Water To Burn Part 10

"So you'll report it to your deep cover agency, too?"

He glared at me for a moment, then took his laptop into the kitchen to work in private.

I looked over the printout of Evers' appointments that Miss Kowalski had made for us. The first thing I noticed was that Evers' schedule began to clear out toward the end of February. New clients became scarce on the ground at that point. Perhaps, I speculated, his drug addiction had begun to affect his work. The column for the day of his murder contained only one entry, "unnamed man, 4 PM, Ferry Building."

I went into the kitchen and gave the printout to Ari.

"See if you know any of these names," I said, "though I don't suppose you will. I've put a red check by the names of two munic.i.p.al big shots."

"Thank you." Ari glanced at the printout and pointed to the checked names. "Are these the men who are putting pressure on Sanchez?"

"That would be my guess, yeah."

I returned to my computer. When I logged onto TranceWeb, I found the file on Reb Ezekiel waiting for me. The secret State Department office had finally connected with the Agency and pa.s.sed the information across, almost a hundred and thirty pages of it. In a few places the text jumped, as if something had been snipped out for security's sake. The translator had also removed almost all the personal names and replaced them with a line of hyphens. At first it referred to Reb Ezekiel, for instance, as J-W-.

Young JW's early career looked ordinary enough. He'd been born into a Modern Orthodox family in Bradford in the north of England, done brilliantly in the local primary schools, then gone to a prestigious yeshiva for the rest of his education, where he'd received his semikhah, his authority to teach and advise about the laws, from the line of righteous rabbis in his inst.i.tution. He then spent two years in the U.K. searching for a congregation to hire him. None had, for reasons of "mental instability," or so the report put it.

After this disappointment, JW emigrated to Israel, where he hooked up with a group extreme even for the local extremists. He began to "seek wisdom in the desert," as he called it, fasting for long periods and wandering around like a wild man in the wastelands, some of which belonged to Jordan. The authorities first took notice of him then.

He saw visions. He heard voices. He believed them all uncritically, as rank amateurs always do. He also claimed to have learned "spiritual practices" from these visions and voices that enabled him to work "wonders." The climax came when the ancient prophet Ezekiel came to him in vision and claimed him as his legitimate successor. From then on, the official report referred to him as Reb Ezekiel.

He wrote these experiences up into a couple of lurid books, which sold very well on the occult market. They brought him money and a small group of followers. On this basis, he returned to the U.K. and began to teach and recruit. When he had enough money, he led his by-then much larger group of followers back to Israel, Ari's parents among them, where they founded their kibbutz.

My poor Ari had spent his childhood in the midst of everything that followed. I felt I understood him a lot better after reading about the place where he'd lived his formative years.

Page after page of the report detailed the years that followed. Disenchanted followers had told the investigators plenty, not that the report gave their names. Many of the quotes reeked of bitterness, even in translation. I skimmed most of it that evening just to get a first impression. Later, I'd go over it in detail. The final pages, however, struck me as more important than the compilers of the report could know.

The defection of a woman called S-N--, and the details pointed to Ari's mother, had sparked something of a rebellion in the kibbutz. Reb Ezekiel had settled things down, then gone back out to the desert to fast and pray for new visions. He'd returned to the Negev Desert, which is when the government began to follow his movements in earnest. I hadn't realized just how many military bases, all of them restricted areas, lay in or near that stretch of terrain. A great many higher-ups wanted to know why this ex-Brit had taken to prowling around them.

Reb Zeke was gone about a month before he returned to his kibbutz. He staggered into the dining hall one night, half-starved, dehydrated, and incoherent. Sunstroke, perhaps concussion-for weeks afterward he'd acted confused, as if he'd forgotten the names of the people in the kibbutz as well as the details of its financial operation.

In time, everything came back to him, but his behavior changed in subtle, less than holy ways during the next couple of years. The report detailed each bout of secret drinking, each trip into Tel Aviv where he consorted with unclean women, i.e. the wh.o.r.es in the brothel where he'd eventually died. At first, the faithful put the disappearances down to the sunstroke or concussion incident; his place of death, however, made the hookers difficult to explain away.

