Silver (24 page)

“It’s the subject of Hassidic songs and even occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, but there it is about the time when Jews will regain their independence and all return to the land of Israel. It even says that all prophecies regarding the Messiah are allegorical, and the only thing important is that all religions return to the true religion, that Jews are free and we know the wisdom of the Torah. It’s all a bit different, isn’t it? So even the word messiah is just another thing Christianity has corrupted.”

Orla didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t come here for a religious studies lesson, but she couldn’t help but think she’d just learned something, even if she wasn’t sure what. “Fascinating,” she said, more out of politeness than true interest.

“Of course, on a personal level, I always found it fascinating that Judas isn’t mentioned once in the Gospel of Peter. Think about it. What does that tell you? The so-called great betrayer doesn’t even warrant a mention in the first saint’s gospel? That ‘betrayal’ bought this whole mythology we’ve swallowed whole, and it doesn’t even appear in one of the main gospels? But,”—the toad chuckled at the thought before he shared it—“if one is to believe that Judas was in fact the divine object, the—for want of a better word—Messiah, then surely that would turn the thirty pieces of silver that bought our religion into the most holy artifacts known to man, wouldn’t it? Instead of the cross people would be worshipping money.” He placed a single coin on the table between them. It was a new Israeli shekel with the word
Yehud
written in ancient Hebrew. Silver. “It almost seems like it is that way already, doesn’t it? Money, money, money. Still, they’re all just stories, aren’t they? But it is an interesting turnabout, don’t you think?”

“Who are they?” Orla asked.

The toad shrugged, his entire upper body undulating in place with the roll of his shoulders. The flesh of his forearms dug into the edge of the desktop as he leaned toward her. “Who are they indeed? We have as many guesses as there are days in the week. More. There have been a number of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv over the last few years that the Shrieks have laid claim to, but in terms of concrete knowledge we know very little. I would say they are ghosts, but they’re not—they’re more like wraiths. They feed on despair.

“What we have managed to work out is sketchy at best, but we believe each disciple has his own followers. So rather than one cohesive organization we’re talking about splinter cells that have grown like offshoots from the core group. Essentially you’re looking at thirteen separate organisms, eh with one purpose—to spread terror. And when you have that image firmly rooted in your mind, then, my dear, you are beginning to understand the nature of the Shrieks. Think about the scope of it for a minute.”

She did. She thought about the thirteen innocent people who, by burning themselves alive in thirteen European cities, started this entire chain of events she found herself caught up in.

“Last year we did a sweep of the city based on an anonymous tip we’d received. We brought in two men we believed to be fairly well placed within one of the chains. They might have been dog’s bodies for all the use they were to us. If we think of each Shriek as a self-sufficient organism, each one seems to be structured in such a way that no one knows who the next step above them in the chain is, or who is two steps below them. They are each responsible for recruiting one man, and one man only, who works directly below them and reports only to them. The identity of their recruit is reported to no one—not even the disciple himself—so no one has a complete picture of how widespread the network is, what positions of authority have been infiltrated. They’re all working blind.

“That kind of organizational set-up makes it damn near impossible for us to crack open. If we take out one man, we break the chain, but it doesn’t take long for it to grow a new tail. And those left behind simply become a new head for their own serpent. You try infiltrating that kind of set-up. It’s paranoia at its finest. It also means it is damned near impossible to stop them. We’re chasing our tails half the time, their shadows the other half. We hit them, they cut their man free and we’re left with nothing. It’s as simple and frustrating as that.”

Orla nodded. She’d come across similar protection mechanisms in sleeper cells in Western Europe. It was part of the modern philosophy of fear. It was based upon distrust. No one could afford to trust anyone around them. They expected to be betrayed at any moment, so there were no secret hideouts, no conspiratorial meetings of gunpowder, treason and plot. It was difficult to be betrayed when people didn’t have the slightest clue who you were or, when it came right down to it, whether you even existed. Everyone focused on their own place in the chain.

In a structure protected by distrust it was amusing that all any of the individual conspirators had to go on was the word of the man above them in the chain that they weren’t alone in what they were doing. She wanted to ask how the disciples disseminated their orders, how the word to fight was passed from link to link without it taking forever. How did the disciples make their will known to others in the chain? It was a basic thing, but in such a fractured chain of command it was hard to imagine them picking up a cell phone and calling the first man on the list beneath their name. She almost laughed at that. She didn’t. Instead she asked, “So the men you caught didn’t talk?”

The toad shook his head. “On the contrary. They tked plenty. They begged. They pleaded. They swore blind they didn’t know anything. It was all we could do to stop them talking. Unfortunately they were telling the truth. They had nothing of use to say. We had hoped that by taking one of them we might work our way up the chain, get the name of his contact, track down the next man in the line, bring him in, break him, get the name of his contact and so on. It didn’t work out quite like that.” The toad licked his lips nervously. She was naturally uneasy about people who licked their lips. It was a furtive thing, a reflex that smacked of nervousness. “The first name on our list was found floating in the Yarkon estuary the morning after we brought his man in. It was a quite literally a dead end.”

Orla nodded again. It made sense that someone would be making sure they kept their house clean. Given the nature of the Shrieks, either the disciple himself, or more likely, his right hand, would have seen to it that Schnur’s men couldn’t simply kill their way up the chain to the top.

“This is all very interesting, but, and forgive me for being blunt, Gavrel, how exactly does this all link up with our two Akim Caspis?”

“A few days ago I would have said it didn’t,” the toad admitted, shifting in his seat again. She pitied the chair. “I wasn’t even sure it did until you showed me that photograph of your man. Then, as they say, it all became clear.”

