable’s electronic treasury in his palace on the Texas plain. Hardly anyone in the civilized world bought or sold anything without
a GeM.

  And that was what worried him.

  His assistant’s voice sounded in his ear. “Pastor Bob is here.”

  “Send him in.”

  Pastor Bob Jonas looked like a younger Sable—maybe that’s why he was drawn to him, thought the older man. They both had thin, inflexible arms and legs which made them hop a little when they walked together. Sable’s incessant boating and fishing had given him raw, spotted skin, while the preacher’s face was pinker, underneath a tall, auburn Texas hairdo. When they smiled, both showed wide gums and teeth artificially lightened almost blue.

  They shook hands under the streaming images of the Pope’s death.

  “It’s a sign, isn’t it, Pastor Bob.” It was not a question but needed some confirmation anyway.

  The pastor evaluated the silent screen for a moment and then gave a knowing nod. “Absolutely. This is ‘the head that is wounded to death.’ It had to happen.”

  Sable sat down again, awestricken, searching the text before him. He read quietly:

  “And I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns.…”

  “The beast is the Church of Rome, sitting on its seven hills,” the Pastor declared. “Revelation, Chapter 13.”

  “And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority, and I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death.”

  “That’s right on schedule. The Pope had to die now. You see, Lam, the beast is the Roman Church; the dragon is the devil that gave the Pope his authority; and now he is dead.”