Maryse held up her GeM and showed the archpriest the screen. On it were the letters DVCEI. “Do these letters mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing. Are they supposed to mean something? They don’t spell a word.”
“These letters are engraved on a ring—one belonging to Peter Chandos. We’ve been informed that you have that ring now.”
“Ah,” he frowned. “So that’s what this is about. The ring.”
“Yes,” the commendatore replied. “You asked my office last night to obtain this ring from the state police, and since you asked for it we did so, although it was highly irregular. Now we would like to see it again.”
Father John Paul swiveled in his chair and looked up at a banner hanging over the mantel of the Baroque fireplace. On a field of yellow and white silk watermarked with the papal arms, these words had been woven in the English language:
The Church must no longer withhold its blessing from those whom God has blessed with love.
The priest’s face shone as he read the motto on the banner aloud. “That’s from the papal bull In Salutem Ecclesiae. Issued by His Holiness Pope Zacharias II, by the Vicar of Christ on earth, assisted by the Holy Spirit and upheld by the Council of the Church Universal.”
He swiveled back and faced them firmly. “It’s a wedding ring. It does not belong to the state, it does not belong to me; I have returned it to its rightful owner.”
“And who is that?” Maryse asked.
“The person in question is devastated; I will not add to her sorrow by bringing the legal authorities down on her. Not that she’s done anything wrong; the marriage was perfectly legal, canonical, witnessed, and registered. But I have custody of that particular register, and for the time being I intend to maintain custody of it.”
“So Father Chandos was married?” The commendatore looked nonplussed.
“Last month. By me.”
“But why the secrecy? It’s permitted now for priests to marry.”
John Paul shook his head. “Father Chandos did not want it known. It was premature, impolitic with the council winding down. He didn’t want to do anything to embarrass His Holiness, he being so close to him. It would have come out, of course, at the right time. He certainly wasn’t ashamed of it.”
“We must see that ring,” Maryse insisted.
The priest slapped the desk with a big hand. “That would be up to her, and I don’t intend to intrude any further on her.”
Maryse stared into his eyes. “There are unexplained things about Monsignor Chandos. Tiny loose ends that in my experience might end up unraveling the case against him. A disappearing icon. His red sash thrown about his neck instead of tied around his waist. And a gold ring with inexplicable engravings. The only loose end I have hold of right now is this ring. If you value the memory of Peter Chandos, if you truly believe he’s being dishonored, you’ll let me look into this.”
The archpriest looked at her with curiosity and then sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m glad I don’t. But if that ring can help the memory of Peter Chandos, I’ll get it back for you.”
“That’s not enough,” she replied, raising herself up as high as possible in the deep leather chair. “I’ve got to talk to the wife.”
The commendatore at her side nodded vigorously. “We also must talk to her. You cannot hide her from us; she may know things that are material to our investigation. It was wrong of you to hide her from us.”
John Paul sat quietly and stared at the man.
“You know I can get authority from the Camerlengo to requisition your marriage register.”
At length, the archpriest looked up at heaven and said, “Lord my God, you know I’ve tried. There’s nothing more I can do. She’s in your hands now.”
Division of Identification and Forensic Science, Sheikh Jarrah Street, Jerusalem, 1030h
Light was important to this kind of work. High-powered fluorescent lamps turned the room into a bath of glaring salt-white light—no crevice, no crack left a shadow. On a high work table that took up most of the room, an odd assortment of items lay boldly illuminated, carefully labeled, and separated as if placed in play on a bright, invisible chessboard.
Dressed entirely in white and with a skin-tight white cap on his head and white gloves like a second skin on his hands, Michael Kara moved from examining a tiny gray pile of lint to an electronic key that was scraped and battered from use. He had strapped to his head a large monocular magnifying lens with several filters attached, and with this he examined the key minutely. His left eye swelled against the lens as he aimed his headlamp on the key. He spoke into a GeM on the table.
“Item 12, electronic key, no recent markings, Technion identifying label.” With a tiny tool like a microscopic screwdriver he nudged open the slide on the face of the key and removed a chip. “Task. Match key chip to Technion security inventory.” For a few more minutes he contemplated the key, then moved to the next item.
“Item 13, Simon Winter Centre security card.” It was a smart card containing another chip. From the face of the card a holographic photo of Dr. Emanuel Shor stared up at him. It was a generous face. Behind the silken beard and brows there was a curious, pitying look, as though the man had seen something unforgettably sad only moments before the photo was taken.
Michael Kara knew about the Simon Winter Centre, had visited it a couple of times. The thought of the place saddened him as well. That was where he found out he wouldn’t be able to marry Sarah—like his, her genes carried Tay-Sachs disease. One more curse on the Jews. He would have married her regardless, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not without any prospect of having a child. Besides, her parents would not tolerate it.
It was probably better that way, he thought ruefully. She wouldn’t have liked being Sarah Kara.
He examined the card with great care, turning it over and over, analyzing the slide patterns, the marks Shor had made by scraping it against key pads several times a day for years. Obviously, Shor had been an energetic man, impatient with things like this, not too respectful of the card and the things it stood for. The edges were yellowed and a bit frayed. These things were easy to see.
