“Believe me. If I can just get in to see this snob of an undertaker, I’m on the next plane.”
There was a noise behind him and he clapped the GeM shut. He turned to see a tall woman with extraordinarily broad shoulders looking down at him and was very glad he had been speaking in Hebrew. Her badge told him this was the undertaker. Her sweaty assistant stood staring at him at a distance.
“I’m Dr. Malemanni. You are from the Israeli police. It is time for my lunch and I’m in a rush,” she announced as if daring him to delay her.
“I’ll try not to keep you.” Ari restrained himself from pointing out that he had been waiting to see her since seven o’clock that morning, so she could wait a few minutes for her pasta. “First, my bureau needs an actual DNA sample from Chandos, and second, I need to see the body.”
“Monsignor Chandos was not committing murder in Haifa on Saturday evening, I can assure you of that. He was in a freezer drawer in my laboratory.”
“I know that, Doctor. But you know that we’ve got an anomaly that needs to be explained. One of the world’s greatest geneticists is dead, murdered. One of my country’s most important security projects has been compromised.”
“What project is that?”
“I’m not in a position to say.” He wasn’t going to tell her that he didn’t know. “And your subject’s hair was found on the scene.”
“Not possible.” Her accent was heavy, but her English was unmistakable.
“Dr. Malemanni, your director has given me all the approvals I need.”
“Very well. This is Ancona, my assistant.” Ari tried to smile at the sour little man he had brushed off earlier, but the man glared back at him. Malemanni gave some staccato directions in Italian. Ancona motioned to Ari to follow him, and the doctor swirled off in her long, elegant coat to what would undoubtedly be a long, elegant lunch.
The laboratory was cool and lit with dark green and blue lamps. The elderly technician took him to a wall inset with drawers; he pulled one open and with a cold dark breath of air the body of Peter Chandos slid out in front of him. As Ari studied the dead man’s whitening face and breast, the lab man roughly swabbed the mouth with a cotton stick and then shoved the drawer closed. They went into an adjoining circular room; only the counter surfaces were lit, and Ari waited in the semi-darkness while the lab man moved slowly from one station to another, preparing the samples he needed. Shining dimly on a ceiling screen was a picture of a man’s hand, the flesh muscular, bronzed to the point that a gold ring on one finger was nearly invisible. Ari inspected the picture idly—but then something about it struck him.
He pulled at Ancona’s lab coat and pointed at the screen, a pleading question on his face. The old man seemed to know what he wanted.
“C’e la man dello Monsignore,” the technician responded. It was enough; Ari understood the last word just fine. It was the hand of Peter Chandos.
Ari squinted for a long moment at the screen. What had Miner said about a ring?
It was clear. It was definite. He skimmed quickly through the images on his GeM. There it was, one of the pictures Miner had sent him: an old finger ring. He zoomed in on it, but still could make nothing out. Finally, he laid the little handheld down and aimed it at the wall beneath the big ceiling screen. The second image flashed up hazy but clear enough so that the tiny letters became readable. Both rings were eroded and scratched, and undoubtedly carried the same engravings. By this time, the old technician was staring blankly up at the two pictures as well. Then he started.
“Lo mesimo,” Ancona said and, surprisingly, smiled at Ari for the first time.
“Yeah. They’re the same.”
In a moment he had Miner on the line. “I’m looking at a picture of Peter Chandos’s gold finger ring,” he said. “It appears that your man and my man shopped at the same jewelry store.”
Before Miner could answer, the phone pinged and someone else came on the line—it was Toad’s plain little voice. “Sefardi here. The freezer is in order except for one thing—a sample is missing. We cross-checked all the samples to the database. Although container number 3111 is here, it’s been emptied.”
“Whose file is it?” Ari asked.
Toad spelled out the name for them:
טשנדוס
“Chandos,” all three of them said at once.
Antonine Study House, Rome, 1100h
The commendatore’s personal car stopped in front of a worn-looking building with grimy steps on which sat a begging Gypsy. They often chose the entrance to convents for this purpose, although the Study House of the Antonine Order was not strictly a convent—it was a dormitory for the nuns who attended schools in the city. Two young women burst laughing out of the building and down the steps on their way to class. In their thin white tops and dark jumpers, they looked like ordinary high-school students except for the white veils that nested their hair. Nearly running down Father John Paul Stone, imposing in his great cassock and coat as he emerged from the big car, they shivered to a stop. He smiled down at them and they continued at a fast clip down the street.
Stone, Maryse, and the commander of the Vatican police, dressed in a plain business suit, had arrived unescorted to avoid attention. In the open entry was a staircase overhung by a darkening, heavily lacquered painting of the Virgin crowned with bluish stars, bearing her child in her arms and looking up into a tempestuous heaven. No one guarded the door, so Stone stepped back outside and pressed the door buzzer. They heard a stirring upstairs.
