Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (10 page)

Gabby dropped her eyes over her hummus. Of
course, she had been thinking about this, but now it was out in the
open.

Itamar said, "That Matternly is obviously
hiding doesn't say much for his innocence. I must give you an
official warning. Since we have his car spotted at the scene of a
crime, he's now a fugitive. We know you would like to help him.
Don't. It will only get you into big trouble. "

The amicable feeling Gabby felt for Itamar
and Zabronski was replaced by a sense of mistrust. She was about to
question the soundness of their position when Zabronski added,
"Which brings up another issue. I've had the unpleasant job of
delivering to his tribesmen the remains of a Bedouin youth murdered
near Qumran, just about the time the cave was looted. The murder of
a Bedouin invariably triggers tribal vengeance. An eye for an eye.
The government has attempted to intervene in such matters, but we
never succeed. The Bedouin say to us 'Mind your own damn business
and we'll mind ours.' No matter how much we threaten them, they do
what they want. When I went to their encampment to speak with Sheik
Telfik banu al-Fahl, I delivered the warning he expected. I drank a
half-dozen cups of coffee and ate unmentionable parts of a sheep.
The elders don't like Jews, but, when in their company, they're
officiously hospitable. We all know they won't heed my warning. The
tragedy is that they're not terribly sophisticated. Half the time
they don't get the guilty party, though that doesn't seem to matter
much. For them, it's enough just to spill blood when blood has been
spilt."

"So what you're saying, major, is that
they'll find someone to murder in place of the youth?"

"One way or the other. The only thing that
works in Matternly's favor is that Bedouin are a timeless people.
They'll move slowly before striking."

"What exactly are you implying?" Gabby
asked.

"That if Professor Matternly is involved in
the death of the Bedouin youth, he's a target. He'll have a better
chance staying alive if we find him before the Bedouin do."

This alarming state she hadn't considered. "I
presume he's only exposed to that danger in the desert."

"That's the way it used to be. But these
days, Bedouin kids go to schools in the city. A few study at the
university. Revenge can have a long reach. And it gets worse. If
Matternly's working with stolen antiquities, he ventured into the
domain of organized criminals."

"Dr. Arad here isn't certain the mafia's
involved,” she interrupted. “Do you feel the same way?"
 "As a
policeman I'm trained to be suspicious. We know that the cave was
looted. That's the kind of work these people do."

"So Tim's now a target of both the Bedouin
and the mafia?" Gabby declared as though asking a question. "Is
that correct?"

"Afraid so," Zabronski said. "That's why we
need to tell you. We don't want you hurt through association."

"Thanks. I'll take a stiletto wherever I go,"
she almost growled.

Itamar said, "Don't be a martyr. Professor
Matternly may have started as a humble academician interested in
scholarship, but he's now involved in a very dangerous venture.
I've seen many an honest scholar corrupted by Mammon or glory. You
shouldn't suffer because of it."

Later, walking Gabby along King David Street
in the direction of the archeological library of the Hebrew Union
College, Itamar allowed his shoulder to touch hers in a gesture of
protection. She recoiled and failed to conceal her
exasperation.

"Where are you going with all this?" she
asked as they were about to part on the library steps.

"I intend to find Tim for his welfare as well
as yours."

"Got any new leads?"

"Trade secrets, I'm afraid."

"Lot's of ifs," she said, suddenly wanting to
retreat into the silence of the library where she could think. She
wondered if Tim were aware of the dangers. But just as important,
she sensed how he had boxed her into an impossible situation. From
now on, anything she did on his behalf would make her complicit
with him. Itamar and Zabronski seemed genuinely concerned for her
welfare. But for how long could she count on their sympathy?

"I'd love to see the cave at Qumran," she
said.

There's nothing there to see. Looters got
nearly everything. My people removed what little they left
behind."
"My thesis deals with prophecy in ancient times and I
devote two chapters to the Roman era." She paused before doing what
did not come naturally—bargaining like an Arab shopkeeper in the
bazaar. "Take me to the cave, then I'll do my best to help you find
Tim."

