An Accidental Messiah Read online

  Noga padded into the room in her underwear and a T-shirt. She pulled on her jeans and fastened her sandals, and looked him over with a playful smile that almost hid her frustration.

  “Going out today?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Let’s go for a walk when I get back. Get some fresh air.”

  Since his return from the hospital, Eli had spent most days on the living room couch, staring at the Jerusalem skyline.

  “Change out of your pajamas, at least? Tonight we’re celebrating, remember? This is my big day.”

  He reached for her and gave her a mischievous smile. “We can celebrate right here.”

  She stepped away quickly to avoid his grasp and giggled. “We celebrate here often enough. I put years of work into this. It deserves. A night. Out.”

  “Years of work,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she said, and leaned in for a parting kiss. “Out. Tonight. Understand?”

  “I understand,” he said. “You want to get me out of my pajamas.”

  She waggled a finger at him and left the room. Moments later, he heard the front door close, and she was gone.

  Noga. Venus. His goddess of love. His guiding star. Today was her big day. For her, he’d make the extra effort.

  He counted to ten and rolled out of bed. After a shower and a shave, he padded barefoot down the parquet of the corridor in a robe. He had done his part; he had gotten out of his pajamas. In his designer, open-plan kitchen, he poured a cup of coffee and moved to the couch of cream leather. The furry carpet tickled the soles of his feet.

  He sipped his morning espresso, sunlight warming his legs. The city sprawled in the French windows. The offices of downtown Jerusalem. The fancy hotels. The ancient walls of the Old City.

  He put the mug down beside the laptop on the glass coffee table and pressed a key. Lines of computer code displayed on the screen. OpenGen, the genealogy website he had founded, ticked along and paid the bills. Recording the chains of ancestry had been Elijah the Prophet’s obsession and his way of tracking lineages ahead of the End of Days. He had cranked out new features and honed his marketing techniques for hours on end, and even set up a telephone support team in Bangladesh.

  Eli closed the lid of the computer and slumped back on the cushioned upholstery. The next app version could wait.

  He reached for the remote and turned on the television in the corner. He had not had time for television in his deluded former life, and he had a lot of catching up to do.

  A bearded face filled the screen. “We are witnessing the fulfillment of prophecies in the Bible,” the smiling rabbi said. “The Resurrection is one stage of the Final Redemption.”

  “How does the Resurrection process work?” asked an earnest, gray-haired reporter.

  “It is a great miracle,” the rabbi explained. “Our ancient writings talk of the Dew of Resurrection, which recreates the physical body from the Luz, a small, indestructible bone in the spine.”

  Eli fired the remote and the television went blank.

  Prophecies. The Resurrection. His chest heaved. The remote trembled in his hand. He knew that bearded face. The man had hovered over him as Eli had lain bleeding on the ground. The rabbi from the Mount of Olives. The End of Days. He had to tell him. To complete his mission. The Thin Voice had commanded him!

  He shot to his feet. “No!” he said aloud. “I’m done with that.” He clutched his head in his hands and shivered. His breath came in short, fitful bursts. If he relapsed into delusion, he’d lose Noga, he’d lose the only thing of value in his life.

  Calm down. He sat on the couch and sucked in air.

  That isn’t real. It’s only in your mind. He raised the remote and pressed the button.

  The screen blinked to life. A podgy man in an expensive suit pushed through a crowd of reporters like a penguin. A penguin with bodyguards. He had a smug smile on his face. “He calls his new party Upward,” the narrator said. “The breakaway has sent ripples through the political world, causing defections and havoc, with only a month until general elections, elections that Mr. Gurion initiated when he toppled the government by withdrawing his former party from the coalition.”

  Eli turned off the television and breathed a lungful of relief. Treacherous politicians and election fever. Reality. There was no Resurrection. No End of Days.

  He had turned his back on his false memories, but now the madness had returned to tap him on the shoulder. Was that why he never left the apartment—not depression but the fear that, once again, he would lose his mind?

