Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  They were not that serious about their Judaism like the poor often were. They would say, to much laughter, we are serious Spaniards who happen to be Jews.

  The Inquisition soon reminded them that they were either Spaniards or Jews. And the Cotas could not bring themselves to leave Spain as so many did. And they found to their surprise that pressed under these circumstances, the thing in them that was Jewish became not some accident of birth, but a purpose. The water of their Christian baptism seemed to light a fire in their secret Judaism, one the family Cota had not known for generations.

  They thought the Inquisition would pass like other waves of irrationality. It did not pass. With whips and fire and prongs that tore human flesh, it pressed itself on the spirit of Spain, on the enlightenment that had once been Spain, and on the eldest member of the Cota family in particular, the one who had been passed the secret of the king’s chalice.

  He had eaten pork freely before and liked its taste. But when he had to eat pork, when others watched to see if it were enjoyable to him, when he had to eat pork when he normally would not eat pork because Christians were watching, then it became meat rancid to the soul.

  And taking a wafer in his mouth and supposedly eating God, while understandable, even admirable, when others did it by faith, became abomination when done to show even the peasantry that he was a weekly communicant.

  What religion, he wondered, as he now in secret places on his vast estates studied the laws of Moses, the Mishna, the Talmud, the Torah, what faith could possibly be built on a sword that forced a man to lie? What faith could be satisfied to build itself in great houses instead of human hearts? What had been respect, even admiration for another’s faith now burned as contempt, partly for himself. For he could have at any moment risked his life and his family and fled to some Muslim land where there was greater tolerance. He could have gone to the fires, as some did for whom lying had become a greater burden than life.

  Instead he vented all his burning contempt with sweet words of devotion, giving for placement in the great chalice in the Cathedral of Toledo, which his father had told him contained the Christian Grail, six well-polished diamonds, having smashed one with a hammer so there would never be seven again.

  NEW YORK CITY, THE PRESENT

  When the six stones arrived at New York County Court in New York City, they were considered a sign of neither ultimate evil nor wisdom. They were cash valued at one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars apiece and listed first as Exhibit A in a conspiracy to sell stolen goods and then as Exhibit A in the torture death of Avril Gotbaum of Tel Aviv, who had been awaiting trial on the original conspiracy charge.

  The skin above his nipple had been cut in a strip and, according to the coroner’s office, was being pulled down slowly when his heart gave out, causing death.

  In a small Queens apartment, a young American woman, whose only previous accomplishment of note had been to win best flower at the Garden Club of Carney, broke the code of the Spanish Marano that had survived undetected for four hundred years.

  She did it with a pad, a pencil, a telephone, and a mind that had been awakened to its powers. The last time the diamonds had been noted was in the possession of a Spanish family named de Cota, shortly after the Inquisition, this from a Spanish court record that she had consulted in her search for continuing mention of the stones.

  Given that they ended up in a British saltcellar, was it therefore possible they had been brought to Britain and bought by someone for the cellar?

  Claire did two things. The Linzer Hasidim had a community in London, a major diamond center, that looked for records of the diamonds there. In neither religious nor business records was there a mention of either six or seven diamonds in a group of roughly the twenty-karat size.

  They also without as much assurance told her there was no Jewish family that they knew of named de Cota, and yet in the history of the Jews of England, Claire found a de Cota, settling with other Spanish Jews, but this one quite late, in the time of Elizabeth I. Like descriptions, names changed from country to country and now de Cota’s descendants were named Coater.

  It was no great feat to find one in a London telephone directory.

  “Yes, yes, we did have an ancestor named de Cota.” The woman’s voice was British as a cold shower.

  Claire felt a tingle at having found her. It was as though she had walked the very lines of the centuries on her wall. She gripped the phone tightly and made sure the ballpoint pen was working by scratching first on the pad and then, when it didn’t give ink, on her blue jeans. That got it to work.

  She could taste the victory and was almost afraid to press on.

  “Were there any family records of diamonds?”

  “If there were,” said the woman, “they certainly didn’t come to me. I believe he arrived penniless. He was a Marano, you know. He was a Jew.”

  “You’re not?”

  “The Coaters have been Anglican for generations. I have a brother-in-law who is Jewish. I’m an Anglican, not a very good one perhaps, but what is a good Anglican?”

  “Is there anyone who might remember a family tradition or stories about de Cota?”

  “I’ve told you everything we know. Is there some claim on diamonds? It would be an absolutely splendid windfall.”

  “Not since the fifteenth century in Spain,” said Claire.

  “I do know this. He was supposed to be deucedly grateful for sanctuary. That probably doesn’t help at all, does it?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, it may,” said Claire to Maude Coater of Kensington Square, London.

  If England gave de Cota sanctuary, would he give a gift of six diamonds to his protector? Why not five? Why not, most of all, the seven?

  No, de Cota was a Marano. He lived his Jewish life in secret, possibly in great hate. Was it possible, therefore, that being unable to speak out, he spoke to those fellow Jews of the world in their language of numbers? He made six of the seven diamonds, which said “not of God.”

