The Flaming Sword

by Breck England

  With a roar of sliding gravel, the red car appeared again and rounded the corner, speeding off toward the south. Maryse caught only an impression of Ari; he was in a dark shirt and sunglasses. He was undoubtedly headed home. “And still carrying all my things,” she thought. She wished she had stopped at the car long enough to get her GeM and backpack.

  She came out of her hiding place and wondered what to do next. She knew Kane would be looking for her; it was a matter of finding a phone.

  Maryse recognized it before she saw it—the clanging noise of a diesel engine, of a kind she hadn’t heard in years. Down the road came a big blue van streaming smoke, its gears growling down as it slowed into the petrol station, shedding people who leaped off and crowded toward the little grocery. She couldn’t count the number of people wedged inside, squirming to get free if only for a breath of air. The shopkeeper shouted greedily at the people flooding into the store for juice and water; they were saturated in sweat.

  Maryse greeted the driver as he jumped from the cab, swabbing his face with a towel.

  “Refugees from Metulla. On our way south.”

  “What’s the news?” Maryse asked.

  The driver looked at her incredulous. “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve been under a rock.”

  Looking at her, he realized he should answer. “This morning the army mobilized all along the Lebanese border—north of here. We left with what we are wearing. No more. We will not sit here to be blown up by Hezbollah rockets.”

  “Jerusalem?”

  “As close as we can get. Let’s go,” he shouted, walking toward the crowd. For the first time, Maryse noticed children. “We may not have much time.”

  “This heat is brutal,” he muttered, to her and to himself, as he pulled open his cab door and wrenched a bottle of water from under the seat. People, mostly families with children, packed themselves back inside while some climbed to the top of the ancient van and others stood on a running board and held onto the frames of the windows.

  The engine snarled to life again. Spotting a space on the running board, Maryse leaped for it, and a young man in patched fatigues, his eyes streaming in the sandy wind, grasped her hand to steady her. “Thanks!…Toda!” she shouted over the noise. He grinned at her and turned his face away from the wind. Maryse hung onto an empty window frame and tried to shield herself from the flying dust that scoured her bare legs and arms. There was nothing for it but to hold on.

  The hills of Galilee looked black to her burning eyes, heaps of coal shrouded in the particulate heat. It was as if the destruction had already come. Once she turned to look ahead, but hot dust blinded and choked her.

  “Look backward,” said the youth standing next to her. He had red hair and a face patched with dirt. “If you try to look ahead, you’ll be sorry.”

  Too late for that advice, she thought. When she opened her eyes again, she could see round hillocks by the roadside and knew them to be tells, ancient sites that had never been excavated—the oddly smooth graves of whole towns built one upon the other until the impulse to build was exhausted. She visualized a mountain of bones and potsherds under the skin of sand.

  By one of the tells, the bus slowed and stopped. The driver climbed out with a tank of water in hand and thrust open the engine.

  “He has to add water to the radiator,” the red-haired man explained.

  It felt good to let go of the window frame. The men holding onto the bus with her stepped off and groaned, massaging their shoulders and legs. Maryse felt like collapsing on the ground, and her new friend held up an arm as if to catch her. “Do you have a mobile phone?” she asked him.

  “Right here.”

  “I’ll pay for the use of it,” she said, although she didn’t know how she would.

  “No need,” he replied, handing her a grimy, sweat-moistened GeM from his pocket, and walked off toward the tell with the other men.

  Knowing Kane’s secure number paid off—he answered her call immediately. No hello. “What happened? Where are you?” he demanded to know. She briefed him quickly.

  “Stay with the bus. I’ll send help.” And he rang off.

  The bus beeped, and the dust-caked passengers clambered back onto the running board. A grizzled little man was hanging on with an old Galil assault rifle strapped over his back and extra magazines jingling from a belt across his chest. The red-haired youth jeered at him as he climbed on next to Maryse.

