The Flaming Sword

by Breck England

  “That pillar. It does the same work as the others, but it is unlike them. So are you unlike your brother believers. You…you are the Sword now.”

  His strength nearly gone, Hafiz continued to struggle around the curve of the aisle. Amal was now carrying him. Amal had learned from the imam that the Dajjal must be destroyed before the Day of Requital, that Isa the Prophet would come down and destroy him. Amal could not imagine that he could play any role in such things. What does it mean, I am the Sword?

  Hafiz seemed to hear his thoughts. “As the stars circle Yean the pole star, so do we circle the foundation stone of God,” the old man coughed. “God is the Center. The stars cannot stop themselves in their orbit; neither can we escape the curve of the future that He ordains.” So they labored on until the old man was satisfied; seven circumlocutions of the holy rock. He could go no further.

  “But it’s time for sleep. Time to go home,” Amal complained. Fatigue had dulled his fear.

  And then he was awake again.

  A sharp noise of boots on the stonework.

  “There will be no sleep yet,” Hafiz whispered. “The Dajjal is here.”

  The Temple Mount, Jerusalem, 2310h

  The Dome of the Rock floated overhead like half a golden sun rising from a dark sea.

  Maryse walked through the barely visible violet band of the alarm system and felt a slight prickling on her skin; so, this was the vaunted “Flaming Sword”—the supposedly impenetrable electronic barrier around the Temple Mount.

  The high-current electron beam flowed from millions of nanoscale pillars embedded in the gates. The artificial intelligence controlling the beam could supposedly detect the most elusive anomaly—a capsule containing milligrams of hydrogen cyanide gas, a miniature printed pistol, a few grains of fentanyl.

  As Maryse passed, a high whine issued from the guardhouse at the Moroccan Gate. The Waqf guard touched a screen, shut down the alarm, and inspected her weapon. Ari and Kane went through the same routine.

  On the other side of the barrier, they were met by an Israeli officer. Maryse looked hard at him. He was lean and short, smart in a uniform the color of sand. Ari snapped a few words at him in Hebrew, and the man produced a card—Ari held it up to the light to validate the man’s identity.

  The lieutenant led them in a straight march across the plaza toward the Dome. Maryse looked around nervously, her hand on her weapon, staring into the distance made darker by the floodlights on the dome. She thought she saw writhing shapes outside the pool of light; perhaps waves of heat or the twitching of her eyes from exhaustion.

  At Shin Bet headquarters, Ari had encouraged her to rest for a while, but she couldn’t sleep on the hard bunk they gave her in an underground room. Dozing in the heat, she had dreamed about hanging from a speeding bus in the desert; a panicked mob ran alongside the bus, shouting for help, as the sun grew more intense and the landscape whitened to the color of bone. Then a pillar of smoke boiled into the sky; across the plain, thousands of people dried up along with their shadows.

  Startled awake, she had found Ari standing over her; David Kane, dressed in a black commando uniform that was almost elegant, waited in the doorway. They would all three attend the meeting of the Cherubim uninvited.

  “This is the plan… in the broadest possible sense, of course,” Kristall had said in her accustomed ironic voice. “If we’re going to draw Unsub out, we’ll need to keep our presence minimal but maintain absolute security at the same time. If the Cherubim really are his target, we’ll have our precision instrument—Davan—waiting for him inside the Dome. Inconspicuously.” She eyed him and he nodded.

  “I’m going in too,” Maryse had said almost involuntarily. “I’m another possible target—more incentive for Unsub. And I can handle myself.”

  Kristall looked skeptical.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Ari shook his head. “And it’s not necessary now. We have the Cherubim to decoy him.”

  “Dangerous for whom? I’m a far better shot than you.”

  Ari grinned at her; he had to admit it.

  “If you’re going into the Dome, I’m going as well,” Kane had announced, and Kristall did not object.

  Maryse sighed imperceptibly with relief as they arrived at the gate of the Dome and entered. An ethereal quiet came over them. The lieutenant departed, his heels snapping on the stone into the distance, and they were alone in the building.

