The Day of Atonement

by Breck England

  “May he come into his kingship in your lifetimes and in your days and in the lifetimes of the whole family of Israel swiftly and soon.…”

  Toad noticed that Rappaport had stopped playing with his fingers and was listening with sudden, solemn interest.

  “He who makes peace in the heavens, may he make peace upon us and upon all Israel. Amen.”

  The last response faded. Levinsky could not look at the coffin but fixed his eyes on the ground as it was lowered into the stone box. Catriel Levine, her face dark even in this sunlight, also looked away. The black sheath she wore could not have been simpler, and the bright makeup of the day before was gone. She looked like a farm girl, Toad thought. Everyone stood still as Levinsky and his daughter departed with the security men, and then stirred and walked slowly away.

  Toad caught up with the gray-haired Joseph Rappaport and showed him his card. “We talked earlier,” he said. “I’m Inspector Sefardi.”

  “Oh yes,” Rappaport said absently. “I don’t know what I can show you that the others haven’t already seen.” Hebrew with a heavy New Jersey accent. He gestured at the gate of the cemetery where a black car was pulling away.

  Toad looked at him just as doubtfully. “Shall we go?”

  They climbed into their vehicles and Rappaport led Toad through the streets of Haifa toward the medical center and into the blessedly cool corridors of the Simon Winter Institute of Genetics. Toad rushed to keep up with the long-legged Rappaport, barely glimpsing the lines of photos on the walls, old black-and-whites of grinning lab-coated researchers and people with strange disorders mixed in with more recent, stunning micrographs of molecules and proteins. Soon they were in a labyrinth of rooms filled with a quiet computerized whine that sounded like distant insects.

  Rappaport closed the door of his glass-enclosed cubical office, silencing the droning outside. Toad could survey the entire laboratory from here, but no one else was around.

  “We’ve got only a short staff today, out of respect for Manny…I mean, for Dr. Shor. Now what do you need from me, Inspector?” The man’s long fingers were at play again, forming and dissolving little architectural patterns.

  Toad was quiet for a moment, examining a long, horizontal simulation of a DNA molecule that ran around the four glass walls of the office, two symmetrical waves of green and purple forming an ever-repeating spiral. It was the only artistic touch in the room, except for an old portrait on the desk of a bald, bearded, smiling man in glasses who bore a resemblance to Emanuel Shor.

  “No,” said Rappaport. “That’s not Dr. Shor, although he looks a bit like him. That’s a hero of mine. Stanley Cohen, a great genetic engineer. Stanford University. He was the first to import plasmids into the DNA matrix.”

  Toad smiled faintly at this. “You knew him?”

  “No, not at all. Fifty years ago. Great achievement. Made all recombinant DNA possible.”

  “I’m sure. And I apologize for taking your time, above all since you have already been so helpful to, um…to them.” He gestured vaguely out the window. “I’m just cleaning up a few details. My task is primarily to determine if Dr. Shor had any contact with this man.” He pulled out the printed photo of Chandos.

  Rappaport looked casually at the picture and shook his head. “Don’t know him. Never seen him.” Toad was not surprised; Rappaport didn’t seem the type to pay much attention to newspanels.

  “Do you recall Dr. Shor saying anything about a man named Chandos?”

  “Chandos?” Rappaport looked hard into the distance. “I think I’ve heard that name. Just recently.”

  “If it comes to you, please ring me, would you?” Rappaport nodded.

  “Secondarily, I wondered if you could help me retrace Dr. Shor’s movements the last time he was in the laboratory. We’re trying to reconstruct his final hours in detail.”

  “Of course, I can’t really help you much there. Manny was here in the laboratory on Saturday, but I wasn’t. Apparently, he came in the afternoon hours and left soon afterward. There’s an electronic register of anyone who comes into the lab, with entry and exit times.”

  “Is everyone who comes in required to register?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. There’s a digicam and an e-pen just at the entrance, where you signed in. The digicam shows Manny entering precisely at 1630 on Saturday and leaving at 1652.”

