The Boudicca Parchments

Chapter 74

It was the dead of night when Bar Tikva crept out of the hidden chamber and back into the Marwani Prayer Hall, leaving the body of the Arab behind him and Daniel trapped in the underground chamber along with his friend. But neither the darkness nor the silence held any fear for Bar Tikva. He was a God-fearing Jew.

Beyado afkid Roohi,

beh’eit eeshan veh’a’eerah,

veh’im roohi geveeyati,

adonai lee veh loh eerah

Into his hand I commit my spirit,

When I sleep and when I awake,

And with my spirit my body,

The Lord is with me and I will not fear.

That was how he felt. Strong not because of his own native bodily strength, but because of the strength and courage that his faith gave him. He knew that the Muslims had finished their late night prayers. That was why Daniel Klein and the Englishman had come here now, thinking they were safe. That was why Bar Tikva felt safe, crossing through the mosque and leaving the way he came, crossing the Temple Mount and leaving.

But now they were doomed. Even if the cried out for help, the Muslims would not hear them through the stones and above the sound of their prayers. And if they did find them, they would probably suspect them of some manner of wrongdoing and would tear them limb from limb! They would think they were agents of the Temple Mount Faithful — those vile Zionist, nationalist Jews who wanted to rebuild the Temple!

Rebuild the Temple?

Without a command from Hashem?

It was bad enough that the Zionist vermin had rebuilt the Jewish state — a state based on secular values and not the ideals of purity taught by all the great Jewish sages throughout the ages. The redemption of Zion would only come when the Messiah came! And that day would only come when all Jews returned in repentance.

And that day was surely not now. Not when Jews were brazenly breaching the Sabbath. Now when restaurants in Israel were serving pork! Not when Jewish men in America and elsewhere were marrying non-Jewish women and worse still Jewish women marrying non-Jewish men!

We should live in peace and friendship with the goyim, and accept their government, but we should not consort with them.

To Baruch, as to his father, this was the greatest sin of all. And it was this that was keeping the Messiah at bay. These chilonim — these irreligious Jews — were not only holding back the Messiah for themselves, they were denying their fellow Jews, the more pious among them, the joys and bliss that would be brought by the harbinger of the perfect era.

So he had no qualms about what he was doing now.

He made his way through the Jewish Quarter that had been turned into a slum during the nineteen year Jordanian occupation and rebuilt by the Zionists after the Six Day War, leaving the Old City via the Dung Gate. Oblivious to the fact that he was following the same route, on the surface, as the subterranean route being followed by Daniel and Ted, he walked by the city wall, taking out his mobile phone and calling his father’s mobile. He knew that his father was in hiding. But he would surely take a call from his son.

“Is it done?” asked his father.

“It is.”

“Did they beg?”

There was a cruel streak in his father. But it was not his place to judge.

“I didn’t stay to hear.”

“What do you mean, ‘stay to hear’?”

“I didn’t manage to shoot them. But there was no need.”

“What do you mean?”

Baruch explained how he had trapped them in the underground cavern with the heavy stone and bragged how even he had great trouble lifting it. But before he could finish his explanation his father interrupted him in a tone of unmitigated rage.

“Have you been sent from Shamayim to be a curse upon me!”

It took no more than these words to his strong, tall, powerfully built son, into a fit of tears like a small child. His father was angry. But what had he done wrong? He had done as his father had told him. He had killed Daniel Klein and the other man. Why should his father be angry?

“I don’t understand,” said Baruch, in the tone of a little girl, as the tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Do you think the cavern is nothing but a sealed chamber? It is an aqueduct — like Hezekiah’s tunnel! They can escape!”

“But I thought Hezekiah’s tunnel was… was…”

“There are two aqueducts! And this one is the other one!”

“I am sorry. I am sorry!”

“Never mind that now! Tears are for fools. Do you have the car with you?”

“I parked it near the Sultan’s Pool.”

“Okay come to the house of Aryeh. And be careful that you are not followed. Tomorrow we have work to do! I intend to end this once and for all!”