The Flaming Sword

by Breck England

  They left the cemetery together. Amal had not wanted to go home with his father, had not wanted to sit idle in the heat, the house filled with neighbors, mourning and doing nothing. As they walked through the gate, the women and girls from the town who had watched the funeral from the fence thronged, weeping, around him. It startled him; they looked at him as they had once looked at Nasir.

  Then, gratefully, he saw Rabia al-Adawi standing in the shade of a tree, away from the others. She approached and held out her hand to him. Behind her sunglasses her eyes were invisible, but he could tell she was examining al-Muhandis. Amal had taken her hand and thanked her for coming to the funeral.

  The bus driver’s voice jolted him back to the present.

  “We must stop here. Everyone off the bus.”

  The passengers moaned. An old man protested.

  “This bus has been requisitioned. For the evacuation.”

  Resigned, the old man led the way off the bus, which turned and hummed off toward the west without delay. Amal panicked; he did not know where he was nor how far he had to go. Once in the bright, sun-heated street, the other passengers scurried off like insects for shade, leaving Amal standing alone by the bus stop.

  His GeMscreen was unreadable in the sunlight, and he struggled to make out the path he needed to take from this location. Then a radiant purple arrow grew across the screen to show him the way; he clutched his plastic bag under his arm and started down the street in the direction of the arrow. It was unbelievably hot. For courage, he murmured the words the Imam had repeated so many times: Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. So many times he had chanted those words without feeling. Now he felt them swelling hard and strong inside his chest. The Day of Requital will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O servants of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

  He would cry if he thought of Nasir, so he tried not to think of him—of his rich white smile and the intelligence in his eyes. Nasir was gone, Father would soon die, and then he would be alone again. Hafiz had told him he had a mission. Whatever it was, it would be a lonely mission. It was now time to act, to stop playing boys’ games. He would start with the family of the man who had killed Nasir.

  He arrived at a little house encased in reptilian stucco. He had no idea if the people called Davan were inside; it didn’t matter, he would strike anyway. Looking around and seeing no one, he darted under a corner of the house and emptied the plastic bag on the ground. He removed the film from its case, attached it to the house with gum, and unspooled it until it dangled crackling from the corner to the ground. Then he opened a little tin. Inside was a whitish lump of wax, glistening wet in the sunshine. He dug one end of the film into the lump so that it would stay. Now the heat of the day would do the rest.

  That was all. For a moment he admired the simplicity of it; then he turned away.

  As he did so, two black electric cars rolled almost noiselessly up in the street and stopped. Startled, Amal began to run.

  “Amal!” It was the voice of Rabia al-Adawi. “Please stop.” He looked over his shoulder and saw her getting out of one of the cars. She was accompanied by two men in tan suits who had attended the funeral, only they had removed their turbans.

  “Come back,” Rabia called. Amal’s instinct was to keep running, but instead he stopped, turned, and walked mystified toward her. The strange little company waited silently for him.

  “This is not the way, Amal,” she said, reaching for his hands, clasping them tightly. “This is not your father’s way.”

  “But we have a mission. Slay the idolaters wherever you find them,” he whispered.

  “Requital is in the hand of Allah,” she whispered back. “You haven’t understood. You will have your part in it, but not like this.”

  She looked up as one of the men approached. He had examined the apparatus Amal had attached to the house. “White phosphorus…still wet,” the man said, his voice subdued. “Once dry, it combusts and sets the film on fire. A very intense fire.”

  “Remove it,” she said.

  The Western Wall, Jerusalem, 1025h

  Rachel Halevy bowed before the dusty yellow stone of the Western Wall and quietly began to cry. A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. Her Casha was no more, but she would soon follow her. It was her only comfort now.

  Scarved against the heat, elderly women surrounded her murmuring their t’khinet, the prayers of the women, for Israel, for their children, for their husbands, for the brassy sky overhead to be opened, and for refreshing rain from the Lord. She had never seen so many women here. The crisis had filled the square with supplicants, both male and female, and their keening swelled the air. On the northern side of the partition, a sea of kippehs; on Rachel’s side, a sea of scarves.

  Behind her, in a line of Army vehicles, soldiers waited silently for an event no one had defined for them. In their simplicity, they were ready. Just to the south, another line of soldiers guarded the entrance to the Temple Mount. How she would ascend the Mount she did not know, but she would do it. The Lord would do it, and there would be many witnesses.

  In the end, it is always the women who save Israel. Rachel, the wife of Israel, who gave her life for her child. Devorah the prophetess, who lured out the oppressor; and then Yael, the wife of Hever, who fixed the oppressor’s head to the earth with a stake. And Esther—always Esther, the savior of the people. Her own Casha. Rachel knelt and murmured the t’khine.

  May the Merciful Father in Heaven, in the power of His mercy, remember with mercy the devout, the righteous, the blameless one who gave her life to sanctify the Name, her who was beloved and pleasant in her lifetime, quicker than an eagle and stronger than a lion to do the will of her Creator.

