The Illumination (21 page)

The sooner he scoped out the scene, the sooner he'd be able to redirect the rest of his team in hunting down Landau and D'Amato.

And Firefly.

Their room in this hotel gave him the starting point he'd been lacking. Now he had a trail to follow. A trail that wasn't nearly as cold as the desk clerk, lying with what was left of her
face covered in the ambulance outside, about to be conveyed to the morgue.

“Show me the room, Franco. I want to see this drawing you told me about on the phone.”

 

 

 

Rabbi Calo gestured Natalie and D'Amato back into their chairs and tossed a packet of study sheets onto his desk. He pumped D'Amato's arm with zest and Natalie's with similar enthusiasm.

He had a dazzling smile, a dimple in his chin, and deep-set, dark, puppy dog eyes that twinkled with friendliness behind wire-rimmed glasses. “How can I help you, my friends? Elena tells me you have some Aramaic writings?” He beckoned with his fingers, inviting them to give it over.

Natalie complied. “Any help you can give us, Rabbi, would be tremendously appreciated. We first need to confirm that this
is
Aramaic, and second, we need to know what it says.”

His dark eyes first darted over the enhancements, then lifted to Natalie's face. “This isn't Hebrew, that much I can tell you. So we could deduce it is Aramaic, but I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough to read or translate it.”

He was regarding them with a puzzled expression. “May I ask why you want to know about this—in what context did you find these words? Elena mentioned that you work at a museum—”

“Yes. The Devereaux Museum in New York. Rabbi, it's extremely important that I find out what they mean. Is there someone else who might know?” She leaned forward in her chair, her face betraying her desperation.

“Well, then. My good friend Father Caserta is a biblical scholar and quite renowned. The Babylonian Talmud happens to be one of his passions. It's written predominantly in Aramaic, as you might know. So I'm quite certain your question would pique his interest.”

D'Amato surged to his feet. “Can you help us arrange it? And how quickly can we see Father Caserta?”

“Let's find out.” With a smile, Rabbi Calo lifted the phone.

A few moments later the rabbi was leading them from the building.

D'Amato drifted away as Natalie engaged Calo in conversation. He loped over to the trash receptacle holding a wad of crumpled paper he'd taken from his pocket. Natalie knew he was retrieving the gun, and she didn't turn her head, even as he hurried to catch up with them.

If she'd turned, she might have recognized the burly young man in jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt ambling after them on the other side of the street.

 

Bingo.
Elation surged through Barnabas as he watched the Landau woman and the reporter hurry from the synagogue with a shorter man.

When the journalist hovered a moment at a trash bin, Barnabas frowned, watching closely. As the man rejoined the others, and they began walking east beneath the thin morning sun, Barnabas continued on behind them, keeping his anticipation in check.

The Light was right here in Rome. And he was following it.

 

 

 

“Well, now. How I wish all the questions people posed to me in my work were so simple.” Father Giuseppe Caserta spread his thickly veined hands with delight. He was a tall, spare man in a short-sleeved black shirt and slacks, surprisingly casual in contrast to the ancient, gilded sanctuary where he preached. About sixty, he might once have been blond and as handsome as a film star. Now his hair was thinning, paler than straw, and he wore it longish, curling up at the nape. His face was angular and sallow. And kind.

The four of them were packed into the cramped back office of the tiny, ornate Santa Rosalia Church, which was tucked into the corner of a tree-canopied street. Rabbi Calo had explained to them on the way that the twelfth-century edifice had been built atop the ruins of one of the earliest Christian churches in Rome.

Since they'd left the synagogue, all of Natalie's tension had returned. She felt vulnerable once more—there were no armed guards patrolling the streets as they walked. And there was no security here at this quiet, out-of-the-way church where they'd found Father Caserta awaiting them in his cluttered office, which they'd reached through a short corridor that ran behind the marble altar.

“You're correct,” the priest continued in his low, sonorous voice, “about these first two words. They are certainly Aramaic.
Belteshazzar
is a name—”

“Belteshazzar? Really?” Rabbi Calo interrupted excitedly, tilting his head to the side. “That's a Babylonian name, I believe. The one King Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, Balshazzar, bestowed on Daniel, the prophet who interpreted his dreams.”

