The Gates of Zion (17 page)

The boy nodded. “Do you see down the block? A large building? It is the theatre. We can get to the balcony from here. Inside the theatre.

But you will have to help me. I cannot see!”

“God, help me!” Ellie said aloud as she glanced backward. The flames from the tailor shop raced from building to building, threatening the structure where they waited now. Never had she felt such fear. Yet as she remembered the boy’s small hands reaching out to help her, she wrapped his arms around her neck and swung him onto her back. Crouching, she ran to the edge of the building and leaped onto the next, spilling him onto the rough tar roof. “Are you okay?” she asked, gathering him onto her back once again.

He nodded, then clung to her. “Just tell me when you are jumping, lady.”

“You scared or something?” she asked, running a pattern across the roof like a football quarterback.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Me too,” she replied, staring over the edge of the roof to the top of the next building several feet below them. “Ready?”

The jump was at least a foot farther, but Ellie hoped that since the roof was below them, they would make it. A short distance beyond was the theatre, and Ellie caught a glimpse of the fire-escape ladder that led to the balcony. “Ready?” she repeated, not sure that she was.

“Yes.”

Ellie took a big breath, as though she were plunging off a diving board into deep water. Then she jumped, her feet landing on the very edge of the building. She fought to regain her balance, but the weight of the boy pulled her backward.

Yacov fell from her back as she lurched forward, his hands barely catching the ledge. He cried out, sensing death below him if he lost his grip.

Ellie clambered to him on her hands and knees, reaching him just as his hands began to lose their tenuous hold. “I’ve got you!” she cried, grabbing his wrist and pulling him up to her. “We almost got it that time.”

She hauled him up, then fell back, exhausted, as Yacov sat heaving, cradling his face. Smoke swirled through the sky above them, dancing to some unheard melody, while below, the staccato of gunfire was punctuated by screams.

***

David fought his way inch by inch up Princess Mary Avenue, trying to reach Jaffa Gate. Somewhere, he knew, Ellie was in the thick of this riot. A knot twisted tight in his stomach as he watched men and women fall around him. Had she fallen, too?

He wanted to shout her name, to keep on calling until she heard and answered, but he knew that shouting would be futile in this din. His eyes searched for the copper glow of her hair amidst the bloodstained rabble that surged against him, pushing him back. But on he pressed, straining against the current, hoping to find her before it was too late.

All around him piles of goods were being set on fire, and no one, it seemed, raised a finger to stop the mob. He heard the roar of an engine and, with some relief, watched two dozen British troops pile out of the canvas-covered truck bed onto the street. His relief soon evaporated, however, and was replaced by anger when the troops simply stood ready in the street as the brutality raged around them.

A man in a Palestine police uniform gawked at the roof of a burning building. He also did nothing to help—nothing to stop the bloodshed.

When the officer gestured to three grim Arab men, David’s eyes followed that gesture toward the rooftop.

A girl’s copper hair bobbed across the roofline. It couldn’t be―she was carrying a young boy on her back!
But if it is Ellie, and those
men …
Horror and hope rose in David’s heart as the girl plunged over the edge of the roof onto another building across a gulf five feet wide and another six feet below her. When she fell, the boy slipped from her grasp and clung to the edge of the roof. As she turned and leaned over the building to grab the boy by the wrist, David caught a glimpse of her face.

“Ellie!” he shouted. “Hold on! Don’t let go! Hang on!”

As she hauled the boy to her, one of the Arab men pulled an ancient revolver and took aim. The policeman simply looked on.

David yelled again and charged at the man, knocking him to the ground as he pulled the trigger. “Ellie!” he cried again. “Run for it!”

The gap-toothed policeman smiled and kicked David hard in the groin. Darkness circled around him… .

***

Ellie pulled herself up and placed Yacov onto her back once again. She sprinted across the rooftop and, without looking at the ground, reached for the rickety metal ladder on the side of the theatre building.

“Hang on, now,” she warned. “It’s only a short hop to the ladder.

