The Caleb Collection Read online

  “Then ask Hadane to speak to me himself.”

  “He will speak to you, my friend.”

  Caleb turned to face the monk. “When?”

  “He will speak to you when you are ready to listen.”

  17

  Rebecca crouched in the rock formation and peered down at the monks’ camp through her binoculars.

  The sun had already dipped into the western sky when she first saw their camp. She’d circled around the large field of boulders, secured her camel at the base of a small rock mountain, and climbed up to her position an hour ago. Judging by the shadows, it would be dark in about three hours. She had already decided to wait for nightfall to make her move. But she hadn’t decided what that move would be.

  The tents were little more than squared canvas drapes, simple and effective in this environment. They were white, like most everything in the camp. The only exceptions were a few large blankets that they gathered on at the tents’ entrances.

  Rebecca slowly scanned the camp for the hundredth time. A light breeze moved the tent walls like sails. Children romped at the base of the rocks, sixty meters from where she hid in her perch. Most of the people had retreated to the shade of their tents. But the two she was interested in sat by the southernmost tent, cross-legged, talking.

  She knew that the man was Caleb—his tunic was different from the others’ and his feet were bandaged. What he could possibly have to say to the pretty young woman, Rebecca had no clue. She’d have thought he would be making a fuss about the monastery, not loitering in the afternoon heat, talking with a woman.

  The woman was in her twenties, Rebecca guessed, with long dark hair, not unlike her own. Her skin was darker, a deep tan, and her eyes were brown, like her skin. She laughed and engaged Caleb without a care, it seemed.

  She’d never seen Caleb before now, and what she saw was nothing like she had expected. Somehow this man sitting on the desert did not meet her image of someone who’d hidden from the world in an Ethiopian monastery, serving lepers. For starters, he wasn’t Ethiopian. In fact, his skin was lighter than the woman’s. His hair was dark and hung nearly to his shoulders, which were square and strong.

  But it was his eyes that had arrested her attention. Even from where she sat, eighty meters away, their green hue shone in her magnified lenses like twin emeralds.

  Know thine enemy. It was the first rule of engagement. And what exactly was the purpose of her engagement here? It was to gather information from this man named Caleb. He knew the location of the Ark, and it was her objective to get that information from him.

  Rebecca thought about that as she studied him, listening intently to the woman. The woman’s a desert wanderer, Caleb. What does she have that interests you so?

  There would be two ways to take information from the man. The first was by force. The second was to try to coax it from him. The two alternatives seesawed in her mind, and the longer she looked at him the less clarity she felt about which course would be best.

  Forcing information from a man who was not eager to give it could be an unpleasant task. She could only assume that he wasn’t ready to spill his guts, or he wouldn’t have crossed this inferno to escape her. And any man who had the fortitude to walk as Caleb had walked, bleeding from his feet, was a man of unusual character. Even if she was willing to threaten him for the information, she doubted he would respond to threats. For that matter, she wasn’t sure she could effectively threaten any man, much less this one with green eyes. Perhaps her heart was growing soft.

  From the start, she and Michael had agreed that once they caught up to Caleb, they would simply force him back to the monastery and deal with him there. But now the game had changed. She could take Caleb by gunpoint, but without a radio or a GPS, heading into the desert might be the end of both of them. She needed assistance, and she doubted the monks would be eager to help in a kidnapping.

  She watched Caleb stand and walk in a circle, as if deep in thought. His lips moved and he brought a hand to his chin. What was he saying?

  Rebecca watched the woman for a few moments—she was using her hands to explain something as she talked. Caleb was asking questions. But not the animated questions she would have expected. He seemed more introspective. If he’d come for help, he had a strange way of asking. If he’d come to escape, he had come to the wrong place. This desert was a hell, not the local sheriff ’s office.

  A bead of sweat trickled past Rebecca’s ear and down her cheek. The sun was taking its time, crawling down the sky. Regardless of what she did, she would do it in the dark.

