Marlen: Book 2

Chapter 2

It was the darkest of all hours in the Libyan desert. The last of the stars had gone, the first gray light of dawn yet to ooze over the horizon.

The blackness pressed down, thick and icy cold, over Nadine's head. The Bedouin called this the time of the dead, when the spirits still spread their nighttime fears before returning to their tombs beneath the sand. She knew the desert intimately, the way she had once known her mother, the way Raza knew her.

She sensed his presence. He would be standing alone, coiled and tense, like a desert leopard come to point, his head, which seemed carved from granite, tilted slightly forward to listen better, his coal-black eyes half closed to see what no one else could. His energy radiated through the darkness, a tangible thing, like his animal magnetism, and the way he could rouse a crowd by simply standing before them. This power was the nearest to the supernatural she had experienced. Raza was now using it create fear in the recruits.

He had silently counted them as they ran into position and dressed off --- ten rows of forty, none older than twenty, some not yet fourteen. The latest pick of the refugee camps of Lebanon. Some had already killed; all had shown they were anxious to do so.

He had promised them that in the training camp they would learn ways to kill they had never imagined. But no matter whether it was with a wire garrote, steel blade, booby trap, bomb, or gun, they must do so with total discipline. And that meant making no movement at all while on parade.

In the week since they had arrived, the recruits had stood for hours at attention. Those who moved were punished by being made to force-march in the noon heat with backpacks filled with sand. Those who collapsed were dragged to their feet and ordered to continue. Those who fell again were beaten mercilessly. Last night, Raza had told them the time for soft punishment was over. The recruits had gone to their barracks filled with unspoken unease. Now, he waited for the first infraction. A boot moving on the scree, a hand changing position on a Kalashnikov, a mouth suppressing a shiver. He would hear the slightest sound. Waiting, he enjoyed the fear he created, the power of his will over theirs.

Raza glaced sideways, where Nadine was standing. She was tall for a Palestinian and her thick, tawny hair would be tucked beneath a forage cap and her body hidden by fatigues. Her face, pale and as finely sculpted as a Pharoah's princess, would be staring fixedly ahead. Though he could not see her, he was certain of this because he had told her that was how she must stand on parade. Nadine still obeyed him in all matters.

Her sister, Shema, had once done the same. Because of that, he'd chosen her to take his most secret orders to cell leaders all over Europe. He'd dressed Shema for the part and ordered her to stay in the best hotels and always to fly first class. And she'd carried off to perfection the rôle of the culture-loving daughter of an Arab millionaire. In the museums and art galleries of Europe, she'd passed on his instructions.

Then the girl had forgotten who she really was, turning up her nose at the spartan rations all Feydeheen ate when back at base, and complaining about having to stand guard duty and performing other chores. Because Shema was so good at her job, he'd contented himself with warning her that such behavior would not be tolerated. Then, when she displayed an arrogance toward him he'd shown her show others, he punished her the way he did any other woman under his control. He'd given Shema to one of his aides for the night. The man, a coal-black Sudanese, was feared for his brutality and sexual excesses.

Next morning, Shema came to him begging forgiveness. He had stared at her, cold and silent. After a while, he told her, as she stood before him like a penitent, that she would have one more chance.

The truth was he had no one else to deliver new orders for a bombing campaign in Germany. He told Shema to fly directly from Cairo to Munich. Instead, she'd taken a flight to Frankfurt. When his fury over her disregard for his orders abated, he remembered Shema had a desert dweller's fascination with fertile countryside and, whenever possible, liked to travel by train.

What she had not expected was for one of Nidal's men to kill Israel's cultural attaché in Bonn an hour before her flight landed. Waiting for the train to Munich, she had been caught in the German dragnet. Their computers quickly discovered her real identity. She had been charged and convicted of complicity in a crime in which she had had no part. The Germans sentenced her to fifty years in prison. She had forty-eight more to serve.

When Raza told Nadine what had happened, she'd been stricken. He'd shrugged and said a true revolutionary accepted such punishment. For a moment, he thought he'd seen hatred in her huge almond eyes. But whatever was there had quickly passed.

Raza had then left on another of his trips. Before then, he had put Shema in charge of the camp's clinic. There was little to do, as the Feydeheen were extremely fit. She spent her time reading books from the villa's well-stocked library of revolutionary tracts.

She had been there one evening, browsing, when she turned and found Raza towering behind her. He smiled and asked if she'd found anything to interest her, touching her arm as he did so. No man had ever touched her like that, so deliberately, so lingeringly, so sensuously. She had stood there, not knowing what to do. Still smiling, he had moved closer, stroking her arm and then her neck. She'd closed her eyes, feeling her breathing quicken. Then without a word, he laid her on the floor, his weight on her so that she felt crushed. And, as he entered her, she had said to herself she wanted this because somehow it could help to free Shema. But she had also clung to him for herself. When finished, he had rolled to one side on the cool tiles and looked at her. Then, very softly, he said she was now his woman.

Since then, he had made love to her in ways she never imagined. At first, she felt she was being torn apart as he filled her. Then the pain passed and she experienced a feeling of mission, that if she satisfied Raza, he could be persuaded to use his power to free Shema.

When his chief bombmaker had been arrested in Paris, Raza had promptly taken three diplomats from the French Embassy in Beirut. While Paris had gone on hesitating, Raza sent a finger from one of the hostages. Next day, the bombmaker was back. Yet, whenver Nadine asked if he could free Shema, Raza would only shrug.

Nadine planned to ask him again once this fearful tension was satisfied. While it remained in his body, he was like a man possessed.

His energy was so great Nadine felt as if it was touching her body. And, despite herself, she became aroused. Apart from the boy in Beirut who had raped her when she was twelve, Raza was the only man she had known.

The knowledge that Nadine was still his added excitement to Raza's tension as he continued to scan the rows of recruits. He had told them that only the snakes, lizards, and scorpions could escape his authority here.

The darkness was lifting. It was not yet quite light, but it was enough for Raza to spot the recruit change grip on his rifle. He was in the back row and must have thought he was safe. Feet barely touching the scree, Raza burst through the ranks, scattering recruits. He frog-marched the youth to the front and threw him to the ground.

"Reform ranks!" Raza ordered.

The recruits quickly scrambled to their feet.

Nadine saw the sky was turning gray, the color of slate. The youth was on all fours, like an animal, his head moving from side to side, as if desperately seeking a way to escape or for someone to save him. Hundreds of pairs of eyes stared fixedly ahead. A heavy, expectant silence hung over everything.

Raza hauled the youth to his feet, holding him by the scruff of his collar until his feet were almost off the sand. The recruit squirmed, half-choked by the grip. Raza turned slowly, so that everyone could see the abject terror on the youth's face.

He can't be more than sixteen, thought Nadine. She glimpsed something in Raza's eyes and, despite herself, shivered.

"Look at him! All of you, look at him!" Raza commanded. He gripped the boy's face with one hand, wrenching it round to study it for a moment, then removed his fingers as if he had touched something dirty. He looked out over the stilled, watchful ranks. "What is the first rule of this parade ground?"

"Nobody moves unless ordered!" came the low, fearful response.

"And why?"

"To make us disciplined!" The voices grew in strength and certainty.

"And why?"

"To defeat our enemies!" Hundreds of voices roared.

"And who are our enemies?" Raza's voice seethed with pent-up hatred.

"The Zionists! And all those who support them!" The thunderous response echoed around the parade ground.

Nadine saw the terror deepen on the youth's face. His lips moved, but no words came out.

"What do we do with our enemies?" Raza could feel his skin starting to crawl and itch with fury.

"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!" bellowed the voices.

Raza felt the tension and excitement was almost unbearable. He had to steel himself to remain absolutely still as the repeated, insistent bellowing broke over him. The recruit hung limp in his grasp.

Letting him fall to the ground, Raza raised his hand, palm open. The silence was immediate and total. He touched the recruit with the tip of his combat boot, his eyes raking the ranks. "A man who moves when he has been ordered not to is more dangerous than our enemies because we trust that man with our lives." Raza's expression was savage. "A man who betrays that trust, betrays us all!"

He gave the recruit another small kick. "Speak!"

"Yes, Comrade Commander! All you say is right. But I only wished to hold my rifle better for you. Words tumbled from the boy.

Raza kicked again. The youth was at once silent.

Don't beg, pleaded Nadine silently. Whatever you do, don't beg.

"Please, Comrade Commander," the boy pleaded. "It will never happen again. I promise on my life. I will never disobey any rule again. I will be the best Feydeheen you have. I beg you, believe me."

Raza stepped back. He slipped the Uzi off his shoulder, reached down, pressed the snub-nosed barrel against the boy's head, and squeezed the trigger. He continued to empty the magazine long after the head had ceased to resemble any human form.

The sun rose as Raza finished. He turned to face the glow that came surging from the east, spreading across endless miles of sand and stone, all the time climbing swiftly into the sky.