  A new resolve launched him to his feet. He marched down the corridor and opened the one door he had not dared to touch since his discharge from the hospital. He turned on the light.

  Items of various shapes and sizes lined the walls of the sanctum and the sunken den in the center, like the walls of a museum: a shaggy fur cloak, a leather shield, a sword in a leather scabbard, a rounded clay urn, an oriental rug, a clunky pistol with a rounded handle. The mementos from his imagined past were also doorways to insanity.

  He rolled up the sleeves of his gown. To seal the tomb of his delusions he needed to purge every trace of his old life.

  And now he knew how.

  CHAPTER 7

  Yosef reached out a hesitant hand, hoping to make a good impression. “Welcome,” he said in his shaky English. “Welcome.”

  The tall, silver-haired stranger in the tailored suit gave his hand a mighty double-handed squeeze and shake. “Rabbi Lev, I presume.” He spoke with an oily southern drawl.

  “Yes.” Yosef kept his words to a minimum to avoid accidentally insulting his guest. Moshe had yet to return from the Ministry of the Interior and so Yosef would have to entertain the honored guest in his stead.

  “The name is Adams but you can call me Henry.” Mr. Adams entered the Dry Bones Society with the momentum of a charging buffalo and the regal posture of an American Indian chief. A lanky suited associate followed in his wake, carrying a leather briefcase.

  Adams looked around the call center, his broad, white smile and suntanned skin radiating health and confidence. He seemed to like what he saw.

  “And you can, eh, call me Yosef. How was your, eh, flight?”

  “As long as it needed to be, Rabbi. So this is your call center. And the volunteers?”

  “In the field.”

  “The field?”

  “At the cemeteries. For collection.” Yosef had looked up English words on the Internet before the potential donor’s arrival.

  “Ah. Extraction teams across the country, welcoming home the returned souls.”

  “Yes!” Yosef could not have said it better, even in Hebrew.

  “And Mr. Karlin?”

  Yosef swallowed. “He had to go out,” he said. “An emergency. I am, eh, very sorry.”

  The American frowned only for a moment. “No problem. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Yosef ushered him to Moshe’s corner office.

  “We’re big admirers of the work you’re doing,” Mr. Adams said, when they were seated. “And we want to help you however we can.” He nodded at his associate, who opened the briefcase and handed Yosef a check.

  Yosef inhaled sharply when he read the amount. “Ten thousand dollars?” The sum, worth about forty thousand shekels, was more money than Yosef had ever handled.

  “A modest contribution to get us started.”

  To get us started! “Thank you, sir!”

  “You’ll need more of that to continue your good work.”

  “Yes. More supplies for the new arrivals. And, eh, more teams in more cemeteries. Yes.”

  “Good, good.” Their benefactor seemed less interested in the operational details. “The money is yours to spend as you see fit. All we ask in return is an update now and then to see how things are progressing. I understand that the number of your Society members has been rising steadily.”

  “Yes. More and more each day.”

  “Good.” Adams cleared
his throat. “Now that the Resurrection is in full force, you wouldn’t happen to have heard from a charismatic young man, would you?”

  Yosef racked his memory. “A resurrected man?”

  “Hmm. Yes, but not recently. Mid-thirties with long hair, probably. Speaks Aramaic.”

  Yosef shrugged. None of the returnees spoke Aramaic.

  “I see.” Adams seemed disappointed. “Is it true,” he continued, “that, as time goes by, the resurrected have been returning from farther back in the past?”

  Surprise delayed the words in Yosef’s throat. “Yes,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone outside knows this.”

  “We like to keep informed,” Adams said. “How far back are we now?”

  “Well, we get a lot of soldiers now. British soldiers.”

  Adams leaned in. “From the British mandate era?”

  “Yes. Some die in the fighting. Some die from, how you say, malaria. And then some from even before! That why we start lessons.”

  “Lessons—you mean training courses?”

