The Day of Atonement

by Breck England

  Amal smiled, lay down the tray, and lounged over it as the three of them studied the news together. Hafiz nodded at the boy and remembered when in his youth he had sat with his uncle reading the newspaper in the morning over breakfast. He supposed that somewhere they still had newspapers. The panel suddenly emptied and then filled again with pictures of Rome, a sky-view picture of the galleries of St. Peter’s embracing an enormous crowd; then a mournful picture of the interior draped in black and gilded with candlelight.

  “There will be no visit from the Pope this year,” Amal said sardonically to Nasir. “Your trip was for nothing.”

  Nasir ignored this. “Look how cold it is there”; he pointed to policemen in heavy coats breathing steam as dignitaries filed into the cathedral.

  “I wish for the cold,” Amal replied. The stone room at the top of the house was already beginning to get hot. “They say at school that the Pope wanted to come here to become a Muslim and that’s why he was killed.”

  Nasir chuckled at this. “Your school is full of idiots. The Pope wanted to come to the Holy Land as a pilgrim and to visit the Muslims. He said he wanted to make peace. He was not going to become a Muslim.”

  “Your school will be short of an idiot if you do not move along,” Hafiz grunted at the boy. Amal jumped from the table and grabbed from the doorpost at a scarf which he wound twice around his neck and ran off.

  The newspanel changed views again to show a contingent of Israeli airmen posing around attack helicopters that looked like great black broken-backed crows as the men grinned into the camera. There was a tremor of insecurity in those smiles, Hafiz noted. The half billion Muslims who surrounded this land were no longer the poor unsophisticated nations of his youth; they were oil-rich and modern, and their anger more and more democratic. The attack on Al-Aqsa—this latest, profoundest insult to their faith—had nearly ripped up the delicate fabric of a status quo no one wanted. Hafiz shook his head.

  He turned unsmiling to Nasir. “I fear these days. Your investiture cannot come too soon.”

  “There’s time, Father.” Nasir looked unworried. Since his return from abroad in the early hours of Sunday, Nasir had seemed different, less tense, relieved to put those things behind him and to be home.

  “The danger is very great now.”

  “I know.”

  “I wonder if you do. You are like that man,” Hafiz said, pointing at a still picture of the dead Pope on the screen. “You have too much faith.”

  “No, Father,” the younger man shook his head. “But I have enough.” Nasir looked meditatively for a moment at the image of the Pope, pushed himself away from the table, and went to his room to dress for the day.

  “Do I have enough faith?” thought Hafiz. Do I have even the faith of a blood clot—enough to stop the blood from flowing? There had been blood in the washbasin this morning. He looked at the calendar on the wall. It was a scruffy thing, fingered with grease, given him by one of the junk dealers in the valley below, and he had hung it next to the TV screen as he had done every year. The calendar worried him—it was an exceptionally dangerous season.

  He went to an old, very wide wooden chest that sat against a wall of the room and opened it with a key. Buried inside, beneath rugs and robes so old that the frayed, silken folds threatened to give way as he dug through them, he found a long parcel wrapped in a rosy fragment of tapestry and removed it. Carefully unwinding the tapestry, he drew out of it a sword with a black wood hilt and a blade that curved nearly into a half circle. It was the shamshir, the scimitar his uncle had given him.

  The blade had blackened slightly around the edges in the years since he had taken it from the chest. But the Damascus steel felt firm and smooth to the touch as always. He laid it on the table and then removed from the chest a large silk envelope, which he set reverently next to the sword. Opening the envelope with care, he extracted a bundle of faded green wool. He remembered when he had taken his uncle’s hand nearly forty years before, when his uncle had laid the green stole, ancient even then, over his shoulder; this Friday he would do the same for his son.

  Just then Nasir, dressed for work, came running up the steps to say goodbye to his father. He stopped abruptly at the table. “Your sword?”

  “The brothers will want to see it.”

  Nasir picked it up and admired it for a moment. “It’s stained.”

  “I will take it to the smith today.”

  Hafiz watched his son lift and spin the sword as though it were a toy. The young man had been carefully prepared in every way, and he was highly disciplined.

  Except for a tendency toward too much faith.

  Nasir set the sword down and embraced his father. Dressed in black from neck to toe, his black hair tightly cut, his skin gleaming, Nasir looked both soldierly and playful at once. His new gold ring shone as he waved to his father.

  Hafiz glanced at the calendar and wished away the days until Thursday. But now, he thought, it was time to make contact with the others.

  Headquarters, Servizio Polizia Scientifica, Rome, 0715h

  Maryse nearly leaped from the car. She walked quickly toward the central entrance of the large blue-windowed building that housed the scientific service of the Italian state police. Its three glassy wings made it look like a gigantic letter E from the air, as she remembered well from her many visits here by copter. Investigations into art thefts by the dozens had given her intimate acquaintance with this building.

  Her eyes and hands duly examined, her badge verified, she headed for the morgue. The science building was just as she recalled it, corridors filled with white-suited technicians, throwing back cups of coffee and shouting at each other. She could never understand why this building was so noisy.