  And since there was no mention of these diamonds after the fourteen-hundreds in Spain, was it possible that they weren’t hidden but put on something in Spain itself, put on not as the Seven Eyes of Seville, which would be noted, but put on as six?

  Put on what?

  Something that a Jew should be aware was “not of God,” that made its way to England with a Duke de Cota and became, for some reason, a saltcellar. She stopped doodling on her pad and, on the map of the world on her research wall, made a strong blue line from Spain to England, the path of that thing that was for a Marano “not of God.” Could it be Christian? Maybe, thought Claire, getting herself a Coke from the refrigerator.

  XV

  He trusted more in His help and succour than in his sword, for he saw most plainly that no prowess achieved with this world’s arms would suffice to save him unless Our Lord came to his aid.

  —CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES

  Le Conte du Graal, 1180

  At 4:32 A.M. Harry Rawson got a phone call. It was a British voice and the caller did not tell him who he was.

  “Rawson?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re in a red flag warning. Feldman, Norman, is a red flag.”

  “Thank you,” said Rawson and hung up. He had made a few of these calls himself. It could mean many things. The ruby dealer could be working for some government, even the United States. He could be aligned with some terrorist organization, something that would make him a danger to be around. Was Feldman the professional killer?

  Rawson would have to find out exactly. But this was enough for now and was well appreciated.

  He debated turning on the light or going back to sleep. He was not bothered by the warning. That just meant things were working well.

  He was bothered by the Grail itself, this “poorish bowl” he was hunting, supposed to be the great remnant of an empire, an empire that imploded itself back on the island that had given birth to it so that Great Britain itself had all the problems of its
old colonies and none of the grandeur of ruling them anymore.

  He could have said to Sir Anthony, come to New York, named after the Duke of York, and see the judge and jury system in Kings County, working with the idea that a man was innocent until proven guilty; and then go up to the Bronx, where Spanish and Yiddish and Latvian and Lithuanian and Polish and Italian and languages he couldn’t even name were spoken. And hear them all learning the English tongue upon roads called Kingsbridge. That was the living empire.

  It was not the repossession of a poorish bowl.

  England as they knew it was over. The staid, sturdy populace had now degenerated, like the people of ancient Rome, to vicious rioters at public games. The British craftsman was now a joke even on television, where some contractors trying to demolish a building failed, to the amusement of the American announcers. England could not have defeated even Argentina alone without the American assistance that helped to guide their ships across waters Britain once ruled. That empire was done for, and only the parades were left back home.

  Harry Rawson neither turned on the light nor went back to sleep, but went to the windows and looked out at the predawn lights of New York City. Runnymede was here. The Magna Carta was here. The idea, the most important idea, that a policeman was here to protect the citizenry and not rule them was so very British. He wondered whether Detective Modelstein understood that. He could tell him. Modelstein would probably think it was some sort of arrogance.

  Central Park glittered in random lights before him. Parks were British. They were all over London. Nothing quite this big though. Central Park was an American interpretation.

  There will always be an England, he thought, even if we sink into the sea. But he wasn’t doing all this for England. He was doing this because he was English.

  He wondered if non-Englishmen could ever understand that. He didn’t care, really, he thought. Never did. He had once cared about other things, but he was young then. This life took the young out of him, the way ammonia could bleach fresh grass.

  He had seen death and suffering in so many ways in Banai. A head cut off, a hand cut off for stealing, tortures. But even more ruinous to the spirit was the deceit and treachery so common it had to be assumed by everyone, including one’s own countrymen. That was where his young Rawson had gone since Sandhurst.

  The problem for Captain Harry Rawson, assigned Argyle Sutherlanders, was that in the thirty-fifth year of his life he had learned in little painful ways to believe in nothing. And he was the man England had sent to search for the Holy Grail.

  While Rawson was having breakfast in his suite, the reason for the red flag became apparent with the delivery of a sealed typewritten report. Norman Feldman, sixty-seven, of New York City, was an especially dangerous killer, this first determined in Burma, where Feldman adapted to local customs including indigenous tortures. Therefore, the decision had been made to cancel surveillance until such time as the proper authorities wished to sanction hazard duty.

  The source of this information, Rawson found out later in the day, was an ex-CIA official who lived in Darien, Connecticut, just north of New York City. Rawson also found out, as he suspected, that there was a question of whether surveillance had been terminated for reasons of hazard or because his people had already lost Feldman twice in New York City. He had left the country without their finding out until he had returned a week before. To which country he had gone Rawson’s Intelligence support did not have the foggiest.

  Infuriated, Rawson drove up to Darien, Connecticut, to do the background himself. He was going to find out what the red flag meant exactly. The source for the information was Feldman’s OSS superior in Burma during World War II. Access to that source was through the former British commander of the Singapore battalion, who was a friend of Feldman’s OSS superior. This was all old-boy friendship.

  The OSS commander had become a CIA section chief for Burma-Thailand after the war and then retired to the New England village of Darien and a modest house with a suitably modest lawn. He lived amid the loot from his career in the Far East, with jade vases, bamboo furniture, and Thai paintings of pagodas and dancing women.

