Authors: Michael Byrnes
The rabbi had zoomed in on the face, captivated by the man’s aquamarine eyes, which mirrored his own.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
His bloodshot eyes broke from the monitor. “We will be just fine.”
“We”? Who else is he answering for?
she thought.
Sighing, he sat back and wove his hands behind his head. “I’m very much interested in how they came up with this image,” he said, pointing with his chin to the monitor. Having spent plenty of time in genetics labs, he was certain that the equipment was far too sophisticated to bring into Vatican City. Most likely, a sample would have been sent off-site. God willing, the geneticist’s laptop would have some record of it. “So I want you to search every file for anything pertaining to genetic studies.” The request seemed to overwhelm Ziv.
“I’m not exactly a scientist.”
“You don’t need to be
geneticist,
” he corrected.
You don’t need to be Dr. Charlotte Hennesey,
he bitterly thought—the name the field operative had found on the geneticist’s business card and driver’s license. A search of her passport activity would certainly show that she’d been in Rome back in June. Though it seemed unnecessary, he made a mental note to have his contact at Immigration Control run the query.
Looking apologetically at Ziv, Cohen realized he’d be better suited for this task. “Just get me a list of all the files. I’ll select the ones for you to look at.”
“Of course.” Lightning-fast fingers back at the keyboard, she stripped out unneeded information, filtered, refined.
In the quest to reclaim the purity of his family’s sacred bloodline, Aaron Cohen had become proficient in human genome studies—specifically the genetic research pioneered by Israeli professor Karl Skorecki in 1997, which traced unique gene markers in the patrilineal Y-chromosomes of Ashkenazi (European) and Sephardic (Spanish, North African, and Middle Eastern) Jews claiming to be
Kohanim—
the priestly descendants traced back over 3,300 years directly to Aaron and Moses. The Cohens. Of the world’s seven million male Jews, less than 5 percent bore the unique genetic markers passed down by Moses’s brother, Aaron. And since the mutations were preserved exclusively in the male Y-chromosome, intermarriages resulting from intercontinental Diaspora had virtually no effect.
Not surprisingly, the study’s expansive database showed that Cohen’s own Cohen Modal Haplotype had been the most pure to date, just as his late grandfather had promised—now vindicated by genome analysis. The problem with his own DNA was that countless mutations, or polymorphisms, had corrupted God’s original perfection. Genetic distortions had been passed down from generation to generation. No doubt it underscored God’s scorn.
The whittled-down list took almost fifteen minutes.
“Not too bad,” she said. “Looks like there wasn’t much here—at least important stuff, that is.” She clicked a command on the screen and the printer came to life, spitting out a seven-page directory of files sorted alphabetically and grouped by file type. Scooping the sheets up, Ziv passed them to the rabbi. “Just let me know what you want to see.”
In the Land Rover’s fully reclined passenger seat, Jules was fast asleep, snoring like a barnyard animal, hands crossed over her chest.
A new sun was rising over Jerusalem as Amit put the truck in drive with a scab-knuckled hand. He was bleary eyed, exhausted to the bone. The falling rocks had pounded his back, bringing a physical pain that was oddly reminiscent of the automatic gunfire he’d once taken to his Kevlar vest in Gaza—nothing broken, but definitely some deep bruising. Even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to sleep—not without something to numb the pain . . . and his growing paranoia.
For the time being, he felt they needed to keep moving. Call it instinct.
And for good measure, the flat black Jericho 941F pistol he’d recovered from the assassin rested on his lap, its two spare magazines weighing down the deep pocket of his cargo pants.
As the Rover lurched forward, Jules stirred and her bandaged knee touched up against the dash, making her flinch. Amit glanced down to verify that the bleeding had stopped. He’d done a good job cleaning the wound with the iodine from the truck’s first aid kit. The cuts beneath the second tight wrap of gauze were deep, but nothing that required stitches. All things considered, last night could have ended much worse.
He checked the mirrors to make certain that no suspicious vehicle was tailing them.
A few hours earlier, when she’d first spotted him from her hiding place in the ruins of the Essenes’ scriptorium down near Qumran’s visitors’ center, she ran up and threw her arms around him.
“What the hell just hap
pened back there?!”
she’d cried, squeezing too tight around his tender ribs. But he liked it nonetheless. It’d been a while since Amit felt like any kind of hero.
