The Kabbalistic Murder Code: Mystery & International Conspiracies (Historical Crime Thriller Book 1) (3 page)

              “How will I be paid?” Elijah asked hesitantly. “With a second job, I shall automatically be docked fifty percent in tax, which would leave me next to nothing. Orna, my wife, constantly complains about my inability to earn a decent living.”

              “You have nothing to worry about,” Norman reassured him. “We will follow our standard procedures, and you will receive a net sum, after taxes. We pay 250 dollars per hour.”

              “Surely you mean shekels?” said Elijah, not believing his ears and trying hard to conceal his astonishment.

              “No, no!” Norman exclaimed, elegantly disregarding the all-too-apparent amazement in Elijah’s voice, as he began rifling through a pile of documents he had removed from a drawer. “I meant dollars. That is the net amount which you will receive per hour. We are not interested in having our scholars getting embroiled in problems with the tax authorities. We employ a law firm to deal with these matters. You will have the amount credited directly to your bank account. I want you to understand that it will be solely on your recommendation whether the Institute does, or does not, purchase the scrolls for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Given your background, I think the Institute will be getting an excellent deal.”

              The fee offered was more than satisfactory and Dr. Elijah Shemtov’s motivation increased by the minute, and reached a level that matched Hasidic fervor. He tried to banish the few lingering doubts that continued to flutter through his mind. Of course, a number of unanswered questions remained, such as where would the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to buy the manuscripts come from? Why buy them and bring them to Israel, when the State would only try to nationalize them? Also, if they were destined to become State property, why not have the government finance it? What had he not been told?

It was true that each manuscript would be worth a fortune, but Norman clearly had no intention of selling them. In terms of content, it should be enough to have just one of them if all were copies of the same original, what would be known as “backups” in modern parlance. All these intense thoughts pounding through Elijah’s brain caused a neuron overload and everything seemed to blur together. What Norman saw were the blue eyes of a harmless dreamer, a person totally detached from reality, peering out from behind the computer. Elijah did not know it, but that was exactly what Norman liked about him. That, and of course his baffling ability to decipher ancient Hebrew texts.

              “I’m happy that you’re able to begin. There remain just a few minor technicalities to finalize.”

              The ring of a cell phone, playing the opening notes of the Unfinished Symphony, interrupted them. Norman answered impatiently, but almost immediately his tone changed to one of astonishment and apology.

              “I’m very sorry. I hadn’t realized that it’s already two thirty. I know I should have been there at two. I’m on my way.”

              Norman turned off the phone. “It is important for me to sum up details with you, as I have to leave the country tomorrow,” he commented. Accompanied by the Asian man, Elijah made another tour of the Institute. The man handed him a set of keys to the Institute and explained the order in which the doors must be opened. While the man showed him everything, Norman explained each item, the way a flight attendant would explain the use of life jackets and the location of the emergency exits.

              His desk was on the second floor. Near the computer was a fax machine. The demands on Elijah were minimal: He was to go over each manuscript, type in the text in a simple word processing program, print it and e-mail it to an address Norman gave him. To ensure absolute secrecy, Norman told him, the computer would automatically delete whatever Elijah sent out by e-mail. Elijah did not hear the technical details, he was busy thinking once again of General Allenby, whose statue astride a horse has not, to this day, been placed on his monument. He did not understand how it was possible for the files which he prepared to be sent on without leaving any trace of them on his computer, but was assured that such would be the case. At the end of each workday, he would make use of the fax machine to report the number of hours he had worked. He was forbidden to call anyone outside the Institute or to smoke, and he was not allowed to use a cellular phone.

              “It’s the Institute’s policy,” said Norman apologetically.

              He showed Elijah how to file a form recording the three hours of his first day of work. Elijah was stunned by how easily he had earned a sizable sum of money in one day.

              He turned to leave. Norman picked up the keys Elijah had forgotten on the table and handed them to him.

              “Please take down our telephone number,” said Norman, “should your wife need to reach you.” Elijah was confused. For some reason, he seemed to sense that Norman was delighted at his absent-mindedness. It was as if his confusion bore out exactly what Norman had expected.

              Everything had happened so fast that Elijah felt himself in a dream, unable to absorb completely what had happened. He had managed to secure for himself a fantastically well-paid summer job, or, more accurately, it had been found for him.  It was a job for which many people would have been willing to sell their souls to the devil. Truth be told, he may well have done just that.

              But Elijah could think of only one thing and that with a distinctly victorious note: Orna.

In the year 134 C.E. Jerusalem was conquered by the Roman Legions for a second time, following two years during which the city had been ruled by the forces of Simon Bar Kokhba, the
Nasi
president of Israel.

