An Accidental Messiah

by Dan Sofer

  She swept crumbs from the marble tabletop with her hand and took his empty plate to the sink. The street outside loomed large and terrifying.

  “But Mother, I have nowhere to go.”

  “Nonsense!” She pulled him out of his seat and herded him toward the door. “You have your palace and your wives.” She opened the door, looked up and down the street, and shoved him outside. “Enjoy your eternal reward,” she said, as she closed the door and blew him a kiss, “and don’t forget to visit your mother.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Sunday morning, Moshe died and went to Heaven. Dazzling lights blinded him, not the spiritual glow at the end of an afterlife tunnel, but the glare of spotlights and the flash of press cameras in a packed auditorium at the Ministry of the Interior.

  Minister Malkior sat beside him onstage while Isaac Gurion gave forth at the podium, his voice booming from speakers. He spoke of thousands of resurrected Jews and their needless suffering, of cutting bureaucratic red tape, and welcoming back long-lost family.

  Moshe had a powerful friend, and there was no limit to the good they could do together.

  Galit beamed at him from the front row, seated among the top brass of the Dry Bones Society, and ahead of the many rows of reporters. The idea of a career in politics had not overjoyed her at first.

  “Are you sure you want all that attention?” she had asked him after Friday night dinner at home. He was asking a lot of her. Politics would shove them both into the public eye, and ever since his brief incarceration Galit had remained tense and pensive, looking over her shoulder every time they left the house.

  “It’s a great opportunity,” he had said. “Think of all the good we could do. Besides, I can’t see any other way to get citizenship in the near future.”

  That argument seemed to win her over. “Promise me we’ll get married right away.”

  “Of course. I’ll book the first hall that’s available.”

  “Forget a hall,” she said. “Let’s have a quiet ceremony here at home.”

  Moshe chuckled at her sudden eagerness. “What about your parents?” They’d need time to fly out from the USA.

  “They’ll get over it.”

  “And now,” Isaac Gurion concluded at the podium, “the time has come to correct this injustice, by granting those poor lost souls recognition as citizens with all the associated rights and responsibilities.”

  He turned to the table where Moshe sat. “Minister Malkior, will you do the honors?”

  Malkior waved his silver pen in the air like a magic wand, and signed the document on the table to the background music of flashing cameras. He gave Moshe a broad grin and shook his hand as though he hadn’t double-crossed him last week. They faced the cameras, hands still engaged, for the photo op—the Minister of the Interior shaking hands with Moshe Karlin, the magnanimous Isaac Gurion standing behind them, his arms spread like sheltering wings.

  Malkior picked up the microphone on the table. “I have a surprise for you, Moshe,” he said.

  The floor fell out of Moshe’s stomach. Malkior’s last surprise had involved a knife in the back.

  “While we were drafting this letter of intent, our friend Mr. Gurion got busy pushing our new legislation through Knesset. This morning, the proposal passed its third reading.”

  Gurion shifted back to the podium. “The new law grants asylum and automatic citizenship to all new arrivals. I call it”—he paused for dramatic effect—“the Second Law of Return.”

  Applause broke out from the audience. Moshe glanced at the beaming faces in the front row. Shmuel clapped his hands and gave him the thumbs-up. We’ve done it. Tears welled in Moshe’s eyes.

  “Anticipating this,” Malkior said, “I went ahead and had this made for you.” He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Instead of a dagger, he withdrew a blue booklet.

  Moshe opened the crisp, new covers and studied the freshly minted identity card within. Moshe Karlin. He had kept his old identity number. “Thank you.” He shook the minister’s hand and let him give him a side hug.

  Gurion spoke into the microphone again. “We have another surprise for you, Moshe.”

  This was his cue to join his benefactor at the podium.

  “I’ve gotten to know Moshe very well recently,” he said. “He risked everything to help his brothers and sisters in need and I’m proud to count him as my friend. Our country needs more Moshe Karlins, and so I’m excited to announce that he and the worthy folks at the Dry Bones Society have agreed to join our list and run with Upward in the upcoming elections.”

