The Byzantium Inheritance

The Byzantium Inheritance is a work of fiction – not ‘a thriller’ but rather, an ‘informed adventure’.

My story describes a series of climactic events, each event becoming the logical cause of the next, all of which might come together catastrophically. It is set against known historical influences but takes place in the near future, or perhaps, it is happening now.

It involves the pipelines bringing energy to the EU; the democratic deficit facing ‘citizens’ of the sovereign nations that constitute the EU; and the schism in the US between, both, the voting population and the Democrats and the Republican parties, perhaps rendering the US, potentially, ungovernable; the differences between Sunni and Shia and, finally, the influence of the Ashkenazi (or Soviet Jewry) on the system of proportional representation in Israeli when, arguably, some leaders are proselytizing the “End Of Days”.  Some have remarked that it is odd to think how in modern times, the descendants of  Europeans of every religion and race that had gone to America and disestablished the existing population there,  are now being seen to repeat the effects in modern Palestine. Groups like the “New Settlers” leaving America and doing to the Palestinians what had been done to the Indians.

The components I use include; “the Primary Chronicles”, the “Schechter Letter“, and the Church of St. Luke.   Meanwhile, events happen in their proper habitats; from Berdychiv via the Republic of Carpatho-Ruthenia and the  Tilkitepe Mound to the Tell al-Mutesellim.  …..

 

Chapter extract: 

The Byzantium Inheritance

“1: It was done, finished; finally, and for the first time in 3,000 years, the torment of the Diaspora could end. From this day, he thought, no Jew need ever fear again the threat that force might be used to drive his race from the land promised to them by Yahweh himself.

The two men had worked silently over many hours – wiring, welding, and then bricking the charge in place.  The demands of the work left him grateful for the skill set he had acquired in the course of living a demanding life in which, threaded through its entirety, had been present an existential threat. It was, he thought, in some ways not dissimilar to the lives of Jews throughout history.

In this century, that implicit threat had become manifest as the Nazis spread like a malevolent rash through Germany and Austria. Then it had been the camps and, thereafter, from the British in Palestine. Finally, from the Arabs and, especially, the so-called Palestinians who, if allowed would, he knew, take something much more valuable than his poor life; they would take from his people not just the land that was theirs by gift from God but also hope and a sense of destiny that was biblical in both origin and scope.

At times, especially as they had laboured to conceal the evidence of their work, he had wondered if his skills were the half-remembered soul memories of his forefathers who had been amongst those who had helped conceal the tombs which, legend had it, their Egyptian enslavers believed would shield them for all eternity.  Perhaps, he thought, his true inheritance had been via a gene pool in which the needs of survival had helped embed the cunning, patience, and skills that had allowed the modern survivors of his people to survive the camps, defeat the British, and then build their nation from nothing.

Few knew better than Yaakov that what had been achieved had been done in the face of hate and hostility from all of their neighbours. It was true also, for him at least, that much of the world had looked with contempt upon his tribe since time immemorial. How fitting it was then, he thought, that those same skills should now serve, protect, and preserve the gains they had made since the ideal that was Israel had been reborn.

Sweaty, exhausted by their efforts in the cramped chamber, but ecstatic with their success, Yaakov Avshalom nodded to his colleague, Weiss Haviv, who closed and locked the door of the titanium cage; they were done.  The device was bonded, shielded and concealed impenetrably deep in the wall of the basement of the elegant fortress that was the Israeli Embassy in London.  The tiny wire linking the detonator to the receiver was in place, primed for the coded signal that would if ever sent – kahs vesholem, he added to ward off the evil spirit – begin a sequence as unstoppable as the results of it were too dreadful to contemplate.  Their job was done” …..