Bloodline

by Alan Gold

  Quietly, and looking at the floor, Bilal asked, “How do you know I’ll be safe, Imam? Where will you take me that’s safe? I can’t go back to my parents’ home, so where will I go? Egypt? Jordan? How will you get me out of the country?”

  The questions took the imam by surprise and Hassan took a small step backward.

  “You doubt and question me? You’ve sworn an oath in the name of Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, that you would obey, not question. Why would you doubt me?”

  Bilal didn’t answer but found himself staring at Hassan, and for the first time since he had arrived Hassan didn’t avert his gaze.

  “What has happened to change you, my son? You forget yourself. Too long in the company of the infidel,” the imam said. His voice was quiet and confident.

  Bilal’s eyes slowly left Hassan’s and he faced the imam.

  “The doctor saved my life when the Jew soldiers shot me. She may be an infidel, but by custom, and all that you have taught me, is my life not now hers?”

  “Bah!” The imam waved a dismissive hand at the suggestion. “You were not saved, Bilal. A martyr is not saved when his martyrdom fails because of the enemy.”

  But Bilal was not deterred and a stoic tone rose in his throat. Hassan took a step back, frightened and confused by the Bilal in front of him, so unrecognizable from the childhood friend he knew.

  “And she saved my life again when she helped me escape from the prison. There were people who would have killed me in the prison. Muslims! Muslims would have murdered me. Yet, she saved me.”

  “What nonsense is this, Bilal?” The imam’s voice changed to anger. “What is making you say these things?”

  “I have been told—”

  “Who has told you? What have they said?” the imam snapped.

  Imam Abu Ahmed bin Hambal stared deeply into the eyes of the boy who’d once been his acolyte, his willing puppet. In that moment he knew that the boy had changed irrevocably and had to be dealt with immediately. He had converted from being a shahid to being a traitor.

  “Hassan, end this now,” demanded the imam in gruff and commanding tones, the voice of a man used to being obeyed.

  Bilal turned his gaze to his friend and saw that Hassan showed no sign of surprise at the order from his imam. Yet, Hassan did not move.

  “End it now!” bellowed the imam.

  * * *

  73 CE

  SAMUEL THE MERCHANT looked at the doors to the synagogue and was surprised to see his wife, Sarah, standing there, framed in the brilliant light. He couldn’t see her face, dark against the light, but he knew from her shape that it was her.

  “Wife?”

  “Samuel. I’ve come to spend some moments together with you, in the peace of the synagogue, and in the presence of Adonai Elohim, our God Almighty.”

  He stood and reached out his hands toward her, but instead of taking them, she hugged him in a close and loving embrace. But when she looked closely at his face, she could see that he’d been crying.

  “Husband. What’s wrong?” she said softly.

  “Dearest wife. My lovely Sarah. There are things I must tell you. Things I have done in the past of which you don’t know. Things that touch upon my acts toward Abraham, your beloved husband, and you and your children.

  “Sarah, years ago, when I was a friend of the Romans, I—”

  But she put her fingers to his lips and stopped him from talking. “Samuel. Husband. There are things that happened in the past that we can’t alter. These are things that we have to live with. But we are today, and we will be tomorrow and next year. We have children who came to us from others, and now we have our own child. The past is the past, husband. We have started our lives again. Ours is the future. Don’t let the past damage what we have, what we’ve built.”

  He looked at her with such love and tenderness, and tears rolled down his face.

  She continued. “Samuel. Husband. When we first married, I was not in love with you. I was still in love with my beloved Abraham. You were a friend, and as a widow with two children, I needed the protection of a friend. You were good to me, and I know that for two or three weeks after we were married I didn’t share my body with you, and you never once demanded your rights. For that I was more than grateful. I knew from that simple gesture that you were a kind man and that your heart was fond and loving.

  “And it was then that I opened my own heart to you and began to love you. Slowly at first, but more and more, and now, Samuel, now that you’ve paid for this beautiful synagogue in memory of Abraham, now that we ourselves have a glorious son called Abraham, I’ve come to tell you how much I love you and to thank you for being such a good and kind husband to me and a father to my children.”