Just hang on.” Her fear had given birth to a courage she had not been aware even existed in her. “I’m no Errol Flynn,” she muttered, “but I can do this.” She grasped the ladder and jumped, both feet catching the rungs with ease.

She looked over her shoulder and down, watching as the policeman and his thugs attacked a man in the street. “At least they’re not watching us,” she said, climbing as quickly as she could to the small wrought-iron railing around the fire-escape entrance to the theatre.

Carefully placing Yacov’s hands securely on the railing, she helped him climb up to the platform. Even before she joined him, he had the splintered wooden door open and was crawling into the theatre. She climbed in after him and shut the door, hoping their pursuers had not spotted them.

“I sneak into the movie this way.” Yacov leaned against the cool cinder-block wall behind a heavy velvet curtain. “My eyes,” he said softly. “They hurt.”

Ellie peeked out from behind the curtain. The place was nearly dark and totally deserted. Outside, the popping of machine-gun fire filtered through the thin, wooden door. Ellie felt as though they had, indeed, just come through a war movie, complete with genuine bad guys.

But a minute later she heard a dull, systematic thudding. “The theatre doors! They’ve found us!”

The boy reached for Ellie as the steady cadence slammed against the building. For an instant she thought he was afraid; then he said, “It is all right, lady. We will be okay. But we got to go.” He patted her hand comfortingly. She wondered if he had forgotten that she was the adult and he was the child.

A barrage of gunfire accompanied the final crash of the doors. The theatre filled with murky light and the sound of the policeman and his men ordering rioters to slash the seats and soak them with gasoline.

Ellie watched from behind the curtain as the policeman stood in the center of the reeking chaos and scanned the theatre. He raised his chin in grim pleasure, evidently secure in the fact that his quarry would die in the fire or be caught as they tried to escape the inferno.

“Lady, I smell petrol. They are going to burn us up, too. Let’s go!”

Yacov urged.

With one last glance around, the policeman ordered everyone out, then threw a match, turning the interior into an instant hell of smoke and flame. When the floor beneath them began to heat up, Ellie knew they only had seconds before they, too, would be trapped. And even when they escaped, the fire would pursue them through the open exit.

She began to cough. “We’ve got to jump for it the instant we open the door,” she told Yacov.

Yacov climbed onto her back and wrapped his arms around her neck. She shoved hard against the door and jumped for the ladder even as the flames roared after them and licked the sudden flow of oxygen at the door.

Ellie glanced below them and saw the policeman and his men waiting at the entrance of the alley with their arms folded. “We’ve got to go up!” she cried. “They’re waiting for us.”

As the flames pursued them up the ladder, Ellie fought her way through the dense, strangling cloud of smoke. The boy was nearly unconscious, it seemed, yet still he clung to her. She was aware of her camera banging against the rungs of the ladder as she painfully climbed up.

The policeman sprinted to Ellie’s only hope for escape―a ladder on the far side of the theatre.

As Ellie pulled herself onto the roof, spots were beginning to smolder. She carefully set the groggy Yacov on his own feet and surveyed their precarious situation. “Roast chicken or sitting ducks … ,” she said, weighing the options.

Behind them, flames lapped up the side of the building. Below waited the policeman and the man who had tried to rape her. She grasped the rail of the ladder that led down to them and stared bleakly at the policeman.

The policeman cupped his hand around his mouth and yelled above the roar of the rapidly encroaching flames, “Come down, Miss Warne. You will not be injured.”

Her eyes went to the gun in his hand and the still-leering face of the murderer beside him. In an instant she made up her mind. There was no easy way to die, she knew, but to become the main course in a barbecue was not her idea of a noble demise. There was a chance she could escape. She hefted the boy once more and began a careful descent on the ladder to the waiting grip of the men below.

Suddenly, with a howling scream, the windows on that side of the building burst. Flames licked out all around them, engulfing the middle ten feet of the ladder. Rungs and rails became hot to the touch.

***

Eyeing the flames on the ladder, Hassan stepped back with a shrug. Well, he had tried to talk them down, at least. This would certainly solve the problem of how to dispose of them.

