Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (7 page)

After gently correcting the cleric's
geography, she asked, "Do you know Father Benoit Matteau, from the
École Biblique?"

"Of course. Everybody in Bethlehem knows him.
When he's not excavating in the desert, he attends mass here and
gives lectures on biblical history. His collection of archeology
slides makes you feel you're right there, centuries ago. We always
invite him for lunch but he seldom accepts."

"Is he here this morning?"

"Don't know. You can't miss him because he
wears an Arab
djellaba
at mass. He tells
us if we want to think and feel like our Savior, we should dress
like him, not like modern clergy. Look for a short man in a gray
djellaba
."

Gabby thanked the priest, adjusted the scarf
far over her forehead to conceal errant strands of hair, then
marched from the Orthodox and Armenian sanctuaries through a
darkened corridor to the adjacent Franciscan church of St.
Catherine and, once there, stepped into the nave to find a pew
among rows of worshipers, as far forward as possible. It struck her
that, while the young choirboys were bareheaded, the clerics lined
in rows behind them were hooded, their heavy winter robes
concealing all but their noses and mouths.

The choral music was Gregorian; the pervading
aroma, that of Greek spices. As the mass began, she observed the
Franciscan and Dominican brothers leave the altar through a side
door to descend fourteen steps to a subterranean grotto marking the
manger and birthplace of Jesus. With smoldering incense vesicles in
hand, they returned to their previous places in the Franciscan
church. From the distance, she could only guess which, if any,
might be Father Benoit, either in a black robe or a gray
djellaba
.

As soon as the liturgy concluded, she rushed
forward to the low-lying, narrow passageway leading out to Manger
Square. People clustered ahead, waiting patiently to file under the
low lentil. Among those nearest the low aperture, she caught a
glimpse of what looked to be the gray cloth of a
djellaba
, and a white and black Palestinian
kafia
that the wearer had released from
his head to rest on his shoulders. She thought about calling over
the worshippers waiting patiently to leave, but hesitated because
the man was already near the passageway. Instead, she concentrated
on not losing sight of him, noticing how he rudely elbowed his way
forward through a cluster of children impatient to seek sunlight
beyond the darkness of the church. A moment later, the man ducked
his head under the threshold and disappeared.

It happened so fast Gabby found herself
muscling forward through the pack of bodies. Determined steps
brought her forward where she used her shoulders to edge past those
waiting patiently to leave. Her head dipped under the lintel and a
moment later, she plunged into Manger Square, showered by warm
morning sunshine. Father Benoit was nowhere in sight. Clerics were
traversing the wide plaza headed in different directions. In the
middle of the square, an enormous Orthodox monk with an untamed
beard, his head crowned with a blood-red skullcap, was straddling a
Vespa motor scooter, scanning passersby as though a police officer
searching for a criminal. The little scooter appeared ready to
collapse under his massive weight. Bodies moving in different
directions confused Gabby. In a snap decision, she stopped looking
for a
djellaba
and instead sought a short,
heavyset cleric. With only a moment before those currently on the
square were likely to disperse, she selected the shortest churchman
and dashed in his direction, catching him on a cobblestone walkway
leading to a street lined with souvenir shops. Bright sunlight had
misled her because, as she raced forward, the brown habit she was
chasing turned out to be gray.

She accelerated until she caught up and
addressed the priest from behind, "Father Benoit?"

He barely slowed his pace, twisting his torso
to observe who was talking. The moment he jogged his chin upward,
she knew she had made the right choice.

"I'm Rabbi Lewyn, Tim Matternly's friend,"
she said. "I met you with him at Fink's Bar in Jerusalem."

Benoit came to an abrupt halt and turned
fully toward her. "
Mais oui
, why of
course." He spoke with the uplifting pitch of his French mother
tongue.

"I don't wish to intrude, but I've come to
talk with you about Tim."

"I'm afraid I have a pressing appointment.
Perhaps you could return in a few days.
Et
oui
, have lunch with me?"

"I have questions that can't wait. Tim has
disappeared and I have no idea where."

