The Day of Atonement

by Breck England

  Beneath a tall rack of stuffed toy Wise Men, another pattern showed up in the dust. Someone had sat down there on the floor. And from there, Toad could see, a path had been scraped that led around the corner of a display table toward the back shelves of the shop. If he was right.…

  Yes. There it was. Almost hidden behind a case filled with moldering prayer beads was a grate in the floor, its lid painted over so that it could barely be distinguished from the floor around it. But it had been pried open, and recently.

  Toad examined the ledges of the display table behind the rack of Wise Men, where the squatter had sat. He didn’t much care if the shopkeeper noticed him now—he already had enough to go on—but he mentally divided the table wall into square centimeters and inspected each one.

  At last. The tiniest fleck, hidden under the sill of the table. He took out his GeM, quietly photographed it from several angles, and texted the pictures along with a few notes to Miner in St. Helena Street. Blood—it was notoriously hard to get rid of.

  Now it was time to speak to the shopkeeper.

  Al-Anbiya Madrassah, East Jerusalem, 0945h

  Koran school was not Amal’s favorite time of day, but it was better than geometry or science. His real interest was politics; he stayed late each day to talk to his history teacher about it. Today’s religion class promised to be more interesting than usual, however. The teacher, Imam Abu Rushd, had been mysterious about the lesson, and was particularly loud in leading the morning recitation of the shahada.

  “La ilaha il-Allah, wa anna Muhammad rasulu’llah!” the boys shouted at top voice. The imam had a great mouth with open spans between his teeth, and he grinned happily at the enthusiasm of the shouting. The louder the cry, the more convincing, Amal thought as he looked around at his schoolmates. He himself was perfectly satisfied in the knowledge that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet, and he enjoyed the shouting.

  Still there was a part of Amal that said no to everyone else’s yes; and yes to their no. He had been born with a skeptical ear: when one of his teachers said something, he would without thinking find contrary arguments spilling into his mind. When his history teacher denounced the West for something, as he did virtually every day, Amal shot back mental rejoinders almost as a reflex. And the teacher seemed to enjoy it when Amal occasionally challenged him—the man even giggled—until Amal had realized that it was a contemptuous giggle. His teacher had complained about him to the headmaster, who had passed on the complaint to Amal’s father, Hafiz, who in turn simply smiled and nodded a bit nervously.

  Amal was angry at himself while listening to the headmaster. The last thing in the world he wished for was to disappoint his father in any way, even though the old man was not really his father. Hafiz had taken him in when Nasir caught him cheating tourists at the Old City wall. A gang of boys was caught and released to their parents—except for Amal, who had no parents. At age ten he had been brought to Jerusalem by his uncle, a shepherd, from their village near Ramallah, so the uncle could get help at the hospital for his withering, painful knees. The old man had left Amal in the hospital waiting area, but he never came out again. For years, until he was old enough to read, Amal did not know what had become of his uncle. Bewildered and in pain, the uncle had wandered through the buildings when a sudden stroke overcame him in another part of the hospital. No one knew that the dying Bedouin had any family at all.

  After many hours of waiting Amal had thought to look for his uncle, but he did not know where to go or whom to ask. At ten Amal was illiterate, but he was also used to fending for himself. He had a little money, bought some cheese and bread with it in the market, and lived in the streets for days until taking up with some boys who showed him how to get money from tourists. When the fat, dumb Americans would climb up the Jaffa Gate stairway to walk the wall around the Old City, Amal would run ahead of them, keeping his distance but always in the tourists’ line of sight. The only exit from the wall was down a stairway near the Lion Gate and through an ironwork door that fenced the wall off from the lane below. The door was supposed to remain unlocked, but the boys would padlock the door from one side and trap the tourists behind it. Then they would demand a few dollars from them to give them their freedom.

  It worked very well for Amal for a few days. He slept at night in the boys’ houses, a different one every night, and used his dollars to buy food. The boys showed him how to steal from the halal merchant and how to get games and GeMs and even explosives.

  Then one day he was crouched behind the iron door ready to surprise a particularly fat American sightseer who was just coming down the steps near the Lion Gate. Amal felt a strong grip on his shoulder and looked up to see that the Arab Quarter patrolmen had surrounded him and his friends. One of the older boys removed the lock and handed it to the police, who herded the boys down the lane toward their headquarters. Amal sat fearfully in the police station after the other boys had been taken home.

  Night had fallen when one of the young policemen in black uniform sat down by him, asked him his name and where he lived. Amal liked the man’s sympathetic face, so he told him his story. Years later he asked Nasir why he had taken him home with him that first night. Nasir told him that as a boy he, too, had earned a few dollars at the foot of the Lion Gate stairs.

  Nasir was good enough to him, but Hafiz took almost instantly to the boy. The old man loved to sit and listen to Amal talk about his old home, his sheep, about sleeping in olive groves on summer nights, about making cheese while his uncle baked flat bread on an old stove in their tent. As if he were the child and Amal the father, Hafiz often went to sleep at night listening to Amal tell about the countryside.

