The plain, middle-aged American woman kept smiling. She touched the brim of her hat and said, “I’m off to watch them take down the mosque. That’s not something you see every day.” Away she went. She pulled a disposable Kodak from her purse and started snapping pictures. She would be somebody who clung to film after the rest of the world used ones and zeros.
“The nerve!” If Orly couldn’t take it out on Barb, she would on Eric. “If she thinks her crappy God is doing this—”
“Whose God do you want?” Eric broke in. “Rabbi Kupferman’s? The Grand Ayatollah’s?”
Orly’s suggestion about what Kupferman and the late Grand Ayatollah could do violated Leviticus 18:22. She added, “Or with a sheep,” which took care of the next verse. That seemed to soften her temper; she went on, “What I want is for things to go back the way they were before this started.”
“Sure. Me, too,” Eric said. “But what are the odds?”
A crane took hold of a wall section that had just been separated from what remained of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Diesel engine belching, the crane swung the panel onto a truck that took it down a ramp laid over the steps of the Bab al-Maghariba. Eric didn’t like seeing the Temple Mount turned into a dusty, smelly construction site, but he couldn’t do thing one about it.
Was this what God had in mind? Barb Taylor seemed to think so. If it wasn’t God’s idea, who was in charge? Anybody?
* * *
—
Satellite dishes sprouted all over the West Bank, occupied though it was. Jamal Ashrawi wondered whether there was any place these days where they didn’t sprout. He could watch Al Jazeera. He could watch the Hezbollah station, which made Al Jazeera seem reactionary. He could look at the Zionists’ lies. And he could watch as much American television as he could stand.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem stayed away from CNN and Fox. To him, they were as bad as the Israeli stations. He found himself watching preachers who sold their lying religion over the air.
“Will you convert to Christianity?” a guard asked him with a mocking grin on his face.
“By God, no!” Haji Jamal answered. “The Prophet, peace be unto Him, rightly ordered death for those who abandon Islam.”
“Then why poison your eyes with these talking turds?” the younger man said. “Whenever they open their mouths, filth comes out.”
“What they say is filth,” Ashrawi agreed. “How they say it, though…is very clever. They persuade those who believe as they do to do as they say and send them money: millions of dollars.”
“And so?” the guard sneered. “What does that show except that American Christians are fools, sheep who deserve the fleecing their holy men give them? This we knew.”
“One other thing,” the Grand Mufti said. Despite the fighter’s skeptical grunt, he went on, “It shows how to inspire people. The American Christians do it for wicked purposes, but the things they do we can use to promote God’s truth. They know how to work their people up. We could use that now.”
He got another grunt from the guard. Morale on the West Bank was low. Ashrawi knew he wasn’t the first Muslim to use the Christians’ notions against the Jews. In the 1990s, an Egyptian had written a book called The False Messiah that drew on one distorted faith’s beliefs to discredit another. The book had had imitators, too. But now the hour was at hand.
The Grand Mufti preached in the main mosque in Hebron after noon prayers on Friday. Somebody was bound to inform on him, so he was ready for a quick getaway. He and the men outside the mosque with assault rifles were also ready for a fight.
“You think times are hard,” he told the faithful. Men with phones filmed his sermon. Soon TV and the Internet would take his words around the world.
“You think times are hard,” Haji Jamal repeated, “and, by God, you are right. The Jews gloat that their foolish Temple will rise, replacing the holy Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. They think their Messiah is at hand. The Christians, who lie when they say the prophet Jesus, peace be upon Him, is the Son of God, believe the rebuilding of the Temple foretells the rise of the Antichrist and the Second Coming of Jesus.”
He made a slashing motion with his hand. “The Jews and Christians are right—and wrong. They are right when they say the Hour is nearly come. God will do what He wants in this world when He wants to—and the time is near.
“But it will not be what the misbelievers think. Take heart, believers! Let the Jews and Christians fool themselves by believing God will be good to them at the Hour. He whom the Jews proclaim the Messiah will be the False One instead.
