Bloodline (11 page)

Subtly ignoring her protest, he took out his card and handed it to her.

Then she remembered his reports from the Golan as fighting between Syrian and Israeli forces raged in the background. As an Israel-based correspondent for a US network, his reports were sometimes broadcast on Israeli television. Yael felt slightly embarrassed that she hadn't recognized him.

Yaniv Grossman smiled his devastating smile, full of perfect American teeth and apple-pie cheeks, and said to her, “You're a fascinating woman, Dr. Cohen. The find is fantastic but I think you're just as interesting. I'd like to do a background piece on you. For American audiences. You're beautiful and smart. You're the face of modern Israel.”

“I don't know about that,” Yael said, and hoped desperately that she wasn't blushing.

“Well, US audiences rarely see any Israelis who aren't rabbis, feral settlers, or soldiers, so you'll be like a breath of fresh air.” He let out a small chuckle, deliberately self-deprecatory as a counter-balance to his fulsome and, she thought, fawning approach. “What do you say?”

She shrugged. “I'm just a doctor who got lucky. I'm sure there's very little about me that your viewers would be interested in.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. You'd be amazed at how interesting I can make you, Miss Cohen. It is
Miss
Cohen, right?” he said.

As Yael walked out of the museum, she wondered whether she'd just been propositioned for a television program or for a date. Certainly he was handsome, but the slickness of his American attitude annoyed her. Where some might have seen confidence she saw only entitlement. But the contemplation of Yaniv Grossman only partially distracted her from the thoughts in her head that seemed to be coming from twisting strands of DNA.

A
HIMAAZ LAY AWAKE,
staring at the low ceiling of his house, thinking about the things that Naamah had said to him, wondering whether he'd ever get to sleep in the palace of the high priest. For years he had accepted his lot of being a minor functionary in the priestly hierarchy of Israel. Azariah, his brother, was the favored one, the gifted one in the family.

But now he held in his grasp the chance of becoming high priest himself. Suddenly he had a patron, a woman who had recognized his talents. And why not? Why shouldn't he be the high priest? As a descendant of the line of Zadok, why shouldn't Ahimaaz rise to the top? He knew as much, was as devoted to Yahweh, and prayed just as fervently as any other priest.

Yet, though he smiled and bowed, willingly did Azariah's bidding, and had married Solomon's daughter Basmath, Ahimaaz was never the one to whom the Israelites looked for rituals or comfort or advice, nor the one upon whom the king called in time of need.

As third in charge of rituals, he was sometimes invited to the home of Azariah when there were matters of importance to discuss. But Ahimaaz knew that Azariah's invitations were delivered at the behest of King Solomon, who asked the high priest to include him. It was both the advantage and the curse of being married to Solomon's daughter.

Try as he might, he had begged Basmath to intervene on his behalf with her father, to get her to use her influence so that Solomon would elevate him to the position of second in command of the priesthood. Yet, she had refused. He knew that she held affection for him but she would not raise a finger to intercede on his behalf with her father.

But now, as if from nowhere, Naamah the Ammonite had delivered power into his hands.

The next day a message came to him from the third queen, delivered by a female servant, evidently one she trusted. The message gave Ahimaaz the task he must do to set the wheels of his ascension in motion, though the message was phrased as a pondering question rather than an instruction.

What if Azariah was the worshipper of pagan gods?

Could he? Could he plant such a seed? Place a pagan idol in his brother's house?

Was it only last night, in the fierce heat of Elul, that Naamah had brought these ideas to him? He knew that for the past few months she had done more than sow doubt in Solomon's mind; she had played him like a harp. By allowing him to find certain documents, by having servants tell him that Abia and that Azariah seemed to disappear without trace for long periods during the day—by telling him that his first wife, Tashere, was writing to foreign kings without Solomon's knowledge—Naamah's lion of Judah had growing concerns about the loyalties of his son and heir, and his high priest.

