Forty-Eight X (3 page)

“I can,” Fala smiled, hugging Joshua a little tighter.

At one time the land of Israel had been peacefully shared. In their modern world gone mad, it was only their knowledge of history that allowed Joshua and Fala to hold out hope for the future.

An hour later, they found themselves sitting in the anteroom of the headquarter offices of Aman in the Hakirya district of Tel Aviv. Aman was located in one of several high-rise concrete and glass buildings that made up the Defense Ministry complex, the Kirya, Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon. Krantz had always viewed it as an eyesore because of the needle-topped sixty-story communication tower in its midst. When the new nation was first established in 1948, the Defense Ministry had located their offices in a sparsely populated area on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Today, the heart of the city surrounded it. Although it had been nearly two decades since Krantz had occasion to enter the Kirya on “business,” he walked past the walled compound frequently because it sat right across the street from the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center and he had season tickets. While the Kirya’s well-trafficked location seemed to make it a ripe target for Israel’s enemies, essential business was conducted in an underground command center—“the Bor”—located six floors beneath the Defense Ministry complex in reinforced concrete offices mounted on giant springs designed to withstand a nuclear attack. The entire building could be demolished from the ground up and Israel’s military would still be in business. Unfortunately, Krantz mused each time he entered the theater, while the Kirya would go on, the show would not.

Fala and Krantz had passed through three metal detectors and a hand search. Snapped to their wrists were plastic color-coded identification bands. A young receptionist wearing crisply ironed olive-green fatigues paid them no mind as she sipped on a Coke and snacked on chips between answering calls. Photos of the chain of command adorned the walls, from the prime minister to the lieutenant general currently in charge of military intelligence. An officer walked by and cast a quizzical eye at Fala. She was wearing a
hijab
, the traditional scarf-like Muslim head covering. Fala wondered if any Arab, any Egyptian, any Muslim had ever “voluntarily” set foot in this sanctum of Israeli intelligence. What secrets they must know here. Clearly it was something important they wanted from her Joshua to have consented to his demands that she be privy to any decisions he’d be asked to make. When soldiers walked by and inevitably stared at her, she lowered her head and averted her eyes and thought of a verse from the Koran she’d memorized as a young girl.

“Believing women, they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty. They should not display their beauty. They should draw their
khumur
over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands.… And O ye Believers! Turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.”

“We are ready,” a commanding voice announced. Fala looked up. An Israeli officer was standing over them.

Krantz put his hand on Fala’s arm and squeezed it reassuringly.

This is all bullshit
, she thought and, as she stood up with Krantz, she flipped her
hijab
off her head and over her shoulders and marched alongside him to a nearby conference room. Modesty was for some moments. This was a moment to feel empowered.

“Salaam Aleichem,”
the
aluf
, an Israeli major general, greeted Fala as they entered.

“Shalom,”
Fala smiled in polite response.

Krantz noted the insignia on the general’s uniform. He wore epaulets on his shoulders with the insignia of his rank, a fig leaf and a sword piercing an olive branch. On his sleeve he wore the symbol of the Golani Brigade, a green olive tree on a yellow background. This was the same unit in which Joshua had served, and seeing it always brought back memories of a sense of pride—and loss. As a young soldier he still remembered his indoctrination lectures.

“Green,” his sergeant had explained, “symbolizes the green hills of Galilee, where our brigade first served when the nation was created. The olive tree is known for its strong roots, roots that penetrate deep and hold firm to the land. It represents how Golani will always hold firm to protect and keep this land. And the yellow background represents how far we have come. Golani took Eilat.”

The Golani brigade was instrumental in capturing Israel’s southernmost city, Eilat, in 1948. They were also the special forces troops responsible for the rescue of 260 hostages in the Entebbe operation in 1976. They had an unequaled reputation among the Israeli public for esprit de corps and heroism.

“Colonel—” the general began, nodding a welcome to Krantz.

Joshua Krantz was quick to interrupt. “Dr. Krantz, please. I’m no longer a soldier.” He was not about to let any cameraderie he was feeling usurp his control of the moment.

