So it seemed that here Donovan’s recent past had been buried as well.
Until today.
The store was empty when the two men arrived just before noon, each claiming a stool at the end of the counter, close to the door.
Donovan folded the Eire Post and made his way over to greet them. He could tell immediately they weren’t locals. Tourists, most likely. One was of medium height and build, the second tall and broad.
“Dia duit,” he said in Gaelic, followed up quickly with, “Top o’ the morn’.” Though twelve years with the Vatican had suppressed his brogue, Belfast had slackened his tongue. “Coffee, lads?”
“That would be wonderful,” the smaller one said.
“Coming right up.” Donovan grabbed two mugs and set them on the counter. As he retrieved the coffeepot from the burner, the pair removed their rain-dampened overcoats in tandem. Turning back to them, he immediately noticed that each wore a black shirt with a white square covering the collar button. Priests.
As he filled the mugs, Donovan tried to place the smaller man’s plain face, but conjured no recollection. The accent, too, certainly wasn’t local. “Cream, sugar?”
“No, thank you, Patrick.”
The taller priest simply shook his head.
“Sláinte,” Donovan said with a friendly nod and another glance at the man’s priest collar. “Forgive me, but”—he backed up a few steps to return the pot to the burner—“have we met?”
“No,” the smaller one said. He sipped the coffee, steam wafting over his dark eyes. “But we come on behalf of the Holy See.” Orlando made his introductions, referring to his colleague as “Father Piotr Kwiatkowski.”
“I see,” Donovan said.
“It wasn’t easy finding you,” he said, embellishing the truth. Passport tracking had indicated Donovan’s entry into Northern Ireland on July seventh. And though he hadn’t used credit cards, a recent obituary for his father, as well as the deceased’s estate transference records—including a deed for a family home in Ardoyne and ownership of this establishment— had been easily found in their search of public records.
Donovan gave him a stiff stare.
“Seems you left in quite a hurry after Cardinal Santelli’s, shall we say, sudden demise.”
“The reasons for my departure are no one’s business,” Donovan dourly replied, snatching up a rag and buffing the counter. “Best for you to state your business, Father.”
“We’ll waste no time then.” Clawing his mug with sinewy fingers, the man slurped another mouthful of coffee before going on. “We’ve been informed about your involvement with Dr. Giovanni Bersei . . . and the ossuary he’d been studying in the Vatican Museums.” He paused to gauge the Irishman’s reaction. But the man didn’t react or even look over. “I’m sure you take great comfort in knowing that the carabinieri have closed their investigation into Dr. Bersei’s accidental death.” Father Martin certainly had.
Uneasy, Donovan glanced over as the man reached into his pocket and produced a photo.
“I’m certain you will recognize this man, though he’s a bit pale in this photograph,” he said, flattening Salvatore Conte’s morgue shot onto the counter. As Donovan cautiously stepped closer and looked down at it, Orlando could see a reaction—a subtle twist in the jaw, apprehension pulling at the eyelids. Orlando unabashedly laid out the connections for Donovan—the ossuary, Bersei’s death in the catacombs, Santelli’s timely passing, Conte’s murder. “All of this within days of a theft that took place in Jerusalem.”
“I’m afraid the only man who has the answers you are looking for,” Donovan replied, “is Cardinal Santelli. And as you’ve stated, he’s taken those answers to his grave.” Moving back to the coffeemaker, he moved the rag fast along the stainless steel, polishing it to a soft glow.
“His Eminence appreciates your dedication, Patrick. Our intention is not to levy accusations.”
“Then what might your intention be?” Donovan said with a note of challenge.
Orlando’s face tightened. “First, we need to determine why the ossuary had been brought inside Vatican City. There’s also a matter of locating relics that supposedly had been contained inside the box.”
“And Cardinal Lungero requests this information?”
Without diverting his firm gaze, Orlando faltered for a split second. “That’s correct.”
Donovan calmly set down the rag. Lungero was the name of someone in Vatican City, but certainly no cardinal. If these men weren’t envoys from the Vatican, then who could have sent them? Perhaps they’d aided Conte in Jerusalem and failed to receive their cut prior to his demise? “What relics might he be questioning?” his asked, his brogue thickening.
“You know better than most that an ossuary is a bone box. As such, it stands to reason that there had been bones inside it. Other relics too.”
Would mercenaries be at all interested in the bones? Donovan wondered. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to assist you. But there is something . . .”
“Yes?”
He shook his head dismissively. “I was asked to sign confidentiality agreements prior to my leaving the Vatican. I’m not supposed to—”
“Those agreements are meant for those outside the Holy See.”
Strike two. Donovan had signed no such agreements prior to his departure. The fact remained that the Holy See still wasn’t aware of what had truly transpired and thought it best not to pursue such inquiries. There wouldn’t be a strike three.
At that moment, the front door opened and a man wearing mud-stained yellow coveralls came strolling in. “Patrick-me-boy!” he said cheerily.
Donovan straightened and conjured a smile. “Conas tá tú, Kevin?”