These several miles of arid sand dunes and treacherous gullies were his testing ground. Here, he had trained others in his image. Thousands had passed through the concealed barrack huts on the far side of the parade ground. Tons of Semtex had come and gone from a bunker, buried under the sand so that only its heavy steel doors showed. On any given day, he kept sufficient explosives there to destroy a small city or all the aircraft in the world. His bombmakers had served him well. But soon, their skills would be obsolete because of what had been created in the bunker nearest to the villa. There, the Anthrax-B-C had been made ready.

The knowledge filled him with excitement stronger than anything sexual. It was such a wonderful feeling that once he had savored it again, he pushed it back into his subconscious, to nurture and strengthen it for the day when he could indulge himself without restraint. The prospect made him feel a little crazed. Only the killing had kept it under control.

Raza turned and deliberately stood over the body. He riveted the recruits by his very silence. When he began to speak, he pitched his voice to reach the furthest ear, no further. "Your enemies are many and strong. Some were your brothers and sisters. But they have been seduced by promises of money and an easier life. Even by soft drinks and hamburgers, and cheap radios to listen to their lies and filth, and videos to watch it."

He stepped over the body and began to pace. The mullahs had said the message must be simple because jihad itself was simple. A holy war was to the death. That was the way to glorious martyrdom. He hadn't believed them. But he had paid lip service. With their money, he could achieve goals even he had thought impossible.

"Our enemies want to destroy your values. To dilute your faith. To keep you their prisoner. To make Islam weak."

Personalize it, Ayatollah Muzwaz had said. Make each one feel personally threatened; each one feel this is his fight. Raza had smiled politely. He knew as much about mind control and motive as any mullah. About group psychology, and about imbuing with ideology, and promoting that all-or-nothing attitude that permits no half-measures, no gray areas.

"You must fight our enemies as never before! You must show them no compassion, because they show you none! Destroy them before they destroy you! You must be prepared to kill in the name of justice! And you must be prepared to die!"

Raza looked into the faces, glaring this warning at them. The sun was burning off the night odors of the desert, leaving the air as purified as Allah intended.

He continued to address the recruits. "Every one of you here has one thing in common. You are victims. Of the Zionists. Of the infidels who support them. Every one of you has a right, a sacred duty, to defend his family, his home, his land, from the tyrant."

Nadine heard the familiar surge of fury from the recruits. Raza had told her, in the quiet dark hours, when their lovemaking had left her exhausted, that arousing rage was very necessary. An angry man did not think --- only did what was ordered.

Raza pointed at the landscape. A moment ago, it had been faint and gray. Now, it was alive with a rainbow of warming, vivid colors. Nadine knew every trick in his repertoire. Yet, no matter how many times he displayed them, she was enthralled by his charisma.

"Allah gave us the sun to warm us," Raza was saying now, "and to keep our faith hot and alive even in the coldness of the night."

"Allah be praised," came the low, unified response.

He saw their eyes were bright and their faces suffused with blood.

"Allah gave us food. But our enemies deny it to us. They took our lands and drove out our people. They have installed their own puppets to rule in all those countries where they plunder our oil. When we protest, they send their ships and bombers to threaten us, their soldiers to protect the Zionists! Now, Allah has said this must stop! That you will stop it in his name!"

Another chorus praising Allah came from the recruits. Raza's words were like an aphrodisiac, promising them paradise beyond the harshness of their present surroundings.

Once more, as Nadine knew he would, Raza turned away, to stare across the wilderness, which stretched to the horizon. He drew his kaffiyeh, his checkered headdress, about his face. He reminded her of a prophet communing directly with Allah. Belief, he had told her, is all. Not the soft-centered faith of the mosques, but the hard, unyielding creed he had fashioned, in which killing was an expression of freedom, another step toward justice. And so well had he convinced her that already she was coming to accept that the slaughter of the youth had indeed been necessary.

Raza turned back, his face calm and certain. He allowed his kaffiyeh to fall from his face. The headdress was his only concession to desert convention. While everyone else wore fatigues, he was dressed in a black polo-neck cotton sweater and black trousers tucked into his combat boots.

"Remember this day well," Raza cried, "for this is the day before judgment. Tomorrow, our enemies will feel our power. Tomorrow, they will know our fire, our justice. Our revenge for all they have done. And tomorrow will only by the beginning!"

Raza turned and looked directly at Nadine. She nodded, staring into his eyes. Tomorrow, something would happen. This was no longer dizzy rhetoric, but reality.

The Long-Ranger helicopter known as Chernow's Chariot flew so low over the desert that it left a swirl of dust in its wake.

Jacob Chernow hoped that at this height, Jordanian and Iraqi radar scanners would dismiss the Long-Ranger as another herd of camels racing from one strip of grazing to another.

The chopper was coated with radar-reflecting paint, and its heavy armaments replaced with extra fuel tanks for the long journey into the northern vastness of Iraq. The Long-Ranger's only protection were the Eagles and Tornadoes. Chernow had glimpsed their contrails as they rode six miles above. But the escort would turn back when the Long-Ranger reached the Dead Mountains. There was no way for them to protect Chernow's Chariot from then on.

Chernow continued to stare out of the cabin window, ignoring the professional crosstalk from the flight deck in his headset. The two pilots had barely spoken to the two passengers since lifting off from their base north of Tel Aviv. The city had been blanketed in a gray haze. People said it was caused by a mix of car exhaust and sea ozone. He knew better. The noxious cloud was a combination of wasted breath expended on the Bitburgs of the world.

Chernow wasn't a Zionist, God knows. He hadn't found his own truth by destroying other people's, or by clinging to blind faith. Those four years at Cambridge had shown him there was something more important than that: they had taught him the meaning of real freedom. And that included the right to live and let live.

He could have gone over Bitburg's head directly to the Prime Minister. Doing so would risk plunging Mossad once more into factions. Bitburg had his supporters --- that legion who only returned calls when they had ensured they were covered by a memo --- and they would fight to protect one of their own.

But Bitburg was right when he'd said Israel's relations with the West were at a nadir. Despite all that happened in the Gulf, the West clung to the belief it was possible to coexist with militant Islam.

When George Bush and John Major had been in office, they'd at least listened. But an Arabist now sat in Downing Street and, in the White House, other Arabists dominated the present incumbent's strategy and policy. In the meantime, Israel shouldn't rock the boat. The caveat was that Mossad should keep its hands off the alarm button.

Those times when there'd been no alternative but to press it, his peers in the West had asked for evidence. They'd done so before Lockerbie, before Kuwait, before all the other outrages he'd warned would happen. Afterward, they'd said of course they would have acted --- if there'd been proof. Every intelligence service had its Bitburg.

Chernow had little doubt what would happen if the West was warned about Raza. There'd be a flurry of meetings. Somebody would be deputized to go to the Chinese. The Chinese would deny they ever made the stuff. They denied everything as a matter of policy. There'd be a final meeting. Recommendation: action must wait for certainty. The Bitburg solution.

Taking his eyes off the desert landscape, he glanced across the cabin at the only other passenger in the craft. The girl was looking out the window on her side at scenery very much like on his side.

He had reluctantly agreed to let her accompany him to this meeting, not quite sure how The Syrian would react to Chernow bringing along another person. But she had managed to convince Chernow that this was as much her concern as it was his. And he was the one who had brought her into this in the first place.

The Syrian was one of the Arab world's key intelligence officers, privy to priceless secrets. Jacob Chernow had gone to a back room in West Beirut and recruited him. It was an intelligence coup unequalled since Kim Philby had spied for the Russians. The Syrian wanted nothing for his information except a chance to play his part in bringing a lasting and just peace to the Middle East, in which Jew and Arab would live in harmony.

Forty minutes after entering Iraqi airspace, the Long-Ranger passed over the first foothills. Beyond, running the width of the horizon, reared the granite of the Dead Mountains, their jagged peaks rising one above the other without symmetry or beauty, as if God had started to form them and then moved on to create something more worthwhile. The mountains were dark and forbidding in the hot afternoon sun.

"Our air cover's heading for home," came the pilot's voice in Chernow's ears.

He stood up and poked his head into the flight deck. On the radar, the last of the blips were peeling off. In moments, the screen was empty.

"They'll be back for us in a couple of hours," promised Chernow into his microphone. There was always a feeling of anxiety at a time like this, knowing help was no longer a minute's flying time away.

"Let's hope the weather holds," said the copilot, peering at his radar. "There's a disturbance a couple of hundred miles ahead. Looks like the makings of a helluva storm."

Chernow craned his head. The sky was clear, but its intense blue was being steadily distilled into white, in places streaked with yellow. Somewhere beyond the mountains, the wind had become sufficiently strong to have funneled up huge swathes of sand and spread them across the heavens.

"The mountains could deflect it coming our way," said the pilot.

"Hope so," said the copilot. "I once got caught in a whirler in the Sinai..."

"Any sign of the gorge?" cut in Chernow brusquely. This wasn't the time for horror stories.

The copilot turned back to the map on his knee.

Beyond the gorge, The Syrian would be waiting. He never chose the same place twice. But the arrangements were always the same. The Syrian placed a classified ad containing a verse of poetry in the Egyptian daily, Al-Ahram, The verse that brought Chernow and his guest to the Dead Mountains referred to the suffering of the people.