              It is not entirely clear to this day why the revolt broke out. According to one school of thought, it was because Emperor Hadrian wished to turn Jerusalem into a Greek city, with a temple to Zeus. Another school believes that it was because the Romans imposed a ban on circumcision, under a law of the Empire forbidding all its residents from sterilizing or castrating anyone. What is abundantly clear is that this was not an easy battle for either side. The Jews prepared the revolt carefully, and secretly stockpiled a large supply of weaponry. They dug out an extensive and wide-ranging system of tunnels, reinforced walls and towers, and waited for a propitious time. When the revolt finally broke out, they had the advantage of taking the enemy by surprise, and defeated the Romans time after time. The XXII Roman Legion was totally destroyed, and was erased from the history books. The Romans were driven out of Jerusalem and all of Judea.

              We are not completely sure about the position of the Jewish Sages during the time of the revolt. Some came out in support of it and others voiced their opposition. The most prominent supporter of the revolt was Rabbi Akiba b. Joseph, who said of Bar Kokhba, “A star
[
kochav
]
has risen from Jacob.” Others, on the other hand, saw Bar Kokhba’s actions as a revolt against Heaven itself and some attribute to Bar Kokhba the saying: “Lord of the Universe, do not help us, but also do not hinder us.”

              To aid the Roman forces, Hadrian summoned the heroic Julius Severus from Britain. Severus was wise enough not to confront the Jews face to face. Instead, he cut off their supply lines and captured one after another of their fortifications, and advanced slowly, step by step. Hadrian and Severus amassed a mighty army in Judea, consisting of thirteen legions, a force unparalleled in size at that time. Severus believed that the civilian population, with its women, children, and elderly would be unable to hold out for any length of time against a trained army. And he was right. After three years of fierce battles, the Roman army defeated the army of Bar Kokhba. Betar, the last center of the Jews, was annihilated, and with it most of the Jewish settlements in Judea.

              Many Roman soldiers were killed in the battles. In fact, the losses were so great that, in writing to the Roman Senate, Hadrian omitted the customary salutation, “If you and your children are well, we are pleased. I and the army are well.” Nevertheless, the losses suffered by the Romans paled into insignificance when compared with the destruction and devastation in Judea. No fewer than a thousand Jewish settlements were destroyed and 600,000 people were killed in the battles and attacks. To this, we may add the numbers - which we will never know - of those who died of starvation, plague, fire, etc. So many Jews were sold into slavery that the price of a slave in the Land of Israel dropped to that of a portion horse fodder.

              The results of the revolt were felt for many years to come. Jerusalem was wiped out and was replaced by a Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, in honor of Emperor Hadrian (Aelius Hadrianus). Jews were forbidden to enter the city, a law that remained in force almost until the Moslem conquest of the city. Judea was ravaged. Those few Jews who remained either moved to the Galilee in the north, or left the region altogether. There was a mass migration to the land across the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and Babylon ultimately became the spiritual center of the Jews.

              All the way home, Elijah rehearsed, to the minutest detail, what he would say to Orna to explain what had happened to him. Both he and Orna had doctorates, except that Orna was a world-famous ophthalmologist, while his doctorate was in the field of medieval Hebrew lettering. If anyone called and asked for “the doctor”, there was no doubt as to whom the call was for. That night, though, he would demand equality! He would not tell her immediately about what he had accomplished. He would let her stew for a while, allow her to vent her accumulated bile. After all, because he had not picked up the girls, the nursery school teacher had been obliged to summon Orna from her hospital rounds. Indeed, by the time she had brought them home it was no longer worth her while to return to the hospital, so she was effectively stuck at home for the rest of the day. He would let her continue with her standard litany on how much longer would he continue to agree to work for the measly salary they paid him? And how much longer did he intend to fawn on Landau? He would listen to her patiently and after she finished, he would tell her everything that had happened to him that day, ending with the words: “From this day on, a meeting with me costs $750.”

              However, Orna had not even showered yet, as their daughter Michali had suddenly developed a high fever. And Elijah felt a sudden urge to refresh his knowledge on the Bar Kokhba revolt, which Norman had talked about in such detail as if he were describing the latest suicide bombing. Elijah did not remember all the details regarding Hadrian, against whom the revolt had been waged and felt a special need to investigate the shape of Hebrew letters at the time of the revolt, in order to prepare for the delightful work that awaited him when he returned to the Institute the following day. He went over to his bookshelves, which were devoted primarily to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and to his own personal hobby – from which he derived a great deal of pleasure, but which also aroused in him feelings of horror at the tremendous loss of life - the various conquests of Jerusalem. He opened up the chapter on Aelia Capitolina and read:

“Why did the revolt break out? There are those who say that this was due to the attempt by Emperor Hadrian to build, as a replacement for Jerusalem, a Greek city with a temple to Zeus. Some say it was because of the prohibition against circumcision... “

              “Elijah!” Orna called out in a tone of voice that was unmistakable. “Would it be too much of me to ask you for some help with the girls? After such a long day, I am at least entitled to take a shower, am I not?”

