Vigil (21 page)

Then he turned to the Metro section and read the remainder of the story. It appeared to be a mystery with no solution as yet, though the
Times
had gathered opinions and commentary from such exalted sources as the diocesan council, a high priestess of the Wiccan faith, and, on the theory that it might be an amazingly elaborate Halloween prank, Penn Jillette. Ezra didn’t think even for one second that it was a prank. Lately he had been through too much; he knew all too well that there were things not dreamt of in most people’s philosophies.

A mother holding her daughter’s hand was walking past the bench where he was sitting.

“L’Assemble Generale est ou les delegats viennent a
faire la paix l’un avec l’autre,”
the mother said. The girl smiled at Ezra, but he forgot to smile back until she’d moved on. He was still bitterly mulling over what he’d just heard the mother say—that the General Assembly was where countries came to make peace with each other. What a laugh. When he’d lived in Jerusalem, he’d always found it particularly apt that the UN office there was situated on a spot known since antiquity as the Hill of Evil Counsel.

He turned now to the front page of the Metro section and saw there a photo of a burning brick building. EXPLOSION AT NYU KILLS ONE, INJURES ANOTHER. Idly he scanned the piece; apparently an explosion and fire had done serious damage to a lab in the biology building on Saturday night. And while the cause was still of unknown origin, a fire marshal was quoted to the effect that “we’re looking at a string of high-intensity lamps which were recently rigged up with inadequate fuses.” A young assistant professor had been killed in the blast, and some other visiting professor had been very seriously injured. Ezra was just about to turn the page and return to the mystery of the bells when something struck him, something that would probably strike no one else.

It was the coincidence of timing.

The deadly explosion had occurred at approximately ten-fifteen, just one minute before the church bells had begun to ring. And while no one else would even
think
to connect the two events, a building fire and a pealing church bell, it was just the sort of thing that Ezra was doing all the time now—piecing things together, making connections, constructing a logical narrative out of seemingly unrelated scraps and fragments.

Nothing, he was discovering, was really coincidental. Not even the fact that this paper had been left intact on this very bench. For him to find. And read.

A couple of questions, then, confronted him. First, were these two events indeed connected in any way?

And if they were, was this connection anything that should concern him? Could these events, in any way, however remote or unlikely, have something to do with his own work?

He tried to think it through. He tried to remain coldly rational. There was certainly a theological element to what he was doing, and that element would—or at least it
could
—tie in to the ringing bells. Traditionally, church bells were rung to call the faithful to prayer, to signal the beginning and the end of each day, to announce such things as the wedding of a king or the news of a great battle won.

But they had also been rung over the centuries to warn of an impending disaster. Invaders seen landing on the coast. A fire or flood. The Black Plague.

Was there anything in his work with the Lost Book of Enoch that could have triggered the ringing? Oh, how such a question would appear to Dr. Neumann. She’d write it off in two seconds flat; yet another symptom of his Jerusalem syndrome, she’d claim, another manifestation of the rampant self-aggrandizement that was part and parcel of his overall delusion.

But he also knew things that she did not; he understood things that she could never comprehend. He was piecing together the most ancient narrative in the world; he was translating, slowly and laboriously, the words of the secret scripture; he was learning from Enoch, the father of Methuselah himself, the ways of good and evil. There was a battle, or so he had read last night, over the soul of everyone, a battle waged between two angels, and the outcome determined the person’s fate for all eternity. Was he uncovering something lost for so many millennia, something so fundamental to an understanding of the universe and our place in it that he had set off alarm bells, as it were, all over town? Even to Ezra, it seemed far-fetched . . . but it did not seem impossible.

Hadn’t that voice whispered
Yes
in his ear? Hadn’t it urged him, in the solitude of his room, to
go on
?

