Isaac glanced quickly left and right. The streets appeared to be empty, and nothing moved at any of the windows in the nearby buildings. He swallowed hard as he picked up the bag. “Aleichem shalom,” he said, nodding.
“Peace be to you, too,” Melman said, and Isaac read a world of meaning in his dark eyes before he moved away.
Sarah drew her shawl forward over her head, then retreated into the crowded alleys of the old city’s marketplace. Due to the famine, few farmers were participating in the chaotic melee, but the changing fortunes of the city had resulted in a more interesting market. People without the Universal Chip and UFM code were trading jewels and rare collectibles for unregulated shekels with which they could buy bread. Those who had complied with Romulus’s orders sold meager loaves of bread for a week’s wages or bartered for gemstones and works of art. It was, Sarah decided, a more horrific picture of corruption than Orwell’s spoiled pigs in Animal Farm.
She walked slowly, one hand holding her shawl halfway over her face in the way of modest Muslim women, the other prodding at what few fruits and shriveled vegetables were available. In the past two weeks, she had realized that the key for survival lay in the market. Many of the people here were outlaws like herself, and, like her, they cared nothing for Romulus or his rules and regulations. The vendors at this black market yearned simply to get rich—because people will part with anything when their stomachs demand to be fed. As transient salesmen, they lacked the proper equipment with which to check for identification chips and the UFM code, so they bargained and made deals without proper authentication. When the occasional Universal Force patrol motored through the marketplace, they simply covered their wagons with blankets and picked up their newspapers, pretending to while the day away with nothing to do.
After nearly an hour of searching, Sarah spied a clucking chicken in a rusting birdcage atop one cart. The hen appeared healthy and might even be persuaded to lay a few eggs before the situation grew dire enough for Isaac to wring its neck.
She approached the vendor and pointed to the bird. “How much for the chicken?”
The vendor, a walrus-mustached older man with dark sweat stains beneath his arms, squinted in her direction. “What do you have to trade, little lady?”
Sarah fumbled at her wrist, then held up Isaac’s watch. Once upon a time it had come from Tiffany’s; now she prayed it would tempt a man who would have been too intimidated to even walk into that jewelry store before the Disruption. “It’s a very good watch,” she said, draping it across the vendor’s wide palm. “Waterproof and shock resistant. The battery is new. It can be set to give the correct time in three different time zones.”
“I don’t need three different time zones.”
Though his words made her heart fall, still he held the watch. “I don’t know if all these fancy gadgets are worth a chicken. What else do you have?”
Sarah felt a moment’s blind panic. She had nothing else of value, nothing at all. She lowered her head and put out her hand, about to retrieve her watch and walk away, but a gravelly voice growled in her ear. “You young women,” a woman said, her bony arm slipping around Sarah’s waist. “You are not used to the ways of the marketplace. This, my dear, is a place that calls for chutzpah.”
Sarah looked up to see Rachel Levison, an elderly woman from her father’s congregation. She had not seen Rachel in years, but by the gleam in the older woman’s eye, Rachel knew she’d been recognized.
“How are you?” Sarah murmured, wondering how much she could say in this public place. Rachel’s husband, Yusef, would never have taken the Universal Chip, so they had to be outlaws, too.
“We are well.” Rachel turned slightly so the merchant could not read her lips. “If we are separated in the crowd, you and your Isaac must come to the tunnels under the Western Gate. There are many of us who meet in the secret caverns under the Temple Mount. It is a safe place.”
Sarah nodded, then felt the pressure of the older woman’s hand on hers. “Now, let me show you how to deal with this bully. You want the chicken?”
Speechless, Sarah nodded again.
“Then demand a rooster.” The old woman crossed her bony arms and took a half-step back, smiling in encouragement. “Go ahead. Remember you are the daughter of Rabbi Lerner, and do not take no for an answer.”
Sarah smothered a smile as she stepped up to the merchant’s cart. In her work with Shin Bet she had learned how to interrogate suspected spies and prevaricate without wavering, but no one had ever taught her how to haggle with a junkman. How different could it be?
She waved her hand and caught the merchant’s attention. “I’ll be taking my Tiffany watch now,” she said, extending her palm. “You say it is not worth a chicken?” She gave him a hostile glare. “Such a watch is worth a chicken and a rooster! You should be offering me something else to go with that scrawny bird.”
“It’s a good bird,” he replied sharply.
“Does she lay eggs? My husband wants his scrambled egg in the morning.”
“He’ll have eggs if you take the chicken. And you didn’t say the watch was from Tiffany’s.”
“But how do I know I’ll have eggs?”
“How do I know this watch will run tomorrow?”
“How do we know anything? Only the Master of the Universe knows such things.”
She threw the words at him like stones, then halted, her fist uplifted, as the merchant’s granite face cracked into an unwilling smile. “OK, lady, you can have the chicken,” he said, slipping the watch into his pocket. “Though I will take a loss for giving you this fine bird.”
