Vicious Circle (34 page)

“Does that include females?”

“That includes females, yes.”

“Does that include children?”

Dror drew a deep breath. “What does it mean, children? Any person found in the hideaway will be an active member of the Islamic
Abu Bakr Brigade, and as such, armed. If you don’t shoot them they will surely shoot you.”

“You said that Abu Bakr operates a clinic. Why don’t we capture him when he goes to work?”

“It will be too late. The deadline for murdering the Rabbi is the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast, which marks the end of
Ramadan. Ramadan ends and the feast begins at sundown tonight, which will occur at exactly eighteen hundred zero six. We will
start to move into position when darkness settles over the Old City, which will be at approximately nineteen hundred hours.
The full moon will rise at nineteen forty-eight. That gives us forty-eight minutes of total darkness to get in and get out
again.”

“If the deadline for killing the Rabbi is set for the end of Ramadan, what makes you think the terrorists will hold off another
two hours?”

Dror glanced at Zalman Cohen in the back of the balcony. “The Prime Minister has scheduled a press conference for fifteen
hundred hours today—he will announce that the government, bowing to pressure from the United States, has agreed to meet the
demands of the Abu Bakr Brigade; El Sayyid Nosair, the Palestinian serving a life sentence for killing Rabbi Meir Kahane,
along with the Palestinian prisoners, will be released at the Lebanese border at twenty-hundred hours tonight. We expect the
terrorists to hold off killing the Rabbi until then, by which time the raid will be over.”

A short soldier in the back row stood up. “You mentioned that the apartments on the third floor of the bathhouse had two rooms.
What if we break through the first door and find a second door?”

“That’s a good question,” Dror said. “If Abu Bakr and his hostage, or hostages, are barricaded behind a second door, they
will obviously know we are there after we blow open the first door. At that point we will try to talk the terrorists into
surrendering—we will offer them their lives in exchange for the lives of the two men in the room. The explosive team will
tape charges to the second door while we engage Abu Bakr in a dialogue. Depending on his reaction, the terrorists will either
open the door and walk out with their hands over their heads, or we will blow our way into the second room and hope for the
best.”

“In the unlikely event that Abu Bakr and the others surrender, do we at this point take prisoners?”

“No. If we take prisoners, the fundamentalists will only take new hostages and offer to exchange them for these prisoners.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that Abu Bakr is a serial murderer. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. As far as the
world will know, they were killed when we stormed the hideaway to free the Rabbi and the American journalist.”

“Will the Rabbi and the American journalist have any way of knowing we are coming in? I’m asking this because if they had
some way of knowing, they might attack the terrorists, or somehow divert them long enough for us to get through the door.
At the very least they might hide under a table when the shooting starts …”

“The answer to your question is: hopefully, yes. Without going into details, we have a method of warning them that a raid
will take place. On the other hand, we cannot count on them assisting us in any way whatsoever. We have to go in and do the
job ourselves.”

“How will the different squads communicate with each other during the raid?”

“They won’t. Squads will know their roles so well they will not have to communicate with each other. Under no circumstance
will anyone break radio silence until the operation is completed.” Dror looked around. “If there are no further—”

In the back of the balcony, Zalman Cohen waved a pudgy hand. “You mentioned at the start of the briefing that everything depended
on achieving surprise. How are you planning to slip forty-five men—forty-seven including you and Baruch, who, as I understand
it, will be going in with the medical team—into the Old City without someone phoning up CNN to tell them a raid is in progress?”

At that moment, as if on signal, two soldiers pushing dollies with large cartons on them came through the swinging doors at
the back of the theater. Dror flashed a grim smile. “We will get into the Old City without CNN, or the Arabs, knowing about
it … by converting to Christianity.”

I
d al-Fitr
,
THE
F
EAST OF THE
B
REAKING OF THE
F
AST, GOT UNDER
way as the cry of the
muezzin
, broadcast from the minaret of the El Khanqa Mosque, drifted over the roofs of the Old City. “
Allahu Akbar, Allah Akbar
.” Shuffling along unsteadily on his numb legs, Rabbi Apfulbaum kept his right hand glued to the Doctor’s left shoulder as
he followed him into the outer room of Abu Bakr’s safe house. “The blind leading the blind,” quipped the Doctor as he steered
his guest toward the low round table in the corner.

“Oh, God, I feel like a fish out of water,” the Rabbi groaned, massaging a wrist where the manacle had rubbed off the hair
and chafed his pasty skin. He ironed creases out of his rumpled jacket with his palms, then threaded the fingers of one hand
through his unkempt hair as he allowed Ishmael to gently push him down onto a cushion next to the table.