I put the report through a second encryption, saved it, and cleared the screen, then stood up to stretch my back. When I glanced into the kitchen, I saw that Ari had attached a different keyboard to his laptop and was busily typing away. I started to sit back down, but I realized, thanks to a sudden line of cold running down my spine, that I was being watched. I spun around and saw a Chaos critter standing on the coffee table, a green-gray thing somewhat like a possum, except it had spiky scales instead of fur. As soon as I raised a hand to sketch out a ward, it disappeared.

"Good thing we're moving," I muttered. I was getting real tired of spies popping up everywhere.

I logged off TranceWeb, then walked into the kitchen. The screen on Ari's laptop displayed what looked like Arabic letters to me, though I couldn't be sure. Ari leaned back in his chair and smiled at me.

"Tell me about Armageddon," I said, "from an Orthodox Jewish point of view, I mean. The report mentions that Ezekiel believed it was coming, but it doesn't go into detail. I got the Christian version in school, but I don't know the Jewish one."

Ari's smile vanished. "Reb Ezekiel's version had very little to do with anything any other Jew believes. Alien invaders, mostly. In s.p.a.ceships."

"You're the one having the joke now."

"I am not. I wish I were. I was only eight years old at the time, of course, when we were first told about this in the kibbutz school, so I probably heard only a simplified version. But alien invaders were going to appear in Megiddo, and we were going to repel them."

"Is Megiddo where the kibbutz was?"

"No. There's a proper kibbutz there already, and they wanted no part of Reb Ezekiel's revelations. It's an important archaeological site as well. The various academics involved weren't keen on having target practice going on near the antiquities. So he had to find land elsewhere."

I sat down in the chair opposite him.

"Oh, boy," I said. "And here I thought my hometown had a monopoly on that kind of thing."

"Belief in aliens, you mean?"

"Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of people who believe that the flying saucers are coming, not just in San Francisco, but the whole Bay Area, and down south in Santa Cruz, and then there's the Mount Shasta group, and-"

"That's enough, thank you." Ari paused for a look of profound gloom. "I take your point."

"Okay. According to the file your agency sent me, Ezekiel wandered off into the desert for about a month. You would have been about nine, I think. It was after your mother left. Do you remember him going off?"

"The incident when he had his stroke?"

"That's the one. The report calls it sunstroke or concussion."

"It was worse than that. Ezekiel was so muddled that at times he could barely remember where he was. He refused to get proper medical treatment." Ari thought for a few moments. "I remember the uproar, but not why he wouldn't let the doctors examine him. I probably wasn't told, actually. The adults did their best to keep things from the children."

"Too bad. Do you know if Zeke had any new visions during that missing month? The report doesn't detail any, but then, whoever's writing it tends toward scorn when it comes to psychic details. He thinks all the phenomena are just lies and scams."

"Do you think Ezekiel had genuine abilities?"

"Yeah, I do. A lot of the details ring true."

"That's a shock." Ari hesitated, then shrugged. "Well, you're the one who'd know. He was always having visions. I shouldn't be surprised if he'd had a sodding flock of them during the time he was gone." Ari paused to glare out at nothing in particular. "I wonder if his doppelganger is as mad as he was?"

"Uh, I have a new theory about that. Brace yourself."

Ari's eyes narrowed. I decided that he was sufficiently braced.

"If Reb Ezekiel's in the city," I said, "it's not his doppelganger. It's him."

"What?" Ari slammed one hand down on the table so hard that his laptop screen flipped down onto the keyboard. The machine beeped. He winced and began rubbing the slammed hand with the other. "Sorry. Shouldn't have done that. Nothing broken, I should think."

"Oh, good!" One of these days, I decided, I'd have to talk with him about that temper. "Look, he disappears for a month, and when he comes back, he doesn't remember half of his loyal followers. He doesn't know what bank the money's in, or when the crops were planted-none of the really important stuff. And then we have the personality change. The report makes it clear that while Zeke was a nutcase, he was a sincere nutcase. All he thought about was religion, his spiritual powers, and Armageddon. So he suddenly takes to drinking and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g wh.o.r.es?"