11

Deliverance

Clutching himself in agony, David got slowly to his feet and leaned against a lightpost as he surveyed the destruction around him. He caught sight of the policeman and the man who had kicked him running around to the far side of the burning theatre. He limped after them in time to watch Ellie begin her climb down. To his further horror, the windows exploded and fire closed in on them. His heart pounded.
They haven’t got much time!

Then David saw the canvas-covered troop carrier standing deserted.

Giving a war whoop, he ran to it. As he climbed aboard and cranked the engine, a British sergeant stuck a muscled arm through the window and grabbed his throat. David drew back his fist and struck the sergeant full in the face, knocking him onto the ground. Without looking back, David pushed the accelerator to the floor and ripped toward the policeman and the waiting men below the ladder.

The policeman turned in disbelief at the approaching truck, screaming and jumping clear seconds before the vehicle slammed into the man at his side. The dead Arab lurched onto the hood of the truck, his face pressed against the windshield. David slammed on the brakes, stopping the truck just below Ellie and the boy.

The flames licked higher, reaching out to where Ellie waited, frozen in terror, on the ladder.

“Ellie!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Jump, girl! Jump onto the canvas top!”

***

Ellie stared down in shocked disbelief. She recognized David’s voice, but how could it be him?

The fumes had choked her almost to unconsciousness, and in a second the ladder would be too hot to hold. She tried to focus on the top of the truck. If the canvas would hold against the force of their weight, perhaps there was a chance. “God,” she whispered. It was the only prayer she knew. “We’re going to jump now, Yacov. Hold on, boy; hold on.”

She leaped into the open air, grasping the arms of Yacov as they fell for what seemed a long time. The boy screamed with Ellie, who expected to miss her target and die. When indeed they did hit, the canvas broke their fall, but it tore away and they crashed into the metal bed of the truck. The world grew dark, and Ellie gasped for breath.

When she came to, the ping of bullets dented the tailgate of the rumbling truck. She stayed down and shielded the boy with her body as the vehicle careened wildly through the streets for several minutes. When the sounds of the riot died behind them, Ellie dared to rise and squint through the torn canvas.

A spiral of smoke rose above the Jewish commercial district, and the wail of sirens echoed off the peculiar pink stone that comprised most of the city’s buildings. A military motorcycle with a sidecar screamed toward them, manned by two British soldiers who glared in deadly earnest through their goggles. They whipped around the troop transport and pulled up alongside the driver of the truck.

Only then did Ellie remember the voice that had sounded so much like David’s calling for her to jump to safety.
It must have been my
imagination.
But she couldn’t help wondering who was driving the truck and where she and Yacov were being taken. She did not have long to wonder. The truck began the ascent to Hadassah Hospital, with the screaming siren of the motorcycle still alongside.

Ellie lifted the canvas on the side of the truck and peeked out at the British soldiers. They had their guns trained directly on the driver.

She craned her neck to see the driver but saw only a leather-clad arm hanging out the window.

Flight jacket.
Ellie’s heart pounded.
Could it truly be David?
She pulled her head back and clutched at her torn and gaping blouse. If she had ever expected to see him again, this wouldn’t have been how she had envisioned the meeting.

The truck screeched to a halt outside the emergency entrance to the hospital. The two soldiers were immediately on the driver, prodding with their guns as the door swung open slowly and a pair of lanky, Levi’scovered legs extended and jumped to the pavement. Stunned, Ellie watched as the driver was whirled around at gunpoint and slammed, facedown, onto the hood of the truck.

“David!” she screamed.

“Ellie, I—” He tried to look toward her, only to be slammed down once again on the truck.

“Y’ can’t steal a troop transport and expect t’ get away wi’ it now, mate,” said one of the soldiers.

“I didn’t steal it!” David insisted.

“There is an injured boy back here, Officer!” Ellie cried at the top of her lungs.

The soldiers eyed one another, then David with suspicion. “I’ll go see,” said the driver of the motorcycle as the other shoved the muzzle of his rifle against the back of David’s neck.

The soldier sauntered back to the bed of the truck and peered in at Ellie, who was cradling Yacov. He was still unconscious, his face swollen and distorted.