“It is perfectly normal for you to feel disoriented,” the Doctor said, hiking his long robe and settling onto the cushion
next to him. He waved Sweeney toward a cushion across the table. The el-Tel brothers, looking ill at ease (neither of them
had ever broken bread with a Jew), took their places opposite the Rabbi. Aown removed the ancient British Webley from his
belt and placed it on the floor near his thigh. Petra, who was cooking rice and zucchini and lamb chops on a small portable
stove heated by a canister of camping gas, hummed to herself. She seemed very light-hearted. “The feast will be ready in five
minutes, please,” she called shyly.

The Rabbi squinted in confusion. “What feast will be ready in
five minutes? Who’s got an appetite at a time like this? For God’s sake, Ishmael, let’s not drag this out.”

Leaning toward the Rabbi, the Doctor patted the back of his thin wrist. “Isaac, I have magnificent news for you.”

Apfulbaum’s lips produced a lopsided smirk. “I know, I know. Tonight I will sit at the right hand of God.”

“It is not that at all,” the Doctor burst out. “The Isra’ilis have given in to our demands. Your Prime Minister himself made
the announcement during a public press conference at three this afternoon.”

Sweeney cocked his good ear. “You’re sure of what you say?”

“I would have told you sooner,” the Doctor plunged on, “but I wanted to avoid torturing you with false hopes. I waited for
the international press to confirm it. The radio has been filled with the news all afternoon. The Jews talk about nothing
else,
ya’ani
. The opposition party denounces the Prime Minister for ceding to terrorism. The mother of a soldier excarnated by a suicide
bomber says the life of every Jew is sacred and sides with the Prime Minister. Petra even heard someone grumbling over the
Army wavelengths about the government’s shameful capitulation to Islamic terrorists. In any case, I thought it would be a
marvelous surprise for you when you sat down to our Feast of the Breaking of the Fast.”

The Rabbi, swaying slightly from side to side, appeared dazed. He opened his mouth and rolled his eyes and started giggling.
Soon he was laughing uncontrollably. He laughed until his chest heaved and sobs emerged from the back of his throat and tears
streamed down his sunken cheeks. “Ishmael,
Ishmael
,” he moaned, and he shook his head and laughed some more. Across the table, the el Tel brothers exchanged puzzled looks.
The Rabbi breathed deeply and blotted his eyes on the back of his slit sleeve. When he was able to find his voice, he said,
“Being blind is no excuse for not seeing the handwriting on the wall. The Israelis are trying to trick you—”

“Perhaps I did not explain myself well, Isaac. They’re not saying they are
going
to negotiate, they’re not stalling for time. They are saying, in front of foreign journalists, in front of television cameras,
in front of the world, that El Sayyid Nosair and the Palestinian prisoners
will be released at the Lebanese frontier at eight o’clock tonight—that is less than two hours from now.” The Doctor jammed
one of his Palestinian Farids into his mouth, lit it with a match and took several shallow puffs. “How could they lie about
that,
ya’ani
? The whole world will be watching! When the prisoners reach the Lebanese side of the frontier, the Arab journalists will
interview them. As soon as we hear their voices, we will begin making arrangements for your release.” The Doctor reached over
and curled his fingers around the Rabbi’s gaunt neck and pulled him closer so that the bruises on their foreheads were almost
touching. “You will surely sit at the right hand of God, my friend,” he said quietly. “But thanks to God, it will not happen
tonight. Tonight you will celebrate with us the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the beginning of the rest of your long
life.”

Sweeney remarked, “You actually look disappointed, Rabbi. Anyone else would jump for joy—”

An eyelid twitched in the Rabbi’s face. Veins stood out in his neck. “Who is this joker, Ishmael?” Before the Doctor could
respond, Apfulbaum’s claw-like fingers snaked out and clamped onto his wrist. “You are being naive,
ya’ani
. Never trust a Jew,
ya’ani
.” He cackled wildly at his own little joke, then caught himself with a gasp. “You set a deadline,
ya’ani
. Ramadan has come and gone,
ya’ani
. It’s the moment of truth. Put up or shut up. I’m betting into four spades, so what. I’ll see your twenty and raise you twenty.”

From Petra’s Army radio came the static-charged voice of an Israeli reporting, in the shorthand phrases of military Hebrew,
from somewhere in the occupied zone. “Arabs … celebrating … fireworks,” the soldier said. “Teenagers … hundreds … dancing
… barn fire … chanting Abu Bakr,
mujaddid
, Abu Bakr,
mujaddid
. We can hear them up here … hills above the town.”

