The Day of Atonement

by Breck England

  Then he heard Maryse calling to him. “We’re not going in there.”

  After a moment he turned. She stood at the edge of the park. “Where then?”

  She pointed at a tall, unremarkable house at the corner of the street facing the church. He caught up with her just as she sounded the bell.

  “What are we doing here?”

  She gave him a preoccupied smile. “The man who lives in this house might have some answers for us. About the ring.” They waited for another minute, and Ari began to wonder if anyone was home. She pushed the button again and immediately they heard a noise from inside. Somebody was looking at them through the Judas eye in the door; then it opened quickly.

  “Maryse!” A jovial man in gray wool and flannels beamed at them and shepherded them into the house, which smelled of wood and coffee and egg-rich baking. “Jean-Baptiste Mortimer,” he nodded to Ari, extending a hand that was noticeably stronger than expected.

  “This is Ari Davan,” Interpol introduced him with no further explanation, as Mortimer didn’t seem to require any. The man was elderly, of medium height, and, although he was fleshy around the waist, there was a hint of iron in the frame. The most unusual thing about him was the dreamy, delighted smile that stretched over his face from one silver-lined temple to the other.

  “You are just in time for breakfast,” the old man said, sniffing hard, savoring the smells of his own house. “I’ll ask Madame Arcier to set two more places.” He wandered off into the back of the house before Maryse could protest.

  Maryse moved into the sitting room and Ari followed, examining walls made of icons, paintings, and souvenirs, dried flower bouquets and framed fragments of stained glass, arranged haphazardly around the stone hearth. A striking tapestry hung over the mantelpiece, a six-pointed red cross threaded with fraying silk on a golden field. Old firearms, muskets or antique rifles, stood on end in a high glass case that was surmounted by a sword hung with a dirty silver tassel. These items were buried in a sea of mementos, including a plaque covered with service ribbons and a few Greek icons that Maryse was studying closely. None of this had any meaning to Ari, but he did recognize the white képi posed by itself in the center of the mantelpiece. This peaked cap with the bill was the distinctive headgear of the Légion Etrangère. The French Foreign Legion.

  Ari looked up just as the old man came in. “I served with the Legion for many years, Mr. Davan.”

  “He didn’t just ‘serve,’ Ari,” Maryse explained. “He was on the general staff.”

  “First Regiment. They paid me well and I got six weeks’ holiday every year to graze through the great restaurants of France.”

  Maryse smiled. “It was the romance of it, wasn’t it? The refuge of penniless aristocrats and broken hearts?”

  “And dilettantes like myself,” he chuckled back, “who are neither.”

  Ari smiled but did not laugh. He knew well enough the professional reputation of the Legion. There was no tougher fighting force on the planet. He looked out the bay window toward the cathedral.

  “You admire our little church, Mr. Davan?”

  “Breathtaking, sir.”

  “Well. I have coffee. I have tea. And Madame Arcier has baked a brioche, for which you will find no parallel in all of France.”

  They followed him into a small dining room next to the salon and sat at a table next to a bay window; the glass was cold and rattled with the wind, but the room was warm and rich with the smell of the brioche and the coffee. A tall woman bustled in without speaking and served them, setting little bowls of jam next to each of their plates. Ari tasted the brioche; it was like hot butter on his tongue. He had never tasted anything so delicious.

  “So. Maryse Mandelyn,” the old man said as if once again announcing her arrival. He beamed at her. “How can I help you?”

  “What makes you think I need help?”

  “Wouldn’t have traveled all night to Chartres to visit me without notice, bringing an Israeli policeman with you…if you had no use for my help.”

  Ari was impressed. He knew she had given no notice to anyone where they were going or who she was with.

  Maryse smiled at Ari and explained. “Mr. Mortimer likes to play at Sherlock Holmes. We have to indulge him. So how did you know all that?” she asked, turning back to the old man.

