The Gates of Zion (54 page)

“Then they find us.” Howard shrugged. “What is this? We could take a few of them with us, you know.”

“Five bullets.” Moshe closed his eyes. “Three for them and two for us.”

“Shut up, Moshe, or I won’t give you any more to drink. A little too much Coke, huh?”

Moshe smiled and opened his eyes. “If I don’t make it, Howard―”

“You’ll make it,” Howard said, questioning his own words.

“If I don’t, there is so much I would have wanted to say. To Ellie―”

he paused— “to Rachel. But you, Howard, you know you have been to me the brother I lost.”

“We’re both going to make it, Moshe. So just go to sleep. Shut up and go to sleep.”

“I think if I sleep I shall never again awake in this life,” Moshe said, but soon he drifted off to sleep.

Howard glanced around the chamber as Moshe’s breathing became more deep and even. “If I descend into the tomb, lo, God is there,”

he said quietly. Then he picked up the scrolls and carried them to a crypt that was blocked by a flat stone slab. He moved the slab to the side and wiggled into the hole, knowing that near the back was a depression in which he could safely hide the scrolls. If he and Moshe were to die together in this tomb, he thought, at least the scrolls would be safe from the hands of the Mufti. And one day, when at last peace came to Palestine and the American school again opened its doors, he was certain that another archaeologist would return to the dig and find them.

He placed the slab back over the opening and sat for a long time staring at it. He thought perhaps he knew what had been in the heart of the men who had hidden the scrolls in the caves nearly two thousand years before. “You were there then, too, Lord,” he said, facing death without fear. “But if you could arrange it, I would like to stay around awhile longer.”

***

The men of Hassan cheered lustily as the great pillar of smoke rose high above Jerusalem in the distance. They stopped their search and gathered near the roadblock by the monastery.

“The war for Jerusalem has begun!” shouted the leader of the men from Talpiyoth.

“Enough of this search for two small men and worthless baggage,”

came the cry of another. “We are needed in the city, as you can see!”

A rumble of dissatisfaction swept through the group as the eyes of all the Jihad Moquades turned toward the Holy City.

Hassan leaped to the top of the barricade and raised his pistol, firing a round angrily into the air. “It is the wish of the Mufti that these thieves be found!” he cried. “Their heads are worth more than the loot of Jerusalem.”

“It is for your glory that you say this!” shouted the leader. “It was through
your
bumbling that they escaped. It is
your
head that is in peril with the Mufti.”

The gathered troops echoed approval at their leader’s words. Raised fists and weapons reinforced their dissatisfaction with Hassan.

“We are going to the mosque. To Jerusalem,” the leader cried.

“Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” came the frenzied call of the men.

“Leave me ten men!” Hassan shouted at their leader. “Ten can do the work of a hundred in daylight.”

The leader scratched his grizzled face. “Perhaps.”

“There is great reward if the men are found. My word of honor,”

Hassan said.

“Ten. Only ten? Perhaps.” He pointed his finger at a disgruntled collection of men who stood to the side. “You. You will stay and aid our brother Hassan in this search. He has promised great reward from the hand of Haj Amin if they are found.”

With a great cheer, the remaining hundred Jihad Moquades swarmed past the barricade and up the road toward Jerusalem.

34

The Cavalry

The windows above Ellie’s bed rattled insistently. Shaul sprang to his feet beside her and whined. Still wrapped in a towel, having fallen into bed after her shower last night, Ellie opened her eyes and focused on David’s present, sitting on her dresser beside Miriam’s red-wrapped package. She reached out and languidly scratched Shaul behind the ears. “Merry Christmas, mutt,” she croaked sleepily.

She sat up suddenly as she remembered Moshe and Uncle Howard.

She had not heard them come in last night; surely the dog would have had something to say about it if they had come home.

Jumping from bed, she hurried to find her robe. Quickly brushing out her tangled hair, she rushed down the hall.

“Uncle Howard!” she called loudly, throwing his door open to reveal a perfectly made bed and an alarm clock that read 5:45.

“
If I’m not home before dawn,”
he had said,
“send the cavalry.”