The Rabbi’s eyes, bulging and dark, darted in the direction of the green radio on the table near the door. “So what’s that
supposed to be?” he wanted to know.

“We monitor the Army’s wavelengths,” the Doctor explained, flicking ashes onto the floor.

Apfulbaum snorted in derision. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ishmael,
they
know
you monitor their wavelengths. The last thing they’re going to do is tell you what they’re up to
on the radio
.”

Petra added the lamb chops, along with the zucchini and olives, to the steaming pot of couscous. Tugging the scarf over her
head down around her neck, using the end of it to grip the handles of the pot, she came over to the table and began spooning
food into each bowl.

The nostrils in the Rabbi’s hawk-like nose flared as he sniffed at his bowl. Very pleased with himself, the Doctor announced,
“In your honor, Isaac, the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast is kosher.” He peered across the table in Sweeney’s direction.
“Be sure to include that detail in your story, Mr. Sweeney. ‘Arab terrorists serve kosher supper to Jewish hostage.’” He edged
the bowl closer to Apfulbaum. “I instructed Petra to purchase the lamb from a kosher butcher in the Jewish Quarter of the
Old City. I thought that combining your ritual with mine would give pleasure to you.”

Petra, who had caught the word
kosher
, said in Hebrew, “Even the olives are kosher, Mr. Rabbi. They must be because I bought them in the Jewish shop next to the
butcher.”

It took a moment for all this to sink in. Then it dawned on Apfulbaum where he was being held prisoner. “I assumed I was in
Aza …”

“In the eighth century,
ya’ani
, Imam Ali said, ‘
If you want to see a corner of paradise, regard Jerusalem
.’”

The Rabbi said emotionally, “The Babylonian Talmud tells us: ‘
Of the ten measures of beauty that came down to the world, Jerusalem took nine
.’”

“If the windows were not bricked in,” the Doctor said, “you could look out on the holy city of your King David.”

“I bless God, I thank you, Ishmael. If I am to die, let me die in Jerusalem.”

“Let us talk no more of dying,
ya’ani
.” Raising a glass of grape juice, the Doctor proposed a toast in Hebrew. “
Ad meya v-esream
—may you live to a hundred and twenty.”

The Rabbi tossed a single bony shoulder. “You’ll see, Ishmael,” he said sulkily. “Eight o’clock will come and go, and nine,
and ten,
and there will be no Palestinian prisoners talking to reporters on the Lebanese side of the border. Ha! This will turn out
to be the last supper after all.”

Sweeney picked up a lamb chop with his fingers and began to nibble on it. He wondered if he would be able to reconstruct the
conversation from memory. It was surreal. The blind leading the blind, the Doctor had said. The mad leading the mad would
have been closer to the truth. He decided to needle the Rabbi. “If this is the last supper,” he ventured, “that makes you
the Messiah. From a journalistic point of view, this has to be the scoop of the century. The Islamic Renewer and the Jewish
Messiah in the same room! At the same table!”

Apfulbaum inched his cushion closer to the Doctor and the two men gazed into each other’s unseeing eyes. “Ishmael,” he declared
with fervor as saliva seeped from the corner of his mouth, “is surely the long-awaited Renewer for whom the Islamic world
is waiting with baited breath. As for me being Messiah …” The Rabbi’s jaw trembled. He hauled the silver worry beads from
his pocket and began working them through his bony fingers. “I have never told this to anyone before, Ishmael. When I was
a Talmudic student in a Brooklyn yeshiva, there were some who whispered I was Messiah. When the others around me were still
learning to read, I gave interpretations of Torah that flabbergasted my teachers. It was said of me that if I started out
in a storm, to the left of me was rain, to the right of me was rain, but where I was there was only sunshine. It was said
of me that if I started out on Friday and the sun set while I was on the road, to the left of me was
Shabbat
, to the right of me was
Shabbat
, but where I was it was still Friday. My father, Apfulbaum the grocer at the A & P on Albany Avenue, God rest his soul, had
a nickname for me as a child.
So ask the Eastern Parkway Messiah
, he’d say when he didn’t know the answer to something.” The Rabbi swatted a large tear from the corner of an eye with the
back of his hand. “I’m not saying I am Messiah, I’m not saying I’m not, I’m only saying—what am I saying?—
that it is within the realm of possibility
. Ha! The Renewer and the Messiah, side by side! Think of the
puissance
of it! Together we could set the world back on the straight path. It goes
without saying but I’ll say it, what do I have to lose? Jesus of Nazareth was a false Messiah, the Koran tells us that, all
Muslims are convinced, all Jews, too.”