“Task. Match ID card chip with Technion security inventory.”
He moved methodically through the rest of the contents of Shor’s wallet. A credit card; an ancient, grimy five-euro bill; a plastic card that could have been decades old containing a few verses from the Torah—the kind of thing an Orthodox Jew might carry with him. A photo of the brother, Levinsky, looking grim; and another photo of a lovely, proud-looking young woman who bore a resemblance to Levinsky—same skull shape, same brow structure.
“Task. ID young woman in wallet photo. Looks like the niece.”
Finally, a shabby photo like an old-fashioned post card. At first he couldn’t place it, although it was familiar. Then it came to him. It was a picture of a miniature building, the model of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem that sat on the grounds of the Holyland Hotel. On the back of the photo there was a series of six Hebrew letters scrawled by hand:
עבאלהם
“Task: Find out what the letters ABALHM refer to—on the back of a photo of the Jerusalem model at Holyland. Ask Toad to check with the family.”
Next was a real treasure. “Item 21.” Shor’s GeM. It had been found intact in the dead man’s front shirt pocket. It was a standard Global Electronic Manager, slightly outdated. All the apps were routine: browser, satellite phone, mini-HDTV receiver and projector, maps, satellite radio pick up, beam cash, credit card, contacts, voice recorder, digicam, clock, calculator. A few family pictures. Nothing unusual.
But there was one strange feature—what Kara knew as a “red circuit.” He had heard of them, but never seen one. He wasn’t even sure what it was for—just a tiny red dot at the base of the unit where no one who wasn’t looking for it woul
d notice it.
Kara put the GeM on a cradle on the shelf behind him and pushed download. The GeM beeped faintly and began draining its contents into the massive hidden server called the Black Hole that was buried in the headquarters bunker. Soon he would have the pleasure of poring over the decade or so of data that had built up like layers of refuse in the trash heap of the GeM’s memory. That was his favorite part of the job—mining the data.
Kara was one of the agents at Shin Bet known as “tip miners”—people who liked to dig, as he said, for the details, into rubbish bins, lint filters, paper-shredder baskets, cloud drives, old hard drives, and the Black Hole itself. So he was called “Miner.” This was where he had started, right out of school, in the laboratory at Sheikh Jarrah Street. It was his favorite thing—to burrow into the sedimentary deposits of other people’s lives, into things they themselves had long forgotten. It was his favorite thing because he knew that the real treasures were always the buried ones.
But he had never been satisfied with mining. He knew he could see only half the story on this illuminated table—he itched to see the locus in quo, the scene of the crime. So he had applied for and gone into the field, finally working his way onto Ari Davan’s team. Miner liked being on Ari’s team because, for one thing, he liked Ari, and for another thing, Ari was always sent into the richest of what he called the “gold fields” where there were the most possibilities to play with. Today his spirits were up because he had a feeling Ari had stepped into a diamond field this time. Emanuel Shor’s murder at the threshold of the biggest black operation he had ever encountered—a terribly sad thing, of course. He smiled to himself.
Miner moved on to Shor’s wristwatch. Funny old machine; a Swiss watch with an alligator band, probably fifty years old, with a foggy crystal that had unfortunately cracked open when Shor fell on the tiles. Hardly anyone wore wristwatches anymore—the GeM served for that. Of course, Ari wore a watch, but it was a high-tech gadget for cliff climbers who were sometimes in no position to look at their GeMs.
He knew that Ari liked having him on his team, too, not just because Miner was a good field agent but also because he was an extra-good information pump. In Miner’s opinion, Ari had the first quality of a successful investigator: ravenous curiosity. Miner’s own souped-up GeM was capable of producing pretty astounding results on the spot. At the same time, it couldn’t do everything, and Miner spent a lot of time in this brilliant room. On a few occasions he had been allowed into the dark cells below the building to commune with the Black Hole, the global intelligence network computer. When Ari became impatient with this, Miner always responded, “You know there’s gold in the Black Hole.”
The wristwatch told him little he didn’t already know, so he moved on to the gold finger ring labeled “Item 23.” The antique ring was so worn, its patina so soft, that it failed to shine even in this brilliant light. But it was gold all right. Miner flipped the magnifying lens over his eye and examined it. At first he wasn’t sure, but then it came clear: something was engraved on the ring. He talked to his GeM as he rotated the ring in his fingers:
“Roman letters. I, E, C, V, D. Or D, V, C, E, I. Don’t know what they spell. Could be a trademark, maybe a memento from someone. Task: Check Google for this combination of letters. Ask Toad to check with Technion and with the family. Check with Shor’s university.”
He pulled the white gloves and cap off, and with a snap his red hair flew free like wings from his head. He looked over the table one last time and made some phone calls to Technion about the key. A long call to Toad and a short call to Shin Bet.
Then Miner’s stomach said lunchtime, an hour early as always. He would go now—pizza, his stomach suggested. He would go alone, as both Toad and Ari were out of town, and it was time to check in with Ari anyway.
