By the Rivers of Babylon (57 page)

Rish howled like an animal. He pounded his fists into the dust and bit his tongue and lips so hard they gushed blood. “For the love of Allah! For the love of God, Hausner!”

“Were your ancestors Babylonian, Rish? Were mine a part of the Captivity? Is that why we’re here in the dust all these centuries later? Was that your purpose?” He fired twice and splintered Rish’s right wrist and right elbow.

Rish collapsed with his face in the dust and sobbed “Mercy! Mercy. Please.”

“Mercy? We Semites have never shown mercy to each other. Did you show mercy to Moshe Kaplan? Did he show mercy to you, for that matter? Our people have slaughtered each other without mercy since the Flood receded and probably before. The land between the Tigris and the Mediterranean is the biggest graveyard on this earth, and we made it that way. If the dead rise up on Judgment Day, there won’t be room to stand.” He fired a full burst and the rounds caught Rish on his left forearm and partially severed it.

Rish fainted, and Hausner walked up to him, reloaded a fresh magazine, and fired a bullet into the base of his head.

Hausner gave the lifeless body a violent kick. It rolled over the crest, slid down the steep glacis, and dropped into the Euphrates.

As he watched the body sinking, he noticed that there were still two Ashbals at the base of the glacis. They were firing at the floating Concorde, and by the look of their tracers they were scoring hits. Hausner aimed his rifle down at them and moved the selector switch back to automatic fire. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the F-14 diving straight down at him out of the brightening sky. He thought that if he dropped his rifle and
waved his arms, the pilot might not fire at him. He hesitated, then fired down at the two Ashbals with a long, unrelenting burst.

Teddy Laskov held back for a split second, then hit the switch for his last rocket.

Hausner’s rifle clicked empty. There was no more movement as the base of the glacis, and there were no more tracer rounds following the Concorde. He heard the rocket coming at him over his shoulder, then saw the F-14 as it pulled up over the Euphrates. He knew that all his actions, not only over the past days, but over the past years, had been self-destructive. God—the Perverse One, not the Benevolent One—had only waited until Hausner imagined that he had something to live for before he pulled the rug from under him. Hausner knew it would happen that way and was neither bitter nor sorry. If he felt any sorrow at all, it was for Miriam.

The last thing Hausner saw was Laskov’s tail number. Gabriel 32. A blinding light enveloped him, then he was suffused with a golden warmth, and an image of Miriam, looking very serene and eating dinner in a sunlit room, passed through his consciousness.

Laskov looked back and saw the top of the western crest erupt in orange flame.

Salem Hamadi moved forward quickly. The high-backed bucket seats did not show much target, and he wondered for a moment about the best way to proceed. He came up behind Burg and grabbed his thin white hair, pulled his head back, and exposed his throat. He looked down at the man and recognized the chief of the hated Mivtzan Elohim. His hands shook. It was like having Satan himself at the mercy of his long knife. His blade came across and cut into the side of Burg’s neck. He was about to draw the knife across the jugular and windpipe when he saw a movement to his left. He looked at Becker, who had regained consciousness and was staring at him. All he could see in Becker’s eyes was contempt and disgust. Not one bit of fear. Hamadi’s hands began to shake and his eyes and lips twitched. He looked down at Burg. It occurred to him that killing this man was not going to make any real difference in the outcome of events. Not killing him might make a difference at least in regard to his own life. It would be the first time he had not killed an enemy when he had the chance. He wondered if he could do that. He took the knife away from Burg’s neck.

Becker pointed to the shattered windshield.

Hamadi nodded. He spoke in slow Hebrew. “Tell them in Israel that Salem Hamadi spared a life. Tell Isaac Burg that he is in my debt for one favor.” Perhaps he could collect on that someday. You never knew. Most agents on both sides carried these favors around with them as life insurance. “Salem Hamadi. One favor.” He slid between Becker and Burg, over the instrument panels and squeezed through the shattered windshield and onto the nose cone. He rolled off and disappeared into the water.

Becker was fully awake now. He knew it wasn’t a dream because he could see the gash on Burg’s neck. It was too strange to dwell on. A strange incident in a strange land. Hamadi. Salem Hamadi. He’d report that, if he ever saw Jerusalem again.

