The Omega Theory

by Mark Alpert

  Monique frowned. “That’s great. And we’re looking for a guy who calls himself ‘Universe, the Son of Time.’ Maybe he’s a nut job, too.”

  “I don’t think Jacob Steele would have collaborated with a nut job.” David shook his head. “Remember what Bennett said? Jacob was desperate to make a significant discovery before he died. Maybe Olam ben Z’man came up with a brilliant idea, a Nobel Prize–winning idea. And maybe Jacob heard about it and started working with him to get a share of the glory.”

  “Okay, maybe Olam’s a genius. But plenty of geniuses are also crazy.”

  “No, I think he’s canny, not crazy. It can’t be a coincidence that his fiber-optic line got deleted from the phone company’s records. I think he took steps to cover his tracks.”

  “Why? What was he afraid of?”

  “I don’t know. But look what happened to Jacob. Obviously someone didn’t like what they were doing.”

  One of the weeping pilgrims let out a particularly loud wail. Monique jumped at the noise. “Damn it, I can’t think! This is so fucking distracting!” A look of immense frustration contorted her face. “How the hell am I supposed to think?”

  David moved a step closer and put his arm around her. She was shivering. “Hey, it’s all right. We’re gonna figure this out, okay? One way or another, we’re gonna find out what’s going on. And then we’ll get Michael and bring him home.”

  She shook her head and started crying. It was a rare moment of vulnerability for Monique, who was usually so steadfast and logical. Like Michael, she’d had a chaotic childhood, growing up with a negligent mother in a bleak housing project, and from a young age she’d developed a fierce self-possession. Very few things could unnerve her like this. Sobbing quietly, she leaned her forehead against David’s shoulder. He held her close.

  After a little while she began to calm down. David let go of her and she wiped her eyes. She was back to normal by the time Aryeh returned. He was out of breath from fighting the crowd of Christs.

  “Line three-seventeen branches off there,” he said, pointing to a building just ahead. “Then it goes down a stairway to the Hasmonean Tunnel.”

  The name sounded familiar. David had read about it somewhere. “Is that the tunnel that runs alongside the Temple Mount? Next to the Western Wall?”

  “Yes, the archaeologists excavated it. The tunnel goes down to the big stone blocks at the base of the Western Wall, ten meters underground. It’s mostly for the tourists, but the kippot srugot like to go into the tunnel to pray.”

  “Kippot srugot?”

  “The religious Zionists, the settlers. They have that name because they wear knitted skullcaps, kippot srugot.”

  “Wait,” David said. “I thought the religious Jews wear black hats.”

  “No, those are the haredim, the ultra-Orthodox. The kippot srugot are religious, too, but most of them are right-wingers, very angry at the Palestinians. They’re obsessed with the Western Wall because it’s the only surviving part of the Temple. You can see the wall aboveground in the Jewish quarter, but the kippot srugot like to pray in the tunnel because it’s closer to where—”

  “Whoa, hold on,” Monique interrupted. “Why does the fiber-optic line go into the tunnel? Are there computers down there?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s a way to find out, yes? Come on.”

  David and Monique followed him again, sidestepping the pilgrims until they came to the tunnel entrance. Standing by the doorway was a fat bearded man wearing a knitted yarmulke. He held a small black prayer book in his left hand and an Uzi in his right. David knew from his previous visit to Jerusalem that many Israeli citizens routinely carry Uzis because of the ever-present terrorist threat, but the sight was still a little unnerving. Aryeh approached the fat man and said something in Hebrew. The man responded in an aggressive tone, sneering. Aryeh held out his hands and said something else, obviously trying to be reasonable, but the fat man started shouting and waving his Uzi. Then Aryeh pointed a finger at the man and spoke so quietly that David couldn’t hear him. Whatever was said, the fat man got the message. He reluctantly stepped aside and let them through the doorway.

  They walked into a dark room with gray stone walls. The air smelled damp and ancient. At the far end of the room a metal staircase descended into a rocky, rough-hewn shaft. As they headed down the steps, Aryeh trained his flashlight at the jagged ceiling, following the course of the black cable. He looked over his shoulder at David. “You see what I mean about the kippot srugot? They turn everything into an argument. That schmuck at the entrance wanted to charge us for going into the tunnel.” He shook his head. “They’re always like that, crazy and angry. But that’s not the worst part.”