  As planned, each of them silently moved into position next to one of the gates. A fourth gate would be unguarded, but under surveillance. Maryse was assigned to the south gate and, finding a secure place behind a marble pier, she sat down on the floor to wait. From here she could surveil the entry without being seen.

  Lamplight washed over the walls of stone and the red carpet on the floor. The patterned gray marble on the piers rippled upward like streams of milky sand. Inlaid medallions of the moon and sun alternated with ten-pointed stars. They reminded her of the star, moon, and sun cards of the Tarot deck. Roman arches topped the pillars that held up the dome, and beyond them Maryse could just glimpse starry golden galaxies spiraling around the base of the dome. It was like the observatory at Cambridge that she had once visited, a round cavity of a ceiling with a keyhole to the universe.

  She thought of the labyrinth at Chartres, of the maze stone at Glendalough—of the eternal re-imagining of the round heavens, the reaching for the center that should unite rather than divide.

  In the near-silence, she could still hear the tinnitus of the crowds outside the Mount. Passing through them, she had looked round quickly at the Jews sweating in their white robes, praying nervously, expectantly, as floodlights played over the plaza fronting the Western Wall. Severe heat made the worshipers restless, and they all kept one eye on the Dome, willing it to disappear—and fearing that it might. The night was made grimmer by the mournful chanting of the Kol Nidre, the hymn of yearning for atonement that the Jews sang on Yom Kippur. And among them those American pilgrims, too excited to sleep away their last hours, roaming the square, loitering smugly until the End.

  Then Miner’s voice came clearly into her earpiece. “Grammont has left the hotel on foot. We’ll keep you informed on his progress.” She heard Ari and Kane acknowledge, and she did the same.

  Maryse stood up quietly to observe the shrine. She had hoped the interior of the Dome would be cool; instead, it was hot as a greenhouse. The sacred Rock was invisible behind a circular wooden screen inside the colonnade of piers; palm-like columns marched around it. As her eyes adjusted to the pale light, she could see the veined purple porphyry of the columns and began to make out bunches of golden grapes coiled in mosaic over the green marble soffit overhead, elaborate fruits and foliage dripping like jewels from every surface. For a moment she imagined the vines on the walls coming to life, the fruit ripening in the heat. These stylized plants inlaid in the marble meant something, of course: This was Eden, guarded by the Cherubim at the command of God. This was the garden of Adam and Eve. Where so many others outside waited for the ending, Maryse caught a breath of a beginning.

  To her historian’s eye, it was a strange building—unlike any church or temple she had ever seen. No altar, no cross, no image. Nor was it like a mosque. From where she stood, she could see the qibla—the niche in the south wall indicating the direction of prayer—but the building was not oriented toward it. The qibla seemed almost an afterthought. Despite the monumental Koranic inscriptions, the Dome soared curiously beyond any particular idea of God, and yet centered on Him.

  She heard a footstep, and her heart bumped in her chest. Would it be Jean-Baptiste? How could he get through the maze of security around the Mount? Then she remembered what Kristall had said.

  “The Waqf seem to know about this meeting tonight.”

  “What do you mean, they seem to know about it?” she had asked.

  “We’ve had a little talk with th
em, and they don’t say yes, they don’t say no. They never really communicate with us unless they’re angry about something. So, we’ve given our orders. If someone comes toward a gate and the Waqf let them in, so be it.”

  They would have plenty of notice if anyone approached the Dome. And someone was approaching—it was the hard click of the lieutenant’s footsteps.

  But this was wrong. He shouldn’t be returning.

  She heard the west door open; then a shout in her earpiece and a simultaneous echo. Then nothing.

  “Ari?” she whispered. No answer.

  “David?”

  Kane’s voice hissed in her ear. “Sh. I’m coming.”

  Instinctively Maryse flattened herself against the pier, keeping the colonnade toward the west door in sight and her pistol ready.

  She held her breath forever, but there was nothing.

  Then someone emerged from the lamplit gloom. Walking calmly toward her, a curious look on his face—Ari.

