It was the Mahdi. He turned and started climbing the stairs to the top of the Kaaba. Three old men came through the doors and followed him up the stairs. In a glance Krebs saw that Isaac Rehv was not one of them. He recognized the king of the Saudis, the president of Egypt, and the shah of Iran. They wore simple white robes like the Mahdi’s.
Rising onto the balls of his feet, Krebs stared into the shadows beyond the golden doors, straining to glimpse a fourth man. No Isaac Rehv. A man in a skullcap pulled the doors closed.
Now, for the first time, Krebs doubted. Perhaps Rehv was dead, after all. Or he had gone mad and disappeared. He had felt the madness in him that night in Kordofan. What would he do if Rehv did not appear? Go back? To what? He had nothing to go back to. And even if he had, there was no going back now, because of Fairweather.
The Mahdi reached the top of the stairs and walked slowly across the top of the Kaaba. In the center he stopped and looked about him at the crowd. His face was cold, but his eyes burned. It seemed to be what they wanted. They began to roar.
The king of the Saudis, the president of Egypt, and the shah of Iran stood behind him. They did not roar, but they tried to look happy. Krebs saw that the Mahdi ignored them completely. His burning gaze swept slowly over the roaring crowd. Everywhere liquid brown eyes adored him. Krebs felt himself being pressed forward, and saw the fear on the faces of the three old men on the Kaaba.
He knew Rehv had won.
Krebs pushed against the crowd. He was sick of its sweat, its smell, its roar. He wanted to go. The crowd pushed back. He jabbed his elbow into something soft. An elbow jabbed him. “Let me go,” he shouted. They squeezed him tighter. He thought of drawing his gun and shooting the Mahdi. He was an easy target. But there would be no point without Rehv there to see. On his own the Mahdi meant nothing to him. They squeezed.
He butted his head at the roaring face behind him. A hard foot kicked the back of his knee. It buckled, and he started to slip down to the ground. They would trample him. Wildly he clawed around him for something to grip. Cloth tore. Someone yelled. He regained his balance.
As he stood up he saw a commotion at the base of the Kaaba. Near the stairs the crowd surged together like a contracting muscle; heads rippled in a little wave; a man fell forward on the stairs. He was dressed like a pilgrim. After a moment he pulled himself up and began climbing the stairs. A hand reached out and spun him around. In that instant Krebs saw the pilgrim’s face. It was old and hollow and white-bearded, but it was Isaac Rehv’s.
He had been right. He had been right the whole time. All the others had been wrong—Armbrister, Bunting, Birdwell. The president. From the beginning he had done it by himself. From beginning to end. He slid his hand inside his jacket and pulled out the gun.
On the stairs Isaac Rehv jerked himself free, turned, and started walking up. Krebs let him get about halfway so he could fire over the crowd. Then he pointed the gun at the back of Rehv’s head. The crowd roared in his ears. He pulled the trigger.
Rehv staggered on the stairs; but he kept going. Krebs aimed again, a little higher. The back of Rehv’s head was suddenly huge: He would not miss. He wanted Rehv to know. “Isaac,” he shouted as loudly as he could. “I’m killing you. Me. Krebs.”
Someone knocked the gun from his hand. It bounced off his foot. He bent down to find it. Hands grabbed at him. “Stop it,” Krebs said. “I’m not shooting at your goddamned Mahdi. I’m shooting at Rehv.” He tried to think how to tell them in Arabic. Before he could, they tore him apart.
Isaac Rehv watched the golden doors open and saw his son step out of the shadows. His heart pounded. The air tingled around him. He felt light-headed and swayed forward. Someone shoved him back, hard. The air stopped tingling.
His son was climbing the black-and-gold stairs. He was no longer the boy he had left beneath the two baobab trees. He was a man, a big man: almost as big as Sergeant Levy. As he reached the top of the Kaaba and turned, Rehv peered at his face, scanning it for some vestige of the face of the boy who had said: “Dad, what if you can’t make it next week?” He did not see any.
