Spiritus Mundi: Book II: The Romance

Spiritus Mundi

Book II: The Romance

By Robert Sheppard

Smashwords Edition

© Copyright 2013 Robert Sheppard All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction: Names, characters, places, incidents and references herein either are solely the product of the author’s imagination or are used totally fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or of the same or similar names, or to other works, business establishments events or locales is entirely coincidental and unintended.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. Jerusalem – Gerusalemme Liberata & Orlando Furioso

CHAPTER II. London – In a Glass Darkly

CHAPTER III. Jerusalem – Great Expectations

CHAPTER IV. Qom, Iran – The Parable of the Cave

CHAPTER V. London – The Xth Day of the Crisis

CHAPTER VI. Qom – The Supreme Leader & The Three Messiahs

CHAPTER VII. London – Going for the Jugular

CHAPTER VIII. Qom – The Night Journey, Goethe & The Monkey King

CHAPTER IX. The Central Sea, The Crystal Bead Game & The Quest

CHAPTER X. The Island of Omphalos & The Mothers

CHAPTER XI. The Council of the Immortals & The Trial By Ordeal

CHAPTER XII. Nemesis

CHAPTER XIII. London – Armageddon

CHAPTER XIV. The Fever Breaks

CHAPTER XV. Washington – High Noon & Showdown at the OK Corral

CHAPTER XVI. Jerusalem – Ecce Homo

CHAPTER XVII. Middle Earth/London/Lhasa – Deliverance

CHAPTER XVIII. Moscow/Beijing – For Every Action…

CHAPTER XIX. London/Little Gidding – The Burial of the Dead

CHAPTER XX. Spiritus Mundi – (London/Jerusalem)

CHAPTER XXI. New York – In My End is My Beginning—

APPENDIX 1: Committee For A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

APPENDIX 2: Index of Principal Characters

About the Author:

ON SPIRITUS MUNDI

Read Robert Sheppard’s sprawling, supple novel, Spiritus Mundi, an epic story of global intrigue and sexual and spiritual revelation. Compelling characters, wisdom, insight, and beautiful depictions of locations all over the world will power you through the book. You’ll exit wishing the story lines would go on and on. May 13, 2012

—Robert McDowell, Editor, Writer, Marketer, Editorial Cra, The Nature of Words

Robert Sheppard’s novel, Spiritus Mundi, has everything. Spiritus Mundi is Latin, meaning spirit or soul of the world. According to the Norton Anthology of English Literature, the phrase refers to the spirit or soul of the universe with which all individual souls are connected through the Great Memory. This amazing novel is all inclusive and unceasingly riveting. If you are interested in politics, philosophy, human relationships, sex, intrigue, betrayal, poetry and even philosophy — buy and read Spiritus Mundi!November 18, 2012

—Raymond P. Keen, School Psychologist, Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS)

Robert Sheppard’s new novel Spiritus Mundi is a new twist on a well-loved genre. Robert leaves no stone unturned in this compelling page turner you’ll experience mystery, suspense, thrills, and excitement. Robert touches on sexuality and spirituality in such a way that the reader is compelled to ask themselves what would you do if faced with these trials? Robert is a master at taking the reader out of their own lives and into the world he created. If you’re looking for a can’t put down read pick up Spiritus Mundi! May 20, 2012

—Nicole Breanne, Content Coordinator, Ranker.com

Longing for a thrilling experience of the sexual and spiritual world? Expecting a thorough summoning of your inner heart? Aspiring to find an extraordinary voice to enlighten your understanding heart? Then you can’t miss this extraordinary novel, Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard. The author will spirit you into a exciting world filled with fantasy, myth, conflicts and wisdom from a fresh perspective. Don’t hesitate, just turn to the 1st page and start out enjoying this marvellous journey.November 17, 2012

—Alina Mu Liu, Official Interpreter, Editor & Translator, HM Courts & Tribunal Service, London UK & the United Nations

"Robert Sheppard’s Spiritus Mundi is a literary novel for those with an extensive vocabulary, and who believe how you tell a story is as important as what occurs in it. It is as current as today’s headlines.

—Jaime Martinez-Tolentino, Writer" November 19, 2012

Robert Sheppard’s exciting new novel, Spiritus Mundi, is an unforgettable read and epic journey of high adventure and self-discovery across the scarred landscape of the modern world and into the mysteries beyond. Its compelling saga reveals the sexual and spiritual lives of struggling global protesters and idealists overcoming despair, nuclear terrorism, espionage and a threatened World War III to bring the world together from the brink of destruction with a revolutionary United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and spiritual rebirth. This modern epic is a must read and compelling vision of the future for all Citizens of the Modern World and a beacon of hope pointing us all towards a better world struggling against all odds to be born. May 19, 2012

—Lara Biyuts, Reviewer and Blogger at Goodreads.com and Revue Blanche

Robert Sheppard’s Spiritus Mundi" is a book of major importance and depth. A must read for any thinking, compassionate human being living in these perilous times. I highly recommend this powerful testament of the current course of our so-called life on his planet. April 25, 2012

—Doug Draime Writer, Freelance

This new novel ‘Spiritus Mundi’ brings together history, politics, future society, and blends with a plausible World War Three scenario. I have read it and find it over the top fascinating. I am very glad to see Robert share his creativity with the world through this work of fiction, and know it will be a huge hit. April 28, 2012

—Jim Rogers, Owner and Director, AXL

Robert Sheppard is an exceptional thinker! His work should be read and made the subject of critical study.May 26, 2012

—Georgia Banks-Martin, Editor, New Mirage Journal

This novel rocks the reader with its supple strength. You want to say No, No, and you end up saying, Maybe. Political science fiction at its highest, most memorable level.November 17, 2012

