The Day of Atonement: A Novel of the End

By Breck England

Jerusalem’s holiest site is the epicenter of an ancient conspiracy to destroy the world in an electrifying thriller for Dan Brown and James Rollins fans.
 
The Pope is dead, the apparent victim in a murder-suicide carried out by his most loyal secretary in Vatican City. But the strange disappearance of a sacred relic suggests that the truth is even darker than it first appears. And it’s a link in a terrifying chain of events that could devastate the world’s three major religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—and hasten the end of all things.
 
In Israel, a potentially devastating explosion at the Dome of the Rock is narrowly averted, as Mossad agents rush in prevent the early morning destruction of the sacred site where Solomon’s temple stood, where Christ was crucified, and where Muslims the world over come to worship at their holiest mosque. In the raid’s aftermath, an Israeli intelligence agent forms an unlikely partnership with an Interpol art expert. But their hunt for answers leads them into the dark heart of an ancient conspiracy, as the world’s oldest, most secret society prepares to unleash a power more destructive than anything ever imagined.
 
The Day of Atonement is an ingenious international thriller from the author of The Tarleton Murders. Packed with unrelenting suspense, it is a breathtaking adventure that fans of Inferno, The Da Vinci Code, and the bestselling fiction of Daniel Silva and David Baldacci will eagerly devour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781633537972

Breck England

Breck England juggles writing mysteries with composing classical music, French cooking, teaching MBA’s in the world-class Marriott School of Business, ghostwriting for authors such as Stephen R. Covey, and (formerly) singing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He writes widely, mostly books and articles for business people, and occasionally contributes to the newspapers on subjects ranging from education to politics to religion to French pastry. He holds the Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah. Breck lives with his wife Valerie in the Rocky Mountains of Utah among nearly innumerable grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2018 Breck England

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The Day of Atonement: Volume I

Library of Congress Cataloging

ISBN: (print) 978-1-63353-796-5 (ebook) 978-1-63353-797-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952272

BISAC category code: FIC031060—FICTION / Thrillers / Political

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

January 27, 1984

Chapter 1

Saturday, October 2, 2027

Chapter 2

Sunday, October 3, 2027

Chapter 3

Monday, October 4, 2027

Chapter 4

Tuesday, October 5, 2027

Chapter 5

Wednesday, October 6, 2027

Breck England

Preface

The Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem is the keystone in the arch of faith for three great world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Here, they say, the Creation began. Here Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son. Here Solomon’s temple stood. Here Christ was crucified.

On the summit of the Mount stands the golden Dome of the Rock, where the hopes of half of humanity converge. Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold similar beliefs that a Messiah will one day descend to this spot and rule the earth from this place, bringing a new order of peace and justice. On that day every human soul will be gathered into one true faith—thus, it will be a day of At-One-Ment.

But for now this keystone in the arch of faith trembles. The Temple Mount stands at the apex of the world’s conflict zones. Many Jews want to take down the dome and build a new temple there. Radical Christians want to help because they believe it will hasten the coming of the Messiah. The Islamic world would not stand still if anyone touches the holy shrine.

The religious and geopolitical forces pressing on this one small hill in Jerusalem threaten to collapse our world. If the keystone falls, the outcome might make all world wars look petty by comparison. And some people in the shadows, using technological tools that are already in our grasp, are actively working to bring that day about.

This is about what might happen if their plans succeed—on the Day of Atonement.

Prologue

January 27, 1984

The Temple Mount, Jerusalem, 0630h

The guard peered through the diminishing darkness at the threads he held in his fingers. He could just tell a black thread from a white thread.

It was time for the dawn prayer.

In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful.

He crouched on a stone bench next to the water tap and felt for the valve. Cold water streamed from the old stone fountain. He washed his right hand, then his left, and rinsed his mouth. Gently, he cupped his hand and inhaled water from his hand and breathed it out again.

He thought he heard a whisper behind him, turned to look, but there was nothing.

