CHAPTER 1

1:06 P.M.
Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, Israel – built on
Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection sites.

“Jerusalem – home to the Bible’s final battle between Good and Evil,
Armageddon, gate to Heaven and hell.”
Storm clouds blackened the church courtyard.
“Director Engel, it’s like something out of the Bible.”
“Pray my little intern.” I ducked a punch, gave it to a lipstick nun behind
me. “I think it’s Vatican Jack. He stalks us. My daughter has holy autism.”
Riot police rained batons on sinners, the ancient stone church unable to
save.
“Never met the little trouble maker,” Hope said.
“She’s eighteen. My daughter’s lucky charm kills.”
“Great.”
Wind like hell as pilgrims ran from the holiest church alive, fleeing into
holy streets.
The Jerusalem Effect. Fervent Christian pilgrims overwhelmed by the
spiritual. But Jesus died there.
Police cordoned its newest holy secret.
“He has risen!” yelled a face.
I fumbled my cell phone. “I’m Anna Engel, redheaded – what the hell does
being cocky and Irish have to do with anything? I’m bobbing and weaving riot
cops! I’m in the courtyard, stupid!”
Click.
I threw an arm around my intern Hope and hurried her off. “Hellen just
knows things. Hurry, Hope. She’s gifted. One autistic savant remembers all
7,000 books he’s read. Really. One calculates time with no clock. Hellen can’t
read or write, but she blabbers about an ancient symbol of good fortune, a
swastika, known to almost every group of humans. Swastikas were Hindu
thresholds. Buddha’s footprints. China’s eternity and long life. Scandinavia’s
Thor’s hammer. For early Christians it’s the gammadion cross. Mayan and
Navajo swastikas. Now you stay here, Hope. I have to go in.”
Swastika in Sanskrit was svastik. Two spellings. S-v-a-s-t-i-c-a and S-u-a-
s-t-i-k-a. Su meant good and well and asti meant to be. Svasti meant well-
being and the suffix ka brought a sense of being beneficial, positive. So the
lucky charm was lost.
“If I knew this when I applied for my internship…”
A man with red eyes split the crowd. “God isn’t nice today, Anna. I’m
Detective Amzi Ben-Shimon. Come. We must hurry.” He led me past
helmeted police and into the holiest church in all of Christendom.
“Hope,” Ben-Shimon said pointing, “you go with that nice man.”
“I’ll see you Hope.” I think.
The church was empty. God-nuts Jerusalem. I stepped over a dead
contorted face and hurried after the detective, past the stone slab where
Jesus’ body was worked before entombed. Past priceless holy art, gadroons
for God, abaci, entablatures, foliate moldings, figurative lintels, and pointed
arches that did nothing.
“Come along, Anna.”
I caught him, stepped into his path, and dug him with my eyes. “You
freaking call me?” I asked.
His dead-look told me no.
“So what’s the little religious problem here today?” I scanned dark
balconies overhead for eyes.
“Where’d you go this morning?”
“Via Dolorosa. I traced Jesus’ footsteps from His trial to His crucifixion.
Where’s my daughter?”
“Stop anywhere?” He planted his feet in front of me.
I froze in the Rotunda circling Christ’s Tomb. “Station four where Mary
appeared to Jesus on His way to His execution. What’s this about? You got
ID? Where’s my daughter?”
“We’ll get to that.” He flashed a tarnished shield, walked off. “Who walked
with you today, Anna?”
“Uh, Adam.” Adam was my German-Jewish historian significant other.
“Why isn’t Adam here now, Anna?”
“Dunno. He went missing.”
“You didn’t report it, Anna?”
He just disappeared on the walk! “He’s a grown man.”
“Your soul is in your eyes and it doesn’t lie, Anna. Why did you leave
Hellen in this church with father this glorious morning?”
