“Notify? Oh, no, not just yet. First our man must be unmasked—he and his associates, you could say.”
Loukas shook his head and rolled a crust of bread into crumbs. “It is only the first hour and already I am lost. You stayed up all night and have reached what you are convinced is the solution, am I correct?”
“Correct.”
“And on the basis of your all night musings and under the influence of tannin, you are confident you can deploy the prefect’s minions in a way that will capture the killer.”
“I can.”
“Are you going to let me in on this revelation or shall it be a surprise?”
“Which would you prefer? Pass me the remainder of that loaf while you consider which.”
Loukas practically threw the wheaten bread at Gamaliel. “There are times, Rabban, when I sincerely wish I had never met you or better, that I saw you as the annoying old Pharisee everyone else does.”
“Tut, Physician, you know that you love every moment of this. Who else of your acquaintance offers you so much adventure?”
“I give up. So, tell me. How did you divine how all this was done and who did it.”
“Unlike you, I am happy for your acquaintance. You have taught me many things, geometry and Euclid, for instance.”
“Geometry? You said you had no knowledge of either the subject or its innovator.”
“I don’t remember that, and you did and I do. Well, at least enough to use what I believe are the principles it employs to solve problems.”
“You used…Please continue. I am fascinated at the Israelite who tackles geometry without having studied it.”
“I said the principles. They are not so complex, are they? Look, if I understand the system correctly, there are certain things, facts you could say, that serve as axioms. These are the indisputable items. They stand. Against them, one arrays possibilities and if the possibilities are congruent with the facts, then you move forward one step toward the solution. Correct?”
“In a way, yes, I suppose so. Go on.”
“Well, it seemed to me that the trick one needs to employ in the geometry of murder is to first sort out the axioms from the suppositions, the facts from the assumptions, so to say. Then one has only to put them in the correct order and the problem is solved. You may then assume the acuity of the angle or, in this case, the murderer and his motive.”
“The geometry of murder?”
“Yes. Nice turn of phrase, don’t you think?”
“If you insist. Continue with your lesson. What are the axioms?”
“What do we know for certain? Well, he was dead when placed in the Holy of Holies. We all agree with that.”
“Except the high priest.”
“Yes, except Caiaphas and the Temple party. But we will discount them for the moment. They will be brought into the solution later. We know the dead man was not Jewish, although there was an attempt to make it seem as though he was. From that we conclude?”
“Someone wished to lead us astray.”
“Correct. But why, Loukas? Why such a massive deception? People go missing all the time. Why suborn two guards, pose as a kohen, and run such risks just to deceive people of one’s real intent?”
“He wanted to send a message.”
“Yes, but to whom?”
“Well, given the enormity of the project, the only answer I can think of is to us, to the Nation, to Israel, but I can’t for the life of me think what the message could be.”
“Then we must conclude the message was not for us.”
“But—”
“Patience, you will see soon enough. Now, where was I?”
“The geometry of murder.”
“Yes, let me ask you another question, Loukas. If you wanted to announce to an enemy that you had eliminated one of his people, someone important, say, how would you do it?”
“If I were a Roman, I would publically hang him from a cross. Otherwise I would send a neutral intermediary.”
“Take the case that you wanted the enemy to know their man was murdered and in a very dramatic fashion, and you were not in a position to crucify him?”
“I give up. Tell me what you’re driving at.”
“In a minute. We need to establish a few more axioms.”
“Gamaliel, you try my patience. If it weren’t so early, I would be well into the wine by now. Just tell me what you decided.”
“I stayed up all night working this out and you would deny me my moment, my geometry lesson?”
Loukas groaned. “All right, go on, but could you give me the short version?”
“There is no short version. To continue with another axiom, we know that there are two sources of this new hul gil, Egypt and Khorasan. We know that men from both places are on their way here to wage a small war over who sell it in the souk. We conclude that they represent syndicates, and we also conclude they do not wish to share the market. You remember that one of the shopkeepers said that the Hana store had a proprietor before the most recent one. From that we extrapolate that there has already been some murderous activity and perhaps this temple man was an act of revenge. So, to send the message, our killer perpetrates the most sensational murder in history. He assumes that we, that is, the Jews, will do nothing about it, believing that the circumstances were as the high priest wishes to us believe.”
“But we didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t, but that was sheer chance, a misadventure. I summoned you and you immediately suspected an alternative. Do you realize what our position would have been if you had been away or unavailable that morning?”
“You give me too much credit. You would have tumbled on to the ruse in good time.”
“Possibly.”
A loud knocking at the door brought Gamaliel up short. Benyamin announced that there was a man at the door who wished to speak to the rabban.
“Are you able to receive a visitor or shall I send him away?”
“I will see him.” Gamaliel disappeared, and Loukas could hear him talking to someone. The door slammed shut, and the rabban returned.
“And that was…?”
“I needed to deploy my minyan.”
“I thought you had done so already.”
“Redeploy, then. This time in a way that will net us our killers. In an hour they will be set and ready to bring this to a close.”
