The Flaming Sword

by Breck England

  “No, Kristall and Mr. Interpol wanted to talk to him alone,” Ari said, absently rubbing at the bandages on his legs where stones and shrapnel had frayed the skin.

  “It’s not like you.”

  “What?”

  “To sit here like this. To be…um, excluded.”

  Ari gave him a drained smile. “I’m tired. Like I’ve never been.”

  “I’ll leave you alone then.”

  “No.” Ari motioned to him to close the door. “I want to ask you something.”

  Toad shut the door and sat down. Ari’s eyes were closed, and for a moment Toad thought he had dropped off. Then the eyes flickered open again.

  “Why would the Saladin Brigade jump the wall to attack one small car on the Afula road?”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.”

  “Whoever ordered the attack obviously knew who you were—the one responsible for the death of that Palestine Authority officer, al-Ayoub.”

  “I didn’t kill that man,” Ari sighed.

  “I know. We saw the data this morning.”

  “So who could have ordered the attack? Who knew where I was?”

  Toad’s blank face darkened. “We all knew. Everyone here knew. Miss Interpol called her boss this morning, described the car for us. That’s why Miner was with that helicopter crew. They were looking for her—and you—on the road south.”

  Ari called Miner, who appeared almost immediately.

  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for saving my poor, hacked-up corpse today.”

  The big man laughed. “It was the ride of a lifetime.”

  “And for saving Interpol, too.”

  “She didn’t seem as happy as you.”

  “She wasn’t in the same mess I was in. Even now, I’m not sure what mess she was in.”

  “You two had a tiff, I take it?” Miner smiled. “You didn’t have much to say to each other on the chopper ride.”

  “Nobody could talk over that noise. But I want to ask you. I know why you came out on the rescue, but who sent you?”

  “Kristall, of course.”

  “Was there any talk about the Brigade raid? Did you know what you were up against?”

  “Not until we were in the air. Got a call that your car was under attack, so we phoned Wing Four at Hatzor and got that gunship escort.”

  “Who notified you about the attack?”

  “A bus driver who saw the whole thing. Called in from a mobile phone.”

  “Must have been Maryse’s bus driver,” Ari muttered. “Doesn’t help.”

  “ ‘Maryse,’ is it?” Miner giggled. “No more ‘Interpol’?”

  Ari glared at him.

  “Bit long in the tooth, isn’t she? They’re always more grateful, though, I suppose.”

  Ari grabbed a pencil and jabbed Miner in the rib. Then there was a sudden and authoritative rap on the door. Ari was surprised to see Tovah Kristall standing there. Working her tense lips feverishly, she came inside and slapped the door shut.

  “That was quick,” Ari said.

  “It was outrageous.”

  “What happened?”

  Rummaging through her pockets, Kristall looked hopelessly for a cigarette.

  “You’re not smoking in here.”

  She glared at him. “They’ve let him go. Ordered me to let him go.”

  “Grammont?”

  “From the Premier’s office directly. No reason, no explanation. How do they expect me to protect this country?” she almost spat. “Our mission is to prevent a bloody Armageddon. We’ve got a rogue with at least two infernal engines out there, looking to blow up the heart of Islam. How long do they think our Arab friends would hold off their atomics?”

  She took a cavernous breath. Ari was afraid she would topple where she stood, but she went on: “And this Grammont is our only lead. Our only connection! He’s walking out the front door now.”

  Ari smiled thoughtfully. “Has the sun set?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s in for a surprise.” Ari stood and stretched. “I think I’ll go for a walk. Want to come, Miner?”

  “Sure.”

  “And bring that special GeM of yours.”

  “Never go anywhere without it.” Miner grinned.

  “Toad, you might want to wake up that eye in the sky.”

  As Ari and Miner left, Kristall muttered, “I just don’t want to see the landscape decorated with body parts.”

  It was her way of thanking them.

  ***

  A few minutes later, Ari and Miner stood in the exit from Shin Bet’s nondescript building, looking out at Queen Helena Street. A peculiar sight in this heat in his suit, tie, and starched shirt, Lucien Grammont was easy to spot, talking to a policeman on the crowded corner. They got close enough to listen.

  “No taxis tonight, sir. Yom Kippur.”

  Grammont looked around in amazement, taking in the fact that there was no motor traffic in the street. No car, bus, or even motorcycle would desecrate this night in Jerusalem.

  “How do I get back to my hotel—the King David?” Grammont asked the policeman, who shrugged and pointed vaguely eastward.

  “Walk?”

  The policeman turned away. By now the pale gradient of the sky barely lit the street, and people were hurrying home or to synagogue; they fled the intense heat as if it were a storm. Grammont looked confused for a moment, then put his GeM to his ear.

  “Can you pick up the call?” Ari asked Miner, who leaned on the building and manipulated his unusually bulky handheld.

  “Not possible. He’s using his red circuit.”

  The call was a short one; Grammont rang off and then examined his handheld.

  “What’s he looking at? Can you see his screen?”

  “That I can do.” Using a setting that was not supposed to exist, Miner tried pairing the screen on Grammont’s GeM with his own. His thumb moved quickly and lightly over the tiny display. “It’ll be hard. There are too many active screens…”

  Ari glanced around; several pedestrians within a few meters were talking on GeMs as they walked along.

