Bloodline (52 page)

Yael screamed. The high ceiling of the synagogue swirled above her. Two muscular arms slid under her shoulders and she felt herself drifting backward.

And then silence.

S
PITZER LOOKED THROUGH
the scope and realized that the scene was hopelessly compromised. He cursed under his breath. He hadn't seen the doctor and the reporter coming, and five targets made for a much-too-complex kill zone. But he was a patient man; he knew for certain that three had been taken and the rest would have to wait for another day.

He picked up the spent shells from the rifle, carefully unscrewed the scope and silencer, and packed everything away into
the small case. He stood, shook his blanket, which he'd dump into a trash can on the way back to Jerusalem, and paused for a moment, wondering. Unlike amateurs, who would run like scared rabbits from such a scene and be noticed by passersby, Eliahu was a professional. It would be hours before anybody came to where he was to examine a possible sniper's location, and so he waited there for a few minutes, pondering his next move.

He then walked toward his car, threw everything into the trunk, and drove cautiously along the narrow, twisting streets out of the village. The image of the despoiled synagogue bothered him, but there was nothing he could do about that. He said another
b'rucha
as he drove along the road to Nahariya, then south to Jerusalem.

As he drove, in his mind's eye he could see the face of Rabbi Telushkin, could feel the aging man's comforting hand on his shoulder and hear his voice, which always seemed so lyrical that every sentence was a chanting prayer. The rabbi would be proud of the work he had done this day.

F
EW PATIENTS WERE MORE
used to hospitals and their routines than Yael Cohen. She knew most of the nurses in Nahariya's main hospital and all of the doctors, and had walked this very ward a hundred times when she was a surgeon operating here.

After the massacre in the synagogue, she'd been brought by ambulance, unconscious, with a rising temperature from the infection that the lodged bullet was causing her. As a shooting casualty, she was immediately wheeled into the triage section and examined by an intern. But when a terrified and profoundly distressed Yaniv Grossman had explained who the patient was and her relationship to the hospital, a call had immediately been made to the hospital's director, the thoracic surgeon Fadi Islam Suk.

Though he was in a meeting with a man from the Health Ministry, Fadi leapt from his seat and ran at full speed down the four flights of stairs to the emergency room. He strode into the cubicle where Yael was being examined and looked at her pale, almost lifeless face.

“Dear God,” he said, turning and barking instructions at the ward nurse. “Get Raoul the anesthetist to prep for surgery; get the operating theater ready—find one that's sterilized. Now. Immediately.”

He turned to the intern and barked, “What's happened to her? How did this happen?”

Standing just outside the drawn curtains, Yaniv entered and spoke to Fadi. He explained who he was and that Yael had been the victim of a sniper shooting in nearby Peki'in.

Fadi nodded. “Are you her brother? Who are you?”

“No . . . I'm just a . . .” But the Palestinian doctor didn't let Yaniv finish.

“Okay, look, she's been shot in the upper thorax but her blood pressure isn't weak, which is a good thing; it means that no major blood vessels were hit. But I won't know until we get her into surgery.”

Then Fadi took charge. Within half an hour of her arriving at the emergency room, the Palestinian surgeon was operating on Yael, tracing the path of the gunshot and opening only as much of her chest as he needed to to expose the bullet so that he could remove it. It had torn much of the surrounding muscle but hadn't fractured any bones or severed any important blood vessels. Yael was young and strong and healthy; she could fight the infection. Fadi rarely prayed, but as his hands worked and the sweat beaded on his brow, he said a silent prayer to Allah beneath his surgical mask. And one to Yahweh just in case.

F
OUR DAYS LATER,
Yael was sitting up in bed, eating grapes and sipping pomegranate juice and, strangely, beginning to enjoy being a patient. Her private room was full of sunlight, a spectacular view over the Mediterranean, flowers, fruit, dozens of get-well cards, stuffed animals, and a pair of felt lungs inside a plastic rib cage, a joke from surgical coworkers in Jerusalem.

