Ashes of the Red Heifer (32 page)

He unlocked the door and ushered Annie inside. He snapped on a light, not needing caution since there were no windows to reveal their presence.

The room resembled a cave. Old tile flooring and a few dilapidated pieces of furniture were piled in one corner. The walls still had paint and wallpaper, but the floor had been removed. The place looked like a construction site, with tools, shovels, rags, and debris scattered everywhere. Piles of dirt rose near several holes in the floor, a shovel stuck in the top of the largest one.

Two men sat up from flimsy cots shoved against a wall. They immediately jumped up and before Annie got a good look at them, had guns pointing at her.

David waved them down. “It’s okay.”

The taller of the two men was near her father’s age. His wiry form was covered in dirt streaked khakis and a torn cotton shirt. The younger man had fierce dark eyes. He looked as though he enjoyed a few too many latkes. He wore faded jeans and a baggy T-shirt.

David addressed the taller man. “Get the word out. The Red Heifer is born and we are moving ahead as planned.”

The tall man’s eyes grew wide. He mumbled a prayer. David slapped his arm. “Go.” David turned toward the younger man. “Slomo, I need you to go with me.”

Slomo looked as though David issued him a death warrant. His face paled. David put a hand on Slomo’s shoulder. “I’ll give you time to leave before we light the fuse.”

This couldn’t be happening. David planned on blowing up the Dome. He had tried to murder Moshe, would probably kill her, and thousands of innocent people before the night was over. She struggled against panic.

Slomo still looked scared. “What about her?”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s coming with us.”

Slomo’s thick eyebrows drew together and his mouth clamped shut. He didn’t look happy with the news, but he wasn’t going to argue.

David handed his keys to Slomo. “Go to the new house. I left a box of supplies there. Bring it to me. Hurry.”

When Slomo left, David said, “Can you feel God at work here?”

She stared at him, trying to figure out a plan. “Why didn’t you kill me, too?”

David looked surprised. “Because you’re going to see miracles that will turn your heart. And we’re going to be together. God promised me.”

Well, that answer was simple enough: his brain had come untethered, and she was going to die.

David meant to destroy the Dome. Chaos would follow. People killing each other in a religious frenzy the modern world had never witnessed. All her life she’d heard stories of Armageddon and the Apocalypse. She’d thought they had as much chance of being real as an ancient apple containing the knowledge of good and evil. Yet David had the will and the means to start that sort of end-game with a single fiery explosion.

The war wouldn’t be fought between angels and demons, as her father thought, but between Muslims and Jews and Christians. No one would win.

She had to stop him. “What good can come of you blowing up the Dome?”

He motioned her toward the back of the house. “I’m doing God’s will. Clearing the way for the Messiah.”

Did the Israeli police know of this place? If Hassan had reached them and they discovered the firestorm at the camp, they might put it all together. They might be on their way right now. If she could stall David, it could buy them time. She shuffled her feet. “But the Messiah won’t show until the Red Heifer is three years old, right?”

David shrugged. “There’s always been controversy about whether the Messiah will build the Temple or whether it should be built before he comes. I took the side of the Messiah arriving first and reinstating the Temple. Obviously, I was wrong. God has taken the matter into his hands by sending the Silim to camp to alert me to the danger. Isn’t it marvelous how God uses people?”

She backed up a couple steps toward the door. “What I think is marvelous is how your brain can attach divine meaning to everything.”

David shoved her through an arched doorway into another room identical to the first with the holes and piles of dirt, except it was smaller. “God wants action, commitment and obedience.”

Annie searched the room for a way to escape or some weapon. “Action doesn’t mean igniting Armageddon. I may not be tight with God but I know that much.”

“We can’t know God’s plan. We act as he tells us, trusting he knows best.”

She had to break through his religious trance. “David, stop Eli from this insanity. Come back to me. I love you.”

He studied her. “How do you know about Eli?”

She might get through to him. “I love you, David. Eli is someone I would hate.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I am Eli. I’ve always been Eli.”

She shook her head. “No. Before the Red Heifer you were David. My David.”