  “Are you going to shoot the rockets down with that, old man?”

  Maryse thanked him for the use of his GeM and grabbed hold of the window frame.

  “Another hour,” he shouted over the grating noise as the engine ignited, and they were off again at what seemed like high speed, although Maryse knew they would never go much faster than fifty kilometers per hour.

  Around them, the land became flatter and the humidity increased. As the wind slackened, scrubby desert plants gave way to cornfields and orchards of wilted olive trees. In the distance, Maryse could see mountains floating as if on clouds on the horizontal plain. She knew those heights looked down on the valley of Armageddon, which lay all around her, as peaceful as an Irish dale except for the noise of the bus.

  Now that there was less wind, she could hear the moaning of the children inside and the quick, repetitive scraping of the wheels beneath her feet. In her arms and shoulders, the bones ached and the muscles began to sting from holding onto the window frame. She didn’t know how much longer she could continue. In the old days it wouldn’t have been a problem. But she was older now; her body hurt, her skin felt like sand and metal. The pain was wearying.

  Then a sign: “Afula, 15 km.” A cheer rose from inside the bus.

  “We’ll be safe at Afula,” the red-haired man shouted. “The rockets won’t get that far.”

  Then she could see off to the right a white line, oddly symmetrical, tracing the horizon and thickening the closer they came.

  “The West Bank wall,” he shouted again. “Keeps the crazies inside.”

  It was a long concrete barrier that stretched to the south as far as she could see. For years it had kept things quiet by separating Palestinians from Israelis. Beyond it was a world of hopelessness, villages of exiles in a permanent limbo that was both physical and mental.

  “That’s odd.”

  “What?” Maryse wasn’t sure she had heard.

  Nodding his head, the red-haired man was staring at something. Then she could see it; a huge vehicle like a black bull astride the road at an angle. All at once the bus brakes clanged and shivered, and they rolled to a stop.

  “What’s going on?”

  Men inside the bus moved to the front, and Maryse could see the bus driver peering down the road. Half a kilometer at least separated them from the vehicle barring the way—clearly, the driver didn’t want to get any closer.

  Maryse stepped down and was urged back. “You don’t want them to see you,” the young man hissed at her. “If it’s who I think. See? Behind their vehicle?”

  Nearly blinded by the sun on the plain, Maryse saw still figures in the distance, like black posts with horizontal white bands across their heads. They were like impressions on photo film. A pillar of dust rose up behind them, clouding the unceasing line of the West Bank wall.

  A rustle, and instantly a man carrying a rifle appeared from the canebrake at the side of the road. Over his black mask he wore a strip of cloth marked with Arabic lettering. He stood at attention like a soldier and, aiming his weapon at the little man with the Galil, motioned for him to put down the gun.

  The little Jew rubbed his stubbled face for a moment, then cautiously unstrapped the Galil from his back and deposited it on the ground.

  As he straightened up, the masked man pulled the trigger of his gun. Surprised, the little man grasped his chest and fell back against the bus.

  Maryse j
umped to hold him and inspected the wound, digging the heel of her hand into the sucking hole that appeared in his shirt. After a shout of horror from the bus, there was an instant of stillness and then the shooter came forward to pick up the Galil. He mumbled at Maryse in English, telling her to get away from the dying man. She shook her head and looked up into the barrel of a rusting Kalashnikov.

  It was no more than a reflex, she concluded later—five years of Interpol training hammered into her brain. She grabbed the barrel and thrust it right, pivoting at the same instant to the left and springing with full body force into the man’s chest. His head thumped the ground as he went down. She flipped the gun around and leaped back toward the bus, keeping him in her sights and well away.

  The red-haired man snorted with laughter and took her place at the dying Jew’s side.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Former IDF medic.” He blocked the chest wound with his palm and breathed calmly into the man’s mouth. “Loved it,” he said, looking up at her admiringly. “Just loved it.”