—Carl Macki, Owner, Carl Macki Social Media

Robert Sheppard’s Novel Spiritus Mundi confronts politics and philosophies of the world. He’s examined multiple layers of personality in his characters; male, female, Chinese, Arab, English, and American melding them into a story of possible outcomes. How else can I convey the intelligent presentation of fiction woven with sensitivity to our world’s governments, religious influences and sectarian principles? We must not forget the influence of a largely secular world. Robert tirelessly checked, rechecked and triple checked his resources in order to bring a fiction of occurrence, and psychological impact as set forth in his novel Spiritus Mundi.November 18, 2012

—Glenda Fralin, Author, Organization NWG

Robert was one of my best guests. His novel is as wide ranging as are his interests and expertise. He can explain his various ideas with great clarity and he does this with compassion. Novel is worthwhile reading.November 18, 2012

—Dr. Robert Rose, Radio Show Host, www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience. The former—while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges so stated, and especially to mingle the Marvellous, rather as a slight, delicate and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the dish actually offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to have committed any literary crime, even if he disregard this caution. In the present work the author has proposed to himself—but with such success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge—to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to

The House of the Seven Gables

CHAPTER I.

Jerusalem

Gerusalemme

Liberata & Orlando Furioso

1

Jack McKinsey arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport dragging a fine case of jet-lag along with his light luggage, emerging from the long West to East trip from New York fatigued, and it was with a queasy heaviness in his stomach and a clammy stroke of his left hand over his heavy eyes and uncombed hair that he made his way through the extensive security exiting from the El Al 747. Despite his exhausted yearning for sleep he was only able to catch a couple of intermittent hours of shuteye on the plane and his head felt heavy, his body flushed out hot under his wrinkled suit. He was visiting Jerusalem wearing two hats, one white and one black. Under his white hat he was appearing as the representative of Jung Communications, doing advance work for the final 24-hour Global Appeal Telethon for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly Campaign, which, in addition to holding a rally and video-linked broadcast from Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, would on the same day hold parallel live video-linked 24-hour Telethons hosted and attended by the world’s greatest celebrities and political leaders in London, New York, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Moscow, and Tokyo. Under his black hat, as Jack Sartorius of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he would be meeting with David Epstein, his counterpart katsa contact at Mossad and with Isser Diskin, his liaison with the Shabak, or the Shin Bet internal security service to compare notes on a number of cases and leads they had been mutually following, and potential threats of common interest to their common counter-terrorism operations. In the airport VIP Lounge he was greeted by David, who smiled and greeted him in a broad Brooklynese New York accent with American ease and friendliness—he had been born and raised in the City and emigrated to Israel only after graduating from high school. After his obligatory stint in the IDF, serving as a paratrooper, he had returned to the United States, doing a BA in International Relations at Harvard and then a Masters at John Hopkins, finally entering The Institute, or Mossad, the foreign intelligence service of Israel. They made small talk and some professional chat of a light character, and discussed the latest developments in American baseball, basketball and football in the back seat of the chauffeur-driven car as they sped along the expressway, from Ben Gurion International Airport near Lod, in the Eastern suburbs of Tel Aviv, the original Israeli capital, towards the problematic city of Jerusalem, an hour or two distant—a city claimed by three great religions as the navel of the world and place of spiritual origin, and for sixty years the locus of internecine contention as the claimed and disputed capital of both the state of Israel, and of the latent state-to-be-born of the Palestinian people in a seeming perpetual limbo of unfulfilled childbirth and dissilient contortion, the subject of innumerable frustrated international initiatives and United Nations Security Council Resolutions fading unconsummated into the mists of contemporary history. David Epstein entertained Jack with a narrative of recent events in the capital as he pointed out places of interest along the landscape, commenting that the long ride from Ben Gurion to Jerusalem was necessary since the Jerusalem International Airport at Atarot was closed and under IDF military administration indefinitely, its location near the Palestinian headquarters of Ramallah, a site of frequent military confrontation, making its operation as a commercial airport unfeasible for the foreseeable future due to security concerns.

They met again the next morning after giving Jack a much needed night of rest and reorientation. After a buffet breakfast at the Caesar Premiere Jerusalem Hotel, headed up by a triple-cheese Western omelette, and a pot of Columbian coffee the driver ferried Jack to a nondescript building in the western suburbs of Jerusalem beyond the main government sector housing the Knesset and principal ministry buildings and their attachments, such as the stadium and the Israel Museum. There over excellent café mocha, sweets and donuts Jack, David Epstein and Isser Diskin broke open their files and began to compare notes on the intelligence and security environment in the lead-up to the big Global Appeal for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly program.

Jack shared some of the signals intercepts from suspected players in the Hamas bullpen, taking off the top one from 24 hours ago from a character named Ayman, last name unknown, apparently working out of Bahrain.

‘We’ll burn them bad—Payback time!’ this guy says, Jack intoned, looking up at the face of David Epstein momentarily occupied in chewing over a bite of halavah… What could that have meant?

How good is the translation? he responded.

The NSA footnote says there is no problem on that. The intercept was clear and static-free. It is a simple statement of fact in literate Arabic, with no particular problems of nuance or interpretation. Jack answered.

Origin and recipient? chimed in Isser Diskin.

The originator is this guy named Ayman, last name unknown. We’ve had a handle on this mutt for a couple of years. We think he is one of the mid-level operations people—a planning and liaison conduit rather than a field man or doer. He is based somewhere in Bahrain, but travels into Egypt, Israel and the occupied territories with some frequency on business. He’s a little bit careful but not really professional. He only talks on his cell phone when he’s in a moving vehicle or in a crowded square, street or market. He’s been traced to two or three other known players, but nobody’s ever gotten a fix on him. The recipient is supposedly a new guy—maybe an old guy under new cover, using a new phone and card, or a series of clones—old throwaway analogues so we can’t get a clear voiceprint on him… Jack responded, …but put it into the wider context—cellular traffic is accelerating, E-mail is heavily encrypted, the STR rate has been up for months—It is clear there is some project underway—global in scope, immensely complicated, extremely expensive, nature unclear.