But he was so far away. Rehv tried to push forward; he could not move at all. He pushed harder, as hard as he could. He squeezed forward a little way. He kept pushing. His breath began to wheeze in his throat. He was weak.
Across the top of the Kaaba his son walked with an easy, fluid power. He stopped and looked around him. In that look, in those burning eyes, Rehv saw that it was too late to go back, too late for a normal life. He saw the Mahdi.
But it was not too late to be near him. He pushed forward. Shoulders, elbows, knees, feet pushed him back. He pushed harder, panting with effort. Slowly he inched forward through the crowd.
For the first time he noticed the three old men standing on the Kaaba behind his son. He had never seen them before, but he knew who they were. Once he had lain on a camp cot far away and thought that there could only be an Israel if the Arabs gave it back; and gazed into red eyes, dreaming of warrior hordes. So he knew who the three old men were.
He no longer cared.
He was much closer now, close enough to see his son’s face very clearly. It was cold and calm—the face of a man who loves power. The face of the wolf he had loosed on the world. The sight of it made people roar like animals.
Rehv understood then that there was no point in asking forgiveness. His son would not want to hear that: He would want to thank him instead. But still Rehv wanted to be near him. He wanted to tell him he had not abandoned him that night under the baobab trees. Even more, he wanted to tell him to stop. Now. To stop loving power, to stop living death. He did not blame his son. He blamed himself. It was his duty to tell him, to make him listen.
Rehv strained against the crowd. It resisted him. He lowered his shoulder and pushed with all his strength. The crowd swore at him. It punched him and kicked him. He pushed. “I want to be with my son,” he shouted. Suddenly he fell forward, out of the crowd and onto the black-and-golden stairs that led to the top of the Kaaba.
Rehv lay panting on the stairs. The air tingled around him. He knew it was coming, the moment planned so long ago. But perhaps the cold dark man on the Kaaba would not say what his father had told him to say. Perhaps he believed he really was the Mahdi. That was more reason to stop him: not for the sake of a new Israel, but for his own sake, and the boy’s.
Rehv stood and started climbing the stairs. A hand clutched him. He jerked free and mounted another step.
Something bumped him in the back. What? A bullet. He knew it instantly, from long ago.
He stumbled and almost fell. Somewhere behind him a man screamed. He kept climbing. His back began to hurt. He wanted to lie down and rest it, to curl up, just for a little while, and sleep. Keep going. Three steps. Two steps. One more.
Rehv fell hard on the flat roof of the Kaaba. The sound was lost in the roaring, but his son must have felt the vibration in his feet. He turned and looked at him. “Paul, Paul,” Rehv tried to say. “Stop.” The words whispered in his throat but went no farther. Without a sign of recognition his son turned away. He did not know him.
Rehv took a deep breath. “Paul. It’s me. Your father.” No sound came. He tried to crawl to him, but could not move. “Paul.” His back hurt. The roaring filled his head. It sounded like the sea.
As his eyes began to close, he saw the Mahdi step forward and slowly raise his arms above his head. The roaring stopped at once. In the silence Isaac Rehv heard his blood dripping on the Kaaba. “Paul. Paul.”
Death reached up his spine.
Acknowledgments
many thanks to Ron Tysick
About the Author
Peter Abrahams is the author of thirty-three novels. Among his acclaimed crime thrillers are Hard Rain, Pressure Drop, The Fury of Rachel Monette, Tongues of Fire, Edgar Award finalist Lights Out, Oblivion, End of Story, and The Fan, which was adapted into a film starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes. Under the name Spencer Quinn, he writes the New
York Times–bestselling Chet and Bernie Mystery series, which debuted with Dog on It. Abrahams’s young adult novel Reality Check won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery in 2010, and Down the Rabbit Hole, the first novel in his Echo Falls Mystery series, won the Agatha Award for Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel in 2005.
Abrahams lives on Cape Cod with his family. Visit his website: www.spencequinn.com
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1982 by Peter Abrahams
Cover design by Barbara Brown
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1632-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Tongues of Fire Page 32