A little more quietly, he washed his arms three times and then swept both of his dripping hands through his hair.

All at once he jerked up his head. He closed the valve abruptly and listened hard.

The sound of dripping water stopped.

Then another sound, a rustling rapid and intense, broke the profound peace of the morning. The guard knew instinctively what it meant.

Making no noise, he leaped from the bench and ran up the flagstones toward the Dome of the Rock. Sprinting into the shadow of a cypress tree, he averted his eyes from the floodlit golden shrine that would have blinded him and into the darkness beyond it.

Sunrise was an hour away, but the clouds glowed gray from a high crescent moon. Against the pale stone walls he could see figures moving like locusts—three, maybe four of them, strangely bent and misshapen as they scuttled from the eastern gate toward the dome.

The guard froze for an instant, then grasped for the radiophone at his belt. He would not call the other guards; there was no time. He needed someone much faster and much stronger. In a hush he spoke the code into the phone.

The intruders had reached the dome and were crawling around it. His uncle had been right to alert him; the danger was here. Now. Helpless fear came over him—what should he do?

It seemed forever, but it was really only minutes before the military police exploded silently into the Temple Mount. The young guard was amazed at their speed and organization. Running towards them he pointed the way to the intruders, who had dropped heavy backpacks and were now retreating toward the eastern wall. The police caught and wrestled two of the figures, who seemed older and slower. Another stayed momentarily ahead of them, but a fourth, scampering like an athlete, dived over the wall and disappeared.

The guard flicked on his torch and gazed at the three men the police had caught; their faces meant nothing to him. He exchanged a few questions and answers with the police, who were polite but now had little use for him—they were busily examining the foundations of the dome.

He understood why. Parcels and ropes lay scattered across the pavement of the Temple Mount. He moved one of the packages with his toe and was ordered back. A quick glance by the aid of his torch told him what he already knew—dynamite. A large rucksack filled with it. A little pride warmed him; he was so new, so young, and he had stopped an attack on the dome. His uncle, who had got him this job, would be pleased.

By now the other guards on duty had stirred from their quarters and were watching the plaza warily, uncomfortably respectful of the Israelis’ efficiency. As the gray light grew, they stood back and smoked. A couple of them congratulated him, and he grinned and accepted a Turkish cigarette.

Three Israeli uniforms walked toward him; to his surprise, one of them was a young woman whose face looked as if it had been battered with stones. On her shoulder she wore a white patch encircled with blue lettering.

Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, he read.

The woman nodded once, not happily. She asked to see his identification card and studied it as she pulled out a cigarette of her own.

Did you see the one who escaped? she asked in easy Arabic. Would you recognize him again?

I might. I already told that to the men.

She was unruffled, her bony, plated face showing no emotion. Then you could help us find him.

Maybe.

I want to show you something. She marched away without another word.

After prayer, he called. She turned and looked at him disdainfully, but he smiled and went into Al-Aqsa for his morning devotional. Because of the turmoil outside, the mosque was empty; only a little light came from the high windows and the lamp over the pulpit. He dropped to the carpet, faced the qibla, and performed the dawn prayer. Do not defend the mosque, his uncle had told him, only to ignore what it is for.

The woman was still waiting for him when he went out.

Wordlessly, they traveled in a secure van—the guard, the woman, and two Israeli soldiers—to West Jerusalem far away from his neighborhood, then over a rough road into a deserted Palestinian village called Lifta. Fragments of stone walls littered the hillside among bushes caught in the cliffside like balls of gray wool. There were many villages like this one, emptied by despair, medieval relics shaken down by the thundering of the new autoroute nearby.

They stopped at a house, a qubba with a little plaster dome, near a dead tree and a spring abandoned to rubbish and choked with ancient leaves. It was surrounded by armored vehicles and soldiers standing watch.

"Shu hada?" the guard asked. What is this?