  “Why did he come to the lab? And on a holy day?”

  “I’ve asked myself that question over and over. Manny Shor was very observant. I, on the other hand, not at all. We had some interesting talks about that.” He paused and smiled into the distance.

  “And what do you think was his object in coming to the lab?”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Hm. I don’t know. Unfortunately, after a person passes the digicam, we don’t have any idea what he does inside.”

  “Was Dr. Shor working on anything that might have involved his brother, Professor Levinsky?”

  “You know, the others asked me that, and I can’t say. He was close to retirement and often didn’t come into the lab at all. He seemed more and more interested in other things than in the work here.” Rappaport looked thoughtful for a moment, smiling to himself. “He was, however, very involved on a couple of projects. Brilliant geneticist. Absolutely brilliant.” Rappaport nodded absently. Momentarily, he seemed to have forgotten Toad.

  “Which were?”

  “Hm? Oh. Oh.” Rappaport thought for a moment. “The Monoamine project and the Cohanim project. The Monoamine project is really rather confidential.”

  Toad understood “confidential” but hated it. It was the most frequently encountered and the most difficult obstacle in his job. Bureaucrats protecting bureaus, which in his experience were usually not worth protecting, especially in the shadow of murder.

  “Can you give me any idea at all what the Monoamine project is about?”

  “It has to do with an enzyme connected to behavior, but I’m afraid that subject is off limits.”

  “And the Cohanim project? Also confidential?”

  “Oh, there’s nothing confidential about that. Been going on for years. It’s about genetic tracing of the Cohanim… you know, the ancient priesthood of Israel.”

  “The ancient priesthood?”

  “The Cohanim are supposedly the descendants of the temple priests. In the Bible? We’re tracing the Cohanic modal haplotype.”

  “Again, I’m not with you.”

  “A haplotype is a recurrent pattern in the male DNA. We use it to establish paternity. With the Cohanic haplotype we can determine if a given man is a descendant of the temple priests.”

  “But how do you know what the Cohanic pattern is?”

  “Years ago we figured it out by comparing the DNA from people known to be of priestly descent. Found a 90 percent correlation among them. We can be almost certain now. In fact, we’re very close to isolating the actual Aharonic genome.”

  Toad smiled questioningly.

  “I’m sorry. The Aharonic genome is the DNA signature of Aaron, the first high priest of Israel. You know? The brother of Moses?”

  “I know who Aaron was. And Moses.”

  “Aaron was the ancestor of all the Cohanim. I’m one of them.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. My name, Rappaport. A priestly family of Italian Jews. Grandfather went to America. My own DNA correlates within one percent to the Cohanic.”

  “And Dr. Shor?”

  “Yes, of course. A Levite. Original family name Levinsky.”

  “What was Dr. Shor doing on this Cohanim project?”

  “There are several of us. We work on it if we have the time. It’s not really in the scope of our scientific work…more of a, um, humanitarian project. If a man wants to know if he is one of the Cohanim, we will find out for him.”

  “So what was Dr. Shor working on Saturday?”<
br />
  “No idea.”

  “Usually, when a person drops in and out of his office, it’s because he’s left something behind or needs to pick something up. Is anything missing from the lab?”

  “That occurred to me too, so we’ve done a search of his office.” Rappaport played idly with his fingers. “It was very tidy, particularly as he so rarely comes in any more. But everything was in order. We’ve looked through the library and the equipment—everything accounted for.”

  “What about this Aharonic DNA. Do you have actual samples of it?”

  “Oh, no. That exists only as a computer construct.”

  “And the materials connected to the, um, the Monoamine project?”

  “There’s a huge database, and a few samples. You know, I hadn’t thought of that.” Rappaport leaped from his chair without warning and slipped out of the office. Toad followed him into a darkened room of the laboratory.

