“How do you think the artists could have made such a mistake?” Maryse asked. Several of the tourists looked dumbly back at her.
“Oh, couldn’t say. Everything else is in order. You see, there are twelve signs in the ecliptic, starting from the top—eight signs in the vertical—Capricorn, Sagittarius, Libra, Virgo, Cancer, Taurus which should be Gemini, Aries, and Pisces. The four cardinal signs are to the left, outside of the vertical—Scorpio, Leo, Gemini which should be Taurus, and Aquarius. It’s very odd. Never understood it.”
Ari tilted his head with sudden interest. There was something strange here. Four cardinal signs…Leo, Gemini which should be Taurus, Aquarius…Scorpio.
“Maryse,” he whispered. “The lion, the ox, the man.…”
“Yes, I know. We’ll talk about it later. I want to hear this next part.”
Mortimer grinned and led the group a few steps away from the aisle and into a looming wing of the building that soared at a right angle from the nave.
“Here you see that the cathedral is a vast set of arches,” Mortimer called, pointing up at the vault where nave and transepts came together. “The structure is held together by the confluence of these arches, there, at the keystone. Imagine the weight of all this stone flowing toward that central point and you’ll have some idea of the enormous tensions that have been held in perfect balance there for nearly a thousand years.” Ari stared up at the zenith of the crossways stone beams and shook his head in wonder.
Shepherding the group further into the gloom of the transept, Mortimer lifted his face and was suddenly illuminated. From the apex of the wing a brilliant circle of blue and crimson light rippling with smaller circles reflected on the floor far below.
“This is the south transept,” Mortimer announced, “and that is the South Rose Window. The windows on the south side of the cathedral, as I told you earlier, depict the Christian’s hope for a new world. There is more light on the south side. In the center of the Rose Window the Christ comes in bloody hues to put an end to this miserable world and to inaugurate a better. Around him, the eight angels of the Apocalypse and, at the cardinal directions, the four guardian spirits—the lion, the ox, the winged angel, and the eagle.”
Ari grabbed Maryse by the elbow a little too hard. She winced and moved away from him, listening intently.
“Now these four spirits are often equated with the four Evangelists—Matthew is the winged man, Mark is the lion, Luke is the ox, and John the eagle. But the Evangelists come rather late in the game, given that the four spirits make their début in the book of Ezekiel many hundreds of years before Christ. ‘All in bright array the cherubim descended, on the ground gliding meteorous, as evening mist.’ Milton.”
Ari wasn’t sure in the dim light, but he had the impression that Mortimer was looking at him.
“And, according to the book of Apocalypse, here they pop up again at the end of the world. To the Jews, these were the guardian archangels Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel. Christian historians think of them as guarding the throne of God, as they say, until He shall come whose right it is to rule.”
The last sentence Mortimer didn’t speak so much as he declaimed it; Ari thought the man’s rolled r’s a bit precious. “It’s Oxford,” Maryse whispered to him as if reading his mind. “It does it to them.”
Just then Ari’s GeMphone went off in his pocket. Now Mortimer really did stare at him. Quickly Ari doused the sound and walked to the aisle to take the call. It was Miner’s voice.
“We’ve got an interesting subject here. Within 48 hours of October 2: Contact with Chandos confirmed. Presence in Haifa confirmed.”
Ari took a breath. “Eyelash man?”
“A Palestine Authority security man, apparently. And he lives right here in Jerusalem. We’re looking for him now. Toad is taking the first watch at the address. What are you doing anyway in…Chartres, France?”
Miner knew where he was from his GeM signal. “Learning about stained glass. Out.”
Ari sat down on one of the caneback chairs to think about this development. Could Miner’s call end this search? He felt it like a thump in the stomach: so often it happened this way. The case becomes interesting, leads into strange new places; then it turns out to be something mundane after all, and the world goes on as before. Some high-class thief covering as a diplomat meets Chandos by coincidence, an eyelash falls on him, he flies home, breaks into the Technion, and steals the whatever-it-is to sell. A diplomat. The best cover possible—you can come and go as you like.