Sarah tossed a triumphant glance toward her tutor, then silently basked in the glow of her small victory as the bulky merchant turned to lift the cage from the top of his heaped wagon. Isaac would probably laugh when he saw what had taken her an entire morning to win, but if by some miracle the bird did lay an egg for breakfast—
“Sarah? Sarah Ben-David, is that you?”
The voice caught her by surprise. She turned to see a man with his hand uplifted, then recognized Yitzhak Peres, her coworker in the Jerusalem office. He stared at her across another vendor’s piled wagon, then smiled when she turned to face him. Sarah was about to speak, then remembered. Yitzhak had been one of the first in her office to receive the ID chip and UFM code, and he was one of the few who outspokenly supported Romulus.
She pulled the edge of her shawl across her face and lowered her head as a trembling rose from within. Rachel Levison immediately stepped to Sarah’s left side and filled her peripheral vision. “Ignore him, child.”
“Sarah!” Peres called. “I need to speak to you!”
Rachel lifted her head and croaked out a command to the merchant. “Will you hurry with the chicken? She doesn’t have all morning.”
The mustached merchant glanced over his shoulder, then hesitated, one hand on the birdcage. From the expression in his eyes, Sarah knew he understood that she was an outlaw, anxious and uncertain, and the arm of the law was about to reach for her.
“Sarah!” Battling the pedestrian traffic, Yitzhak came closer. Sarah stood her ground, torn between the desire to flee and the need for the chicken she had sacrificed to earn.
“Sarah!” Rachel whispered in her ear now. “Run, child. I’ll get the bird.”
As Sarah hesitated, Yitzhak’s bony fingers closed around her upper right arm. She whirled to face him, but kept the shawl over her nose and mouth, allowing him only a glimpse of her eyes.
“I am sorry, sir,” she murmured in Arabic, “but I do not know you.”
“Cut the foolishness, Sarah, I know it’s you. And we all know you’ve joined the resistance.” He jerked his head toward Rachel. “This old woman—is she with you?”
“No!”
Ignoring Sarah’s protest, Yitzhak tightened his grip and lifted his free hand. “Over here!” he yelled, waving to catch the attention of a Universal Force patrol in the distance. “I’ve found a pair of resisters!”
Sarah cast one last longing look at the chicken, then gave Yitzhak a swift kick below the knee. Howling, he went down like a shot dog, and Sarah took Rachel’s hand. “Hurry,” she cried, tugging hard on the woman’s arm. “We can lose them in this crowd.”
Rachel took three steps, then cried out and fell. Sarah stared, horrified, and saw that Yitzhak had grabbed the woman’s ankle and pulled her down to the ground.
“Go!” Rachel cried, looking up at Sarah with wide eyes. “Remember what I told you! Now go!”
Too frightened to think further, Sarah ran.
TWENTY-FIVE
IN A SECRET SUBTERRANEAN VAULT, SARAH AND ISAAC sat with a handful of other Jewish resistance members and quietly mourned Rachel Levison’s loss. They had learned of her death only an hour before, when one of the small errand boys had witnessed the most recent transfer of prisoners. The boy, barely nine years old, stood in the circle of adults and described Rachel Levison perfectly. With tears in his eyes, he said that she had limped bravely to the prison truck, then collapsed to the ground, her hand clutching at her shoulder. “They said she was dead,” the boy said, shifting his gaze from Isaac to Sarah. “A heart attack. She just lay there in the street, not moving.”
“They said she was a criminal.” Yusef Levison groaned and pulled on the tufts of white hair that grew from the sides of his head. “My Rachel, a criminal? They could not convince even this innocent child of such a thing! But now they have killed her, and she never did wrong to anyone.”
Sarah watched silently as her father came forward to embrace the older man. “At least,” her father said, placing his hands on Yusef’s shoulders, “she will be among the martyrs. We have read their story, Yusef. We know they are with Jesus and waiting for us in heaven.”
Sarah pulled her shawl around her shoulders and sat down. Despite Isaac’s attempt to encourage them, she could feel discouragement and defeat seeping through the chamber like a fog. So many of their friends were missing . . . as was Lily, who had slipped through the fence around the safe house garden and did not return. Sarah wanted to go back to their house to see if Lily had found her way home, but Isaac warned her it was too dangerous.
Isaac sat, too, as did most of the others. The underground chambers and tunnels, hewn out of stone so many generations ago, seemed to fill with preternatural silence. From one of the other chambers Sarah heard the ghostly chatter of a laptop keyboard, but stillness reigned in the small room where she and her friends had gathered.
Isaac pulled a battered Bible from an inside coat pocket. He had begun to carry it with him at all times, like the pistol he used to carry so long ago.
“I read something the other day,” he said, his gaze moving around the room and resting for a moment on each face. “Jesus was talking, and Matthew recorded his words. The odd thing is that Jesus was talking about the last days—these last days. His words were so clearly applicable to what we’re going through that I can’t believe no one ever pointed them out to me.”