  “What is?” David asked.

  “They’re always antagonizing the Palestinians. They stir up trouble by buying buildings in the Muslim quarter and turning them into yeshivas. And then they go marching past the mosques, carrying their Uzis and singing their prayers.”

  David nodded. “I can see how that might lead to trouble.”

  “I’m a little surprised, Mr. Goldberg,” Monique said. She was just behind David, her shoes thumping on the metal steps. “You work for an Israeli intelligence agency, but you seem pretty sympathetic to the other side.”

  “I have no illusions about the Palestinians,” Aryeh replied. “Their terrorists are worse than the kippot srugot. And so are the bastards in Hamas who aim their rockets at our schools and the suicide bombers who try to blow up our buses. And the mullahs in Iran who want to throw atomic bombs at us.” He stopped for a moment, as if contemplating this catastrophe. Then he gripped the handrail and continued down the stairs. “But for some reason I get angrier at the crazy Jews.”

  When they reached the bottom of the staircase, they found themselves in another dark room. Aryeh’s flashlight illuminated a vaulted ceiling, where the black cable ran parallel to the wires for the overhead lights. “The line goes this way,” he said, heading for a vertical fissure in one of the stone walls. “The path is narrow here, so we’ll have to walk single file, yes? This used to be the aqueduct that brought water to the Temple.”

  It was now a tunnel designed for tourists, with handrails conveniently bolted to the limestone, but David’s chest tightened as he followed Aryeh into the fissure. He didn’t like tunnels. He’d nearly gotten killed in a tunnel two years ago, when he was on the run from the FBI, and since then he’d become a bit claustrophobic. After a couple of minutes, though, they came to a wider, better-lit corridor, and David opened his mouth in awe. Running along the left side of the corridor was the underground section of the Western Wall. Stone blocks as big as trailer homes were stacked like monstrous bricks. The edges of the blocks were rounded with age and there was no mortar or cement in the crevices between them. Their weight alone had kept them in place for centuries, even as the detritus of the Old City had slowly buried them.

  “Unbelievable,” David whispered. He looked down at the smooth paving stones under his feet. “This is the Herodian Street, right? The promenade that King Herod built outside the walls of the Temple?”

  “Yes, yes,” Aryeh said, but he wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were fixed on the fiber-optic line snaking along the tunnel’s ceiling. Monique stared at it just as intently.

  After walking for another two or three minutes David saw a crowd up ahead, at least twenty-five people jammed into the corridor. They were kippot srugot, bearded men in knitted yarmulkes, shouting their prayers as they faced a low archway carved into the Western Wall. Each man held a small black book in front of his nose and rocked back and forth as he yelled in Hebrew. Their Uzis, hanging from shoulder straps, swung like pendulums. As David got closer he noticed that the archway was blocked up with gray stones. The zealots were praying to an ugly, cracked wall glistening with moisture. He caught up to Aryeh and tapped his shoulder. “Why is the archway blocked? What’s on the other side?”

  “The Holy of Holies,” he replied. “The place where th
e inner sanctum of the Temple used to be. The Dome of the Rock is there now and religious Jews won’t go inside the Muslim shrine, so they pray here because this is the closest they can get. There’s always a crowd of them here, day and night.”

  One of the bearded men stopped rocking and glared at them. “Show some respect!” he shouted in English. “Cover your heads!”

  “Ah, go to hell.” Aryeh shook his fist at the man, then turned back to David. “Look at them with their Uzis. Even when they’re speaking to God, they won’t let go of their guns.”

  Monique nodded. “More wackos,” she whispered in David’s ear. “This city is full of them.”

  About a hundred yards beyond the crowd of zealots, the corridor widened into a spacious chamber. To the left was another blocked-up archway and to the right was a steel door. Aryeh stopped—the beam from his flashlight showed the fiber-optic line vanishing into a hole above the doorframe. The sign on the door said EMERGENCY EXIT in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.