  “Yes. Training. They know nothing. Nothing! No cars. No electricity. No cell phone. Need to learn everything.”

  Adams raised his eyebrows and exchanged a meaningful glance with his associate. “And how far back do you think this will go?”

  Yosef shrugged. “God knows.”

  The two visitors exchanged another glance and smiled.

  “We’re very serious about our continued support. In fact, our organization has created a wholly owned subsidiary just to manage your funds. We’ll be in touch soon about our next contribution, so please go ahead and send us the Society’s bank details.” Adams got up to go. His voice dropped to a whisper. “And keep an eye out for that young charismatic friend of ours. It appears that he’ll be arriving when his generation returns, so I’d appreciate it if you’d call me when we reach the Roman Period.”

  “The Roman Period?” Yosef repeated. Had he heard correctly? The benefactor’s words had sped by so fast and some of them had raised red flags. “Wait—what organization?”

  Adams handed him a business card. The credentials read:

  Rev. Henry Adams, Managing Director

  The Flesh and Blood Fund

  A division of the New Evangelical Church of America

  Yosef almost swallowed his tongue. The words of the sages of the Great Council echoed in his ears. Sitra Achra! The Other Side.

  Yosef had ignored their warnings, siding with his conscience, and now he was joining forces with a fundamentalist Christian organization! Had the sages been right all along? Were they falling into the grip of the unholy Other Side?

  He reread the card, hoping that he had misunderstood.

  “Flesh and Blood?” he said.

  Adams smiled with one side of his mouth. “You’re the Dry Bones, right?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, we’ve got you covered.” He chuckled, patted Yosef on the shoulder, and charged out of the room, his associate in tow.

  Yosef stared at the check and the card in his hands. Drops of sweat slipped down his brow. The check would go a long way to helping people in need, but was he allowed to accept their money? For all Yosef’s good intentions, his new partners might have very different motives.

  He could stand the uncertainty no longer. He ran after his guests, catching up with them at the front door. “Mr. Adams,” he said. “Why are you helping us?”

  Adams turned and flashed his confident smile. “We’ve been waiting for this day a long time, Yosef,” he said. “Our Daddy’s coming home.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Noga stepped onto the train on Jaffa Road and swiped her Chofshi Chodshi monthly pass over the sensor. For once, everything in her life was going well.

  Weeks ago, she had completed the data collection phase of her thesis, the longest and least stimulating part of her research project, and submitted the batch of DNA samples for processing at a private lab. Her doctoral degree, forever in the distant future, had finally inched within grasp. Today she would return to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center to collect the results. All that remained was to analyze the raw data and make them pretty for her paper.

  She found a vacant window seat and rested her laptop bag beside her. On Jaffa Street pedestrians dragged their shopping carts toward the Machaneh Yehuda market as the train pulled off.

  Shaare Zedek. She smiled to herself. The hospital had provided the other new development in her life. At Shaare Zedek, she had met Eli Katz.

  Within a week, Eli had swept her off her feet and she had helped him overcome his delusions. A fair exchange, in her opinion. By the time of his release from the hospital two months ago, they had become inseparable, and when the lease on her apartment had expired two weeks ago, Noga had moved in with him.

  The tram veered left onto Herzl Boulevard toward the Mount Herzl military cemetery and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center.

  She had been single and miserable for so long that she found her recent good fortune hard to believe. Eli was the love of her life, he was gorgeous, and he adored her. He also happened to be very rich. She had found the fairy-tale Happily Ever After to a bumpy early life. She only hoped that at twelve o’clock her chariot wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin and her Prince Charming into a frog.

  Stop worrying, girl, and enjoy your life. Those irrational fears belonged to her old life. Why shouldn’t she be happy?