"It's out of bounds, secured by the
army."

"And you're the director of the Antiquities
Authority. How can the army keep you out?"

"I can't promise. Before taking anyone there,
I would have to get permission from the IDF. And to see anything,
we'd need trekking outfits and rappelling lines. Equipment like
halogen lamps and water—a lot of water. Entering a cave like this
is dark, dusty, and, I can’t overemphasize, claustrophobic. There's
barely enough space to breathe. Would you be prepared to crawl in
thick—and I mean thick—dust?"

"To visit a Dead Sea cave? Are you
kidding?"

CHAPTER FOUR

Tim compelled himself to think of Father
Benoit not as the deceitful man he had come to know, but more
charitably as a soldier defending a different church. In contrast
to his own views of the Carpenter's Son as a man to be modeled, not
worshipped, the Benoit's faith was anchored in Catholic doctrine of
a human body inhabited by a divine spirit. Earlier, he and Benoit
had agreed to overlook their theological differences because they
needed each other. But three words on a fragment of decaying
parchment had abruptly ended their mutual reliance. To Tim's mind,
they had entered the cave at Qumran as partners, but left as
adversaries.

With the exception of what was taped to the
small of his back, he accepted the impossibility of removing two
picnic coolers filled with fragments from the monastery of St.
George. Unassembled, these scraps of animal skins were nothing but
a scramble of words and letters, revealing almost nothing about
life in the first century. The electronic record he now possessed
on a pair of DVD disks was an entirely different story. Based on
his past work with fragmented documents, he was confident it was
possible to reconstitute these data into readable text. His lust to
study, but not to possess, the parchment records from the dawning
of Christian history had remained unchanged from the instant he
entered the Qumran cave, making it easy for him to leave Father
Benoit with the dubious honor of fighting over ownership of the
original documents with the Israeli authorities.

From the workroom, Tim made his way to his
sleeping cell and climbed out of his scrub suit, donning the light
desert clothing he had worn at Qumran. Over that, he wrapped
himself in the monk's woolen frock, loaned to him when he first
arrived at St. George. The heavy garment was bulky and hot, but
provided a measure of anonymity.

Shortly after his encounter with Father
Benoit, he noticed a sea change at the monastery. Monks, who
previously averted their eyes when he strode through the
passageways, now stared at him suspiciously. He feared that soon
Benoit would discover what he had removed from the workroom and,
given his friendship with Abbot Afanasieff, prevent him from
leaving. And the longer he remained in the monastery, the more
difficult it would be to escape. He knew of no secret corridors
leading beyond the exterior walls, thus he was obliged to plan a
getaway using the lift. That led to a difficult question: could he
count on monks to operate its pulley system?

He moved along the stone paths toward the
courtyard to re-familiarize himself with the lift's operation. In
the past, the gondola had rested on the cobblestone floor, unlocked
and ready for use, but he now discovered a rusting padlock bolting
it to the wooden platform. And to make matters worse, the crank
handles necessary to operate the gears were nowhere in sight. What
he feared most had come to pass; the monastery, once a retreat
promising peace and serenity, was now his prison.

He scanned a nearby wall to confirm the
presence of a rack holding keys to the cars parked outside the
walls. Two pairs, he knew, belonged to the brothers of St. George
while the third probably operated Father Benoit's Buick, evidence
that the Dominican priest had not departed for Bethlehem as he had
previously declared.

Aware that the wooden door to his sleeping
cell could be locked from the outside by a simple latching
mechanism, he refrained from returning there. There was no evidence
that Abbot Nicholas or Father Benoit actually intended to lock him
inside; nevertheless, it was prudent not to give them an
opportunity. He kept on the move, meandering along the monastery's
passages and inventing escape scenarios, each time returning to the
lift as the only means of descending from the parapets to the
ground outside. Now that the gondola had been locked, he was
certain to find no monks willing to cooperate.

