Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (33 page)

"It will take time," the officer replied.
"May I ask why this is so important?"

"You're entitled to ask, but the matter is
confidential, so I'm not authorized to provide details. All I can
say is it's urgent."

The security officer paused, as though he
couldn't be expected to assign any of his overworked staff to
search for records, especially when he was kept out of the
loop.

Zabronski growled his displeasure. "I'm sure
I can get the prime minister's office to put a fire under you guys.
I understand how busy you fellas are, but, if you want, I'll start
the ball rolling with the PM."

"That might not be necessary, as long as you
send a formal requisition to me personally."

"Done. You'll have it within the hour. But
start immediately. Time is absolutely critical. And while you're at
it, can you tell me how many bags Father Benoit Matteau traveled
with on February 8, El Al Flight 54 from Rome back to Tel Aviv? And
how much they weighed?"

"We'll do our best."

"That's all I can ask," replied Zabronski,
appreciative that Ben Gurion Security was now willing to help.

"Three pieces of luggage," the official
reported when he called back near noon on the following day. "Our
records show that Father Benoit Matteau submitted three suitcases
at Customs. They all matched what we x-rayed before sending them on
to a Gulfstream V executive jet. Weight? Each between thirteen and
seventeen kilos."

"Oh, shit!" Zabronski exclaimed, immediately
apologetic for letting his frustration invade his language.

"Sir?"

"Unfortunate for us. And how many pieces of
luggage on El Al Flight 54 back to Tel Aviv?"

"The report says he had one bag. Fifteen
kilos."

The bad news from Zabronski sent Itamar's
mood cascading. Three suitcases going to Rome and only one
returning confirmed his suspicion that the priest had taken more to
Italy than he brought back. Both Zvi and Itamar were convinced that
the elusive fragments Tim Matternly had scanned at the Monastery of
St. George were in Benoit's luggage. They belonged to the State of
Israel, but were now in Europe where they would be difficult to
trace and even more difficult to claim as state property. If the
Antiquities Authority managed to locate them, lawyers for their new
owners would have a heyday preventing repossession by the
government. The redeeming feature in this deplorable situation was
that Tim Matternly had left Gabby and the Antiquities Authority
with a good, if not full, digital record of what had been
stolen.

Though Itamar agreed with Zabronski that it
was probably too late, he moved quickly to obtain judicial
authority to arrest Father Benoit for theft. The minister of
culture was cautious about arresting a prominent priest with
influential friends in the Vatican. But he was overruled by Deputy
Prime Minister Zebulon Sonnenberg who expressed outrage that Father
Benoit would smuggle artifacts out of a country that had graciously
hosted him for four decades.

Zvi Zabronski insisted on being part of the
team that headed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to arrest Father
Benoit because, while Itamar was dealing with Zebulon Sonnenberg,
his department had traced the Uzi murder weapon to a gun dealer in
Bethlehem and he now suspected Benoit knew something about the
murders committed with this weapon. He wasn't prepared to issue a
warrant based on inconclusive evidence. Still, he believed that the
Antiquities Authority had a strong case for theft. If Itamar Arad
was prepared to take the priest into custody, that was perfectly
all right with him.

***

Father Donito Freezini met the police
delegation in the library of the École Biblique. The moment he
recognized Israeli police uniforms, he switched from Hebrew to
Italian, flailing his arms and squealing like a puppy dog whose
tail had just been stepped on. Itamar attempted to pacify the
panicked priest with the modest Italian he knew, but the cleric
refused to stop jabbering and listen. One of Itamar's staff
solicited help from the receptionist.

She was a Christian Arab, nervous but
composed. "No," she said, "I am very sorry, but Father Benoit is no
longer dean of the École. Father Donito Freezini is now acting
dean."

"Where is Father Benoit?" demanded
Itamar.

"He didn't say where he was going. All I know
is he took most of his possessions in several trunks."

"He's been in Bethlehem for nearly thirty
years. Surely, you don't leave after all that time without giving
someone your forwarding address."

