The Caleb Collection Page 59

  “This is why I am really here.” She took a deep breath. “My father, David Ben Solomon, was conceived in Auschwitz in 1942. His mother, Zelda, managed to escape with a German’s help, three weeks before giving birth to my father. But she was so traumatized by the ordeal that she died in childbirth— the Nazis had killed her after all.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Caleb said.

  “Hold your sorrow—I’m not finished. My father was six when the nation of Israel was born in 1948. He was twenty-five and newly married to Hannah, my mother, when Israel was attacked at the onset of the Six-Day War in 1967.

  On the fifth of June Israel bombed Egypt’s air bases in a massive preemptive strike. The battle in Jerusalem lasted three days. Against international pressure Menachem Begin ordered Colonel Mordechai Gur and a brigade of young paratroopers to take the Old City, held by Jordan. My father was one of the paratroopers.”

  Rebecca paused, remembering the story told to her by her father a hundred times.

  “They entered through the Lion’s Gate, on the northeast, with Colonel Gur leading a column of half-tracks that rattled through smoke and fire from Jordanian legionaries camped on the walls. They pushed past a burning bus that blocked the gate, firing in every direction. They screamed down the street, turned through another gate onto a path lined with trees, and into a plaza. An octagonal building with a golden dome stood before them. And the men were off the vehicles and running to it, guns in hand.

  Gur lifted his radio and spoke words which ring through Jerusalem to this day: The Temple Mount is in our hands.”

  Caleb watched her, eyes wide.

  “The Temple Mount was in our hands. My father was in the last Jeep. He jumped off and ran for the Temple Mount, carrying a Torah scroll under one arm and a ram’s horn in his other hand. Soaked with sweat he ran, uncaring of the bullets from Jordanian gunfire. David Ben Solomon was roaring out in song. He was the herald of the Lord, and he arrived on Gur’s heels, blasting the shofar. He dropped to his knees and bowed to the Holy of Holies, where the Dome of the Rock stands now. Then he stood and blasted the shofar again, this time on the radio so that all of Israel could hear.”

  Rebecca tossed a rock into the desert below. “The general had arrived, and soldiers were wandering around in a daze. For the first time in a very long time the site of Solomon’s Temple, to which the Messiah himself would one day return, was in Jewish hands. My father ran up to the general. ‘Uzi,’ he said. ‘Now is the time to put one hundred kilos of dynamite in the mosque and be done with it, once and for all.’ The general laughed and my father insisted. They hauled him from the Temple Mount in handcuffs.”

  Rebecca briefly wondered whether Caleb was even believing all of this. She had lied to him once, and he’d found her out. But this was different. He would hear the sincerity in her voice.

  “The war ended on June 10. Three days later, on Shavuoth, 200,000 Jews gathered at the Mount in a festival of victory. Four days after that, the military of Israel decreed the new status quo. Under Israeli rule, the Temple Mount would remain a Muslim religious site, to be guarded by Muslims. Jews could enter the Mount but they could not pray there—that would be relegated to the new square that the engineers had cleared at the Western Wall. That was over thirty years ago and nothing has changed. In the middle of Judaism’s most holy city lies Judaism’s most holy site, originally built to house the presence of God. Only there is no Temple for our God—there is a Muslim mosque. Isaac’s inheritance has been stolen by Ismael.”

  She faced him. “My father says that if he had blown up the Haram al-Sharif when he was on the Mount, the Messiah would have come in 1967.”

  “I’m so very sorry—”

  “No, I’m not finished. My father made a vow to God the day he was taken from the Temple Mount. He would not rest until Solomon’s Temple was rebuilt. It has become his calling. To many in Israel, David Ben Solomon is a prophet, a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” She stared into his eyes.

  “Now I’ve come into the desert, and I see that we have the wrong prophet calling out.”

  Caleb just looked at her, unsure.

  “You are the one who will prepare his way, Caleb.”

  If her meaning sank in, he didn’t show it.

