The Caleb Collection Read online

  She’d paused and closed her eyes. “Dear God, redeem your children.”

  Beside her Zakkai was talking. “. . . but I would feel better traveling with an army to take the monastery by force,” he said. “We would be justified— the Ark is Jewish property, after all.”

  Rebecca looked at him. “And you live in a fantasy world, Professor. You know as well as I that the Knesset sells its soul to keep this madness they call peace intact. They know what the Ark’s discovery would do— they would stop at nothing to prevent it. Sometimes I think they’re as much the enemy as the Arabs. If the Israeli army follows us to Ethiopia, it’ll be to kill . . .”

  She stopped. They had come around a bend and two hundred meters ahead a checkpoint crossed the road. Three armed soldiers stood on guard, one on the right, two on the left. They were a hundred kilometers south of the West Bank—fifty kilometers south of Beersheba. Encountering a checkpoint this far south wasn’t unknown, but they should have been told about it. Which meant the roadblock was only hours old.

  She snatched up the radio. “We have an unscheduled checkpoint ahead, Michael.”

  “Copy.”

  “What’s this?” Avraham demanded. He leaned forward and studied the nearing post. “We weren’t told of this.”

  Rebecca slowed the Land Rover. “You’re right.”

  Something about the way the checkpoint looked bothered her. She brought the Land Rover to a stop a hundred meters out. Several tires stood in a heap on the right and a long pole rested diagonally across the blacktop. An Israeli flag coiled slowly in the breeze.

  Avraham leaned over Rebecca’s seat, sweat dripping from his chin. “You can’t stop here! They will suspect—”

  “Shut up! Sit back. Something isn’t right.”

  Avraham glared at her and sat back. She had to think.

  To either side of the road the creamy desert stretched brown in the morning sun. Beyond the three guards in Israeli uniforms, one of which was now waving them forward, the blacktop snaked over the horizon. They sat on the road, like a bull facing the fighter. Why hadn’t they been told about this checkpoint? The Palestinians had been known to erect ambushes exactly like this one, waving an Israeli flag.

  She keyed the radio again. “We will drive up slowly. Do exactly as I say. If we’re lucky it’s nothing. Under no circumstances will anyone bring out a weapon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rebecca looked at Zakkai. “If anything happens, I want you on the floor. We can’t afford to lose you to a stray bullet.”

  She winked at him and smiled. Then she eased the clutch out and rolled for the roadblock.

  The checkpoint was Ismael’s first and most obvious choice.

  The boy had given him more detail than he could have hoped for. Smart kid. Too bad. Rebecca was headed south by land, the boy had said. That meant they would take the Red Sea route to Ethiopia. If they were headed to Eilat, they would come down this road, and Ismael intended to stop them here.

  Mustaf and Jamil were the only two patriots he knew who hated the Jews more than he. Both had watched their parents die at the hands of Mossad agents before they were ten. Ismael had simply told them that they were going to kill Hamil’s assassin. Rebecca.

  The white Land Rover drove towards them. “It’s them,” Ismael said, pulling up his bandanna. “Ready yourselves. Remember, we want the girl dead.”

  He glanced at the pothole in the middle of the road where they’d placed the explosive. It was now filled with gravel. We will see how smart you are, Rebecca.

  Two separate images burned in Rebecca’s mind, and she slowed their approach to a crawl. The first was the stance of the soldiers. They were unmoving, which meant they were most likely nervous. The second was the small hole in the middle of the road. It appeared to be a repair, but a few chunks of asphalt, roadside, struck her as having just come from that hole. As if it had been freshly dug rather than slowly worn. And it was positioned to be directly under any vehicle that stopped at the pole they had set across the road. Most potholes were worn on the side of roads, where tires pounded. The three soldiers stood twenty meters back, rifles ready.

  The PLO needed to learn a few new tricks, she thought. A bead of sweat broke from her brow and snaked past her left eyebrow. She stopped the truck fifty meters from the three men.