This inhospitable area of waterless gullies and deep fissures had witnessed its share. The first King of Babylon had gone mad here. The Philistines, Phoenicians, and Romans had all seen their armies founder in this parched, burning land. Driven from their Promised Land, Chernow's own people had wandered here, dying in their thousands from thirst and starvation. And centuries later, the Crusaders had failed to hold this no-man's land against the lifeless, yet implacable stone.

The Syrian had chosen one of their forts as the meeting point. It lay on the far side of the mountain range.

As they drew closer, Chernow saw that the solid dark red of the granite was broken by gorges and defiles, dark, uninviting openings running back into the mountains.

"You're looking for a gully that leads up from a scree slope, maybe five hundred feet from ground level," Chernow reminded the crew.

The mountains had begun to cast long shadows, making it more difficult to spot the opening.

Chernow repeated the instructions The Syrian had given. The pilot checked them against the ones he had earlier fed into the navigational system. The Long-Ranger changed course and began to traverse the rock face.

"There," Chernow called out. "On your left."

The Long-Ranger crabbed toward the spill of boulders and sand. The mountains were close enough to block out the sky.

"That's it," confirmed the pilot.

Ahead was a break in the rock face that began at the bottom of the scree. The opening was less than a hundred feet wide. The clearance for the Long-Ranger would be tight.

Chernow gestured for the girl to return to her seat. She refused with a quick but emphatic shake of her head, grabbing hold of a strut as the copter lurched. Chernow also grabbed a strut as the Long-Ranger entered the gorge. The rotors began to create air currents, which swirled from one side of the defile to the other. The pilot throttled back.

"Switching to sensors," said the copilot.

From now on, the helicopter would depend on the two black boxes fixed on either side of the fuselage to stay clear of the tall cliffs.

It was gloomy in the gorge. Chernow sensed the tension in both men as they listened to the constant pinging of the echo returning from the rock, and watched the digital computer read off the clearance. Often, it was no more than thirty feet as the gorge narrowed and twisted its way through the mountains. With each turn, the light grew dimmer, the feeling of claustrophobia and imprisonment greater.

"We need the lights," said the copilot.

"No lights," replied Chernow. An Iraqi air patrol would spot them from miles away.

The engine's reverberation dislodged loose rocks and shale. On either side of the Long-Ranger, small avalanches slid down the gorge.

One medium-sized rock hitting the rotors and it will be all over, thought Chernow. He'd deliberately left no map reference back in Tel Aviv; a search party would not know where to begin.

"We're out of the gorge!" yelled the pilot. Ahead, the granite rose unbroken and perpendicular.

"Take her down," ordered Chernow. "The tunnel should be below us."

When he'd briefed them on this part of the flight, they'd looked at him, not quite believing. It was there again in the pilot's voice. "We don't know how long this tunnel is, how wide it is, and whether it's obstruction-free, correct?"

"Correct," answered Chernow steadily.

"That's what I thought you said." The pilot shook his head as the Long-Ranger began to descend.

"I heard you flew one of these at street level in and out of West Beirut. This'll be a piece of cake," encouraged Chernow.

"And I've heard about you, Colonel. Talk anybody into anything!"

"For sure."

The Long-Ranger continued to drop.

"Three hundred feet ground clearance," reported the copilot.

"Plenty of room," insisted Chernow. He'd detected the nervousness in the copilot. The kid couldn't be much more than twenty. When he'd been that age, Chernow remembered, he'd led a platoon into the Golan Heights. That had been scary. He reached forward and tapped the kid's shoulder. "Just watch your instruments and you'll be fine."

"Yes, sir," said the copilot.

Chernow felt dwarfed by the immensity of the rock on all sides. The girl must have felt it too, for she moved closer to him.

"Two-fifty." The nervousness in the copilot's voice was more pronounced.

"Steady, son," said Chernow softly into his lip mike. "You're doing fine."

A living mass suddenly rose in front of the Long-Ranger. The copilot jerked his head back. There was a sharp intake of breath from the girl behind him.

"Just bats," said Chernow reassuringly. The Syrian hadn't mentioned bats.

"Hope so, Colonel," said the pilot quietly. "We're down to twenty feet clearance on either side."

"That's still plenty," said Chernow.

"Two hundred feet," whispered the copilot.

"There! Straight ahead!" said Chernow. They had reached the mouth of the tunnel. "Ease us close, then take a quick peek with your lights."

The pilot edged the Long-Ranger to the opening in the rock and switched on the powerful headlights. "Almighty shit! What the hell do we have..."

"Just more bats," said Chernow tightly.

The ratlike creatures clung to the roof and walls of the tunnel. Their hairless young were deposited on the floor, creating a writhing, heaving carpet of blind flesh. Great piles of droppings were dotted everywhere.

The helicopter began to fill with an almost overpowering stench. The crew's faces were turning sickly green in the instrument glow.

"We can't go in there!" croaked the copilot.

"Sure you can, son," said Chernow firmly. "It looks worse than it is."

The disturbed bats were swooping and diving at the Long-Ranger. One crashed against the windscreen. A dark red splodge ran down the glass.

"Turn the wipers on," ordered the pilot.

Thousands of creatures hurled themselves against the Long-Ranger. The air filled with continuous, unearthly screaming. The windscreen was streaming with blood.

"They're moving back!" reported the girl.

The bats indeed were retreating, carrying their young with them. The glare of their eyes was like millions of tiny glowing coals.

"Move in!" ordered Chernow.

The copilot looked tortured. "Please, sir..."

"Shut up, son. Just do your job." Chernow had not come this far to turn back now.

"I'll need to keep on the lights..." began the pilot.

"For sure."

The Long-Ranger entered the tunnel.

"Oh my God!" groaned the pilot.

Chernow felt his skin creep. The feeling had nothing to do with the girl suddenly moving up close to him, one arm coming around his waist.

Millions of bat skulls and carcasses were deposited on every ledge, nook, and cranny. The floor was a thick carpet of crumbling bones, which were moving.

"Tarantulas!" screamed the copilot. "The whole place is swarming with them!"

"They can't hurt you!" said Chernow hoarsely.

Drawn to the surface by the lights, the bloated, black-bodied spiders stood in serried ranks. Long jointed legs clicked against each other and mandibles probed the air. They began to devour pieces of bat flesh that fell from the helicopter.

The bats launched a new attack and were minced by the rotors.

"The crud's blocking our sensors, sir!"

"Increasing pitch to clear them," said the pilot. The Long-Ranger moved faster. The pinging resumed.

"You're doing fine," yelled Chernow.

The bats continued to crash against the Long-Ranger.

"Cut the lights!" ordered Chernow. "That'll reduce their panic. Just keep the beacon on!"

Only the revolving red glow of the navigation light filled the tunnel. The nightmarish screaming continued.

"Five feet portside," cried out the copilot.

"Easy, son. We're almost there."

The Long-Ranger lurched and dropped a few feet.

"The rotors must be clogging!" screamed the copilot.

"I'm going to give her more pitch!" said the pilot.

The helicopter began to move faster, still constantly buffeted by the bats.

"Look!" yelled the girl, pointing beyond the windscreen. Ahead, brighter and steadier than the myriads of eyes all around them, was a pinprick of light.

"Go!" yelled Chernow.

With a surge of power, the Long-Ranger forced its way through the bats and emerged from the tunnel.

"You want to curse me, curse me," said Chernow quietly.

The pilots looked at each other and said nothing.

In silence they flew another quarter of a mile down the gorge before it opened out on a rubble-strewn plain that stretched to the horizon. The Crusaders' fort stood at its edge.

The pilot let the Long-Ranger hover. "There's no way we're going back that way."

Chernow nodded. "We'll go back over the top. The Iraqis won't be expecting us to come from this direction. We'll be gone long before they realize we're not one of them."

He reached for binoculars in a rack behind the copilot and studied the fort. Constructed from stone hewn from the mountains, it blended into the landscape. "Let's take a look," Chernow said, handing the binoculars to the girl and reaching for another one for himself.

She looked through them as the Long-Ranger began slowly to circle the fort, flying at rampart level. The roofs had long gone, but the walls remained immensely solid-looking. Its eastern parapets rose from the edge of an abyss. The crack looked as if it had been made when the earth had cooled, and was too wide for a horse to jump. The only access into the fort was a causeway, narrow enough for just one horse at a time to cross. Behind, the mountains provided a natural defensive barrier. Before gunpowder, the fort would have been virtually impregnable. Even now, one man with a rifle could keep anyone from crossing the causeway for as long as his ammunition held out.

"That storm's really brewing," reported the copilot, turning from the radar scope. "Less than a hundred miles out and tracking this way."

"You'll be snug before it hits," Chernow promised.

"Where do you want me to put this thing down?" asked the pilot when the Long-Ranger had completed its circling.

Chernow pointed to the rear of the fort. "There."

Cut into the rock was a bower large enough to shelter a 747.

As they passed over the fort, Chernow saw a camel tethered in one of the lower courtyards. Otherwise, there was no sign of life.

