Bloodline (20 page)

Solomon waited as if genuinely expecting someone in the room to answer. But nobody did. Ahimaaz knew his death was close. This is not what he had planned, but it would come nonetheless.

“A war, a war fought for Yahweh. But one that would have led to the destruction and enslavement of all Israel. And not just a war between Israel and Egypt but between us and Moab, and between us and the Hittites and the Assyrians. No matter what I said, no matter how I counseled and demanded, Abia was determined to rid the land of Israel of my wives and concubines and their gods. He would have brought destruction to my kingdom. So he had to be exiled. As did your brother, high priest. And no matter what militia she raises, or how much she fights or begs, Tashere will never return to my bed, and our son Abia will never rule in my place. So tell your tax gatherer that I am pleased that he told you these things, as I knew he would.”

Slowly Ahimaaz looked up at the king.

“I know what's in your heart, Ahimaaz, high priest of Yahweh. I know what dark pain keeps you from sleep.”

The words were a lash across his back, a lash that sent the spinning colors of the child's toy whirling in his mind once more. The laughter of his brother. The two of them running through their father's house. The brother he had played with and laughed with. The brother he had betrayed.

“Your brother will never be returned from exile.”

Tears welled in Ahimaaz's eyes. A rush of blood pounded in his temple.

“Abia fell in league with your beloved brother, Azariah. Together
they wanted the death and destruction of all those who would not accept Yahweh. And so you were my instrument. You and the tax collector both. My instruments.”

Ahimaaz felt his knees, in danger of collapsing. All this time Solomon the Wise had known everything. Had used him.

Realizing Ahimaaz's distress, Solomon continued. “And do you think that Naamah's whisperings into my ear were what convinced me? Are you so stupid to believe that I'm as foolish as you, high priest? That I would allow a wife to dictate the running of my nation?”

Others in the room began to laugh. Soon the chamber echoed with Ahimaaz's shame and ridicule.

“Return,” said Solomon. “Go back to being the high priest. Go back to your rituals. And tomorrow, when you wake up, understand that Solomon can see into your scheming heart.” He roared with laughter.

From somewhere deep inside him, a weak but insistent voice said, “No.”

The room's mirth slowly fell into silence. All eyes upon him. Not least of all Gamaliel from across the chamber.

“No, I will not return.”

Solomon glowered at Ahimaaz, but this time the priest did not shrink from his gaze.

“I won't be your high priest anymore. I will be the instrument of no one.”

And Ahimaaz tore off his pure white vestments, beneath which he was wearing sackcloth covered in the ashes of the sacrifice, the dress of a sinner, and left the throne room without having been given permission.

The king watched him leave, and for just a brief moment there was a smile of acknowledgment, perhaps even admiration, on his face.

Y
AEL WAITED
in the hospital's main reception entrance area and saw him leaving his car. She watched him walking toward her, self-confident, self-possessed. In another life, he could have been a movie star; not pretty but ruggedly and strikingly good-looking, he was tall, lean, attractive in a very masculine way, with dark, Semitic looks and jet-black eyes, dressed in easy and casual clothes matched top and bottom with enormous care. Color and style harmonized as though he had a willing wife or a shrewd butler, and he looked as though he knew that he was at the top of his game. To a passerby he could have been any successful young Israeli man, yet she, of course, knew he was an American. She couldn't help noticing that as he walked toward the hospital's doors, nurses he passed turned for another glance.

When he saw her, he beamed his best television presenter's smile, walked purposefully toward her and shook her hand. She was tall for a woman, but he stood a head taller. As they made their way to the cafeteria, she couldn't help but feel that people were looking at them both. The white medical overalls and stethoscope around doctors' necks normally made them invisible in the hospital, but the two of them walking together were turning heads.

They sat with their coffees and Yaniv came straight to the point. “Yael, I said to you that you're the face of modern Israel: talented, clever, professional, and dedicated. If you're willing, I'd love to do a feature story on you, a profile of who you are. It'll be shown in America, and we have tens of millions of viewers, and it'll almost certainly get picked up here in Israel.”