This is their headquarters. It seemed a grandiose word for such a place. We’ve been watching it for some time.

Who are they?

I hoped you could tell us, the woman replied.

Inside the house technicians were taking up stones from the floor, and under a small floodlight the guard caught sight of a stack of rifles and other ordnance jammed into a shallow cellar.

There are weapons enough down there for a small army, the woman said. But this is what interests me. Her finger made a circle around the room.

The guard saw that the plaster walls were painted with pictures that made no sense—trees, angels, swords, bleeding animals, and on the west wall a crude human figure holding up a knife in one hand and in the other a lamb with wide cartoon-like eyes. A lion crept from the ceiling toward the lamb. On all the walls old newspaper articles and photos hung from yellowing tape among Stars of David, crosses, and crescent moons, a mad mixture of religious symbols spinning around as if sucked up and deposited by a flood.

On the western wall, under the lion’s mouth, a motto was chalked in white Hebrew letters. He read it easily to himself.

Who may abide the day of his coming? For he is like a refiner’s fire. He shall purify the sons of Levi, he shall purge them as silver and gold, and they shall offer unto the Lord offerings in righteousness.

What do you make of this? the woman asked.

Baffled, the guard gazed slowly around the room and shook his head. "Ma’allish. God knows."

Look closer. She left him abruptly, stepping outside to talk on her radiophone.

Curious, the guard studied the walls under the eyes of the two soldiers.

A huge crucifix, splayed at the ends of the crossbars and splashed with red, dominated the northern wall; the photo of a young man in uniform was pinned at the nexus of the cross. At the top of the wall stretched a painting of a dark, robed figure like the shadow of an angel.

On the east wall above the door, two priestly figures wrestled a wounded bull streaming blood. Perhaps a hundred golden Stars of David dripped like painted rain from the roof. Photographs decorated the wall, one of them framed. The man in the photo looked familiar with his short, curt beard and smile—by the caption, the Zionist hero Chaim Weizmann, one of the founders of the State of Israel. This east wall, the guard realized, was Jewish, while the north wall was Christian.

That would mean the south wall, the wall facing Mecca, was for Islam. It was covered with images. Painted trees dropped fruit into the mouths of stick-figure souls under a crescent moon. Coarsely photocopied pictures hung from a tree. A rough mural of the Great Mosque at Mecca stretched from one side of the wall to the other, concentric circles of pilgrims in white paint ringing the Kaaba. Above it all, a black eagle spread its wings over the ceiling.

The four images—the lion, the angel, the bull, and the eagle—converged overhead in a cupola streaked with red and yellow paint flowing from a central star, a parody of the Dome of the Rock.

What do you make of this? the Israeli Security woman had returned and was standing at his elbow.

Syncretism, he said.

The woman gave a gravelly laugh. A big word for your mouth.

He bristled; should he tell her about his years at university in Cairo, about his first-class honors degree in languages and literature? Remembering his uncle, he chose not to be offended.

But he broke into cultivated English to explain. Syncretism. A melding or mixing of many religions into one. Perhaps this is a shrine of some sort.

And she answered him in English. Yes, I see all of that. But what about the photos? She pointed impatiently at two curling images dangling from the southern wall. Then softly: Why the photos?

The guard looked closer at them and then leaped back as if someone had struck him.

This one is a picture of my uncle. Doctor Haytham al-Ayoub.

So it is, the woman said, watching him, the toughness returning to her voice. And the other?

The guard was speechless. The other photo, rumpled by the humid air, hanging at an irrational angle from a claw of the eagle, was of himself.

Chapter 1

Saturday, October 2, 2027

The man stood erect, all in black, waiting in the autumn cold for the Pope to appear. On one side of the great square the twin towers of the cathedral and the ancient palace of St. John Lateran rose out of the morning darkness. On another side stood the rose-colored Renaissance face of the sanctuary of the Holy Stairs. Between them in the center of the square the Egyptian obelisk soared into the frozen sky; from the base of the obelisk a great stone eagle soared upwards and a granite lion lapped hungrily at a frozen cascade of fruit and flowers.