So they most likely have some kind of operation running… conjectured David.

That is our take…nature, time and place unknown. Jack replied.

So we don’t know shit. sneered back Isser, scowling heavily, What are they going to do about it?

At our end nothing much useful. They have put out so many alerts that nobody pays any attention to them any more—the boy who cried wolf syndrome—people just put it in the recycle bin. Nobody pays attention to loose words unless they have the details on the source, the reliability and the background. But nobody is going to release all of that for fear of burning their source. Jack opined.

So they do nothing? Isser snarled.

Not exactly nothing, but you could say nothing useful. Unless they get a smoking gun they are too jaded to raise the alert level to the red end of the spectrum for fear of losing credibility if, as usually occurs, nothing happens. On the other hand they are foxy bureaucratic stagers, specializing in the art of ‘CYA’—Cover Your Ass. They know if they cry wolf for the umpteenth time on an intuitive speculation and nothing happens they will lose the credibility of their followers. On the other hand if something does blow after the umpteenth false alarm, they know their asses will be grass under the shears and screamings of the blame-mongering politicians unless their qualified caveats and Cassandrasizings are on the record. So it’ll go out in a verbal jumble-heap that won’t lead to any action but will allow them to side-step any future ex post facto witchhunt accusation of Intelligence Failure.—besides we just don’t have the manpower to follow up on all of these leads and teases, so that is why I ferry them to you, who may be closer to the biting end of the beast and motivated to dedicate more resources to the beagling. Jack intoned.

So they straddle the issue, and bullshit it with something they know won’t work… retorted Isser.

…and hope for a miracle falling out of the skies. fleered back Jack.

OK.—We’ll make a note to look into it—what else do we have on the radar screen? David chirruped, trying to nudge the tone back towards the positive side.

Well the Take-Report out of NSA Meade and from GCHQ Bude over the past week shows that message traffic of interest to the analysts has been down by 27% from known sources and suspected players, and 37% from Hamas-related. That sort of thing makes the signals intelligence pukes nervous. In the military if the enemy suddenly goes black it is a tell-tale clue that he is up to something, and possibly is on the move in an operation calculated to attack with surprise. The majority of the time such a fluxion means nothing at all, just a random chance in operation. On the other hand it may be a marker of a stand-down prior to the commencement of real operations. It is something that gets the signal-spooks to fluttering their wings in the coop—it touches on their raison d’etre and their amour propre if nothing else.

I stopped being superstitious a decade ago Isser sneered.

But in this environment only the paranoid survive… retorted David, we’ll keep our eyes open over the next two weeks in the run-up to the UNPA Global Appeal in Teddy Stadium. We don’t expect trouble but with so many leaders and celebrities anything might happen—we’ve got more former and sitting presidents coming in here than ex-kings in Voltaire’s Candide—Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Gorbachov, Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and the fly-through appearances by Presidents Wen Jiabao, and Medvedev, not to mention all the superstars—Isis and Osiris—and we will be one of the eight international cities with the world’s eyes on us, so we need to be careful. Our leaders are hoping to use the Teddy Stadium rally to showcase Israel and Jerusalem as a Post-Intifada open, safe and reliable world-class meetings and communications center and enhance our tourism and event promotion and global presence. So we have got to be on our toes and create a good impression.

It is all quite an endless struggle. mused Jack.

Yes, an endless struggle. But we Israeli’s are used to endless struggles. In fact the name ‘Israel’ etymologically is derived in Hebrew from the word ‘to struggle’ or ‘to wrestle’—the children of Israel are destined, as our patriarch Jacob wrestled with the Angel, to wrestle with God and his messengers first, then with his enemies, and finally with ourselves—the hardest struggle of all. riposted David.

The three case officers worked through their files through the day, breaking for a light lunch of falafels and hummus and a Caesar Salad at the canteen of the government office building. At two Isser returned from the computer facility with the read-out on the Ayman connection, retrieving the file.

We have some sporadic contacts of him with some questionable people, nothing definite. he noted, scrolling through the data. But there is one edge of it I can’t figure out. He’s repeatedly linked to communications with this Baroness—the Baroness Lady Maddox—you know, the latest wife of the media supermogul, Baron Maddox. She is in and out of our area—she is in and out of everywhere—a real globetrotter! I guess it’s not so surprising given their wealth and the global reach of their media business interests, but we’ve never been able to get a handle on her contacts on the dark side." What have you got on her?

Jack shook his head. Then he tried to sum up the frustrating loose bundle of threads: Nobody has a handle on the ‘Dark Lady.’ At MI6 they have a hands-off attitude since she is immensely wealthy, connected, technically a Member of Parliament as a Baroness sitting in the House of Lords, and close to the Prime Minister. The services have been ordered to stay clear of her. At Langley they have a thick file, but once again it is inconclusive and politically sensitive. As you say she seems to be well connected to the underworld and the espionage world across the globe, and there are innumerable records of meetings, conversations, e-mails and contacts with suspect persons. But they, she and the Baron are in the media business and are connected to everybody—movie stars, celebrities, Prime Ministers and Presidents, writers, reporters, paparazzi, ferrets, moles and detectives in all walks of life. She is constantly meeting with heads of state, movers and shakers, dissidents, denizens of a dozen underworlds as part of the flow and milieu of the global media. Nobody can make a definitive case of anything, but she keeps turning up like a bad coin in the middle of innumerable embarrassing situations. I’ve had a few personal run-ins with her in London and she can be a tough cookie—seductress, bitch and femme fatale. We keep an eye on her but nobody has deciphered her game for sure, and she is so connected, for most of the ‘crats she is too hot to handle.