  “Très élémentaire, chérie,” he chuckled. “An airline boarding pass protruding from your coat pocket; the 6:30 train from Paris stopped here about a half an hour ago. Walked directly here from the station—from your windblown condition.” Maryse patted down her hair. “Been flying and training all night.”

  “What about me?” Ari asked. “An Israeli policeman?”

  “My dear sir,” Mortimer’s face puckered with his enormous smile. “A lightweight suit of the type professional men wear in the Middle East—by no means appropriate for our autumn cold. Hair cut severely; walks lightly but with deliberation; eyes examine surroundings with the practice of a professional detective. All of this says, The Police.”

  “But why Israeli?”

  “Another time.” He turned dismissively toward Maryse. “Now, what is on your mind?”

  She took a pencil and paper from a sideboard drawer—Ari wondered for a moment just how well she knew this house—and wrote on the paper the five letters of the inscription:

  DVCEI

  She pushed the paper across the table to Mortimer. He picked it up and studied it for a long time in silence, at one point taking a sip of coffee, and continued tapping the paper slowly with his finger. Finally, he looked up.

  “And your interest in this inscription?” he asked.

  “You know it’s an inscription, then,” Ari exclaimed.

  The old man kept his eyes on Maryse. There was a challenge in his eyes, almost as if he were asking her to pay in some way for the information.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Maryse responded. She seemed puzzled by his reaction. “At least not yet. I was rather hoping you would recognize it.”

  Again, he looked into her face for a moment and then folded the paper slowly into four quarters. He seemed suddenly to make up his mind and smiled widely: “I can’t say.”

  “We’ve come a long way, Jean-Baptiste, and it’s dreadfully important. There’s a police investigation that may depend on our knowing what this inscription means.”

  Mortimer leaned forward, at once sympathetic. “Of course, of course, my dear. But why come to me with this? Why not the Vatican archivists, for example?”

  Ari was again surprised. How would this old man know about a Vatican connection to the inscription?

  “All right; you’ve guessed what we’re investigating, so you must realize just how important this is,” she said with a pleading note in her voice.

  The old man laughed softly. “Interpol would hardly send you scurrying across Europe in the middle of the night for anything less. But, my dear, popes come and go—some are enemies of the Christ, some are his friends. All ephemeral, like the hundreds of nameless, flawed, weak-headed disciples that swarmed around him anciently. It’s the central figure who matters. Why wear yourself out over something so earthbound as police work? Thought you’d given all that up.”

  “I have. It’s not the pope that concerns me. It’s something else…connected.”

  “Ah. I’d like to help you,” he smiled again, spreading his hands, “but.…”

  She sat up. “Would you mind letting me look through your card collection? I believe what I’m looking for is there. I have this memory…”

  “Yes, of course. You’re perfectly welcome.” He got to his feet and swept the crumbs from his vest, then led them toward a staircase in the entrance hall. Ari gulped coffee and followed.

  “What cards are you talking about?” he whispered.

  “You’ll see.”

  At the top of the stairs, th
e old man opened the door into a long room that churned with dust the moment they entered it. Ari felt pricking in his eyes and nose. It was like a museum. Glass-topped tables were arranged the length of the room containing books, parchments, ancient tracts, and pieces of stained glass. A tall glass case at the end of the room held a life-sized mannequin robed all in red. The walls, broken at intervals by nearly opaque windows, were layered floor to ceiling with books two and three deep. Mortimer took a key from his pocket, opened one of the cases, and handed Maryse a greenish box that looked as if it had come from a public library shelf. The name “J-B Mortimer” was stamped on the lid.

  “Mr. Davan,” Mortimer turned to him. “My library. Contains the sum of my life’s efforts to read the cathedral.”

  “Read the cathedral?”

  “Yes, to read it. It’s a book, you know, a vastly important message that awaits a reader with the key of knowledge. Authors are gone, key remains. Explored the passageways, examined the vaults, gazed at sculptures. And here, in this room, I have brought my findings together. Maryse has been here many times.”