The pilot drifted the Long-Ranger across the ground and in under the overhang. The bower's walls disappeared up into the mountain. When the rotors stopped, the silence was overpowering.

Chernow looked at his watch. "We'll need an hour." He turned and picked up his Uzi, slid open the cabin door and dropped to the ground. The girl followed him, seemingly unarmed, though he knew she had a Walther PPK somewhere inside her combat fatigues.

The smell almost made them vomit. The Long-Ranger looked as if had flown through an abattoir. Pieces of skin and gristle were stuck everywhere. Only the protective mesh had kept the engines from seizing. The underside of the helicopter was coated a grayish-white in which were fixed thousands of dead tarantulas.

Chernow walked to the front of the Long-Ranger. The pilots hadn't moved, sitting slumped in their seats. Yet he couldn't let them relax. They would need to keep their adrenaline flowing for the return trip. "You better start cleaning up," he called out, walking out of the cave.

The girl hurried to catch up with him, moving stiffly, with no sign of her usual grace.

Across the black limestone scree, the wall of the fort rose steep and unbroken, each stone worn smooth with wind and sun.

Chernow glanced at the sky. The sickly pallor was deepening as more sand was being sucked up. There, the wind would already be howling. But here, only the faintest breeze stirred the air.

They reached the fort. There was no sign of life; no face at the opening higher up the wall, from where the Crusaders had drawn up their ladders and rained down arrows and spears on attackers. The Syrian would have heard the helicopter. But he'd only show himself when he was certain it had brought Chernow. Chernow briefly wondered whether The Syrian would show himself this time, now that Chernow was not alone.

Tyreen followed Chernow along the wall. It was as tall as Herod's Western Wall on Temple Mount in Jerusalem and constructed the same way: each massive block fitted together without a need for mortar. She had heard it was a construction technique as old as Israel.

Above, the sky was turning the color of burnt custard. She looked back toward the Long-Ranger. An outcrop of scree blocked her view.

"Hello," Chernow shouted in Arabic.

There was no reply. He placed his mouth close to a crack in the stones and called again. The echo of his voice reverberated through the inner wall of the fort, then faded. The oppressive silence returned.

They turned a corner and came to an opening. There was fresh camel dung near the breach in the wall. He stepped through the gap into a courtyard, and she followed.

The flagstones were each several feet square. The floor sloped upward toward an arched opening. This must have been a storeroom of some sort.

He led the way through the archway. Beyond was another flag-floored room, open to the sky. The air, which had been preternaturally still, was now stirring sufficiently to send an eddy of sand swirling across the flagstones. Above the ramparts, out across the plain, the sky was black and ugly.

The camel was in a third storeroom, tethered at its forelocks.

Chernow called again in Arabic. There was no reply. The camel moved uneasily and exposed its teeth to the girl as she followed Chernow to another arched opening. Beyond was a narrow passageway.

She almost didn't see the desert cobra. It was the color of the stone and was coiled at the edge of a black rectangular hole in the floor. It reared with the speed of an express elevator, rising to the height of her chest and swaying forward. Its tongue was flickering and a faint hiss, like steam being released, came from its throat.

Her right arm shot out even faster then the cobra, even faster than a striking mongoose. The knife-edge of her hand struck the snake's body just below the bottom of the hood. Still twitching, the cobra fell into the hole. She listened to its body scraping against the side of the cistern. Then came a distant splash as the snake reached the water level of one of the deep natural wells that had supplied the fort.

They continued to climb and reached a walkway. Steps led to the crenellated top of the fort. At regular intervals there were narrow openings for bowmen.

Ahead was a doorway larger and more imposing than the others. It was the entrance to a narthex, the lobby where the Crusaders had left their weapons before going into the chancel proper.

They walked quickly through the vestibule, barely pausing to look at the carvings in the stone, which had survived a thousand years and more. There were lions and angels and palm trees and robed figures with hands crossed on chest or entwined in prayer. And everywhere Christ --- Christ at Gethsemane, Christ at Calvary, Christ risen.

Beyond, just inside the nave, stood The Syrian. He wore the flowing robes of a desert prince. A burnoose rested squarely on his head, the white cloth draped around his face.

"Hello, Chernow. Glad you and your British friend could make it."

The Syrian's voice was surprisingly soft for such a large man. Not even the folds of his robe could conceal the massive muscular frame. As a student, he had boxed middleweight for Yale. In the intervening years, his English had remained almost accent free.

Gesturing for the girl to join him, Chernow did the introductions. Neither the girl nor Chernow asked how The Syrian had known that she was British. One did not ask The Syrian how he got his information.

Tyreen Mackenzie walked forward to stand beside Chernow. "You choose the most unexpected places to meet."

The Syrian smiled at her. "No one would look for a Jew or a Moslem here."

"Except a snake," said Tyreen. She told The Syrian about the cobra.

The Syrian produced from inside his robe a curved-handled knife. "I prefer this." He put the knife back inside the robe.

Tyreen followed Chernow into the nave. The remains of the roof littered the marble floor. The niches for the incense burners were thick with sand. Only the plinth of the altar remained. Above it was a tall narrow window opening, flanked on either side by wall carvings of Christ and the Madonna, and Christ on the Cross.

Tyreen suddenly felt an intruder in this atmosphere of cold piety. The Syrian had said that no one would look for a Jew or a Moslem here. But they were of this world. Despite having been conceived, born, and spending her entire life here, she was still an Arion.

"You parked your helicopter well," said The Syrian, bringing her thoughts back to the here and now. "The shua will be here shortly." He used the Bedouin slang word for a sandstorm.

Chernow nodded. Beyond the narrow window, the sky was spotted a dark red, like wine, on the unbroken blanket of cloud.

"Come," said The Syrian. "This is the best place to shelter." He walked back into the narthex and squatted with his back between a Christ figure and a pair of lions rampant. He produced a cigar from the folds of his robe and busied himself lighting it.

Chernow sat beside him, waiting. Some things could not be hurried. Tyreen sat beside him.

It was almost dark where they sat. A gust of wind made the cigar glow intensely and tiny flakes of leaf whirled off.

Chernow laughed softly. "You're wasting a good cigar. You'll not manage to smoke half before the shua."

There was another gust, a pulling Tyreen's long hair out from under her cap and whipping it around her face. The Syrian's cigar flared again, fanned by the wind.

"I know," sighed the Syrian, drawing deeply. He studied the girl's efforts to recapture her blowing hair as he exhaled. "The news is very bad. Raza has the Anthrax-B-C."

A gust hit the ramparts and bounced off into the gloom.

"Where is Raza?" asked Chernow.

The Syrian drew deeply again. "No one knows except Ayatollah Muzwaz. And he is not saying."

"When and where will Raza use the anthrax?"

"The Syrian gently shook his head. "It is not as simple as that, Chernow."

"So tell me."

The Syrian took another puff and closed his eyes for a moment. Another gust of wind, like a sheet being snapped taut, hit the fort. He opened his eyes. "The mullahs are divided among themselves over this matter. There are those who say Raza must use the weapon at once. That it would be a fitting way to launch a jihad. Others say that after his failures in Berlin and London, he must prove himself. They say the weapon is too precious to risk mistakes."

A longer gust filled the air with its low, insistent moaning. The first swirl of sand, which had been carried hundreds of miles, stung their faces.

"The cabal is like the shua," continued The Syrian. "It is very powerful. It has invested much in Raza. It expects much in return."

"Where and how will Raza provide this proof?"

The Syrian sighed and removed the cigar from his mouth. Glowing ash was swirling around his head. He stubbed out the remaining two-thirds of the cigar on the ground. "Raza will not say. Only that he will provide it soon."

"How soon?"

"No one knows."

The wind had started to howl, piercing, intermittent shrieks that screamed against the fort. With them came a steady drumming sound.

"It comes!" shouted the Syrian, huddling closer to Chernow. Setting down the Uzi and throwing a leg over it, Chernow put his arm around the girl and pulled her closer.

The air was filling with sand, grit, and stones. A full-fledged shua could carry small boulders.

"How long after he has proven himself before he uses the anthrax?" Chernow yelled in The Syrian's ear.

"No more then seven days," yelled back The Syrian. "The moderates in the cabal say a week is a reasonable time for the world to meet all their demands,"

The drumming was glowing louder. The sky had gone, leaving only a stifling pitch-blackness. The Syrian wedged himself in a corner, pulling Chernow and the girl with him.

"Are they asking for anything new?" yelled Chernow.

"They've added pornography. They want a worldwide ban on it. Every type. Even the soft stuff."

"A lot of people would support them on that."

The Syrian pulled the edge of his burnoose around his face. "That's what they're counting on. They've decided to wrap up their more extreme demands, such as getting rid of Israel and having full control over the oil fields and mineral deposits in the Sahara and the Empty Quarter, with things that appear almost moderate. For instance, they want a worldwide ban on drugs. And they want punishment to be under sharia law."

Chernow shook his head. "No one's going to agree to public beheadings in Times Square, or hands being severed under Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower."