              Elijah smiled, happy that at long last she would be going for a shower; afterwards he would be able to tell her his news. The Roman law had forbidden circumcision and castration. With a smidgen of self-pity he thought of his own circumcision and for a fleeting moment he felt that the Roman approach had been an infinitely more humane one.

              “Elijah, you are driving me crazy! How can you devote all your energies to reading about people who died centuries ago, but not so much as lift a finger to help your own daughters, who are very much alive? You’d better believe me that you’re going to be the one taking the girls to school or the doctor tomorrow, whatever happens.”

              Bar Kokhba was a gutsy kind of guy. To say to God,
“
Lord of the Universe, do not help us, but also do not hinder us,” was a very courageous thing to do. Just reading it gave Elijah the courage to take a stand.

              “I’m warning you, Elijah! The only thing you are good at is messing things up! Come here this minute and help me!”

              Elijah felt his wife had finally reached boiling point. He didn’t want her to go beyond it, but he also hoped that her constant harping would end from that day on. He started toward the girls’ room, still reading: “After three years of struggle, the Roman army vanquished the troops of Bar Kokhba.”

              “Damn it!” Elijah yelled as his foot stubbed the door-post in the hall. A sharp pain made him made him realize that he had miscalculated the turn and that one of the toes on his right foot had collided full-force with the door-post. His thoughts, which had been luxuriating over the different Hebrew letter-forms now focused solely on the agonizing pain in his foot. Holding the book open with one hand, Elijah bent down to rub the offending toe. It was one of those heavy picture-format tomes; all he needed now was for it to fall on his other foot.

              “The number of Jews sold into slavery was so great that in the Land of Israel the price of a slave dropped to that of a portion horse fodder.”

              “Elijah! I am not your workhorse, when are you going to get that into your head?”

              “ ... There was mass migration to the land across the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers...” Elijah pictured in his mind thousands of backpackers seeking out a spiritual center and finding refuge in the different ashrams of Babylon, which, in the latter part of the 20
th
century had become Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

              “Well, well! Hello, Elijah! Have you just arrived? I’ve already put them to bed. Would be so kind as to read Michali a story before she falls asleep?  I suggest that whatever you choose to read her shouldn’t deal with conquests, disease, plagues, and death, as she lies there with a temperature of 104 degrees. I’m sure you’ll understand and take that into account this time.” Orna had reverted to cynicism, as she had no strength left to scream at her husband. Not that she had any need to scream, as Elijah was standing right next to her.

              Elijah looked at his wife and noted with satisfaction that she was still beautiful, even after giving birth to two babies. To him, this was an objective appraisal, and not only because she was his wife. She had luxurious brown hair which fell in waves over her shoulders; even when she pulled it all up in a rubber band and went about devoid of makeup and dressed in rags, Orna attracted attention wherever she went.

              Elijah could no longer contain his excitement and blurted out, “Orna, sweetheart, would you book us a vacation in the Bahamas for a week or two – or as long as you like?” Orna responded with a string of mocking insults; Elijah tried to convince her, in vain, of the seriousness of his intentions and in the meantime, Michali had fallen asleep. Orna went to take her shower, more put-upon and bitter than ever.

              The next morning she drove off to work in the family’s only car, not saying a word to Elijah before departing.

              Elijah called an emergency babysitter to take care of his sick daughter and sent the healthy girl off to nursery school. He himself left home earlier than usual on foot; he loved walking and the fact that the Luzatto Institute was within walking distance of his home pleased him immensely. He started pondering on the enormity of the calamity that had occurred in the very place where he now walked. Nineteen hundred years ago, you could have heard the cries of the wounded, and from afar you could have seen the city going up in flames. No, he corrected himself in his mind, ever the exacting scholar, it was actually about 1870 years ago. One of the most significant effects of the defeat had been the sudden disappearance of the flowing post-Herodian script.

In every written form and every language there are two primary types. Nowadays, they are referred to as square and cursive. The first is the official letter shape used for printing books and newspapers. The second refers to handwriting, which evolves from the first. When you write something by hand, you tend to want to write more quickly. The letters used in cursive script are affected by the environment, the types of writing instruments available, the paper, the ink, etc. Gradually, over time, letters are shortened, lines are joined, and a new style of handwriting is eventually created, which differs from that of the official letters and that is known as cursive handwriting.