Benoit's dark eyes studied Gabby's face
before nodding his head negatively from side to side. His eyes were
distracted over her shoulder, toward the center of the square where
the Orthodox monk was now standing alongside his scooter like a
piece of public statuary. She noticed the priest's eyes narrow and
his lips purse. It looked as if his attention returned to her only
under duress. After an awkward moment, he asked, "No contact with
Timothy? A note? E-mail? A phone call perhaps?"
"Nothing. Is there
another woman in his life?" she pursued, seeing how the priest had
other things on his mind. "I wouldn't like that, but then I also
don't like that I can't find him. If it's bad news, I need to know
now, not months from now."

"I would doubt that," Matteau said in a tone
of dismissal, as if to say
th
at domestic
matters were not his field.

"Is he all right?"

"Is there any reason to think otherwise?
Timothy and I see each other only when we have a matter of
scholarly interest. At such times, we're inseparable, but for the
present, matters that concern us are quiet. It's been more than
four months I would think."

She knew too much from Itamar Arad to believe
that a preeminent scholar with numerous contacts in the region
would characterize the present state of archeological affairs as
quiescent. "Please," she said, testing Benoit with a question whose
answer she partially knew. "Have there been any recent
archeological discoveries that might affect Tim?"

She thought she saw his eyebrows rise
slightly as he said, "There are always rumors. Most are spurious,
of course. Nothing I can confirm at this moment."

"Thank you, Father," she replied, uncertain
how to interpret his response.

"Do come and have lunch with me, Rabbi," he
said, turning on artificial charm. "As I recall, you're working on
prophecy. I'm eager to learn what you've come up with."

"I've made considerable progress since we
met."

"Well, then you absolutely must come. Contact
my secretary, Simi, at the École.
Salam
alekum
." A mottled, fleshy hand shot out from his
djellaba
to seize hers.

He was away in an instant. She was about to
move into a side street and hail a taxi when struck by the image of
Benoit's eyes riveted over her shoulder. She pivoted toward the
center of the square where the Orthodox monk was now vigorously
pumping the starter peddle on his Vespa, maximizing his entire
weight and strength. No matter how hard he attacked the
kick-starter, the engine stubbornly refused to turn over. As Father
Benoit disappeared from the public square toward a narrow row of
shops, the monk threw his arms over his head as if cursing the
heavens.

***

Orthodox Friar Hilarion, whom Gabby had
noticed at Manger Square, had driven a Vespa belonging to the
Monastery of St. George through three Israeli checkpoints from
Jericho to Bethlehem to deliver a message from Tim. Sworn to the
silence of his ecclesiastical order, he refused to answer when
Father Benoit took possession of an envelope and released a torrent
of foul curses, blaming the messenger, not Tim, for unnecessarily
compromising their pact of secrecy. The fact that the monk had made
a public spectacle of himself by parking dead center in the middle
of Manger Square compounded Benoit's rage.

When he cooled down, the Dominican priest
offered the unfortunate man fruit juice, then dismissed him with
instructions not to return immediately to Jericho. A cleric of his
size driving a motor scooter was certain to attract unwanted
attention. Instead, Benoit proposed that he visit the Church of the
Holy Sepulture in Jerusalem then, as his guest, have a leisurely
lunch at a restaurant in the Abyssinian Quarter of the Old City. He
should return to the monastery only after sundown.

The envelope contained a handwritten message
from Tim Matternly.

COME IMMEDIATELY.
URGENT!

Benoit struggled to read between the lines.
Why was it important for him to leave Bethlehem for Jericho,
forging a trail that might later be followed? In the thirty-one day
interval since a scanner, computer, and server, along with other
office equipment, had been delivered to the monastery, it was
impossible for Tim to have completed the task of sorting, scanning,
and coding the fragments from Qumran. And it was equally impossible
for him to have compiled them into a decipherable form. The only
plausible explanation for this impatience was that something
important had been discovered. Benoit could have used his mobile
phone to contact a representative of St. George in Jericho, but
that would have established an undesirable phone trail,
particularly since he had long suspected how Israeli officials were
eavesdropping on his calls. And there was now an additional danger
that the police might be listening to conversations originating
from the monastery.