  More than once Nasir took them all for a drive in his car to see the area near Ramallah which Amal said was his home, but the boy was too young to know the way. Inquiries were made. No one knew anything about Amal or his uncle. One day Hafiz took Amal to a large office building where the old man signed a folder full of papers and photographs were taken of Amal; after that, he was called Amal al-Ayoub.

  Amal imagined that one day he would search out the place again where he and his uncle had lived; but it did not concern him much. He liked—no, he loved Hafiz. For all he knew, his old uncle, who had never had much to say to him, had abandoned him. And with Hafiz he didn’t have to sleep in the cold. Hafiz was now the father he had lacked. For his part, Hafiz truly liked the boy and began to teach him to read, to recite the holy book, and to understand the news panel. When he turned fourteen he began to argue with Hafiz, which delighted the old man even more.

  But it worried Amal when his teachers had complained to Hafiz about him. He decided not to talk back to them anymore, and went humbly to Madrassah in the mornings, shouting louder than the others and listening harder to the imam.

  The day’s lecture began, and Amal opened his electronic tablet to take notes. Propping a book of hadiths—sayings of the Prophet—open on the lectern, the imam read:

  “These are the hadiths of the Prophet, peace be upon him,” he announced in his high, birdlike voice.

  “From the birth of Adam to the advent of the Judgment Day, there is no tribulation greater than that of dajjal.

  “Every prophet came to warn his nation of the deception of the dajjal.

  “When you hear that the dajjal has appeared, flee him. Because you may go to him intending to deny him, but you will remain and follow him because there are many things with the dajjal that fill the heart with misgivings.

  “He will have Paradise and hell with him. Though his paradise will seem to be the true Paradise, in reality it will be hell. Likewise, though his hell will seem to be the true hell, in reality it will be Paradise.

  “The dajjal will appear accompanied by a river and a fire. What will seem to be fire will in reality be cold water, and what will seem to be cold water will be fire. He who falls into his fire will certainly receive his reward and have his load take
n from him; but he who falls into his water shall retain his load and lose his reward.”

  A lisping boy behind Amal, a boy who always asked the question the imam wanted to hear, called out: “Imam, what is dajjal?”

  The imam pulled at his cap to release the sweat seeping from his razored gray scalp and grinned. This was obviously a favorite topic.

  “The dajjal is the anointed of the Evil One who will come to rule the world before the Day of Requital.”

  “Imam,” shouted the lisping boy. “Is Shaitan the dajjal?”

  “No, no,” came the grinning reply.

  “The dajjal is a man with curly white hair and one floating eye. He is the servant of Shaitan, the Evil One. He is a man but also a spirit that will overcome all the unbelievers, and—here is a warning—even many of the believers. Even many of the most ardent believers he will dupe into disbelief.

  “And he is here now. The dajjal is among us. He is undoubtedly a Jew ruling the world by fear, like a snake in his hole, casting fear around him by his very presence. But he is also beautiful like a snake, and that is why he is such a fatal danger to you.

  “It is the dajjal who rules in the harb—the West. He has deceived them into believing that the hell they have created is a Paradise. It is a hell of numbness, of pleasure and acquisition, of sex and money and power. They live to play games, to do perversions on one another, to prey on each other. They have lost their faith and now they exalt their disbelief and make war on the believers. The dajjal has left them miserable, and now they seek to seduce us into their misery.”

  Amal struck back in his mind. Hafiz had paid for him to spend a summer in America, where he lived with a host family in Florida. For Amal the West was not the hell the imam described. The Favella family had taken him to the Everglades, where he saw alligators and a remarkable bird with orange and red feathers that had landed on the youngest Favella daughter’s shoulder. With her red hair she looked like the bird, and the whole family had laughed at this. John, the father, had taken Amal and his son Tony, who was also fifteen, fishing on a lake in Georgia—a lake with a calm green surface, with trees bending into the water as if drinking from it, and fish that nearly leaped into the boat. Fish called bass with succulent white meat. They had cooked the fish over a fire on the beach and he had never tasted anything so good. John teased Amal by throwing hot flakes of fish into his mouth. Later they had gone swimming in the cool water. He remembered the moist darkness that crept over the lake, air so warm and wet that he had slept in the open on the beach all that night and felt not a bit of cold.

  The imam was wrong. Dajjal, he was sure, was real enough. He could not believe that his friends in America could serve the dajjal. But then, hadn’t the imam said that the dajjal could trick even a believer into thinking that hell was a paradise?

  “What will happen to us?” asked a serious boy from the corner of the room.

  The imam smiled again with pleasure. “We are blessed beyond all others. The dajjal will be defeated. Here. Where we stand, in Jerusalem. It is revealed in the hadith. When Jesus returns to earth he will do battle with the dajjal at Bayt al-Maqdis—the mosque on the Mount above us—and the breath of the Prophet Jesus will completely destroy him.”

  Amal was comforted. Not only would the dajjal be defeated, but his friends from that summer, he knew, were devoted Christians. They would be happy to see Jesus in Jerusalem again.

  After the other boys left, Amal approached the imam alone and, as he often did, asked a question that sounded like a statement. “The Christians—they will be pleased to see Prophet Jesus destroy the dajjal. They will be saved from the dajjal.”