  A commotion rippled through the audience and cameras flared again.

  An aide adjusted the microphone for Moshe while he extracted his cue cards, and the hall fell silent.

  “This is a truly historic occasion,” he said, his voice echoing back on the speakers, deeper and more confident than he had expected. “On behalf of our resurrected brothers and sisters, I would like to thank Member of Knesset Isaac Gurion for his friendship and Minister Malkior for his quick and effective cooperation. Thanks to you both, thousands of men, women, and children are now able to lead dignified and productive lives. We at the Dry Bones Society look forward to working closely with you in future for the betterment of not only the resurrected but of all citizens.”

  Gurion opened the floor to questions. A multitude of hands shot into the air. Gurion picked one.

  A disheveled man with reading glasses and a press card hanging at his neck stood up. “When will identity cards be issued?”

  Moshe had rehearsed the expected questions with Gurion the previous night, and that one had topped the list.

  Moshe leaned into the microphone. “Starting from tomorrow, the Ministry of the Interior will open special service desks to receive the resurrected. Details are on the Ministry of Interior website.”

  Gurion selected a female questioner. “How will the resurrected prove their identities?”

  “Good question,” Moshe said. His smile won a few laughs from the crowd, and he relaxed. “Those with pre-existing identity numbers will be matched with the photographs on record. There are still a few glitches to work through. The computer systems don’t support multiple birth dates yet.” Another round of chuckles. He was getting the hang of this. “Those without identity numbers—whose first lives predate the State—will need to provide details of their former life: dates and places of birth and death. Checks will be made—photo analysis and fingerprints—to ensure the applicants are not already in the system.”

  Gurion picked a third questioner. “What positions on the Upward list will the Dry Bones Society occupy?”

  Gurion stepped in to answer. “Three, and then twenty through twenty-four.”

  The reporter raised his eyebrows. A recent poll had given Upward seventeen mandates in the upcoming election. Even with the resurrected vote, only Moshe would sit in Knesset. That didn’t bother the Society much. Gurion’s party had pushed through the Second Law of Return.

  “I have one more surprise for Moshe,” Gurion said, bringing the questions to a close.

  Moshe glanced at him. Gurion had not mentioned this in their preparations.

  “As you know, Moshe, we look out for our friends, so please accept this gift as a token of our appreciation.” He handed Moshe a black box tied with a blue ribbon. “Go ahead, open it.”

  Moshe did. Inside, on a bed of soft velvet, sat a large gold watch.

  “Every man of action needs a good timepiece,” Gurion continued.

  Moshe closed the heavy metal links over his wrist. The brand new Omega felt lighter than his grandfather’s ancient Rolex. Moshe reminded himself to redeem the family heirloom from the pawn shop in Talpiot when he could afford to. The old vulture at the shop would not return the watch without a mighty negotiation. Luckily for Moshe, he had a secret weapon: Savta Sarah.

  “Thank you.” Tears threatened to surface again.

  Gurion gripped Moshe by the shoulders and pulled him close for ano
ther photo op.

  Moshe smiled for the cameras. He had nothing to worry about now; he had powerful friends.

  CHAPTER 26

  Noga stared at her laptop through the veil of steam from her coffee cup on the kitchen island. She had to prove Eli wrong. The data did support her thesis. But no matter how she arranged the charts, the conspicuous cluster of Palestinian Arabs with the gene markers of Jewish priests would not disappear. Erasing the pesky results was out of the question—she would never sacrifice her scientific integrity.

  Background chatter came from the television in the living room. A Channel Two correspondent reported on early poll results. Election fever had gripped the country. Noga aimed the remote and the television screen went dark. She hated politics.

  She stared at the charts and ran her fingers through her hair. The Arabs in the study were Jewish. They had to be. Hannah, her advisor, had reached the same conclusion. Noga’s thesis stood strong. Her paper would appear in academic journals and, incidentally, solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making Noga both a world-renowned scientist and a national hero. How convenient, indeed.