Becker shouted over his shoulder into the cabin. He looked at Kahn and called to him. “Peter!” There was no answer. He could not see the foaming at the chest, which meant that either the hole was sealed or he was dead.

The Concorde was floating mostly as a result of the tremendous surface area of its wings, but Becker knew that the wings wouldn’t keep them afloat much longer. Even as he looked back out of his side window, small waves broke over the big deltas. The water in the compartments below deck was pulling the craft down, and the heavy engines were causing the broken tail to sit low in the water. Becker felt the nose beginning to rise as the tail sat deeper in the water.

The door from the cabin was thrown open. Yaakov Leiber rushed in. “Captain, the rear baggage—” He saw Kahn and Burg slumped in their seats.

Becker noticed that Leiber seemed to be in full control of his faculties now that he was needed in his professional capacity again. “Go on, Steward. Make your report.”

“Yes, sir. The rear baggage compartment and galley are swamped, and I’ve evacuated the—the potential suicides, and I can see water through the floor in the compartments below. Also, we can’t account for Alpern. I think he was on the tail when we went over.”

Becker nodded. “All right. Please get Beth Abrams and someone else in here to take care of Mr. Kahn and Mr. Burg. Then instruct everyone to put on the life jackets that are still available, if they haven’t done so already. And get a more complete damage report for me.”

“Right, sir.” Leiber ran into the cabin. The passengers had
come through the fall with barely an injury, but they were all anxiously eyeing the six-potential exits and beginning to cluster around them. Leiber found Beth Abrams sitting against the galley bulkhead with Miriam Bernstein. He whispered in her ear, then moved off and spoke to Esther Aronson and the Foreign Minister.

Beth Abrams, Esther Aronson, and Ariel Weizman moved quickly up to the flight deck. The two women immediately unstrapped Kahn and Burg. They began carrying the men, one at a time, back into the cabin.

The Foreign Minister leaned over Becker’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “Are we sinking?”

Becker waited until the two women were out of the door with Burg. “Yes. We are. If we sink suddenly, we will all be drowned. You may want to order an evacuation now.”

“But the wounded—”

“Put life jackets on them, sir. They can’t stay here.”

“Can’t we get to land?”

Becker looked out the side windows. To his left he saw the mounds of Babylon slide by. He looked back at the citadel mound where he had thought he was going to meet his end. He could see a few commandos on the top of the glacis and a few on the bank waving to him. Some of the commandos had lowered rubber rafts in the river and were pursuing the Concorde. Ahead on the west bank, he could see an earth quay in the distance and a small village. There appeared to be commandos there as well. Help was all around them, but it might as well be in Jerusalem. The Euphrates had him caught in midstream, and he didn’t see how he was going to beach the aircraft. No one could say that he should have thought of that when he took it over the side. He had thought of it, but it seemed like a totally inconsequential question ten minutes before. He looked out the right window. The aircraft might beach itself if it could float on for some distance. But it couldn’t. “We’ve come so far,” he said.

“And we’re so close,” said Ariel Weizman. “And we did
not
come this far to drown like rats in this cursed river of our sorrow.” He looked out at the muddy water encircling them.

“Did Hausner ever get aboard?” asked Becker.

“No. He stayed.”

Becker nodded. “How’s Miriam—Mrs. Bernstein?”

Weisman shot a glance at Becker. “She’ll be fine, Captain,” he said formally.

Becker turned as the two women carried Peter Kahn out into the cabin. He looked at the bloody water on the floor running back into the cabin as the aircraft tilted upwards. He turned back in his chair. “Salem Hamadi was in here.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, sir. Just thinking out loud.” He watched the two banks slide by. The aircraft was moving more slowly now as they took on more water. Someone—the commandos, the fighter pilots, or he himself—would have to think of something very quickly.

Becker settled back in his chair. He had finally become accustomed to sitting in a downward-pitched flight deck, and now it was pitched upward. Strange how these minor irritations loomed so large during a crisis. He tried the radio just to satisfy the requirement that it be tried, but it was as dead as everything else that was electrical. He spoke to the Foreign Minister, who had sat down in the copilot’s chair. “I’m the Captain and I could order the evacuation if you’d prefer not to, sir.”