  “I think this is his. The display’s not Hebrew or English. What is it?”

  Ari looked down discreetly into Miner’s hand. “It’s French. That’s it.”

  “He’s looking at a map of the city. The old town. Probably just looking for a route back to his hotel.”

  The screen illuminated a jumbled lattice of streets with a blue bubble over the corner they were standing on; all at once, a little thread fluoresced purple across the map and ended at a red bubble—the King David Hotel.

  Staring at the GeM, Grammont started across the street. Ari and Miner looked at each other, and Ari rang his own GeM. “Toad, do you have a fix yet?”

  “Not quite yet. They’re still positioning the satellite.”

  “Grammont doesn’t know Miner, so he’ll follow him. Once you get him onscreen, don’t let go.” He rang off.

  “I’ll stay with him,” Miner whispered and padded off behind the erect figure disappearing into the crowd.

  Ari had other work to do, and he wasn’t pleased about it. An idea had come to him; it was time to see Kristall.

  Shin Bet Headquarters, St. Helena Street, Jerusalem, 1830h

  “Are you hungry?” Ari asked.

  Maryse sat sweating in one of the green interrogation rooms below ground. It was hot and dank, smelling of old effusions of pain.

  She had not looked at him when he entered.

  “I’m sorry you have to stay here,” he said, more gently than he intended. “But how should we know what to do with…” He broke off.

  “To do with me?” she murmured.

  “I’m only trying to protect my country.�
�

  Maryse tensed her lips and stared at the wall.

  “Thank you for being on my side today,” he offered. “It was brave. Also foolish…but very brave.”

  The air in the room smothered him—he had always hated closed rooms, small spaces. He wished he could take her out of there, but Kristall had given strict orders—and in part for Maryse’s protection. She seemed very pale and slight in the black clothes the matron had found for her.

  “Maryse, please. I need to know more from you. This country is at stake…”

  “This country,” she breathed. “This country. The whole world is in pain because of this country. Has been my entire life. Every day, the oldest drumbeat in the world—‘trouble in the Mideast.’ ”

  “We have a right…”

  “Yes, I know all about your bloody rights. The rest of us seem to have no rights but to suffer and be terrorized.”

  Ari sighed and stood to leave.

  Maryse shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend that.” She turned her back.

  “Maryse, we’re caught in a maze with no way out. There’s a rogue toying with us out there. We don’t know where he is, what he wants, or why he wants it. He seems to be able to go anywhere and do anything he wants—and he’s got Jerusalem in his hand.”

  She turned again and looked coolly at him.

  “I won’t be interrogated.”

  “Maryse?” he asked quietly. “You said that each of the Cherubim had a successor, someone to take his place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re to be a successor.”

  “Yes, to Jean-Baptiste Mortimer. That is, if I want it. And if I qualify.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  Frustrated, she stood and leaned against the wall. “I don’t. I don’t. Why can’t you just believe me?”

  “Because you’ve held back so much.”

  Maryse closed her eyes; she was exhausted, he could see.

  “What I’ve held back…it was a promise I made. All right?”

  “I’m sorry, Maryse. But I need to know everything you know.”

  “Everything I know is ancient history.”

  “Ancient history is what matters here,” Ari said. “The mission of the Order of Cherubim is to protect the temple, like guardian angels. How do they do it?

  “Originally, with their armies. Today, it’s different. Persuasion. Influence.”

  “What kind of influence?”

  “It’s a very old story. A sort of chain of influence over the centuries. One old man talking things out with another.”

  “Old men?”

  “As I hear. A Prime Minister gets a call from a former Prime Minister, who was in turn influenced by the one prior to him. The Cherubim keep the chain going.”

  “They just…talk?”

  “They talk. Sometimes they act. When the Israelis took control of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, a lot of radicals wanted to take over the Temple Mount. One influential rabbi tried to have the Dome blown up immediately. But the defense minister stopped him.”

  “The defense minister would have been Moshe Dayan.”

  “Yes. The next day Dayan walked up the Mount and met with the Muslim authorities. They all sat down on the floor together in the Al-Aqsa mosque and talked. Ever since then, you have this modus vivendi—live and let live.”

  “Are you saying Moshe Dayan was one of the Cherubim?”

  “No, but someone had talked to him long before. Chaim Weizmann.”

  “Weizmann was the first president of the state of Israel…”

  “And one of the Cherubim.”

  Ari smiled at this. A long, quiet conspiracy of peace. A portrait of Weizmann hung on the wall in his parents’ home; he had known that grandfatherly face as far back as he could remember. Along with his father’s silver menorah and the pictures of forgotten relatives that crowded the house, the portrait connected him to an unnamable longing, a bond in the blood and the heart that he had never broken, despite the detached life he led.

  In the same room, another portrait showed a bearded Weizmann making a gift of a Torah scroll to Harry Truman, the American president who in 1948 had enabled the creation of the state of Israel—both grandfathers of his country, beaming with hope even as the world woke from the horror of the Shoah. There was something comforting in the thought of this long, long line of wise men, calm men.