He worked over and over in his mind the geometry of the next hour, thinking mechanically through his preparations—weapon, route, timing. What could reasonably be expected…what unexpected.

He concentrated on a sharp diagonal line between sun and shadow descending the façade of the sanctuary. Reflexively he stroked with his thumb the unfamiliar gold ring on his fourth finger, then re-focused his mind on the number of stairs, the sequence of the ritual, the cubical room inside.

The crowd grew larger, and as a cold wind raced over the square people around him jostled and stamped their feet to warm themselves. He remained still and kept his eyes on nothing. The voices of the crowd were like the wind on his neck—prickly, scraping. Otherwise, the people seemed infinitely remote. He felt utterly and triumphantly alone. He knew there was no one like himself in all the world, no one with the singular mission he had to perform, no one with the peculiar knowledge he had.

No one, of course, but his holy father, who had willed him here.

Inadvertently, the man looked up the lines of the obelisk to the icy, unwavering blue sky, then back to the chapel steps. His concentration ebbed only slightly; his mouth tightened. What he had done so far had been hard…very hard. What he had yet to do would be far harder, but just as necessary. For that, he would need ice and stone within himself.

He lowered his gaze to the ground. His dark face looked back at him from the twin black mirrors of his shoes. He sighed, then with a strong effort he silenced his breathing, concentrated his hearing, immobilized himself.

There was a cheer from the crowd. The time had come.

Today he would carry out his mission. Today the long preparation would end, the years of training, the decades of planning, the centuries of confused hope—it would all make sense soon. Today the genetic swirl that had given rise to himself would meet its apex. Today would be not just another gust in the deceptively chaotic storm of time—it would be the eye of time. The event toward which all history had flowed in a breathless rush.

Piazza San Giovanni, Rome, 0930h

The crowds this Pope draws, thought Antonio Bevo as he surveyed them intently. From his perch near the corner of the square he could see everything; and to him everything looked very odd.

The piazza of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, sloped away from him like steps in a fountain. The cobbled stairs were usually dotted with the sellers of tourist trinkets, but today most of them had been crowded off the square. He had dealt with crowds for years, but mobs like this one were new to him.

Bevo was head of the detail of Roman police designated to guard the Pope when he ventured out of the Vatican and into the city of which he was nominally bishop. Bevo’s job was to coordinate with the Vatican authorities and secure the sites the Pope would visit. Only yesterday he had been the featured speaker at the Papal Visitation Security conference, and had, he thought, impressed the audience. He was under no illusion that his flat black suit and sunglasses made him inconspicuous; in his work he wanted to be conspicuous, to be seen as authoritative and even fearsome. He had efficiently guarded popes since the days of John Paul II. The Vatican police had made occasional attempts to recruit him, but he had no desire to immure himself there.

Nevertheless, he did not know what kind of security he could ensure in this situation. A hugely muscled cowboy walked past him with spurs tinkling, a great gold cross hanging around his neck. Three men dressed in identical rainbow-colored sweat suits giggled as they followed the cowboy around the square. Gypsies squatted on the pavement, showing their scars to passersby and begging for euros; Arabs tried hawking souvenirs in the crush. Scattered throughout were groups of protesters with banners pleading for a return to old ways; the protesters, a tight-faced lot of men in old black suits, were ignored except for a couple of Bevo’s men who kept close watch on them.

I might be one of those old men, Bevo thought to himself, if I weren’t here instead. He found the current pope incomprehensible and ludicrous. He wondered how ordinary Romans had felt in the days of the bad Borgia popes, and thought of the many popes in history who had been chased from the city over some obscure point of politics. But Zacharias II seemed on the point of overthrowing everything that mattered. He had called the council now known as Vatican III to address the problem of a moribund church—the pews were empty, the priests dying off, the coffers drying up. Although flourishing in the Southern Hemisphere, the Church had lost its base of wealth in the north.