  Still in his funeral coat, the scientist was bending over a sleek computer screen and talking softly to it. “Monoamine oxidase…CV 2002, 2003.…” File names whizzed past him, reflected in the dark glass windows behind him. At last he straightened up.

  “No, everything’s here. No samples missing. Any removal of those samples is automatically registered. Of course, I can’t think why he would have removed any of them. No reason.”

  “And the Cohanim samples?” Toad asked.

  “There are thousands of those, but that sample freezer isn’t automated. Take days to check them by hand against the database. In any case, why would anyone take them? Nothing in there of interest to anyone…except to the people who gave the samples to us. And to a few researchers.”

  Toad had learned the hard way that what is of interest to no one in general is often of very great interest to someone in particular. “Would you mind doing a quick check for me?”

  Rappaport giggled. “There’s no such thing as a quick check of that database. But I’ll see if anything has been removed and registered.” The uncontrollable fingers suddenly and smoothly stroked a keyboard and the screen flashed up—this time filled with Hebrew characters. The window behind him glowed with a reflection like a golden page from the prophets.

  “No. Nothing. There are 3,281 samples in the database, and 3,281 present and correct.”

  “May I see them?” Toad asked.

  Rappaport looked at Toad with some impatience.

  “May I see them?” Toad asked again, patiently.

  “Certainly,” the scientist grunted, and they began the walk down a series of corridors to a room filled with humming freezer units. Rappaport patted the white-overalled technician guarding the door on the back and the three of them walked in.

  “Sorry, sir,” the technician smiled at Toad. “I have to observe everyone who goes in or out.”

  Toad asked, “Were you here on Saturday when Dr. Shor came into the office?”

  “Off duty that day, like everyone else. The laboratory was locked up all day, sir.”

  Rappaport led Toad to a large, older-looking unit at the back of the room. They looked through the window of the freezer and a light came on inside. Toad could see rows and rows of white-labeled vials. He stared into the freezer, willing himself to see something out of place, something missing. But the ranks of samples were perfectly straight.

  “Curious,” Rappaport mumbled. He was staring at a screen on the wall between the freezers. Toad, on tiptoe, looked over the man’s shoulder at several long lines of icons stretched horizontally across the screen. These lines too were perfectly straight—except on one of them a faint little upward curlicue glowed yellow.

  “What is it?”

  “The temperature record. All the freezers are kept at precisely minus twenty degrees—the optimal temperature for preserving these samples. But there was a tiny spike in the temperature in this one. For no more than thirty seconds.” He pointed at the Cohanim freezer and turned to look at Toad. “On Saturday at 1641 hours.”

  St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, 0900h

  The Reverend John Paul Stone, Cardinal Archpriest of St. Peter’s, touched the lock on the choir chapel with regret. He had hated disappointing the dozen couples who had come from all over the world to be married in the chapel, but the death of the pope precluded weddings in the basilica until the mourning period ended. His office had reached all but one couple the day before. He had to tell them face-to-face. The bride had wept; they had planned for years for this day, and the expense was considerable. Father John Paul had blessed them and promised to perform their wedding as soon as possible.

  The towering African-American priest turned back toward his office. Darkness covered the basilica as clouds obscured the light of the monumental windows. Workers were draping vast black curtains of crepe from the columns overhead. Tall and portly, Father John Paul in his night-black cassock looked like a moving shadow crossing the marble floor. He passed the long metal frame supporting the rows of seats that had been intended for the closing ceremonies of the council—already the white and red coverings were in place, awaiting the cushions for each Cardinal of the Church. Now the celebration would be transformed into a funeral, and the bishops who had narrowly voted for this pope’s vision of a new beginning for the Church would now mourn the close of his life.

  Some would mourn less than others.