  The second alternative, coaxing the information from Caleb, had its challenges as well. It might take time. She didn’t have time.

  She looked at his face in the setting sun. Are you the kind of man who can be coaxed, Caleb? Or is your skin too thick?

  He suddenly spread his arms wide and turned in a circle, with his chin lifted to the sky, as if crying out. Rebecca blinked at the sight. She could hear the soft murmur of his voice on the breeze, and it wasn’t a cry.

  Caleb sank to his knees and gripped his hands to fists. His face wrinkled in a kind of remorse. For several long seconds he remained in the posture, hands flung wide. And then he bowed to the earth, slumped to one side, and rolled onto his back.

  It occurred to Rebecca that she had stopped breathing. She could feel the man’s desperation through her glasses. What a strange thing to do.

  The woman touched his forehead, as if taking his temperature. She stood and walked away nonchalantly, leaving Caleb spread on his back. He lay unmoving, eyes closed. They were a roving band of lunatics down there.

  After a few minutes, Caleb pushed himself to his seat and sat, staring out at the endless white flats in a stupor. She could still see his eyes, green and unblinking, lost in deep thought.

  What secrets are you hiding, dear Caleb? Hmm? Would you open your heart to me?

  The notion of engaging this man suddenly struck her as appealing. He was a man; she was a woman. A gun wasn’t the only weapon in her arsenal. She would see what this strange man was made of. In the end, if she failed to lure the key from him, she could always resort to some form of force.

  Rebecca turned away and leaned back against the rock. As soon as the sun went down she would wander into the camp, a lost soul in desperate need of water. They would take her in because they were monks, and then she would find Caleb.

  “You may call me Delilah,” Rebecca whispered.

  18

  They sat in a sitting room off Prime Minister Simon Ben Gurion’s office, three men from the Israeli government. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He, Solomon, was the good for obvious reasons—he stood for God and God was good. Stephen Goldstein was clearly the bad—not only did he head up the Labor Party, which was for the most part bad in Solomon’s book, but he wasn’t even sure there was a God. And Ben Gurion was the ugly because, in spite of his belief in God, he lacked the political backbone to build God a house.

  Ben Gurion reminded Solomon of Benjamin Netanyahu with his short cropped head of gray and sharp nose. The consummate politician who hardly knew how not to smile. Goldstein, on the other hand, made it to the top of his party without a pretty face. He wore a scraggly goatee, a mustache, and narrow glasses that rendered his eyes as slits. He looked like a goat.

  “Don’t be absurd, Solomon,” Goldstein said. “We live in the twenty-first century, not in the pages of the Bible. Our nationality drives us, not some antiquated religion. We have children to educate and cities to build and two thousand years of lost time to make up. And 70 percent of Israelis agree with me.”

  “Of course,” Solomon returned. “With thousands of atheists who call themselves Jews flooding in from the Orient, you should have no problem getting your percentages. But that doesn’t make you right. There’s a call to righteousness hidden in every Jewish heart, even yours, my friend. That call holds us together.”

  “Our nationality holds us together.”

  “Our nation
ality? Walk the streets of Tel Aviv and tell me what brought these people together. You have a black man from Ethiopia, a yellow man from China, and a white woman from Poland, and you cannot say that they came to this narrow strip of land to eat dinner together. They don’t even eat the same food. No, they came because they are Jews, and Jews are Jews because of Judaism. That is what unites us.”

  Goldstein nodded but not in agreement. “We’re all entitled to our own beliefs, Solomon. And to your good fortune there are just barely enough Israelis who agree with you to give you a seat in the Knesset. But it’s only one seat. You should remember that.”

  “And there is only one God,” Solomon said. “That doesn’t make him wrong either.”

  The prime minister sipped at a glass of red wine and let them go.

  “Please, don’t throw God in my face,” Goldstein said. “Not even his spokesmen, the rabbis, share your conviction of rebuilding the Temple.”