Well, thanks for the help, gentlemen. Jack said with his innate politeness as he headed for the door.

Likewise… responded Isser Diskin, …what are Friends on Friends for?

After three Jack returned to his hotel, then took the rest of the day off to stroll around the old city and its historic sights, glad to have a little time to himself to clear his mind and recover some inner equilibrium.

2

The next day brought Jack to the hotel and office complex across the plaza from Teddy Stadium where the Committee for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly had taken out a six-month lease of an office space to serve as the administrative and media centre for the Global Appeal event. Jack entered the offices for the first time and observed on one side about a dozen administrative staff engaged in sundry office tasks distributed along partitioned work stations. On the other side were the unoccupied batteries of work stations for the incoming media crews who would arrive in the next ten days in the lead-up to the world-wide live Global Appeal Telethon. At the far end of the line of office workers was the doorway to a private office, that of the Director, or in this case to be more precise, the office of the Directors, since that role and function was shared by the two Middle-East Coordinators, Mohammad Ala Rushdie and Mustafa bin Salman al Khalifa.

Jack entered and was greeted with a warm handshake and embrace by Mohammad, and a cooler handclasp and nod by Mustafa. Jack’s feelings were very mixed towards the two men. On the one hand he felt a closeness and trust towards Mohammad—after their encounter at the Sufi Enlightenment Movement Meditation Centre in London in the company of Isis, and after Mohammad’s overnight stay with him in his flat at the London Ritz Hotel he had an abiding feeling of friendship, respect and affection towards the spiritual young man and wished him well. With Mustafa, however, his feelings were quite the opposite. He sensed that Mustafa was always on his guard against him and against others generally, always nervously poised and postured artificially in an acted-out role which made you guess he had something to hide, and the fact that Mustafa was on the CIA and SIS watch list heightened his unease in his presence. Mustafa had been known to have had sustained communications with several known players in the support network for known or suspected terror activists and his financial transactions showed suspicious patterns of unaccountable assembly and distribution of substantial amounts of funds disappearing into numbered and concealed accounts or unaccounted for cash transfers. Then there was the matter of his disturbing and long-standing closeness to the Baroness. None of the intelligence services had been able to pin anything definite on him as of yet, but Jack’s relations with him were nonetheless strained and on pincushions on his side, and seemed mirrored in a similar parallel prickliness and distancing on Mustafa’s side. At a minimum Jack found him a rather slippery and shady character, somehow always dissimulating and acting a false part, for which purpose none could decipher, and he would not be surprised if he proved a darker and more dangerous mutt than anyone had supposed. After an half-hour of chit-chat and small-talk they got down to business reviewing the endless plans and arrangements for the scripting and scheduling of the successive appearances at the 24-hour live telethon in the stadium, and the administrative tail that was inevitably attached to the televised head—all the arrangements for flight bookings, hotels, transportation, logistics and support, uplinks, Web and satellite connections, visas and security arrangements and myriad others. The trio intermittently called in several of the administrative staff specializing in each of these areas for briefings on the status and progress reports for each area of concern and mapped out action plans for the next ten days to follow-up on unresolved problems.

The next day Jack and Mustafa were picked up by Isser Diskin with a convoy of Hummers in tow for the excursion out to meet with President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to lay down and negotiate the details of his participation in the telethon. Though the Israelis clearly would rather not have his participation at all it was clear that the Telethon had to present the image of being broad-based and inclusive and fair to the Palestinians and the Islamic world. If the Israeli’s wished to prove Jerusalem internationally acceptable as a location for global events it would have to accommodate the Palestinians’ interests, but the Israeli Shabak in the person of the abrasive Isser Diskin was keen to dictate the terms, conditions and limitations on any allowed Palestinian attendance and participation in the event. Jack was there to broker a reasonable compromise. En route Jack was to have a introductory tour of the possible routes of travel and communication for potential attendees between the Palestinian areas and the site of the telethon at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, including a look at the winding Wall and checkpoint barriers separating the archipelago of Palestinian enclaves from Jerusalem.

On the journey Isser Diskin rode in the back seat next to Jack, while Mustafa rode in the shotgun front seat beside the driver, a young overmuscled Shabak lieutenant in a crew cut. Jack found the endless series of security checks, roadblocks and checkpoints mind-numbing. He was used to contemplating Israel and Palestine on a map in the course of the events of recent history, but being on the ground he was impressed first of all by how small the total area was, yet how contorted in the grip of division and conflict. The Palestinian areas were broken up into an endless series of enclaves and checkpoints, along with the new wall that made internal communication almost impossible, let alone communication with the outside world, even to the extent of the theoretically short hop to Jerusalem, claimed ineffectively by the Palestinians as the capital of their own land, yet also by the Israelis’ as the capital of their land, the two lands being geographically and psychologically the mutually exclusive reverse mirror-images of each other in a deadly dance of alterity, a macabre Alice’s Looking-glass world of mutual fear and loathing. Jack became more and more depressed as they ground their way through grim checkpoint after checkpoint, the tired faces of the Palestinians bunched up in lines and queues under gunpoint to make their way to markets or offices to carry on their daily chores across the barriers. As their small convoy moved along the ridgeline above the long snaking wall he looked down at the faces of the Palestinian children looking up at them over the barbed wire atop the concrete slabs of the wall, the expressions on their young faces hardened like those of prisoners who knew themselves irredeemably excluded from entering the wider world. Mustafa after an hour withdrew to himself and took out a book to read—"A Memory for Oblivion and Selected Poems" in Arabic by Mahmoud Darwish. Jack questioned Diskin on how many Palestinians would be allowed to travel to Teddy Stadium to attend the telethon and the details of travel passes and routes to be used, and they haggled as Jack tried to eke out better terms.