  “Avraham. They have a bomb in the road. You see it?”

  “The pothole.”

  Zakkai shrunk in his seat. “Dear God! They’re not ours?”

  “Easy, Professor. If we can lure them up to the hole before we go, they won’t detonate the bomb, unless they’re interested in blowing themselves to bits as well. Avraham, take a bottle of water and pour it on the engine block when I pop the hood. Yell at them in Hebrew—tell them that our car is acting up. Wait for them to approach the pothole and when they do, slam the hood.”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “If you have a better idea, make it quick. We’ve done this before.” She keyed her radio. “Michael, we’re running a double blind. Like the Golan Heights. Have Mark put his sights on the guard to the right and wing him when Avraham shuts the hood. No killing. Make sure they don’t see the gun.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rebecca turned to Avraham. “The steam will mask the shots. Move it. And leave the door open—if you miss us, jump in the back of the other truck. Once we go we won’t stop, so I suggest you don’t miss.”

  Avraham grabbed a bottle of water and shoved the door open, cursing under his breath. He immediately began to yell their dilemma, holding his hands up in a helpless gesture. He might not like being told what to do, but he was doing it well. Rebecca popped the hood.

  The air remained quiet—they weren’t firing. Rebecca eased a handgun from under her seat and held her breath. What if she was wrong? Imagine the mess that would result in shooting an Israeli soldier.

  Avraham shielded the water bottle from the soldiers and dumped it onto the engine. A cloud of steam swallowed the front of the truck. Unable to see the checkpoint now, Rebecca watched Avraham, who jumped back from the hood, cursing loudly like any surprised motorist might. He waved at the guards, calling for help, then stopped to listen.

  Their response sent Avraham into a frenzy. He screamed at them, furious. “Can’t you idiots see that I’m stranded here? I don’t care if you’re manning the checkpoint. I’m the only car that needs checking and I’m smoking like a bomb here!”

  Avraham ducked back behind the hood and then pulled out to urge them on. The soldiers weren’t taking the bait. Rebecca began to mull through a change in plans when Avraham suddenly cast her a side glance. His hand reached the side of the hood. This was it; they were walking forward.

  “Stay down, Professor,” Rebecca said. It had been two years since she had killed a man, and now the familiar rush of adrenaline pumped through her veins. She keyed the mic. “Here we go.”

  Avraham suddenly jerked the hood down and dove for the back.

  Rebecca’s foot smashed the gas pedal to the floorboards before the hood slammed. A single crack of gunfire rang over the engine’s roar, and the soldier on the right staggered back.

  The second got off one wild shot before Mark’s next shot took him through the shoulder. The force of the bullet spun him to the ground.

  The third soldier wasn’t in sight.

  Avraham managed to roll into the backseat. “The third one! Off the road! Get off!”

  Rebecca understood immediately. The third soldier had pulled back and might still detonate the bomb.

  She yanked the wheel hard, three meters from the pothole. The Land Rover roared onto the desert sand and Rebecca aimed it directly at a red pickup truck, behind which she assumed the third soldier waited.

  The mine detonated then, just as Michael’s truck cleared it. She saw the truck swerve badly in her rearview mirror and she knew it had been hit, but for the moment there was still the third soldier to worry about.

  In a sudden burst of anger, Rebecca very n
early rammed the red pickup. She saw the soldier crouched behind now, staring directly at her. He made no move to shoot or run; his eyes were black with resolution, not fear.

  A small chill of dread ripped up Rebecca’s spine at the sight. This was no common Hamas terrorist glaring at her.

  At the last moment Rebecca jerked the wheel. They roared to the pickup’s left and when they were abreast, she reached out and pumped two slugs into the left rear tire. The soldier had vanished.

  Rebecca shot past the disabled vehicle and bounced back onto the blacktop. The second truck followed, swerving ungainly behind.

  “Go, go!” Zakkai shouted, straining for a view behind. The sound of automatic weapons fire riddled the air, but no bullets struck. And then they were out of range, leaving a cloud of dust in the desert air.