A flicker of understanding sparked his eyes. He smiled at her. “If God had willed it, we would have been happy together.”

She nodded, tears threatening. “Forget about the Red Heifer.”

His voice sounded choked, barely above a whisper. “It would be so much easier if I hadn’t fallen in love with you.”

Either he was still lying and manipulating, or his heart was really breaking. “Was loving me part of the game?”

He took a step toward her. “It wasn’t a game. If I could have anything in the world I want, I’d take you away and we’d live together where no one could find us. But I can’t.”

“Yeah, The Corporation wouldn’t be too happy.”

“It’s not The Corporation. It’s God. I’d defy any man for you. But I can’t turn from God. He’s laid this chore on me. The Messiah is counting upon me. God asked and I must say yes.”

“Yes to what? If God wants the Third Temple, he’ll find a way. Use your head, David. As flattering as it is to think God chose you as he chose Moses, it isn’t the case.”

He froze then slowly raised his eyes to hers. “You’ll never know how much I love you. From the moment I saw you—the fearless way you attack life, the tenderness you try so hard to hide—my heart belonged to you. But my soul belongs to God. Maybe you’re the temptation, the only thing that could make me give up my vision and turn my back on God’s work.”

Heartbreak, what an appropriate word.

His smile was wistful. “Ever since I recognized the job God set aside for me, I was amazed at how easily it all seemed to fall together. The Israeli government endorsed PharmCo and The Corporation was successful in placing people where we needed them, even within the state police. But deep inside, I knew that God would require a personal sacrifice as a sign of faith and obedience. I know now that sacrifice is our love.”

She wanted to surgically remove the religious cancer that ate up the man she had wanted to love. “What incredible presumption to think you know the mind of God and can work behind the scenes to force him to cough up the Messiah.”

A light gleamed in his eye. “I suppose people thought Moses was arrogant to say he’d spoken with God. And I’m sure they all thought Noah was delusional. I can’t make you understand, all I can do is ask you to trust me. Through me and you, Israel will once again be the home of God.”

Every preacher sounded the same, flipping through phrases that sounded as if they’d been pulled from a Common Book of Evangelizing. David’s words weren’t new. But the fire in his eyes had an unhealthy glow. “I’d love to tell you I have faith in your vision but I think you’re nuts. Maybe Moses and Noah were, too. You might call it God, I think it’s probably schizophrenia.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “No more talking. Let’s go.” He took her arm and roughly pulled her to one of the gaping holes in the floor. “Go.”

Annie looked into the blackness below. She had to think. She could charge David, but he’d shoot. She thought about Hassan, body ripped apart by bullets and Moshe’s life-blood soaking into the sand. She was the only one who would save the boys.

She could descend into the darkness and try to reason with David, get him to give up the idea of blowing up the Dome and buy herself and the world a little time. It held as much possibility of success as charging him and taking his gun.

She took a step backward. “I can’t go down there. It’s too dark to see.”

He looked annoyed. He scanned the room until he found a flashlight sitting on a tall dirt pile. With his gun still pointed in her direction, he took a few sideways steps, his head swinging to look at her and at the flashlight. He grabbed it and hurried to Annie, shining it down the hole. “Here. Now, go.”

She spotted an aluminum ladder, its top about three feet from the brim. She looked up at David. “If I go down in that hole, you’ll never let me come out again, will you?”

David tilted his head and looked at her as if he didn’t understand. “We’ll be together, Annie. Whatever happens, we’ll always be together. “

How could she have believed his lies of love? She’d been so blind. And now it was her responsibility to stop him. She had one stupid trick left but it might work.

Suddenly, she jerked her head up and raised her eyebrows in surprise as if she saw someone behind David. She couldn’t believe it when he fell for the elementary school ploy and glanced behind him.

She didn’t wait. Annie leapt forward, focused on the gun. She hadn’t closed half the distance between them when David spun around. He dropped the flashlight.

By the time he brought up the gun, Annie had her hand on it. Her fingers closed on the cold steel of the barrel but lost contact when he jerked the gun up. She tried to get it and crashed into him. With his free hand, he shoved her.