The Hummers, now covered in dirt from the rusty-dry dirt roads, now moved along beside a caked-mud road flanked with sesame stalks. Jack looked out the side window and occasionally would see the face of a peasant farmer or a young boy pop up amoung the sesame stalks. After continuing for a few minutes up the slope of a ridgeline the line of Hummers suddenly came to a bumping halt and Diskin bolted out in a shot, his gun in his hand. He raced into the clutch of sesame stalks lining the bottom of a steep ravine which led up to a gap in the Wall necessitated by the deep fissure. He jogged forward through the sesame, pushing the stalks apart with his jutting paunch as he held his pistol perpendicular towards the sky. Pushing the stalks down with his free hand Jack saw cowering beneath him a sobbing peasant woman with a headscarf, an older smaller woman in a burqua, an old man and two small toddlers, their eyes wide with terror, all cringing in the underbrush.

From what village? demanded Diskin, pointing his gun at the woman’s head.

The mother remained crouching, her eyes wet, staring at him askance, although he towered right over her, huge as a looming mountain peak.

From Berwah? he yelled at her, as she unrespondingly remained silent.

She made no response but continued to stare askance, just to the left of him.

He pointed his pistol at the old woman in the burqua saying "If you don’t answer you’ll spend the next three months in the prison.

The woman trembled convulsively, her back shaking and her eyes tearing and finally she answered Yes, from Berwah.

You know it is forbidden to cross past the wall—why were you trying to cross over through this ravine? he bellowed at them.

Forgive us, your honor pleaded the younger woman, her eyes, though bright with fear still remarkably beautiful above her veil, My mother’s sister’s farm is just on the other side of the wall. Before the wall we used to go back and forth daily to help with the harvest on each other’s farms. Now we just heard that my aunt has just died and there is no one to take care of her children. We are crossing over to wash the body and fetch back the children—we meant no harm. she wept.

Your name? Diskin demanded as he drew aside the veil of the younger woman with the point of his pistol to reveal her strikingly sculpted, beautifully high cheekbones and broad and ample sharp-lined lips.

Jack started as the veil was drawn aside, half-shocked by the sheer beauty of the girl’s face, her immense black eyes framed by the exquisite gypsied lines of her cheeks and lips appearing like some kind of Oriental vision out of some realm of forgotten memory, eyes suffused with welled but unshed tears and the palpable pathos of her helplessness.

Darwah she answered, "Khlorinda Sofronia Darwah, and this is my mother, Armida.

A moving but unlikely story Diskin retorted, More likely you are going over to bring back contraband and these children are a convenient cover—we know your tricks—now Move!—go back to your village now or you’ll go to prison. If you have any need to cross over you will apply for a pass and subject yourself to a full body search.

But that will take weeks, we…

Move! I said—or the whole lot of you will rot in jail. he hollered, his face flushing red with a loss of temper, Didn’t we warn you people that anyone crossing the barrier illegally would be shot or imprisoned? How can you be so stupid? Don’t you people have any brains at all? You’d think you would at least have some thought of the safety of your children if not yourselves—Now, Move! Move! he prodded and shepherded them down the ravine at the end of his pistol.

Diskin threw his back against the seat of the Hummer and yelled to the driver to move on, muttering to himself in Hebrew These damned stupid people—will they never listen? Will they never disappear?

When Jack looked wincingly at Diskin, with an implied but unspoken criticism in the set of his eye Diskin responded in English: You are new here you don’t understand. You sympathize with the bleeding heart liberals and human rights people who only see pathetic melodrama in front of them and respond with cheap sympathy. It’s not just their hearts have gone soft but their brains as well. They don’t understand that this is a war and being nice just doesn’t work—you’ll end up with a knife in your back. Fear works, toughness works—you’ll learn it too if you stay here long enough.

Mustafa continued unperturbed, burying his face in his book and reading selected lines of poetry out to himself in a low voice in Arabic:

"I laud the executioner, victor over a dark-eyed maiden;

Hurrah for the vanquisher of villages, hurrah for the butcher of infants."

What? said Jack, thinking that Mustafa had said something to him.

Mustafa looked up to him and shook his head, pointing to the book, and continued mouthing the poetry to himself in a low voice:

"We know best about those devils

Who of children prophets make"

It was past midnight by the time Jack got back to his hotel after a full afternoon of meetings with the Palestinian President’s staff and then twenty minutes with President Abbas himself, during which the compromises for the terms for the ground rules for a limited Palestinian participation in the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly Global Appeal were hammered out, accepted and initialed by Diskin, Jack, Mustafa and the President’s Chief of Staff. After that they shared a pleasant dinner with the President amoung some talk and pleasantries including a beautiful Sheka singer chanting Tunisian Rai music. Exhausted, he slept for the next twelve hours.

3

When Jack awoke the next day, to his surprise it was already two in the afternoon. Also, novelly and unaccustomedly Jack found himself with nothing in particular on his agenda for the day. It was marked in as a much needed day of R & R. He needed it. He even went so far as to shut off his mobile phone to pre-empt the stray imposition on his privacy, although he did occasionally up periscope to switch it on to check for SMS messages in case of any true emergency, followed by a quick down periscope and Dive! Dive! Dive! turning the damned thing off to savour his moment of private freedom.

After a buffet lunch at the hotel Jack set out to relish the delight of being as free as the wind in a new city. The distances in Jerusalem were small, and Jack took to the streets on foot to see where chance would take him. He set out without plan and Without Baedeker to take in this new environment, one of the oldest cities in the civilized world. His ambling soon found him in the Old City making his way through the Four Quarters upon entering the Jaffa Gate, beginning with the Armenian Quarter surrounding the St. James Cathedral. It was a surprise to Jack’s expectation to find here an Armenian Quarter surviving the millennia alongside the Christian, Muslim and Jewish Quarters. He had not anticipated the obdurate staying power of historical momentum and inertia.

