The Volvo bounced along over the rough stones of the road.
"We'll turn on Shlomo Hamelech and enter the Temple Area by way of the NewGate entrance," the driver called over his shoulder. "The House of Medals is on St. Francis Way."
"Yes, I know the area," Leah said. "St. Francis Way is only a short distance from the New Gate Road. Let us out close to the Holy Sepulchre. We'll walk the rest of the way."
The driver slowed the car and we proceeded in silence. I had been in Jerusalem before and this was familiar territory to me. Nothing had changed. Hebrew and Arab newspapers were still being sold from the same stands. But cigarettes had risen in price. The Volvo passed a sign: American cigarettes $1.80 a pack.
Slowly, we drove past tiny stalls selling a favorite tidbit, round rolls encrusted with sesame seeds and served with hard-boiled eggs. Other stalls sold gazoz, a raspberry-flavored carbonated water. There were open sheds displaying felael, a kind of vegetarian meatball made of chick-peas and peppers; and neat Occidental posters advertising Ponds Almond Cream. There were stalls of dried figs, miniature apricots, almonds from the other side of the Jordan, mysterious-looking herbs from India, walnuts, vine leaves, and bright-orange lentils.
Leah turned to me and placed her hand on my arm. "You've been very silent, Nick." Her voice was as soft as rose petals. "But you shouldn't worry about me. I've seen my share of violence."
I realized that like all Israeli girls Leah had seen service in the small Israeli Army. Just the same, if she came unglued if and when the shooting started, the whole damn deal could fall apart. I was going to have enough to do without having to watch out for her. But only a fool or a philosopher ever tells a woman what he's really thinking. I was neither.
I looked at Leah and mused, "It's ironic… some would say sacrilegious, that the SLA should have a cell functioning within the Jerusalem Temple Area, just a short distance from the famous Wailing Wall. On the other hand, the Moslem Dome of the Rock is also close by. I suppose that sort of evens things out." I lit one of my gold-tipped cigarettes. "Actually, the Wall and the Rock are only symbols, symbols that reach their highest state of power in struggles between good and bad principles of social orders personified in heroes and villains, gods and devils, allies and enemies, and the like. Your Wailing Wall is a good example of symbolism. A million Jews would go out and gladly die to protect that wall, the most precious of all their symbology."
Leah's laugh was low and amused. "You're right. Nick. But don't say 'your wall. I'm an atheist. But to those who believe, it's the Wailing Wall, more than anything else, that convinces them that they're living in the City of God. Yes, the Wall is a symbol. Yet no monument has ever given a people such a collective strength."
The driver of the car turned his head sideways and said in a voice tense with emotion, "It's because of the Wall that we Jews in Israel are able to say, 'We are surrounded by millions of Arabs, but we have no fear. »
I didn't comment. If the man wanted to believe in a wall of stones that was his business. As far as I was concerned it had been U.S. military aid that so far had saved tiny Israel, not a pile of ancient rocks that, supposedly, had once been part of Solomon's Temple.
The House of Medals popped up in my mind again. If and when the shooting started, the Shin Bet would make a two-pronged attack on the building, coming in and rushing both the front and back entrances. The trap would be closed, hopefully, on at least one SLA agent. With some forceful persuasion, he or she might provide some clue to the location of SLA headquarters in Syria. If we got really lucky, the captured agent might even have some information about the LNG plot.
The driver called back, "I'm going to have to park up ahead. The streets are getting too narrow. I'm as close as I can get to the Holy Sepulchre."
Leah checked her large shopping bag resting on the floor of the car. In the bag, underneath a few dummy packages, was an Israeli-made UZI 9mm submachine gun.
I checked to make sure Wilhelmina was resting securely in her shoulder holster, then held up my right arm and looked down my sleeve. Hugo was secure in his chamois case: a flick of my wrist and the stiletto would slide into my hand, handle first.
I took another long drag from the cigarette and flipped it out of the window.
"The way you smoke!" Leah chided. "Don't you believe the warning of your own Surgeon General?"