  Near the morgue she found the doorplate she was looking for: Dr. Sylvia Malemanni. She knocked, but there was no answer. A pair of technicians stopped and watched her, then started talking at her in Italian phrases she didn’t understand. She turned. “I must see Dr. Malemanni.”

  She mustered as much authority as she could in her eyes, and the two men at length gestured down the corridor. She could feel them watching her as she made her way toward the stainless-steel doors of the morgue itself. Just as she pulled the door open, another man came out. He looked out of his element in his light summer suit, and he walked as quickly as a cat through the entrance, throwing only the briefest glance at Maryse as she passed. His badge told her he was a visitor like herself.

  Beyond the doors the world changed abruptly. Here was no noise and not much light; except for the brilliant examination lamps dimmed by frosted glass in the rooms ranged around her, she would not have been able to see. Even in the science lab, a certain darkness surrounded death. She asked the young woman at reception where to go and was pointed to a room at the end of the corridor.

  She knocked, and the door was unbolted by a heavy, elderly man whose white coat smelled of sweat and another odor she could not identify. He dabbed his face and swept back the few white hairs on his scalp. He said nothing but looked curiously at her.

  “Dr. Malemanni, per favore?”

  The old man opened the door a little further and looked over his shoulder. “Chi e là?” came a strong woman’s voice from inside.

  “It’s Inspector Mandelyn from Interpol,” Maryse called.

  “No, no, no, no Interpol,” the voice shot back. “I’ve had enough interruptions already this morning—the Vatican, the Israelis…what next?”

  Maryse was determined. “I have to see you, just for a moment. There’s something I must check…something about the Monsignor.”

  The old man’s eyes turned hard. He began to close the door.

  “Where is Kane?” came the voice from inside.

  “He had to leave,” Maryse called.

  She remembered her angry surprise when she had tried to call him earlier and got the echoing voice of
Intel instead, telling her that Kane had left Rome in the night.

  “Where did he go?” she had asked Intel. “I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “Can’t say. You’re in charge of the case, he told me.”

  “He said nothing to me about leaving Rome. I just spoke to him last night. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “He wants you to take over from here.”

  “Take over? But it was his investigation.”

  Intel sounded rushed, strained. “Look, you can’t expect the head of Interpol to run a little investigation into an art theft. Not now.”

  “Not now? Little investigation? What do you mean, not now?”

  “Now doesn’t matter. Not to you,” the answer was short.

  “But I can’t do this. I only came to help him, to give him advice on the art side of it. I’m not even active.”

  “You’ve been active for exactly…thirty-seven hours and twenty-seven minutes. The case is yours.” And he rang off.

  Intel was right. It was hers now, in every sense. In the darkness of her hotel room she had stared at photographs on her GeM screen for two hours, but the answers were not there. Now she had to get past the old man and into that lab. There was a noise behind her, and she turned to see two black-coated policemen coming down the corridor toward her. “Signora,” they said almost simultaneously. She knew they were there to remove her.

  She called through the door, “I know what the ring means.”

  The two policemen stopped and in gentlemanly fashion bowed her away from the door. She shook her head, and one of them carefully took her by the arm. Just then the door opened revealing a tall woman with shoulders so wide she looked a perfect V-shape within the door frame. She wore what looked like white satin pajamas and gloves and a tight white cap over her hair.

  “I’ve changed my mind. The inspector has information that I need. I’ll call you when I’m finished with her,” Dr. Malemanni said to the policemen. Maryse went in and the door shut unceremoniously on the two officers.

  She saw a round room, with a single crystalline white light over the table in the center. A sheet covered the body that lay there. Although the room was cool, nearly cold, a peculiar stale odor hung in the air—she did not want to know what it was. The tiny red lights of digicams on the wall and the GeM on the table in voice recorder mode indicated that Malemanni knew her place in history.

  The doctor leaned against the wall like a statue with folded arms. “This is Ancona,” she said, tipping her head toward the old man, who frowned. “Now what did you want to tell me about the ring?”

  “May I see it?”

  “You said you had information about the ring.”

  “Well, when I saw the photo of the right hand yesterday, I was focusing on the gun. I noticed the ring, but it wasn’t until this morning that I realized there were engravings on it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to see the ring to be sure.”

  “First tell me what you think you saw.”

  “That’s the problem. I’m not sure of what I saw, and that’s why I came to you. I’ve got to examine it.”

  The doctor stirred with irritation. “You can’t examine it. It’s not here.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Not in this building.”

  Maryse was startled. Evidence had already been removed from the police laboratories?

  “Under protest I handed it over to the Vatican authorities yesterday. They were insistent, and my director was with them.” Malemanni gestured at Ancona, who stepped toward the table and moved the sheet back to reveal, white, glazed with light, a man’s hand.

  “The ring was here, on this finger.”

  Maryse moved, trembling slightly, toward the dead hand on the table. Malemanni held the ring finger up for her to examine.

  “There’s no ring mark,” Maryse murmured in English.

  The doctor switched into her own heavy English. “You notice that. So do I. He had not worn this ring long. Of course, that is true of many priests these days.” The language change left Ancona out, and he frowned more deeply.