  John Paul’s sadness became anger as he looked up the ranks of seats. He could think of no one to replace Zacharias—no one with the vision to reach out at last to the millions who had waited an eternity on the margins of the Church, waited for the Church to come to them and help them. He had cheered the momentous council votes, had personally solemnized hundreds of once-forbidden marriages, had watched currents of repressed tears flow in the chapel at last. At long last. The lonely, the divorced, the sexually confused—and the priests. And the nuns. By the hundreds. And now, after a short ray of blessed sunlight, the clouds threatened again. The council would re-convene, re-think, re-consider—and possibly recant their own votes of the past three years. Without Zacharias, it was probable.

  Father John Paul himself had come to Rome to be part of this new day. Named for the great Pope by his starving, dying, addicted single mother, he had been reared in a Catholic orphanage in the depths of Detroit. He had dreamed of the barely hopeful little woman who had been his mother and promised his life to carry out her faith in him. He had grown to hate the unnamed forces that had destroyed her, that had left him motherless and fatherless, that had left him alone in broken, smashed streets blown with trash in the day and powdered with bullets in the nighttime. Only the priests had cared for him, and he had learned to trust them, wanted to be one of them—even after a caped, bejeweled white priest had cared for him in ways he didn’t care to remember. The others were good, so good. And they hated what he hated. Ironically, from this hatred arose a burning love inside of him, for the goodness of the priests and the God who had sent them.

  He sat down for a moment in the great transept to contemplate the morning. With all the weddings canceled, the schedule was briefly blank. He would have a full afternoon and evening of meetings, preparations for the funeral, so he was glad to have an hour to himself. Some people found the basilica too vast, too monumental for private worship—but he had always found it an ideal place to be totally alone with God. To him, the great space was like heaven, and he loved the echoes of the distant, awed voices of those who entered it.

  Still, he had done at least one good thing today. Even though some had gone away disappointed, one had gone away a little happier. To see that face so frozen with pain soften just a bit in the early morning light—and to see her back to safety—it had been worth the big battle with the bureaucrats he had fought all day Sunday.

  Soon it was time to go back to his office. As he rose from his seat he saw the commendatore of Vatican security coming toward him with a woman at his side, lithe, hesitant, with
whitish, freckled skin and brown hair.

  “This is Inspector Mandelyn of Interpol, Father. May we speak to you in your office?”

  “Of course,” Father John Paul said, and they strode quickly into the inner chamber of the cathedral where the administrative offices were located. He bowed them into a Baroque room that for all the opulence of the marble walls and fireplace contained no furniture but an inlaid wooden table and three leather swivel chairs.

  Settling into a chair behind the table, he asked, “What can I do for you?”

  Maryse spoke English. “It’s about Monsignor Chandos. I’m investigating one aspect of the assassination that you will be able to help us with.” She decided against mentioning the Acheropita, as the archpriest might not know about the theft.

  “Whatever I can do,” John Paul said, leaning over his desk, almost whispering. “But first I must tell you, as I’ve told everyone else. Peter Chandos did not do this thing. It’s impossible.”

  Maryse was startled for a second. The commendatore asked in lightly accented English, “How do you know this?”

  “Because I knew the man. Knew him well. He was devoted to His Holiness—not at first, you know. But His Holiness won him over. Father Chandos was no fool; he understood perfectly well what Vatican III was all about, and he supported it in every way, even wrote parts of the documents. And he wasn’t crazy!” he added in response to the doubtful look on the face of the commendatore.

  “We found huge quantities of literature in his rooms, all of it anti-council—books, pamphlets by the hundreds,” the policeman pointed out.

  “Sure you did. That was Peter’s job—he was supposed to answer it all. Anticipate all those arguments in the council and help His Holiness answer them. He was not a closet Tyrell man; and he didn’t go berserk. He didn’t have the capacity to do that.”

  “You seem quite sure of that,” Maryse said. “Do you have another theory, then? Some other explanation of what happened?”

  “Not at all. Not at all. Not my area of expertise. But somebody, somewhere wanted to stop this council. And whoever they are, they’ve done it. They’ve done it now,” he added bitterly. “And in the worst possible way.”