A tour group, clearly from the Middle East, began to shuffle past, the older women dressed in black chadors and veils, the men, or at least a few of them, in Arab headdress. Their tour guide, burbling in Arabic with what sounded to Ezra like an Egyptian accent, was wearing the whole get-up, a billowing djellaba and, even in this cold weather, open-toed leather sandals; he was walking backward as he faced the group, his arms waving, his voice swelling as he expatiated on the United Nations and whatever else. As the group moved past, their garments ruffled by the wind off the river, Ezra, who prided himself on such sensitivity, picked up their scent—the distinctive aroma of olive soap and tamarind seed, of dried dates and ripe figs, seasoned lamb and jasmine tea; it took him back, despite himself, to the streets of the Old City. Most of the people in the group passed in front of him, but a few went behind the bench; he felt himself suddenly surrounded by them, by a swirling mass of black-robed figures and hooded men, and just as it had happened before, he heard a voice whisper in his ear, Only this time it sounded like Aramaic. It sounded like the words for
“Finish it.”

He whirled his head around, but the group was simply ambling past him, no one even paying much attention, it seemed, to the man on the bench. But someone had spoken! He had heard a voice. The same low voice that he had heard once before. Ezra leapt to his feet.

“Who said that?” he demanded. “Who just spoke to me?”

But no one replied; one man looked at him quizzically, and Ezra said, “Was it you? Did you just say something to me?”

The man backed away, and several of the women drifted backward with him, muttering and clucking under their veils, which only made Ezra angrier. What were they saying? Were they trying to play a trick on him?

“Somebody here spoke to me, and I want to know who it is.”

“I assure you, sir,” the guide said, hastening to intervene, “no one in this group spoke to you. No one in this group speaks English.”

“It wasn’t English they were speaking,” Ezra shot back. “It was Aramaic.”

The guide, whose skin was lined and colored like a walnut, looked even more surprised. “That, too, would not be possible, sir. We are very sorry for any disturbance we have caused you,” he said, shepherding the group away, and saying something to them in Arabic under his breath. Ezra remembered enough of the language to pick up the word
majnoon,
or “madman.”

“You’re telling them I’m a
majnoon
?” he said. “You’re telling them I’m crazy?”

“Please move away, sir,” the guide said, “or I will have to take measures.”

“You will have to take measures? What measures would those be?”

Ezra stepped toward the guide, but before he could get any closer, there was suddenly a pair of United Nations security guards standing in his way. “All right, let’s calm down now,” one of them said.

“What seems to be the problem?” the other one said.

“One of these people said something to me,” Ezra declared, “and all I want to know is who it was.”

“This man is interfering with us,” the guide said, quickly ushering the last of his group toward the steps to the building. “He should be put under arrest!”

“We don’t do that in this country!” Ezra shouted at him. “Don’t you get it? You’re in America now! Not in some medieval Arab backwater! America!”

Even Ezra didn’t know where the fury was coming from; it was as if it had been pent up behind the flimsiest of dams, which had suddenly burst wide open.

“Yours is a country of infidels and devils!” the guide spat back. And then, correctly assessing his enemy, he added in clearly enunciated but soft Arabic,
“And Zionist swine!”

Ezra leapt at him, his hands reaching for the man’s throat, but one of the UN guards suddenly knocked his arms down and the other grappled him from behind.

“Make no mistake,” Ezra shouted, “there is a living, breathing God of Israel,” but before he could finish his thought, the very breath was squeezed out of him and he was wrestled to the pavement. He heard one of the guards shouting at the Arabs to move on, while the other, the one pressing his knee into the small of Ezra’s back, muttered code numbers into a walkie-talkie and asked for immediate assistance.

If he could have caught his breath, Ezra would have told him there was no need for that; he was already spent, there was no more fight in him.

But he never got the chance. The next thing he knew, his hands were cuffed behind him and he was being hauled to his feet. As several tourists looked on aghast—and a few took pictures—he was dragged toward the First Avenue gates to the park, where a police car, red light flashing, was screeching to a halt.

A cop jumped out and threw open the back door to the car.