“And what do you think makes me interesting? Or different?” she asked.

He smiled and said, “I'm a good storyteller. I can make anyone interesting.”

She suddenly felt miffed. “Then you don't need me. If you're
Pygmalion, I'm nothing more than a dumb marble statue called Galatea.”

He blushed. “No, that's not what I meant.”

His reaction in the moment made Yael soften. A man with such self-confidence caught off guard, floundering before her. It made her feel assertive and poised and helped her see him as a slightly less clichéd American.

“I didn't mean that at all, Yael. Of course you're interesting and fascinating. But it's the angle of the story I choose to take, and the way it's shaped by the editor that makes or breaks a good story or makes a boring story compelling. That's all I meant.”

“I know. I was only teasing. So, if I said yes, what
angle
would you like to take?” Yael asked, skeptical of the word's meaning.

“I need to know more about you and your family. When you came to this country, where you're from, what your parents do, what their backgrounds are, your work as a surgeon—what compels and drives you . . . Then we'll—”

“Whoa . . . wait a minute . . . That's a lot of investigation. I don't want to talk about my family. Anyway, I don't have time for this sort of thing.”

“It's all research. I won't take up too much of your time. The work you do here in the hospital, you standing near the Wailing Wall if you're religious, looking over the West Bank if you're political, outside the Knesset if you've been a demonstrator—that sort of thing. We'll pick you up, have makeup and hair in another car ready just before you appear on camera, schlep you quickly from place to place, and deliver you back. Like you tell people before you give them an injection, ‘It'll only hurt a bit . . .' ”

“And the other stuff . . . my parents' background, where we came from . . .”

“I'll interview your family and anybody else appropriate: friends, schoolmates . . .”

“Why? Why all this fuss just because I found an old piece of stone?” she asked.

“It's a bit more than that. You're A-grade talent for TV. Who knows? If I make you famous, you could put this surgery business behind you and become what every young woman really wants to be.”

Yael raised an eyebrow.

“A weather girl on TV.” Yaniv's smile was his trademark and he used it to full effect.

She forced herself not to laugh. His American bravado might work on a lot of other young women, but Yael didn't want to seem like putty in his hands. He quickly changed tone.

“Look, good-news stories don't come often for Israel in the U.S. media. You and the archaeological find are a good-news story.”

“My role was accidental. It all sounds like such a fuss and I did very little. I'm frantically busy. My surgery list is so full.”

“For the good of the nation . . .”

“For the good of Yaniv Grossman, is more like it.”

“Oh, absolutely!” And he smiled again.

A
CROSS THE
K
IDRON
V
ALLEY
from where Yaniv was sitting with Yael, in the village of Bayt al Gizah, another meeting was taking place. The mosque was tiny compared to the palatial mosques of Mecca, Medina, or Istanbul, but the intensity of the prayers and the yearning of the congregants were no less passionate. It was a prosaic building at best, with a blue-domed cupola and a minaret that was almost invisible among the nearby houses. It had been constructed in the 1930s following the demolition of three houses that clung to the edge of the cliff, and for years it had been little more than a house of prayer.

But recently the intensity of the sermons delivered by a new and fervent imam, Abu Ahmed bin Hambal bin Abdullah bin Mohammed, had roused the younger men of the town to new heights of passion, their fervor channeled into hatred for the Jews
who lived in their mansions across the valley. The imam had tapped into the frustration of the youth, and in the two years since his arrival he had drawn around him a group of men whom he'd dubbed his Army of God. Bilal was one of them. So was his unemployed friend Hassan, who earned his meager income from being a pickpocket in the Jerusalem marketplaces.

All the young men were assembled for the usual Wednesday-night sermon, a gathering of intimates and initiates behind closed doors, where the imam would explain why the young men were disadvantaged and unemployed, why the Palestinians were poor and dispossessed, and why the Jews across the valley were to blame; these Jews, he told them, drove their Porsches and BMWs, living like ancient kings in their ten-bedroom mansions because they were thieves who had stolen Palestinian land, dispossessed the rightful Palestinian owners, and were prospering while the Palestinians were forced to live in squalor. Fueling their anger, the imam told them that he'd heard there was a secret Jewish law, not on the statute books, that allowed a Jew to abuse his Palestinian servants, even kill them, just for displeasing him.