  The imam smiled, blinking his eyes rapidly. Such a wonderful thing to pique so much interest, so much devotion in the boys. “The Christians are unbelievers. They commit the monstrous crime of shirk¸ worshiping Jesus as the equal of Allah. Jesus himself will destroy them for their blasphemy. They cannot escape the reward of the dajjal; they will go into hellfire with him.”

  Amal’s lips tightened and he shook his head. There was no justice in this.

  The imam saw Amal’s face, recognized the stubbornness the other masters had told him of, and turned sober. “It is the will of Allah. They are kafir, unbelievers. They took our land from us and gave it to the Jews, who are the people of dajjal; the Americans are their dupes. The dajjal himself is a Jew, alive today! No, no. They will all go into hell together.”

  An angry heat came over Amal; he stared at the imam, at his large lips and teeth. But he would say nothing. He would not disappoint Hafiz again—no fight with the imam.

  Turning his back, Amal walked out into the unmerciful sunshine toward the school, where he was already late for geometry class.

  Rue Percheron, Chartres, France, 0910h

  “Yes, Monsieur Davan. The title is cavaliero di onore e devozione in obbedienza…a knight of honor in devotion and obedience to the Order of Malta.”

  Mortimer put down his coffee and sat back in his chair. “We are a chivalrous and charitable order. Knights of the red cross. Hospitals, doctors, nurses all paid up and paid for. At one time we were known as the Hospitallers—a very quiet group, the oldest school of the oldest school of knighthood. We actually take vows,” he smiled and took another tidy sip of coffee.

  “Not vows of poverty, surely,” Ari reflected, looking around at the luxurious oak table and chairs and the silk-covered walls.

  “Some do. In my case, it’s a vow of obedience to the officers of the Order.”

  “You yourself were an officer of the Order.”

  “Yes, for a while. At times one obeys, at other times one is obeyed.”

  Maryse broke in. “The Order has a library and art collections dating back to the fourteenth century. Jean-Baptiste bought the de Viéville deck as part of a lot of materials confiscated from the Order by Napoleon and auctioned by the French government.”

  “They hold these auctions periodically,” Mortimer explained. “If an item appears on the Order’s patrimony list, I bid for it.”

  “According to the record we saw yesterday, you bid a considerable amount for this little item.” Ari gestured at the card box that lay on the breakfast table.

  Then Maryse plunged in, clearly impatient. “Ari, the card isn’t important anymore.”

  He looked at her in surprise. Then why make this trip back to Chartres? Why are we here?

  She understood his look. “It wasn’t the card I was interested in. It was the Bible. I realized it when we were talking to Grammont. When I looked up the inventory that Jean-Baptiste bought, there it was: a 1592 Aldus printing of the Latin Vulgate, from the same auction lot as the tarot deck. We saw it yesterday in the library upstairs.”

  “What does that Bible have to do with this?” he asked.

  “It’s where the inscription came from.”

  Without another word she rose and indicated for Ari to follow her as she disappeared up the staircase. For a moment he hesitated, baffled—a hint of trouble crossed his mind. But he got up and mounted the stairs after her toward Mortimer’s library. He could hear the old man climbing up behind him and felt for the automatic in his pocket; after all, this inscription had something to do with two murders.

  Irritated again by the dust of the display cases and books that tiled the walls of the library, Ari blinked and sneezed. There was Maryse standing next to the big Bible they had looked at the day before, the silver pointer still lying on the page where they had left it. She was photographing the page with her GeM and motioning for him to come see.

  “Here.” The pointer indicated a verse on the open page. “Look very closely.”

  He bent over the page but could not make out much. Against the buttery vellum, the printing looked almost new—still, under the Latin words were smudges that appeared nowhere else on the page. Maryse produced a magnifying glass from a drawer in the bookstand.

&nbs
p; “Closer.”

  The smudges now looked liked wavy lines. Someone a long time ago had marked the verse with brown ink and circled the initial letters of five of the words in the verse. Maryse read these words in Latin:

  …donec venire cuius est iudicium.

  “D, V, C, E, I,” Ari breathed. “What does it mean?”

  “Until He shall come whose right it is to rule,” intoned the old man, who was standing behind him. Ari turned and stared at him, his memory clicking.

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Yes. Tried to tell you yesterday.”

  “You were talking about one of the windows.”

  “West Rose.” Mortimer assumed his guide’s voice. “‘In the center of the Rose Window the Christ comes dripping in blood to put an end to this miserable world and inaugurate a better.’ Left the pointer on the page—something for Maryse to pick up.”

  “But there’s more. Much more.” Maryse’s voice was trembling, her forehead tensely lined. Was it excitement or agitation? “Listen to the whole passage. It’s from the twenty-first chapter of Ezekiel.”

  She began reading and translating:

  tu autem profane impie dux israhel cuius venit dies in empore inquitatis praefinita…

  “Thou also, profane impious prince of Israel, whose day is come, whose time of iniquity is finished.…

  haec dicit dominus deus, aufer cidarim tolle coronam…

  “The Lord God says this: Remove the headdress, remove the crown,

  nonne est que humilem sublevavit et sublimem humiliavit,