Annie saw nothing but the gun. He held it high, as if teasing a child, only this was no game. Annie reached up and grabbed hold of his wrist.

Together, they brought the gun down, their hands forming a giant fist on the handle. She grabbed it with her other hand and they struggled. David was stronger but not by much. In a quick movement, he worked the gun until it faced into Annie’s belly. Both her hands tried to shove it to the right so if he succeeded in pulling the trigger, the bullet would lodge harmlessly in a wall. They had a standoff. He couldn’t pull the trigger, she couldn’t shove the barrel away.

In final desperation, Annie raised her knee and rammed it in his crotch, expecting him to at least flinch. But she didn’t make contact; instead, David swiveled out of the way, throwing her off balance. He put his leg between hers and pulled her off her feet. With a painful thud, Annie landed on her tail-bone in the dirt. The barrel of the gun lay cold against her temple.

David panted. “Deceiver. Like Eve in the Garden.”

“No. I don’t want you to kill yourself. I love you, David.” Even to her, the words sounded hollow and forced.

He shook his head and rammed the barrel against her temple. “Then why did you attack me? You would kill me if you had the chance.”

There, he was wrong. She wouldn’t kill him. Hassan and Moshe were dead. Killing David wouldn’t bring them back. “I only wanted to get the gun because I’m afraid. You can understand that, can’t you?”

He waved the gun at her and shook his head. “You lie.”

David kept the gun leveled at her but glanced around the cluttered room. He stepped to a pile of debris in a corner and picked up a utility knife and dropped it in his pocket. He watched her carefully as he bent over and selected a roll of duct tape and slipped it on his wrist. “Get in the hole. Now.”

THIRTY

       After descending the ladder for twenty feet, she landed on a ledge and from there she and David scrambled toward the middle of the earth. They walked through a crude sand tunnel similar to a human-sized gopher run. It emptied out to a narrow, chilly crevice hewn in rock.

Slomo caught up to them carrying a plastic milk crate. David handed him the flashlight. He gave Annie the plastic crate. Slomo took the lead, Annie next, and David brought up the rear with his gun pointed at Annie’s back. She stumbled in the darkness, eyes trained on the shaft of light ahead.

She remembered a trip she’d taken to the Grand Canyon, how she’d walked back in history with each foot she’d descended. That’s how she felt now. By the time their burrow leveled out, she figured she had gone back to Christ’s time, the era of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Slomo’s flashlight cast the only ray of light. She didn’t know where they were going but David poked her in the back with the gun so she kept moving. After several twists and turns they entered a tunnel that had been constructed of five-foot stone blocks. She estimated they’d been walking for fifteen or twenty minutes through this stone passage. It was as wide as her arm span and close to ten feet high. Her boots crunched on loose gravel. The damp air raised goose flesh on her bare arms and the smell of moist dirt sank deep into her nostrils.

Here and there other passages connected with theirs and Slomo led them through a few turns. She didn’t think she could find her way out…if she ever got the chance to try.

She had no weapons, no means of escape. She was helpless to stop the destruction and death. The cold steel of the gun barrel against her back underlined her despair. Her only hope was to draw him out of himself. “I had no idea there was this network of tunnels under here. Who built them?”

He paused as if considering whether to answer. “The main passage we just entered was built as an aqueduct to deliver water to the altar to clean after sacrifices. It’s actually quite well known by Muslims and Jews alike.”

Good. He sounded sane, almost like a tour guide imparting information. “What about the other tunnels, like the one we were in at first and the others I see taking off from here?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Our Jewish fathers were wise beyond their age. They listened to the Lord when he spoke and they laid out these tunnels so they’d be here two thousand years later, when the Messiah was ready to come. We’ve been secretly excavating them for decades. We’ve found Temple vessels and antiquities to help us return to Temple worship. The Ark of the Covenant is hidden somewhere in one of these tunnels. We haven’t found it yet, but God’ll lead us to it at the right time.”

He handed her a kernel of hope. “If the Ark is down here someplace, you can’t blow up the Dome. You might destroy it.”