  “You have in your power the key to Israel’s restoration, as foretold by the prophets. If the Temple is not rebuilt, Israel will fade like this desert—it’s a foregone conclusion. But with the Temple, Israel will return to God and thrive. You, Caleb, have in your hands the power to allow Israel’s destruction or bring about her restoration. And I will ask you again, do you really love the Jew?”

  He stared at her with a blank face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

  “The Ark of the Covenant, Caleb. The Temple was built to house the Ark. If the Ark is returned to Jerusalem, then Israel will be obligated to rebuild that Temple. You alone can lead us to the Ark.”

  There she had said it.

  He blinked once. Then again.

  “Where do the oil and the brine mix, Caleb?” Rebecca asked.

  “You are with the Jews who overtook the monastery!” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You . . . Then my mother and father are safe?”

  “Yes. In fact, they have helped Zakkai dig into your old sleeping place below the monastery. They found a letter from Father Matthew that talks about the place where the oil and the brine mix. We believe the Ark is hidden there.”

  For a long time, Caleb looked into her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Caleb. I know I misled you, but considering the circumstances, I’m sure you can understand.” She told him Raphael Hadane’s story, and that Father Matthew had told his good friend, Father Joseph Hadane, about the Ark. “Israel is on the verge of finding her salvation, and you now hold Israel captive.”

  Caleb finally spoke. “The presence of God is not in an Ark any longer, Rebecca. It’s here in the desert. It’s in the ocean. In his eyes. In the heart.”

  “Yes, well I haven’t seen you knock down the walls of Jericho or defeat armies. The Ark belongs to Israel.”

  Caleb closed his eyes. “I would like to be left alone,” he said.

  “You’re supposed to be my guide,” she said. He didn’t respond. “Okay. Talk to your God and see if he doesn’t urge you to help me. If he’s the God of Abraham and David, I think he will. I will pray that you listen.”

  She left him like that, standing with eyes closed, perhaps staring into the eyes of God. It would be the last time she left him, she thought. She had now committed herself, for better or worse. If he didn’t agree to help her, she would at least make an attempt at force.

  24

  The Republican Guard team made excellent time through the cool hours of the night, covering more than half the distance to the boulders before the sun began to warm the desert.

  Ismael rode in one of the Jeeps, leading the horses at a steady fifteen-kilometer-an-hour clip. The animals wouldn’t be able to maintain the pace in the heat, but with an hour’s rest and a good watering at dawn, they would have the strength to continue through the day. It all came down to water, and they carried two hundred liters of it between the Jeeps and all the horses.

  Now the sun was halfway up the sky, and the captain was sweating profusely. “This heat is as bad as I was told,” he said. “The faster we move the worse it feels. It’s like a blast furnace. God has given Ethiopia a corner of hell.”

  Ismael ignored the comment. They rode for another few minutes in silence.

  “We will come into their camp at dusk, on horses only,” Ismael said.

  “The vehicles are too loud. Tell the tracker to halt us two kilometers before the camp.”

  “Reasonable,” the captain agreed.

  They rode on.

  “Tell him,” Ismael said.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Now.”

  “Now? He’s behind us, with the horses.”

  “You don�
�t know how to walk? Get out.”

  Captain Asid hesitated for a moment and then stepped out onto the sand. The Jeep rolled on, a steady five kilometers per hour now. Ismael closed his eyes and let his mind wander to the killing ahead. They had the firepower to wipe out a small army. Whatever lay before would soon be dead. If they were lucky, they would find both Caleb and Rebecca. And if not, they would level the monastery anyway. The thought made the heat bearable.

  Caleb missed the midday meal, and Rebecca began to worry. She might not have so much experience handling a man without a knife or gun in hand, but she could’ve sworn that she had moved him this time.

  Elijah had informed her that the camp would leave for a watering hole in the morning. One way or another she would take Caleb with her tonight— she couldn’t afford to travel further from the monastery.

  She waited another hour, expecting him to walk into camp at any moment. But the desert lay still and hot. No sign of life, much less Caleb. If he had come to his senses, he would have done it by now.