Normally, a Palestinian chauffeur drove Benoit
around Bethlehem in the École's vintage maroon Buick. For security
reasons, this afternoon he drove himself north to the eastern
outskirts of Jerusalem, then veered to the northeast in the
direction of Jericho where he stopped on a promontory to survey the
Judean wilderness through binoculars. The sun, dropping in the
western sky, cast the desert in ochre and rust, punctuated by
patches of yellow and white wildflowers sprouting in the wake of
the winter's extraordinary rains. The desert's beauty stirred in
him a familiar sense that this was not just any desert, but the
holiest of lands, sanctified by having given birth to humankind's
spiritual history. Beneath his sandaled feet, Benoit could almost
feel legions of Christian believers preceding him. Their ghosts
still lived in the soil of this precious geography and their
spirits were still carried by the desert winds.

Benoit had toiled in the garden of biblical
archeology his entire career, primarily editing books and articles
written by his colleagues, adding his expertise to the compendium
of knowledge about life in the time of Jesus. When an archeological
site bequeathed artifacts from the past, he had tirelessly labored
to place them in an historical context. But there were many fallow
years in which nothing of significance was unearthed. During these
long droughts, he kept himself occupied by compiling and
reexamining past assumptions.

Despite the scholarly acclaim he had
achieved, he was left with a dim view of his life's work. Though
commentator and editor of countless scholarly papers and author of
five complete books, he had never discovered a single original
artifact, leaving him to feel that his professional life had been
squandered looking over the shoulders of others while they, not
him, pioneered in building major bridges to the past. His sponsors
in Rome knew nothing of his frustration. Even less did his
colleagues in the Holy Land sense how he envied their achievements.
As the years of his scholarly career neared an end, he prayed
fervently for a personal discovery, some tiny artifact of history
to secure his place between generations of the faithful. Yet come
each new year, his prayers remained unanswered.

On this afternoon, Father Benoit interrupted
his ruminations to concentrate on more mundane matters, searching
for Israeli patrol vehicles along the border between Israel and
Jordan. A white lorry emblazoned with large black letters marking
it as a United Nations vehicle was heading eastward toward the
Jordanian frontier. A stream of taxis and small trucks moved at
what appeared breakneck speed to and from the Allenby Bridge
fording the Jordan River. Figuring that no one on the highway would
take special notice of his car, he adjusted his position behind the
wheel and maneuvered the gearshift from Park to Drive.

Before actually entering the ancient city of
Jericho, he veered from the bituminous highway onto an unmarked
dirt track, swerving westward from the desert floor into the Judean
foothills. Two cars and an all-too-familiar Vespa belonging to the
Monastery of St. George were parked where this potholed track ended
five kilometers later. He eased his Buick behind the second car and
cut the ignition, then removed a leather bag from the backseat
before starting on foot along a rocky path that sometimes offered
crude stairs cleaved from the limestone outcropping. A banister
rope provided support for the steepest portions. He paused on three
occasions to rest, thinking that in his younger days he could have
made this climb without stopping to catch his breath.

The Orthodox Monastery of St. George had been
carved from the mountain's limestone in the fourteenth century and
offered a distant view of where the Jordan River now snaked through
fertile green farmlands. High on this bluff, a gentle breeze
ruffled Benoit's thinning silver hair as he tugged at a cord
attached to a bell situated on the parapet above.

The architects responsible for designing this
mountain retreat seven hundred years before had deliberately
ensured privacy by omitting to build a gate. To enter, monks and
their occasional visitors were obliged to be hand-hauled over the
wall in an unstable gondola dubbed by friars who operated its
archaic pulleys "the lift." While waiting for the gondola, Benoit
anticipated the ride would trigger acrophobia he had suffered since
childhood. And after enduring this unpleasant ordeal, he would
still have to descend into the monastery on a series of rickety
wooden ladders, a second trial certain to aggravate his arthritic
hip.