Now he was still searching for an answer to Jules’s question.
Why would a professional assassin try to kill them? Was what he’d uncovered at Qumran so shocking that its complete destruction was warranted? It made no sense. Sure, the wall painting was highly unusual and the unique chambers brought to mind all sorts of possibilities. And the glyph? Well, the glyph for Heliopolis could mean just about anything.
Then there was the matter of tactics. The assassin came with gun in hand, precisely when he and Jules had been seemingly trapped inside. The run-in, therefore, had been no coincidence. Amit wondered how long the man had been waiting to make his move, because there’d been no other vehicle in the parking lot last night. What had his plan been?
The jar.
At least the jar was safely locked away at the Rockefeller Museum. The jar and its scrolls.
The scrolls?
Gears were turning in Amit’s busy mind. Maybe his dear friend Jozsef Dayan could shed some light on matters. No doubt he’d finished the translations already. The man was a machine. The IAA would never get him to leave his post. And why should they? Age had only improved him. And years had only added to the trust Amit shared with the old man.
“Morning.”
It was Jules. He hadn’t even noticed she’d stopped snoring. With hands folded behind her head, she was arced in a stretch.
“Hey.” Out of the corner of his eye, Amit couldn’t help but notice that her shirt had hiked up to expose her lovely flat stomach. And her puckered navel was an innie. Nice. “Sleep okay?”
“Not too bad. Been a while since I’ve been laid out on a guy’s car seat.” She yawned. “So what’s the plan?”
He shrugged. “Tough to say. I’ll need to make some calls. I’ve got a friend who can probably help us.”
“A
friend
? How about the police?”
He shook his head. “Not an option yet.”
“What? You told me that
dément
is still alive. How is going to the police
not
an option?”
“Because of this,” he said, holding up the pistol. “Standard issue for the IDF. Also used by Israeli intelligence field agents.” He set the pistol back in his lap.
The mere suggestion of it had her smiling. “So what?” She cranked the seat-back upright. “You think he’s one of them?”
“Too early to say. But look here,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket and flipping open his cell phone. “That’s him.”
Jules closely scrutinized the grainy picture. He liked the fact that she wasn’t panicking. Most people would fall apart if someone had just tried to off them. “As I was saying. I’ve got a friend, a contact inside Israeli intelligence. I’m going to forward this to him, see if he can figure out who this guy is—who he works for, perhaps. You never know. We might get lucky.”
“How would that be lucky? Someone obviously wants you dead.”
“If he wanted me dead, he would have shot me on the spot.”
“Too suspicious,” she said. “If you were killed in a cave collapse in Qumran, no one would suspect a thing.”
He glanced at her and grinned. “Not bad.” Maybe the gun in his lap had only been the guy’s insurance. The real plan was probably a lot simpler, just like Jules was suggesting. Clever. “Sounds like you may have done this yourself a time or two.”
“When you go through a shitty divorce, you can come up with all sorts of ways to pull off the perfect crime.”
She had a point. His second breakup, with Sarah, hadn’t gone too badly—dare he say, amicably. But the first . . . The fierce custody battle for his two girls, and the fallout from Jasmina having forfeited her professorship to stay home and raise them? Brutal. Could have driven a lesser man to fantasize about unspeakable remedies.
“Sorry about this,” he said. “I had no idea . . .”
She reached out and gave his thick, dusty arm a gentle squeeze. “It’s an adventure. And I’m a sucker for a good thrill. No need for apologies.”
Her words were sincere. But she’d once told him that her eye color changed with her moods. And the silver in her irises seemed more pronounced. “Glad I could entertain,” he said with a half smile. “Thanks, Jules.”
The Land Rover climbed Hanoch Albeck into downtown Jerusalem. The city was still waking up, so the sidewalks were empty.
Amit pulled over so Jules could run into a café to use the facilities and get some coffee and pastries. As she got out of the truck, he reminded her that it was imperative that she pay only with cash.
He kept the truck running, his wary gaze scouting for anyone who looked shady.