“Eh,” the man responded with a tired shrug. He eyed the priests as he lumbered past. “Mornin’, fathers.” His grin revealed a mouthful of tobacco-stained, crooked teeth.
“Good morning,” the short one tersely replied. He watched as the man trudged to the farthest stool at the end of the counter.
“A moment, please,” Donovan said apologetically, then went to tend to the patron.
Orlando monitored the ensuing exchange. The man in coveralls was animatedly talking with his hands, most likely about his mundane morning digging a trench somewhere. Then he finally placed an order with Donovan. All somewhat garbled, but spoken very loudly. The conversation, however, was happening in Gaelic.
“What’s he saying?” Kwiatkowski asked inconspicuously.
“No idea.” He cursed under his breath. Had Donovan sought refuge in any other country in the EU or anywhere in the Middle East, he could have easily deciphered the local dialect, even read their lips if the volume was insufficient.
Then Donovan slipped through a doorway, as if to get something for the patron.
Kwiatkowski immediately reacted, making to get up from his stool.
Orlando grabbed his arm. “Give it a moment.”
Moments went by. No Donovan.
“My heavens! What did you order, my son?” Orlando called with playful sarcasm to the laborer.
“Coffee, just like you, Father.” The scraggly man gave another toothy grin. “If it’s good for your soul, it can only help the fire in me.”
This caused both men to push back their stools and spring into action.
The laborer’s eyes widened as he saw them darting his way—particularly the tall one, a giant of a man. He coiled into himself. “I’ll drink tea if it’ll make ya ’appy!” he said, cowering.
But the two paid him no mind as they whisked by, rounded the corner of the counter, and disappeared through the door.
7
******
It was easy for Orlando to see that the rear room was meant for storage: it was filled with dried goods and cans lined neatly on shelves, and stock glassware. There was a large walk-in refrigerator to one side, its door open wide. “Check it,” he said.
Kwiatkowski reached it in three strides and poked his head in. Lining the floor a
nd shelves were crates of milk and eggs, cases of soda and beer, bins of cheeses, wrapped meats, and butter. No Donovan. “Not here.”
Then just outside a solid metal door in the room’s rear, they both heard the muffled sounds of an engine coming to life.
Donovan had considered blocking the door with something, but in the narrow alley, there was only a large Dumpster that wasn’t budging. Hopping onto his motorcycle, he jammed the key into its ignition and started it up, forgoing the helmet in the rear stow box. He pulled back on the throttle just as the door swung open behind him.
The cold V-twin sputtered before yanking the Kawasaki Vulcan forward with a squeal of rubber. Donovan shot a glimpse over his shoulder and spotted the two men dressed as priests scrambling out the doorway and into the alley—each brandishing a handgun.
Donovan’s eyes shot forward, sharpening on the opening ahead—a good fifty meters, nothing but brick wall corralling him on both sides.
An easy target for a straight shot.
Pressing his chest down against the fuel tank, he cranked the throttle to the max and serpentined the bike as best he could, trying to avoid skidding out on the rain-slicked pavement. The first shot ricocheted low off the wall in front of him. A second punctured the exhaust pipe and made the bike produce an ear-numbing grumble. Clearly the men could shoot. But they didn’t seem to be aiming directly at him. Were they attempting to blow out a tire?
In a panic, Donovan made a split-second correction to maneuver around a pothole that caught the rear tire. The Kawasaki jerked hard and forced him close to the wall just as a third shot nearly grazed his calf and pinged off the chrome engine block. Another five meters and he gripped the brakes and skidded out into the roadway, leaning right to force a wide turn. In the process, he clipped the bumper of an oncoming truck, whose horn was blaring.
The bike slid hard to the opposing curb, forcing Donovan to throw out his leg to keep from rolling into an older woman who was walking her poodle. The muffler’s throaty rumbling covered her shouted obscenities as he pulled the bike upright and raced away.
8
******
Jerusalem, Isr ael
Descending the precipitous steps from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, Rabbi Aaron Cohen gazed over at the fortified Temple Mount complex, which covered thirty-five acres of Mount Moriah’s summit like an artificial mesa with its huge filled rectangle of retaining walls, parapets, and embankments. A second, lesser platform rose up from the Temple Mount’s center to support the shrine that had dominated the site since the late seventh century—an elaborate building with a massive gold cupola perched upon an octagonal base of marble and colorful Arabian tiles.
The Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-most-holy shrine.
And when Cohen’s eyes defied him and caught a glimpse of it, he cringed severely. He muttered a prayer to suppress the deep-rooted emotions that surged every time he thought of the grand Jewish temple that once graced the world’s most hallowed hilltop. The feelings of loss and insult came in equal measure.
At the bottom of the steps, he made his way to the security checkpoint for the Western Wall Plaza. As always, he set off the metal detector. Casually stepping aside, he held up his arms. The young IDF soldier, dressed in olive fatigues and beret with an Uzi slung casually over his left shoulder, shook his head as he got up from his stool. He grabbed a black security wand off the bag scanner. “Shalom, Rabbi.”