  He hugged her and realized there and then that all would be well for them. “Sarah, my dear wife. You know how much I love and admire you, and for you I have built this synagogue in memory of your first husband. May this building, dedicated to the One True God, be a sanctuary for all time, a place of peace and harmony and loving-kindness.”

  Sarah nodded and said softly, “Amen.”

  November 8, 2007

  SPITZER LOOKED THROUGH the viewfinder on the rifle’s sight into the synagogue. He had a clear view and could easily kill the target now. He was settled in position, lying in a block of wasteland cordoned off from the road by rusted corrugated iron and elevated some three hundred yards from the Peki’in synagogue. Lying down on a blanket, staring through the high-intensity scope of his Israeli-made TEI M89SR sniper rifle, his view of the front half of the interior of the synagogue was more than adequate. Despite its use as a long-range killing weapon, the rifle was very short in length and easily slipped away into a sports bag. And this is exactly what Eliahu Spitzer would do when his task here was done.

  Eliahu lifted the rifle’s silencer out of the case and screwed it to the end of the barrel so that neither sound nor muzzle flash would be emitted. Then he brought the rifle back to his shoulder. The crisp black crosshairs of his telescopic sight drifted slowly and incrementally across the space of the synagogue so far away before him. Through the tunnel-vision image ringed in black, Spitzer heard and felt his own breath. Just before he squeezed the trigger, he’d hold his breath. Years of training compelled him to slow his pulse and let his muscles press into the ground beneath him.

  Opening his other eye briefly, he adjusted the dials on the scope and then returned to the tunnel vision of the crosshairs now drifting over the figures standing in conversation.

  He saw the imam, his head uncovered, wearing his long robes in stark contrast to the ragged jeans and jackets of the younger men. He saw the one who must be Hassan standing close by and facing the third figure: Bilal.

  Spitzer settled the gun sight, stopped its slow drift over the scene to come to a standstill over the head of Bilal. The crosshairs formed a perfect crucifix on the bridge of his nose.

  Spitzer’s lungs filled very slowly with air.

  * * *

  WITH A SLOW, DELIBERATE HAND and eyes never leaving Bilal, Hassan took out a small pistol from inside his loose jacket. Bilal physically shrank in retreat, and yet, as he looked at his friend, there was no shock or surprise in his expression.

  Hassan leveled the gun, and his hand shook but he quickly grasped the butt of the pistol with his other hand to steady it.

  “Hassan. You’re my brother,” said Bilal, with pleading in his eyes.

  “You betrayed us,” Hassan replied.

  “No. We’ve all been betrayed,” said Bilal, his voice more resigned than afraid.

  “I have to do what the imam tells me, Bilal. I swore an oath in the name of Allah.”

  “Why?” asked Bilal. “Why?”

  Hassan’s voice dried up and he couldn’t speak. The imam said menacingly, “Because you failed. We can have no patience with failures. You deserve to die because you put us at risk by your failure.”

  The imam turned to Hassan with cold, piercing eyes. “Hassan, kill
him!”

  Suddenly they heard footsteps on the stones leading up to the door. The imam turned at the intrusion and Hassan’s eyes flashed in surprise, but he didn’t lower the pistol and Bilal was rooted to the spot.

  Yael walked into the synagogue. She stared in shock at the three men standing there, but when she saw the gun, instinct made her try to stop what was happening.

  “Bilal!” cried Yael.

  For a long moment nobody said anything.

  * * *

  THE OPEN DOORS of the synagogue afforded Spitzer a perfect view of all of the players in the drama taking place. But then there was a flicker. Though the dark field of vision through the telescopic sight was constrained, showing little more than the head and shoulders of Bilal, the light in the room altered, causing the shadows over the young Palestinian’s face to shift.

  With a tiny movement of his forearm, Spitzer lifted the sight away from Bilal to drift over the space of the synagogue. It was amazing how much of the interior of the room he could see. The imam and Hassan remained fixed to the spot, but their gaze was diverted elsewhere in the room. Eliahu continued to guide the scope upward toward the subject of their gaze until the face of Yael, like a deer in headlights, filled the sight and behind her, soon after, emerged the figure of Yaniv.