No one spoke, but several people shifted their positions in order to look at Isaac as he opened the Bible. Sarah noticed that Ephraim Ben-David tilted his head to gain a better perspective of his son.
“Jesus’ disciples had asked him for signs that would reveal the end of the age,” Isaac said, introducing the passage. “And Jesus replied that first they would hear of false christs, wars and rumors of wars, and earthquakes in various places. Then he said, ‘“Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because of your allegiance to me. And many will turn away from me and betray and hate each other. And many false prophets will appear and will lead many people astray. Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold. But those who endure to the end will be saved. And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then, finally, the end will come.
“‘“The time will come when you will see what Daniel the prophet spoke about: the sacrilegious object that causes desecration standing in the Holy Place”—reader, pay attention! “Then those in Judea must flee to the hills. A person outside the house must not go inside to pack. A person in the field must not return even to get a coat. How terrible it will be for pregnant women and for mothers nursing their babies in those days. And pray that your flight will not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For that will be a time of greater horror than anything the world has ever seen or will ever see again. In fact, unless that time of calamity is shortened, the entire human race will be destroyed. But it will be shortened for the sake of God’s chosen ones.”’”
Sarah’s mind, lulled by the even pitch of Isaac’s voice, exploded into sharp awareness. How terrible it will be for mothers nursing their babies . . . Binyamin would have been older than a nursing baby, but she could not imagine dragging a child through the dangers she and Isaac had endured in the last few days. Providing for Lily was difficult enough; how could she have ever managed with a child?
She closed her eyes, knowing in her innermost heart that she would have done anything, including joining the Universal Faith Movement, to create a safe haven for her son. And as a result, she and Isaac and Binyamin would have followed Romulus into eternal damnation.
She swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat and looked again at her husband. God had been merciful to take Binyamin when he did. The baby had gone to heaven, where she and Isaac would be reunited with him. She could not see the hand of the Holy One in the tragedy before this moment, but she could clearly see it now.
Isaac paused and skimmed over several sections with his fingertip. “There’s more here, about how no one knows exactly when the Lord will return to put an end to the suffering, but that’s not what I wanted to show you—ah, here it is.”
He lifted his Bible and held it in a stream of light coming from a high vent cut into the wall above. “‘But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those on the right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”
“‘Then these righteous ones will reply, “Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?” And the King will tell them, “I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.”’”
The keyboard clatter from the other room ceased, and Sarah smiled as two others joined the circle to listen.
“‘Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, “Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons! For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.”’”
Isaac looked up and surveyed the room. Sarah saw confusion and wonder mingled with affection on several faces. They liked Isaac, they wanted to believe him, but they weren’t certain what he wanted of them . . .
Isaac let the silence stretch, lifting his head only when the quiet was broken by the soft popping sounds of a little girl wearing flip-flops in the hall.
“The Christians,” Isaac began, looking first at his father, “the believers, the born-agains, the Messianic Jews, whatever you want to call them—they were taken up in the Disruption. Romulus ha
s said that only the people whose hearts were hardened beyond redemption were eliminated—well, in a way he was right. Those people belonged to Jesus, they were the bride of Christ, and so they were spared from the judgment we are now enduring. But we have been spared, too. Though we are suffering, this is nothing compared to the suffering that awaits those who will join Romulus and worship him in the future. They and the entire planet will soon feel the wrath of God in a way it has never been demonstrated before.”
“Are you telling me that things will get worse?” Yusef Levison lifted his trembling head. “I cannot live through much more, Isaac Ben-David. If the Master of the Universe is compassionate, he would not do this to his people.”
“God is compassionate, and he has been patient for generations.” Isaac’s voice broke with gentleness. “But we have been blinded by our laws and our own efforts to reach him. Don’t you see? We wanted a triumphant king, not a suffering savior. We wanted a man who could work miracles for the nation, not a God in flesh who could work miracles in individual hearts. The prophets spoke clearly of him, but we confused his two appearings—the first, when he came to die, and the second, when he will come to reign.”
“What about those who believe Romulus is the mashiach?” Ephraim Ben-David tossed the question to his son. “You have to admit, Isaac, he fits the profile almost perfectly.”
“Too perfectly.” Isaac tapped the open Bible in his hand. “But he will soon reveal his true colors. Jesus and Daniel both told us that he would set an abomination in the Holy Place— and I believe the abomination is a statue of himself. It’s only a matter of time before he stops the daily sacrifices and demonstrates that while he pretends to love Israel, he truly hates us. He has been rounding up our people and imprisoning them without mercy—he is as ruthless as Hitler, and soon his evil will be even more evident. Soon all those who remain in Jerusalem will have to flee. We can’t hide in these tunnels much longer.”
“Where shall we go?” The question came from a young woman Sarah had never seen before. She sat next to Thomas Parker, and her brown eyes moved from Isaac’s face to his. “Where will we be safe?”
The Spear of Tyranny Page 23