"Then the diehards in the cabal will say there is no alternative, to make the world a better place, than to cleanse it with the purity of a jihad. They're convincing more and more of their people that their traditional values and faith are being destroyed. The mullahs say the West's materialism and erosion of moral values is all part of a plot to force those standards on the Arab world. To weaken the Arabs, like the Africans and Asians have been weakened."

"There's a lot of wrong in the West," said Chernow. "But people can still pick and choose. The mullahs want to enforce their standards at the point of a sword! They're crazy!" He turned his face into The Syrian's shoulder, pulling the tail of the burnoose across his nose and mouth, and clenching his eyes.

"Tens of millions don't think so! They're just waiting for the fuse to be lit. And they'll be like this shua, unstoppable."

The grit tore at every exposed inch of their skin. It was like being flayed alive.

"If we can stop Raza..." began Chernow.

Then further conversation was impossible as the full fury of the sandstorm burst against the fort with the impact of an artillery barrage. Great funnels of wind, near-solid with debris, drove through the narthex, burst against the walls of the nave, and then exploded upward to re-form and attack once more.

A flash seared Chernow's eyeballs, followed by a thunderous boom overhead. Another bolt of lightning zigged and zagged, momentarily giving the swirling debris a purplish hue. Another great roll of thunder echoed and re-echoed through the fort. They continued to be lashed in a sustained fury that blocked out the whole world. Each purplish flash of discharged electricity was followed by a boom as if the fort had been hit by a monstrous artillery shell.

The three of them clung to each other as the maelstrom tried to pull them apart, as if to pick them up and hurl them from its path. It tore at their clothes and skin.

Then, suddenly, the wind dropped as the eye of the storm arrived. The eerie silence was broken by a new sound: the half-scream, half-below of an animal in fear.

"My camel!" shouted The Syrian. Before the others could move, The Syrian was out of the narthex, running along the walkway and was gone.

Then the fury of the storm returned. Its violence seemed even greater. No matter which way they turned, the driving particles found them, lashing them, trying to choke them, wanting to kill them somehow for daring to come here. They huddled together, pushing their faces hard against the wall, so that they were against the feet of a crucified Christ. In the dying minutes of the shua, Chernow fell asleep in that position, numbed by the sound of the wind and the thunder.

When he awoke, he was still in the girl's arms, his head pillowed on her shoulder. It wasn't the first time he'd woken up to find himself in her arms.

The other time had been after that blast at the Jerusalem hospital that had taken his wife and son. After they'd found Ruth and David beneath several tons of rubble in a recovery room, she'd taken him home. He remembered sitting with her on the couch as they shared their grief. He'd woken up to find her beside him on the bed, his eyes raw and dry.

Feeling him stir, she loosened her arms and allowed him to sit up straight and look around. The night sky was filled with stars; a million sharp points of brilliance against a velvet blackness.

He struggled to get his legs out of the sand that half-buried them. His mouth felt dry and swollen. Putting a finger to his lips, he touched the sand-covered blisters.

She stood up and then helped him up. He felt tired, almost beyond endurance. When he called out in Arabic for The Syrian, his voice sounded hoarse and he could hear the raw anxiety.

The girl simply took off her cap and shook her head, sand cascading out of her hair.

He called again, and again, there was no reply.

Crawling about on his knees, he found the Uzi, buried under the sand. He picked it up and checked the mechanism. It worked.

The starlight was good enough to guide them down through the fort. From time to time, one of them continued to call for The Syrian. There still was no answer.

She found him first, in the passageway where she had killed the snake. In the renewed force of the storm, The Syrian had fallen into the cistern. His neck had been broken and twisted so that the head was facing back. The Syrian stared wide-eyed and sightless, a look of surprise on his face. His jaw resting on the edge of the hole was all that kept his body from falling into the cistern.

Coming in response to her hail, Chernow kneeled and gripped the head with both hands. Reaching over him, she gripped the back of the burnoose and gently lifted The Syrian. Chernow's eyes caught and held hers.

Then he gave a minute nod. She let go. The body disappeared from sight, bouncing against the sides of the well before hitting the water with a splash not much louder than the snake had made.

When they reached the storeroom, Chernow untethered the camel, led it down out of the fort, then released it. Almost certainly, a passing Bedouin drover would find the beast and ask no questions why Allah had been so generous.

They saw the pilots standing in the mouth of the bower. Behind them, the Long-Ranger stood intact. Chernow called softly in Hebrew if everything was all right. The pilot replied that it was.

Chernow and the girl were silent the entire journey home.

Lila continued to photograph the people gathered for the barbecue. The whole of Trekfontein seemed to have come to the sports field at the foot of the turreted gray rocks that rose out of the veldt. The field was encircled with Jeeps, vans, and cars that had drive the half-mile from the town across the sandy earth of the plain.

From this distance, Trekfontein looked like any other township in the Transvaal: white-walled buildings, many thatched to keep them cool in the scorching summers, and all with deep, shaded verandahs and bright rooms. Rising above them was the imposing Dutch Reformed Church. Even from here, its shimmering white colonnades suggested a certainty and determination that found a ready echo in the guttural Afrikaaner voices all around Lila.

They were gathered to celebrate another year of totally successful resistance to the changes that had elsewhere swept through South Africa. Apartheid was all but dead --- except in Trekfontein. Here they continued to practice a more sophisticated form by ensuring even the most menial job was done by a white. No black was employed within the city limits. No black had reason to step over those limits and enter the last great bastion of racism in the Union.

Trekfontein's name had spread across the world --- and come to Raza's attention. He had told Lila that the township would provide a perfect illustration of the creed that governed both their lives: that destruction is the only creative act, and violence is man re-creating himself; that each enemy killed ensures that a free man emerges to propagate the revolution.

Beneath the banners proclaiming Trekfontein to be "The Heart of the Nation" and "White and Proud," women in summer frocks held parasols against the hot African sun. Many of the younger men wore the veldt garb of shirts and shorts. The children were often dressed in Voortrekker costume of bonnets and long skirts for the girls and stiffly starched shirts and shorts for the boys.

People smiled and waved to Lila as she moved among them. In the rwo days she had been in Trekfontein, she had become a familiar figure to most of its five thousand inhabitants, photographing them at work and now at play.

They had welcomed her into their shops and homes, their hospital and church. And when she had asked, they had proudly pointed out Trekfontein's two landmarks: the gray rocks, which rose like a scaled-down replica of Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town; and the reservoir, which provided Trekfontein with some of the purest water she had ever tasted.

Lila had visited both location and quickly eliminated the rocks. The prevailing wind was from the wrong direction. She had thus concentrated on the reservoir.

"See any wildebeest out there?" called out a grizzled old man in straw boater and high-buttoning suit.

"Not yet."

"You keep looking, girlie," he chuckled.

She smiled and walked on. The old fool thought she didn't know there wasn't an animal worth photographing within a hundred miles. She probably knew more about the habits of the wildlife in the area than he did. Raza had made sure she'd read everything. That was his way, and she admired him for it. But she'd played along with the old man; she'd play along with them all. That was an essential part of the job.

She had gone again to the reservoir at dawn to photograph the sunrise. Then when she was satisfied no one was looking, she had conducted another test to check the speed of the water flow.

As before, she had chosen a piece of driftwood. To this, she tied another of the miniature bottles of liqueur she'd taken from the mini-bar in her in her room at the ridiculously named Trekfontein Grand Hotel. Once more, it had taken four hours for the bottle to reach the reservoir sluice gate. She had watched the bottle break against the metal gate, amd saw, for a moment, the brandy spilling over the weir and on into the pump room, which filtered the water before it was piped to Trekfontein three miles away. Several tests had produced the same results.

Lila was satisfied that when the time ame, the perfume bottle in her camera bag would take the same time to reach the sluice. From there, it would take another couple of hours before the Anthrax-B-C entered thepipe to Trekfontein.

Six hours. Jan Smuts International Airport in Johannesburg was a three-hour drive across the veldt. Two hours to clear departures. She could still be in Nairobi before the first deaths. And in Athens before the last.

A police officer in khaki shirt and shorts stopped in front of her. "You photograph us good now," he said in thick accent. "You show the world we don't care what they think."

She waved a hand, keeping her eye to the viewfinder. "Put your hand on your gun, Captain."

He placed his hand on the holstered sidearm on the polished leather Sam Browne belt. "I've never had to draw this gun once," continued the policeman. "You know why? Because we don't have a Kaffir problem. No blacks --- no crime. It's as simple as that." He dropped his eyes to her breasts and then returned to her face. "A woman is safe here. Anywhere else, she runs the risk of some black pawing her at a dance or a movie. The more freedom they get, the more they want. But you try telling Mr. Mandela that."

"I'll remember that," said Lila, reloading her camera.

The police captain touched the peak of his hat and moved on.

Lila moved on toward the barbecue pits on the far side of the field. She paused to photograph a group of teenage boys, all wearing tee shirts emblazoned with the legend "Work to Remain White."

"Your magazine like Kaffirs?" asked a youth. She recognized him as the waiter who served her at the hotel.