The Armenians had been perhaps the first kingdom to receive Christianity as its official and popular religion from the Fourth Century onward, and the practice of pilgrimage, predating the Hadjj of the Muslims was early established by the national patriarchs St. Bartholomew and St. Thaddeus and anchored in the Cathedral of St. James, constructed to facilitate such practice in 430 AD, two hundred years before Mohammad. From that early age they were survivors. In the midst of the Crusades and their eventual demise the Armenians had been largely neutral, the Crusades having been largely a Catholic affair. They thus escaped harsh reprisals from both sides at various high and low tides of fate. No amount of neutrality or pacifism could entirely shield their people from the brutality of man’s historical inhumanity to man however, as the Turkish atrocities after the First World War sent a further wave of Armenian refugees into the Quarter. But even down to the present time they largely escaped the wrath and reprisals of the Arab-Israeli conflicts and maintained their modest presence alongside the more powerful antagonists.

Jack lost himself amoung the innumerable archways and claustrophobic alleyways of the Muslim Quarter, amid the chatter of Arabic voices. As he walked the narrow streets filled with an endless series of small shops he could imagine himself in one immense and giant swap market. He found it ironic that the majority of the Via Dolorosa, the path Christ took to crucifixion, was to be found not in the Christian but in the Muslim Quarter. Suddenly the clatter of Arabic voices rose to a clamor and Jack found himself caught in a stampede of male voices and flesh responding to the high-pitched call to prayer as virtually the whole male population made its way in one streaming lurch towards the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the Dome of the Rock. Afterwards Jack bargained in the Arab Souk and made some small purchases, which he had sent over to his hotel.

Meandering through the narrow streets and alleyways lined with shops Jack’s eyes and ears took in everything around him. His mind felt sluggish and inert even though his senses were keyed up by the flow of stimulation. I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking—he reflected inwardly to himself as he watched his steps move forwards and onwards—Someday, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed and somehow edited.

Meandering on he found the Jewish Quarter by contrast was more sedate and less hectic, having a more residential character. Ironically again, it was from the Jewish Quarter that there was the best view of the Muslim Dome of the Rock. Jack walked amoung the pillars and palm trees. Sitting down for a cup of tea at a small sidewalk café the proprietor told stories of the Jewish Quarter and how on Hanukkah you could walk around at night and see outside each doorstep the glass boxes containing burning candles.

The Christian Quarter was dominated by the hordes of Palestinian vendors as Jack made his way towards the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Jack followed the crowd and inevitably found himself at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Sanctum Sepulchrum, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, shared by the Armenians, Copts, Catholics, Protestants and Greeks according to a highly complex set of agreements between the sects going back for centuries. This site is venerated by most Christians as Golgotha, the Hill of Calvary where the New Testament attests that Jesus was crucified and also where he was buried in the reputed sepulcher. As the site of the death and resurrection of Jesus the site had been an important site of pilgrimage for all sects from the early Fourth Century. Jack felt within himself the strong tug and pull of his Christian heritage as he felt the weight of history and faith upon him as he entered the venerable Church, dating back to the Emperor Constantine. Jack knelt in prayer, kneeling down before the Aedicule of the Holy Sepulcher beneath the dome of the rotunda, the tomb of Christ, responding to an instinctive urge made familiar in his regular attendance at the Episcopalian Sunday services of his prep school in Massachusetts. Jack was respectful of his family religion, and though cultivating an educated understanding he had not questioned the roots of his faith, to which he remained a somewhat conventional yet passive adherent. The weight of the moment, however, produced an upsurge of religious feeling, and Jack shut his eyes and prayed sincerely and deeply.

Rising, Jack strayed into a group being given a guided tour by an English-speaking guide, and Jack took in the lore of the Holy Sepulcher. He moved along the stages and stations of the Passion, taking in the Stone of Unction, where reportedly Christ’s body was washed by Joseph of Arimithea prior to burial, the Holy Prison, where Christ was held and flogged prior to the Crucifixion, and the Angel Stone, a remnant of the stone which reputedly blocked the tomb of Joseph of Arimithea prior to Christ’s resurrection. The guide explained how evidently the site was originally the locus of a Temple of Venus, allegedly built by the emperor Hadrian over the Christian holy sites, purposely to render them lost in oblivion. The guide recited how the Emperor Constantine the Great—founder of Constantinople and the emperor responsible for the Christianization of the later Roman Empire, ordered the Christian Church to be constructed on the site, demolishing the pagan temple. According to Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, the guide related, he entrusted the work to be overseen by Helena, his mother, who reputedly excavated the burial site of Christ and the rocky outcropping on Calvary—Golgotha, or The Skull—the site of the Crucifixion, and set forth a double domed cathedral to enclose these holy places in a magnificent setting. Purportedly, Helena was able in her excavations to recover the True Cross on which Christ was crucified, which was subsequently lost, restored and lost again, reappearing thereafter in unending profane resurrection, however, in innumerable churches across Europe and the globe under dubious or contested claims of provenance and authenticity. The Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim, ordered Constantine’s church razed and it was completely destroyed in 1009, an act that contributed to the anger and outrage throughout Christendom leading to the original incitement of the Crusades. The Church was subsequently reconstructed by the Emperor of Constantinople and the Greek Patriarchate after Al-Hakim’s son, the more tolerant Caliph Az-Zahir granted permission to the rival ruler, for which 5000 Muslim prisoners in Constantinople were released in a show of gratitude. The guide iterated the varying fates of the Church from its liberation by the Crusaders, to its subsequent loss to Saladin—the Kurdish paladin of the Muslim faith, to its control by the Sublime Porte of the Ottomans and the subsequent British Mandate, followed in turn by its current status within the modern Israel, a continuation of a Status Quo, or negotiated power sharing arrangement dating back to the firman of the Ottomans in the 1800’s, a changeless deadlock so strict that for hundreds of years a ladder, The Immovable Ladder on a ledge at the window of the church could never be taken down from where it was left due to the inability of the contending parties to agree to any change.