  Aryeh pushed the door open. No alarm sounded. “Ladies first, yes?” he said, gesturing at Monique.

  She stepped through the doorway, her eyes still fixed on the cable. David followed her and Aryeh up a staircase. Then they opened a second door and emerged into a cobblestone alley that looked very much like the one near the Lions’ Gate. It was narrow and lined with tourist shops, but now the shops were closed and the alley was dark and empty. Aryeh raised his flashlight and found the cable again—it ran directly to the entrance of a nearby building and disappeared into a hole drilled above a massive door. When Aryeh pointed his flashlight at the sign above the door, it illuminated the words BEIT SHALOM YESHIVA.

  “Ah, I don’t believe it.” Aryeh sighed. “This is one of those yeshivas I was telling you about. Full of crazy Jews trying to take over the Muslim quarter.”

  David stared at the building, squinting in the darkness. The door was steel reinforced and the windows were barred. The place looked like a prison. “Are you sure this is where the line ends?”

  “Yes, this is the terminus. I can tell by the markings.” Aryeh pointed his flashlight at a pair of white dots on the cable. Then he swung the beam back to the sign. “And look at the name, look what they call this place—Beit Shalom, the House of Peace. Can you believe it?”

  David exchanged glances with Monique. He sensed that entering the yeshiva with Aryeh would be a mistake. The man was a little too free with his opinions. David stepped toward him and offered his hand. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Goldberg. We’ll take it from here.”

  “Yes, go ahead. Believe me, I have no desire to go in there.” He shook David’s hand, then Monique’s. Then he started down the alley, heading toward an intersecting street. “Good luck, G-man and G-woman! I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  Monique watched Aryeh until his flashlight beam moved out of sight. Then she turned to David. “So how do you want to do this? Should we call Lucille?”

  He thought about it for a moment. Lucille would certainly want them to contact her before they marched into Beit Shalom Yeshiva. She was the professional, after all. And she’d probably insist on taking the lead in whatever interviews they conducted. But David wasn’t sure that approach would be the best. If, as he suspected, Olam ben Z’man was afraid of something, he’d probably feel more comfortable talking with a couple of professors than with an American FBI agent.

  “Let’s play it by ear,” David said. “If we find Olam, we’ll try to convince him to come with us and see Lucille.”

  Monique nodded. She agreed with him. She opened her mouth to say something, but then she jerked her head to the left and peered down the alley. “Shit! Is that . . . ?”

  David spun around and looked where she was looking. He saw only the dark cobblestones of the alley and the iron shutters of the closed shops. “What is it?” he hissed. “What’s going on?”

  “Shhh!” She continued to peer into the darkness. After a few seconds she shook her head. “Damn. I thought I saw someone.”

  “You saw someone? Who did you see?”

  “Remember that pilgrim who nearly hit me with his cross? I thought I saw him down there, just past that pillar on the left. Dark face, black stubble.”

  “What? You mean Jesus?” David let out a deep breath. In his relief, he couldn’t help but smile. “You think Jesus is following us?”

  Monique frowned. “Come on,” she said, turning to the yeshiva’s door. “Let’s find Olam.”

  • • •

  NICODEMUS WAS TEMPTED TO TAKE A SHOT. THE BLACK WOMAN WAS exposed, an easy target in the middle of the alley, and neither she nor the man was armed. Nico knew this because he’d observed them up close while carrying his cross on the Via Dolorosa. He could’ve killed them back there without any trouble and escaped into the crowd, but his orders had been very specific. His primary target was neither Monique Reynolds nor David Swift, but the person they were seeking. Nico had followed the Americans across the Old City in the hope that they would lead him to Olam ben Z’man.

  Crouched behind a concrete pillar thirty meters away, Nico watched Swift and Reynolds approach the heavy door of the yeshiva and ring the buzzer. The door opened, revealing two bearded men armed with Uzis. They started talking in English. Nico was too far away to hear them clearly, but he could guess what they were saying. After a minute or so, the bearded men allowed the Americans into the yeshiva. Then the door closed with a thump.