“Not to go memorabilia hunting in Jerusalem, that’s for sure. Look, why
are you…”
I wanted to split his head open with a fourth-century A.D. Constantine-
column. Overhead was the twelve-pointed dome, like symbols for Apostles. I
paused yards from the Tomb of Christ enshrined on the Rotunda floor.
Historians and archaeologists agreed it was His. The tomb sat inside of a little
house on the rotunda floor – columns, square piers, red-yellow breccias,
pilasters, and an ill-placed dome on a flat terraced roof. Protective scaffolding
saved God’s Tomb from earthquakes.
“Get me the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv now.” For this foreign shoot, I had
informed the American Embassy in Tel Aviv of my whereabouts. “Where is
my little swastika chick? How many times must I ask you officer?”
“Until the messiah arrives in this glorious city.” He walked away, sniffing
his pistol barrel, sweat on his blue blazer and gold pants.
Fine! My Romanesque tunic had vertical Velcro strips for whip-out action
at the navel where a custom, pink, leather holster lurked. A skinny Irish
woman with a .357 Smith & Wesson pistol had drilling power, baby. Straight
face blaster. Bone splitter.
But he pulled it out with a little jab at the end, humming my favorite song,
Stairway to Heaven. “Why are you really in Israel?” he asked.
I tiptoed off.
I didn’t want to tell him something he might know, that I hit the papers as
an accused man-murderer last year, and that made me down-and-out and
near broke and I needed this church film-gig, sorry, and that I was simply
searching into why my daughter’s hobby, one that she doesn’t even know she
has!, can’t really be explained by modern science!
He blocked my path. “You’re here to film a church documentary. You’re a
prolific independent filmmaker. You created Women Haters in Amsterdam,
Arab Street Walkers, and Choke Chicks in Iran. I’d say the Vatican would call
you a farce and leave you dead once they kill your discovery. They paid you
nicely to shoot here. You were to name the documentary, Jesus the Messiah.”
He cleared his throat. “Why did you say that you wanted to kill the bastard?
Did you mean Jesus?”
“No. Never. I was upset, burdened with caring for Hellen’s every whim,
that’s all, that’s human isn’t it? Please, where’s my baby?”
“We’ll get to that.” He walked off with a smashed up face. He said over his
shoulder, “Christians sin too, but that’s not in your documentary’s subject
matter.”
“Did you read my documentary notes, you thief? I didn’t say it so don’t get
pissy. However, some say the sins of Jews and their unwillingness to
recognize Christianity made God take Israel away from your people. Do you
have children detective?”
He peeked over greasy bifocals, his only hair a drop of black bird shit.
“Christianity was born from Judaism. Christians distorted Hebrew words to
fit their beliefs. Ever since your Jesus walked the earth, we Jews have had no
peace for over two-thousand-years. And, yes, I have a tribe of children.” He
slapped cool metal into my hand. “Your daughter left this.”
I choked on bile. “Okay, it’s Hellen’s favorite swastika.”
“Hellen spoke of the Holocaust?” He circled.
“Listen, I mean really – The Arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is a
variant of the ancient swastika. The Christian Insignia of the Order of the
Holy Sepulcher and the simple Jerusalem Cross too.”
“You really want to die, don’t you?”
I don’t think he’s a detective.
I lived and loved in Israel. The land wasn’t safe but the people were, and
beautiful. But I can’t tell him the Christian cross came from a swastika,
differing only in that the swastika has hooks on the ends of its cross, that the
similarity was generally accepted, and the swastika was on earth first. He
probably already knew the primitive cross was the gamma cross and that
swastikas were on earth before Israel’s ancient history, predating ancient
Egypt, and that swastikas were good before they were evil.
He circled me in the magnificent stone rotunda. “Islam, Judaism, and
Christianity all made covenants with God in Jerusalem, Anna. If you want to
know God just come to Jerusalem. I’ll take your heart for the answers.” He
screwed the pistol between my eyes. “She’s in good hands, Anna. Would you
like to see her before you expire?”
“As long as I’m not a bottle of red wine.”