The Gates of Zion (8 page)

Ellie towel-dried her hair in front of the popping radiator, then braided it into a damp rope hanging down her back. She dressed quickly in dark blue slacks and a gray sweater, a favorite from college days. Then she padded back down the hall to the photo lab for one more look at the scroll.

Partially unrolled, it lay on the stainless-steel countertop, looking fragile and ancient next to the shining surface. Ellie touched the leather and put her index finger gently on the faded ink of the strange, squared letters. She wished she could read their message—decipher whatever secret they held.

“If Moshe were here,” she said to the scroll, “you wouldn’t be so secretive.”

She gathered a few tiny fragments that had crumbled from the edge and carried them back to Uncle Howard’s study. Opening an unlocked drawer, she pulled out an envelope and brushed the fragments into it. Then she dated it and wrote the words
Secret Code
on the outside before she placed it carefully on the desk blotter. She looked up to see Miriam standing at the door with disapproval on her face.

“Where is your nightshirt, Miss Ellie?” Miriam shook her head.

“You are not going out now to street dance—except over my dead body, maybe.”

“I’m okay. Fine. Wide-awake, really.”

Miriam’s voice started at a low rumble and got louder with every word. “The professor will not like to have his sick niece out dancing the hora with the rabbi’s daughters, and Miriam will not let you out the door tonight when every Muslim is counting his bullets for tomorrow’s party!”

She was interrupted by the arrival of a group of rather boisterous students at the front door. “Ha!” she shouted at them. “Go to bed where you belong!” She grabbed a fire poker and brandished it menacingly as she moved toward the door.

Ellie beat her to it. “We won’t need that, Miriam.” She laughed. “I think these troops are on our side.” She opened the door and was greeted by seven young male students and Darla Makewith, wearing a ridiculous pith helmet and a bright blue dress.

“Trick-or-treat!” they shouted with glee. Laughing uproariously, they pulled Ellie out the door, drowning out Miriam’s protests with a rousing chorus of “We’re Off to See the Wizard!”

Ellie looked back just long enough to see the silhouette of Miriam holding the poker in the open doorway. Ellie waved a cheerful good-bye, then walked toward King George Street, where throngs of people had all but halted the flow of automobile traffic. It was Mardi Gras and New Year’s Eve and, as Darla had said, V-day all rolled into one.

From sidewalk to sidewalk the broad avenue was jammed with singing, dancing, laughing human beings. In front of her a black-coated covey of Orthodox Jews hefted a British soldier high above their heads and spun him around as he roared with delight, “God save the Jews!” The joy was infectious. The brightly embroidered kaftans of the Bukharian Jews bobbed beside the khaki-clad Sabra Jews, who were more at home on the kibbutz than in the synagogue.

It was a night to remember.
A night to be recorded on film,
thought Ellie as she watched the British soldier, still on the shoulders of the Jews, bob down the street toward the municipal park.

In a moment Ellie and Darla were sucked into a whirlpool of dancers. Linking arms they hummed a song that even without words breathed joy into the night air. Faster and faster they spun in a great human wheel until, exhausted from the effort, Darla fell away and Ellie, too, let go of the shoulders of the strangers on either side of her. She spotted a red-faced, puffing Darla several yards from her and began to inch back to her.

Suddenly she caught a glimpse of a tall, sandy-haired man across the street. Her heart stopped, and she gasped for breath.
Surely he can’t
be here, so far from home! Surely it’s not David!
She stood on her tiptoes, craning her neck to see the man again. Through the living tide, she saw briefly only a quarter of his profile and the back of his head.

“David!” she called as loud as she could, barely hearing herself above the din. “David!” she called again, almost certain this time.

A stranger turned and put his arms around her. “Did you call me, pretty lady?” he asked, smiling.

Ellie struggled to free herself, still straining to see over the crowd, but the tall man was gone, leaving her heart pounding.
What a dope I
am,
she thought, feeling foolish. David was back home in San Francisco, probably hadn’t thought about her since she’d sent him packing, and now she was in love with another man. Possibly in love, at any rate. Regardless, she could not follow every sandy-haired stranger who resembled David Meyer.