“Let him seem to conquer. Let him seem to grind us underfoot. But Jesus will return—not as the Christians say, but with the holy Mahdi at His side. Together, they will smash the Jews and their lies. In the last battle, trees and stones will shout out that they have Jews hiding behind them, and Muslims will go forth and kill them. Believe this, for God ordains it.”
He could see they wanted to believe. They called the war that created the Zionist entity al-naqbah: the catastrophe. They’d seen another catastrophe in the Setback—what the West called the Six-Day War. Ashrawi had been just too young to fight then. Now the Israelis were grinding their faces in the dirt again. How could they bear it and remain men? No one with red blood could.
“Once the False One is defeated, Christians will go down, too. Their crosses will break. The whole world will become Muslim. At the valley of Jehosaphat outside Jerusalem, God will judge everyone who ever lived. Sinners and misbelievers will get what they deserve, and good Muslims will know Paradise for eternity. You have only to believe, and you can make it happen.
“When the Jews lay impious hands on Al-Aqsa Mosque, do they not follow what is foretold in the Qur’an? For does not the blessed Prophet say in the sura called The Night Journey that the Jews would be twice corrupted, and that God would send an army to enter the mosque and punish them for it? You know the verses—see here the interpretation. So I say again, take heart! Yes, they ravish the mosque, but they will pay!”
When he looked out at the sea of men listening to him, he saw they were hearing him, too. If you saw things the right way, the way God wanted you to, you saw they weren’t disasters after all, but part of His plan.
“Let the Jews gloat and strut. Let the Christians broadcast their nonsense. We will see who rejoices and who laments when the Hour comes—and I do not think we have long to wait.”
Cheers buoyed him, sweet and strong as wine in Paradise. Let the Zionists howl, he thought. It will be too late, for the truth will run ahead of them, the way truth always does.
* * *
—
The Holy Land! Not even a long flight and the indignities of customs could remove the exclamation point from Lester Stark’s mind. Rhonda was even more excited; she came here less often than he did.
The Israelis did their best to show him their land was mundane as well as holy. They closely examined his luggage. An inspector said, “You’re a Christian minister?”
“That’s right,” Stark answered.
“Purpose of your visit to Eretz Yisrael?”
“Journalism, mostly. I want to see the Temple rise.”
If that wasn’t a skeptical snort, Stark had never heard one. “You aren’t going to try to convert any Jews, right?” the customs man said. You’d better not, his tone warned.
“No, I’m not here for that.” Stark could have added commentary on what would happen when the Last Days came, but he doubted the Israeli official would have appreciated it.
“You’re sure?” the man said. He had bad breath.
“Yes, I’m sure. If you doubt it, call Rabbi Kupferman. He’ll vouch for me.” Stark’s patience frayed.
But he’d found a name to conjure with. “You…know the Religious Affairs Minister?” the customs man said.
Stark took out his phone. “Look—here’
s his number. Shall I call him?”
The customs official weighed the risks. “No, never mind,” he said. The inspection didn’t last much longer. Stark’s luggage passed. He hadn’t expected anything else.
Gabriela Sandoval waited beyond the customs area. She looked casual, but professional. She wore jeans, but plainly designer jeans, and her makeup was almost camera-ready. “So good to meet you, Reverend,” she said. “And you, Mrs. Stark. Rhonda, isn’t it? May I?”
“Of course, Gabriela.” Rhonda Stark smiled. So did Lester; he thought better of the TV personality for including his wife so naturally.
Gabriela had a limo waiting for the trip to Jerusalem. “We can afford it,” she told Lester. “And the other choice is a sherut—a shared taxi. You’d never fit all your bags in, and the people we’d share it with wouldn’t like it if you tried.”
“I’ve ridden in limousines before,” Stark said dryly. “I don’t mind.” He knew the verse about the camel and the eye of the needle. You couldn’t be a minister without knowing it. But, while he enjoyed wealth, he didn’t flaunt it the way some of his colleagues did.
