WIlliam Bayer: Pattern crimes

Targov wandered the Old City for hours. The heat was punishing. The dry dust of Jerusalem clung to his clothes. There were so many mysteries here, interstices, hidden corners, tunnels that led to bolted doors. But above the labyrinth, dominating everything, was that great and stunning golden dome.

To want to destroy beauty like this-what could be Sergei's purpose? But the moment Targov posed the question, he knew what the answer had to be. It was the classic rage of the unsuccessful artist against anything that mocked his mediocrity. If you can't create great art, then feel free to destroy it. Sergei was no better than that miserable little Dutch painter who, despairing at his own failure, had slashed out at Rembrandt's "Nightwatch" with his knife.

He phoned Rokovsky from an Arab money changer's shop just outside Herod's Gate.

"Fetch him!"

"Where are you?"

"The Old City. Bring him to David's Tower."

"When?"

When you find him."

"And what if I can't?"

"Find the bastard!" Targov hung up, then plunged back into the labyrinth.

"You bypassed me and Latsky!" Rafi was furious.

"I did what I thought I had to do."

"Send an oaf like Uri Schuster to handcuff Rabbi Katzer! Send twenty-two-year-old Shoshana Nahon to arrest General Gati!"

"They're my people, Rafi. Who else was I going to send?"

"I understand you personally hauled Ephraim Cohen out of bed in front of his wife and kids."

"So what?"

"So what! Cohen's a hard-ass. You don't make an enemy of a man like that. You must be out of your mind."

"If I am I'll pay for it, won't I?"

" Oh, you'll pay for it all right. Latsky's neck's gone purple. His blood vessels are about to burst." Rafi shook his head, tried to calm himself. "You're over-involved, David. Twisted around and riddled with guilt. This whole business about Gideon and Ephraim Cohen…"

"What about it?"

"It's taken its toll on your good sense." He picked up a pipe, knocked it against his palm. "As for Miss Stephanie Porter and her unsourced rumors about 'the ninth'-the bitch is jerking you off. She's got her own agenda and she's got you pussy-whipped, and you don't even see how you're being used."

David felt the heat rise to his cheeks and sweat break out on his brow. He felt like punching Rafi in the face.

"Oh, Rafi-what a stupid lousy thing to say…"

When she put down the phone after Rokovsky called, Anna knew this was the day that David's and Sasha's vectors were destined to converge. Each of them had been following a separate trail with obsessive intensity, and now they were both running around madly in the city, and she felt that the meeting of their trails, of which she'd dreamed the night she'd tried to dream herself inside her cello, could end in some kind of tragedy, and that she must not let them meet alone.

When David finished telling them of Rafi's doubts, all except Dov stared at the floor.

"He's wrong, David. You solved it and he's jealous." Dov smiled. "It's as simple as that."

"Screw Rafi anyway," Shoshana said. "Who wants to be in an outfit where the fucking commander doesn't know what the fuck is going on?"

Rebecca Marcus, offended by Shoshana's language, sat ramrod-straight in her typing chair.

"It felt great to arrest Katzer," Uri said. "His breath stank. He must have eaten sausage before he went to bed."

"He's already out," Micha said.

"He keeps a lawyer on tap. His thugs called the guy and he turned up all bristly with a writ."

"Gati wanted to strangle me," Shoshana said. "He gagged when I told him the charge." She made her voice severe: "Obstruction of justice and conspiracy." Then she broke down and giggled.

"Ephraim played it cool," David told them. "'So what did I do? Called a doctor for an injured American, a good friend to Israel.' He laughed in my face. But he was faking it. One side of him thinks he's immune; the other side knows he's in very deep shit."

"We did right, David," Dov's voice was steady. "Those guys play rough. They don't worry about the rules."

"Anyway, we're the Rabies Squad." Shoshana's black eyes flashed.

David loved them: They were his people, they'd done something extraordinary, and now, like a small commando unit reassembled after a dangerous operation, they were reliving the drama of it, laughing, exchanging stories, astounded by their own audacity.

Even Rebecca Marcus, normally distanced from their camaraderie, seemed excited by their tales. When the telephone rang she snapped it up.

"For you, David. It's Anna. She says it's urgent."

At 2 P.M. every Friday, tourists throng the sides of narrow Via Dolorosa while pilgrims gather near the First Station of the Cross waiting to be led along the route by priests. Church groups from Mexico, the Philippines, rural France, men, women, and children, many obsessed with martyrdom and stigmata, some even bearing huge oversized crosses on their shoulders, assemble to make the march and relive their Savior's Passion.

It was amid this throng that Targov now found himself. The procession was already in progress. He could barely push his way past the stream of pilgrims. But oh!, he thought, the faces!

Targov studied them: Haunted faces with jutting chins, and stern determined glowering eyes. Fanatical faces, otherworldly and smug. Superior scowls that said: "We Know. We are the elect. We have seen the Light. And now we own the Truth."

Suddenly Targov hated that burning look, and hated the passions, generated within this city, which powered it. He too had longed to wear it, to die intoxicated by righteousness. But now, seeing it on others, he understood the arrogant pride in which he'd spun his plan. In that same instant of awareness, he was flooded with self-contempt, for he finally understood the idiocy of the notion that a man can achieve redemption by acting out another's pain.

David entered the Old City by Jaffa Gate, then followed narrow David Street, unmarked dividing line between the Christian and Armenian Quarters, jammed that Friday afternoon with pilgrims, shoppers, tourists, and miscellaneous Jerusalemites. Pushing past people and mules, through the aromas of sewage and roasting meat, David fought his way into the tunnel that connected up with the old Roman Cardo. Recently excavated and restored, it had been turned into an underground street of fashionable Israeli shops.

Anna was waiting for him in front of Steimatsky's newsstand. He ran up to her, planted a kiss on her brow.

"What's going on?"

"It's Sasha. Rokovsky called. He said the old man's acting crazy, wandering around in here, babbling something about Sokolov being party to a plot to bomb the Dome of the Rock. Sasha demanded a confrontation at David's Tower, and Rokovsky gave Sergei the message. Now he's scared. He thinks they're both crazy and there's a real danger one or both of them will be hurt."

The Citadel, called David's Tower, was attached to the Jaffa Gate. Here Targov stood on the highest parapet awaiting Sergei Sokolov. There was no breeze this torrid August afternoon. The tower was deserted and the Old City baked. His ears took in its sounds. Shrieks, moans, and wails of Arabs, Christians, and Jews thronging below in the labyrinth, each scheming to increase his fraction of the precious space.

"I am summoned!"

Targov stared down. Sokolov was standing legs apart in the center of the courtyard while a nervous looking Rokovsky waited several meters behind.

"The Great Sculptor wants to see me. He demands my presence." Sokolov made an exaggerated bow, then began to scamper up the first flight of narrow steps. Watching him approach, Targov saw something new in his face. The deadness, the emptiness were gone, replaced now by mockery and spite.

"It's about the nose, isn't it?" Sergei's tone was bitter. Charging up the second flight, his entire face was animated by rage.