  She glanced behind her. Kane stood by the qibla, and she breathed again.

  One relaxed second was too long.

  She only had time to glimpse the face, to recognize it.

  Too late. Her neck exploded with pain. Then darkness.

  Chapter 5

  Monday, October 11, 2027

  Beit Horon, near Jerusalem, 0010h

  Inside the van box, the darkness was almost complete, except for an occasional flash of light from the crack around the lid. Ari knew from the roar of the engine that the van was climbing rapidly.

  He gulped air from the bare opening and tried to think, tried to make sense of what had just happened.

  From his crouch behind a pier in the Dome, he had wondered why the IDF man was returning and kept his weapon ready. The door opened, and the lieutenant entered calmly enough; too late, he saw it was not the same man in the sandy uniform. In the gloom, the face was unclear. The instant he knew he was looking at the twin brother of Peter Chandos, the man disarmed him with a swipe to the hand and a smooth, simultaneous blow to the chin.

  Cursing himself as Chandos confiscated his GeM and earpiece, he heard a whispered instruction—there was a nine-millimeter pointed at his head—he was to remain completely silent and walk forward.

  Chandos had been smart enough to stay out of Ari’s reach. At a certain point, he was told to stop and stand still. The gun trained on him, Ari was forced to watch as the man crept up on Maryse in utter silence and struck her in the neck, a knifelike blow. She dropped without a sound onto the red carpet. The next moment, Chandos did the same to him.

  On waking, he had still hurt from the methodical blow he had received to the vagus nerve. Lying on the carpet alone, he could see neither Maryse nor Kane, but Chandos stood over him pointing a black pistol at his eye. “Get up,” the man whispered.

  And that was all he said. From a small cabinet he extracted a tunic and cap of a Defense Force officer, then motioned to Ari to put them on. He pocketed the gun and marched Ari out the door and across the moon-stained plaza, down steps, toward a warren of corridors he knew to be the Cotton Merchants’ Gate. Ari knew better than to make any signal at all to the two Waqf guards who stood at the Gate; they motioned them through the electronic cordon without a second look. Once beyond the gate, he ordered Ari to drop the disguise. Under a dim stone arch beyond the cordon, a group of sleepy IDF men rustled to attention at a salute from Chandos.

  After a helpless forced walk through shadowy alleys, they had come to Dung Gate, the south entrance to the old city, where an ancient van sat waiting. Chandos wordlessly ordered him into a large box in the van bed and locked him down inside it.

  Now the van was on a sudden decline and picking up speed. The faint wind did nothing to cool the box—the heat was like a force pressing on Ari’s body. He tried to think, but couldn’t for the memory of Maryse lying on the blood-colored carpet. He had to force her out of his mind; she was probably already dead, along with Kane. Chandos was so smooth, so calm, so conscience-free, as logical as a dancer in his motions.

  The van stopped and Ari heard the driver getting out. This might be his only chance—to overpower Chandos when he leaned over the box to unlock it.

  It was useless. The lock clicked electronically, and Ari peered out to see Chandos standing well away from the van, a remote control in his hand.

  “Stand up,” he motioned with his head, the nine-millimeter aimed exactly at Ari’s left shoulder.

  Ari stood and looked around quickly. He couldn’t tell where they were—some dry road in the desert. From the length of the drive, he estimated a place within ten miles of the city. A three-quarter moon tarnished the horizon; by its rusty light, he could see they were near a precipice.

  With this disciplined an enemy, Ari knew his only chance was the haphazard—and talk his only weapon.

  “I know who you are.”

  Chandos never took his eyes off Ari; there was no amusement in them. He removed his officer’s cap and for the first time, Ari noticed the man’s resemblance to himself: the same cable-like limbs, the trim head with dark cropped hair, the eyes.

  A gold ring on his finger shone with sweat.

  “Your name is Chandos, and you are an assassin. You murdered the Pope, you murdered Emmanuel Shor, you murdered Tempelman and Rachel Halevy and Catriel Levine.”