The limo took them to the Sheraton Plaza. “We stayed at the Holyland the last time we were here,” Rhonda said.
“My producer and I looked at it before we came over,” Gabriela replied. “This is newer and nicer and has a better location.”
“I’m a little surprised you didn’t move somewhere else after Mr. Nesbitt, ah, passed away,” Lester Stark remarked.
Gabriela’s face clouded, but quickly cleared. “To take the bad luck off, you mean?” she said.
He nodded. “That’s right. Superstition, I know, but people still knock wood after two thousand years of Christianity. I do it myself.”
“We thought about it,” Gabriela said, “but the location is good, and in a Sheraton you always know what you’re getting.” Her eyes, which he’d thought quite expressive, suddenly went wary, opaque. Or maybe he was just jet-lagged and worn out and imagining things.
Getting settled at the Sheraton went as smoothly as it would have in the States. Afterwards, the Starks and Gabriela had an early dinner. The Reverend ordered Sichuan noodles with lamb. “Yes, sir,” said the waiter, who was certainly no Israeli. “How spicy would you like that?”
“Don’t tell them to go all out,” Gabriela said quickly. “They’ll take the top of your head right off.”
“I wasn’t going to. Medium will be fine,” Stark replied.
“Yes, sir.” Did the waiter tip Gabriela a wink? Stark thought so, but, again, he couldn’t be sure.
Over the food—even medium-spicy seemed plenty hot to Stark—the minister said, “I’ll want to see the Ark. I’ll want to get up on the Temple Mount. And I’ll want to talk to the Israelis from the Patriot batteries that were about to launch on the Iranian missiles till they went off the radar.”
“Talk to Rabbi Kupferman for the first two. If he gives you trouble, I’ll have our producer do what he can. Saul’s known him for years,” Gabriela said.
“Thank you,” Stark said. He’d known Kupferman for years, too, but he wasn’t a member of the tribe. Saul Buchbinder was.
Briskly, Gabriela went on, “Saul and I both have some contacts in the Defense Ministry, so we’ll see what we can do about the last one. No guarantees there, though. The military doesn’t like showing its cards.”
“Do what you can, and I’ll do what I can—I know a few people there, too—and we’ll see what happens,” Stark said.
She smiled. “Sounds like a plan. I think I’m going to enjoy working with you.”
“And back at you.” Stark didn’t think polite lies were sinful—who was more obnoxious than people who prided themselves for being brutally frank?—but, rather to his surprise, he found he was telling the truth.
* * *
—
Eric tracked Yoram Louvish to his lair: a cramped office on the Hebrew University campus at the west end of Jerusalem, with steel bookcases full of books in half a dozen languages and boxes stuffed with old journals. Yoram was swearing at his computer when Eric knocked. What the Israeli archaeologist said about Windows wasn’t anything a lot of people hadn’t said before him.
He looked up and saw Eric. “Oh. It’s you.” He sounded as glad to see the American as he was about whatever horror Bill Gates had wrought.
“Yeah. Can I come in?” Eric said.
“I won’t shoot you if you try.” From an American professor, that would have been a joke. From Yoram, it sounded more like a statement of fact.
Eric edged into the office. He took a box off a steel-framed chair and sat. He said, “Who do I have to kill to get a look at the Ark in the Shrine of the Book?”
“Me,” Louvish said. “And if that doesn’t do it, Professor Sh. Nechshat.”
“Let’s start with you.” Eric didn’t want to beard Shlomo Kupferman in his den. Kupferman already had a fine beard.
“Okay.” Yoram grabbed a piece of paper and wrote rapidly. He handed the sheet to Eric. “Here. Happy now?”
Admit Professor Eric Katz and Professor Orly Binur to the Shrine of the Book to view the Ark of the Covenant. I vouch for them. If you have any doubts, call me. Yoram Louvish. Hebrew script was as different from the printed version as Roman-alphabet cursive was from printed caps. Eric needed to work his way through it before he finally nodded.