Ariel Weizman kept his head and eyes straight ahead. “Will we have
any
warning if it is going to sink?”

Becker turned and faced the Foreign Minister. “It’s sinking
now
, sir. It’s only a question of the
rate
at which it is sinking. If it continues to sink slowly, we can ride it a while longer. If it suddenly slips into the river, then that’s it.”

The Foreign Minister looked at the earth quay in the distance, then back out the side window at the rubber rafts gaining on them. “We’ll wait,” he said hesitantly.

“Fine.” Becker settled back and stared out the window at the new day. They had done some remarkable things with Concorde 02, but now the innovations and cleverness had come to an end. Great seabird that she seemed, she couldn’t float worth a damn.

Miriam Bernstein stared out the porthole at the Euphrates. She looked up and watched the desolate east bank slide by. Her vision was blurred by her tears and the shattered glass distorted her view of the terrain, but she knew she was still looking at Babylon. A mud village appeared and people moved on the bank. A great assembly of them lined the shore and stared. The prismatic effect of the shattered glass gave the black
gellebiahs
and dun-colored huts a rainbow hue. Like Babylon of the colored brick. She thought she could feel, sense, almost see the Jews of the Captivity as they labored on the banks of the river,
their harps hanging on the ghostly willows. She sighed and pressed her forehead to the glass and tears ran down her face. She knew he was dead. He had a preordained rendezvous with Ahmed Rish—or someone like him. She only hoped that he had found some peace at the end.

Danny Lavon spoke into his intercom. “Fuel, General.”

Laskov looked at his fuel gauges. The aerial combat maneuvers had burned more than he had figured on. “Roger. Send everyone home. We’re going to have to hang around a little longer.”

“Roger.” Lavon radioed the squardron.

The squadron went into a V-formation and flew by Laskov. They came in low over the river and dipped their wings in unison, then turned west and headed home.

Laskov looked out of his cockpit as they disappeared, then turned away. The sun sat on the highest peak in Iran, and its rays came down into Mesopotamia and turned the the grey land golden. The wind had dropped, and he could see only an occasional line of dust clouds racing across the flat alluvial plains. He looked down at the two C-130’s, the smoking guest house, the ruins of Babylon and the village of Arabs sitting in the middle of them. He stared down at the village of Jews on the opposite shore, and the huge, white, delta-winged Concorde floating toward it. “Incredible,” he said into the intercom.

“Incredible,” agreed Danny Lavon.

Laskov wondered if she were on the Concorde. He could see that the wings looked blurry now, which meant that they were awash. He didn’t give the aircraft another two minutes. He tried the El Al frequency again. “Concorde 02, this is Gabriel 32. Bail out, damn it! Bail out! Can you hear me?” There was no answer. Laskov could see five rubber rafts closing in on the Concorde from the rear. He wondered if Becker knew they were there. They weren’t much, but at least some of the wounded could get on them. The rest would have to swim or float if they had life jackets. Why the hell didn’t they get out? Laskov spoke to the two ground commandos and the two C-130 captains. Everyone had ideas, but no one really knew quite what to do. There were contingency plans for just about every situation, but no one, not even the think-tank boys in Tel Aviv, had foreseen this. Major Bartok in the rafts seemed to have the closest shot at rescuing
them. The squad of commandos in Ummah had recruited the villagers and many of them took to the water in
gufas
and tried to pole upriver to meet the approaching Concorde.

The Foreign Minister nodded. “We’ll lose some, but what can we do? Let’s evacuate.”

“Wait one minute.” Becker watched Laskov bank sharply to stay with them over the river. Bank sharply. Bank right. He looked down at his dead instruments. He moved his hands over to the emergency power switch. He turned it on. Dead. He already knew that. But he needed power. Power. The engines were dead and so the generator was dead. The batteries were under water. The nitrogen bottle was back in Babylon, and the primary hydraulic pumps were submerged or damaged. Still, there was a source of power left, and he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He quickly reached down under his seat and pulled a manual handle that he never imagined he would use and never wanted to have to use in the air. A nonelectric hydraulic pump activated itself, and the trap door beneath the Concorde opened and the small generator propeller dropped out.