"You have it backwards," I said. "The tobacco industry has determined that it's the Surgeon General who's dangerous to the health of smokers. Are you ready?"
Five minutes later, Leah and I were walking along on the ancient stones of St. Francis Way, or rather, we were hobbling as though slowed by the passage of years. While Leah held onto my elbow, I walked with the aid of an old-fashioned hickory cane with a curved handle.
We were ignored by the people brushing past us — tourists from a dozen nations and Arabs wearing the kqffiyeh, the white headdress bound with black ropes. But some Arabs were dressed in Western business suits or wearing shirts and slacks; others wore the traditional burnoose, a hooded mantle or cloak. The clothing of the Arab women was equally as diversified, the older women traditionally veiled, the young ones in Western blouses and skirts.
It was easy to spot an Israeli. The men were wearing white shirts, open at the neck. The national costume of Israel, I thought. At least for men. A necktie salesman would starve to death in this small nation. In contrast, the Orthodox Jews wore a long dark tunic, or caftan, and the broad-brimmed hat called a streimel.
"It's difficult to believe that many of the older people passing us survived Hitler's death camps and the Judengasse," Leah said. "1 believe that was the German name for ghetto.
"You would, if you were Jewish," Leah said. Anyhow, it was Pope Paul IV who established the first Roman ghetto for Jews. But it was the Moslems who pointed the way for the earliest forced segregation — which doesn't have anything to do with why we're here, does it?"
Leah laughed as if enjoying some secret joke, and I looked at her with a puzzled expression on my wrinkled face.
"I'm sorry, Nick," she said. "I was only laughing at fate. A few months ago if someone had told me that I'd be in Jerusalem disguised as an old woman and walking down St. Francis Way with the famous Nick Carter, I would have said impossible. But here I am! Here we are!" Leah sighed. "I suppose it's all relative. There's a saying in the Talmud that a baby comes into the world wanting everything, its fist clenched, while a man leaves the world wanting nothing, his hands open. All Israel wants is peace."
I wasn't in the mood for philosophy. "Let's make certain that we don't go into eternity ten minutes from now, with our hands open and our eyes closed," I warned. "We're almost to the shop."
"Suppose none of the clerks speak English?" Leah asked.
"One of them should, with all the tourist trade they get," I said.
"But suppose they don't?"
"Then we'll have to speak in Arabic."
"But won't it seem suspicious for a tourist from the West to speak Arabic?"
"Should it come to that we'll have to risk it." I shrugged. "Mental telepathy is out of my line."
"Well, no matter what," Leah whispered and gave my arm a little squeeze. "I'm with you all the way."
The front of the House of Medals was made of stone, and, like tourists everywhere, Leah and I looked at the items displayed in the small, glassed-in window, articles of Roman Catholicism. There were medals and medallions; statues of Christ and His Mother; of the Apostles; of the various saints. There were beautiful lithographed prints; candles of various sizes and shapes; crucifixes and tiny bottles of holy water; round vials containing soil from the Mount of Olives.
I leaned heavily on the cane and whispered, "Listen. Don't take any chances. You move when I move, understand?"
Leah nodded, and we went into the shop, passing a young couple on their way out.
A sullen-faced young man, who was wearing a clerk's white coat and whose head was shaved, was behind one counter. An older man, also an Arab and also wearing a white coat, sat on a high stool behind the opposite counter. At the rear of the long room, a pinched-faced woman was arranging brass candlesticks on shelves. The woman, in her forties and reminding me of a spinster from some Victorian novel, glanced up as Leah and I walked in, then returned to her work.
Only a few years older than Leah, which made him about 26 or 27, the dour-faced clerk was brusque to the point of rudeness.
"You will have to please hurry," he said in heavily accented English. "We are about ready to close for the day."
I had begun to analyze the setup from the moment I had walked into the place, and already had put together a plan. Close to where the woman was working in the rear, a heavy curtain hung in a large arched doorway. Quite obviously the archway was the entrance to a back room, or to a hallway that led to a back room or a series of rooms.
The clerk was impatient. "Did you hear me, old man?" he said crossly. "We are getting ready to close. You buy now or go."
