GABRIEL PLUM
IN HIS LONDON apartment on Baker Street, Gabriel was waiting for a visit. He knew the arrival of his guest was imminent. Just now, looking through one of his curved windows down into the street, he saw the black-clad emissary of Perpetuity.
Almost no one in London wore black anymore. The color was as passé as New York City. When the dollar came in at four-to-one for the pound, everyone in London dressed in white. Clothes in Paris reverted to a pleasing medley of colors—a vivid Postimpressionist palette. But here was a blackbird—conspicuous, dignified, self-righteous.
A well of darkness, Gabriel thought, ready to absorb all light that comes to him. For a moment he thought of the dark hole to the interior of a box designed to illustrate black box radiation to beginning physics students.
Against the background of the upright black garb moving over the walkway below, Gabriel immediately spotted a white slip of paper. The bearer held it in one hand, and the paper fluttered like a small flag. With his other hand the rabbi adjusted his pince-nez to better view what was written on his flag—without doubt an address! This address, Gabriel thought. He sighed.
The rabbi’s footfall on the staircase was as light as a dancer’s. He moved as though he enjoyed climbing stairs—who knew what was at the top? Gabriel wondered if the man’s thoughts moved from one to another with as much nimbleness as his feet. Anticipating a knock at the door, Gabriel moved as quickly as he could across the worn carpet. The jute threads were visible in some areas. He took care to make no noise at all and swung open the door.
“Professor Plum, I believe. I am Rabbi Esau ben Ezra. I have read your latest articles with great interest.”
“Then you must be a physicist as well as a man of the cloth. No other sane person would have done so. Please come in.” Did the man have news of Lucy? Gabriel decided to prolong the pretense that his visitor was a colleague in physics. “Your specialty?”
“Many body calculations employing domain decomposition.”
Though the knowledgeable answer startled Gabriel, he pushed the game a step further. “To business, then. Come in. Please sit.” Gabriel closed the door to the hallway. “I suppose you come to inform me the matrices must be positive-definite and self-adjoint. I have already thought as much.”
“Domain decomposition—yes.” The rabbi slowly removed his pince-nez and made it disappear within some placket of his robe. He rubbed his eyes, retained his hat. “Yes. But we are not speaking of quite the same domain. Mine is not material.”
“Exactly the problem with all mathematics, is it not? My reason for being a physicist, instead of a pure mathematician. I prefer my math, no matter how subtle, to refer to physical realities, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Explain yourself.” Gabriel felt as though he were going mad. He was greatly tempted to begin to sing “Jerusalem, the Golden.” Free association was running out of control. Hamlet had pretended madness as a prelude to real madness. Gabriel took a deep breath to steady himself and then merely said, “What about domain decomposition?”
“I was not referring to Professor Bernard Belecki’s mathematical exploration, which he names ‘domain decomposition.’ No. I refer to the domain of the spiritual, which I fear may be about to undergo a certain amount of decomposition. I speak of dogma—Jewish dogma fundamental to the faith, to be exact.”
“Your exactness lacks precision, my friend.”
“Very well—the dogma of Jew, Christian, and Muslim, fundamentally speaking. I’m afraid I have rather bad news and need to enlist your services. Your concern is the key to the future, the flash drive. My chief interest is in the past. Perpetuity has an interest in both.”
Fear for Lucy swept over Gabriel. From Pierre Saad’s phone call, Gabriel knew that she not only wore Thom’s flash drive but also carried a manuscript that might well undercut Genesis as being literally true. He had been expecting a visitor from Perpetuity, and yet he had hoped not to be so firmly linked to the group.
“But do you really know physics,” Gabriel asked the rabbi, “or has some scientist read my article and written you a script?”
“Science was an interest, and so of course I have some skills, still, in math.”
“What’s gone wrong? Still no flash drive?”
“The Arab who was commissioned to retrieve the flash drive has committed suicide.”
“Where?”
“In Amsterdam, as it happens.”
“How?”
“He plunged from a high window on Prince Street. Familiar location?”
“To be sure.”
For a moment the conversation rested. Gabriel stared at the rabbi, who took an inventory of the furnishings of Gabriel’s room. Finally the rabbi said, “Isn’t it all rather Sherlockian, these digs? A Persian slipper on the mantel? Surely you don’t smoke shag. The Arab had some stomach for violence, but not enough.”
With as much regret as irony, Gabriel asked, “Then he dropped the piano on Thom, didn’t he?”
“Well, he assisted. But he refused to go after Mrs. Bergmann. First he dallied—we waited patiently for the war to quiet, or at least for a lull. But the battery embedded in the case—”
“The case?” Gabriel asked. “The titanium case for the flash drive?”
“No. The French horn case. You don’t seem to understand.”
Gabriel pushed the tips of his fingers together and said, “I believe I do see. Perpetuity is two-pronged.”
“God has condensed our mission. In one person, our two objectives are united.”
“Mrs. Bergmann disappeared.”
“You, Professor Plum, failed to relieve her of the flash drive, though you were her companion in Egypt.”
“You were speaking of a battery in a case.”
“The Genesis codex—”
“I know of the existence of the codex—”
“When Pierre Saad had a French horn case prepared for transporting the codex, we had a global positioning device placed in the case. Its battery has begun to weaken. The Arab should have secured both the codex and the flash drive; he failed. One story is, he committed suicide; another is that he was murdered. In any case, he’s out of the picture. Now you must try again to retrieve the flash drive, which interests you, and the codex, which should interest you but apparently does not. I believe you fly rather well. Airplanes.”
“Why, for God’s sake, did you ever let her carry the case out of Egypt?” Gabriel asked. “And why haven’t you gone after her before now, if you knew where she was?”
“We did not expect it would be entrusted to her. Monsieur Pierre Saad was barely acquainted with Mrs. Lucy Bergmann.” The rabbi cleared his throat. “And to your second question—the area where her plane went down is a doughnut hole. A little oasis of peace, but totally surrounded by the most vicious warfare the world has ever seen. A little Armageddon, a Christian might say.”
Gabriel realized that should he fail to cooperate, two stories about him might be circulated: committed suicide or murdered. He maintained his seat and tried to take comfort in the ordinary nature of his surroundings. “And you want to send me there?”
“Things have quieted down. You and I and an American businessman will visit Eden. I’m having an airport constructed in the wilderness not far from Baghdad.”
Gabriel wondered what value had been placed on the life of Lucy Bergmann.
As though he knew Gabriel’s thoughts, the rabbi said, “It is not the person of Mrs. Bergmann that interests us, but the things she carries. However, at some point you may need to consider, Professor Plum, whose life you value more—hers or your own.”
Gabriel stood up. “How do you know what you know?”
“Eyes. Eyes and ears. Sometimes they ride on donkeys let loose in Egypt; sometimes in the broom handle of a maid; sometimes in the black spot on the back of a tiger’s ear in India. There is no place where we of Perpetuity do not watch and listen. We have watched you, friend and rival of Thom Bergmann, many years and anticipated your sympathy to our cause. You did well to inform our office that Mrs. Bergmann had gone missing with a flash drive full of information on perfected spectroscopic methods and extraterrestrial life.”
“Why do you call me Thom’s rival?” Gabriel knew it was unlikely that he’d ever be permitted to ask such questions again.
“You never wanted his search for extraterrestrial life to succeed. You rejoiced over each sterile planet. You wanted science to affirm that we are special, unique in the universe.”
“Are we?”
“In a word? No.”