“Daniel?” Natalie's brows lifted. “The biblical Daniel in the lion's den?”

“
Ezzato!
Exactly.” Pleased, the priest nodded at her.

“And what's the second word, Father?” Natalie was nearly out of her chair now. “Is that one a name as well?”

“No, no.” Father Caserta was staring hard at the enhancements. “The second word . . . ,” he said slowly, glancing at Calo, “is
tzohar
.”

The rabbi suddenly gripped the arms of his chair.

“
Tzohar
is a Hebrew word,” the rabbi said before Natalie could ask. “It means ‘brilliance, light, shining.' ”

“Exactly. But here it is written in Aramaic characters,” Caserta said.

“
Tzohar,
” Natalie repeated, puzzlement on her face.

“It's a word used only once in the Torah—in the Old Testament,” the rabbi explained. “You'll find it in Genesis—in the flood story. God tells Noah to hang the
tzohar
in the ark.”

D'Amato glanced between the two clerics. “What does that mean, ‘hang the
tzohar
in the ark'? How do you hang something ephemeral, like ‘brilliance,' in an ark?”

“A very astute question.” Calo rubbed his palms along the top of his thighs, beginning to warm to his subject. “There are many legends about the
tzohar,
and I'll be happy to share them with you. But I would like to understand something also.” He turned to Natalie, his dark eyes magnified behind his eyeglasses.

“Could you tell us more about this puzzle you've brought us? How did you find these two Aramaic words? Were they written together—as you show us here—or did you come across them separately?”

“They're very much together, Rabbi. I'll show you.”

As she removed the pouch from her shoulder bag, Natalie slipped the pendant into her palm and closed her fingers around it. Then she carefully turned the leather covering inside out.

“My sister sent me a necklace from Iraq recently, right before she died.”

“I'm so very sorry,” the rabbi murmured. Father Caserta regarded her with sympathy from his kindly eyes.

Natalie nodded in acknowledgment. “We've been trying to determine the origins of the necklace. It was Mr. D'Amato who thought to look inside its pouch. Do you see this faint lettering? That's what we had enhanced in order to read it.”

Rabbi Calo looked startled as he stared at the actual lettering on the ancient leather. Father Caserta's eyebrows spiked upward to form sandy arrows. Neither cleric spoke for several seconds.

The priest peered at the ink impressed on the soft leather. “This is quite ancient, isn't it?” he murmured.

“No wonder you brought it to our museum.” Rabbi Calo spoke quietly, his gaze also glued to the letters. “And the Aramaic only confirms how far back it goes . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Right.” D'Amato's keen gaze noted the two clergymen's stunned expressions. “We've scientifically determined it's roughly three thousand years old.”

An odd expression flickered in Calo's deep-set eyes. “Daniel the prophet lived three thousand years ago.”

Natalie noticed a faint tremble beginning in the rabbi's fingers. “By the shores of Babylon . . . ,” he murmured.

By the shores of Babylon we wept . . . when we remembered Zion.
The ancient words of exile from Psalms echoed in Natalie's head—lamentations for Jerusalem and the destroyed First Temple, written thousands of years ago by the Jews who'd been led to Babylon in captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. Natalie's heart began to race.

“Are you suggesting this could have belonged to Belteshazzar? To
Daniel
?”

Natalie had handled many ancient objects in her career, including
many Jewish artifacts in Israel, but never had she held an object possibly linked to a biblical figure. Could this evil eye pouch truly have been connected to the prophet Daniel?

D'Amato had gone motionless beside her. For once even he couldn't seem to formulate a question.

“It is . . . possible,” Rabbi Calo said dazedly.

“Your sister,” the priest interjected, his eyes suddenly sharp. “You said she was in Iraq—ancient Babylon. The location certainly fits.”

“But . . . what about
tzohar
?” Natalie asked.

Calo considered his words carefully. “Most people haven't heard of the
tzohar,
but it is one of the most fascinating of our Talmudic legends.”