With pseudo timidity, I stepped up to the counter and cackled, "Me and my Missus here, we're interested in a statue of St. Joseph. Like the kind on the shelf there."
With the tip of my cane, I pointed to a foot-high statue on the shelf behind the clerk, who then turned, picked up the statue and placed it on the marble-topped counter.
I turned to Leah who was playing her part perfectly. "Is this the one you wanted, dear?" I asked.
Leah smiled, nodded and patted my arm.
"One Israeli pound," the clerk said in a bored voice.
I picked up the plaster-of-Paris statue and pretended to study it, turning slightly, my movement giving me an opportunity to glance in the direction of the other Arab who was behind the opposite counter. Short, heavyset and cruel-looking, the man had gotten off the stool and was leaning against the shelves, his thick arms folded across his chest. He kept looking in my direction. The more he stared, the less I liked him.
I turned to Leah, looked directly into her eyes and silently told her, This is it, baby!
But I said in the voice of a senior citizen, "Check your souvenirs, dear. We'll put the statue in the bag."
Nodding, Leah bent down and began to fumble with the dummy packages in the canvas shopping bag, glancing up at me every now and then.
I returned my attention to the clerk and smiled. "Very well, young man. It's a fine statue. Guess we'll take it. You needn't wrap it."
"One pound," the clerk said, more sullen than ever.
Nonchalantly, as though reaching for my billfold, I slid my right hand inside my coat, and then went into action. It was now or never! I jerked my hand out from underneath my coat, only now it contained a fistful of Luger. Before the young SLA clerk could put together what was happening, I slammed the barrel against his right temple, knocking him out before he had time to open his mouth. The SLA agent slid to the floor just as I jumped to one side and shoved Leah out of the way. My quick movement saved our lives because the SLA member behind the other counter was extremely fast. I had figured he would be. I could tell by the quick, darting movement of his eyes.
The heavyset man jerked a Soviet 9-millimeter Stechkin machine pistol from underneath the counter and triggered off a stream of fire toward where Leah and I had been standing only seconds before. The line of hot 9mm projectiles stabbed across the room, missed us, but found a resting place behind the counter, shattering a row of St. Joseph statues and a row of Madonna figurines into flying chips of plaster.
In the rear of the shop, the prune-faced woman screamed in Arabic, "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" to whoever was in the back section of the shop. Then she reached into an urn and jerked out another Stechkin machine pistol. But I knew that my sudden action had taken her completely by surprise because she reacted more slowly than the terrorist behind the counter.
The Arab woman was swinging the machine pistol toward me and Leah when Wilhelmina roared, her 9mm 110 grain bullet catching the heavyset SLA man just above the bridge of the nose and knocking him backward against the shelves. With a round hole in its lower forehead, the corpse sank to the floor, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
Leah had surprised me. She had been as quick as a bolt of lightning. During those few blinks of time, she had jerked the UZI submachine gun from the shopping bag and had triggered off a short burst of 9 mm slugs that hit the elderly woman squarely in the chest. The blast of hot copper-gilded lead slammed the woman backward through the heavy red curtain that divided the shop from the back room. Practically torn apart by the UZI slugs, the corpse of the Arab woman crumpled to the floor, the curtain half-wrapped around her like a flowing shroud.
In a low crouch, I whispered fiercely to Leah, "Get down behind the counter to the right. I'll take the left side and we'll work our way toward the back. Stay down until I make my move."
Her face grim, Leah nodded, then jumped behind the counter. I leaped over the top of the counter to the left and began to crawl toward the rear of the shop, the pungent odor of burnt cordite stinging my nostrils.
The young Arab I had knocked out with Wilhelmina lay like a log, a long bloody gash on his temple. I hoped I hadn't killed him. Just to make sure, I felt for his pulse. Good. He was still alive. Whatever information the man possessed, Hamosad interrogators would pull it out of him.
Leah and I were still not out of the woods. I reached the end of the counter and cautiously poked out my head. Six feet away, to my right, was the arched entrance to the rear of the shop. The dead Arab woman was lying on her back, torrents of blood pouring from her chest, flowing down to the floor. A Stechkin machine pistol lay next to her.