“Nice GeM.”
Ari looked up at the young man who had been playing around in the middle of the labyrinth with the two skinny girls. British, from the sound of him. He was gesturing at the sleek, card-thin GeM Ari still held in his hand. The boy swept his hair away from his eyes.
“Nice GeM, I said.”
“Thank you,” Ari said back.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Um, London,” Ari lied. “Harrod’s.”
“No, man. Not Harrod’s. I know all the GeMs. Never seen one like that before.”
“Then I guess it’s slipped my mind.”
“I seen ’em all. NanoGeMs, BioGeMs. Had seven of ’em once. Got rid of the lot, though.”
“Why?”
“With the world ending next week and all. Didn’t have no more use for them, did I?”
“The world is ending next week?”
“Sure, mate. On Monday. That’s why I’m here with me wives. We came to walk the maze, you know, before the time comes. Didn’t you?”
“No. I’m just…a tourist.”
“The church don’t want people walking the maze. That’s why they set out all these bloody chairs.” He gestured back into the nave.
Ari hadn’t noticed before, but now there was a considerable crowd of people, their heads lowered so they could find the path, clambering over the chairs that covered the labyrinth. Their dance looked random but was clearly choreographed.
“Like they’re all looking for something they lost,” the young man said, nodded, and walked away, the two girls slinking after him.
Ari watched them go and thought, “No. It’s not that simple.” The Chandos connection was far from random. Shor’s murderer was just too clean to carry a bit of fluff with him by accident all the way from Rome. And what about Shor’s odd behavior the afternoon of the murder—removing gene samples labeled “Chandos” from the Technion lab? And then the finger rings.…
But what on earth would a Palestinian diplomat have to do with any of it? Maybe the man was after all just in the wrong places at the wrong times.
Again, not likely. The P.A. was riddled with intrigue and bribery, perennially short of money; there could be any number of crazy connections, all the way from some mad religious conspiracy to a high-rolling assassination plot. The P.A.’s so called diplomats were sometimes just extortionists in disguise—there had been several cases like that. He should find Maryse and let her know.
She was still listening to Mortimer, who was winding up his tour next to a small side chapel bathed in golden light. He was saying something about the veil of the Virgin. Ari took Maryse aside and whispered.
“Listen. My service have identified a subject who was with Chandos and in Haifa within 48 hours of the two murders.”
“Who is it?”
“A diplomat from the Palestinian Authority. They’re checking on him now. No coincidence, I’d say. But it’s possibly just that. At any rate, I’ve got to go back. Do you have any scruples about keeping me informed of your…of what you’re doing? About the ring, I mean?”
She shook her head. “Not if it goes both ways.”
He nodded. The worn look of her face was softer in the muted light of the cathedral. There was a kind of lonely independence about her that Ari liked.
Just then Mortimer came up to them. He had dismissed his tou
rists, who now roamed aimlessly into the dimness of the nave.
“Some are bored, some are mystified. Which are you, Mr. Davan?” Mortimer sounded just a bit irked that Ari had abandoned the tour.
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be rude…it was my bureau calling. Actually, I’m rather fascinated by your beasts.”
“My beasts?”
“Yes, Jean-Baptiste,” Maryse broke in, fumbling in her bag and pulling out the antique tarot card. “This is what I was looking for. It’s the World card with the four beasts of the Apocalypse…I found it in your de Viéville collection.”
Mortimer smiled slightly as he took up the card and carried it into the light of the chapel to see it better. “Yes, yes,” he mumbled, examining it from all angles and then holding it up for a long moment as if presenting a trophy to her. She took it again.
“Grammont. He is the one you need to see.”
“Who?” asked Ari.
“Grammont,” Maryse replied. “He’s a specialist in antiquities like these. At the Bibliothèque Nationale, right?”