  They stopped three kilometers down the road and changed out a shredded tire. One of the men’s cheeks had been cut by a rock, but the tailgate had caught most of the flying debris.

  Next time they might not be so lucky.

  “Let’s move!” Rebecca urged, shoving the old tire off the road. “Our Hamas friend knows how to change tires too.”

  They filled the trucks and rolled towards the Red Sea, three hours to the south. The day was hot, but Rebecca couldn’t shrug the lingering chill in her bones. Something in the man’s stare stayed with her. She had not seen the last of him.

  Ismael watched the trucks disappear over the horizon, seething. Behind him Mustaf and Jamil held their respective wounds, but he hardly noticed them. An image stuck in his mind—the soldier girl, eyes flashing brown, jaw fixed and smooth as she methodically shot his tire out.

  Rebecca.

  It was the first time he’d looked into her eyes, and with that one look he knew two things with utter clarity, as if Allah had spoken them directly to him. He knew that Rebecca Solomon had indeed killed his brother. And he knew that he would soon kill her. Today she had outwitted him with her clever little stunt. Tomorrow would be different.

  The thought stopped him. She was no idiot; it was possible that her reputation was justified. Ismael spit into the sand. Either way it wouldn’t matter. He had the advantage. He knew her route and he knew her destination.

  He blinked at the horizon. You may be searching for your precious Ark, pretty Rebecca, but you will find something very different.

  Ismael grinned and reached for the spare tire. He knew what he would do now, of course. In fact, he’d almost anticipated the roadblock’s failure. Now that failure only put him on the path he had wanted. Alone this time.

  The path of the true hunter.

  4

  Leiah Marker stood at the kitchen door and watched Caleb in the garden, talking to a child no more than ten years old. The boy was jabbing emphatically westward, towards the leper colony. Caleb knelt on one knee and listened for a few minutes, and then he laughed and rubbed the boy’s curly hair. He took the child in his arms and hugged him, and although Leiah couldn’t hear what Caleb whispered in his ear, it must have been funny because the boy threw his hands to his face and ran off giggling.

  She smiled and stepped down into the rear courtyard. The Debra Damarro stood in the midday sun, an anomaly in the desert highland, vacant and bare except for the odd acacia tree and the stubborn knots of grass that peppered the sandy soil during the dry season. The only way to reach the isolated compound was over a barely navigable road which led to Adwa to the south and to the Red Sea northward. Fifteen years ago Leiah and her husband, Jason, whom she then knew only as the hardheaded Peace Corps worker, had raced down that road with a small orphan boy named Caleb huddled in the back of a Jeep as bullets flew over their heads.

  Now that boy had grown to become a strapping man nearly two meters tall—twenty-five years old with a smile that never failed to brighten her world. He still wore his hair long, nearly to his shoulders, and on occasion a goatee graced his tanned face, but he was clean shaven now.

  Leiah walked towards him and suppressed the impulse to run up and hug him as she had so many days when he was a child. Hug him the way he had hugged the small boy just now skipping off past the three old camels they kept in the corral.

  Caleb faced her, still chuckling. His dark wavy hair framed those impossible pools of green God had seen fit to give him for eyes.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Morning, Caleb. What is so terribly funny that has Musava in stitches?” Caleb shrugged. “One of the little leper girls, Maria, is showing interest in him, but she’s informed him that he isn’t smart enough for her yet. He asked how he could change her mind.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him that he should avoid talking to her and focus instead on appearing wise. Women are generally wiser than men.”

  “And he thought that was funny?”

  “No. He wanted to know what to say if she asked him a question. I told him to raise one eyebrow, say nothing, and go hmmm.”

  Leiah laughed. “This from Casanova himself.” She looked to the west. “I thought you were going to visit the lepers today.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her hair. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  He had said that three days running now.

  “You said that yesterday. What will you do today?”

  He shrugged. “The garden looks like it could use some weeding. God knows we don’t have the water to feed the weeds.”