  The strength of women, she thought, is in their stealth. Yael welcomed the goy general Sisera to her tent with a cup of milk and then impaled his head while he slept. Esther gave a banquet to entrap the evil one. Casha’s plan interlaced in secret the fortunes of the goyim with her husband’s physics—all to save Israel. Casha would not fail, for Rachel herself would weave her way through the soldiers as if unseen, carrying the undetectable weapon into the heart of the beast. And from that blinding moment, she would study Torah in paradise with the women, saviors of Israel.

  She raised her eyes to the wall and kissed the stone. It was the taste of gold to her. How beautiful is your tent, O Jacob—your dwelling, O Israel. Soon the hilltop above would be swept clean and ready for the House to be restored. It was time.

  She slowly worked her way through the crowd of women and found herself among men, hundreds of them, who had washed and put on white clothes for the prayers of the coming day of Atonement. Many were barefoot. They would neither eat nor bathe until the following night. By then, she hoped, the priests would have stepped forth, like Ezra of old among the ruins of sacrilege, to begin the cleansing of the temple.

  At length she stood at the foot of the arched bridge, facing the line of soldiers. She took a step, waiting for a sign. She had come as far as she could; now the Lord must do the rest. But the soldiers stared past her or joked nervously with each other as they watched the throng. She cast another silent prayer into the crowded air.

  And then the miracle. From behind the line of soldiers, a young uniformed man stepped forward. Smart in his peaked cap and loden-colored shoulder boards, his bony face concealed behind sunglasses, he brightened at the sight of her.

  “Rachel?” he asked.

  She nodded, her heart nearly crushing her with its beating. It was an angel, surely.

  “Come with me.”

  The barriers of soldiers parted like the sea and the young officer led her up the ramp. Slowly the blasphemous gold dome rose into view
as the surge of white-clad worshipers receded behind her. Fingering the freezing lump in her bag, she wondered if the young man was aware that God had sent him. He wore the badge of the lulav, the palm frond to be waved in thanksgiving to God on the feast of Sukkoth. She wondered what was in his mind, and what would happen next with each ascending step. And she wondered if her heart would burst in her body.

  At the top of the ramp, the officer politely motioned her inside the security gate and stepped to one side.

  After a lifetime lived at the foot of the Temple Mount, she had never climbed it before. Her pulse was blazing; the plain of sun-stricken white limestone blinded her; cypress trees towered like black flames before her eyes.

  “This way, please,” the officer said in a quiet voice. He gestured toward an empty guardpost that stood between two humming white pylons. She had passed the Flaming Sword! God had brought her through the gate. A whispered t’khine streamed from her heart.

  Through Your rich mercy I will enter Your House; I will bow to Your Holy Sanctuary in awe of You, O God. I love the House where You dwell, and the place where Your glory resides. I shall bow, I shall kneel before God my Creator. O God, in your rich mercy, you have answered my prayer with Your salvation.

  Jezreel Valley, Israel, 1035h

  Ari felt the sun melting the muddy sweat on his back as he crouched tight against the car. He had instinctively buried himself in dust to make a less visible target. They had attacked him exactly where he should have expected it—in the middle of a flat field with no cover. He had rolled out of the car into broken stubble the instant the windscreen flew apart from bullet fire. As they surrounded him, he took two men out. The burping of the Tavor alarmed the others and they retreated to their old Army Wolf that now blocked the road.

  Ari cursed himself for failing to notice the telltale plume of dust that signaled their approach, but they had come at him from a blind angle down a hill that was now behind them. He had been going too fast, too tense in his confusion. Silently he had crept back to the car, gambling they would not blow it up and create smoke they could not see through. There was not much choice; it was the only cover available. And then he was glad, because a grenade went off like a lightning stroke in the brush behind him.

  From their white headbands, it was a Saladin Brigade. He wondered why they would come for a lone old beater flailing down this road—usually they moved against high-value targets such as petrol tankers or machine transports. They were in the sabotage business, striking at the Israeli state like a venomous fly against a horse. The IDF stationed units along these northern roads for a time after every attack, but the Brigades simply waited until the units were pulled out.

  So why him? He looked over the tattered car, the tracery of his own blood on the windscreen. Why would they take the risk of coming out in the open for this? Unless, somehow, they knew about him. But they couldn’t…

  He glanced around the car at the bandits’ vehicle. It was all dusty black plates. He could see no one; but they were there. In the distance, children were crying in a bus the terrorists had stopped just in the line of sight. There was no escape. He couldn’t run. His GeM was buried in a bag inside the car, but the slightest movement would alert them. He only hoped that someone in the bus had had the chance to call for help.

  And then, with disbelief, he saw a woman on the hill behind the terrorists, a woman with a big assault rifle. Her white arms were visible for an instant as she dropped into the low brush.

  It was Maryse.

  How could she be here? What was she doing? Did she want the terrorists between them, or was she after him too? He looked at the ring he had slipped onto his black finger and for a moment wondered about the range of the Tavor.

  He buried his head by instinct at the flutter of an assault weapon. From the shouts in the distance, he knew it wasn’t the terrorists; Maryse was on his side.

  He risked a glance. Blasting away at the hill, the bandits were diving into the dust in his line of fire and he wasted no time. The Tavor snapped in his hands and two more of them leaped back, screaming.