  Eliahu lifted his left hand from the rifle and adjusted the telescopic sight to draw it back to a wider field of view so he could see everybody at once. The imam, Bilal, Hassan, Yael, and Yaniv Grossman, the journalist.

  “My God, what an odd congregation in a synagogue,” said Spitzer out loud, a wry smile on his face as he reflected on the hopes that he and the imam shared for the dismantlement of Israel.

  Eliahu Spitzer said a quick b’rucha under his breath as he rested the stock of the rifle against the side of his face. The task ahead seemed all too easy.

  * * *

  THE MOMENT YANIV followed Yael into the synagogue, he recognized the danger of their situation. He grasped her forearm and tried to drag her back through the door but she jerked free with a strength that surprised him.

  She was pleading with Hassan and the imam. “What do you want with him? Let him go?!” To her own ears the words sounded petty and worthless.

  “Hassan!” insisted the imam. But Hassan’s eyes flashed back and forth between Yael and Bilal, his hand trembling around the pistol in his grip.

  “Don’t! Don’t do this!” Yael’s voice was desperate as she walked closer to the three men. “Hassan. Remember in the café? You told me you couldn’t kill me. Remember? Don’t do this to Bilal. He’s your best friend. Please.”

  “Yael!” Yaniv was behind her, trying to pull her to safety.

  “Hassan! Kill them. Shoot!” the imam demanded. But Hassan didn’t . . . couldn’t. Nor could he move as he and Bilal stared at each other, wide-eyed.

  The imam let out a guttural grunt. He snatched the pistol from Hassan’s hand and pointed it at Yael.

  Yael froze in sudden horror as she stared into the hollow barrel of the gun.

  “You’re a priest. A man of God!” she gasped, her body rigid as stone.

  “Jew! What do you know of God?”

  In that instant a part of the imam’s head suddenly detached from his body and flew sideways toward the Ark of the Covenant. One second Yael was looking at the imam’s face, seeing him sneer with the pistol in his hand; the next she stared into part of his skull, his bloodied brain exploding and splattering against the synagogue’s walls. His brain liquefied like jelly and sprayed over the ceiling, the walls, and the floor. Dollops of the imam’s brain hit Yaniv and Yael. Both of them looked on in astonishment.

  There was no noise of a gunshot, just the clattering of the pistol to the floor and the strangely wet smack of the imam’s body crumpling to the floor. For a fraction of a moment nobody moved.

  Then Hassan broke the stupefied silence as he fell to his knees in front of the near-headless body of his imam. He put his hand on the chest of the cleric as if feeling for a heartbeat. Yael looked on, her doctor’s mind unconsciously considering the absurdity of such a gesture. Then, still stunned and her head spinning, she saw Bilal crouch in front of his friend and grab Hassan’s wrist, trying to yank him back to his feet.

  “Run, Hassan. Run!” Bilal cried as he hauled Hassan back to his feet. The two childhood friends stood staring at each other for a moment. Hassan then opened his mouth to speak but there was a small percussive thud. Instead of words, blood poured out of Hassan’s mouth as he slumped into Bilal’s arms.

  Another bullet suddenly splintered the wood of a pew close to Yael and she flung herself sideways onto the floor. Her sudden drop in height meant the next bullet flew through the space where she had once been and exploded the plaster on the wall behind, mere inches from Yaniv, who in turn threw himself onto the floor.

  Yael looked up and out through the open doors of the synagogue into the bright, glaring Israeli sun. For a moment she was dazed by the light, her eyes squinting. She heard the sound of running feet but whether it came from behind or in front of her she couldn’t say. Blinded and blinking, she pushed herself onto her knees as a shadow fell over her and the glaring light dimmed for a moment. Widespread arms wrapped around her and pushed her to the ground, knocking the air from her lungs in a squelching gasp as she heard again the same strange damp percussive thud as her head hit the floor. Feeling the weight on her, she opened her eyes to see Bilal’s face inches from her own.

  His mouth was straight, not contorted. His eyes were open but not focused. The muscles around his brow and his jaw were slack, his lips close enough to kiss.

  “No!” came a cry from somewhere that seemed far away. “Bilal?” Yael screamed.