“Right,” Mortimer smiled again. “I’m sorry you won’t be able to stay for lunch. I have turtle soup on order at the Grenouille d’Argent. But you just have time to catch the 11:42.”
Shin Bet Headquarters, Queen Helena Street, Jerusalem, 1400h
Tovah Kristall was not happy about the head of Interpol. Her afternoon was about to be taken up by a briefing that would not be brief. This latest turn of events had made her hungry to stay on task, and it might be possible to put Kane off.
But when she saw him again, she realized it wouldn’t work. She had met the man only 24 hours before but had not failed to note the intensity of his eyes. That dark blue stare offered no quarter; so she decided to co-opt him instead of fending him off. His fighting value was high indeed.
“Afternoon, Mr. Kane. We have an urgent new development, if you’d like to put on those headphones and join us in a little actual police work.”
Kane gave her a cool look but acquiesced as he sat down in a chair at her conference table. His three retainers stood quietly behind him in dark suits, card-sized GeMs in hand, gazing into open space—although Kristall knew information flowed constantly through those glistening flesh-colored earpieces they wore. Her conference room was now under Interpol surveillance.
“What development?” he asked, shortly.
“We’ve confirmed a subject in contact with Chandos and then, within 48 hours, confirmed in Haifa.”
Kane looked indifferent to this and picked up the headphones, hearing that vexing voice now in stereo. “I’m downloading our information on the subject to your GeM, but you can see it on the screen.”
On the opposite wall, two large bluish tablets hung in lieu of windows. One of them blazed to life with the photograph of a lean, good-looking Middle Eastern face. A river of Hebrew text appeared, which then changed to English.
Nasir bin-Hafiz al-Ayoub b. 18.07.1997.
Palestinian National
Accredited to Palestinian Authority Foreign Affairs Security Office, 2020.
Positive ID: Attended Vatican Security Conference 28.09–01.10.2027.
Positive ID: Alitalia 2027 Rome–Tel-Aviv 1105-1412 02.10.2027.
Positive ID: local airline Tel-Aviv–Haifa 1455-1530 02.10.2027.
“This is all?” Kane spoke up almost immediately.
“Yes, this is it. Mr. Kane. This is what we have. And now we are going to listen to an interesting recording made about an hour ago of a telephone call from this subject to another fascinating character we’ve been looking for.”
Kane slumped into the chair and listened. He heard two voices growling away in Arabic. Kristall perked up—a little slowly, he thought—as he motioned to her; she stretched across the table and tapped the shoulder of a sleepy person who turned out to be the interpreter. “I forgot…Mr. Kane doesn’t understand.”
The interpreter glanced wide-eyed at Kane and immediately began to jangle away in an English that was not appreciably easier to understand than the Arabic.
“I will meet you. Where?
“The suk behind number 8 Aqabat Tekiyah. It will be twenty-hundred hours.
“Why there?”
“It’s not important why.”
“I’ll be there.”
Kane looked up questioningly at Kristall. “So? What is interesting about this telephone call?”
“We picked up this call the moment we began dropping in on Ayoub’s GeM phone. Unfortunately, we only caught the end of it, but what intrigued us was the identity of the other caller. We ran the recording through our voiceprint system and came up with a top prize: Talal Bukmun.”
“Who is…”
“One of the nastiest jihadists we’ve ever tracked.”
Another picture flared onto the screen—a dark, flickering image of a hard face.
“Disappeared three years ago in Iran. We wondered if he was dead, but here he is in the flesh—or the voice, as it were. By 20:05 tonight, we’ll have made the nicest little bag we’ve had in a long time.”
The imposing figure of the Prime Minister came just then into the conference room, shook hands with Kane, and put his hand on Kristall’s shoulder. She looked up at him almost gratefully; he had obviously been listening in.
Kane asked, “What do you make of it all, then? How does this development get us any closer to the object?”