I decided to rush the back room and motioned for Leah to fire a round at the top of the archway. That would prevent its occupants, if any, from possibly escaping by the front; if they took a rear route, the Shin Bet would grab them. Leah nodded, then pointed the stubby barrel of the UZI upward. At the same time, we heard shrill police whistles from outside the shop. The Shin Bet was getting ready to rush the House of Medals.
With Wilhelmina ready in my hand and a prayer in my pocket. I tensed myself and gave Leah the go-ahead sign. She triggered the UZI, the short burst of 9 mm slugs stabbing into the back room, a foot or so below the arched entrance.
Now that the curtain was down. I could see that beyond the wide archway was a small open area, empty except for an ordinary wooden chair against the right wall. Ahead, six feet from the chair, was another arched doorway, this one narrow and covered with a green curtain.
I didn't like the setup; yet there was no other way to do it. I first put six of Wilhelmina's bullets through the green curtain. Then I put a fresh clip into the Luger, cocked the old girl, leaped up and zigzagged into the small area, throwing myself against the wall next to the chair.
With Wilhelmina all set to fire, I picked up the chair to my left, crept forward along the wall and then tossed the chair through the doorway, its momentum tearing off the green curtain. I dove into the room, right behind the chair, at the same instant that a man fired a couple of Military Mauser slugs at the chair, the 7.63mm bullets ripping through the seat.
I threw myself to one side, my eyes making an instant survey of what appeared to be a storage room. There were two SLA gunmen in the room, the one with the Spanish-type Mauser dressed in burnoose and kaffiyeh, the second man wearing a gaudily colored sports shirt and yellow pants.
The Arab dressed in Western clothes was sitting on a packing crate, his Finger furiously working a Cytex code key. On top of the crate was a shortwave set. But the man stopped clicking the key and reached for a pistol when he saw me.
In that half a second, the Arab who had hit the chair, spun around and fired as I ducked to one side. The bullet sizzled a foot to my left and slammed into a crate standing against the wall. The blob of copper-coated lead must have hit a nailhead because it ricocheted with a screaming whine, stabbed across the room and buried itself in the opposite wall.
I dodged once more and twice pulled the Luger's trigger. The Arab in burnoose and kaffiyeh jumped and jerked, an expression of shock freezing on his dark face. A small dark hole appeared in the center of his chest; the SLA terrorist was dead before he crashed to the floor.
Worried about the man dressed in Western clothes by the code key — he still hadn't fired — I started to drop flat, firing at him by sheer instinct. Frantically he snapped off a shot with an Italian Glisenti automatic. The bullet burned high through the left side of my suit coat, tore through my shirt and left a graze on the skin of my left shoulder, a momentary streak of agony that interfered with my own aim. Instead of Wilhelmina's 9mm hitting the Arab in the chest, it plowed into his mouth, moved upward at an angle and tore off the top of his skull. The Glisenti automatic fell from his dead fingers and he dropped to the floor, the corpse sitting down flat, leaning against a packing case, the mouth cavern-like in a silent scream.
I jumped to my feet and listened to the terrible silence. Silence? Not quite a full and complete silence. There was another sound, a familiar one that made me shiver. It was a loud ticking, similar to the ticking of an alarm clock, and it could mean only one thing: the SLA fanatics had booby-trapped the place. I could think of only one question: How soon before the big bang?
I ran to the doorway and yelled, "I've cleaned them out back here. But stay back. They've triggered a time bomb. I've got to find it and do a disconnect."
Personally, I had a lot of respect for the Syrian Liberation Army members. Even in the midst of dying they still had been able to contact their main base — I assumed that was what the Arab at the short wave had been doing — and put a destruct device into operation. Dedicated men and women like that are always extremely dangerous. People willing to die for a cause must always be handled with extreme caution.
With my heart pounding, I began a frantic search for the source of the loud ticking, of the timing-detonator that was connected to explosives. I wondered what kind and how much.
