The Flaming Sword

by Breck England

  “The Zionist threat to Al-Aqsa is well documented. For sixty years the Zionist entity have held the holy shrines in their hands, eating away at them, digging under them for what they call archeological purposes. They have hoped for generations that the shrines would fall of their own accord.

  “But now their patience is ended. They are sending madmen to bomb the shrines using a new type of explosive, while denying all knowledge of the plot. They will insist that it is all an inexplicable accident.

  “Let the Zionist regime understand clearly the consequences of the destruction of the holy shrines. They will find that the patience of the Islamic world shall also be at an end. Retaliation will be swift and massive.”

  The uproar from the defense ministry was long and loud. Tovah Kristall sat silently, irritated by the noise, her eyes on her frightened analysts, feeling tired and old. She had worked so hard for so many years, but nothing had changed.

  Then Didi stood. “Anyone for coffee? It’s going to be a horrid evening.” Against her will, Kristall laughed amid the angry shouting from the defense ministry over the telephone and the mobs screaming death to Israel over the television. “Coffee, yes.” And then she waited.

  It took only seconds for the Prime Minister to come on her private link wanting to know how word got out about the Levinsky affair. “It’s somebody in your organization, obviously.”

  “Pardon my contradicting you, Prime Minister,” she growled, “but that isn’t obvious at all. You knew about it and so did your people. We’ll fly this mission together, or you can be sure we’ll crash together.” She wasn’t certain, but she thought the politician whimpered at the other end of the line. “Now we have two jobs to do. One is to make assurances to all quarters that there was a crazy plot, but it’s completely under control. That’s your job. The other is to make sure that it is completely under control, and that’s mine. That includes finding out who tipped off our ill-tempered friends.”

  “Can’t we just deny the whole thing?”

  “The other side clearly knows too much; if we denied it, they would host a very large celebration for the global media to trot out the evidence. Furthermore, if you try to deny it, I’ll take it to the media myself.”

  She shut off the line to the Prime Minister’s office in Kaplan Street and turned to her assistant. “I’ll see Toad and Miner. Now.”

  Both had been waiting outside the door, and both shuffled in.

  “All right. You heard?” They nodded. “Toad, who other than you knew about this Levinsky business?” She answered her own question. “Myself, the team here, and Miner. And Halevy and his three crazies, all of whom we have locked up. That’s it. I want you to find out who at Kaplan Street knew about it before this broadcast. Miner, go find out.”

  The big man left with a glad sigh.

  “Toad, what about Halevy?”

  “He says that Levinsky came down from Haifa for his daughter’s funeral last night. They put him up in the guest bungalow, and this morning Halevy had an argument with Levinsky, who apparently wanted to use the nano device to destroy the Haram shrines. Then, according to Halevy, Levinsky tried to recruit one of the younger men at the funeral to do the deed. He wanted it done on Yom Kippur as a kind of statement. As revenge. For his daughter.”

  Kristall tapped out her cigarette impatiently. “But what’s going on with Halevy? Why did he turn in his friend? He of all people wanted to see the Temple rebuilt—why would he stop it? And might he be the one who tipped off the other side?”

  Toad shook his head. “I think Halevy is genuinely against violence. He’s thoughtful, a physicist; his enthusiasm for the Temple is more hypothetical than practical; his designs for bringing it about are more subtle than blowing up the shrines. He’s terrified by real emotion—and that’s what Levinsky faced him with this morning. Real anger. I know he struggled with the decision to talk to me, but in the end he did.

  “But no, I don’t think he leaked the information to the other side. He would know what their reaction would be, and as I said, he hates violence. He’s also a logical man—what good would it do to tell the tale to them?”

  Kristall had lit another cigarette and drew in smoke. “What good indeed? And for whom?” She paused. “Have you made anything of this Lambert Sable connection? The contact number on Catriel Levine’s phone?”

  “Total firewall. Nobody gets through to talk to him. Even the American FBI are helpless.”