“You don’t need to do this!” Ezra managed to shout, but the cop simply put his hand on the top of Ezra’s head and shoved him down and into the backseat.

The door clanged shut; Ezra had to lean forward toward a wire grill just to keep the handcuffs from cutting into his wrists. The security guards gave the cops a thumbs-up and the car pulled away swiftly from the curb. As Ezra looked out the back window and through the iron railings that surrounded the park, he could see the Arab guide smiling smugly at his victory. Smile all you want, Ezra thought—your days are numbered . . . and dwindling fast.

As soon as Raleigh left the gallery for the day, Beth
shoved the incomplete plans for the holiday party into a folder and hurried out the door. She took a cab straight home and, as expected, did not find Carter there. He’d spent the previous night at St. Vincent’s Hospital, and she suspected that was where he’d want to be again tonight. She grabbed the overnight bag they’d just unpacked from the country and threw in his razor, shaving cream, fresh socks, underwear, and a clean shirt.

At the hospital, she made the mistake of going in through the emergency room entrance. It was like entering bedlam, with dozens of people, some of them still bleeding, moving all about, others strapped to gurneys lined up in the halls like planes at an airport waiting for a runway. Over an intercom a nurse recited names, called for various doctors to report stat, reminded new arrivals to have their paperwork filled out and, most important of all, to have their proof of insurance readily available.

She followed the signs and arrows toward the general admittance and registration desk, which was several long corridors away. There she was told Guiseppe Russo was being treated in the intensive care unit on the fifth floor. Overnight bag still in hand, she took the elevator up.

Compared to the emergency room, the fifth floor was like a space station—all white light, hushed sounds, gleaming hallways, and closed doors. As she walked to the reception area outside the ICU itself, she saw two doctors conferring in low voices over a chart on a clipboard, an orderly pushing a sleeping patient in a wheelchair, a tall man in what looked suspiciously like a woman’s red coat bending low over a water fountain. On a blue plastic chair, his head down and shoulders slumped, sat Carter.

“Any news yet?” Beth said, putting the bag down beside his chair.

Carter looked up, his face unshaven, his eyes weary and bloodshot. “No, not so far. He’s still not conscious.”

Beth sat down beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. “Have you had a chance to talk to the doctors?”

“A few hours ago. The one in charge, her name’s Dr. Baptiste, said they’d let me know if there’s any change.”

Beth rubbed his shoulder. “Did she give you any idea when a change might come? I mean,” she said, searching for the right words, “did she think Joe might come out of it tonight? Tomorrow?” And though she didn’t add it, she was thinking—
Ever?

Carter shook his head. “No clue.” He leaned back on the chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “That’s why I don’t want to leave. He could come out of it anytime—nobody knows—and I want to make sure I’m right here if he does.”

That’s what Beth thought he would say. “I’ve brought you a few things I thought you might want. Your razor, some clothes, the book from your bedside table.”

“Thanks. There’s a public bathroom downstairs; I’ll use that to wash up later.”

They sat in silence, listening to the murmur of the nurses at the reception desk, the occasional sound of a closing door or a voice on the intercom overhead. Beth had hoped Carter would be prepared to come home, at least for a few hours, but she wasn’t surprised. She knew that he not only cared deeply about Joe; she knew that he also felt responsible for what had happened. The death of Bill Mitchell. The terrible injuries to Russo. At this point, all she could do was pray that Joe would pull through.

“You know,” she said, gently, “if you wanted to go home and sleep for a few hours, you could leave me here. If this Dr. Baptiste comes looking for you, I could call you.”

“No, that’s okay. I should be here.”

She debated saying what she was about to say, then went ahead. “What’s happened is awful,” she said, “but you’ve got to remember that none of it is your fault. None of it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He didn’t respond.

“It was just an accident. An awful, unforeseeable accident.”

His expression didn’t change. She knew he’d heard her, but she could also tell that what she was saying had hardly made a dent. Maybe someday he’d be able to let go of the guilt, but today, she knew in her heart, was way too soon.