Ellie threw down the brush and ran back to her room. Rummaging through her drawers for clean underwear, she tried to think of whom she could call. Captain Thomas? Surely he was off duty by now, and she did not know where to find him. Her hand brushed the camera.

“David!” she cried with relief as she hurriedly pulled on her clothes.

She buttoned her jacket and, as an afterthought, snatched up Miriam’s gift and slipped it into her pocket.
I’ll open it over breakfast.
“Come on, Shaul,” she said, grabbing the camera and loading it. She would take her first photographs this Christmas of David.

The dog followed her onto the front steps, bumping into her legs as she looked across the rooftops of the city in the soft morning light. A huge funnel of smoke rose from the downtown section of Jerusalem.

“Dear God!” she cried, running outside to Howard’s Plymouth and jumping in. Had that been what had rattled her windows? The sight of the smoke sickened her with fear for David. She had seen the aftermath of a bomb before. “Please, God,” she cried as the car careened nearer, following ambulances and screaming police cars to the scene.

An ashen-faced officer waved his arms and flagged her down a full six blocks from the center of the blast. She rolled down her window and shouted to him. “What happened?”

“The Arabs bombed Ben Yehuda Street.”

Ellie felt the world spin around her. She laid her head on the steering wheel and fought for control. Horns and sirens blared behind her.

“Move your car, miss! We have to get through,” shouted the officer.

Her breath coming in shallow gasps, Ellie managed to slip the car into gear and drift to the side of the street. She laid her head back on the seat, unable to make her legs move or her hand slide to the door handle. Shaul whined and nudged her. Cries of the officers filtered in through the windows as rescue vehicles rushed by: “Ben Yehuda Street. Atlantic Hotel. The whole place is leveled… .”

A wave of nausea overcame her. She opened the window of the car and gasped for air. Then, feeling her breath come easier, she grabbed her camera, a certain pass into the scene, and pulled herself from the car. Shaul followed on her heels as she staggered up the sidewalk against the flow of neighborhood survivors, who clutched each other and wept as they fled the carnage.

“Nothing is left!” screamed a woman hysterically. “No one―they are dead! All dead!”

Most were still dressed in their nightclothes, and in the frosty morning air children cried out from the cold.

Three blocks from Ben Yehuda an officer stopped her. “Can’t go in there, miss.”

She held up her camera. “Press.” She heard her voice echo hollowly.

“
LIFE
magazine.”

He allowed her to pass, restraining a weeping mother who cried that she had lost her child in the wreckage. Ellie raised her camera and snapped the shutter. Glass from the windows of shops and apartments crunched beneath her feet. Worried about the dog’s feet, she moved to the center of the street, more crowded with hysterical women and men than the sidewalk.

Everywhere there was blood: on the starched white nightgown of a little girl who wailed as a rescuer carried her from the bomb site, on the face of a man limping in anguish toward the makeshift medical post.

A woman darted frantically through the crowd. “My husband!” she cried. “You have to help me find my husband!”

Nothing in her life had ever prepared Ellie for the devastation she witnessed as she stepped onto what had been the Street of the Jews.

Nothing but rubble was left of the Atlantic Hotel. The buildings that remained standing were marred by great gouges; whole walls had been blasted away, revealing the wreckage of bedrooms and the bodies of victims. Here and there a rescue worker scrambled over the debris or dug toward a feeble cry for help. Smoke rose from the ruins. The body of an old man lay against a fire hydrant. Firemen shoved it to the side as they connected their hose. There was no time to worry about the dead; rescuers had to attend to those living who faced being burned alive beneath the wreckage as fires from the gas mains began to spring up. Wrought-iron railings dangled from what had once been balconies. Torn clothing littered the streets. Two young men hurried by, carrying a maimed man who had been pulled from beneath the concrete only moments before.

Ellie’s hands dropped to her sides, and the Speed Graphix jerked and dangled from the strap around her neck. Then she recognized the remains of Michael Cohen’s car―a huge piece of metal had crushed its roof.

“David!” Her heart broke in anguish as she surveyed the scene.

“David!” She stumbled toward where the Atlantic had stood.