  Now they knew where he was.

  They scoured the Mercedes with bullets. Ari burrowed into the roadbed, but knew he had only seconds.

  Another burst from the hill spared him. Assault-rifle fire glinted off the Brigade vehicle and drove the bandits back to the ground. Ari got off half a dozen shots before they recovered.

  But there were too many of them too eager to die.

  With a cry, they rose and charged him, guns flaring. Knowing they wore armor, he fired at the white bands on their heads and saw one of them rip open in a red slash. Another man, shoved forward by the automatic on the hill, crashed into the car and went limp.

  Then there was a sharp, disorienting blast from Ari’s right and another bandit fell down with shock on his face. Down the road a stranger rushed them, a redheaded man in old fatigues, a flood of fire pouring from a Galil he held waist high. The terrorists’ guns raked him across; smiling, he slid into the gravel of the road and was still.

  Abruptly, everything stopped. A harsh cry came from the vehicle and the remnants of the Brigade leaped into it. The machine growled to life and skidded backward, crushing the stranger’s body, then turned and fled into its own screen of white dust.

  Ari raised his head and saw floating up from the south a brace of helicopter gunships. One of them raced over his head in pursuit of the terrorists, guns and propellers cracking the sky while the other closed on him and hovered there. He shrank back under the shell of his car, keeping well out of sight until the helicopter landed a few meters away. Troops leaped from it and scattered before it was on the ground.

  Ari crept further under the car, keeping his eyes on the helicopter. At length a helmeted head slowly came upside down into view. “Ari?” asked a muffled voice from behind the flight visor.

  “I know you,” Ari grunted through a mouthful of dust. “You’re the one with the extraordinary nose, the one they call the Miner.”

  Plaza of the Western Wall, Old City, Jerusalem, 1310h

  Toad breathed in the heat and sat down on a stone bench to think. For the hundredth time, “No sign of her,” came over his earpiece. Impatiently, he cut off the chatter.

  Somewhere in this throng Rachel Halevy was lost, along with an ordinary-looking GeM that had the bizarre capability of turning into anything the owner asked for—including a volatile explosive. It was like Aladdin’s lamp, he thought, a talisman that could produce wonders or wreak disaster.

  What more could he do? He had thought of impounding every mobile phone in the square, but then realized the heat was affecting his thinking. He had seen her eyes and knew she would never give it up to anyone else. But she had come off the bus hours before and disappeared. Since then Kristall had been in his ear every few minutes: “Where is she? Do you have her? Do I have to come out there myself?” Scores of agents were searching the city with her picture, visiting every shop and house where Temple fanatics were known; female agents stood watch on the prayer wall.

  Now he had to think. From his perspective, the golden Dome of the Rock was just visible over the parapets of the prayer wall. He knew the Muslim security force known as the Waqf kept jealous watch on the shrine. Additionally, it had been guarded on all sides for the past twenty-four hours by lines of IDF soldiers and the Flaming Sword detector. It was completely effective against any known weapon or explosive.

  Until now, of course—the weapon Rachel Halevy was carrying could pass through the perimeter easily, as it was not a weapon until she ordered it to be one. But so far she had not succeeded in doing so.

  Or had she? The only place they had not searched for her was the Mount itself.

  He stood and walked more briskly than was usual for him toward the arch that bridged to the entrance of the Mount. Getting through the gathering crowd was already a challenge; by nightfall the square would
be jammed with white-robed worshipers. Perhaps she had pierced the defenses and was waiting somewhere on the Mount for the sunset and the beginning of the great Day of Awe.

  The line of soldiers looked impassively at Toad as he showed them his badge and the picture of Rachel Halevy. None of them spoke, but a squad leader motioned to their captain to come down the ramp to speak to him. The captain was a solid, aging soldier with sweat cascading from beneath his combination cap. His squad had not seen her, but they had been in position only since noon. His orders were that no one—not even a little policeman with a badge—was to enter the Temple Mount precincts under any conditions. Toad murmured a few words into his GeM.

  It took about fifteen minutes for the call to come through to the red-faced captain, permitting Toad to go up the forbidden ramp. He asked for and got an escort of two soldiers.

  Watchful, slow, almost casual, Toad climbed the Temple Mount. He had been here once before, as a student in the yeshiva. He remembered the caution, the tentativeness of the teachers, who were not sure they should be on the Mount at all. After all, the Rabbinate had forbidden it; but Toad’s yeshiva was not particularly orthodox. Still, one of the teachers had called continually to the boys to watch where they were walking, although no one knew what they were supposed to be watching for. He remembered this because the teacher had snapped at him when he stepped outside the group for a glance into the long low building where the Muslims washed before prayer. A lone worshiper had looked up at him from a faucet, his hair and hands dripping, and, seeing a Jewish boy, glared icily back at him. At the same moment his teacher had yelped, and Toad had felt the nervousness of both men.

  On the same outing, he had encountered a party of American Christians of the type he later knew to be “evangelicals.” A smiling man, their pastor, was leading them from the golden Dome as Toad’s group approached. He recalled how the ladies had grinned at the “little Jew boys” in their skullcaps.