“Thanks,” he said. “And thanks for putting Orly there, too.”
“She would have killed me if I didn’t. You talk about it—she would have done it.”
“I guess.” Eric folded the note—the paper was Hebrew University stationery—and stuck it in his pocket. “You okay, Yoram? You’ve pulled a disappearing act.”
“They don’t need me now, so I’ll work up some publications,” Louvish said. “Hardly ever time to do that right. Just making the bibliography work…You know about that.”
“Just a little,” Eric said. Yoram grinned tightly. Eric was like a lot of archaeologists—his career would have been further along if he’d published more. But he dug digging, not pawing through journals to compare what he’d found to what others unearthed twenty or fifty or ninety years earlier. You needed to do that. It was part of the game and of the record. But it wasn’t nearly so much fun as getting your hands dirty.
Yoram felt the same way. Seeing him stuck in this airless office was jarring. “Everything okay?” Eric asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Yoram didn’t usually answer a question with a question. If he had something on his mind, he said it.
“I don’t know,” Eric said uncomfortably. “You’ve got…shunted to the sidelines since the Ark came out from under the Temple Mount. It doesn’t seem right.”
The Israeli archaeologist looked at him—looked through him, really. “You’ve always been secular, pretty much,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“Well, yeah.” Eric nodded, more uncomfortably still. “And you’re not. But you never held it against me before.”
“What do you think of everything since we found the Ark?”
“I don’t know what to think. It’s weird.” Eric asked the question Yoram had to be waiting for: “What do you think of it?”
“It scares me.” Yoram muttered something, then nodded. “Yeah, it does. When Brandon touched the Ark and dropped dead…I’ve never been so frightened, not under mortar fire, not ever.”
“I think maybe Munir feels the same way,” Eric said. “He bailed out even before you did.”
“It could be,” Louvish said. “He’s more like you, though. He thinks politics before he thinks religion. And that doesn’t work any more.”
“But…” Eric knew he was floundering. “Why aren’t you happier, dammit? If what’s happening goes with what you already believed—” He thought about Rabbi Kupferman, who seemed sure Brandon had got what was c
oming to him.
Yoram cut him off. “It doesn’t. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Okay.” Eric blinked. “You’ve lost me.”
“I’m a Jew like you, only more observant. I’m a post-destruction-of-the-Temple Jew. You do what God says, and He treats you fair. Now I’ve seen the real thing, and He’s as mighty and arbitrary as He was in the days of the Bible. He’ll do what He wants. It scares the crap out of me.”
“Oh.” Eric had to shift gears. Recent events had sent most believers into ecstasy. Eric said, “I don’t think your reaction is too different from mine.”
“You didn’t want to believe to start with, any more than Munir does. Of course a God Who shows Himself scares people like you. Me…A God Who would do some of the things we’ve seen…” Yoram looked drawn and old. “A God like that, you begin to see how the Shoah could happen after all.”
Little fingers of ice walked up Eric’s back. An arbitrary God Who did as He pleased with the world might throw six million people into the fire of the Holocaust if that furthered His purposes. “What can we do?” Eric whispered.
“Nothing,” Yoram said flatly. “You don’t fight God.”
“Oh, yeah? What about Jacob?—I mean, Israel. This country got a name because he wrestled with God and prevailed.”
“God let him. If that happens, fine. If it doesn’t, you end up like Sodom and Gomorrah—or like Brandon,” Yoram said. “And this thing is just starting to play out. We think we know how it goes. So do the Christians and the Muslims. Somebody’s wrong. Lots of somebodies. That scares me worse than anything.”
Yitzhak Avigad watched the Third Temple rise. He’d always prayed for such a thing, but he’d never really believed it would happen. Here it was, though. Christian evangelists were screaming their heads off. So were the Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites alike. But not even the Iranians thought launching more missiles was a good idea.
Trucks rumbled, on top of the Temple Mount. The Reconstruction Alliance had delivered two six-tonne cornerstones. They’d had them ready for years. The police always turned them back before. No more.
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