Ari's eyes had gone very wide, and his mouth, a little slack. I figured he was following my line of reasoning.

"And then there's the clincher," I continued. "You told me that one of the things he claimed to be able to do was 'shorten the journey.' Right?"

"Right." His voice dropped nearly to a whisper. "Kefitzat haderach. So, what do we have?" His voice returned to normal. "He goes through one of the gates, and his doppelganger comes back out?"

"That's the line I'm working on."

"So the doppelganger's the one who died in the wh.o.r.ehouse." Ari nodded as if agreeing with himself. "And now for some reason the real Reb Ezekiel-well, they're both real, aren't they? I should say, the Reb Ezekiel I knew and loathed comes back out of wherever he's been. Let's see. I was eleven when the other one died. I'm thirty now. Took him long enough to return, I must say. Why, I wonder?"

"Why or how, I do not know." I smiled. "Yet. I'm hoping the police can find him. If not, maybe I can. I'd like to meet this Stein guy. Possible?"

"Very. I have his contact information with me. Hang on a minute." Ari took his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. "I'll just ring him and see what he says."

Stein answered his phone immediately. Ari said something in Hebrew, then grinned. I could just hear a man's voice answering in the same language. He sounded on the edge of laughter, glad to hear from an old friend. After a few exchanges, though, they switched to English. At that point I did my best to stop eavesdropping. They kept the phone call short, anyway, and arranged for the three of us to get together for dinner that evening.

"A question," Ari said after he'd clicked off. "Do you think Reb Ezekiel is part of the coven?"

"No, but I don't think he isn't, either. I need to know why he's turned up. It might have something to do with you and Itzak Stein being in the same town. There's a weird karmic gravity that operates on these things, or you could call it a critical ma.s.s. You two might be attracting him, but that's only a metaphor. Don't take it literally."

Ari's eyes went glazed, as they so often did when I was trying to explain the psychic truths of the universe.

"There are other possibilities, too." I stopped trying. "His appearance could be a random coincidence, or it could be a true synchronicity, or he could be involved with our Brother Belial. I need to know which."

"Very well. That makes sense, as much as any of this ever does."

For our meeting, I wore a black dinner suit of satin-backed crepe and a teal silk blouse, accented with the pin Ari had given me. Itzak Stein had made reservations at a Cajun place on upper Fillmore Street, because it had private booths left over from the 1930s, with real mahogany walls that ran up nearly to the ceiling and a narrow doorway opening out to the main dining room of the restaurant. As long as we talked in a quiet tone of voice, no one was going to overhear us.

Just in case, though, Ari took a little black box that looked like a light meter out of an inner pocket of his sport coat. He pa.s.sed it along the walls to check for bugs while Stein laughed at him. He was about Ari's age, Itzak, a stocky fellow with curly brown hair and brown eyes behind wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, not unattractive and not good-looking, either, except when he smiled. He had a great smile.

"Some things never change," Itzak said to me. "Good old Ari, as suspicious as always!" He grinned at Ari, who sat down with his back firmly to the booth's back wall, opposite the door. "I'm not surprised you ended up a cop." Itzak glanced at me. "Did you know that Ari was an M.P. in the army?"

"Military police?" I said. "No, but I'm not surprised."

"I wasn't, either," Itzak grinned, then looked Ari's way. "Interpol and you, a marriage made in heaven."

Ari forced out a small smile that signaled he was used to this line of teasing. "And I'm not surprised you ended up working with computers," Ari said. "You were always divorced from reality."

"One up to you! I'm afraid I am. I like life better that way. Reality generally sucks."

The waiter appeared, and Itzak ordered an amazing number of oysters for the table's appetizers.

"I see you're not keeping kosher," Ari remarked.

"Are you?" Itzak said. "Huh, that'd be a cold day in h.e.l.l."

They shared a grin. Itzak ordered a c.o.c.ktail for himself, though Ari stuck with mineral water, as did I. I halfexpected Itzak to tease Ari about it, but he seemed resigned. We all studied the menu in silence. I finally found a dish I could eat if I dumped the potatoes onto Ari's plate and sc.r.a.ped the fancy sauce off the chicken.