  Leiah smiled with him, but her heart felt heavy, looking into his face. There was a sadness in his eyes—not the kind many would notice, but one that had softened his face over the last year nonetheless.

  “I’m worried for you, Caleb.”

  He faced away. “Don’t be.”

  Leiah took his arm. “Walk with me.” She led him to the same gate the boy had run through, past the three old camels in their corral, and up the path behind the monastery.

  Caleb walked in silence. He knows it as well as I do, she thought.

  “I’m not saying you are, but it seems to me that you’re changing, Caleb.”

  “It’s called living,” he said. “You can’t walk down life’s path without changing your position on it. Every step changes that.”

  “Save your wit for your father. He sees it as brilliance. I see it as fear.”

  “This coming from the queen of wit.”

  She smiled despite her attempt at sincerity. “And that’s why I know how to characterize it. Please, I’m being serious, Son. You can call it your journey down life’s road if you want—I just want to know where your journey is headed. What has changed?”

  Caleb said nothing.

  They had reached the top of a small knoll overlooking the valley and Leiah turned to face the monastery. The brown mortar blended into the landscape— from a highflying plane it might very well look like one more rock outcropping among a thousand in the arid highlands which fell to the Danakil Desert and then to the Red Sea, 150 kilometers east.

  They had rebuilt the monastery together, after its destruction fifteen years ago. Caleb had been ten then, a simple boy who wore faith like an eagle wears its feathers.

  “Maybe it’s time for a change,” Leiah said. “Maybe you should spread your wings a little. See the world.”

  “I’ve seen the world.”

  “And you changed the world.” She paused. “I just don’t want to hold you back—”

  “We’ve had this discussion. This is my home. And if you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t changed the world much in the last fifteen years. Have you seen a single person healed at my touch since I was ten?”

  “A few.”

  “A few. Yes, three to be exact. The gift God gave me served its purpose— things change.” He shrugged. “Now I’m in Ethiopia doing what I was born to do.”

  She looked at him. Part of her agreed with him—many a monk had lived detached in the desert. But Caleb was no monk. And she couldn’t bear to see him waste away out here in obscurity. The vibrancy that had once characterized him had
been replaced with something that looked more like defeat.

  “And what about your faith, Caleb? Has it changed?”

  His hesitation spoke with more volume than his words. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Lately you’ve been withdrawing from the lepers. You used to go to the colony every day. A healed heart is more spectacular than a straightened hand—those were your words, remember? You had half the world believing in those words. And now you don’t seem as eager to heal hearts as you once were.”

  “The Spirit of God heals hearts, not me.”

  “Yes, and he heals using willing vessels.”

  “I haven’t lost my faith, Mother. No one could see what I’ve seen and lose their faith.”

  “I know you haven’t lost your faith, Caleb. But perhaps you’ve misplaced it.”

  Jason’s Jeep rumbled over the far hill—he was returning from Adwa with supplies. Leiah felt her heart tighten at the sight.

  “Your father’s home.”

  Caleb nodded.

  They watched the Jeep roll down the road and disappear behind the monastery.

  “You’re twenty-five, Caleb. Maybe it’s time you discovered life beyond this valley.” Saying it she felt a small dread rise through her chest. The thought of living in the monastery without Caleb was like trying to imagine life without skin, and she knew about that, didn’t she?

  “You might as well ask me to step into the ocean and drown myself,” he said.

  “And have you ever thought that maybe you’re drowning yourself by staying?” She paused. “I’m not crazy about the thought of you leaving either, believe me. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t see any eligible females walking around, do you? You should be falling in love, not weeding a garden.”

  “And here I was thinking of taking a vow of chastity.”

  She knew he didn’t mean it. “If you must, but you’ll miss one of God’s greatest gifts. Come on, Caleb. You’re no more cut out to live your life alone than I’m cut out to live in a city. I left Canada to find my purpose. All I’m suggesting is that you consider leaving this valley to find your purpose.”