She smiled. "Time's nonpolitical."

He squinted at her. "That sounds liberal to me." The others laughed

A tall girl, with long limbs and sun-gilded blonde hair, pointed at Lila's camera bag. "I'll carry that for you. Cost you no more than you'd pay for a black boy in Johannesburg."

The rest of the group laughed uproariously.

"I don't think the magazine would let me claim for a bag girl," Lila said politely. When the time came, it would be a pleasure to destroy these racist pigs. She hefted the bag and continued across the field. To reassure herself, she felt inside again. The bottle of Grecian Nights was still there.

A short, stocky, middle-aged man blocked her progress. He was dressed in a lightweight summer suit, an old-fashioned wide tie, and a straw boater. Beside him was his wife, in a pastel dress, a picture hat, and white cotton gloves. "Hello, young lady. Getting all you want?" boomed the man.

"Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor."

Trekfontein's first citizen beamed proudly. "It's a great honor to have Time here."

"It was your willingness to stand up for what you believe in which attracted my editor."

The woman peered from beneath her hat. When she spoke, her voice was soft and gentle. "But you won't go away and write nasty things about us? Attacking us just because we don't want to hand over our lovely town to a bunch of savages?"

Lila somehow found a neutral smile. "But it is the last bastion of 'whites only'."

The mayor nodded vigorously. "And we're very proud of that. No matter what the politicians in Cape Town say about canceling sensible legislation on race and color, Trekfontein will remain as it has always been."

"Look around you, young lady," said the mayor's wife, waving an arm. "No one here feels uncomfortable being white. If God had meant for us all to have one color of skin, He would have arranged it. Instead, He made us black and white, and, just like night and day, He meant us to separate. That's all we ask --- a separation."

The mayor gave another emphatic nod. "We don't want to fight them. We just don't want them here, in our town, on our land, alongside our people."

The mayor's wife peered at Lila, suddenly anxious. "Do you think the world will understand us?"

Lila managed to smile. "Your husband has explained the position quite clearly."

The mayor's wife nodded, reassured. "But foreigners always distort what he says, call him a Kaffir-basher. He's never hit a blackie in his life!" She stared at Lila through watery eyes. "Let me ask a question: do you think America a better place after what Martin Luther King did?"

"I'm only a photographer, ma'am," smiled Lila. She had long discovered that smiling was only way she could suppress her hatred.

The mayor took his wife by the arm and delivered a homily Lila had heard many times since arriving in Trekfontein. "Young lady, God chose this place for us. He guided the wagons of our forefathers here, protecting them from the Zulu spears and the Matabele hatchets. A century later, He is still protecting us. That is why everything we do is for God. If He did not approve of what we do, He would show his displeasure."

"The way He did to the Israelites," added the mayor's wife.

"It's all in the Bible," explained her husband. "If you live the way God wants, you will be blessed. If you don't, you will be cursed by whatever passes for brimstone and fire and the plague today."

Lila nodded pleasantly. "I'll remember that, Mr. Mayor."

She continued toward the barbecue pits. Raza had been right. These people were sanctimonious monsters. Half the world would cheer their deaths. The other half wouldn't care. The people of Trekfontein were the perfect expendables: high profle and unsympathetic.

Children were running between the sizzling barbecue grills filled with prime steaks and other meats. Nearby, tables were covered with salads of all kinds. Barrels of beer and vats of lemonade stood on blocks. Lila calculated there was enough food to feed a refugee camp for a week. And already the scraps had filled several tubs.

She began to photograph them.

"We have the best-fed pigs in the Union."

Lila turned to face the Most Reverend Moderator of Trekfontein's church. He stared at her with pale blue eyes. She guessed he was no more than thirty, but his full red beard made him look older.

"Why do you photograph that?" He had a soft, cultivated voice.

"It's all part of life."

He stepped closer. She could smell the aftershave on his skin.

"You are not American?"

"Naturalized American. Like a lot of Americans," she replied carefully.

"Naturalized from where?"

"Greece."

"And how long have you worked for Time?"

Lila smiled and stepped back. "Would you mind just standing there? It's a great shot." Behind the Moderator, a group of girls were munching burgers.

Lila busied herself, switching from one camera to another. Why had he asked that question? she asked herself.

"You've taken enough photos to fill a whole issue," said the Moderator.

"I took a thousand of the Japanese Emperor's Coronation. They used one. That's Time."

Once more, he stepped closer. "I know. I have a cousin who works in the bureau in Cape Town."

Lila felt her breath was quick and shallow. She managed to fight down the panic. "I'll be going down there to process some test shots. I'll say hello for you."

"I already tried to call him. He's on assignment in Lusaka. But no one in the bureau seems to know about you being sent here."

Lila forced herself to remain calm. "I was assigned out of London. A last-minute thing. Someone had the brilliant idea of following up on the Mandela visit."

Two months ago, Nelson and Winnie Mandela had come to Trekfontein to challenge its policy. They had found the town completely locked and shuttered. Not a shop had opened. Every curtain in every house had remained drawn until the country's Black First Couple had driven away, defeated by the eerie silence.

"We showed the Mandelas they are not the only ones who can protest passively. Like them, we've also studied Mahatma Gandhi," said the pastor softly. "Time, of course, attacked us."

She broadened her smile. "I had no idea you had a cousin on the staff."

He touched her arm. "Actually, I don't like him. He's one of those pinko, born-again Christians."

Lila nodded, exhaling slowly. "We've got too many of those. I like people with faith like your mayor's."

He touched her arm again, smiling this time. "I'm glad to hear that. We can do with all the friends we can get."

The Moderator turned and strolled away. Lila swore under her breath. The sooner Raza called, the better.

Jacob Chernow drove his car out of Tel Aviv. Before leaving, he had alerted every Mossad station that Raza was poised to attack. He'd sent copies to Israel's internal security service, and the commanders of all border units. He'd prepared the country as far as he could.

Apart from Danny Nagier, Chernow had told no one about the death of The Syrian. There would be no memo for Bitburg to pick over.

Tyreen Mackenzie had sent her own messages to her superiors at MI6 in London. Whether any action would be taken as a result of them remained to be seen.

The city limits gave way to the first of the Bedouin encampments. Black tents, black implacable faces, their voices lost in the roar of the traffic.

At this hour, the road to Jerusalem was like a racetrack --- army convoys, sheruts, the shared taxis, motorcyclists. In less than an hour, it would be dark and the Arab pot-shotters would be out in the hills, choosing their targets. Every death widened the gulf, deepened the hatred.

Ahead, a caravan of donkeys shambled across the highways, their drivers oblivious of the blaring horns. The caravan was going to camp for the night in the ruins of the police station until one of Raza's commando units had come off the beach and kamikazied it. Chernow had warned this could happen. Bitburg had sent down a memo saying he'd circulated the warning. The note had arrived after the attack.

Chernow reduced speed as he approached the first of the Arab settlements of the West Bank. There was a roadblock, a dozen Defense Force soldiers, a couple of Jeeps, and an APC tucked into a bend in support.

He showed his ID and was waved through. He drove slowly the short length of the street, missing most of the potholes, trying not to throw up stones from his wheels. Riots had started for less. He ignored the hostile faces.

Al-Najaf had come from a village like this. In such a place, he'd first learned his violent and brutal skills and gone on to help write the agenda of modern terrorism. On any take-out list, he'd be there with Raza.

The hot afternoon sun whipped at his sleeve and rustled the wrapped package on the seat between him and Tyreen Mackenzie. Months ago, he'd bought the leather-bound volume on life in the First Dynasty of Egypt for Steve's seventieth birthday. It would be a fitting addition to all his other books on the ancient world.

They, and Steve's way of making the past come alive, had fired Chernow's own interest in archaeology and comparative religions, and made his tutors at Cambridge plead with him to come into academic life.

Another communal taxi roared past. Chernow kept a steady fifty miles per hour. Conserving petrol, resources of any kind, was deeply ingrained.

Ahead, a military convoy turned off into the Judean hills. He knew its destination --- the base he'd helicoptered from into Lebanon a dozen times this past year.

Tyreen was looking out the windows. On either side, the Judean wilderness began. At school, she'd been told Jesus had come out here to think. She could understand why. There was nothing here to distract.

How long, she wondered, would Raza wait before starting? When he'd first gotten his hands on Semtex, he hadn't delayed more than a week before beginning to engulf his victims in fireballs. The only certainty was the longer he was from his last outrage, the closer Raza was to his next.

Another Arab village loomed up. More white-walled houses, and the same, tense, watchful faces. Beyond the last village, the last of the daylight went. Chernow switched on his headlights.

The first lights gleamed in the hills --- Bedouin shepherds in their huts. A full moon was rising to meet the stars. Ruth had always said the first hour of night was as if time had stopped.

Topping a rise, Chernow pulled off the road. No matter how many times he saw it from here, Jerusalem was like no other city. There was nothing else in the world to match the Dome of the Rock, and all the other domes, spires, and minarets outlined in the labile darkness. Once more, he could sense the city's piety and hypocrisy. Jerusalem was unique --- a timeless place beyond the touch of time, which God had chosen to make holy to Jews, Christians, and Moslems. Yet it was fought over like no other.