“Shalom, Yakob.”
The soldier lackadaisically ran the handheld metal detector over the Hasid’s limbs and torso. As always, it let out a high-pitched screech along the left thigh and hip. Sighing, the guard discreetly patted the area to confirm nothing was there. “No way to get rid of that stuff, Rabbi?” he asked with a polite smile as he rounded back to his stool.
“Not if I want to keep walking.” Cohen shook his head. “Better get used to it.”
The deeply embedded shrapnel was a physical reminder of the suicide bombings at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market that left sixteen dead and dozens more wounded, including Cohen, who’d stood mere meters away from the shaheed ’s detonation. Despite four surgeries and five months at Hadassah Medical Center, nails and pellet-shaped metal remained where surgical extraction would guarantee paralysis. For two years following the incident, he’d relied on a cane for walking.
Normally, Cohen would present a medical badge prior to triggering metal detectors. But that badge wasn’t required here. Everyone here knew Rabbi Aaron Cohen—very well. Over the past two decades the fifty-threeyear-old Brooklyn-born Haredi had become one of Israel’s most influential religious and political voices—a staunch proponent of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, the return of Zion, and the official state adoption of the Halakha— Jewish laws of the Torah—to govern public life. As a younger man, he’d served two terms in the Knesset’s leftist National Religious Party, whose credo had been “The land of Israel, for the people of Israel, according to the Torah of Israel.” And his teachings at Israel’s most prestigious yeshivas had earned him much acclaim. Jewish and secular Israelis considered him the next contender for Chief Rabbi.
“Have a great day,” the soldier said.
Cohen tipped his wide-brimmed zayen to him, then strolled outside with a slight hobble, the white tassels of a prayer scarf worn under his black vest swinging in rhythm with his quick shuffle. The strands of his long black beard and tightly twisted payess danced against a gentle breeze.
The spacious open plaza led up to an exposed section of the Temple Mount’s western retaining wall that was fifty-seven meters wide and nineteen meters high—the Kotel. Normally the place would be full of Jews chanting prayers, rending their garments, and shedding tears for the lost temple—all of it exemplifying how the place had earned its most famous nickname: the Wailing Wall. And for good fortune, tourists would stuff prayer notes into the razor-thin seams between the wall’s enormous Herodian stone blocks.
But for the past month, the scene here had been much different.
Barricades zigzagged through the plaza. Backhoes ferried debris out to dump trucks parked outside the Dung Gate, where tour buses typically queued. Judaism’s most holy site now looked like a construction zone.
Cohen headed to a tall arched entry on the plaza’s north end that accessed the Western Wall Tunnel—an underground network of ancient roadways, cisterns, and water passages running deep beneath the buildings of the Muslim Quarter along the Temple Mount’s western foundation. Prior to its recent closure, tourists could’ve walked the subterranean passage from the Western Wall Plaza all the way to steps leading up and out onto Via Dolorosa beneath the Temple Mount’s northwest corner. An archaeological marvel. But more important, Cohen thought, a direct link to first-century Jerusalem.
He greeted half a dozen IDF soldiers chatting in a loose circle. He’d insisted on the added security detail prior to his agreeing to assist overseeing the sensitive and highly secretive project now under way here. Death threats from Muslim fanatics had already been received, with many more to follow, he was certain.
Inside, the cool air refreshed him. Wilson’s Arch swept high overhead— the remnant of a grand first-century bridge connecting the Upper City to the Temple Mount courtyards. A series of connected vaults formed a spacious hall normally used as a synagogue. Near where the Torah Ark had been only four weeks ago, Cohen maneuvered around heaps of limestone brick and mounds of cement aggregate. He descended a metal staircase that accessed the next level of the tunnel.
Emotions came quick in this mystical place—a gateway to an ancient world his grandfather had taught him so much about in a secret room in Brooklyn.
Swapping his zayen for a bright yellow hard hat, he entered a massive subterranean chamber—the Large Hall—where tour groups would normally assemble for an orientation about the Temple Mount’s first-century construction by Roman and Egyptian architects employed under the visionary architect King Herod the Great.
Cohen stayed close to the massive, beveled Herodian blocks that
formed the mount’s base—one was the largest stone in Israel and weighed over six hundred metric tons.
Work lamps flooded white light over dozens of men working atop tall scaffolds who were repairing heavy fractures in the hall’s four lofty interlocking vaults. In many spots, massive gaps remained where whole sections of the thirteenth-centuryb.c.e. arches had forcefully dislodged.
The earthquake that caused the damage had happened almost six weeks ago. Part of the Lord’s plan, Cohen was certain. Another sign that the prophecy was being fulfilled.
His eyes fell to the tiered seating in the rear of the hall, set in front of a miniature model of the mount and the temple precincts atop it circa 70 c.e., now crushed beneath three massive stones. Amazingly, the tourists who’d been present when the tremor hit had not been injured, or anything worse.
“Good morning, Rabbi!” a worker yelled over the clanging jackhammers.
Cohen waved to him.
The Sacred Blood Page 4