“You recognize him?”

The toad nodded slowly, as though deciding how much it was reasonable to share. “I do,” he said. “He was one of us.”

Now that had her attention. “You mean Intelligence?”

Gavrel nodded again. And again the gesture was painfully slow and drawn out, as though it physically hurt him to share even that much. “Now he calls himself Mabus. When I knew him his name was simply Solomon. He was Akim Caspi’s protégé.” He looked at the photograph of the Masada dig again. “The fool took him under his wing, taught him everything he knew. I think he saw him as the son he never had. It is a common flaw among childless men of a certain age. Curious that Solomon chose to pass himself off as Akim. This was taken when?”

“Around two months after the real Akim Caspi died,” she said. “It was taken at an archeological excavation at Masada after the ’04 earthquake.”

“Meaning, if I understand you right, two months before these mysterious payouts from Humanity Capital began?”

She nodded.

“Curious.”

“You could say that,” she agreed, “but I’m still not seeing how this all ties together. I feel like I am missing something obvious, something staring me right in the face.”

“From here on, what I am about to tell you is pure conjecture. It has no basis in fact. I have no real reason for believing it, but I do. I believe Mabus is not merely a self-styled Disciple of Judas, but rather he is the First Disciple, the man who stands above them all. That he should be reborn at Masada, well, perhaps that is not so surprising. How much do you know of the place?”

“Some,” Orla said, leaving it to the Israeli to work out for himself what she did and didn’t know.

“For a while Masada was a Roman fortress, then it was occupied by a group who called themselves Sicarii. They wanted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judaea. One could argue it is the same fight we are having today, but isn’t that always the way? People fight about territory. Anyway, the Sicarii were dagger men, assassins. That’s where the name comes from in point of fact.
Sicae
is Latin for dagger. Sicarii, men of the dagger. They were forerunners of the Arab
Hashshashin
. Patient killers. They worked their way close to their target, ingratiating themselves into their service, becoming trusted friends. Confidants. Allies. They would become indispensable to the Roman generals they sought to kill. They worked away in the background. Then, when the guard was down, they struck and faded away into the chaos of the murder scene, often calling for help for the dying man and holding him like the friend they were supposed to be.

“Does any of this sound familiar? It ought to. It is the story of Judas, or at least a version of it, after all. Even his name Iscariot is interpreted by some scholars as a Hellenized transformation of
sicarius
. The suffix -
ot
could be interpreted as denoting his belonging to the Sicarii. Of course, it’s only a theory, but it is a theory that is supported by the knowledge that Menahem ben Jair and his brother Eleazar, the last known leaders of the Sicarii, were the grandsons of Judas. And, interestingly enough, the brothers died together at Masada in AD 73 when the entire sect committed mass suicide rather than be captured by the Romans. So why wouldn’t Masada be the perfect place for the first Disciple of Judas to be reborn? There’s a certain sick symmetry to it.” He shook his head.

Orla didn’t really understand half of what he had said. She had stopped listening halfway through when something the toad had said had derailed her train of thought. Something wasn’t right about this.

“Mabus has been their mouthpiece for the last five years. He is the one obsessed with taking terror to a new level in this country. He makes hate films and distributes them via the Internet. They call it Viral Fear. In them he claims responsibility for attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Gaza and along the West Bank. He taunts us openly. He goads our investigators as we hunt his people. Last year they instigated a one-of-them—one-of-us policy.

“After we captured their two men, they snatched two of my men, good men, and showed their beheadings on the Internet. It makes me sick what this man does. I watch the filth he spreads, and it makes me want to crush his windpipe with my bare hands, Miss Nyrén. As I am sure you appreciate, I am not a violent man. For Mabus I would make an exception. For Mabus, I would get blood on my hands. What frightens me most, though, is not the films or the beheadings—we all know the risks when we enter this line of work. No, what frightens me most is he knows us; he knows how we think, because he was one of us.”

Orla understood that all too well. No one wanted an enemy who shared their mindset and knew the ins and outs of their protocols. It meant he could anticipate every response, every action, and compensate for it. It wasn’t just that it gave him an advantage; it was as though he could reach into their minds and pluck out each and every measure and countermeasure even before the first strike had been made. It made their enemy omnipotent. Godlike. But what she didn’t understand was how the toad knew it was him.

Gavrel Schnur reached down and opened one of the drawers in the pedestal legs of his desk. He pulled out a dossier marked “Mabus.” He flipped it open and laid it down on the desk between them. “We never found the man responsible for my old friend’s death,” the toad said. “But now,”—he tapped the photograph on the table with a thick stubby finger—“I think we have. I think I am finally beginning to understand a lot of things that have bothered me for a long time, Miss Nyrén, and for that I thank you.

“Now, I believe I have upheld my end of the bargain and told you all we know of the Shrieks.” He pushed the folder across the table toward her. “It should prove interesting reading, if nothing else. This is every last scrap of information we have gathered on Mabus and his people. It’s yours. I wasn’t sure what arrangements had been made for your stay, so I took the liberty of booking a junior suite for you at the Dan Tel Aviv. It’s one of the nicest hotels in the city, with a stunning view of the water. And I really do mean stunning. I’m not just quoting a line from the sales brochure.” He chuckled at that. “I don’t know about you, but I appreciate a little space when I travel.” The toad cupped both sides of his pendulous belly with his hands and wobbled it. It was an oddly self-deprecating gesture. “But, don’t get me wrong, there’s ng quite so enjoyable as a little bit of indulgence, either.