She'd been visited by colleagues and concerned friends. She'd been interviewed by the police, by Shin Bet, and by others who simply explained that they were from “the government.”

Her problem was that she had absolutely no memory of what had happened in Peki'in. The anesthetic, the shock, and hitting her head on the floor when she fell with Bilal on top of her had robbed her of the memory of two days of her life. She remembered going to Peki'in desperate to save poor, dead Bilal. She clearly remembered the drive and Yaniv. But from there her mind was a complete blank. She had no memory at all of the synagogue, the shooting, the imam, or the massacre. To her it was a complete blank, and no amount of thinking about it made any of the details reappear. As soon as she was feeling more like a human being, she'd ask Yaniv to remind her of the details.

T
HE TIME AND PLACE
of the meeting were sent to Eliahu Spitzer's phone by text message. He had wanted to go to the rabbi's home, a place that felt like a sanctuary, in some ways more sacred than a synagogue to him. But the message was clear about the time and place, and Eliahu made his way slowly to Sacher Park by public transport and then walked the rest of the way.

Eliahu arrived as the sun was setting, bathing the Old City in warm light like rich honey. Christian domes and Islamic minarets were interspersed in amber shades amid clusters of mobile phone antennas and modern glass-and-chrome structures. In this
light, at this quiet time of day, everything was beautiful. The bullets and the bombs and the blood that had been spilled here were purified by the sunset and, for fleeting moments, forgotten.

He gazed out across the open expanse to the clusters and strings of people moving through the park. The modern intersected with the ancient, both in the buildings of Jerusalem and its people: women in power suits, police officers in uniforms, youngsters drafted into the army using mobile phones in one hand and clutching high-powered rifles in the other, children in American T-shirts, Arabs in veils, and Orthodox Jews in black hats and frock coats.

Reb Shmuel Telushkin ambled up the path toward Eliahu, his gaze on no one and nothing in particular. Eliahu stood as his mentor and teacher approached, but the rabbi paid no mind and sat down on the end of the park bench without a word.

“How are you, Rabbi? I hope you're well,” said Eliahu.

The rabbi drew a deep breath as he looked out across the park, but didn't answer. Nor did he look at Eliahu.

“Your family?”

The rabbi gave a nod as his only response.

“Good,” answered Eliahu as a strange uneasiness spread over him.

The two men sat in silence for a long moment until the rabbi spoke with a voice so soft that Eliahu had to lean closer to hear.

“How many are dead?”

“Three,” replied Eliahu soberly.

“All of them Arabs?”

“Yes.”

“But there were others?” said the rabbi. “The girl . . . the doctor. And the American?”

Spitzer hesitated before answering. “Yes.”

“And what of them?” the rabbi asked in a tone that said he knew the answer already but that this, in true Jewish fashion, was to become a teaching moment.

Eliahu didn't answer. He was not expecting to be questioned, and the interrogation took him by surprise. In his head he went through the responses he might give: that the two Jews who survived didn't know anything; that they would be taken care of. But in the silence the rabbi turned to face him for the first time.

“What of them? Such a mess. This is not what should have been. When you came to us, I had such hopes. I thought that out of your tragedy . . . but it wasn't to be.” The rabbi sighed.

Eliahu was starting to get annoyed. Where was the praise for what he had done for their cause? Where was the warm hand on his shoulder and the encouragement for what he must do next to prepare Israel for the Messiah?

“Nobody could have foreseen what—”

“God foresees! The Almighty knows everything! You may have been blind to the consequences, but because of your failure we are weaker today than before. Because of you!” The rabbi shook his head in dismay.

Eliahu was too stunned to speak. A grown and experienced soldier, a man who had seen more war than most, and suddenly he felt like a schoolboy being reprimanded.

The scolding continued. “Who is our puppet now, huh? Which Arabs can we call upon to place their bombs? Huh? When this false government”—he waved a hand in the direction of the Knesset—“starts to talk of a peace process once again, who will throw the stones? If there is peace, this false Israel becomes strong. But while there is violence it is weak; it can be torn down and God's will be done.”