Aluf Daniel “Danny” Echod, vice-commander of Aman, was not upset at being interrupted. While he was a general, he was also an Israeli and a Jew. He was used to a life of insubordination. Privates in the Israeli army had opinions and let them be known. An American general would be court-martialing soldiers right and left for what Danny Echod tolerated on a daily basis. Danny was nearly a decade younger than Krantz but came from the same mold—independent, determined, always ready with “no” as a first response, but then just as ready to accomplish the impossible.

“Doctor, do not think that your demands are met because you are so mighty. We would not have consented to your lady being here if we did not believe she could be of help in this mission we have for you.”

“I have no interest in military missions.”

“We have not called you here to be a soldier—but an archaeologist. You are, it seems, the most scholarly person we have in the field of military archaeology. And”—General Echod smiled toward Fala—“this is something in which I am told you, too, are expert. We want to also hire you.”

“You want to hire us… both?” Fala responded, somewhat surprised. She was just imagining the string of curses her family would conjure if they knew she’d been offered a job by Israeli military intelligence.

“Sir, you can’t afford me,” Krantz responded immediately and firmly.

“Ah, your services are priceless? We are the government. We have plenty of money.”

“My time is priceless. For my entire life I did what others would have me do. Now, I do only what I want.”

“Five thousand shekels per day. That is quite more than your usual rate.”

“As I said, my time is priceless.”

“So, you want to bargain?” The general smiled toward Fala. “Six thousand.”

Krantz stood up and walked to the window. It was dusk, and traffic in Tel Aviv was thickening as jobs ended and people headed home. Soon it would slow to the kind of crawl experienced during rush hour in large American cities. He remembered this land in his youth, when the roads were filled with dust and donkey carts, when it was less green but also less paved over with concrete. The skies over Israel were once ethereal blue. Now even the Holy Land had smog.

“This day is done, General. How much is my time worth, you ask? Is there a price you can pay to give me back my today and my yesterday?”

“Please. Sit.” The general gestured toward a chair.

Colonel Krantz instead took Fala by the hand, raised her from her seat, and turned toward the door.

“I have no desire to sit. I have no desire to listen. I just want to go.”

“I know you. The hero of the Chinese Farm. They tell stories about you.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“I love stories. I come from a rabbinical family, you know. But I am the first—the first of the sons in my family not to go
to yeshiva
. Instead, I spent my youth inside Megachs, Nakpadons, and Merkavas.”

Krantz knew he was referring to a progression of Israeli tanks since the 1980s.

“I love stories,” the former tank commander went on. “Somewhere inside me is that rabbi.

“Dr. Krantz,” he began his story, paraphasing a nineteenth-century Jewish fable, “somewhere, somewhere on this earth, a Jew has died—an ordinary man, with a life of virtues and sins. After he was laid to rest and Kaddish said, he was taken to stand before the heavenly seat of judgment. There he saw the scales on which all his earthly deeds, the good and the bad, were to be weighed. His righteous advocate came with a bag of good deeds as white as snow, more fragrant than the finest perfume, and began pouring them upon the right pan of the scales. Then, his evil adversary came with a bag of sins as black as coal, as foul as offal, and began pouring them on the left pan of the scales. The scales of judgment tipped up and down until finally they stopped. A heavenly judge studied the scales carefully and announced his decision. There could be no decision. The scales were perfectly balanced. No judgment could be made. The soul could neither pass through the gates of heaven nor of hell.”

The general stopped his tale, perhaps to give more meaning to its moral conclusion.

“You should know, General,” Krantz interjected. “I am not a religious man. Heaven and hell and the Big Bad Wolf are all fairy tales to me.”

“It is not so much a story about heaven and hell,” the general responded. “Yes, it may be useful to imagine the torment of being in limbo—not being able to be chosen for your good works or your evil ones. But the horror you must imagine today is simply not even taking the time to choose. You must at least listen; then you can make your choice. After all, it takes so little to tip the scales.”

The general put his hand in his pocket and retrieved something white. He sprinkled it on the table for effect. Krantz pursed his lips, then smiled and conceded to rabbinical wit. And he and Fala sat down again at the conference table.