But to Bevo’s mind, Zacharias and Vatican III had spun out of control: granting the priesthood to women, letting go of clerical celibacy, liberalizing constraints on abortion and divorce. Gay marriage. But the results were inarguable—in Europe and America, people were flooding back into the Church. Here in Rome, a new kind of energy flowed into the streets whenever Zacharias appeared. There had been a little gust of this sort of thing when Francis was pope, but nothing like this. Now a small knot of women dressed in new black suits with white clerical collars pushed wildly forward, weeping and clutching at their handkerchiefs. Pope Zacharias II had arrived.

Bevo straightened up and looked at the GeM in his hand. Its screen blazed and its wireless earpiece chattered at him. He gave a few perfunctory orders. The bizarre crowd leaped forward as the Pope descended from the white-and-yellow Popemobile and raised both arms above his head like a prizefighter. Cheering young men waved their intertwined hands. A rotund little woman priest held up her cat to be petted and was nearly pushed over from behind. The Pope reached out, catching her with one hand, touching the cat with the other. The crowd roared.

These people were mostly thin and young, thought Bevo, so different from what he was used to. It had been twenty years since he had seen really big crowds at events like these. In his early days, the crowds were groups of elderly tourists and diminutive, portly rural women in faded black who came to wave their handkerchiefs at the Pope. It had been a quiet assignment, but it was quiet no longer.

The Pope moved briskly toward two large white vans that sat in front of the cathedral doors. He mounted the stairs and was fitted with a microphone even before his retinue had settled in around him. A few silky-haired old clerics were there to greet him, along with the Monsignor, the Pope’s ever present young secretary, who had quietly arranged everything and now watched over the crowd with a slight benedictory smile.

The Pope’s elegant French-tinged voice filled the square, and the crowd applauded. A tall man with electric white hair encircling his cap, Zacharias offered an energetic blessing on the two vans, which were about to leave on some charitable mission. As always the Pope’s gaze was intense and a bit off-center due to an eye injury he received in Nicaragua years before during an anti-government demonstration. Bevo paid no attention to any of this. The crowd was his priority. He watched intently, alert to any unusual movement, listening hard to reports over his GeM earpiece.

After a few words—this Pope was noted for short speeches—he shook hands with the van drivers and bustled up to greet the crowd. People pushed forward, straining to touch him, to catch a look from his clear brown eyes, but he dashed on to his next task with his retinue speeding along behind him.

Bevo followed as the little party, the pope all in white and his attendants in black, crossed the square through a corridor of yellow caution tape. Suddenly, Bevo was worried. There was that faint iron taste of adrenaline in his mouth that told him something might be awry.

The morning had started cold, but it was warming between waves of frigid wind, and he could now see his own men at every corner of the square, mixed into the crowd along with sober agents from the Vatican. They were like little immovable black stones in a flood of colored water, among the Gypsies in dirty red anoraks, idling Arab men in dusty sweaters, university students carrying rainbow banners to counter the modest banners of the protesters, and as usual lots of women. But they were unlike the women Bevo was used to. They were alarming, loud, energetic, and mostly foreign. Many were in clerical dress.

Women priests! Bevo muttered, but then snapped around at the sound of a voice in his earpiece. It was just one of his men checking in. He sighed nervously—a tidal wave of people was flowing around the great obelisk at the center of the piazza and toward the pink-and-white Palazzo Fontana, where the next ceremony of the morning would take place. Bevo would not relax until the Pope had carried out his little drama and was safely inside that building.

The Papal Party had arrived at the line of black-uniformed guards who stood security outside the palace. They looked fishlike in their tight black helmets and visors. Bevo walked to a point where he could see clearly into the entrance. He spoke a few words into his mouthpiece and saw the guards come to attention, open the line, and close it again around the party. The crowd cheered as the Pope knelt in the vestibule of the palace.