  Maryse was puzzled for a moment, but then she understood the doctor’s remark. “You think it was a wedding ring?”

  “What else? But you see some other significance in this ring.” Malemanni was no fool.

  “It’s just that I thought I saw some lettering engraved on the ring…D, V, and C. I was hoping you could confirm it for me and tell me if there were more letters. It’s very important that I know.”

  The doctor looked uncertain. “Yes, and there were two more letters. E and I.”

  E and I. Maryse took a breath and knew she had to get out of this room. The odor was beginning to sicken her. She did not know if it came from the table or from the sour old man who stood a suspicious watch on her behind Malemanni.

  “Thanks,” she said, and turned to go.

  “All right, what does it mean? What do these letters signify?” Malemanni moved to block her path.

  “I don’t know.” Maryse was being entirely honest.

  “You don’t know! You said you did know, and I want to know too.”

  “I can’t help you. Not yet. I don’t know the meaning myself, but I have seen those letters before.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t exactly remember.”

  “You are playing a miserable game with me. I’ve searched the Internet, I’ve searched the world police archive net. There is nothing. Then I assumed it had some private significance. But now you will tell me what you know, or I will have you detained here.”

  Maryse almost laughed. “I’ve told you. I was startled when I realized there was lettering on the ring. I’ve worn myself out trying to remember where I have seen it before. That’s why I need to see the ring itself, the object itself. If I see it, the memory might come back to me.”

  “And the photographs of the ring?”

  “Not good enough. I’ve been looking at them on my GeM since early this morning, and I can see only a trace—even when I magnified them on the wall in my hotel room.”

  “On the wall,” Malemanni snorted. “Let’s try again.” She touched a wall panel and down from the ceiling came a large white projection screen. Maryse touched her GeM and aimed it at the screen, where a photo of the Monsignor’s hand instantly leaped to life. The lights in the room shut down. Her hands were shaking, so she set the GeM on a shelf and the image stabilized. It was much clearer against the screen than it had been on the yellowing walls of her hotel room.

  “There,” the doctor almost shouted. “The outline of the letter D, quite clear. And next to it, the V.”

  “And that’s a C, I think.”

  “Yes, it is. The other two letters are on the unseen side. Now look at it. Do you remember now where you have seen this word before?”

  “Word?” Maryse muttered. It was not a word, she was quite sure of that. The letters were spaced, like initials.

  “Yes. They spell ducei.” Malemanni pronounced it doo-chay-ee. “It has no meaning in Italian, nor in Latin as far as I know.”

  Softly, Maryse said, “I don’t think this is a word. I think the individual letters stand for something. I wish I knew what.”

  “But you think it is significant.”

  Maryse was frustrated. If she could hold the ring in her hand, manipulate the lettering, it might come back to her. It was the only possibility she had in this quite impossible case. She nodded hopelessly at Malemanni.

  “Then we must speak to the Direttore,” Malemanni said with finality. She threw open the door and strode out, with Maryse and Ancona in pursuit.

  Jaffa Street Cemetery, Haifa, 0900h

  Toad looked at his GeMscreen. It was time for Shor’s funeral to begin, yet the brother had not arrived. It was already hot—the screen indicated forty degrees�
�and Toad wiped his balding head. He strolled unnoticed into the shade of some palms away from the funeral party and looked leisurely around the cemetery, examining some of the crowded stone sarcophagi whitened by the dusty sunlight. Up a walk a simple pine box containing the body of Emanuel Shor lay suspended over an open sarcophagus surrounded by dozens of people—mostly Shor’s colleagues, Toad guessed.

  Then he heard electric car motors stopping behind the walls and Nathan Levinsky limped through the gates led by his daughter and accompanied by three others whom Toad recognized unmistakably as men from the Institute—the Mossad. They were keeping close watch on Levinsky, Toad mused. He rejoined the group of mourners that tightened around the dead man’s brother. Several greeted him, first of all one self-important man whom Toad knew from photos to be the Technion director general.

  Toad was more interested in the crowd than in the service. He found the scientists intriguing. They looked on at the proceedings open-mouthed as if stunned, and their reddening eyes indicated blank confusion. Blinking hard in the hot sun, they looked lost like small children awakened from a dream that had drained from them all their mental energy. One in particular, a tall man with feathery gray hair that, judging from his face, made him look older than he was, fidgeted on the edge of the crowd as if he were trying to solve some intricate mathematical problem with his fingers. Also from photos Toad knew that this was Joseph Rappaport, the manager of Shor’s genetics laboratory.

  At length the bearded cantor who had been singing in soft Hebrew through the service stopped and bowed to Levinsky. At first there was silence, then in a shuddering Ashkenazic voice heavy with sibilants the scientist began to intone the verses of the Kaddish, the prayer for a dead loved one.

  “May his great name grow exalted,” began the hymn to God.

  Toad felt uncomfortable as some in the group repeated the chant, until he realized that most of the others were silent too. The few who knew how to respond did so loudly, their voices scattered and isolated among the crowd. One woman in a dress that insinuated farms and peasantry sang in full voice next to a man cloaked in a prayer shawl, who called out the responses decisively.