The Sacred Blood

“Because whatever it is, he tried to kill me for it. Sent an assassin for me. And your husband had two of my friends murdered.” He turned his gaze to Joshua. “Including Yosi.” The boy had been fond of the old man too. Who hadn’t been?

“Yosi died of a heart attack,” Joshua insisted.

Devora had already figured out Amit’s real name shortly after she’d advised her husband of the man’s sudden appearance at his office, when he’d introduced himself as Yosi. When she’d explained what the visitor and his female companion looked like, her husband had immediately become alarmed. Playback of the Temple Society’s security recordings confirmed what he’d already suspected.

“No, Joshua. It wasn’t a heart attack that killed Yosi. And as we speak, another of my friends is in the hospital having a bullet hole in her side plugged up. All because of your husband,” he said to Devora. “So I care very deeply about what is in that box.” There were also selfish reasons for his interest, traceable to a culmination of years of research and the slim possibility that the Bible’s most cherished relic still existed.

“He’s killed many others too,” Devora weakly replied, staring blankly at a Greek inscription glazed onto a ring of ceramic tiles just below the domed ceiling. She remembered her husband telling her it was a quote from Plato that was the oldest known reference to the study now dubbed “archaeology.” But perhaps Aaron had lied about that too. After all, she couldn’t read Greek—and she certainly couldn’t read him. “He’s done many things you may not like. But it is God’s will that—”

“No,” Amit cut her off. “Murder is not God’s will. Now I’m running out of time. So tell me, what is in that box?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Devora shook her head.

“Try me.”

But Devora stood her ground.

It was the son who offered up the answer. “The Ark of the Covenant.”

“Joshua!” the mother said in a warning tone, shaking her head.

“Thank you,” Amit said with an air of vindication. But the confirmation brought even more anxiety.

“It doesn’t matter now, Mother,” Joshua reminded her.

Devora paused as she looked over at Joshua’s bandaged hand. What her husband had done to his own flesh and blood was unspeakable. Yet it was no surprise, since he’d never shown Joshua true love or respect. Being a son in the Cohen family was no small responsibility. Only the able-bodied could perform the duties of a priest. To Aaron, Joshua had become first and foremost a break in his genealogical chain. Crippled, the boy stood no chance of serving God as a kohen.

And given the gloomy prognosis for Joshua’s condition, a grandson had been considered an impossibility. Nor could Joshua’s corrupted genetics have supported artificial means of conception, even if it were to come down to that. The bottom line was that Joshua could never carry on the Cohen family name and the ever-so-precious pedigree that came with it—his yichus. Not to mention that Devora was able to bear only one child before a series of benign cysts strangled her ovaries so badly that they required excision. Since Joshua’s illness began, Aaron had not been able to reconcile how the imperfections of the next generation could run so deep. His obsession with genetics had grown even stronger. If there was any way to retain the bloodline, he was determined to find it.

Though she hadn’t acknowledged it for many years, Devora had become aware that there was something wrong with her husband—something bordering on mania. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was capable of doing to others. And now that he’d achieved so many things and brought the Ark back to Zion, there was no telling what he’d do next.

Amit’s gaze bounced from mother to son and back to mother. They were serious. “Is it real—the Ark?”

Devora’s eyes were still locked on Joshua’s hand as she answered Amit: “The Ark is real.” There was defeat in her voice—decades of it. “The Ark is very real.”

“My God,” Amit mumbled. Seeing that neither mother nor son posed a threat, he lowered the gun. Though his first inclination was to question her sincerity, there was something else playing out in the woman’s hurt gaze. With his guard down, he noticed a sleek safe case sitting on one of the chairs. He sidestepped closer to examine it—a fancy model with a digital combination lock. The rabbi’s attache? Could the missing scrolls from Qumran be inside it? “What is this?”

When Mrs. Cohen told him, his alarm heightened. He asked who’d be coming to pick it up. The answer wasn’t pleasing either. “When?”

“Any minute now,” she replied. “They are in the building.”

Amit moved the case further across the room and gave her specific instructions on how to handle the transaction. Keeping his attention, and the gun, on the door, he lowered his voice.

“You need to save the Messiah,” Joshua blurted out.

Puzzled, Amit asked, “Who?”

“The woman ...Charlotte. The pretty one they are taking with them. She’s the Messiah.”

Messiah? Amit looked back at the mother, hoping to see recognition that her son had a few screws loose. But much to his surprise, Devora nodded in agreement.

“It’s true,” Devora conceded. “She is the Chosen One. Do you not see how my son walks now?”

This was all a lot to take in. First the Ark, now the Messiah? Things were moving too fast. “She’s the Messiah,” he whispered to no one in particular. “So tell me about her. I also want to know what she has to do with the Ark—and I want to know what your husband is planning to do,” Amit insisted.

63

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