  “What about Mortimer? How did he become one of the Cherubim?” Ari asked her.

  “At first, the Master of the Templar Order was also—quite secretly—the fourth member of the Cherubim. When the Order was dissolved, the role passed quietly to certain Masters of the Order of Malta, which took over the mission of the Templars. Years ago, Jean-Baptiste succeeded to that role.”

  Ari nodded. “Maryse, what I’m going to ask you to do—I wouldn’t ask it of anyone if I had a choice. I’ve already cleared it with Kristall.”

  She looked remotely at the wall. “You need me to draw him out, don’t you? You want me to be a decoy for the Unknown.”

  “We don’t have an option. We can’t find Mortimer to do it, and you don’t know who the other Cherubim are. The Unknown Subject has you all in his sights for some reason—he’s trying to eliminate the Cherubim—and the only way we can think of to bring him out in the open is to provide him a target.”

  A veil of hair hid her face from him. Then she turned and, for the first time, smiled. “I suppose it is my job now. Perhaps, one way or the other, this is how I qualify…to be a guardian angel.”

  Jaffa Gate Room, King David Hotel, Jerusalem, 1900h

  The air-conditioning system, temporarily turned on, pumped and struggled against the heat from television lights and the hundred bodies jammed into the meeting room. Despite the effort, the room was roasting. Nervous, excited, the pilgrims seemed not to care about the heat. “Worse in Texas. Much worse,” one of them muttered to another, who nodded.

  Lambert Sable wandered on in a sagging white suit, his face gushing with sweat, and stood before a camera. “Folks, this is a direct link back to the End-of-Times network.” He was an awkward speaker, but more effective for it. “It’ll be Pastor Bob’s last TV address, before you and me and him walk back to glory tomorrow morning. Let’s make it count.”

  Cheers broke out as Pastor Bob, also in white but immaculately tailored, strode into the makeshift studio and hit his floor marks precisely.

  “I speak to you tonight for the last time. I speak to you from Jerusalem, the city of God Almighty, with my final message and warning to a world on the eve of collapse. It is now only a matter of hours before the Lord takes his church to him in the clouds.” There was cheering.

  “Thus, before you tonight is this great and final invitation: Accept him now, this minute, or by dawn you will be left behind in this world which is spiritually called Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “The prophecy of First Corinthians 15 is about to be fulfilled. Behold, I’ll tell you a secret. We shall not die, but we shall be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye we shall be caught up in the clouds.”

  “Those who are left behind will find themselves in a world turned upside down, where evil is called good and good is called evil, where every kind of sick perversion reigns. When all true Christians are gone, secular-humanist atheists will rule that world for seven years of Tribulation.

  “As I stand here, I can look over the towers of Jerusalem. I can see the sights Jesus saw; I also see what he didn’t see—that sacrilegious Dome where the temple of his Father stood. The abomination of desolation, just as he predicted in Matthew 24. Well, as the book of Daniel prophesies, after the saints are raptured the Jews will destroy all that and rebuild the Temple. Tonight, this very night, the Jews are observing Yom Kippur all over this dark land of Israel. Soon they will rise up and clear this abomination from the most sa
cred ground on the planet and fulfill prophecy—the temple of the Jews will stand once again on that very spot I can see from my hotel suite window.

  “And then the Anti-Christ, that Jewish incarnation of evil, will stand in that rebuilt temple right here in the city of Jerusalem and declare himself to be God.

  “At that moment the wrath of God will fall on this earth. The Islamic hordes will descend on Israel and there will be war like this world has never seen. Millions of Jews will be killed. If God didn’t cut the seven years short, not a single Jew would be left.

  “Then there’ll be earthquakes, fire, and flood. Tornadoes will sweep the earth. Along with the Jew, the Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, the pagan, the witch—all the cultists, the heathens and humanists, the socialists and secularists, the progressives and the pope-worshipers, the gays and God-haters—all of the lost and the lukewarm will be swallowed up together in the prison of Hell, into a lake of fire that burns forever.

  “Friend, you’ll be with them if you don’t join us now. You’ll see Hell on earth—breathe Hell, smell Hell, hear Hell! The Bible is clear: The wicked shall be turned into Hell!” More exultant cheering.

  “You have one chance left to escape the seven years of Tribulation and an eternity of Hell. That chance is now, tonight. You can’t afford to wait one minute longer.

  “Tomorrow at dawn, through the generosity of Mr. Lambert Sable, myself and hundreds of pilgrims will stand at the foot of the Mount of Olives, dressed in white to welcome the Lord when he comes to take us up. You can be with us in spirit; more important, you can be with us in the clouds.”

  A gust of cheers from the pilgrims, and it was over.

  They overran the lobby, scuttling to the elevators, mothers with children begging to use the swimming pool, elderly women, perspiring middle-aged men with the leftovers of twenty-year-old goatees.

  “Americans,” Miner thought. “Religion-crazy.”

  He had taken a chair in the corner of the lobby lounge, and played a game on his GeM while keeping one eye on Grammont and monitoring the babble from Shin Bet headquarters in his earpiece.