  Maryse’s staccato breathing slowed a bit as she realized what she had done.

  “Where did you get your training?” the young man pressed. “You know, you have us to thank for it.”

  “What do you mean?” she muttered, holding the terrorist firmly in her gunsight.

  “Krav Maga. Israeli Defense Force stuff. For taking guns away. But I’ve never seen anyone use it in a real fight.”

  Intensive afternoons under hot lights at the Interpol school. Aikido, Brazilian judo, Krav Maga. It all swept back into her memory—the knowledgeable shredding of the opponent’s joints and muscles, the science of killing with a minimum of exertion, the rational practice of disarming the irrational.

  “So. What next, Sergeant-Major?” he laughed.

  Despite herself, she let out a laugh too, and just as quickly realized how incongruous it sounded. She would not take her eyes off the terrorist, who still lay where he fell. The mask made it impossible to know for sure, but his short quick breathing told her he was conscious. Still, she felt the eyes of everyone in the bus on her. Then the driver was at her side.

  “Why?” she gasped. “The poor old man laid down the weapon. Why shoot him anyway?”

  “That’s why they’re called terrorists,” the driver said. “They terrorize.”

  “What now?” she asked the driver.

  He was silent for a moment and looked over his shoulder down the road. “As long as we stay quiet here, they’ll assume their man is in charge.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I can tell you that,” the red-haired man spoke up again. “Saladin Brigades. I know them by the headband. Lost a brother to them,” he said with an odd smile. “They have a long, long, long history of raiding up and down this valley. They find a weakness in the wall, they’re over it like a shot, and back again before we know it.”

  “That means they can’t afford to stay round,” Maryse said. “What do they want?”

  “I don’t know. If they wanted somebody like us, they’d have taken us by now,” the driver ruminated. “But they seem to be focused quite in the opposite direction.” He bent over and picked up the Galil.

  Gunfire clattered like gravel flung in the distance.

  “They’ve got someone cornered. There’s a red car turned over by the roadside, and they’re very interested in it.”

  Her eyes tightened. “Red? Mercedes?”

  “Difficult to tell, but I think so. A red Mercedes hybrid.”

  An explosion ripped the air. Already wailing from heat, the children on the bus screamed.

  “From the sound, I’d say a regulation hand grenade,” the red-haired man said, looking up at Maryse. “Wouldn’t you, Sergeant-Major? About a hundred meters off?”

  The bus driver cursed quietly.

  “Look,” Maryse lowered her voice, keeping both eyes trained on the terrorist who lay baking on the ground. “I’m a police officer. Interpol.”

  “I wondered how you knew what to do with that fellow,” the driver muttered, nodding at the man on the ground.

  She went on. “Get on the phone to the police. If you’ll hold him here, I’ll go see what’s going on.”

  “Better not go. They’ve already got a target; and we can hope they won’t want us. Let them finish and leave, and we’ll send this one off with them. I have women and children to consider.”

  “I’m sorry, but the red Mercedes is important. I’ve got to go.”

  The driver looked at her curiously. “If you must. We’ll keep the Galil on this one.” The red-haired man grasped it quickly. “Take that,” the driver handed Maryse the Kalashnikov, and she ran into the hills.

  Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem, 1003h

  When the camera shop opened, Amal al-Ayoub was waiting. Few people walked along the normally crowded street, and Amal felt conspicuous. He wondered why the street was deserted; perhaps it was the panic, perhaps it was that the Jews’ holy day was approaching. As soon as the shop man unlocked the door, Amal slithered inside.

  “I need to buy film,” he announced in English. “For a camera.”

  The burly old man who kept the shop stared back at him.

  “What kind of film?”

  “I told you. Film. For a camera.”

  The shop man scraped his jowls with the back of his hand. He was not very clean. A Jew, Amal thought. Another Jew.

  The man pointed to a dust-encrusted glass case at the back of the shop. Inside the case were many small boxes, yellow and green mostly, warped and faded with age.