  “Especially the American FBI,” Kristall spat. Her assistant came up behind her as unobtrusively as possible and let slip a piece of paper on her table. She picked it up, skimmed it, and closed her eyes.

  “Toad, get Davan back here immediately.” She handed them the paper; they looked hard at it and left the room. Toad was already ringing Ari Davan.

  “Or better still,” she said to herself, “tell him not to come back at all.”

  Besharri, Lebanon, 1630h

  Parked precariously at the side of the road, Ari rang off his phone and without a word switched on the car radio, scanning for an English-speaking station. His conversation had been in Hebrew; Maryse looked questioningly at him until the sense of the radio broadcast came clear. They both knew that the consuming puzzle they were playing at was about to turn into a war.

  “I’ve got to get home tonight,” he said. “Things are out of control.”

  “I understand,” Maryse replied.

  “It’s not just this latest show. The European media are naming me—naming me—as the killer of a Palestinian ‘diplomat’ named Ayoub.”

  “What? But it’s not true…”

  “Doesn’t matter. Every Hamas hothead will be after me. As for the Service, I’m finished.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Maryse, you don’t know this part of the world. You should leave me here, get away from me, and stay clear.”

  She looked silently at him for a moment, and then shook her head. “Let’s go. We have work to do.”

  “But you’re in danger, too. Take the car; I can find my own way home.”

  “Ari, please. No one here knows who you are; you’re not even officially in Lebanon. Let’s finish this.”

  Outside, the peaks were turning to gold as the angle of the sun dropped. With a nod and a curse, Ari threw the car into gear and started along the narrow road around the town. On one side, the road shaved the hillside, and on the other, houses protruded from the mountain stone like natural growths.

  At the foot of the road nearest the cliff, the police had told them, and at last they came on an isolated two-story house where a worker was building a ramp to the door. It was a ramp for a wheelchair. Outside the house, shading her eyes as she watched the road, a woman in a pale cotton shift was waiting.

  “Fatima!” Maryse cried as she jumped from the car. They embraced; Fatima’s body felt stronger, more limber. Clearly, she liked the mountain air. She held up a tiny gold cross she wore around her neck.

  “Thank you for this.” Maryse had bought it for her on the day of her husband’s funeral. “It will always remind me of you…of your kindness.”

  “Did you have any trouble? Getting home, I mean?”

  Fatima smiled. “I arrived here yesterday without trouble.” And then, soberly, “Peter’s mother is inside…I know you want to speak to her. It will be difficult.”

  “We won’t take long.” Maryse motioned to Ari, who got out of the car. “This is, um, Paul. He works with me.”

  The young Lebanese woman looked up at Ari.

  “Welcome, Paul,” Fatima said, offering him her small hand. Her smile was neither bright nor sad, but accepting.

  “Thanks,” Ari replied, and Maryse heard relief in his voice.

  “Fatima, we need to ask Rafqa Chandos a few questions and then get under way. We haven’t much time,” Maryse changed tone.

  “Of course. Ther
e is a nurse, an Antonine sister. Let me speak to her first.”

  Fatima went inside, and Ari and Maryse stood in the gate. They looked wordlessly past the house and across a chasm that rose from the road’s end up into the mountains; it looked as if an immense snake had filed its way through the sandstone and left this glittering fissure in its wake.

  “It’s called the Qadisha Valley,” Ari said. “The holy valley. A place for hermits and monks. When I was in the army we did simulated battles on the plain of Bekaa—just beyond the hills there—and fought imaginary commandos in the Quadisha Valley.”

  Strange how often they go together, Maryse thought—holiness and warfare. But she didn’t say so.

  Fatima came out, her face cheerless. “The nurse says it’s all right, but doesn’t think you’ll get much from her. The stroke left her able to hear and speak; still, what she says is not always…what is the word? Intelligible.”

  “Please. Let us try.”