  Maryse smiled briskly at the old man. He unlocked the box she held, patted her cheek, and looked at his watch: “I’ll leave you to look through the materials yourselves. Got to go lead the pilgrims to the altar,” and he slipped out of the room.

  Ari looked questioningly at her. “He has a tour at the cathedral,” she explained.

  “He’s a tourist guide?”

  “Yes. That’s how I met him. He opened up the cathedral for me. That and a lot of other things,” she sighed and ruffled through the box, which contained several leathery objects that appeared at first to be books. They were actually nested boxes, earthy with age and incised with ancient tool work. She extracted one of the boxes and sat down at a small secretary near one of the windows, motioning him to sit next to her.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a pack of cards.”

  “Playing cards?”

  “Not really, although they might have been used for games at one time.”

  Inside the dirty grained lid of the box was a brownish placard, similar to an ordinary playing card but taller and thinner. Maryse slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves from her purse and carefully removed a stack of cards from the box. She began turning them over, one by one.

  “What are they?”

  “These are tarot cards.”

  “You mean, like Gypsies and psychics use. Fortune tellers.” Ari didn’t like this at all.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she sighed again, frowning over the images and paying no attention to him.

  Whatever their use, the cards were tremendously old—Ari could see that. They appeared to be hardened parchment covered in images of red and brown painted by a primitive hand. One card with the Roman numeral fifteen in the corner showed a horrific demon with glowing blisters that looked like human faces. On another card, a hanged man; on another, a man contemplating a great bleeding star.

  “What do they mean? What are you looking for?”

  “Here’s the Star card, the Moon card, the Sun card. Number twenty: the Last Judgment. Ah. This is it,” she muttered and held the card up to the light. Suddenly she arched with excitement. “This is it!”

  Ari stared at the card. Inside a wreath of brown leaves stood a naked, sceptered human figure that might have been finger painted by a child. A red cape hung round the neck and a strange orange halo circled the head. Above the figure were the Roman numerals “XXI”; and in each corner of the card what looked like a smudged, winged insect.

  “See?” she said triumphantly. “Card twenty-one.”

  Yes, he could see. On each side of the wreath, someone had scrawled a block letter in black ink. Parallel to the figure’s head, the letters D and V. Parallel to the feet, the letters C and E. And hanging like an ornament over the chest, the great Roman capital I.

  “This is what I remembered. This is where I’ve seen this combination of letters before.” Maryse caught her breath and examined the card closely for several minutes without speaking. Then, abruptly, she turned to him and pulled him closer to the window light.

  “Look. What are these?” She pointed out the four corners of the card in succession. The tiny images were not insects after all—slowly it dawned on him what they were. In the lower right corner, a bull. Opposite, in the lower left, a lion. The image in the upper right corner looked like a clawed bird, and a tiny winged angel fluttered in the opposite corner.

  “Our four figures,” he mumbled. “From the ceiling in Rome.”

  “Right.” She sat back in the big oak chair and began to talk, more to herself than to him. “This is the World Redemption card. Christ descends from heaven, clothed in his scarlet robe of vengeance, carrying the scepter. Symbol of dominion.”

  “So this is a picture of Christ? Surrounded by the four beasts from the Temple of Jerusalem?”

  “That’s the theory.”

  Ari knew little about Christianity. The idea that God could become human was to him not only blasphemous but incomprehensible. What did Jesus of Nazareth have to do with the four beasts of the Temple of Jerusalem?

  “Later tarot decks show a nude woman in the center of card twenty-one. But this is one of the oldest tarot decks in existence—handpainted by Viéville in the seventeenth century—and it’s a clear depiction of the Christ. It makes sense.”

  “Why does it make sense?”