Though a full-blooded Arion, Tyreen had been born on this planet, and she could feel the magic of this place.

To the left, in the lee of the hill, paraffin lamps flickered. Since Chernow had last come this way, another Arab village had sprung up, creating another fertile breeding ground for Raza. He could feel the tension coming up the hill, knew hate-filled eyes were watching. He eased the car into the flow of traffic, and headed toward Jerusalem.

He parked near the Damascus Gate, and the peddlers surged forward. This was the quiet time between festivals, but still a chance to unload seeds from Gethsemane, water from the Jordan, soil from Calvary. He and Tyreen brushed them off in English. It was still okay to be a foreigner here, but not always safe for Jews.

Yet Steve and Dolly had lived in the Old City for over fifty years. Their apartment on the Via Dolorosa remained striking proof that coexistence was possible.

Inside the Crusader walls, the peddlers continued to offer pieces of the True Cross, nails from the hands and feet of the Risen Christ, hairs from the tail of the Prophet's beast, fragments from the Temple of Herod. Jerusalem always reminded Chernow of a whore, selling the same thing over and over.

As a child, he'd loved it --- talking to old men sitting in even older doorways, following the veiled women burdened with pitchers and paniers, and staying clear of the rabbis and the priests of the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches who were cut off from the present by their witness to the past.

These were dangerous streets. Young men lounged in doorways, silent and watchful, practicing the skill of menace. There was a constant wail of music in the air --- loud Arab love songs, sung shrilly by young voices; discordant Greek music. And everywhere, the Beatles and Rolling Stones. They survived here like nowhere else.

Tyreen could remember when they'd first burst on the music scene in England back in the Sixties, when she was in her twenties, just out of university. While she liked the Beatles, having gone to some of their early shows, she'd never really cared for the Stones.

Long ago, Chernow had gone from here. Steve had said an English public school prepared anyone for life. Five years at Clifton had broadened and toughened him. Each time he'd come back during the holidays, Dolly had said how much he'd grown, how English he sounded. Ruth had teased him about the English girls. He'd teased her back about the boys back home. Steve had beamed his proud father's smile.

When Chernow went to Cambridge, Steve had provided a long list of introductions. He'd seemed to know half of his tutors. Until then, Chernow had not realized what a huge academic reputation his future father-in-law had.

An army patrol came driving down the street, the two Jeeps forcing people against the wall. Chernow felt the anger the soldiers created, and saw the nervousness in their eyes. They blooded conscripts here before sending them to the real trouble spots. Nablus, Beersheba, Nazareth. The patrol glanced at them quickly. One of the soldiers muttered in Hebrew, "bloody foreigners." Chernow ignored him and led the way on into Via Dolorosa.

The last time he'd come back from Cambridge, the print still damp on his Double First --- History and Political Science --- and said he was joining Mossad, Steve had looked at him for a long time before asking if he was certain this was what he wanted. He'd replied immediately, yes. The matter had never been mentioned again.

The apartment was in a building constructed during the Ottoman Empire. The stone façade was smooth to the height of a man, from the millions of pilgrims who had leaned against it as they'd paused while retracing Christ's footsteps.

Chernow stood for a moment, thinking it was as if he had never been away. Then he climbed the stone steps to the first floor.

He had his own key, and he inserted it in the lock of the heavy, iron-studded front door. He held his gift in one hand behind his back. He wanted to surprise them, to hear Dolly's little cry of pleasure, to see Steve rise from his chair, his hands spread in gentle welcome. Chernow eased the door open.

The apartment was in darkness. he let the light from the landing flood into the hallway, as if it would banish the dead silence. Then switching on the hall light, he ushered Tyreen in, closed the door behind them, and walked from room to room, turning on the lights. All the apartment windows, shutters, and curtains were firmly closed.

He returned to Tyreen, standing in the middle of the living room. Everything was exactly as he remembered it. The heavy oak dining table and its four chairs stood at the far end. The table and its brass candelabra gleamed from yet another polishing from Dolly. Steve's armchair stood in one corner, Dolly's in another. Between them was a military chest and its reading lamp. They'd brought the chest with them from Europe.

The couch on which Chernow and Ruth had sat as kids and watched television on the black-and-white set was against a wall. With his first month's pay, he'd bought a color set. Such extravagance, Dolly had scolded happily.

That couch had also seen their first kiss.

The floor-to-ceiling shelves, fitted in every available wall space, seemed, if anything, more crowded with books. Christian and Arabic commentaries, a Koran, an Infancy Gospel, a Russian biography of Alexander the Great stood between hand-bound copies of Syriac scripts. The library ran on through into Steve and Dolly's bedroom, the shelves covering three of its walls, surrounding the large brass bed.

He wandered down the short passage, which led to Ruth's old bedrooms. Since he had last been here, the passage had been lined with shelves filled with yet more books. He reached Ruth's room. Her nameplate was still on the door. He remembered the day he'd stuck it up. She'd turned twelve that day.

He walked back into the living room, searching for clues where Steve and Dolly could have gone. On the sideboard, beneath the telephone, he found a small pile of travel brochures. Steve had always promised Dolly they'd make one last trip to Europe. To London, to hear a play performed as it should be. To Paris, to enjoy food and wine as it should be cooked and served. To Germany, to remember.

He remembered, too, why they had not called him to say where they were going. He had always said there was no way he could be reached --- unless it was a matter of life or death. For that, he'd given them Danny Nagier's number. Nagier always knew where he'd be. He had to.

Putting his gift on the table, he went around turning off the lights. Back in the hall, he noticed again the small patch of wall above the door that remained unplastered. It was a reminder that those who lived here still mourned the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem almost two millennia ago. He had been privileged to have been raised among such good and devout people. He suddenly wanted so much to tell them that.

He felt rather than heard Tyreen stiffening behind him. Chernow became aware of a noise outside the front door. It came again. The faint but unmistakable sound of breathing, of a face being pressed against the wood, listening.

Chernow eased the Browning from his shoulder holster and edged toward the door. He switched off the hall light and sank to his knees. Crouching, he waited, one hand poised above the handle, the other holding the gun at shoulder level. He didn't need to look to know that Tyreen was covering him, her Walther at the ready.

The breathing was hoarser, louder. He yanked the door open in one quick, smooth movement and brought the gun to bear.

The stout, elderly woman recoiled in horror, hands flying to her face, the key in her hand dropping to the ground. She looked at him blankly, struggling for words.

When she spoke, it was a mixture of Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. "Jacob! May God forgive you! Pointing a gun at me!"

Chernow relaxed. Hannah Meir was Dolly's closest friend. She had been the first and only person either he or Ruth had called tante, aunt.

"Sorry, Tante Hannah, sorry, for sure." He quickly came out of his crouch and replaced the gun in its holster. "It was just... well, I was not expecting it to be you." He picked up the key and handed it to her.

She shook her head. "So, who were you expecting? Yasser Arafat? You think after all these years, someone would come here and kill your Mama and Papa?"

He smiled. "You're right. If any two Jews are safe in this world, they have to be the ones. But I'd expected Mama would be in the kitchen, preparing the birthday dinner."

He still called Dolly Mama and Steve Papa. They liked that. He had started when they'd all but adopted him when his parents had died. Marrying their only daughter had only strengthened the bond.

She squinted at him. "You want to talk here, or inside?"

"Sorry, Tante Hannah." He stood aside.

Hannah and Tyreen had met briefly on Tyreen's previous visit, but he went through the formalities. Tyreen added her own apologies at startling the old woman. There was no sign of the Walther that had been at the ready only moments earlier.

"Enough of this saying sorry," Hannah said, pushing past them. "I like it better that you don't take chances. Your Mama says in your business you can't be too careful."

"Mama worries too much." He closed the door behind them.

Hannah strode into the living room. "Your Mama loves you. Your Papa even more so. It's natural they worry."

Tyreen stayed by the door while Chernow followed Hannah further into the room where she turned and faced him, looking him over as if he was a child. She sighed. "I said they should call you."

She pulled a sheet of paper from a pocket in her dress and smoothed it open. Chernow recognized Steve's handwriting, a scholar's penmanship, small, neat, equal separation between the words.

Hannah read out: "Day one and two, London, Connaught Hotel. Day three, visit Shakespeare country. Day four, take Orient Express to Paris. Stay in Hotel Maurice..."

"What day is this, Tante Hannah?" he asked.

"This is still day one, Jacob. They left this morning, dressed to the nines, with enough travelers' checks for your Papa to satisfy his one great wish: to order for your Mama only the finest champagne for lunch and dinner. He's promised to bring me a bottle for looking after this place."

Hannah stuffed the itinerary back in her pocket. She saw his gift and walked over and picked it up. "Yours?"

"Yes. A book."

She nodded. "What else? Every year I say, how about a nice shirt? And your Papa says no, just a book. Did you know he has a list?" This last was directed more at Tyreen. "Hundreds of books he still wants to read." She put the gift back on the table and turned back to Chernow. "I told your Papa you'd come. No son forgets his father's birthday."