Ten minutes went by before she came scurrying out the door with a carrying tray holding two Styrofoam cups cradled in her left hand. In her right hand, she victoriously held up a white paper bag and made a dramatic face as if she were just crossing the finish line at a marathon. Chuckling, Amit reached across and threw open the passenger door for her. She handed him one of the cups, then hopped in.
Taking a sip of the slightly bitter coffee, Amit checked his watch. It was almost seven a.m. “In a little while, I’ll make some calls. Need to get some petrol, too,” he said, checking the fuel gauge. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get some answers.”
“Worry?” she mocked, eyeing the Jericho. “With you packing a pistol on top of your crotch? A girl couldn’t feel more secure.”
After topping off the tank, Amit pulled the Land Rover away from the pump and idled near the petrol station’s pay phone. He hopped out to place a call from the anonymous landline. His contact picked up in two rings.
“Boker tov!”
Amit said cheerily.
“Good morning to you, Commander,” Enoch Blum replied through the receiver. “To what do I owe this pleasure . . . at nine a.m.? Need an extra shovel man at a dig?”
He chuckled. “Not a social call this time, I’m afraid.” On the other end of the call, he heard a car door shut, an alarm chirp.
“Must be very important,” he said.
“It is.” He could hear Enoch’s key chain jingle, then his hard soles clicking on cement. “You’re not in the tank yet, are you?” Amit had twice been called inside the Tel Aviv headquarters of Israeli intelligence to consult on hostage extractions in Gaza. And that’s the impression the cement and steel Bauhaus bunker left: like being in the belly of a Merkava tank.
“Just making my way inside,” he said over the whistle of a breeze blowing through the parking garage.
“Maybe you can hold off on that.”
The footsteps stopped.
“Your mobile isn’t monitored, is it?”
“No,” he said with some reservation. “They still allow me a couple of liberties.”
“They” were the Mossad Merkazi Le-modiin U-letafkidim Meyuhadim, or the Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations— aka the Mossad. They’d assisted Amit’s IDF unit on many operations. It was the two separate hostage extractions—both times, Israeli border soldiers had been abducted by al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and detained in Gaza City safe houses—that left the most indelible impression. The Mossad were a well-trained bunch.
Though the Mossad’s director reported to the office of the Israeli prime minister, its estimated fifteen hundred employees were civilians, among them communications techs, weapons specialists, psychological profilers, field agents, international operatives, and hired guns. Its organizational chart was a pyramid of deniability—top to bottom. And when your business objectives included hostage extractions, terror-cell infiltration, sabotage operations, and assassinations, it worked much better that way, Amit thought.
Like Enoch, many in the Mossad’s ranks had served in the Israel Defense Forces. Enoch had served his three-year conscription under Amit— back then, Enoch was a kid who had yet to shave and who was practically outweighed by his Galil (assault rifle).
“You all right?” Enoch asked with sincere concern.
“Eh. Been better. Have a few minutes for me?”
“Got a briefing in ten, but let’s hear it.”
Amit made sure to squeeze everything he could into a two-minute recap of last night’s assassination attempt. He mentioned the guy’s tactics: his silencer-equipped Israeli pistol, his knowledge of explosives. Deciding to play it safe, he left Jules out of the story. “Same kind of stuff we used to see in Gaza, if you know what I’m saying,” Amit told Enoch.
After a brief silence with more wind whistling through the receiver, Enoch finally came back with, “Hell, I don’t know what to say. Sounds to me like it has something to do with your excavations.”
“Definitely. The entire site was wiped out.”
An uneasy pause.
Enoch’s reluctance was not subtle. Amit couldn’t blame the guy— Enoch was a family man, and much better at it than himself. This was dangerous stuff that could have serious repercussions for him too. Then came the question Amit was hoping for.
“So how can I help?”
“I know it’s a huge ask—puts you in a very difficult position. But if someone on the inside wants me dead, I need to know.”
“If they want you dead, it won’t matter what you know.”
He had a point. Once you were caught in the agency’s crosshairs, the Mossad wouldn’t let up until a file could be rubber-stamped in red.
Should’ve killed him,
a tiny voice kept whispering to Amit.
Killed him and hid the body
. Then he’d at least stand a chance that the guy’s employer would think the job was a success—that Amit and Jules were buried in the rubble. “Just need a fighting chance. If there’s a directive, maybe you can find out about it. See if I’m marked. And if so, why?”