  The young man’s body slid sideways off her and his eyes dimmed in death as the bullet exploded in his back and shattered his heart.

  When he had slid from her, she suddenly felt a searing pain in her body. Her head hurt from when it had hit the floor, but it was the radiating pain that coursed through her, from her shoulder and across her chest, that worried her. As a doctor, she tried to analyze why she was in pain. She put her hand to her chest and it came away bright red with blood. Her blood and Bilal’s blood, mixed together. The bullet that killed Bilal was now lodged in her.

  Yael screamed. The high ceiling of the synagogue swirled above her. Two muscular arms slid under her shoulders and she felt herself drifting backward.

  And then silence.

  * * *

  SPITZER LOOKED THROUGH the scope and realized that the scene was hopelessly compromised. He cursed under his breath. He hadn’t seen the doctor and the reporter coming, and five targets made for a much-too-complex kill zone. But he was a patient man; he knew for certain that three had been taken and the rest would have to wait for another day.

  He picked up the spent shells from the rifle, carefully unscrewed the scope and silencer, and packed everything away into the small case. He stood, shook his blanket, which he’d dump into a trash can on the way back to Jerusalem, and paused for a moment, wondering. Unlike amateurs, who would run like scared rabbits from such a scene and be noticed by passersby, Eliahu was a professional. It would be hours before anybody came to where he was to examine a possible sniper’s location, and so he waited there for a few minutes, pondering his next move.

  He then walked toward his car, threw everything into the trunk, and drove cautiously along the narrow, twisting streets out of the village. The image of the despoiled synagogue bothered him, but there was nothing he could do about that. He said another b’rucha as he drove along the road to Nahariya, then south to Jerusalem.

  As he drove, in his mind’s eye he could see the face of Rabbi Telushkin, could feel the aging man’s comforting hand on his shoulder and hear his voice, which always seemed so lyrical that every sentence was a chanting prayer. The rabbi would be proud of the work he had done this day.

  * * *

  FEW PATIENTS WERE MORE used to hospitals and their routines than Yael Cohen. She knew mo
st of the nurses in Nahariya’s main hospital and all of the doctors, and had walked this very ward a hundred times when she was a surgeon operating here.

  After the massacre in the synagogue, she’d been brought by ambulance, unconscious, with a rising temperature from the infection that the lodged bullet was causing her. As a shooting casualty, she was immediately wheeled into the triage section and examined by an intern. But when a terrified and profoundly distressed Yaniv Grossman had explained who the patient was and her relationship to the hospital, a call had immediately been made to the hospital’s director, the thoracic surgeon Fadi Islam Suk.

  Though he was in a meeting with a man from the Health Ministry, Fadi leapt from his seat and ran at full speed down the four flights of stairs to the emergency room. He strode into the cubicle where Yael was being examined and looked at her pale, almost lifeless face.

  “Dear God,” he said, turning and barking instructions at the ward nurse. “Get Raoul the anesthetist to prep for surgery; get the operating theater ready—find one that’s sterilized. Now. Immediately.”

  He turned to the intern and barked, “What’s happened to her? How did this happen?”

  Standing just outside the drawn curtains, Yaniv entered and spoke to Fadi. He explained who he was and that Yael had been the victim of a sniper shooting in nearby Peki’in.

  Fadi nodded. “Are you her brother? Who are you?”

  “No . . . I’m just a . . .” But the Palestinian doctor didn’t let Yaniv finish.

  “Okay, look, she’s been shot in the upper thorax but her blood pressure isn’t weak, which is a good thing; it means that no major blood vessels were hit. But I won’t know until we get her into surgery.”

  Then Fadi took charge. Within half an hour of her arriving at the emergency room, the Palestinian surgeon was operating on Yael, tracing the path of the gunshot and opening only as much of her chest as he needed to to expose the bullet so that he could remove it. It had torn much of the surrounding muscle but hadn’t fractured any bones or severed any important blood vessels. Yael was young and strong and healthy; she could fight the infection. Fadi rarely prayed, but as his hands worked and the sweat beaded on his brow, he said a silent prayer to Allah beneath his surgical mask. And one to Yahweh just in case.