  Calmly, Chandos rummaged in the cab with one hand and pulled something from it.

  “And you murdered your own brother.”

  Chandos tightened his lips, unwrapping the parcel he had taken from the van.

  “Disguised as Rome police, you pulled inspection duty in the Sancta Sanctorum. You hid, removed the icon in the middle of the night, and when your brother came to look things over the next morning, you shot him and traded places with him. You even put a Cherubim ring on his finger. Why? To cast suspicion on the Cherubim?”

  Ari paused.

  “An hour or so later, it was you who went with the Pope into the chapel. When he knelt to pray, you maneuvered the gun into your brother’s dead hand, fired shots at the Pope, and left the gun there. You threw off your robe. When the police stormed the building, you mingled back in with them.”

  Chandos was expressionless.

  “At first I didn’t understand. But when I saw the blood spatter on the altar, I knew. It was a ritual killing. The red sash around his head, the blood sprinkled seven times—your brother was a sacrifice, a scapegoat.”

  Chandos spoke at last. “Exactly right. To you I am the cliché, the evil twin.” His voice was infinitely remote. “Cain, the envious stock character in a thousand bad movies, curling my mustache, coiling to strike at my poor, victimized brother Abel. But you have that part exactly wrong.”

  Ari was pleased; Chandos was talking.

  “My brother was a false priest, groveling to a false pope, an abomination in the temple of God. An Unholy Father who turned the Vatican into Sodom. So I knocked off his crown.”

  “That profane, wicked prince of Israel,” Ari encouraged him.

  “I, on the other hand, I am a true priest like my father.”

  “Like your father? Who is he?”

  “I’m a son of Aaron, a son of Levi. Yes, I made the offering. I did it to make atonement for the whole sinful Church. “

  Ari wanted to keep him going, and not just to buy time. “So you collected the blood from the wound and sprinkled it seven times with your finger…”

  Chandos nodded. “Leviticus. Chapter 16.”

  “But the ritual isn’t finished yet.”

  “No.” For the first time Chandos smiled, looking at Ari with a glimmer of admiration. “It isn’t finished.”

  “Because it’s the tenth day of the new year, the Day of Atonement. The priest has more to do. There must be two sacrificial victims. One of them is already dead.”

  “There must be three, actual
ly,” Chandos said simply, and he tossed something at Ari, which he caught instinctively. It was a skein of wool.

  “What’s this?”

  “You will wrap that wool around your head now.”

  In the pale light it was hard to tell, but the wool had a blood-soaked look. Ari understood.

  “It’s red.” He tried to recall his father’s recital of Leviticus. “The priest lays hands on the second goat and confesses over it all the wickedness of Israel. A red cord is tied around the goat’s head to represent the blood of the sacrifice, and it is sent into the desert to carry away the guilt.”

  “You’ve been well instructed.”

  “My father is a rabbi of sorts. And your father—what does he do?”

  Ignoring this, Chandos repeated, “You will wrap the wool around your head now.”

  “And this place. It’s the ancient sacrificial place, isn’t it? The place called Duda’el? Where the scapegoat was pushed off the cliff.”

  Chandos stared at him silently.

  Ari went on, “You’re the priest. According to the ritual, you need to lay hands on the scapegoat to transfer your guilt to the creature, l’azazel.”

  “That’s the work of the high priest, and he has already done it.”

  “You mean at the Temple? While I was…asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  Ari was more curious than afraid. “So you’re the messenger priest, not the high priest, the kohen gadol. That person would be your father?”

  Immovable, Chandos stared at him. Ari shifted his feet as if under the scrutiny of a camera continuously re-focusing.

  “What is your father doing now? Is he still in the Temple? The ceremony isn’t over.”

  “Now you will wrap the wool around your head.”

  Ari dropped the skein on the ground. “That you will have to do yourself.”

  “Then I will shoot you first.”

  “You can’t do that. The ritual requires a healthy living victim. And I am not going to be marched off the cliff like a lamb to the slaughter.”