  Rebecca grunted and walked for the boulders. Maybe he had fallen and hurt himself, or lost himself in the square kilometer or so of rock, though the latter seemed unlikely. Then again, with Caleb, nothing was really that unlikely. She decided to return to the spot where she’d discovered him this morning. From there she would follow his tracks—with some luck he hadn’t run a marathon out here.

  Rebecca entered the small sandy enclave overlooking the camp and pulled up, startled. Caleb stood with his back to her, on the rock’s edge, in nearly the same position she’d left him. He even had his arms spread, as if he were trying to calm this desert he called an ocean.

  She pressed into the rock on her right and watched him. A light breeze pushed his cotton robe around his ankles. His wavy hair curled at his shoulders; from behind he reminded Rebecca of a picture she’d once seen of the prophet Elijah being fed by ravens.

  She saw that he held a stone in his right hand.

  “Have you ever ridden a bicycle, Rebecca?”

  His voice seemed lower than she remembered.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked, stepping out.

  “Do you remember the first time you rode a bicycle?” he asked, still facing away.

  She had no intention of following him on one of his crazy lines of thinking. “What are you doing out here, Caleb? I’ve been waiting. The camp is moving in the morning.”

  He turned around. He looked different, again. Not as though he had actually changed, but different, in the subtle lines around his smile and in the color of his skin. And in his eyes. Everything seemed brighter—his cheeks redder and his eyes greener.

  But it was more than the color. Caleb was staring at her and she was feeling her heart pound without understanding exactly why.

  “I am learning to ride my bike,” he said.

  “I . . . I’m not sure I understand.”

  “It’s something Father Hadane told me, and I’m beginning to comprehend. When you learn to ride a bike, you don’t just learn that you ought to ride it; you actually attempt to ride it and then you do ride it. Belief works the same way. I am learning to believe; I am riding my bike.”

  He said it with a delightful awe—you’d think he had just mastered the secret to atomic power. And the way he was looking at her, with such compassion, eyes swimming in an innocence she could not grasp, Rebecca wasn’t sure he hadn’t.

  It was her turn to speak, she knew that, but the words weren’t bubbling out. She spoke anyway, and it sounded stupid.

  “What is the stone for?”

  “My bicycle,” he said. “I was attempting to float it.”

  She swallowed.

  Caleb shrugged and dropped the stone to the sand. “Not really. I don’t think this bicycle has wheels.” He grinned. “Even if it did have wheels, there’s no place for it to go. I think a bicycle has to have a place to go, don’t you?”

  “Makes sense.” Actually it didn’t. She broke eye contact and walked towards the edge. “Did you talk to Hadane today?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I haven’t had the time yet.”

  No, you’re too busy staring into the eyes of God and floating rocks to concern yourself with saving Israel. She wondered if that constituted a fall from grace. She had tested him and he had failed. Hadane would never buy it.

  “Have you thought about our conversation?”

  “The Ark. Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I would like to go with you, back to the monastery.”

  She spun to him. “You would?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think I’m finished here. And I really don’t think I can help you find the Ark. If it is in the Debra Damarro, Father Matthew would have told me.”

  “He did! In the letter.”

  “No. My father often referred to the human heart as the Ark of God, Rebecca. The Spirit of God dwells in the heart, not in a golden Ark. That is the answer to your riddle. The oil and the brine mix in the heart. The oil is the presence of God and the brine is sin. I’m very sorry, but you’re mistaken about the Ark.”

  Rebecca felt her face drain as his words sunk in. The heart! What if he was right? But no, there was other evidence. Too much corroborating evidence. “What about Raphael Hadane’s story? He said that Father Matthew told of the Ark.”

  Caleb smiled politely. “Again, the heart. In Father Matthew’s mind, I was the Ark. He was the Ark. But I can understand him using the term in speaking about me. I was very special to him, and I was hidden in the monastery, wasn’t I? In the letter you found, he’s reminding me. Father Matthew was very creative.”