The general nodded to his adjutant, who handed him an envelope. He opened it and pushed a photograph toward Krantz. It was a poor quality photo, clearly something taken surreptiously in the field, possibly at great risk to the photographer. It was a photo of an unusual weapon—a small leather glove with leather laces at the wrist and, for fingers, four sharpened and curved finger scythes. Krantz perused the photo carefully. He had never seen the complete weapon before, only rusted remnants of the hammered iron finger scythes and hypothetical sketches of what it must have looked like intact. It was a remarkable find and apparently in perfect condition.

“You recognize this?” the general asked, clearly anxious for the answer.

“Yes. It’s a hand scythe, a weapon believed to be used in the third century BC.”

“BC? Before the Second Temple was destroyed?”

Joshua Krantz smiled. “A few hundred years before.” He passed the photo to Fala, who also seemed excited to see the weapon.

“You found this in Israel?” she asked.

The general said nothing.

“This was a weapon of Iskander,” she commented to Krantz, who nodded affirmatively.

“And who is Iskander?” General Echod asked.

“Iskander,” Krantz explained, “is what the Arabs called Alexander—Alexander the Great. He inherited the kingdom of Macedonia when he was twenty years old,” Krantz went on, giving the general a little history lesson. “With his talent for military tactics and strategy, he nearly conquered the known world in his time. But he was schooled in the arts of war by a master, a Greek teacher… a name you’ll recognize—Aristotle. And legend has it that Aristotle designed many of the weapons Alexander used in his battles. This ‘hand scythe’ was one of them.”

“How was it used?” the general asked.

“We can only guess.”

Fala unhesitantly added her opinion. “Alexander developed the phalanx, a box formation of soldiers—a formidable military innovation at the time. The men in front carried heavy eighteen-foot spears. When they held them vertically, the wall of spears hid what was happening in the rear of the formation. When they held them forward, enemy soldiers could be killed well before they reached the body of the formation. But the spears were too heavy for the frontline soldiers to hold any other weapon. If the spear broke or was dropped, well, those soldiers were defenseless.”

“Except for this,” Krantz added, tapping on the photograph. “They could still fight with this hand weapon, slashing it with great effect into the bodies of their enemies.”

The general sighed. He had some answers, but he had a lot more questions.

“I need to know more about this weapon, about how it was and can be used. Will you take the job?”

Krantz was still unsure he wanted to be in bed with Aman. He turned to Fala to tip his scales.

“It’s not the Dead Sea Scrolls,” she volunteered her opinion. “But, for a military historian and archaeologist, the battle scythe of Iskander comes close.”

“I’ll take the job,” Krantz announced abruptly, and quickly got down to business. “Is the site secured? Because I would want to get right to this dig.”

The general was now the quiet one.

“Is it in Israeli territory?” Krantz asked.

Still no answer.

“Occupied territories?” Fala asked.

Danny Echod bristled a bit. Palestinians and Arabs referred to any territory that Jews had settled as “occupied territories.” He wondered what her meaning was. But he had already had this woman thoroughly screened. Of course she was an Arab and a Muslim but so were many loyal Israeli citizens. But, most importantly, he knew she was not a zealot and that satisfied him.

Almost as soon as she said it—“occupied territories”—Fala knew she had misspoke. Especially here. Surprisingly, the general patted the top of her hand reassuringly. Both she and Krantz noticed then, for the first time, that General Echod was missing two fingers on each hand. While it was just surprising to Fala, it jogged Krantz’s memory.

Danny Echod—this was the man who had been captured by Hezbollah, tortured and mutilated. He was famous, not for that fact, but because he had escaped. Although the Israelis always balked at making prisoner exchanges with Arab terrorist organizations, they’d made several such trades. It was always an uneven one—hundreds of living Arab prisoners for one or two dead Israeli soldiers. The enemy had never returned an Israeli soldier alive. In fact, the only one who had ever returned alive from Hezbollah captivity was Danny Echod, and only because of a miraculous escape.