  “The rabbis?” Solomon demanded with a forced chuckle. “The same rabbis who urged millions of Polish Jews to stay in Poland rather than cause a disturbance by leaving? How many Jews died because of what the rabbis said then? The subtext of history is agony, my friend.” He paused to still his heart rate. “My mother was one of those Jews. She too died. Now our well-intentioned rabbis urge us not to build God’s house because of the disturbance it will cause among our neighbors. It’s God’s prophets we should follow, not the rabbis. And God’s prophets tell us to build the Temple.”

  The outburst effectively shut the old goat up. Unfortunately, he probably hadn’t heard a word—his ears had been plugged with the quest for power before he’d learned to talk.

  Ben Gurion cleared his throat. “I sympathize with you, David—”

  “I don’t want your sympathy, Simon,” Solomon interrupted.

  “What is your point?” the prime minister asked sternly. They were all accustomed to this heated banter, but even politicians had their limit.

  Solomon stood and walked to the picture window overlooking Jerusalem. He’d considered a dozen approaches and none of them felt like they would land softly. His point was to make these two face the music, but he couldn’t start full blast—he had to ease the volume up slowly. His exchange with Goldstein had been a little too loud.

  “My point, gentlemen, is that one day our hand, your hand, may be forced.” He turned and faced them. “Not by political winds, but by much more powerful ones.”

  Goldstein silently eyed Solomon over his thin spectacles.

  “Speak plain English, David,” the prime minister said. “We know that you’re talking about religious zeal, so just say that.”

  “Not religious zeal. The zeal of God. There is a difference in magnitude.”

  “I’ve heard this a hundred times,” Goldstein said, sighing. “If you two gentlemen don’t mind, I have a meeting I have to get to.” He started to stand.

  “If a million Jews were to surround Jerusalem, demanding that we rebuild Solomon’s Temple, what do you suppose would happen?” Solomon asked.

  The Labor Party leader hesitated. “Then I suppose we would have to rebuild the Temple. And five hundred thousand of those million might die.” He shrugged.

  The prime minister was not so dismissive. “You’re saying something, David. But I don’t think we’re hearing you.”

  “Is there any scenario that comes to mind that would motivate a million or ten million Jews to demand the Temple’s rebuilding?” Solomon asked.

  Goldstein sat back, evidently interested enough to linger for a while. “You’re planning another Temple building rally and you expect Jerusalem to turn out with more than the usual contingent of Red Heifer nuts to deal a decisive blow—”

  “Surely this isn’t about the Ark of the Covenant,” Ben Gurion said with an incredulous smile. Solomon suspected he said it as much to cut Goldstein off as to ask a meaningful question.

  Silence settled over them.

  The prime minister eyed Solomon carefully. “You’re not planning to make a claim that you can’t back up.”

  Solomon did not answer.

  “What do you mean?” Goldstein asked.

  “It’s been suggested before,” the prime minister said without removing his eyes from Solomon’s. “Think of it, a respected leader claims to have discovered the Ark of the Covenant. The Jews begin to demand a Temple, the Arabs go ballistic, and battle lines are drawn before anyone can discover that the gold box is really a fake.”

  Goldstein glared at Solomon.

  “At least you know your people,” Solomon said. “Something we can’t say about our friend here.”

  “Now you’re talking about a fable,” Goldstein said. “Not Judaism. I never said that a fable could not destroy a nation.”

  “Destroy? Or unite?”

  “Please don’t play with words, David,” Ben Gurion said. “What is your point?”

  “My point is that you’d better fuel your F-14s, gentlemen. The Ark is not a fable.”

  “Please, we have been down this road a dozen times. Over 90 percent of the country believes the Temple Mount is more than just another piece of real estate—they aren’t saying it’s a fable—”

  “You’re not hearing me. The Ark is not a fable.”

  “What, you’ve found it, Solomon?” Goldstein said with a small smile.

  “I didn’t say that. But let’s assume for the moment that I have. Would you support the rebuilding of the Temple?”