  After two and a half months together, it was time to introduce him to her parents. Her adoptive parents. Why had she waited so long? At first, she had kept a wary eye on Eli, expecting him at any moment to explode into another impassioned rant about the End of Days or claims of immortality. Eli had done nothing of the sort. Instead, he had sunk into a sluggish routine of inactivity, and now she wasn’t sure which boyfriend she preferred—the manic delusional or the depressed couch potato.

  Had he grown bored with her? Noga remembered Eli’s words that morning and she smiled. He still wanted her around, that much was sure. He was still adjusting to his new life. Maybe a warm extended family was the support and encouragement he needed.

  The train stopped and she got off.

  Inside the hospital, she passed by the Steimatzky bookstore and the flower shop. Glimpsing a glass door out the corner of her eye, she changed direction and pushed through the exit.

  The secret green courtyard had not changed much. She sat on the bench, the spot where one fateful afternoon Eli had presented her with a jewelry box. She had thought that he was going to propose. Instead, he had given her the entrance code to his apartment and made his confession. He was Elijah the Prophet, ancient and immortal, and Noga had a role to play in the End of Days. She had stormed out on him, of course, and they had never come so close to losing each other. A cold shiver crept down her spine.

  That was then, this was now. Today, she wouldn’t mind receiving another jewelry box from Eli Katz, and this time, a ring.

  She snapped out of her memories and continued to the elevator. Her results waited for her at the Medical Genetics Institute on the fifth floor, but as the slow doors of the large metal elevator closed, she pressed the number four. She couldn’t resist one more stroll down memory lane.

  The linoleum corridors of the neurology ward had not changed. She waved at Nadir, who rose to greet her at the nurses’ desk. Noga complimented her on her new head covering, and Nadir smiled and said, “I’ll call Eliana. She won’t want to miss you.”

  “Noga, dear,” a man’s voice said.

  Noga stiffened. “Dr. Stern.”

  The department head, an older man graying at the temples and in a white medical cloak, drew near. “Lovely to see you again.” His icy blue eyes scanned her. “And how is our mutual friend?”

  Dr. Stern had once threatened to ship Eli off to the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center, and his ongoing interest in his former patient triggered her defenses. She relaxed. The doctor had only been trying to protect her—and rightly so—and he had warmed to Eli in the end. “He’s fi
ne,” she said. “Totally fine.”

  He gave her a quizzical glance, so she explained. “I’ve come to collect my results.”

  “Oh, of course. Congratulations. If you’d like an extra pair of old eyeballs to review the data, I’d be happy to oblige.”

  She thanked him. Then her lungs deflated as Eliana, the busty head nurse, wrapped her in a mighty hug. Noga answered the barrage of eager questions and demands. Yes, she was well. So was Eli. And, yes, she’d visit more often.

  Her curiosity satisfied, Noga took the stairs to the next floor and pushed through the doors of the Medical Genetics Institute.

  “Hi, Katya,” she said to the Russian with the shock of blond hair and—even Noga could tell—too much mascara at the front desk. “My results are in.”

  “Identity card?”

  Noga handed over her blue identity booklet. Katya typed a few keys and pursed her lips at the monitor. For the purposes of data security and to satisfy hospital procedures, the data was transmitted on a secure medical network from the private lab to the institute.

  Katya said, “USB.”

  Noga opened her laptop bag and handed over her flash drive.

  A sudden worry jolted her. She had worked on her doctorate for so long that she hadn’t thought about the day after. She’d get a job at a pharmaceutical company, she supposed, or dream up another research project and return to the scrabble for funding. A university post didn’t appeal to her much, although Hannah, her doctoral supervisor, would probably love for her to join the faculty. One challenge at a time.

  Katya handed back the USB.

  “Thanks!”

  Noga opened her laptop on the chair in the waiting lounge and plugged in the disk.

  The lab data consisted of a simple text file of comma-separated values. Each row represented a test ID and flags indicating the presence or absence of the genetic markers she had specified. In her case, the flags represented the Cohen gene sequences—known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype, a pattern of six Y-STR markers, or short tandem repeats, on the male-only Y chromosome.