"The desserts here are really good," Itzak said to me.

"I'll have a bite of Ari's," I said, "when the time comes."

"What's this? He's starving you? How cheap is he?"

Ari opened his mouth to object, but the waiter reappeared. We ordered. I waited till he'd left again to open the subject that really interested me.

"Tell us more about your sighting of Reb Ezekiel," I said. "What made you call the consulate and report it?"

"My parents." Itzak paused for a smile. "I called them first thing, and Dad insisted I should tell someone official. So I called the consulate to see if they could find Ari for me. We'd lost touch over the last couple of years, but he was the absolutely only person I could think of who might be 'official' and interested, too."

"So," I said, "you knew he works for Interpol?"

"Oh, yeah, we send e-mail now and then." Itzak grinned at Ari. "I don't know why you periodically drop off the face of the earth."

"Simple laziness," Ari said. "I apologize."

"Anyway," Itzak went on. "I told the receptionist she could contact him through Interpol, but she didn't seem to get anything I said. Especially she did not know why I thought this data point was important. So I hung up, but lo! a higher-up called me back about ten minutes later. He understood, all right, and told me he'd get the information into the right hands."

"I know who that was, yes," Ari put in. "Good move."

Oysters appeared, and the drinks. The waiter retreated once again. I ignored the oysters, raw and slimy as they were, but the two men scarfed them right up.

"So, anyway," Itzak continued, "another reason I chose this place. I first saw the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d not far from here, down at Fillmore and Geary. He was panhandling, it looked like. At first, I didn't believe it could possibly be him. So by the time I decided to talk to him, the bus had arrived, and he got on it and sped off."

"Heading which way?" I said.

"In." Itzak glanced at Ari. "That means, toward downtown, where there are social services abounding."

I made a mental note to ask Father Keith if someone answering Zeke's description had ever shown up at St. Anthony's Dining Room, the Franciscan mission to the homeless. "Can you give us a description?" I asked. "I want to see if it matches up with something a police officer told me."

"Sure. About five eight, skinny, s.h.a.ggy gray hair, and long peyes." He glanced my way. "Peyes are what the unenlightened call 'sidelocks.'"

"Ah," I said. "I didn't know that."

"Mr. Secular here won't have told you, probably." Itzak grinned at me. "But back to the rebbe, he was wearing torn-up black clothing, except for a Giants cap that looked new-"

"That's plenty. Thanks."

Itzak paused to devour the last oyster, then continued his story. He'd seen Reb Zeke twice more downtown, once near the bank offices where he worked.

"I hailed him that last time," Itzak finished up. "He screamed and ran, nearly dashed into traffic to get away. I don't know why. I can't see how he could have recognized me. The last time he saw me I was maybe ten years old."

"It's more likely he ran because he didn't recognize you," Ari said, "than because he did."

"Yeah, I bet you're right." Itzak looked my way. "So you're interested in all this, too? Don't tell me you're another cop!"

I rummaged in my bag and brought out my cross-agency government ID. Itzak groaned as he handed it back.

"I should have known," he said. "Obviously, you guys were meant for each other. Although, with a name like Nola O'Grady, you can't be Jewish."

"Nope," I said. "I think he forgives me, though."

"A thousand times over," Ari said. "Other than that one major flaw, she's perfect."

Itzak and I laughed, Ari smiled, but I kicked Ari under the table, though not hard. He kept smiling as if he'd felt nothing. The waiter trotted in with the main courses, and a busboy materialized as well with a pitcher of ice water. While the men ate and I nibbled, I asked the occasional question. Since Itzak and his parents had a decently close relationship, he'd heard bits and pieces of information about life in the kibbutz as the adults had seen it.

"May I ask you where they live now?" I said. "I'd like to debrief them."

"In upstate New York. But they're talking about coming out for a visit sometime this summer. If you're still interested, they'd probably be willing to sit down and talk."

"They don't mind unburdening themselves, then."