  Rebecca felt her heart sink, but she refused to dismiss Zakkai’s evaluation outright. There had to be more to the blind priest’s story than imaginary hearts.

  “I could be mistaken, of course.” Caleb must have seen her disappointment. He crossed his arms and stared out to the west. “Either way, the Ark isn’t what you think it is. If you will wait another week with me, I will take you back to the monastery.”

  “A week? Your parents are back there!”

  “And they are safe. You may want the Ark, but you’re not a killer, Rebecca. I was meant to be here and I don’t think I’m ready to leave yet.”

  “You have no idea what I am! Not a killer? If you knew, you might not be sitting around with rocks in your hands.”

  He looked at her without a shred of concern, still smiling softly. “How could someone who tried to kiss me yesterday try to kill me today?”

  Rebecca suddenly wanted to slap him. “Uhh!” She gritted her teeth. “You’re clueless!”

  He arched a brow. “Am I?”

  “I don’t know what kind of woman you think I am, but I’m not her,” she said. “I’m fighting for my life! For my country’s life—not some relic you think of as a simple golden box. Just because our beliefs differ doesn’t mean you don’t have an obligation to respect mine. How dare you claim to possess the presence of God’s power while dismissing the true resting place of his power!”

  “I only believe—”

  “I don’t care what you believe!” she interrupted. “I don’t see any stones floating, and I sure don’t see any bicycles wheeling around. You’re living in a fantasy world, and it’s time you joined the real one. Whether you like it or not, the Ark is in that monastery, and you’re going to help us find it.”

  She spun and walked away.

  It was time to retrieve her guns.

  25

  Ismael gazed through his binoculars at the large outcropping of boulders the tracker called Manessa. They had made good time through the day’s heat, thanks to the water they carried. Now the sun sat on the horizon behind him like a large orange, spreading fingers of red across the western sky in a brilliant sunset.

  The white tents at the base of the rocks were unmistakable.

  “They’re here!” he said. His heart pounded steadily and a tremor took to his hands. “The camp is here.” He lowered his glasses and snatched
up his AK-47.

  “Nothing lives. Do you hear me? We kill every animal and every man and every child—everything! And every tent burns. We go in hard and smother them before they know what’s hit them.”

  “Yes, sir.” The captain was already checking his weapon.

  “Horses only. Leave the tracker with the Jeeps. Weapons on automatic.”

  Ismael stepped into the stirrup, mounted his horse, and yanked the bit tight in its mouth. It was a fresh mount, and he didn’t have time for the black stallion to question his authority. The horse’s eyes spread wide and it backed up, snorting. The others mounted. They were two kilometers from the camp.

  Eleven horses now stood abreast—the ten Republican Guard and Ismael. He nudged his horse and they trotted forward, maintaining their file. Whatever else these men were, they were excellent horsemen. Ismael had no doubt they would shoot as well as they rode. His father had sent the best.

  The plan to take Caleb by force wasn’t really a plan at all. The tribe didn’t have a defensive bone in their bodies. She would just take him and head due west, with or without the tribe’s help. Eventually they would run into territory that Caleb recognized. Rebecca was only waiting for the sun to remove its heat.

  She made her way around the rocks and climbed to the perch where she’d hidden her weapons and gear. She pulled out a leather saddle pack and flipped the flap up. Thirty seconds later she was dressed in the khakis, the Glock loaded and holstered. She gripped the rifle, hoisted the bag over her shoulder, and turned to leave. An orange sun glowed on the horizon. In twenty minutes it would be dark, and she would be riding her camel west with Caleb in tow.

  She glanced at the camp below. The monks loitered about, at peace with the ending of yet one more day. A nuclear bomb could go off in London or New York or Tel Aviv and these people might never even hear about it. In some ways she coveted the simple lives they led. In other ways she pitied . . .

  Something caught the corner of her eye and she turned slowly to the desert. What she saw stopped her heart. A line was moving towards them, black against the shimmering heat rising through the sunset, like a row of ants.