              This also applies to Hebrew. The official Hebrew script is what is known as square script. The letters are composed of horizontal and vertical lines, with a few diagonals. Religious works and especially Torah scrolls, are generally – but not always – written using this square script. Letters and other works are written using cursive script, which changes from one era to the next and from one country to another.

              At the end of the Hasmonean era and during the Herodian, a unique cursive script began to evolve, an indication of wide-ranging cultural activity and of the fact that more people were literate. This cursive script attained its highest degree of perfection toward the end of the first century C.E., but the manuscripts of the post-Bar Kokhba era, a few decades later, show no trace whatsoever of that script. No sign of it appears on any fragment of parchment, papyrus, or stone carving of that time. People suddenly stopped using the style. They reverted to square script, and developed other cursive scripts. Scholars see this as another sign of the grave calamity that had befallen the Jewish people. Mentally, Elijah had already composed the title of his next article: “The Disappearance of the Post-Herodian Cursive Script.”

              Elijah needed only a single glance to identify the different styles of Hebrew cursive script. Within seconds, he could tell if a document was from Spain or Provence, from 19
th
century Morocco or 14
th
century Egypt; whether it was from the Crimean Peninsula or had been written by one of the members of the priestly clan of Djerba, Tunis, who according to Jewish tradition had been exiled there after the destruction of the First Temple. There was not a single known form of Hebrew cursive script with which he was not familiar. He enjoyed his expertise, and knew that he was good at it. He had no interest in the contents of the various documents. To him, it was all the same whether a document was a deed of sale for a field, a divorce document of a woman who had infuriated her husband, a letter from a father to a wayward son, or a wearisome commentary on a forgotten work. What attracted him was the form of the letters, the style of the script, the spaces between lines and pages, the type of paper and ink used, and the words as such.

              “Never ask me about the content,” he would say. “I can tell you what words were used in this document or that, but as to who wrote them and why, I suggest you check with experts in that field.” Content was simply something that never interested him.

              Prof. Adir, a tenured professor in his department, had once told him, “I understand you, Elijah. You are one of those lovers to whom his partner is totally irrelevant, be it the Queen of Sheba or a rubber doll. All you care about are procedures.”

              At the time, Elijah had been taken aback by the analogy. However, as Prof. Adir had uncharacteristically made that particular comment to him in private, Elijah chose to ignore it. Instead, he preferred to regard himself as an expert in the history of art, and he considered the manuscripts brought to him as works of art.

              Arriving at the corner of Mani Street, Elijah saw from a distance that a man standing next to Norman was locking the doors of the Institute. Close by stood a large black Mercedes taxi (for many years Israeli taxi drivers had a penchant for large black Mercedes cars) with its trunk open. Elijah assumed that the man, who then carried a small suitcase from the Institute and placed it in the trunk of the taxi, was the driver.

              “Good morning, Prof. Norman,” Elijah called out, quickening his pace.

              For a moment, Norman was taken aback, and his body language seemed to indicate that he wanted the car trunk closed before Elijah could see what it contained. Norman made a sharp turn toward Elijah, and Elijah had the distinct impression that he had not expected to meet him that morning.

              “Thanks for the compliment, Prof. Shemtov. To what do we owe the privilege of your arrival so early in the morning?”

              Elijah noted that Norman was rather pale and sickly looking. Elijah was confused and felt he had done something wrong.

              “Should I help the driver with the suitcases?” asked Elijah guiltily.

              “There’s no need,” replied Norman. “Everything has been taken care of. I’m afraid I have to leave; but do keep up the good work. Let me tell you what my father used to say to me: ‘You will bring the fountain.’ Goodbye, Prof. Shemtov, I’ll be in touch with you.”

              Elijah had no idea what the reference to “the fountain” was about, but thought this might not be a good time to go into such a question.

              Elijah noted the trace of a smile on Norman’s lips, like a weak flashlight on a dark night, or a wayward cloud on a summer’s day. He realized that he had blundered again, but couldn’t understand how. The taxi driver whispered something in Norman’s ear.

              Norman turned to Elijah and said, “We are late. Be well.” It was clear that he had difficulty getting into the car, and was only able to do so with the driver’s aid. The taxi drove off.

              For the first time, Elijah used his own keys to enter the Institute. The Luzatto Institute was the dream of every scholar. Elijah stationed himself at the table in the lower hall, it was a gigantic mahogany table that was totally empty except for the materials he needed for his work. He was amazed at the pastoral quiet in the Institute and found it hard to comprehend that this building, which was but a short distance from the bustling and vibrant Jerusalem Central Bus Station and its loud sounds, was a haven of tranquility and quiet. Birds chirped, and from his window, he could see trees all around. From one of the balconies, you could see clear across to the abandoned Arab village of Lifta, at the entrance to Jerusalem.