T
HE IDOL WAS HEAVY
in his clothes. Secreted inside an internal pocket of his priestly robes where he normally kept the money Israelites gave to the priesthood on visiting the house of the Ark of the Covenant, Ahimaaz felt its density weighing him down as he shuffled in the dead of night toward the lavish house of his brother. He felt debased by the closeness of the pagan idol to his skin.

When Jerusalem was conquered by Solomon's father, David, the fervor of the citizens to destroy all that had been Jebusite was so great that a tide of burning and smashing was unleashed on all the images of their gods. The idols and statues, shrines and altars, were put to the torch and the axe. Forbidden to set foot on the top of the mountain on which their evil temple stood, the people vented their horror and disgust on the Jebusite houses, the household gods, and the workshops that made the idols.

Ahimaaz was hard-pressed to find even one idol that didn't belong to one of Solomon's foreign queens or concubines. Such artifacts were rare and, worse still, the act of acquiring one would see Ahimaaz face the same fate he had determined for his brother. In the end he had traveled beyond the walls of Jerusalem to a tiny village where nearby caves held ancient graves of the Jebusites. At first he was met with nothing but dirt, sand, and bones. He despaired but kept digging with his hands through the pagan bodies and tearing at their shrouds until he found what he sought. It was small, only slightly larger than a man's hand. Dense and heavy and made of black marble or some such stone. Or Ahimaaz thought it might be made of copper that had been burned in a fire. But when he looked more carefully in the light, he saw chips and cracks over its surface, which told him it was stone. Though time had worn it down, it was still a ghastly image of Moloch, the god with horns and an open maw. Ahimaaz smiled wryly at the idea that Moloch was an Ammonite god, the god of Naamah; it was fitting, then, that this should be the instrument in her plan.

Ahimaaz was met at the door of his brother's house by a servant. The young woman knew Ahimaaz on sight even though he was an infrequent guest. “The high priest is not here,” she told him. But he knew that already and had planned his visit to coincide with his brother's absence. He explained that he needed access to the high priest's study and the scrolls and parchments that were kept there. Ahimaaz had prepared a detailed story but it was unnecessary. The young girl was not one to question a priest of the family of Zadok, and spoke no word of challenge.

Azariah's private study was remarkably small and unimpressive, little more than an antechamber to the otherwise lavish house. Ahimaaz chose in that moment to see this as a sign of his brother's misdirected priorities, valuing showy opulence over pious reverence. Yet, the small room was laden with shelves of scrolls and parchments, stone tablets and waxes. There was no shortage of places in which to secrete the idol.

He cast his eyes about the room as he took the pagan statue from his robes. A small shelf stood alone against the smallest wall at the end of the room. Stacked with scrolls like the others, it nonetheless appeared to be special in some way, perhaps holding the most important texts. A mat was laid in front of it, adorned with bright colors and clearly not of Hebrew origin, a style and pattern foreign to Ahimaaz's eyes.

Yes, this would be the place, he thought to himself. But as he took short steps toward the shelf that he intended to be mistaken for a shrine, Ahimaaz suddenly stopped. In one corner of the room, leaning casually against the wall, was an object wholly out of place. In a study replete with scholarly pursuits and the dry solemn air of a library was a child's toy.

A spinning top, wide as a dining bowl, wooden and covered in colored paint panels. It was worn, the hue faded, the edges chipped and bruised from years of play. But the sight of it upset Ahimaaz. It was foreign and yet familiar. Ahimaaz knelt beside the toy and reached out to pick it up. Years had dimmed his
memories, yet the feel of the spinning top in his hand brought them back in vivid color.

Ahimaaz and Azariah as children sitting on the cold stone floor of their father's house. He younger and looking in love and admiration at Azariah, who seemed to know so much. Cackling laughter as the boys each spun the top and watched the colors blur and blend into a streaky white. Setting up wooden stick soldiers and watching the army of David defeat the army of the Philistines and bring down the giant Goliath of Gath. Ahimaaz lying, belly pressed flat and chin on the floor, as he watched his brother spin the top with a thin rope with greater speed and dexterity. Watching it spin on a single spot, the colors blending until they became a blur of white before teetering and sprawling over. And the colors magically reappearing.