Darla tapped her on the shoulder. “What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Yes, well … I did … kind of.” Ellie took Darla’s arm and pushed through the crowd toward the park.

***

David Meyer zipped up his worn leather flight jacket and patted his wallet and passport for the hundredth time that evening. Michael Cohen had warned him that the streets would be full of pickpockets, and he did not want to take any chances when it came to his American passport.

He turned around twice, looking for the balding head of Michael amid the crush of human flesh. David gazed with detached amusement at the mixture of weeping and laughing, with Michael in the middle of it embracing every young woman heart and soul.

He felt as though he had, like Dorothy from Kansas, been swept away to the political Land of Oz where little Jewish Munchkins battled wicked political witches against incredible odds. Maybe he was the Tin Man, rattling around with no heart, a mercenary in the truest sense of the word. Only there wasn’t really enough money in this assignment for David to call himself a mercenary. Americans were called volunteers, and most of the guys David had come over with the week before didn’t have much of an idea what it was all about.

“Yeah, my grandfather was Jewish,” David had told Michael three months before. “But my dad’s a preacher. So what’s that make me?”

Michael had given David that deadly serious gaze of his. “The grandfather in your family tree would have been enough for Hitler, David. Maybe it ought to be enough for you, too. You’re the best there is. We need you with us.”

So here he was, feeling about as foreign as a fortune cookie in an Italian deli. A room and all the kosher lamb he could eat was about the extent of his pay. And, of course, the possibility that he might run into an old friend of his. He stopped and scanned the crowd, looking for Ellie’s red head and wondering if she was here tonight. Feeling foolish, he fought off the hopeful excitement that pushed against his chest.

He thought about the other possibilities of this adventure—for instance, the chance that after four years in a world war fighting Nazis, he could end up getting his tail shot off over a piece of real estate no bigger than Rhode Island. And all for the fun of it, for the adventure! He was a fighter with no wars left to fight until this little skirmish came up. To his father, fighting for a Jewish homeland represented some kind of spiritual responsibility, a real honor.

David, the Tinman, simply had nothing else to do with his life.

For a moment he thought he caught a glimpse of red hair weaving through the throng. Then it was gone, and he turned back to Michael just in time to see a grubby little kid in a black coat pull the wallet out of Michael’s back pocket and dash away with a shaggy dog at his heels.

“Hey, you!” David shouted, shoving his way through an embracing couple toward Michael. “Michael! Some kid just got your wallet.

Get ’im!”

In the midst of a passionate kiss, Michael did not hear him or even look. David lunged toward him and pushed him away from the young lady. Grabbing the collar of Michael’s jacket, David began dragging his friend toward the escaping criminal.

“What are you doing?” Michael roared in protest.

“The little beast got your wallet!”

Michael slapped his hip pocket and shouted, “Well, where’d he go?”

He plunged ahead of David, cutting a swath through dancers and drunks, searching for a child he had never even seen.

5

The Attack

Ellie tapped on Darla’s pith helmet, wondering where this previously shy, studious bookworm had come across her headgear. Darla turned her head, unable to face Ellie because of the press of human flesh around her. Her face was worthy of a photograph, Ellie noticed─flushed with excitement and effervescence.

“Wonderful!” Darla cried, her voice a high squeak. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“I’m going back!” Ellie shouted to Darla. “For my camera!” Darla cupped her hand to her ear and looked puzzled; then she was swept away by a wave of dancers. The other students had been lost in the first few yards of King George Street. As Ellie worked her way toward home, she thought she got a glimpse of one of them passionately kissing any female within reach between the ages of thirteen and thirty.

As she neared the corner, an old man in a tattered coat embraced her and kissed her square on the lips, his eyes full of delight. He tipped his hat as she pushed past him and he shouted, “Ve haf a schtate!”

Every man she passed wanted a kiss, it seemed.

Ellie moved closer to the storefronts, where it was a little easier to navigate through the crush.
Getting my camera might take half the
night,
she thought as she inched her way against the flow. She wished Moshe were here to cut a path for her. After a fifteen-minute struggle, she reached the corner of Rehavia, a dark and nearly empty street. Only a few stragglers and latecomers scurried past her toward King George Street. She breathed deeply.