“And we? What shall we do?”
“In that same hour, we shall take a walk.”
“A walk?”
“Exactly. Now where was I?”
Chapter XLIX
Benyamin, who had been standing in the corner seeing to the meal, seemed rattled.
“Excellency, please tell me you do not plan to walk about the streets. If there is a murderer out there, and if he is as clever as you say, he will also know you are onto him. He will come after you.”
“Yes, Benyamin, that is the point of the walk, to draw him out. Now then, to return to our killer…yes, we were discussing where we might have been but for the perspicuity of our good physician.”
Gamaliel had a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were experiencing something approaching the spiritual. Loukas just looked worried.
“The fact of the murder would have been abroad within moments of its discovery.” Gamaliel continued. “Within an hour, everyone in the city would know about it. The faithful would wail and moan and wonder what Ha Shem would make of it. The kohanim and the pharisee would preach and scold, and the syndicate who’d lost their man would have received the message.”
“But they would not report it?”
“In this case, no. They would not like the prefect nosing around the Street of the Herbalists and discovering what his troops, among others, were involved in and doubtless shutting them down.
”
“No, I suppose not. I need to pick up on Benyamin’s worry. Why are we walking into certain danger?”
“Nothing in life is certain. Life, death, they are facets of the same ordinary thing, Loukas, but honor, and truth, and obedience, now they have value.”
“And we will seek these things in our walk?” Loukas did not seem pleased at the prospect.
“Oh, I despair for you, Loukas. It is a problem to be solved, first. If you were the killer and you had on good authority that the rabban of the Sanhedrin knew who you were and why you killed, what would you do?”
“Find an opportunity to do you in as quickly as possible.”
“And if you believed that no one else, with the obvious exception of his friend the physician—”
“Me!”
“No one else knew and further you had it on the same good authority, that the prefect had left the city for a few days or weeks, and that this rabban was waiting for Pilate’s return before revealing who the killer was—”
“Rabban, he’s going to kill us.”
“He’s going to try, certainly, perhaps even succeed. That’s why we will take our walk. He will act as soon as he possibly can, and then the rest will be easy. You see, he thinks no one but the two of us care about the Temple man. With us out of the way, he will be free to set his men against the other syndicate and start the war over the drug. Simple.”
“I have no wish to put myself in harm’s way, Rabban. I have no wish to die in the service of the prefect, for that is what this comes down to. You are asking me to throw myself into the fire so that the prefect, the most hated man in the country, can round up a felon?”
“You will serve justice, not the prefect. It is an axiom that truth must overcome falsehood, righteousness overcome faithlessness.”
“I wish I had never taught you geometry.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t. So there you are, my night’s musings, as you so inelegantly put it.”
“Not quite. We agreed the killer couldn’t have inserted the body behind the Veil alone. Where is his accomplice, and shouldn’t we worry about him?”
“His accomplice? I offer you two possibilities. One, he is the other man who follows the follower, or two, he is dead.”
“Which?”
“My instinct says the latter. There is no reason for them to traipse around on each other’s heels like that. My supposition is that the accomplice is, or was, a hul gil user who, because of his dependency, would do exactly what he was asked so long as he was supplied the drug. But people like that are unreliable and, therefore, he was either the man in the burned out shop who had been co-opted by the other side, or is dead somewhere else, his body with those guards in some remote place. We may never know.”
“Why does the killer believe Pilate has left the city?”
“Because I told him so. Well, not me directly. I left him a message with Amun. You remember the Egyptian craftsman I visited. He produced the bowl and the pot and I was certain that if I visited him, so would the killer, if only to find out what I said.”
“And you are certain he visited?”
“No, but I like the probabilities. See how I have mastered your Hellenic love of mathematics and logic?”
Loukas held his head and moaned. “Rabban, this is not like you. You are always so careful, you are conservative, and you are always sure. What has gotten into you?”
Gamaliel did not answer. Instead, he sat very still and stared at the far wall,
“Gamaliel, is there something?” Loukas studied his friend. His physician’s habit he would say. Gamaliel sat quietly, like a volcano about to erupt, or the calm before a gale. Then, he stood and began to pace, at first aimlessly, then striding furiously back and forth. His voice dropped to a near whisper. His eyes flashed, which caused Benyamin to retreat into a corner.
“My friend,” Gamaliel rasped, “you miss the whole point. This is not just some wonderfully concocted murder. It is not just about the possible consequences of some opiate invading the sensibilities of the Nation. Loukas, someone has defiled the Holy of Holies. He has done so for the basest of reasons and no one seems to care.” His voice grew stronger, and by the end of his speech was nearly a shout.