Hannah seemed to be about to say something else. Instead, she turned away. She'd lost her son, her only child, in the Yom Kippur War. Her husband had died the following year. The others had gone long before. He sensed her putting the old pain back in its secret hiding place. Hannah had always had the kind of courage he'd admired.

She turned and faced him, smiling. "Your Mama even left food in the freezer. She knew you'd come. Kneidlach soup. Knishes filled with potatoes, liver, and onions. Blintzes. Everything you and Ruth liked." She pulled a chair from the table and sat down. "Sorry, I didn't mean to raise the dead."

Chernow moved closer, putting his hands on the table as he leaned against it, the memories flowing through his brain. Ruth had been a childhood friend. She had become sister, then wife. All throughout, she had been his best friend.

Tyreen came to the table. Pulling out a chair, she guided Chernow down on it.Then pulling out another chair, she took her seat. "Ruth was a wonderful person," she said softly, putting a hand over one of his.

Hannah took note of the gesture, but said nothing.

Finally, Chernow looked up. "There's still so much of her here. It's like she never left."

"It's time you moved on, Jacob. Your Mama and Papa have."

"I don't think I can, Tante Hannah. She's bee a part of my life for so long."

"You can't leave a hole in your life, Jacob. You can't keep coming home to an empty house."

"Tante Hannah..."

Hannah turned to look at Tyreen. "I'm sure she has a nice young man waiting for her to come home. Don't you?"

Tyreen had the grace to blush. Even Chernow had to smile at her discomfort.

Hannah turned back to Chernow. She looked into his face. "And you, Jacob? You have no one yet?"

He let the smile widen. "So this is what all this is about! Seeing if you can do a little matchmaking!" He winked at Tyreen.

She raised her hands in mock protest. "May the Lord of the Universe forgive you for thinking such a thing. But yes, I do know one or two nice girls who would make anyone a god wife. And pretty with it." Her eyes briefly went to Tyreen. "And as fashionable as any girl from London or Paris."

"I'm quite happy as I am, Tante Hannah, for sure."

She looked at him seriously. "Every man needs someone to come home to. And your Mama and Papa would love to have you married again. And another grandson for them..."

"Tante Hannah! You're incorrigible!"

She beamed. "I know, I know. I also make the best coffee."

"Coffee I would like."

Hannah rose to her feet. When Tyreen also made to rise, Hannah gestured to her to remain seated with Chernow. "Rest. You've traveled farther than I have." She then bustled to the kitchen.

"So, how is Tel Aviv?" she asked, returning with a tray holding cups and coffeepot. In this house, everyone drank their coffee the Arab way, black, no cream or sugar.

"You know... Tel Aviv is Tel Aviv... a change a day. Some of us are trying to get used to accepting that the rest of the world thinks Iran's the nice guy on the block."

Hannah handed Tyreen a cup then Chernow. "Will there ever be peace, Jacob?"

There was a simplicity to her question that stirred him. He answered her honestly. "One day, maybe. But it's still a long time away."

Hannah looked directly at Tyreen. "But we are so small. When Iraq took Kuwait, the rest of the world talked of 'tiny' Kuwait. But we're smaller."

When Tyreen didn't answer, Chernow took a sip. "Wonderful coffee." He put the cup down. "Our size is part of our strength, that's something our enemies have never understood. Having more weapons and men doesn't make them stronger. A determination is what matters. As long as we have that, Tante Hannah, we will survive."

"But they are getting stronger. You see it on television every day. I hear it on the radio. There is trouble coming, Jacob. I can feel it in my heart. Your Mama feels it, too."

Chernow drained his cup and poured himself another. A clock ticked tidily in its place on the shelf above the radiator.

"These people want their holy war, Tante Hannah, and they want to carry it everywhere. But they know they must remove us first. We stand between them and the rest of the world. That's why America supports us, and all those countries in Europe. We're their buffer."

The highly polished wood of the table caught and held fast the glow from the chandelier. Whenever he sat here, the reflection had seemed to lie buried far below Dolly's layers of polish.

"Your Mama has always said that God put us here for that purpose. To take all the punishment for the rest of the world."

"Mama should be in the Knesset." He pushed his cup away when Tyreen offered to refill it. "As we've shown we can't be removed by force, our enemies will try and use other means. Blackmail the world into not supporting us. Terrify even our few friends into walking away from us. Then our enemies will come."

The silence lay between them for a long time before she asked, "When, Jacob? When will they come?"

"I wish I knew, Tante Hannah."

She tried to smile. "Your Mama says if you don't know something, then it's not worth knowing." She allowed Tyreen to pour her a fresh cup. "I wish your Papa could have heard what you've just said."

"Yes?"

"Yes." She drank quickly and put down her cup. "I don't often argue with your Papa, Jacob. I never heard anyone explain better our past. He should have published more. And not just with the Hebrew presses. In America. He should have gone and lectured when they asked."

"He didn't like to leave us behind."

She waved her hand impatiently. "Ach! His excuse, that's all. He didn't like to travel... now..."

Something was bothering Hannah. Chernow waited while she gathered her thoughts.

"Like I said, I don't often challenge your Papa. But I get really mad when he says we must learn to love our enemies. I ask him where it says that in the Torah? In any of his books? But he just says we've got to learn to do it."

"He's a genuine visionary, Hannah," said Tyreen. "If all the world were like him, it would be a wonderful place."

Hannah held her cup to her lips, peering from one to the other over the rim. Finally, her gaze settled on Chernow. "When did you last see them, Jacob?"

He had to think. "Almost four months now."

"And spoke to them?"

"Five, six weeks ago. Why'd you ask?"

She looked at him steadily. "Then you don't know?"

"Know? Know what, Tante Hannah?"

Suddenly, the weight of her emotions bore down on him. "Your Papa's very sick, Jacob." Her words came in a rush. "Very, very sick."

He stared at her, barely aware of Tyreen's hand moving to cover his. "What's the matter with him? How can he be sick? He's gone on holiday."

"The doctors said he could still travel."

"What doctors?"

"At Brai Nith."

He stared wordlessly at Hannah as Tyreen's hand tightened fractionally on his. Brai Nith was Israel's new hospital for treating cancer.

Hannah put her cup down. "A month ago, your Papa went there. They found cancer in the liver and stomach. Because of who he is, they told him everything. No point in operating. That would just shorten his time."

"But they have a cyclotron there. Surely they could bombard..."

Hannah shook her head. "It's too far gone, Jacob..."

"How long?" he whispered. "How long does he have?"

"They don't know."

He stared into the misery in her face, feeling only this terrible deadness inside him, so heavy it crushed the air from his body.

Freeing his hand from under Tyreen's, he stood up. "I want to talk to him."

She fished out the itinerary and gave him the number of the Connaught.

He walked to the phone and direct-dialed London. The hotel operator said Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan had left strict instructions not to be disturbed until morning. He put down the phone and stood for long moments, staring at the shelves.

Hannah walked over and held him in a mother's hold. "Stay here tonight, Jacob. Both of you. Call them in the morning." She glanced over at the Gentile and then back to Chernow. "Then go to the synagogue and pray. Your Mama would like that."

Chernow nodded, noncommittal, and walked out onto the small balcony that led off the kitchen. When he'd been a boy, he and Ruth had stood here for hours while Steve had pointed out the stars. Chernow looked out over the Old City to the Hill of Gethsemane. The air was cooling. Soon, it would be as cold as the grave.

He didn't know how long he had been standing there before he felt a presence behind him. He ignored it, continuing to stare sightlessly at the night.

The presence came closer, without making physical contact.

Tyreen felt as if she was jinxed. She was just arriving in the country when Raza's bomb took Ruth and David from Jacob Chernow. On her next visit, he was about to lose the man who had been his father in all but name.

When they went back to into the apartment, Hannah had gone. He showed Tyreen to Ruth's old room.

As much as Tyreen Mackenzie would have liked to get into bed with a man like Jacob Chernow, this was not the time to be indulging her Arion body. And certainly not here, in the home of his dead wife's parents. Lying down on the bed still fully clothed, she stared up at the ceiling.

Returning to the living room, Chernow unplugged the phone and carried it to his room, connecting it in the socket beneath the bedside table. Steve had installed the point so that he could receive calls at those unearthly hours when he used to stay over after Ruth's death.

He removed his gun and holster, placing them on the table. He closed his eyes, allowing his mind to drift... From Ruth... to Dolly and Steve... to Tante Hanna... and finally to Tyreen, next door in Ruth's old room.

He wondered how she would react if he was to go to her. Would she...

The phone rang. He picked it up. "Chernow."

"Jacob," said Danny Nagier, "we have an intercept."

"Did you get a voice print match, Danny?" asked Chernow, knowing he didn't need to.

"Positive. It's Raza."

"We're on our way back." Hanging up, he quickly went to tell Tyreen about the call.

Twenty minutes later, with Jerusalem rising behind him as he sped down the road to Tel Aviv, Chernow reminded himself he must phone Steve.

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