  Fatima led them into a darkened room that was surprisingly cool; a window had caught a breeze from the gorge. The nurse stood shyly by a small bed. Rafqa Chandos seemed to sleep, her head slightly bowed under a white hood, her hands spread at her sides, her body draped in fluid white that reminded Maryse strangely of a wedding gown. She was not a small woman, and the bed not large enough—thus the impression of felled strength. A nutrient dripline ran from her arm; otherwise, she did not appear ill at all. Her lips stirred faintly, almost soundlessly.

  “She prays,” Fatima murmured. “And recites. Mostly the gospels.” She looked up at Ari and Maryse. “Rafqa is a linguist—she learned English from her father and studied Greek and Latin in the religious school. Much of what she says, I think, are old lessons from the school.”

  Maryse approached the bed and spoke calmly into the woman’s ear. “Rafqa, my name is Inspector Mandelyn. I’m sorry to disturb you, and very sorry for your loss. But I must ask you one or two questions.”

  There was no sign of comprehension. The lips continued to open and shut in some unknown pattern.

  “Did Peter have a brother?”

  The woman’s breath quickened and she shook her head once. Twice.

  “Was that a no?” Maryse whispered up to Ari, who looked clueless. “Ask her again,” he said.

  “Tasaqat,” the nurse said. Fatima translated: “It is a palsy. It may mean nothing.”

  This time a little louder: “Did Peter have a brother? A twin?”

  Again, the breathing came quicker. Her eyes fluttered and she shook her head in tight little movements.

  “That’s not palsy. She’s telling us no,” Ari said. “Maybe we should go.”

  Maryse turned to the nurse, and Fatima translated.

  “Did anyone—a man—come to the house in the last few days? Since Thursday?”

  No, the nurse had seen no one. But she only moved in Thursday when Rafqa was released. It was thought she could heal at home as well or better than in hospital, and she had seen no one but the medical people and the worker building the wheelchair ramp.

  No. Wait. There had been someone. A man. She only glimpsed him, thought he was passing by. She had seen him from the window, only his back. It was just at nightfall, and he was standing on the cliff edge near the house. What did he look like? He was ordinary, not tall, not short. Dark hair, yes. How dressed? Dark workman’s clothes, blue I think. Doing what? As I said, just standing by himself and looking out over the valley. A moment later he was gone. I thought no more of it.

  “The twin,” Maryse said to Ari. “This is his mother’s home. Maybe he hid something there, in the back of the garden.”

  They started to leave the room when the muttering from the bed grew louder, more breathy. “Phosphoros. Phosphoros. For my sin…”

  Maryse turned. “What did she say?”

  “I think she said, ‘phosphorus,’ ” Fatima repeated.

  “Does that mean anything to you? Has she said it before?”

  Fatima shook her head, as did the nurse.

  Maryse was puzzled. “It means light in Greek, light carrier, or something like that.”

  “Or the element phosphorus?” Ari volunteered. “Number fifteen…in the periodic table.” The women stared quizzically at him.

  “Maybe it’s too dark. Maybe she wants more light.” Fatima switched on an overhead lamp.

  By this light Maryse could see, barely opened, the elegant blue of Rafqa’s eyes; she seemed to recognize something in Maryse. She struggled to raise her hand.

  “Pos exelesen ek tou ouranou…Phosphoros. Quomodo cecidisti de caelo…Lucifer…”

  Then Maryse understood. “She’s quoting scripture. The Septuagint. The Vulgate. Greek and Latin. Quomodo cecidisti de caelo Lucifer.”

  Maryse scrambled in her heavy bag for her GeM and tapped at its transparent face. She kept repeating the Latin phrase softly to the GeM while Ari looked on uncomprehending.

  “Here it is. The Vulgate. Quomodo cecidisti de caelo Lucifer…’

  “What is she saying?”

  Maryse looked up, puzzled. “It’s a passage from Isaias. ‘How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? How art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations?’ ”

  “It’s just random,” Ari whispered. “She’s raving.”

  “I’m not sure. She cited the same passage in Latin and Greek. Lucifer equals Phosphoros—the light bearer.” Maryse shook her head. “What is she trying to tell us?”