Jack retraced the Stations of the Cross ending in the site of the church at the terminus of the Via Dolorosa—the Prison, the Chapel of the Nailing of the Cross, the Rock of Golgotha, the statue of Mary at the site of the Pieta. He saw the Chapel of Adam, where the bones of Adam, the first man, are said to have been buried after his death, Golgotha said to signify where his skull was laid, the Catholicon and the Treasure Room, under the Catholic chapel, where holy relics including those of the True Cross are said to be housed.

Then Jack entered the smaller rotunda alone, under the smaller dome of the twin cathedrals, and then was moved to kneel under the center of the great dome, the compas, or point directly under the transept of the dome, reputed to be the Omphalos, or center and navel of the World, associated to the site of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Jack knelt and closed his eyes, trying to draw into himself the reality of Christ’s suffering, death and triumphant return.

Jack again opened his eyes at the Omphalos, responding to the voice of the curate who announced that closing time had arrived and requesting everyone to move towards the exits. He rose to his feet and began to make his way beneath the grand dome, the light fading at the end of the day. Then once again he moved amoung the endless shops of the Palestinian vendors of the Christian Quarter and as the haze of night crept upon the Old City, then again through the quieter Jewish Quarter. Suddenly, his sense of smell overwhelmed him with the intoxicating wave of scent of the Night-Blooming Jasmine as he approached the Rehavia district. The overpowering and palpable fragrance of these lovely flowers made him almost drunk with pleasure, and a phrase from the Song of Songs, which he had memorized in his Episcopal Prep School days wafted into his mind:

Awake O North Wind

Come O South Wind

Blow upon my Garden

That its perfume may spread.

Jack walked long and long before he brought back to mind where or who he was.

Finding himself before the Cinematheque and seeing a Woody Allen movie on offer he bought a ticket and went in in the middle of the film, which he had seen before so he could pick up the story line. He watched the faces watching the film as much as the film itself, and took in how and when they laughed, and their laughing had a slightly oblique style different from the way Americans would have laughed at it. He noticed two girls in headscarves, one quite beautiful and the other plain, laughing in a particularly womanly and giving way. He noticed how American and many other Western women ceased or seldom had the capacity to either sing from the deeper joy in their hearts or to laugh from their hearts, their laughing ranging from mocking sniggers to chuckles to giggles of unease, but seldom being the full-hearted womanly laugh he sometimes found amoung women of other countries, perhaps more rooted in a simpler life or a more embracing culture or family environ. How seldom he heard a woman singing from the joy of being alive or laughing at a child, as he sometimes heard when he was a boy walking amoung the village women of the small town of his boarding school hanging clothes on a line or doing some such chore. He felt lost.

When the movie ended he waited a minute before getting up to avoid the crush of the crowd pushing out. He watched as the two Palestinian girls in headscarves did the same and then followed them out, hanging back a few yards to keep from being too obvious. They walked a short way and then turned into the Tzuf Bar on Hebron Road not far from the Cinematheque, and after hesitating he followed them down the steps and across a covered courtyard into a large L shaped room at the corner of which was a large circular bar and a stage fitted into the corner of the L. To his surprise, the two girls did not take a seat at any table or the bar but disappeared behind the curtain of the stage. As the more beautiful of the two pulled aside the curtain to enter the backstage she glanced back at Jack a few yards behind her, revealing that she had been conscious of him following her.

To Jack there was something strangely familiar about the girl, aside from the obvious fact that she was quite beautiful and attractive to any man, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on the nerve that her figure brushed upon in his memory or imagination. Jack sat down at an open seat at the circular bar where he could have a clear view of the small stage. Upon it several musicians were setting up their instruments for the next set, apparently featuring Rai music. A dark Arabic-looking musician in a jellaba and turban positioned the guellal, gaspa, a drum machine and synthesizer and sequencer. Then they began to tune up and then set into the beat of the Rai, shifting from Wahrani to Rai Rock to Rai n’B. The player in the jellaba lilted into bedoui and gharbi chants, then continued with the instruments. The music was unfamiliar to Jack, though in a way strangely familiar as well. It has the tang and energy of the Flamenco of Spain that he loved for its ecstatic moments, and there seemed something indefinable in it that was at once Arabic, French and African with a hint or spice of Jamaican reggae. He liked its energy and its tendency to push to the limits or beyond. Jack downed a couple of Rumcocos as he listened, shutting his eyes off and on to focus on the delirious flow of the sounds and music energy. When he opened his eyes again the man in the jellaba was just pulling aside the curtain to lead out a stunningly beautiful Chaba singer whom he introduced as Chaba Khlorindah. It was the same girl with the immense dark soulful eyes that Jack had followed out of the Cinematheque.

As her singing accelerated Jack found himself caught in a trance, transfixed almost hypnotically by the almost supernaturally clear tones of her voice and by the black deepness of her glittering eyes as she sang, her veil cast aside. It was the moment that she cast aside her veil on stage that jerked Jack’s memory with a shock. He thought that this Chaba Khlorindah and the peasant girl that Isser Diskin had intimidated were perhaps one and the same girl. But then again how could they be? This girl was a well known cosmopolitan popular entertainer, while the other was a peasant woman from a farm. He tried to search his memory but he wasn’t sure enough to know if his memory was playing tricks on him or not. In the dark of the cinema he had not noticed, but now he was puzzled. No two women could have the same hypnotic eyes. But if that were true who was she really and what was she really doing on that road? The mystery about her only heightened Jack’s sense of attraction towards her. She followed with some Lovers Rai—singing with the band leader in the jellaba—N’sel Fik—You are Mine, from Chaba Fadela. Then she drifted into some improvisations and free riffs and then some songs with a political edge—Khaled’s El Harba Wayn:

Where has youth gone?