“There will be others. I can find another imam,” Eliahu said desperately.

“Bah!” spat the rabbi. “This failure cannot be endured.”

“What are you saying, Rabbi? What can I do?” begged Eliahu.

“Nothing. You can do nothing.” The rabbi stood.

“The doctor and her boyfriend, they know nothing. They have nothing to hurt us.”

“There is too much attention around them. Too much attention on you. You have failed, and exposed yourself by your failure. It is a matter of time before your Shin Bet brothers come for you.”

“Rabbi. Please.”

“There is nothing you can do. We have no place for you.”

And with that, the rabbi walked away into the sinking sun and fading light.

U
NUSUALLY FOR A MAN
whose life had been dedicated to action, Eliahu Spitzer sat in his office for much of the evening, incapable of moving. He had intended to return home but he was fixed to his chair, his mind in turmoil, ever since returning from his meeting with Reb Telushkin in the park.

He looked around his familiar office: the television, the bookshelf, the photographs on the wall of him smiling and shaking hands with prime ministers, presidents, and heads of foreign delegations. He looked at his desk; there were no papers or files, just a photograph, a computer screen, and a keyboard. Typical of his orderly life, no mess, no fuss, everything in its precise place. It was his Germanic background: everything had to be precisely so.

He couldn't stand the offices of his colleagues, where coffee cups and books and documents obscured the tops of their desks. All that was allowed on top of his desk, aside from the screen and the keyboard, was a photograph of his beloved dead daughter, Shoshanna, when she was just nine years old, smiling at him from the distant past, dressed in a swimsuit, standing on a sandy beach against a blue sea and sky. It was a vacation they'd taken when he'd been posted to America. Where was it? Oh, yes, Florida. She was smiling back at him. Those were halcyon days of innocence and happiness. He would give anything just to hold her again, just to have her young, innocent arms draped around his
neck, telling him she loved him and that he was the best daddy in the entire world.

He found himself immensely tired—so exhausted that he could easily drop off to sleep in his chair. All this duplicity, lying, cunning, and subterfuge had drained him of everything, including his own self. But his energy had come from his cause: to create a land of chaos so that the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, would know that he had to come again and save his people and Israel. None of his former friends or his family understood or even knew of his mission; he'd only seen his Shoshanna, so young and happy in that brilliant light, beckoning him to come to her. He thought he could bring her back when the Messiah returned.

But Reb Telushkin had cut him dead. All the struggles, all the cunning. Why should he continue with it? Why struggle when it was so easy to close his eyes and sleep? And in sleep, in sleeping forever, he'd see his Shoshanna again. Hold her, hug her, protect her.

And he closed his eyes, and in the blackness he saw again the brilliant white light. Framed in the center of the light was the distant face of his Shoshanna. He would do anything to hold her again, his precious, beautiful daughter. Eliahu said a
b'rucha
over his girl, as though this were the anniversary of the day she was murdered.

“Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say Amen.”

He opened his eyes, suddenly feeling calm and rested. Knotted muscles uncoiled. Now he knew what he would do. He should have done it years ago, but it wasn't too late. In fact, this was the best time to do it. He opened his desk drawer, took out his prayer
book, and opened it to Hallel, the Praise of God. When he'd finished saying the prayer, he took out a revolver from the back of his drawer, said another quick
b'rucha
, this one for the rest of his family, and put the barrel in his mouth.

The last word he said before he pulled the trigger was his daughter's name.

Shoshanna.

I
T WAS A BLISTERINGLY HOT
Sabbath day. Others hoped that their one day free of work would reward them with prayer and that after the worship they could return to their homes from the synagogue in Peki'in to benefit from the occasional breeze that might blow up from the olive groves below. Then they could rest.

But Abram ben Yitzhak, grandson of the beloved builder of the synagogue—Samuel the olive merchant—and his good wife, Sarah, had a duty to perform and until it was done, he would earn neither respite nor a cool breeze.