Ahimaaz shook off the memory and looked down at the objects in his hands—a child's toy in one palm and the image of a child-eating idol in the other. He couldn't be a child anymore; he could no longer be dazzled by his brother's spinning of toys. Ahimaaz dropped the top back into the corner, placed the gruesome statue just out of sight on the shelf, and walked away as quickly as he could, leaving the childhood memories behind him.

I
N THE END,
it was so much easier than Ahimaaz dared to believe. The idol was found by a servant, a girl in Naamah's pay, and, as instructed, she brought it to Solomon's treasurer, who reported the high priest's great act of heresy. But this was only the second blow to Solomon that morning, and not the only arrow to find its mark. When the news of the idol was brought to the king, he already held in his hand a scroll under his own seal, written in his own court by his son Prince Abia. A scroll intercepted by a soldier in Abia's retinue but faithful to Solomon. When he opened
it and read the words supposedly written by his son, he wept. His own son had written to Og, king of Bashan, asking him to supply him with an army so that he could deliver Israel into Og's hands and rule in Solomon's place as a vassal of the great king.

So when Ahimaaz walked into the throne room, it was in an uproar. And he watched in breathless awe, silent and brooding, while his brother Azariah was exposed. Despite the protestations the high priest made while he was being rushed out of his palace, Solomon had refused to listen, shouting at him that he had transgressed against Yahweh and that he would be banished from Israel forever.

And on the following day, the lies and gossip that Naamah had been whispering into Solomon's ear grew to fruition. Abia, Solomon's firstborn son, was accused of treason, of plotting with foreign kings to overthrow him. Abia protested his innocence but was banished to the Valley of Hinnom and beyond. Tashere screamed at Solomon that the allegations were lies, but she refused to beg for mercy, instead turning and addressing the court and swearing to bring ruin on the heads of all who had slandered her son.

Solomon's fury at Abia's treason would not be abated, but to command Tashere to follow her son into exile would have meant war with the Egyptian pharaoh. Instead she quietly retreated into the palace, where she wept and rent her garments as though her son had died in battle.

In the large square of Jerusalem's upper public marketplace, a crowd gathered. Rumors had been rampant in the city, and the people came to hear the king's herald announce what was happening. Their shock at the cherished high priest's betrayal of Yahweh was enough to make everybody weep.

And when it was announced by the herald that Ahimaaz was to be the new high priest for the forthcoming Temple of Solomon, people turned to one another and said, “Who did he say? Ahimaaz? Who's Ahimaaz?”

E
LIAHU
S
PITZER WATCHED
the live television broadcast from the lounge suite in his office on the third floor of a nondescript building in the middle of Jerusalem. As deputy director of the Arab affairs department, he was entitled by the bureaucrats to an LCD TV, which he'd initially enjoyed, but he found that he lost the privacy of his office when crowds of employees would congregate to watch a sports match beamed live.

Shin Bet's headquarters were about as different from those of Britain's MI5 and America's CIA and FBI as it was possible to imagine. He knew all three agencies well and visited them regularly to discuss internal security prior to an official visit by somebody important. But while the Brits were always pompous and looked down their noses at him, and the Americans were his bestest lifelong buddies until he asked for something, these other nations' offices were strictly hierarchical. His organization, Shin Bet, responsible for internal national security, was strangely open and informal. If the janitor wanted to watch the news while Eliahu was sitting at his desk, he'd probably just excuse himself and switch the TV on.

Even the building itself was unusual by international standards. At ground level were shops and a narrow corridor open to the street but guarded in its recesses by two security experts. The corridor led to an elevator where the floors were marked 1, 5, 6, and 7. To all visitors, there were no levels two, three, or four. Only by optical iris identification and fingerprint recognition would a potential visitor get to these floors unless escorted by one of the security men if the visitor was known. Those who'd never been before would be interrogated initially by the security guards, then sent skyward by elevator to a bombproof office on the tenth floor, and then, if they were given permission to enter,
they'd be escorted down by a mid-level security person to levels two, three, or four for their meetings.