Kesev couldn’t back up a word of that threat, but he knew the specter of a search of the premises would strike terror into the heart of any serious antiquities collector. They all dipped into the black market now and then. Some bought there almost exclusively. If Miss Szobel followed true to form, a search might result in the seizure of half her collection; maybe more.
Miss Szobel’s pointing arm faltered and fell to her side.
“Wh-why? On what grounds? Why does Domestic Intelligence care—?”
“Oh, it’s not just the Shit Bet. The Mossad is involved too.”
She paled further. “The Mossad?”
“Yes. We have reason to believe that these scrolls are merely the latest in an ongoing scheme to sell worthless fakes to wealthy collectors and funnel the money to Palestine terrorist organizations.”
Amazing how facile a liar he’d become. It hadn’t always been this way. As a younger man he’d insisted on speaking nothing but the truth. But that youth, like truth, was long gone, swallowed by time and tragedy.
He sighed and rose to his feet. “Please do not leave the house, Miss Szobel. I will return in—”
“Wait!” She motioned him back toward the couch. “I had no idea terrorists were involved. Of course I’ll tell you where I bought it.”
“Excellent.” Kesev removed a pen and a note pad from his breast pocket. “Go ahead.”
“His name is Salah Mahmoud. He has a shop in Jerusalem—the old town. In the Moslem quarter, off Qadasiya.”
Kesev nodded. He knew the area, if not the shop.
“Thank you for your cooperation.” He bent and lifted the scroll and its lucite box from the table. “I’ll need to take this back to Shin Bet headquarters for analysis.”
“Must you?” She followed him to the door. “ I will get it back, won’t I?”
“Of course. As soon as we are finished with it.”
He waved good-bye and headed for his car. Another lie. Miss Tulla Szobel had seen the last of her forged scroll. He’d take it with him to Jerusalem for his visit to a certain Salah Mahmoud. The dealer couldn’t plead ignorance if Kesev held the scroll under his nose. Threats probably wouldn’t suffice to loosen Mahmoud’s tongue. Kesev might have to get rough. He almost relished the thought.
I asked the brother why he had come to me with this miracle.
He said to me, Because it has been told to us that you are to guard her, and protect her as if she were your own mother and still alive.
I told him, Yes. Yes, I will guard her with my life. I will do anything you ask.
--from the Glass scroll
Rockefeller Museum translation
SIX
Manhattan
The Gothic, granite-block bulk of St. Joseph’s Church sits amid the brick tenements like a down-on-her-luck dowager who’s held onto her finer clothes from the old days but hasn’t the will or the means to keep them in good repair. Her twin spires are alternately caked black with city grime and streaked white with the droppings of the pigeons that find perches on the spires’ remaining crockets. The colors of the large central rose window over the double doors are barely discernible through the grime. She’s flanked on her left by the rectory and on her right by the Convent of the Blessed Virgin.
From his room in the rectory Father Dan saw the hungry homeless lining up next to the worn stone steps in front of St. Joe’s, waiting to get into the Loaves and Fishes for lunch. He dearly would have loved to sit here and read the translation of the scroll Hal had given him, but duty called.
He left the wooden box on his bed and hurried down to the rectory basement. From there it was a quick trip through the dank, narrow tunnel that ran beneath the alley between the church and the rectory to the basement of St. Joe’s. As he approached the door at the far end, the smell of fresh bread and hot soup drew him forward.
The tunnel ended in the kitchen area of Loaves and Fishes. He stepped inside. Heat thickened the air. All the ovens were going—donated by a retired baker—heating loaves of Carrie’s special bread: multiple grains mixed with high-protein flour, enriched with eggs and gluten. A meal in itself. Add a bowl of Carrie’s soup and you had a feast.
Dan sniffed the air as he headed for the huge stove and the cluster of aproned volunteers stirring the brimming pots.
“Smells great. What’s the soup du jour?”
“Split pea,” Augusta said.
“Split pea? I ordered boeuf bourguignon!”
A slim brunette at the center of the cluster turned and gave him a withering, scornful stare.
“Don’t you be starting that again,” she said, pointing a dripping spoon at him.
“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I forgot. This is a vegetarian soup kitchen.”
The volunteers glanced over their shoulders and giggled. This argument had become a litany, recited almost daily.
“Hush up or we’ll be making a beef stew of you!”
Now they were laughing aloud. The brunette tried to hold her scowl but finally a smile broke through and its brilliance lit the room.
“Good morning, Sister,” Dan said.
“Good morning, Father,” she replied.
Sister Carolyn Ferris fixed him a moment with her wide, guileless blue eyes. Her normally pale cheeks were flushed from the heat of the stove. The rising steam had curled her straight dark hair, cut in a bob, into loose ringlets around her face.
She was in her late twenties, dressed in the shapeless, oversized work shirt and baggy pants she favored when working at the shelter. Her lips were on the thin side, and her teeth probably could have done with a little orthodontic work in her teens, but she’d joined the convent at fourteen so they remained au naturel. The way her smile lit up her face erased all memory of those minor imperfections.
As often as he’d seen it, Dan never tired of that smile. He’d enjoyed it in all its permutations, and sometimes he’d catch a hint of sadness there, a deeply hidden hurt that clouded her eyes in unguarded moments. But only for a moment.
Sister Carrie was the sun and the Lower East Side her world; she shone on it daily.
But for all her gentle, giving, girlish exterior, she was tough inside. Especially when it came to her beliefs, whether religious or dietary. No meat was served at the shelter—”We won’t be killing one of God’s creatures to feed another, at least not as long as I’m in the kitchen”—which was just as well because the food dollars stretched considerably further with the Sister Carrie menu.
And Dan, who’d always been pretty much of a beer-and-a-burger man himself, had to admit that he’d got out of the meat habit under her tutelage and no longer missed it. At least not too much.
“Sorry I’m late. What needs to be done?”
“Our guests should be getting low on bread by now.”
She always called them “our guests,” and Dan never failed to be charmed by it.
“Consider it done.”
She smiled that smile and turned back to the stove. Shaking off the lingering after effect, Dan gathered up half a dozen loaves and carried them out to the shelter area.
A different mix of odors greeted him in the Big Room. Split-pea and fresh-bread aromas layered the air, spiced with the sting of cigarette smoke and the pungency of unwashed bodies swathed in unwashed clothes.
Dan squeezed past Hilda Larsen’s doubly ample middle-aged rump and dumped the loaves onto one of the long tables lined up against the inner wall that made up the serving area.
“Good afternoon, Father,” she said, smiling as she stirred the soup with her long, curved ladle.
“Hello, Hilda. You look ravishing as usual today.”
She blushed. “Oh, Father Dan.”
Thank God for volunteers like Hilda, Dan thought as he picked up the bread knife and began cutting the loaves into inch-thick slices.