  Extraordinary claims, Carl Sagan had said, require extraordinary evidence, and the puzzle still lacked one critical piece—a working theory that explained how this mind-boggling reality had developed.

  She exhaled a tremulous breath and her shoulders slumped.

  “Thanks a lot, Eli.” His devil’s advocate questions had toppled her fairytale palace of cards. His counter-theory ignored the main thrust of the genetic data but still gnawed at her conscience.

  Had her personal bias slanted her analysis? Was she simply not prepared to throw away two years of sweat and tears? If Eli was right, then the End of Days had arrived indeed—for her doctorate.

  Was that so far-fetched? Every day, conspiracy theorists connected unrelated facts to support outlandish claims. Science had names for their logical fallacies: confirmation bias; confusing cause and effect; ignoring a common cause. Being human. Noga could easily have fallen into the same trap.

  She had feared for Eli’s sanity but could she be the one who had succumbed to delusion?

  Her body convulsed as she laughed. She doubled over and tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. Tears of loss. Tears of relief. You idiot! She had been so convinced that she had stumbled onto an epic discovery! This time is always different, Eli had said. The list of failed messiahs proved that only too well.

  She straightened on the kitchen stool and gulped her bitter coffee. So be it. Dust yourself off and start again.

  She opened an Internet browser, typed two words into the search bar—“false messiah”—and clicked the link for Wikipedia.

  “Wow,” she said aloud.

  Eli had not exaggerated. Messiah claimants had cropped up almost every century. Simon Bar Kokhba had led a doomed Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire in the second century. Moses of Crete in the fifth. Most of them had met violent deaths. David Alroy, twelfth century, was murdered in his sleep. His contemporary, the Messiah of Yemen, had told his opponents to cut off his head in order to prove his claim. And on and on. Most of the names didn’t ring a bell.

  She had heard of Sabbatai Zevi. In 1666, after stirring up hope and controversy throughout Europe, Zevi arrived in Constantinople intending to conquer the globe without bloodshed and don the sultan’s crown. The sultan promptly threw him in prison and gave him an ultimatum: convert to Islam or die. Zevi chose Islam and cast the Jewish world into black despair.

  Some communities refused to accept his failure. A Polish Jew by the name of Jacob Frank claimed to be his successor but led his followers to Christianity. The Dönmeh sect of Turkey follow Sabbatai Zevi to this day.

  Noga’s heart did a double-flip. Her academic mind had discerned a pattern in the historic details, a recurring theme that united the failed messianic eras of the past but did not apply to the present day. This time really was different.

  She laughed again. Here you go again. After only a few days of messianic mania, she still struggled to shake free. How had Eli managed to escape a lifetime of delusion? Her admiration for him grew.

  At the sound of bare feet down the hallway, she switched back to EPSS, her statistical software.

  Eli padded into the kitchen in pajama trunks. “Good morning.” He kissed her on the cheek.

  “Morning.”

  He fixed a cup of coffee behind her. The last few days he had been kind enough not to mention her thesis, but her vain stubborn streak had not been ready to concede defeat.

  “Oh, crap,” he said behind her. “I’m late.” He ran back to the bedroom, returning in jeans and sneakers and pulling on a shirt as he rushed for the door.

  “Late for what?”

  “To pick up the bike,” he said.

  The bike. Eli had covered the coffee table with marketing pamphlets for Harley Davidson’s latest and greatest.

  “Hey,” she shouted after him. “Don’t forget—”

  “I know,” he said, preempting her. “I’ll wear a helmet.”

  He blew her a kiss from the front door and slipped into the elevator.

  She sighed. Boys and their toys. At least his retail therapy seemed to have whetted his appetite for life.

  Her phone jingled and she answered on the first ring.

  “Hannah,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to call you.” She wanted to share her doubts with her advisor, but she didn’t get a chance.