“Fascinating in what way? Could you be a little more specific?” D'Amato prodded. “We're talking about Daniel, the
tzohar,
and Noah's ark. How are they all connected?”

Natalie leaned forward. “The ark supposedly ended up on Mount Ararat, if I remember correctly.”

“That wasn't part of ancient Babylon last time I checked my road atlas,” D'Amato pointed out.

“Exactly.” Natalie nodded. “And you could hardly call Daniel and Noah contemporaries.” Puzzled, she glanced at the rabbi, but he still seemed to be collecting his thoughts. He stared at the pouch as he sank into his chair once more and gestured for them to do the same.

“Giuseppe, can we offer our guests a glass of wine or a coffee? This might take us a while.” His expression was excited now. “The only place for us to begin, you see, is at the beginning.”

 

Sir Geoffrey Ashton decided he couldn't wait for noon. He'd been grappling with his conscience all night, unable to settle into his work. And he hadn't heard from Natalie—not once, the entire morning. He'd hoped his words would have resonated with her. She was a highly disciplined professional who had always sought out and respected his counsel. Until now.

Ashton had been a model of professional ethics for the past forty years, and he couldn't bring himself to violate
those ethics now—not even for a favored protégé. Natalie was obviously not thinking clearly. She was putting herself and the pendant at great risk. He couldn't let her do that.

At precisely 11:30
A.M
., he picked up the phone and dialed the office of the Vatican police.

 

 

 

“ ‘In the beginning,' as you no doubt know, God created the heaven and the earth.” Father Caserta glanced curiously at Natalie's closed palm. “ ‘Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And God said: “Let there be light—” ' ”

“And there was light,” D'Amato finished for him, barely containing his impatience. He scraped a hand through his dark hair. “And if we're going all the way to
that
beginning, this is going to be a long story, isn't it, Father?”

“Not at all. This is a story about that first light of creation—a little bit of that light, anyways. Signore D'Amato, when most people think of Genesis and the story of creation, they assume that the first light mentioned in the passage I just recited was the light of the sun. But they are wrong.”

“I'm not following,” D'Amato said. He took a sip of the hot coffee the priest had brewed. “I don't remember much from my days in Catholic school, but I do remember that God said let there be light, and He saw that the light was good, He divided the light from darkness, and called the light day and the darkness night, and, bingo, the first day.”

“You remember your catechism well, Signore D'Amato. But skip ahead with me to the
fourth
day. The day on which God
made the two great lights, the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night, and then set them in the firmaments. So
these
lights—the sun, the moon, and the stars—were not created until the
fourth day,
and are inherently different from that primordial light with which God spoke the world into existence on the
first
day.”

“So, day one.” Natalie stood up and paced to the desk. “God says, ‘Let there be light,' and the world comes into existence. A sort of Big Bang moment, full of primordial light, but there's still no sun, no moon, no stars.”

Calo nodded. “The primordial light from this dawn of creation was so intense it could be seen from one end of the world to the other. Our sages say it shone with seventy times the brilliance of the sun, that no living thing could look directly at it. This light was dazzling, splendorous, powerful. And it illuminated the Garden of Eden day and night with its magnificent, utterly pure light.” He paused briefly to let them absorb his words. “And it did so until the day Adam and Eve were expelled.”

“And then what?” D'Amato leaned forward.

“The legends say that God removed this primordial light from the world thirty-six hours after Adam and Eve sinned. That in His disappointment in them He concealed it—all but a trace, that is. Adam and Eve were bereft when the primordial light was taken from them.” Calo spread his hands in an unconscious gesture, one he probably used in all of his sermons. “You see, my friends, of all the losses Adam and Eve suffered because of their sin, the loss of the primordial light was the most devastating to them. More than the Garden, more than the peace or the joy of their life in Paradise itself, Adam and Eve yearned for that unique, exquisite light. Craved it with intensity and longing. So God took pity on them. He took a fragment of that first light, encased it in a crystal, and gave it to Adam and Eve to carry with them out into the world. It would shine day and night to comfort them, and at the same time to remind them of all they'd lost. And that crystal, that divine jewel containing the tiniest bit of God's primordial light—that jewel is the
tzohar.
”