  “Not many people buy film. Only photographers—the professionals. And I keep the good film locked away for them. Are you a photographer?” He peered at Amal through sleepy eyes.

  “Yes,” Amal lied. “Of course.”

  Again, the old man rubbed hesitantly at the stubble on his face, then decided to unlock the case. Amal stood in front of the case and pretended to study each small box carefully; at last he pointed to a box that looked particularly old and dusty.

  “That’s very fast film,” the shop man sighed as he extracted it. “Are you sure it’s what you want?”

  Amal did not know nor care how fast it was—only that it was old. He gave the man the money and nearly ran from the store.

  And there was the bus waiting for him on the corner; his luck was in. He had everything now, everything he would need to inflict quick justice.

  Amal boarded the bus and closed his eyes. In his mind he re-lived the funeral he had just left behind. He had been pleased at the huge crowd that accompanied Nasir’s body to the grave, not just for the honor shown his family but also for the chance of hiding in the swarm of people with their noisy crying. For himself, he could no longer cry—his face was parched from it. Even in this heat, his eyes felt cold from crying.

  The body of his brother had not been washed, nor had the mournful prayers been said at the mosque, because Nasir was a martyr. The body was brought to the cemetery as it had been received, then wrapped three times in white linen for burial. The crowd fell quiet as Hafiz advanced to take his son’s body from the hearse. Amal had not been able to look at his father, whose grizzled face had gone white with weakness and who had to be supported by the men from the mosque. Amal had kept his eyes on the corpse and shouldered it along with the other mourners as they made their way to the hole in the pale earth where Nasir would lie, his face toward the holy of holies in Mecca.

  Then, at the moment of burial, an unnatural silence came over the crowd as if they had stopped breathing and their hearts had stopped beating. Amal looked up to see a group of men, portly and with graying, short-cut beards, walking from the road toward the party. They were dressed almost identically in sand-colored suits, and each wore the round white turban of an imam. Amal had never seen them before.

  The crowd fell back i
n unuttered respect for these men as they advanced and formed a circle around the grave. Amal was startled when his father took his place as if at the head of the circle. The men began to chant softly.

  In the name of Allah and in the faith of the messenger of Allah.

  It was time to lower the body into the grave. Amal helped the others position Nasir on his right side, and the men in the circle picked up earth and dropped it gently on the body, muttering prayers as they did so. They withdrew immediately, walking back to the road the way they came, and Amal heard the sound of their vehicles as they pulled away from the cemetery.

  Then the keening of the crowd began again; men Amal knew from the neighborhood, as well as men—a little better dressed—whom he had never seen, came forward to embrace him. All at once Amal found in his arms the one he was hoping to find—the one they called al-Muhandis, the Engineer. They had hugged immediately, as if the angels had driven them together in the crowd.

  They had not seen each other for many months, even though Amal had walked up the road through the Damascus Gate to visit al-Muhandis many times in the Old City over the years since his adoption. When his uncle abandoned him, he had slept in the house of al-Muhandis, a boy just a little older than himself. It was al-Muhandis who had taught him how to extract toll from the foolish tourists at the Lion Gate. He also enjoyed the chemical tricks al-Muhandis did with gunpowder from shells and a little white fertilizer from the garden shops; moreover, he knew that al-Muhandis had gone on to more impressive, more covert tricks—the kind played on Israeli targets. That’s why he was called the Engineer.

  There were many boys like him—perhaps hundreds—who called themselves engineers in honor of the fabled Palestinian technician who had invented the martyr’s vest, ingeniously embedded with dynamite to send hundreds of Jews to their deaths and the martyr to Paradise. But al-Muhandis was unique: his weapons were dead grass and fertilizer and plastic bags and chunks of paraffin. And he had joked with Amal, months before, about a type of bomb he had used to set fire to an Israeli guardpost. It was so easy, he had said. For that, Amal had wanted to find him today.