  He said he was more than happy to help a friend of the former British commander of the Singapore battalion. His name was Brewster, and he wanted to make the assistance into a boozy afternoon of reminiscences and a discussion of world affairs among like-minded men.

  Rawson knew almost instantly that Brewster was typical of the dross so prevalent in the American intelligence system and State Department, a result of America suddenly finding itself the new world power in 1945 with no more preparation than an exhausting war. The sort America got were usually those who couldn’t find work outside. Unlike Britain, they did not get the best of their people. They got those who needed livelihoods and were in it because they couldn’t do as well for themselves elsewhere.

  As was common with most like that, they felt compelled to anoint every action with the absolving word professional.

  “Frankly, I was glad when Feldman refused to stay on. I’m not against doing what you have to do. I’m a professional. But Feldman was a psychopathic killer. Psychopathic,” said Brewster.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Rawson.

  “A professional will get in, do the job, and get out. Clean, fast. No mess. You understand?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” said Rawson.

  “You’re not with MI 5?”

  “God no,” laughed Rawson. “Captain, Royal Argyle Sutherlanders, retired. I’m a businessman, and I needed some background on this man in New York. You say there are some problems with him?”

  “I wouldn’t have anything to do with that man I didn’t have to,” said Brewster, drawing himself up to the moment. “He once had someone killed by a death of the thousand cuts. Have you ever seen that? The person is a bloody pulp at the end.”

  “Feldman was a sadist?”

  “Not especially. Man was a Japanese informer. Feldman had it done in the damned square of a village.”

  “Sounds horrid. Did he do that a lot?”

  “How many times does he have to do it?”

  “Of course I’m not a professional, but that does sound decidedly effective. Was he considered dangerous with his hands? Did you ever see or hear of him personally killing anyone with a knife or something like that? I’ll tell you why,” said Rawson with a little laugh. “I don’t know if business is important enough to get near him.”

  “I couldn’t tell you. Never knew what he was doing. Wouldn’t tell you his sources. Wouldn’t tell you how he did things. Wasn’t professional. One time, we even had to threaten to shoot him. We told him the next time he went back into the jungles he might not return.”

  “And that brought him around?”

  “No. The man was impossible to deal with. He laughed. He never quite took us seriously. We had to use him. He had the whole Mogok region of Burma wired for us. We could do anything there. We knew when the Japanese literally moved one truck a mile in any direction. We knew when they came, and went, and where they were going. We could stop their movements too and they wouldn’t even know it. They would think they had trouble with their lazy Burmese coolies, but it was Feldman bribing someone or doing something. We never quite knew. We called him the obnoxious necessity.”

  “Did you attempt to kill him?”

  “Oh, no. We just tried to get him in line. I was more than a little bit disappointed when, despite my protestations, he was offered a permanent position at the end of the war. And I was damned relieved when he didn’t take it.”

  “Where did he get his training?”

  “Trained with your Asia people as a matter of fact,” said Brewster.

  “Oh, I see,” said Rawson. “What I’m trying to find out is, is the man still the sort one should avoid? Would you have any idea how many of these horrible killings he performed and, more importantly, might he still do them?”

  “I just know of that one. What sort of business is Feldman i
n nowadays?”

  “He buys and sells precious gems.”

  “Really?” said Brewster. “Is he successful?”

  “I believe so,” said Rawson.

  “He did pop up a lot in the Far East after the war. Around Burma. Probably set himself up while working for us. Psychopathic killer. Never would have made a good professional.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what is a professional killing?”

  “Clean. You go in. You put the man away. You go out. Nobody knows you were in. Nobody knows you were there. All they know is that someone has been offed. Maybe they wouldn’t even find the body. That is a professional hit.”

  “Well, it all sounds brutal, you know,” said Rawson, thanking Mr. Brewster for his help, promising to forward the gratitude to the former commander of the Singapore battalion.

  Brewster had told him in so many ways that Feldman was really capable of anything, from calculated torture to that dangerous professional stroke into the cerebral lobe of the art dealer. Feldman could have learned that himself or picked it up from the Singapore chaps or just about anywhere a highly competent professional worked.

  Feldman had understood as the sultan of Banai did that punishment was already too late for the one to be punished; rather, its real worth was in the eyes of the onlookers.

  The horrible display in a village square probably helped Feldman reduce the number of people he had to kill. It might have been the only one he dispatched during the whole war. One of the reasons that there was so little crime in the Gulf states was that executions were public and cruel. They were meant to intimidate.

  More importantly, Feldman had shown himself to be competent, and therefore following him to see if he were dealing the remnants of the cellar would require more caution. The man had to lust for that Christ’s head ruby.

  If a British agent saw the cellar in a bank vault, then perhaps Feldman did too. Perhaps Feldman had set everything up along the way. And then, perhaps he hadn’t. The question was, would Feldman throw away a poorish bowl? Maybe. He certainly would keep the ruby. Would he be reasonable about selling the bowl? Probably. Would he keep his mouth shut afterward? Maybe.