Where are the brave ones?

The rich gorge themselves;

The poor work themselves to death.

The Islamic charlatans show their true face…

You can always cry or complain

Or escape…But Where?

The singer’s voice was like the quavering grief of an Andalusian guitar. Her life might be full of wretched shortcomings and sin, but it seemed that when she sang the sound confirmed without a doubt the existence of God, if only for a glimmering moment, like the moment the heart jumped when one saw a school of dolphins break the Mediterranean water’s blue surface, leaping up and out of the sea. She sang with an authenticity of emotion—singing, she said what the public could not say, what they still did not know they felt.

After two of her sets and six more Rumcocos Jack was just feeling that he just might be hooked on the girl, and that he might make the psychological leap to approach her after her set when he felt a slap on his back and a slightly familiar voice: Jack, I knew you were in town but I didn’t expect to run into you here! But don’t get any ideas about putting a move on this girl—she’s mine!—I’ve got the first claim to her—you stick to Isis, you dog—I’m giving you fair warning! He turned with a start from his alcohol-turbopowered romantic reverie and looked up into the mocking grinning face of Orlando Tasso looking down at him from the heights of his towering and muscle-bulked six-foot-six frame. Tasso was formally attached to the AISE, Italy’s Agenzia Informazionie Sicurezza Estema or Italian MI6, though he often liaised and worked on joint projects with both the British MI6 and CIA. Jack had met him at Vauxhall Cross on a couple of occasions and they had moved in the same circles in London over the past year when Jack was paying court to Isis.

Orlando was a former member of the Carabinieri who was transferred to AISE and his London assignment—first to the NATO Joint Anti-Terror Team (JATT) and then on extended loan to MI6 as much for his own protection as for his formidable skills and usefulness. He had been walking the streets of Palermo with his sister when a shoot-out had gone down right before his eyes between a team of Mafiosi hitters and a Prosecutor accompanied by his wife and daughter and a surrounding team of police bodyguards. Orlando had impulsively pulled out his Beretta and from an advantage of surprise and a position to the rear of the ambushers had dropped six of the Mafiosi, including two sons of a capo mafioso, the top Don of the leading family in Sicily, not however before they had succeeded in killing the Prosecutor. The Don vowed to take Tasso down and put out an open contract on his head. Orlando spat at the threat, but the cooler heads in the Italian government in Rome wanted to avoid an escalation of a blood feud between the Mafia and the federal police and prosecutors, and had him transferred secretly to London for long term assignment to the joint NATO counter-terror force. Orlando was known for two outstanding traits: First, he was the best shot with his Berretta pistol in the combined forces of all of NATO; Second, true to type for a hot-blooded Latin he was known as both an impulsive fighter and lover, and generally highly successful and passionate at both callings. Jack had lost two hundred pounds betting he could beat Orlando at the indoor shooting range at MI6 Headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, and he had bested him in the realm of sexual misadventures in stealing a London actress away from him at a party and taking her home, though he had never been successful in a couple of half-hearted attempts to cut in on his affair with Isis. In the small world of the intelligence community Orlando got a double-edged reputation as The Italian James Bond for his dalliances, inspiring admiration and a bit of envy by the commoners but a corresponding distrust from the controllerate at the top as a rogue bull in the china shop who was apt to be unreliable and to impulsively make unwanted messes that others would be stuck cleaning up. But for Jack and the other young agents this spaghetti-eater was the guy who dropped six Mafiosi, three with submachine guns while his family was alongside—nobody needed to remind them he had a couple of hard brass ones hanging between his legs.

Orlando! You sure are a bolt out of the blue! What are you doing here? How is it going? Jack blurted out when he had gotten hold of himself again after the start.

Shh! Orlando hushed him Here the name and cover I go by is Tancredi—last name Franscheschini—I am a musician—my stage and band’s name is Tancredi—we’re playing over at the Underground Club. But God Jack, I am so glad to see you—I don’t have anybody I know here and I am as miserable as hell. Orlando drawled out, slumping to the table and nursing the scotch he had ordered.

So why so miserable, …er…Tancredi? Jack riposted, taking up the lead Orlando had offered.

I’m in love—and she’s not in love with me—so far. I didn’t think it would happen to me of all people! But you’ve seen her and so you can understand why—there is something almost magic about her—something bewitching, I can’t explain it or get a hold of it but it has got a hold on me! Orlando groused, shaking his head over his glass, …and can you believe it? I’m jealous—me! I never was jealous before—you knew me in London—that’s not me…but I chase her around the town at night and if I see her with another man I go berserk!—It is completely insane I know it—but what can I do? he bewailed his agony.

Is she seeing anyone else? Jack asked.

"She’s a hot singer. She has a dozen men after her without even trying—millionaires, playboys, footballers… I slept with her once but then she cut me off. Oh my god you should see her body!—and her breasts!—Belissima!—God Jack I think I am going to have to kill myself!—and how beautiful is her face! How fine the hairs of her head! How lovely her eyes! How desirable her nose and all the radiance of her countenance…How fair are her breasts and how beautiful her whiteness! How pleasing are her arms and how perfect her hands, and how desirable all the appearance of her hands！How fair are her palms and how comely her feet, how perfect her thighs! No virgin or bride led into the marriage chamber is more beautiful than she! She is fairer than all other women! Truly, her beauty