The Sacred Blood

When Amit finally reached the rear service door, he’d waited a full two minutes behind the van, deliberating on how to proceed. In his head, various scenarios were playing out, and every one of them featured lethal Mossad contractors exiting the building and engaging him in a blazing gun battle. That had him thinking of what it would feel like to be shot a few times without the luxury of a bulletproof vest. Couldn’t be pleasant, and he wasn’t curious enough to want to give it a try.

Nevertheless, what Rabbi Cohen had gone to such great lengths to protect was most likely sitting in the IA A’s conference room. No doubt it was Amit’s discovery at Qumran that was the cause for Cohen’s hasty trip to Egypt. And Amit was willing to wager his genitalia that the very same relic that had once resided within the heart of Solomon’s temple was now inside this building.

But it was the thought of the bullet that killed poor David, and the second one that almost erased the first genuine connection he’d had with a woman since God knew when, that finally got him moving closer.

Yet after all that consideration, when the last ever-so-carefullyplaced steps brought him right up to the door in perfect silence—the gun hand ready to respond, the right hand grasping the doorknob and preparing for a three- stage disengagement of the door latch—the door was locked.

Locked?

“Shit,” he spat with little regard for silence.

He did his best to listen for any activity coming from inside, but the thick door wasn’t exactly the off-the-shelf variety. There could be someone standing right behind it yapping away and he might not hear it.

Setting the gun in the waistband of his pants at the small of his back, he dipped his fingers into his inside vest pocket to retrieve his Gaza lockbuster set. The flat tension wrench slid into the keyhole with barely a whisper, and he turned it clockwise. The hook-ended fisher slid in beside it. Ten seconds of hunting and twisting popped the lock.

Still got it.

Smoothly withdrawing the tools and returning them to his pocket, he took up the gun and reached for the knob. His eyes had a momentary standoff with the circular casing of a second lockset—the dead bolt above the knob. If he had to open that one too, things could get a lot noisier.

Biting his lip, he started the steady three-step turn. “Come on”—a little resistance—“give it up”—a little more—“you nasty—” Tickunk.

Exhale.

Pause. Regroup.

The next motion was all or nothing.

Another breath and he went for the pull.

Staying low, Amit cranked the door open and trained the gun straight out, fully prepared to take a bullet. But the corridor beyond was dark and empty. And thankfully, no after-hours alarm seemed to have tripped. Cohen had most likely turned it off when he’d entered the building. The guy seemed to have the password to all of Israel—and apparently some obscure precincts of Egypt too.

Amit stepped inside. He slipped off his obnoxiously squeaky rubbersoled shoes and carried them in his right hand as he penetrated deeper into the building.

60

******

The box’s golden lid felt warm and tingly under Charlotte’s fingers— similar to the sensation she recalled from Evan’s injection, which had shot the sacred DNA into her bloodstream. There certainly was an energy stored up inside this vessel, she thought—though probably not one that could be measured in volts.

She actually heard a couple of the men gasp. They’d certainly been harboring some doubts that she was the Chosen One, because they seemed fully prepared to be dragging a flame-broiled carcass out of the room.

“Ah!” Cohen joyously blurted, bringing his hands together with a clap. “See! Do you all see this? You are witnessing the fulfillment of a prophecy!” he said to the assemblage.

He kept on with it, but Charlotte had tuned him out, because there was something very strange happening over the veil’s sheer surface that the others weren’t picking up on. Something seemed to billow—a distortion that was invisible yet dynamic in its shifting. It could easily have been dismissed as a quick bout of blurred vision. But the interference was contained in only one spot—and when she tested it by shifting her eyes slightly sideways, it remained stationary. Frightened, she immediately withdrew her hand.

It went away.

What the hell was that?

“Don’t be afraid, Ms. Hennesey,” the rabbi said soothingly, stepping up

to her and placing a hand on her shoulder.

She knew he wasn’t referring to what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen. It was her recoiling hand that had drawn his attention.

“What you feel is the Holy Spirit,” he explained. “Just as Jesus did when he laid his hand upon that very spot and it entered into Him—just as it entered into Moses atop Mount Sinai. The sacred blood is a gift,” he repeated. “A gateway into the one light that rules over all creation.”

“Then take the blood from your son,” she fumed. “If you say I healed him by using this power, then it must have transferred to him, right? Or just let me heal whatever ails you, then you can go and do whatever you want with the box, the blood . . .”

Shaking his head, he flatly stated, “It doesn’t work like that, Dr. Hennesey. If it were that easy, I wouldn’t need you.”

She noticed the rabbi’s eyes shift away as he said this.

“I’m not following you,” she said.

“You were chosen. Why, I don’t know. But question not the Lord’s plan.”

More eye shifting suggested that the rabbi was holding back. “You tried it already, didn’t you?”

The rabbi’s jaw clenched tight and his eyes burned with fury.

That’s when the truth hit her. “Your son’s hand,” she said accusatorily. “When you saw that he was walking,