"I'm sorry. I am very sorry. He left at
night. One day he was in his office; the next, gone. Those of us
who have been here for some time didn't even get a chance to say
good-bye. No farewell party. No glass of wine. Nothing, absolutely
nothing. I must confess it struck me as quite odd. A wonderful,
kind man who advanced the goals of our École. Surely, we should
have given him a farewell party. Some cake, or something like
that."

Before leaving Bethlehem, the police searched
Benoit's abandoned office and talked to neighbors. Two men went to
the apartment the École maintained for the director's use and found
it now reserved for Monsignor Patrick Flaraty, the newly appointed
permanent director, who had not yet arrived from Ireland to take up
his new duties. No one knew where Father Benoit had gone. The team
was about to return to Jerusalem when the receptionist gave Major
Zabronski the address of Father Benoit's driver.

The chauffeur lived two blocks north of the
École. The team walked through narrow Bethlehem streets to the
man's home. He was not there, but in a nearby café, playing
shashbesh with fellow chauffeurs. 
No, he didn't know where Father
Benoit was headed, but he had driven the Dominican priest to the
Allenby Bridge and waved goodbye to him as he crossed on foot into
the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They had had to push two carts
loaded with his baggage all the way across the bridge, then return
with the empty carts back to the Israeli side.

***

Rav Schreiber's life nearly ended after yet
another stroke. This time, his physicians agreed that he should no
longer live at home, with or without nursing care. Instead, they
sent him to a hospice for Orthodox men living out the remainder of
their lives in a religious environment, with a resident rabbi
conducting daily worship that few were healthy enough to
participate in. During the second day in his new home, an
additional TIA removed him from the world of the conscious. His
doctors made no effort to revive him, now content to step aside and
let God determine the time of his death.

There were strict conditions under which an
unmarried woman could be alone with a man, even one in a coma. The
door to Schreiber's ward was left open and a religious
shomer
, guard, sat in the corridor, reciting a volume
of psalms. Gabby sat beside the rabbi's bed, thinking how fond she
had become of him. And to some extent, she believed he had grown to
respect her, though he had never said that in so many words. Since
he was willing to let her continue what Tim had started, she took
this to mean that he trusted her judgment.

She had witnessed his encyclopedic knowledge
of ancient languages few mortals could match. Now she could not
fend off the sadness that came from watching the Angel of Death rob
posterity of this invaluable treasure. It would take a lifetime of
dedicated study for a successor to accumulate the knowledge this
man would soon take with him to the grave. While she sat alongside
Schreiber's bed, no visitors came. Noticeably absent were his son
from Ramat Gan and his daughter from New York. The loneliness of
being passed over at the end of one's life seemed to her acutely
cruel. She couldn't help thinking with some bitterness how, when a
person's useful life is over, the healthy, strong and young often
forget what they owe to their mentors.

She also admired the man's humility. For his
labors, he wanted nothing, consistently rejecting the money she
offered. Since the content of the fragments meant little to him,
she struggled to understand his commitment to the project. Was it
just an opportunity to use what he knew? Or was it out of loyalty
to Tim? Or perhaps to her? Maybe, she thought, he shared her own
curiosity about how God actually communicates with humans. Perhaps
his commitment to ritual and study was not as uncompromising as he
led others to believe. She never got a chance to share with him her
feeling that it was not God who selected humans to be His
mouthpieces, but willful individuals who by virtue of simple living
and harsh training ordained themselves to be His messengers.

In her rabbinical days, Gabby had often said
that no one should die alone and yet before her was an obedient Jew
waiting to meet his Maker without family or friend. She glanced
along the ward over several beds filled with dying men to observe
the elderly religious guard seated near the door, his eyes buried
in the psalms on his lap. It was taboo for her to touch Schreiber,
yet she considered making an exception and breaking the silly rule.
Judging the guard to be absorbed in his text, she surrendered to
this urge and leaned far over Schreiber, planting her lips against
his and holding firm, which proved to be a second too long. The
guard lifted his eyes to catch what he considered to be a
sacrilegious action and jumped up, dropping his sacred book to the
floor and howling at her, his arms flailing. In defiance, Gabby
maintained her position over the dying rabbi to touch his lips a
final time. She fled from the ward a moment later, rather than
explain her motivation to the unsympathetic hospice staff.