  Nico reached for his radio. It was time to alert the other members of his team who were scattered across the Muslim and Jewish quarters, monitoring all the exits of the Western Wall Tunnel. Once they assembled, Nico would launch the assault. It looked like the occupants of the yeshiva had fortified the building in case of an attack by Palestinian terrorists, but Nico and his men were well armed and well trained. More important, God was on their side. Brother Cyrus had said the Lord would carry them to victory, and Nicodemus was a True Believer.

  10

  TWO KIPPOT SRUGOT STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF THE YESHIVA. THEY WERE tall, solid men with thick necks and muscular arms, but they were also very young, no older than twenty. Their beards were patchy, with a few pimples visible under the scruff. They wore jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, and aside from their knitted yarmulkes and the Uzis hanging at their sides, they looked like ordinary college students. David felt sorry for them. They should be relaxing on the beach in Tel Aviv, he thought, instead of guarding the door of a yeshiva in Jerusalem.

  Monique smiled at them. She had a charming smile. “Sorry to bother you. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the American law-enforcement agency. We’d like to talk to the head of this yeshiva. Is he here?”

  The yeshiva students looked at each other uncertainly. It was possible that they didn’t understand English, although David had noticed that most Israelis seemed to know at least a little. But even if the students understood every word she said, the mere sight of Monique was probably enough to unsettle them. If they were like most yeshiva students, they’d had little contact with women aside from their mothers and sisters. The bigger of the two, who wore a yarmulke with a pattern of Jewish stars, gave her a sidelong glance, then turned to David. “Excuse me?” he said. “Who are you?”

  “We’re with the American government,” David answered, speaking slowly and carefully. “We’d like to come inside and ask you a few questions.”

  He spoke in an authoritative voice, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough. He had no badge or official identification. The yeshiva students were perfectly free to slam the door in his face. The bigger one shook his head. “The Rav is busy,” he muttered.

  “The Rav?”

  “Yes, our rabbi, Rav Kavner. He’s studying Talmud. And no women are allowed in this yeshiva. I’m sorry.” He placed his large hand on the door and started to close it.

  “What about Olam ben Z’man?” Monique asked. “Is he available?”

  The student froze. He stared at Monique as if he’d just glimpsed a bel
t of explosives under her jacket. “You know Olam?”

  “Yes, I do. And it looks like you know him, too. Can we come inside now?”

  He let go of the door and stood there for several seconds, nervously rubbing his scruffy chin. He looked confused, David thought. The poor kid probably wasn’t accustomed to making his own decisions. Finally he said, “Okay, come,” and waved them forward. David and Monique stepped inside and the student closed the door behind them. “Before you can see the Rav, you must hand over any weapons you’re carrying,” he warned. “We’ll return them when you leave.”

  “Why?” David asked.

  “We have to be careful. The Rav has many enemies in the Muslim quarter. And things are very tense now.”

  “Because of the Iranian crisis?”

  The student nodded. “We’ve heard rumors that the Palestinians are working with Iran. Hamas and Hezbollah are trying to smuggle one of the Iranian bombs into Israel.”

  David opened his jacket to show he was unarmed. “Well, I’m not carrying anything. No guns, no bombs.”

  “Me neither,” Monique said. She opened her jacket, too.

  They stood in a foyer that had one stairway going down to the basement and another ascending to the second floor. David looked over his shoulder and spotted the fiber-optic cable, which emerged from the hole above the front door and followed the flight of stairs going down to the basement. He took a step in that direction, but the bigger yeshiva student grasped his arm and led him to the other stairway.

  They went upstairs to a large study hall. The room had barred windows and creaky floorboards and a long refectory table covered from end to end with massive, ancient books. A dozen young men sat around the table, engaged in the age-old tradition of Talmud study, which involved arguing the finer points of Jewish law by thumbing through the dusty volumes. Sitting at the far end of the table was a tiny old man in black pants and a wrinkled white shirt. He wore oversize glasses and a yarmulke as big as a soup bowl, which made his head look unnaturally small. His beard was long and white, and he smiled beneficently at the students shouting all around him. David was surprised—he’d expected the leader of a militant Zionist group to be more physically intimidating. Instead he looked like a cheerful little beggar.