To the young men, for whom prosperity was an idea far removed from the poverty of their lives, the imam's words rang loud and true. He quoted history and the Koran, ancient and modern Muslim leaders, Islamic heroes and great warriors, telling his listeners of their bravery and selflessness in the name of Allah. His knowledge never failed to astound the young men listening because the imam was able to make the great men of Islam come alive to them.

He painted vivid pictures so that, in their minds' eye, they could see how easy it would be to take back all the land stolen from them by the Jews and Christians, to re-create the glory of the ancient Islamic caliphate, the Great Empire of Mohammed, which after his death had exploded out of Arabia and even stretched from India to Spain. And when they were again a great people, they would cleanse Islam itself of the heretical Shi'ites
and Alawites and Druze and return all Muslims to the purity of the Sunni religion, which Mohammed had created in the sands of Arabia.

As Yaniv was kissing Yael on the cheek and saying good-bye, the young men in the mosque were sitting cross-legged on cushions, waiting eagerly for their imam to begin his lessons. But on this night it was delayed for some time while he was in his office speaking in hushed tones. Some were listening carefully but couldn't distinguish what his muffled voice was saying on the telephone.

In his office, the imam sipped apple tea as he listened to the subdued and unrecognizable voice of the other man on the telephone. Most of what he said was audible, but the device the other man was using obscured his voice, making it sound as if he were speaking from inside an underground vault on the other side of the world.

“She is a Jew, no? Then why is she not your concern?” the imam asked.

“She's already been too much in the media. If it is one of yours, any investigation will come through my office. And then I can control it.” The imam remained silent while the voice on the other end continued, “I wouldn't have thought you, of all people, would be hesitant to spill Jewish blood to bring about your caliphate.”

The imam bridled. He hated the Jew Shin Bet man but he was prepared to dance with the devil if he supplied him with weapons and targets and ensured that his terrorist acts were successful, even if the idiot wanted to bring down his own Israeli government.

He said softly, “If I see this thing done by one of my Arab brothers, then it's your hands that will be red with her blood. Not mine. For me it is war. For you . . .” The imam let his words trail off.

“Will you deal with it?” the other voice asked, ignoring the comment.

“Of course,” the imam said, and hung up the phone without saying good-bye. He left his office, and as he walked into the adjoining prayer rooms of the mosque, he pondered how strange it was, being in bed with a Jew.

H
ASSAN STOOD
in a small chamber adjacent to the main prayer hall. The small space offered a modicum of privacy in a building otherwise devoted to bringing people together in communal acts, although, as the imam often told him, no secrets could be kept from Allah. The pickpocket felt strangely scrutinized and nervous as he waited.

Hassan thought of his friend Bilal, his best friend, and for so long his only friend. But Bilal was gone now. Hassan knew he wasn't dead, he wasn't a martyr, and the whole village knew that the sniper's bullets had not killed him. But still, Bilal was gone, like so many of his cousins and brothers, into the darkness of an Israeli prison. Bilal had failed.

Hassan hadn't been asked to be on the lookout for the woman doctor whom Fuad claimed had saved Bilal from the bullets. Nobody ever thought she would come to the village so far across the valley from where the Jews lived. But when Hassan saw her enter Fuad's house, he knew he must wait and see. He knew the imam would want to know. The imam had spoken of the Jew doctor, how a woman had dared to touch a soldier of Allah, and how he feared for Bilal and the drugs and poisons the Jew doctors might use on him.

Months ago, the imam had put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye and said that one day he would have a special purpose. Hassan had nearly burst with pride, wanting everybody to know, but then the imam had walked away and none of his brothers had been there to see. He knew the feeling was wrong, that it was vanity. But he so badly wanted everyone to see
how highly the imam thought of him. If only they could see . . .