To Maryse the place was cold but comforting. The smell of books, cleaning fluids and incensed clothing reminded her of her sanctuary at Paris. In a place like this, the mind and the soul could function undisturbed and still find enough friendship to stave off loneliness. From somewhere in the building came the rich echoes of recorded chant. A cheerful dark-eyed little woman suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t realize anyone was here,” she said in English, clucking upward at the apparent source of the chant. Father Stone made his request, and the woman shuttled away, her robes fluttering.
Soon she came back accompanied by another woman, beckoned them up the stairs, and left them. Maryse judged that the woman standing there was about her own age, which surprised her. The rich caramel skin was offset by graying hair and a trace of aging in the dark flush around her eyes. Thin, even spindly, she was shivering in her black dress and had clearly been crying.
This was the wife of the late Monsignor.
“Fatima Chandos,” Father Stone introduced her with authority in his voice. “Signora Chandos, these people are from the police and they insist on speaking with you.” The woman gave him a questioning but trusting look and motioned them into a sitting room, bare but for a few chairs, a thready plant struggling for light from the window, and a single blue and white icon of the Resurrection hanging on the wall. Maryse automatically judged it a recent work, though original and no copy.
They sat, and Father Stone explained. “Signora Chandos has been staying here in the Study House as a guest. It was a temporary arrangement until the council ended. She moved here from Lebanon just a month ago—to be married.” He put his great hand on her shoulder and held it firmly.
Maryse spoke English to her as gently as she could. “I’m so sorry for your loss. My name is Maryse Mandelyn, and I am from Interpol. We are investigating certain things about your husband’s death. We must ask you a few questions and will try to be brief.”
The woman stared at her as if she hadn’t heard. For a moment Maryse wondered if she understood English. The commendatore seated next to her then introduced himself, repeating Maryse’s words almost exactly, but in Italian. Again, silence; but at last she spoke to Maryse.
“I am sorry. Will you please explain to the gentleman that I do not understand his language?” The voice was soft and rich, exotic, overwhelmingly sad. The
commendatore replied that he spoke English too.
The woman started to talk to Maryse as if they had been conversing all day and had only just been interrupted.
“I have known him all my life. His mother was like my own mother. Peter and I talked, for hours, days, when we were children. We were more like brother and sister—like friends who never stop thinking about each other, along with each other. Thoughts bound together, perhaps even more than hearts. I loved him. But he was going to be a priest and I had no hopes of him.”
Maryse was recording this on her GeM. “Where do you come from?”
“We came from Besharri. Both of us.” She realized Maryse didn’t recognize the place. “In the north of Lebanon. It’s on the mountain where the cedars grow. We went to school there, the convent school. He was three years ahead of me; he left when I was fifteen, and I saw him very little after that. I knew that he would be the cross I would carry from that time on. I felt sorry, of course, but I was young. Somehow, though, I never really felt apart from him. It was as though I were waiting for him, holding myself back for him, even though I never intended to.” Maryse listened and was grateful that the commendatore sitting next to her knew how to listen too.
“After that I didn’t see him. He was busy. He seemed to be rising rapidly in the Church. I knew he would because he was very intelligent, you see; he often wrote home things I didn’t even understand. His mother was like that, too. I stayed close to her. She was my only connection with him. But then I moved to Beirut to work. He wrote to me less often; we never saw each other, and he was assigned to Rome.” She broke off into a puzzled silence, then went on.
“I did see him once again. Only once in nearly twenty years. Across a street in Beirut. I called to him, but he didn’t seem to hear me, and I lost sight of him. And then three years ago there was the council; one day suddenly he came to see me.” Her eyes shone at the memory. “He didn’t say much, but we knew that what was happening in Rome was important to us both. This summer, at last, he came for me. We had one month.”
She looked up at Father John Paul. His lips were tight, his eyes wet.
“I’m very cold,” she said, and shivered hard. To Maryse, the Study House began to feel like a lonely place after all.
Maryse asked, “His mother. Is she still living?”
“Yes,” Fatima replied. “The police have tried to talk to her, but she is in hospital in Beirut in a state of shock.” The commendatore nodded to himself; he was obviously aware of this.
“And his father?”
Fatima pressed her lips together for a moment. “There was no father. After Peter went away, his mother became a nun, an Antonine. She has taught school, taught English for many years. She taught me.”
The commendatore asked, “What was your husband like in the last month? Did he do or say anything to indicate…”
“That he was planning an outrage?” Fatima looked up defiantly. “He did not do this thing. I told Father John Paul,” who nodded. “He knows.”
But again, the confused look came over her face. “We had so little time. I knew nothing about his work, about his days. I cannot know what happened. But I knew his heart. I have always known his heart. It simply could not be as they say.”
“When did you last see him?” the commendatore asked.
She sighed as if she did not want to remember. “We had lunch together most days. Except Friday—he had a conference to attend. The last time I saw him was Thursday. We ate lunch near the Vatican, we talked. He told me that the council would end soon, and then we would go away together. We talked about America; he wanted to see New York City.”
“So you had no idea whatever…”
Again, that defiant light in her eyes. “None. He was excited about his work, eager for the council to end, eager to go to the Holy Land with the Pope in December. He was eager for our life together…I thought.…” She broke off into some place where there was no light at all. Her eyes went dark.