A working plan came to him on his third
reconnaissance of the courtyard when he noticed that, while the
gondola was locked to the platform, its hemp lines remained braided
through the pulleys. If he could cut away enough line, he might use
it to rappel off the monastery wall. But to accomplish this
required enough time to severer and secure it. And time was a
precious luxury he didn't have. Tim turned his attention to the
monastery's schedule.

Prayers, meals, meditations, and household
duties followed a fixed routine. A bell tolling at half-hour
intervals normally propelled the monks into robot-like motion. They
moved smartly throughout the day until retiring at 2000 hours. Soon
after, the monastery went dark until a reveille bell rang at 0400
hours for morning song. As he was scanning and coding the
fragments, he had noticed that the brethren went their separate
ways during the day, but congregated together for morning prayers
at 0500 hours. This, he determined, would be the best time to
escape. The only tool needed to implement his plan was a cutting
instrument to sever a line from the gondola's pulley.

He was hungry, but refrained from entering
the refectory. He was tired, but avoided his sleeping cell. Though
his feet ached from long hours of standing in the workroom, it was
necessary to stay afoot and in constant motion. The risk of
entering his workroom to fetch a utility knife used for cropping
transparent paper in the scanning process was considerable. But
since he could think of no better way to obtain a cutting tool,
there was no alternative.

When he left the workroom earlier in the day,
he had carefully turned off the electricity, including power to the
business machines. But when he returned, electrified green LED
lights punctuated the darkness, a sign that someone had been there
after him. By candlelight, he surveyed his workroom, not surprised
to discover the picnic coolers filled with the Qumran fragments
gone. Accompanying them was his laptop computer, along with several
unopened Ziploc bags he had left stacked on the worktable.

"Let him have it," Tim mumbled to himself,
noting that Father Benoit had also taken DVD copies of the scanned
documents, though even with the software installed in his laptop,
it wouldn't be easy for him to assemble fragments into readable
form. At the moment, these relics from the dawning of the Common
Era seemed less valuable than a common utility knife needed for his
escape. To his relief, Father Benoit had focused on the artifacts
and ignored the tools needed in the sorting and scanning process.
Tim's knife rested on the second refectory table, exactly where he
had last seen it.

At 1900 hours, a bell tolled the final hour
before bedtime, followed by a new sequence Tim did not recognize,
perhaps a signal to search for him. Moments later, lights
throughout the monastery went dark, including exit lanterns
illuminating the passageways. Each monk on the move now carried
either a flashlight or candle. Tim slipped into a niche in the
limestone wall near his sleeping cell to watch how the brethren
departed from their evening routines. Having observed that, in
their passion for silence, these monks had developed uncanny
hearing, he resolved to move as little as possible. With so many
men now prowling near the sleeping quarters, he needed a new hiding
place.

His choice was a compromise between available
spots and those he could find without light. A half-hour later, he
squeezed into a cavity in the outer wall of the chapel, north of
the central courtyard where the stones trapped the night's cold,
penetrating both his thin desert clothing and his thick monk's
habit.

Near midnight, an emerging gibbous moon cast
a slight tinge of illumination to the darkness. He was bitterly
cold, exhausted from hugging the stonewall, hungry, and
inexplicably thirsty. In the wee hours of the morning, he assumed
that some of the monks had retired because their activity slowed.
The dial of his wristwatch illuminated upon demand, but he feared
even the slightest light might give him away.

At 0330 hours, he took advantage of the dark
to stretch his cramped muscles in preparation for the reveille bell
calling the brethren to morning song. After that, he had to move
quickly to the lift. He clung to the limestone walls, tiptoeing as
silently as possible past the refectory, then a laundry, a bakery,
and individual cells where a chorus of snoring sleepers muffled the
sound of his footsteps. A vegetable garden blocked his path and
sent him around a workshop where his shoulder dislodged a standing
garden hoe, sending it to the ground with a loud crack, followed by
a second unnerving clatter as it bounced. He froze in alarm,
breathlessly waiting to see if it had woken any of the brethren.
Habit would have him return this instrument to its original place,
but its future use as a weapon couldn't be overlooked, so it stayed
with him.