Just beyond the vestibule was a wide staircase, which the Pope began to climb on his knees. These were the Sacred Stairs by which Jesus had entered the palace of Pilate on the day of his crucifixion. Saint Helena had brought them to Rome from Jerusalem in the fourth century, and since then countless pilgrims had climbed the staircase on their knees as an act of piety. It was said that the bloodstains of Christ could still be seen on the marble. Every year of his papacy on his election anniversary, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, this pope had climbed the stairs in this way. At the top of the staircase, Bevo knew, was the ancient private chapel of the popes of Rome, used only at Easter and a few other feasts. Today the Pope would celebrate his morning mass privately in this most holy of chapels after following on his knees in the footsteps of Christ.

Bevo watched the guards to make sure they were alert. A couple of them seemed distracted. He snapped his fingers in the air as he walked toward them, and they stiffened to attention. He wanted as many eyes as possible on this mob.

The Pope climbed resolutely up the stairs, his private secretary close behind him. He stopped briefly at each step and referred to a prayer book the Monsignor held for him. Bevo knew that there were twenty-eight stairs and that it would be roughly half an hour before the Pope was safely inside the chapel. The crowd was now subdued; there was a sound like a river as many prayed quietly, and the banners overhead could be heard waving in the wind.

At last the Pope arrived at the top. He turned around, tall and white-robed in the shadow under the archway over the stairs, and raised his hands in benediction just beneath the stormy fresco of the Crucifixion that marked the portal of the chapel. The crowd broke into applause—even the protesters were clapping—and the Monsignor preceded the Pope through the grillwork of the gate. Bevo breathed with relief but ordered his men to stay alert. The Pope would descend again after he said his private mass.

The crowd began to shrink as most of the curiosity seekers passed on or went back to work, but many would stay until the Pope reappeared. Bevo relaxed and lit a cigarette as the Vatican chief in his nondescript dark suit walked over to greet him. While they exchanged pleasantries they never took their eyes off the people in the square, most of whom were gazing up at the Sacred Stairs and waiting. The peculiar menace of these new worshipers discomfited both men, but as the hour wore on they relaxed a little. Then suddenly a flock of startled birds fled the palazzo.

Bevo would relive the next moment for the rest of his life.

There was a catch in a thousand throats; Bevo whirled around and stared unbelieving as the gate at the top of the staircase opened and the Pope stumbled out, his white cassock a river of blood. Au secours! he cried. Help me! and then fell headfirst down the steps.

Interpol Headquarters, Lyons, France, 1030h

The Pope has been assassinated.

The sentence ran in six languages quickly around the meeting room. David Kane, the secretary-general of Interpol, turned to speak to the aide who had brought the news. They conferred for a moment.

We need to verify this, he said, and walked quickly out of the meeting. The aide followed him. In the room behind him, a big flatscreen came on.

Kane, a tall, well-built man with white hair cropped in a style a quarter of a century old, moved with the stride of the commando soldier he had once been. His aide filled him in as they walked to Kane’s office. The Pope was conducting a ceremony at the church of the Lateran. At first glance, it appears to be a murder-suicide. His private secretary shot him and then himself.

Kane pulled off his suit coat, removed his GeM from the pocket, and touched the screen almost in one swift movement. A bright panel inlaid in the wall flared on, fixed on the backs of hundreds of heads and a virtually still picture of the pinkish façade of a Roman building. At a distance, there was the minute and frantic motion of the emergency workers. Kane whispered as he read the stark text running across the screen and mentally translated: Pope Zacharias II assassinated in Rome. He crossed himself and breathed out what was almost a whistle.

Get the Vatican police on the line. Offer them whatever assistance they need. Also Interpol Rome, he said to the aide, who turned away immediately and began talking quietly into his headset.

Kane spoke a single number into his GeM, adjusted his earpiece, and his intelligence chief picked