Maryse asked anxiously, “Was there a package?”
The woman was startled. “A package?”
“Did the Monsignor send you anything, bring you anything in the last few days? A large box, a wrapped parcel…something heavy?”
“No, nothing like that.”
The archpriest cleared his throat; he clearly felt this interview should end.
“May we see the ring?” Maryse asked, as everyone stood to go. Fatima looked at Father John Paul as if for permission. He smiled and nodded at her, and she walked slowly out of the room.
Then Father John Paul looked hard at the commendatore. “You can see now why I’ve tried to keep her out of this. She can’t help you much, and she can’t stand the news media hell. This conversation has got to stay quiet.”
“There will be an inquest,” the commendatore said doubtfully. “But I will do what I can.”
Fatima returned with a small wad of tissue paper in her hand. She unwrapped it carefully and looked at its contents as if she couldn’t bear the sight. Then her whole body seemed to freeze motionless; the ring held her hypnotized.
“This is not the ring,” she whispered.
“Not the ring?” Father John Paul boomed, startled at the sound of his own voice.
“This is not mine.” She held it up and examined it curiously; the tiny gold band was bumpy and worn; it was clearly not a new wedding ring. “I had not opened the package since you gave it to me this morning. I was going to open it later.”
“May I see it?” Maryse asked and took it delicately in hand. Immediately, she could tell it was an antique, possibly very antique—the gold rim was shaven by years of use, the patina foggy, the tiny letters on the outside engraved by an almost primitive hand.
DVCEI.
She gave it back to Fatima and took out her GeM to photograph it. She took picture after picture as Fatima turned it in her fingers.
“That is not the ring I gave to Peter,” Fatima Chandos shook her head again and again. “Mine was a simple band of gold. Where is it?” she turned to Father John Paul, who in turn gazed mystified at the commendatore.
“This is the ring that was taken from the Monsignor’s hand. I recognize it. I inspected it myself,” the policeman said firmly.
“DVCEI,” Fatima read slowly as she rotated it again and again in her fingers. “Whatever does it mean?”
Gradually, as if a door were opening in her mind, Maryse remembered something.
The End of Time Church, Dallas, Texas, 0830h
Sober in his black suit, over his shoulder a single gray metal cross lit with a golden halo, Pastor Bob Jonas shouted into a TV camera. Inside the largest church in Dallas, an early-morning crowd of worshipers swirled and clapped as more thousands—perhaps millions—watched in their homes.
“We’ve electrified this city, we’ve electrified this nation, we’ve electrified this world with the message of His coming!” The pastor was triumphant as he fell into a whisper. “And it’s only days now. Not centuries, not years, not even months. Days!” Then the crescendo: “The Church Age is coming to a close and the End Time is upon us!”
Once a sports arena, the cavernous sanctuary had become a TV studio. Booms with television lights leaned into the stage, clarifying the audience of mostly elderly women bright in red, gold, blue, and orange robes, their faces white and black like Michelangelesque marble. They billowed and chanted for the cameras, together with the band filling the chamber with a hard, beating sea of sound.
The pastor took a long breath and then chanted in slow crescendo.
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord!”
Shouts of “cau
ght up” and “rise, rise!” rang out.
“We’re here every morning and every night until the Rapture Day itself. More and more and more of you are coming to us. We’ll save as many as we can right up to the last, the very last minute or second of time before that trump is heard.”
Behind the pastor on the stage, twenty or so dancers leaped repeatedly for the sky as synthesized trumpets rocked the auditorium. Behind the pastor his co-host, a decayed woman grave in makeup and trembling under a tower of blonde hair, wept and sang.
“Here’s our Pastor Eva, our own Mary Magdalene, fallen as low as they go at one dark time in her life,” Pastor Bob pulled her gently to his side. “But she’s saved now, and she’s on her way to the clouds.
“Will you be caught up, friends? Will you be snatched into the clouds, away from the coming Tribulation? You who are born again have nothing to fear. The ones we have to worry about are the unsaved, the unpastored, the unholy children of this world.
“It’s for them that I plead now…for the Jew and the Catholic and the Buddhist and the Hindu and the secular humanist who will be left behind next week. We won’t be here to help. But we can do something. Tell ’em what we can do, Pastor Eva.”
The blonde shivered to the microphone. “Pledge now, put your savings into the Lord’s hand, send it on over to the address on your screen. Just one click of your GeM and you can provide for the salvation of the many millions who will be Left Behind.”
Pastor Bob picked up a hand microphone. “We’ve set up a fund, the Left Behind Fund, in a bank trust to be used for only one purpose—to evangelize the lost when all the Christians are gone. Your money, which you’ll have no need of come the Rapture, can still benefit the millions who won’t be caught up, the children of this world who are headed for hell—unless you give like there’s no tomorrow.
“Because, friends, there are very few tomorrows left!
“You can help lead the lost home…even after you’re gone to be with the Lord. Your own unbelieving husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children, and friends who refused to listen. Well, when they find you’ve gone with us, they’ll be listening!
The Day of Atonement Page 16