The ticking led me to the detonator which had been placed behind the shortwave set. The timer-detonator was of the KLX type and had an hour's maximum running time. I held up the timer and stared at the dial. Only four minutes were left. And there wasn't any way I could reverse the timer knob of the KLX device. My only choice was to yank out the wires. But suppose the timer had a feedback circuit? If it did, I would never know it. The instant I pulled the wires, the back-feed spark would automatically detonate the explosive.
I jerked the four wires from the timing device and prayed. There was no explosion. My head remained on my neck. I still had my two arms and two legs.
The ticking stopped.
Perspiration pouring down my face, I quickly began to trace the wires that had been connected to the timer. They curled across the top of the packing case, ran over its edge and down to a two-foot square box on the floor. Judging from the red markings on the box, there must have been fifty to sixty pounds of nitrocellulose in the small crate, more than enough explosive to blow up the building. In fact, more than enough to blow up half the block!
I jerked the four wires from the box and heaved a sigh of relief as Leah and half a dozen Shin Bet security men came into the room.
"Thank God you're all right," Leah breathed, resting her dark head against my chest. "You look like you've been through hell."
"I'll settle for purgatory," I replied, then patted her hair and looked at the young, clean-cut Israeli with a square chin and thick eyebrows. From the way he acted, I assumed he was in command of the Shin Bet raiding party.
"There's a crate of explosives over there," I said, looking at him. "You'd better have your boys get it out of here."
Nodding, the Shin Bet officer motioned to a couple of his men and they moved toward the box of nitrocellulose.
"You should have waited for us, Mr. Heines, or whatever your name is!" the Shin Bet officer said angrily. "If you hadn't rushed the situation, we might have taken more of the scum alive. Mr. Ben-Zvi won't be pleased when I make my report about your hasty activities."
"In that case, Mr. Ben-Zvi will have to be sad." I said calmly. "If I hadn't charged the back room, you wouldn't have captured any of the SLA alive. They had the entire place set to blow up with at least fifty pounds of plastic stuff. There was precious little time left when I disconnected the timer. Be sure to put that in your report to Mr. Ben-Zvi."
A stunned look flashed over the face of the Shin Bet officer.
"I see, he said stiffly and hooked his thumbs over his belt.
I shoved Wilhelmina back into her shoulder holster and took Leah by the arm. "Let's go see what's happening out front."
Leah and I left the room, walked across the small open space and paused at the back of the long shop. The Shin Bet officer followed us but said nothing as we watched two of his men carrying out the corpse of the SLA woman on a stretcher. Two other Shin Bet agents were holding the arms of the young clerk whom I had knocked out. He was still dazed, and his hands were handcuffed behind his back.
The Shin Bet officer in charge began to talk to Leah in Hebrew. He talked just as much with his hands, moving them all over the place, and I got the impression that if someone tied his hands, he wouldn't have been able to recite his own name.
Finally, Leah turned to me and said, "Captain Stein wants us to ride back to Tel Aviv with him."
"I heard him perfectly," I growled, cutting her short and glaring at Stein. "Captain, our driver is waiting only two blocks away, and we're going to return to Tel Aviv with him. Hamosad can contact us in the usual manner. Shalom."
I turned to go. Stein placed a hand lightly on my arm. "But you two can't return to your hotel looking as you do!" he protested.
I brushed aside Stein's hand and took Leah by an elbow.
"We don't intend to return to the Samuel looking like this. We're first going to the safe house on Derech Hagevura to get rid of this makeup and change into regular clothes."
I didn't wait for Stein to reply. I steered Leah to the back door of the House of Medals. Once we were in the alley and past a dozen Shin Bet guards, I said to Leah, "You did a fine job back there. You acted like a professional."
"But you didn't think I would, did you?" Smoking a cigarette, she regarded me with cool eyes. She tilted her chin but there was no resentment in her words.
I felt I owed her the truth. "I was wrong about you and I'm sorry. You were terrific."
I could tell by the flicker of surprise in her eyes and by the way she smiled that she hadn't expected an apology from me.
"Perhaps you'll be able to think of some nice way to make it up to me after we return to the hotel," she said throatily.
"I already have," I said.