  Any good graces that Ben Gurion had harbored up to this point seemed to fade from his face. He knew that this kind of rhetoric could do more damage than good—he’d made the point clear on several occasions.

  “Okay, David. I understand your passion, but you’re—”

  “You asked me to make my point. Please answer my question.”

  The prime minister and Goldstein exchanged glances. “Would I support the rebuilding of the Temple if you really did have the original Ark of the Covenant?” Ben Gurion asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I would take the Ark away and drop it in the sea.”

  “And defile God? The people would crucify you.”

  Ben Gurion closed his eyes and stretched his neck. “I’ve answered your question; make your point.”

  “So I take it you wouldn’t—”

  “Frankly, I don’t know what I would do. It’s a hypothetical question I’ve never given a lot of thought to. Make your point.”

  Solomon looked at Goldstein. “And you?”

  “The discovery of the Ark would destroy Israel, surely you know that. Deep down where romantic notions don’t have the air to breathe. We’re surrounded by enemies, and at the moment the Temple Mount flies their flag, not ours. Burning it would bring World War III. Don’t be absurd.”

  “So I take it that if I were to unveil the Ark on national television for all of Israel to see, you would approach the dwelling place of God with a flamethrower and reduce it to a lump of gold? Then I won’t count on the support of the Labor Party. The Likud Party will see this differently.”

  “I didn’t say I would burn it.”

  “Oh? Then what would you do?”

  The fact was, they couldn’t possibly know what they would do. It was akin to being asked what you would do if you knew an atomic bomb would fall on your house in ten minutes. The options were silly.

  The prime minister spoke quietly. “Why are you asking this, David?”

  He dropped his own bomb then. “Because I may have found it.”

  They stared at him in stunned silence.

  Ben Gurion raised an eyebrow. “May have?”

  “Yes. And I need you to begin thinking about how to handle this to Israel’s ultimate advantage. I will demand that the Temple be rebuilt, and I know without the slightest doubt that the people will enthusiastically agree. The rest is up to you.”

  Goldstein came out of his shock. “That’s absurd! You’ll kill us all!”

  “We’re already dead! I am bringing us back to life!�
�� Solomon thundered. “You may live as a Jew or die in your defiance to God!”

  “What do you mean, may have?” Ben Gurion demanded, ignoring the eruption. “Where?”

  “I mean that I have evidence that is staggering and I have some people on the ground. They have found some things.”

  “Where?”

  He paused. “In Egypt.” It was a justified lie, considering the circumstances. “But you will never find us. If you don’t cooperate, I swear the first you’ll see of the Ark will be on national television.”

  Goldstein was red. “I will see my own family slaughtered before I cooperate with you. If you bring the Ark to Jerusalem, Israel will be forced into war, regardless of who cooperates with you. You know that!”

  Solomon had hoped for a more reasonable audience, one he could begin to plot with. But he knew now that reason wasn’t on the agenda. He would need to let them stew.

  “Then, as I said, I suggest you begin to fuel your F-14s, gentlemen.”

  Solomon turned abruptly and walked for the door. “And sending the Shin Bet after me would be a very bad idea.” He left them staring.

  Ismael hunched under the towering rock and keyed in the numbers over the satellite phone, for the fifth time that day.

  Noon had come and gone and Abu had not been available. The heat was like an oven despite the shade of the rocks, and flies buzzed around the camel’s carcass, six meters off. He had cut strips of flesh from the beast and laid them on the rocks to roast. The raw meat was too warm and wet for his tastes, and it was already starting to rot.

  The line hissed in response. “Abu.”

  Ismael sat to his haunches, relieved. “I’ve been calling all day. What happened?”

  “Some things take time. If you would have handled this right from the start, we wouldn’t be here. But that’s immaterial. I’ve made the arrangements.”

  “Good. I’m in a hellhole down here. If you hadn’t answered, I might have decided to walk out on my own.”