His feature-fat little GeM buzzed as if reading his mind—it was Ari on the line. He put his earphone in firmly and got ready to give a long download: Ari would want to know everything.
Headquarters, Servizio Polizia Scientifica, Rome, 1045h
Ari Davan snapped off the line. It was always like this—waiting for everybody to move. He hated waiting. He didn’t blame Toad or Miner; they were working as fast as possible. It was other people, the ones who couldn’t be bothered to get moving even though a prominent scientist was dead and the reasons behind it were getting mistier by the minute. Not to mention that the black operation—whatever it was—had been compromised and that some serious people were very upset about it—whatever it was. That was another thing. He was expected to work blind.
So he sat here in freezing Rome in his summer suit, staring down dead ends while his team sat at home in the heat waiting for answers.
Miner hadn’t really uncovered anything, except some remote little mysteries about a photograph and a ring—Miner had sent him images of both—and the download from Shor’s GeM. Now Miner was waiting, of course, for someone, anyone, at headquarters to give him access to the Black Hole so he could do a search and see if there was anything of interest about these things. And Technion “would be getting back to him.” Why was it no one ever seemed to have a real answer when asked a question?
Toad’s story was even more frustrating. It was clear that Shor had entered a samples freezer at the Simon Winter Centre on Saturday afternoon—but why? To check something? To return something? To remove something? It would take several hours to examine the contents of the freezer, Toad had been told. Good, Toad had said, he would wait. Ari snorted: that was Toad. He would wait.
Ari stood up and stretched. He himself had waited an unconscionably long time to see the morgue director, after they told him he wouldn’t be allowed in. She would see him “in due course.” He went to see the director to get the paperwork he needed and then came back and waited some more. Finally, he was confronted with a malodorous man in a stained white coat who was the assistant morgue director and who couldn’t speak English. Well, then, he would just have to wait longer.
So he sat down in a chair with a projector table and flicked on the GeM screen so he could review some of the downloads he had got from the Rome police. Fortunately, the automatic translator program wasn’t too bad, flashing subtitles on the screen that were only occasionally incomprehensible. Here was the secretary in the Monsignor’s office, a youthful priest named Della Ruella. Bizarre name, thought Ari. Lots of black hair and a feminine, sad sort of smile. The secretary was being quizzed about the Monsignor’s final days—what he had been doing, who he had talked with, what appointments he had taken, what office hours he had kept.
The secretary had a good, detailed memory, and chattered away. To him the whole thing was a complete mystery, he kept saying. He could not believe his ears, he must have said a hundred times. No, the Monsignor had not appeared distressed or upset. No, no unusual calls or visitors. The Monsignor had spent most of Friday at a security conference on the upcoming papal visit to the Middle East, had returned to the office and worked until late into the evening. He had still been working when the secretary left for the day.
Two things interested Ari. The Monsignor had made a short trip to the Middle East the previous week to work on arrangements for the papal visit. And he had met with an interesting group of people on Friday—some of them known to Ari.
He shut off the projector and got on the phone, pacing anxiously up the hallway outside the morgue. In a few minutes Miner, who was used to abrupt changes of course, was on top of the Monsignor’s visit of the previous week; and Ari himself was on the phone to a certain woman with a jagged voice. He spoke rapidly in Hebrew.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the Rome conference?”
Kristall was cold. “I didn’t know this Chandos was there. It was one of those standard ground-covering meetings that Mattanyah goes to all the time. They talk about itineraries, division of responsibilities, who’s going to watch whom—all that stuff. Bores you to death.”
�
�Get Mattanyah on the line. I want to know who was at that conference and might be an eyelash carrier.”
“I’m ahead of you. I called her up here as soon as I heard this—she’s waiting outside.”
Didi Mattanyah was a motherly sort of woman who also happened to be Shin Bet’s most efficient and knowledgeable security expert. Tovah Kristall and Didi Mattanyah—one tree-twig thin, harsh and hungry, and the other soft and ample, blanketed in pink and mauve. No two women could be more opposite; Ari smiled to himself thinking of the two of them sitting together at the other end of the line.
“Yes, Chandos was there,” Mattanyah’s voice was unusually urgent. She seemed to be in a hurry. “He was at the conference most of the day but didn’t say much. He spoke at the beginning for a few minutes, welcomed us, but the security people did most of the talking.”
“Did you get near him, talk to him, shake hands at all?”
“Yes, he greeted everybody. Seemed nice, a little remote. To be honest, I didn’t notice him much at the time—he didn’t have a great deal to do with the agenda. Of course, since Saturday, well…”
“Who else was at the conference?”
“Vatican people—there were two of those guards in purple silk at the door. We were there, the Lebanese were there, and the Palestinians. The pope was planning to visit Beirut, Bethlehem, Hebron, and so forth.”
Gravel-Voice took over. “We’ll need a list of all the attendees, the agenda, the conference minutes—anything useful, Didi.”
“You’ll have it in a few minutes.” There was a rustle as Mattanyah left the room.
“That was fast,” Ari said with satisfaction.
“Everybody has their hands full. I could use you fourteen different ways right now, so if you’re finished sightseeing in Rome…”
The Day of Atonement Page 15