Four volunteer firemen rushed past her. A shout of joy echoed in the street as rescue workers found another survivor. “Over here!” they shouted from across the street.

Sobs choked Ellie as she tried to control her grief. “David,” she said softly. Shaul jumped up on her and wagged his rump. He spun around and barked.

“Els?” questioned a soft voice behind her. “Els? Is that you?”

She turned toward the husky voice to see David standing in the street in his stocking feet, his clothes torn but his necktie still in place around his neck. A deep cut above his eye bled heavily, and he seemed dazed.

“David!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “Oh, darling, you’re alive.”

“Help me,” he pleaded. “The guys are in there. They were in the hotel when the trucks exploded.” He gazed at the demolished car. “I almost stayed in the car.” He covered his face with his hands. “The guys are in there,” he said again.

“Come on.” Ellie took his arm as he began to walk toward the ruins of the hotel. “You have to get out of here, David. There’s nothing we can do.”

David ignored her and picked his way toward the hotel, searching frantically for a place to begin digging. “I gotta find Michael,” he said simply. He bent down and began tossing chunks of the building to the side.

“David, please,” Ellie begged.

Shaul ran to the top of the mountain of rubble and barked frantically.

Ellie glanced up and said to David, “Maybe he can help. Maybe he knows something.”

David dropped a large piece of wood and scrambled up to where Shaul perched. “What is it, fella?” he asked, kneeling beside the dog.

Shaul continued to bark and David followed his gaze down the opposite side of the remainder of the building. As Ellie climbed up after him, David stood slowly and gave a strangled cry, then disappeared as he slid out of Ellie’s view.

“David?” Ellie called as she reached the dome of the rubble. Below her, in tearful reunion, David embraced Michael Cohen as two other unshaven men happily stood by.

“We thought you was dead,” said Bobby Milken.

“I thought we were all goners.” David brushed the tears from his face. “Man, am I glad to see you!”

“We spent the night down in some dive on Julian. Lost all my money in a crapshoot,” said Michael.

“Yeah,” said David, embracing his friend once again. He wept openly, unashamedly. “I’m glad to see you bums.”

Ellie half climbed, half slid down to where the men clustered. Relief filled her heart as she snapped a photograph of their happy assembly.

“Merry Christmas, Els!” David cried.

“David, I need help,” she said urgently.

David’s smile faded instantly.

“This is awful,” she went on. “But Moshe and Uncle Howard were supposed to be back before morning. I’m worried, David. Please, can you help me?”

He drew a deep breath. “Sure,” he said in a husky voice. “Yeah.

Where are they?”

“On the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem someplace. That’s all I know. I need someone to drive there with me to help me find them. David, I’m so worried.”

Michael and the others turned aside to help with the rescue efforts as David took her by the arm. “You’ll never find them in a car. If they’re in trouble, the last thing they’d want is to have you out there in the middle of it. I’ll fly down and have a look. If they’re along the road, I can land and get them home.”

“I’m going, too, David. Okay? I’m going.”

“No, you’re not. It could be dangerous.”

“What do you think I’m doing here?” she said, hands on her hips in determination.

He rolled his eyes. “All right. All right. Where’s your car?”

David followed her back through the wreckage, walking carefully around broken glass in his argyle socks. Shaul kept his nose right at Ellie’s heel as they snaked through the crush of human misery that waited for vehicles to carry them to Hadassah Hospital.

***

Far above the destruction of Ben Yehuda Street, Ellie focused her camera on the gray plume that rose from the carnage below, then snapped the shutter.

Slowly David banked the plane as they set course for Bethlehem.

“Looks like a B-29 dropped a full load down there,” he remarked. “I thought I saw enough of this in Europe to last a lifetime. Never expected to be right back in the thick of it.”

“Why are you still here, David?” Ellie put her hand on his arm.

“Because it’s the right thing to do. And looks like there’s nobody else gonna do it.”

She pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed the cut on his forehead. “I came to the same conclusion a few weeks ago.”

“You know something else?” He took her hand and held it.

“What?”

“You’re still in love with me.”

She drew her hand away. “You arrogant lout. Why don’t you let
me
say that?”