That evening, she reported to Itamar, "He's
in a coma. I promised I would never reveal his name and I never
will. Tim made the same pledge. Thanks for not pressuring me."

He could see in her eyes how the passing of
this giant affected her. When she told him how she leaned forward
to kiss the old man's lips, he wrapped her with his arms and
whispered, "Some secrets are not worth knowing anyway."

She cuddled into his embrace and planted her
lips against his neck, touching lightly, once, twice, then three
and four times. He reciprocated by pressing his against hers and
securing his arms tightly around her. Neither hid from the other
how their bodies had begun to stir. In Itamar's arms, she asked
herself if it was mourning for Tim that allowed her to open a new
space in her heart for another man. Or was she falling in love with
Itamar because, like herself, he knew how to lose a lover? Maybe,
she concluded, a little of both.

As she waited for the rabbi to leave his
earthbound yeshiva and enter the
Yeshiva
shel-Maalah,
the Heavenly Academy, a sense of life's
inexorable flow captured her. Even the irreplaceable Rav Zechariah
Schreiber must give way to a future generation of scholars.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Because Itamar wanted Zvi Zabronski with him
in Rome, he paid for his travel with funds from the Antiquities
Authority. For an audience with the Pope's Secretary of State,
Donaldo Cardinal Fornenti, he believed it was essential to have
someone thoroughly familiar with the evidence against Father Benoit
Matteau on the charges of theft of state property and the
less-well-established case of conspiracy to murder Timothy
Matternly. Equally important, he feared that less confident Israeli
officials might succumb to the aura of the papal fathers, whose
discipline and pomp could easily dazzle men of weaker resolve. As a
student of Jewish history, Zabronski harbored little love for the
Roman Church, blaming it for engendering centuries of
anti-Semitism. When it came to talking with the Holy Father's
senior lieutenant, Itamar calculated that old-fashioned Jewish
chutzpah
would serve the police officer
far better than polite deference.

At the Vatican, Donaldo Cardinal Fornenti's adjutant
kept Itamar and Zabronski waiting for more than ninety minutes in a
cramped, stuffy antechamber before finally escorting them to the
secretary of state's office, a cavernous, over-decorated, baroque
room with walls displaying numerous photographs of the papal
plenipotentiary and his distinguished foreign visitors.

The cardinal met Itamar and Zabronski just
inside the office door with open arms and welcoming words, as if
they were familiar friends making a social call. A good head
shorter than the Israelis, he made up for his lack of stature with
a bellowing tenor voice. He wore a black gown with gold embroidery
and a crimson skullcap that clung to a completely bald head by
nothing more than gravity.

The cardinal sat his visitors beside his
immaculately neat mahogany desk before returning to his chair where
two stone-faced aides stood like robots behind him with notepads at
the ready. "Yes, yes," he mumbled in English as they settled down
and Itamar organized a file of papers on his lap. "I have read
about your agency, Dr. Arad. We receive extensive reports on
excavations in the Holy Land. Vatican scholars study your
periodicals carefully. Since I found you on my appointment
calendar, I'm curious to learn why you have requested this
meeting." A plastic smile preceded his next remark: "Now I'm sure
you'll let me know."

Itamar sensed the cardinal's dissemblance,
certain that he knew precisely why this meeting had been requested.
The Israeli ambassador to the Vatican had briefed Itamar of
Fornenti's passion for archeology, and there was little chance he
was unaware of stolen fragments from Qumran. Itamar chose to end
diplomatic niceties by getting right to the point. "Your
representative from Bethlehem has no doubt informed you of a new
cave at Qumran."

The cardinal's eyes narrowed on Itamar and
didn't flinch.

"Near the Dead Sea, a new cave was discovered
filled with ancient artifacts. Unfortunately, it was looted before
my government learned about it. A great embarrassment, as you can
imagine."