“There are still difficulties, obviously,” the Prime Minister took over in his authoritative voice. “I think we can theorize at this point that Ayoub is either a free agent or part of the P.A.’s covert apparatus. The object came available to him and he is passing it off to the terror underground. We’ll have both Ayoub and Bukmun tonight.”
Kane was unimpressed. To him the Prime Minister was a politician congratulating himself, as they usually do, for a piece of luck he had no control over. “Your theory is virtually useless,” he said calmly. “It doesn’t even approach accounting for all the facts of this case. For instance, how do you explain the Chandos connection?”
“Ayoub co-opted Chandos. It was obviously a terror attack on the Catholic Church. Certain Muslims hate Jews and Christians, that’s all.”
Discomfited, Tovah Kristall put her hand on the Prime Minister’s, but he went on.
“Ayoub is a killer, and so is Bukmun. When we pull them both in, we’ll get to the truth.”
Kane sniffed and stared at him. “So this Ayoub is some kind of mastermind who arranges for a papal assassination in the morning, flies a thousand miles, and then kills an eminent Israeli microbiologist in the afternoon? Because he doesn’t like Christians or Jews?”
“You make it sound implausible.”
“It’s more than implausible. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.”
The Prime Minister was silent; Kristall knew as well as Kane did that no one had a real theory of this game yet. They were still in the opening moves. She reached for a cigarette and cleared her throat prodigiously.
“Let’s hear from Sefardi now,” she motioned to the interpreter, who was punching in a new telephone number on his console.
“Who’s Sefardi?” Kane asked.
“Our operative who’s tracking Ayoub.”
Toad’s dull voice sounded metallic over the headphones. “I’m on Salah-eddin Street checking on the residence. We haven’t been able to locate the subject yet—his GeMphone isn’t giving a signal. Our P.A. connection says he’s been on leave since last week, although he checked with his office this morning. We don’t want to get close, right?”
“Exactly.” Kristall leaned forward into a veil of smoke. “This man is a professional. That’s why you have the assignment; I don’t want him to know about us. Not yet.”
“We have id’d a person seen leaving and returning to the house. His name is Hafiz al-Ayoub, assumed to
be the subject’s father.”
Immediately a formerly blank blue wall screen came to life with the picture of an elderly man and a flood of text. The caption under the picture: Hafiz al-Ayoub.
Kane gazed silently at the face. The Prime Minister leaned back in his chair and studied the screen with narrowed eyes.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Rue Richelieu, Paris, 1520h
“Grammont, Lucien.”
With no further words, the tall threadlike man in an impeccable suit led Maryse and Ari from the reception into the national library. To Ari the library looked like an old railroad station with mahogany paneling—the ceilings seemed a kilometer away, with portholes beaming like spotlights into bookshelves that curved out of sight. No one was working in the books, however. The floor of the library was a luminous web of computer panels with ranks of researchers submerged in the electronic glow. No one spoke, no one looked to the left or the right; their fingers danced through flat panes of light on the tables. Ari realized that the array of books had become merely décor.
Grammont laced his way through this network toward a carrel in the wall and closed the door behind them. The tiny room was virtually empty except for a neat Persian rug on the floor, an antique desk, and three chairs. On the walls hung a spare selection of faded parchments.
He moved like silk into his chair behind the table, pursed his fingers, and asked in perfect English, “How can I help you?”
Maryse pulled the tarot card from her bag and gave it to him.
“One of the de Viéville collection, roughly 1640. It’s been vandalized,” he said, handing the card back to her.
“So the inscription is not part of the original card.”
“Certainly not.”
“Do you have any idea what the inscription might mean? DVCEI?”
He examined the card again and waved it away. “What this scribbling means, I cannot tell you.”
Ari gave a frustrated sigh. He had missed the flight to Tel-Aviv on the chance that this man might have some answers. Now he was stranded for another night.
But Maryse wasn’t finished. “Then what can you tell us about the card itself?”
The Day of Atonement Page 23