“He has mocked Ha Shem. Don’t you understand? The Holy of Holy has been desecrated, the Temple defiled! That cannot be allowed. Does anyone care about that? Does the high priest? No. It cannot, I repeat, it cannot be allowed. As long as I am alive, it will not go unpunished. You, Loukas and those like you, may drift comfortably along on the edges of near nonbelief and see only a foolish attack on an institution. In my darkest moments I believe half the nation is with you in that, but I will not abide it. The Lord expects more from us, and when he is attacked by some scheming, irreverent, blasphemous…infidel. He expects us to respond. Wringing our hands will not do. Pretending it is something it is not, will not do. This man must be brought to justice. Well, since Rome forbids us the exercise of capital punishment, I must turn this terrible person over to them to do it for us. Do you understand? I am the Rabban of the Sanhedrin, and I can do no less.”
“And how do you reckon the risks entailed in the walk we are to take?”
“Risks? The risks are unimportant. If we are killed, is unimportant. The only important thing is that he be captured and brought to justice.”
Gamaliel stopped his pacing and let out a wail of anguish. Loukas would say later he had never heard the man so upset.
“Rabban, calm yourself. This is not like you. Benyamin, some wine for the rabban.” The servant scuttled off to find the strongest vintage in the cellar.
Gamaliel wheeled and, red faced and, his finger pointing at Loukas’ face, barked, “This is the high priest’s responsibility, not mine. He has no business sweeping this under one of those gaudy carpets he decorates his house with. He is our anointed high priest. He stands foremost in the line of Aaron, and it is his job, I say. But does he address it? No! He frets and fusses about a country rabbi and does nothing about the defilement of his Temple. It is an outrage! He is our shepherd, and yet he chases after mice in the feed bin while wolves ravage his sheep!”
Benyamin handed Gamaliel a cup. The rabban drank it in a single gulp. “It is time, Loukas. Time to walk, time to send our own message.” Gamaliel headed for the door. “Are you coming? You do not have to. I am the man he wants.”
Although his better judgment warned him not to, Loukas followed Gamaliel into the street.
Chapter L
It had been a long and dangerous day. Loukas sat in the late afternoon sun in his back court and contemplated his friend. While his nerves still jangled and his heart pounded from the morning’s excitement, the rabban, sitting opposite him, appeared calm and quite pleased with himself.
“There are still some things I do not understand, Rabban. I listened at the fortress when Ali bin Selah and the other man were being questioned, but what with the Roman’s shouting. Ali’s screaming, and the other man’s moaning, I did not learn much. I must say, as a healer, torture is contrary to everything I hold dear. I could take no more. In any event, I lost the thread.”
“But we went through it this morning. You have been with me from the very beginning. Your difficulty arises from your friendship with Ali bin Selah and your innate reluctance to think ill of anybody, much less a friend.”
“You may be right about Ali. I value friendship highly, and Ali was one.” Loukas paused. “I confess that after I heard the part about our murderer believing you were waiting for Pilate’s return before revealing the killer to him, my mind tended to drift. To tell the truth, not a lot of what you said this morning sank in.”
“Yes, you said ‘He is going to kill us.’ I remember.”
“Looking back on it, I suppose it went very well. I was able to control all of my sphincters, and I don’t think I we
pt. I do admit to being very frightened.”
“Yes, so was I, to be honest. I will happily fill in your gaps, if you produce some Cappadocian wine.”
“You realize it may be the last you will ever taste now that Ali will no longer be traveling this way.”
“A terrible price to pay for justice. In the future we must concentrate on delivering criminals to the authorities who do not require us to make such a heavy sacrifice.”
Loukas produced the skin of wine, and they sipped in silence.
“As we thought, all this business is to be understood in the ruse of planting the dead man in the Temple. An Egyptian dealer in hul gil who traded under the name of Hana. After our Roman interrogators had created sufficient pain in Aswad Khashab, the poor man babbled that Hana was his brother. When he refused Ali’s demand that he surrender the market in the more powerful hul gil to him, Ali murdered him. But, if the plan was to work, our dead man had to seem a recipient of Ha Shem’s wrath and draw us away. At the same time a clear message sent to the dead man’s allies. We might believe in Divine wrath, but they would know otherwise. As you noted, they would not report it.”
“So, the Jerusalem authorities would assume that the dead man was a lunatic who believed he was supposed to communicate with Ha Shem. And the other side would say nothing but know what was afoot?”
“Exactly. It served the same purpose the incense smoke serves at Yom Kippur—to screen the high priest from the Presence lest he be struck down for accidently gazing on the Presence. In this case, the intent was to screen us from the truth.”
“In this case, not with holy smoke.”
“Not even remotely holy. Then, of course, to make it all work, I think they, that is Ali and whoever helped him, dragged the dead man up the ramp to the Altar of Sacrifice and tossed him on the coals left from the day’s sacrifice. Remember, he was only burned to his knees.”
“But you said nothing about Ali at the time, yet you suspected.”
“There was nothing to say. He declared his intention to leave the city immediately, and the matter seemed moot. It was only when he reappeared at your door dressed as someone else that I had any real doubts. I assumed he must be connected somehow, but I did not know how. It was the business about the hul gil that changed suspicion to a near certainty.”
Holy Smoke Page 22