Her photographer’s eye focused on two men strolling toward her through the shadows across the street. As she watched, one of them stopped, leaned against a stair railing, and lit a cigarette. The orange glow momentarily illuminated his face.
Grim—nothing like the
happy revelers just a few blocks from here.
His features seemed hard as stone, his heavy lower jaw jutting out like that of a bulldog.

He must be English,
Ellie noted. Americans didn’t wear heavy overcoats like the one hanging on his massive frame. As she mentally snapped his picture, he looked straight at her, it seemed, until his match flickered and died. The other man hung back, his smaller form all but hidden in the large man’s shadow.

For an instant Ellie felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle; then inwardly she laughed at her foolishness. She remembered the way she had felt as a kid listening to Basil Rathbone playing Sherlock Holmes on the radio. She was silly, she knew, but she quickened her pace to the front steps of Uncle Howard’s large, white-stone home.

Remembering Miriam’s weapon, she gingerly inserted the key and prayed the old woman wouldn’t hear the squeaking hinges.

The house was still and dark as she retraced her steps through the walnut-paneled parlor to the hall that led first to her quarters, then to the photo lab.

The light was on in her bedroom and she glanced in. There sat Miriam, fast asleep in a chair by her bed, her chin resting on her chest and her gray hair falling in wisps around her face. The old woman had waited up for her, like a worried mother waiting for her child to come home from a date.

Ellie paused, then tiptoed into the room. Gently she shook the old woman’s shoulder. “Wake up and go to bed, Miriam. I’m home—you can go to bed now.”

Miriam sat up with a start, then launched into another Arabic tirade, sprinkling in a few English words for good measure.

“You’re right, Miriam,” Ellie said soothingly. “It’s too rowdy for me.” Then she sat on the bed and began to remove her shoes.

Miriam appraised her sleepily. “You are for bed then?”

“Right, Miriam,” Ellie assured her sweetly. “Thank you for waiting up.”

“Huh,” grunted Miriam shortly, rising from the chair with difficulty.

“You should listen to Miriam.” She wagged her index finger before turning down the hall to the kitchen and her own bedroom beyond.

Ellie waited a few minutes until she was sure Miriam had gone to bed. She crept to the lab with shoes in hand. Switching on the light, she gathered flashbulbs and several rolls of film and stuffed every pocket full.

She carefully loaded film into her bulky old Speed Graphix camera.

It had been a gift from her parents at graduation. Even though secondhand, it was in exceptional condition and very valuable.

Ellie’s pride and joy, its wide-angle lens had already captured the best of her feelings for the streets of this strange, jumbled city.

Tonight she would record the moods and the faces of the rebirth of an ancient nation. She inserted the flash attachment, snapping a bulb into place.

Searching the room for anything else she might need, her eyes fell on the stainless-steel counter where she had left the scroll. It was gone!

She put the camera down and hurried across the room, touching the surface of the counter as if to make certain she was not imagining that it was empty. After scanning the room, she jerked open the door to her darkroom, relieved to see her photographs still hanging on the drying racks. Surely the old woman had simply put the scroll in what she considered a safe place. Leaving her shoes and camera, Ellie padded to Miriam’s room.

“Miriam.” She knocked gently. “Don’t go to sleep yet.” Without waiting for an answer, Ellie cracked the door and poked her head in.

“Miriam?” she said again, louder this time, aware of the heavy tick of an ancient alarm clock and Miriam’s steady breathing. “Miriam?

Where is the scroll? Where did you put the scroll?”

Ellie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she could see Miriam’s form beneath the blankets on her small bed. “Miriam?” she tried again. For a full minute Ellie stood in the doorway, wondering if she should shake the old woman awake. Probably even King Richard and the looting Crusaders couldn’t stir her.

She glanced around the room. On a plain bureau she could make out the clutter of two dozen framed pictures of Miriam’s family. On the wall above her bed hung an olivewood cross and on the opposite wall a painting of Jesus with His arms outstretched. On the nightstand was a thick book bound in cracking black leather with a gold-leaf Arabic title in large print on the front.
Must be her Bible,
thought Ellie as she pulled the door shut and left the old woman to sleep. There was nothing she could do about the scroll now, anyway.