  “Noga, dear,” the professor said. She sounded unusually flustered. “I’ve found it.”

  “Found what?”

  “The explanation for the results of your study.”

  Hannah must have figured out their mistake on her own. “Me too,” she said. “I owe you an apology.”

  “An apology?”

  “For misleading you.”

  “Misleading me? Not at all—you were absolutely right, and now I’ve found the key to the whole mystery.”

  Noga’s heart fluttered. “What did you find?”

  “I can’t explain on the phone. You’ll have to see for yourself. What are you doing tomorrow morning?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Sunday evening, Alex pulled up at the Lev Talpiot Mall in his black Skoda Octavia, his heart banging against his ribs. He needed to lie to his boss—his boss and his oldest friend. Not a lie, really. An omission.

  She’s alive!

  Once the shock had subsided, relief had set in. She’s alive! Redemption glinted on the horizon. But soon that relief turned to dread. Mandrake must never know of her existence. If he did, Alex knew what he would command, and he couldn’t go through with that again.

  No. He had to close the case. To lock the door, melt the key, and never think of her again.

  He parked the car in the loading zone at the side of the mall and raised the hand brake. Cops knew better than to tow cars parked in this particular loading zone. The street reeked of garbage and cat piss. A dark staircase cut into the side of the building, but no security guard manned this entrance of the mall.

  As Alex reached the top of the stairs, moonlight traced an open-air corridor that ended in doors of tinted glass. The sound of toppling bowling pins met his ears as he drew near. He pushed through the doors, entering a space filled with soft light, cigarette smoke, and lounge music. To his left, a Sephardic greaser in a leather jacket leaned over a pool table and dropped a yellow ball into a corner pocket. On his right, men in matching polo shirts rolled bowling balls down eighteen lanes to the applause of crashing pins. League night.

  The Talpiot Bowling Center had belonged to an entrenched Israeli mafia clan until Mandrake had arrived in their turf and taken over their monopolies on recycling, vending machines, and protection rackets. Within a month, Jerusalem had fallen under the magician’s spell.

  The blonde at the front desk blew bubbles with her gum and studied her nails. Her tank top left little to
the imagination. Silver trophies and special edition bowling balls crowned the low wall behind her.

  “Evening, Anna,” he said in Russian. “Is he in?”

  She nodded. Easy on the eyes and devoid of curiosity, Anna did her job well. She even made phone calls to car sellers when required.

  He went around the counter, behind Anna, and into a walk-in closet lined with shelves of bowling shoes. At the back, he glanced at the camera in the corner where the wall met the ceiling, and knocked on the door. A bolt shifted and the door opened.

  Vitaly, with his bald head and scarred face, wore his trademark black jeans and T-shirt. He bolted the door behind them. “He’s busy,” he said, and returned to his game of solitaire at a round card table. A gun poked out the back of his jeans. Mandrake always carried a pack of playing cards and the habit had rubbed off on his foot soldier.

  Alex settled on a chair in the corner, opposite the closed door of the Boss’s office. Camera feeds displayed on a wall: the shoe closet; the front door; the street. Other locations of strategic interest across the city displayed on yet more screens: a dark alley; an old warehouse; a knot of loiterers with cigarettes outside a bar. From these rooms, the Boss ruled his empire.

  The safest bet was to turn Mandrake’s attention away from the Dry Bones Society. If he had no further need for them, he would never find out about the girl.

  The office door opened and two heavyset Chinese men in business suits exited. Mandrake had extended his tendrils far and wide since the old days in the USSR. Alex didn’t know half of the Organization’s activities and that suited him well. He knew too much already.

  Vitaly let the visitors out and bolted the door, then motioned for Alex to enter.

  Alex closed the door behind him. A manager’s chair of padded leather lay empty behind a bulky oak desk.

  “Sit, my friend,” said a voice behind him. He turned. Mandrake slouched on the leather wraparound couch. Wearing a black button-down shirt and black trousers, he puffed on a cigar.