  “Lucifer is the devil, right?”

  “He’s often called that. If I remember, originally the term referred to an angel that was ousted from Heaven.”

  Rafqa Chandos began to murmur; the words had the weight of solemn intonation: “Erunt duo in lecto, uno unus adsumeter, et altera relinquetur…altera relinquetur.” And then, unmistakably, a sob, “For my sin.”

  “Did you get that?” Fatima asked. She had taken a pencil and paper and was writing heatedly.

  Maryse tried to translate: “Two…there were two in one bed. And one…I don’t understand. But the other was relinquished.”

  After a silence, Fatima spoke. “I know what it means. She used to tell us this from the Bible, in our catechism. It is from the Gospel.” And she recited:

  Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man shall be revealed.

  I say to you: in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.

  “There were two,” Maryse breathed. “Two of them. One was taken and the other left. Peter stayed with his mother, but the other one…” She approached Rafqa again. “Who took him? Who took the other one?”

  Maryse faintly nudged the woman’s shoulder, and her mouth opened: “Leo…de tribu Iuda.”

  “The lion of the tribe of Judah.” Maryse repeated the text into her GeM and waited for it to answer. “This makes no sense. Now she’s quoting the Apocalypse, a reference to Christ. Christ took the other child?”

  Ari was rattled at this. “Why would Christ be the lion of Judah? Wouldn’t the lion of Judah be a Jew?”

  “Christ was a Jew,” Maryse said simply. “I don’t know. I don’t think we can push her much further…” She was watching the nurse, who was worried about the stress on her patient. Maryse motioned to Fatima to follow her out of the house.

  The heat seemed even heavier in the slanted light reflected from the mountains; only a random breath from the canyon below provided any relief. A new wooden ramp now led from the doorway to the lane, and the worker had left. Maryse led Fatima to the corner of the house. She had remembered from her police training that most abductions of children were by their own parents.

  “Fatima, does anyone know anything about Peter’s father?”

  The small woman slowly shook her head. “It was never talked about. Never. Not even my parents talked about i
t—and they talked about everyone. I don’t think they knew who the father was.”

  “And she always lived in this house?”

  “Always. She inherited it from her father, the Englishman. He is buried in the cemetery here.”

  “Is there anyone in this town who would remember the Englishman…Rafqa’s father?”

  “Perhaps the retired priest at St. Anthony’s. He is very old.”

  “Would you go with us to see him? We’ll need an interpreter.”

  “Of course.” Maryse kissed Fatima lightly on the cheek and looked around for Ari. He had moved to the back of the house—the “garden” as she had called it, although it was only a garden of rocks that swept precipitously toward a cliff. She knew what he was looking for: recently disturbed earth.

  “Maybe he buried the item back here,” Ari said as she and Fatima approached. They walked the small plot, but found nothing but hundreds of footprints.

  “They had workers in last week,” Fatima explained. “To mend the windows and the roof.”

  Leaning over a toothy old rock wall, Ari examined the cliff side and shook his head; next to him Maryse leaned cautiously over it, hoping to find a cave or a rope dangling to some hiding place. But there was nothing: only a cascade of rusty terraces and the vertical drop into darkness beyond.

  All at once her stomach plunged and her eyes went dim—the cursed vertigo. She drew back too fast and her bag, dangling crazily from her shoulder, shot over the wall and landed six or seven meters below on a protruding crag, its contents spilling over the side.

  Ari laughed and then stopped abruptly at the look on her face.

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  “No!” she cried. “Leave it there.”

  “But you don’t want to lose your GeM. It’s got all your notes. And I’ve climbed much worse than this.”

  “No. Please.”

  But he had already removed his boots and socks and was over the side, rubbing dust into his hands to improve his hold on the marl stone. It was true, she thought, watching him: He was a fine climber. His fingers and feet locked into the cracks like machinery, and he coiled and spread his body against the rock with the smooth rhythm of an expert.