  She suddenly realized that Ari wouldn’t get the picture. “Here. Let me show you.” She led him to another corner of the room where an enormous old book lay open on a pedestal. An antique pointer sat on the page, at the top of which in Gothic letters was written the name “Esechiel.” Ari recognized the pointer—it was similar to the long pointers readers used in the synagogue to follow the text of the Torah.

  “This is the Vulgate, an early Latin translation of the Christian Bible. If memory serves.…” Maryse picked up the pointer, looked at it curiously, and began to page through the old book with her gloved hand. Every leaf was leathery with age, and illuminations that had once been gilded showed only ripples of gold on brown.

  “Here. The Apocalypse, fourth chapter.” And she began to read, translating as she went.

  “Et in circuitu sedis quattuor animalia… And round about the throne there were four beasts…

  “Et animal primum simile leoni et secundum animal simile vitulo… And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast was like a bull…

  “Et tertium animal habens faciem quasi hominis, et quartum animal simile aquilae volanti… And the third beast had a face like a man’s, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The Apocalypse is the last book in the New Testament. It’s a prophecy of the end of the world when Jesus Christ comes again to judge mankind. These four beasts are always depicted guarding the throne of judgment.”

  “But why the red cape?”

  She thumbed through the book to the nineteenth chapter, scanned down the page, and pointed to a verse: “Here.”

  “Et vestitus erat vestem aspersam sanguine et vocatur nomen eius Verbum Dei… And his robe was sprinkled in blood and his name was called the Word of God.”

  A robe sprinkled in blood. Some memory whisked past, something he couldn’t grasp.

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “So this is an old drawing of Jesus in a bloody robe coming to put an end to the world. What does it have to do with our inscription?”

  “That’s what I hoped our friend could help us with,” she said, tapping her chin with the pointer. “The letters aren’t part of the design. I have seen other Viéville collections without writing on them, so someone inked in the letters after the card was made.”

  “How long ago?”

  “It’s old ink. It has the look of rusty iron. And from the handwritin
g, I’d say…seventeenth- or eighteenthcentury.”

  She returned the pointer to the page in the book of Ezekiel and put the card in her bag. “Jean-Baptiste has to know what this means—he would never miss a detail like this.”

  “He said he didn’t know what it meant.”

  “He said he couldn’t say. But he’s got to say. Let’s go find him.”

  Division of Identification and Forensic Science, Sheikh Jarrah Street, Jerusalem, 1115h

  Miner had buried himself overnight in the content of Emmanuel Shor’s GeM and had failed to go home. Now fatigue burned at his eyes. The material was disappointing: a huge record of purchases from petrol to pizza that the man had never cleaned out of his memory. An enormous collection of readings of all kinds: Mishnah, scholarly journal articles, film reviews. Classical music files. Shor apparently had had no use for his e-mail, which contained hundreds of routine messages from the lab he had never opened.

  But the contact list was short. Only a few laboratory colleagues, his brother, and several telephone numbers for Catriel Levine. And for Jules Halevy. Other than this, Shor’s digital records turned up nothing but rubbish; after all, the only items of interest Shor left behind were quite concrete—a shabby photograph and a ring.

  The photo intrigued him less now that he knew of Shor’s connection to the crazies who were obsessed with the Temple Mount. Those people had squealed around the fringes of society forever. Nearly every day on his way to work he walked past a little shop window in the Jewish Quarter where someone had concocted priestly vestments for a restored temple and displayed them as if in an ordinary clothing store. A long linen coat like a gigantic sock hung from the ceiling, alongside a gold headband and a breastplate inlaid with artificial jewels. A hand-lettered cardboard sign in the window called all Jews to rise up and reclaim the Temple Mount so that the ancient rituals could begin again, and the Messiah come at last. The display irritated him. Miner loved his country and his people but had no love for their superstitions. If there was a Creator, he had abandoned them. That was clear enough. So why keep up these ancient pretenses? What had it brought but misery? It was why he couldn’t marry Sarah.