Tongues of Fire

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PETER ABRAHAMS

“Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.” —Stephen King

“The care with which Abrahams brings his characters to life sets him apart from most thriller writers working today.” —
The New Yorker

Hard Rain

“A good thriller needs style, atmosphere and a surprising plot, and
Hard Rain
… has all of these and something extra: depth of feeling.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“A class-A thriller.” —James Ellroy

“A riveting tale of betrayal and vengeance set against a backdrop of sixties craziness and enriched by some wonderfully wicked observations on the way we live and love.” —Jonathan Kellerman

The Fury of Rachel Monette

“A roller coaster of a novel.” —
Los Angeles Times

“Visual, frightening, fast-paced and mesmerizing. [Abrahams] is a natural-born artist, a brilliant young writer who has a truly remarkable talent for writing psychological thrillers of enormous power, depth and intensity.” —
The Denver Post

Pressure Drop

“[A] gripping tale … Maintaining suspense throughout, Abrahams sets his scenes with evocative details.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Thrillers aren't generally known for sharp social observation, or for sympathetic examination of career women caught with their biological alarm clocks set to go off and good men a scarce commodity.
Pressure Drop
supplies both, along with the requisite amount of nasty villains and brave deeds.” —
Booklist

Tongues of Fire

“Israel as a nation has ceased to exist. Israel and the Israeli [people] have been driven from their land into the sea by Syria, Iraq and other Arab states. Thus begins
Tongues of Fire
.… This fascinating story relates very plausibly to our age and time. It is gripping.” —
Bestsellers

Tongues of Fire

Peter Abrahams, also known as Spencer Quinn

for Enid, in memory

To depart from evil is understanding.

—Job, Chapter 28

PROLOGUE

It was the night Israel died.

It was night as bright as day.

It could have been day, on another planet where the sky was red and purple and green; where the clouds were balls of orange and yellow fire; where the ground never stopped trembling; where there was no air to breathe, only smoke and dust, cordite and oil, shrapnel and blood.

It could have been a colossal experiment to drive rats crazy; but people, not rats, went mad. The rats would go on as they always did.

It was the night Isaac Rehv crouched behind a gutted school bus on the southern slopes of Mount Carmel: Isaac Rehv, lieutenant in the Israeli army reserve, lecturer in Arab history and literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, husband of Naomi, father of Lena, aged ten. He still carried his weapon, he still wore his grimy fatigues, but his part in the organization of the war was finished. Syrian and Iraqi tanks had wiped out his unit a few hours before outside the village of Hamra three kilometers to the east. They had wiped out the village too. It was hard to imagine the whole country ruined like that—Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa. But Isaac Rehv knew it was happening.

He listened to Israeli artillery near the summit shelling Egyptian positions somewhere on the plain. He listened to Egyptian rockets answer back, and Syrian ones from the north. They burst against the mountain in hot fury. He felt their power in the soles of his feet.

Rehv had not eaten for two days or slept for three. He had stopped thinking about the war or the enemy or defeat. He had even stopped hating the Americans. He thought only of Naomi and Lena. Was it only a week before he had sent them to his mother's in Haifa? “Until they settle this West Bank situation,” he had said. But you can't arrest a million rioters. That was the beginning.

Rehv peered through the twisted body of the bus, scanning the lower slopes for the streets and shops and houses he had known since boyhood. He was looking for a little white house in a small square about a third of the way up the mountain. It took him a long time to picture what had been from what he saw. The buildings were rubble, the bombed streets were buried in debris. He wanted badly to rise and start running up the mountain to that little white house, but he forced himself to stay where he was until he was sure of his bearings.

At last he crept into the open. Even before he could take a first running step across the road a steely insect hissed by his ear, and another whined against the body of the bus. He dropped to the ground and rolled under the bus. Two more bullets bit into the road in front of his face. The stranger who was trying to kill him was hidden somewhere to his right, not far away. In the past week Rehv had grown knowledgeable about the sounds different weapons make, the way he had once learned to identify the instruments in an orchestra; he knew that the stranger was trying to kill him with a Russian-made AK-S. It was not much different from the standard AK-47, but to his ear it had a more authoritative crack. It also fired fragmentation bullets, which dug holes the size of soccer balls and carried legs away instead of wounding them. He made himself very small. That didn't stop the sniper from firing a few more rounds. One shattered glass; one tore up a lump of pavement; the third didn't appear to hit anything at all, shot somehow into the void.

But the third bullet drew a brief staccato reply—the familiar voice of the Uzi submachine gun. It was so near it made Rehv's tired body jump. To his right, where the man with the fragmentation gun was hidden, he heard a muffled cry, then nothing.

Rehv looked around. There was another man under the bus. With some difficulty he was pulling himself out into the road. For a moment Rehv thought he must be wounded, but then the man stood up and the reason was clear: He was enormous, the kind of man called a giant in former times. He carried one Uzi in his hands and another across his back. They both seemed like toys. With surprising lightness of foot he advanced on Rehv, reached down, and took him by the elbow. Rehv glimpsed the sergeant's stripes on the sleeve as he was whisked to his feet. Rehv was six feet tall. That brought his eyes to chest level with the sergeant, where he read the name tag sewn on his shirt: “Levy.”

The big man smiled down at him. “You're lucky he couldn't hit anything, Lieutenant,” he said. “You'd be dead.”

Rehv didn't need to be told. And in no way did he feel lucky. The big man seemed to notice how his words had been understood. He patted Rehv lightly on the shoulder. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and turned to leave.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

Sergeant Levy pointed his gun barrel at the summit. Rehv looked up. Fans of flame erupted from its surface like storms on the sun. He heard the pounding of the enemy guns, so incessant now that he couldn't separate one explosion from the next. They merged into one roar like a ghastly drumroll. He could no longer hear the Israeli artillery fighting back.

“Don't be ridiculous,” he said to Sergeant Levy. But the big man had already disappeared quietly into the shadows.

Carefully Rehv picked his way up the mountain, half bent over, edging along from crumpled house to splintered tree. He recognized a butcher's shop. Mr. Kardish's, he remembered, where his mother bought her meat. One wall remained, and on its meat hooks in a tidy row hung sides of beef.

Rehv turned into the next street, a narrow street which opened into a small square. In the center of the square stood a stone fountain. Rehv saw that it was still working: The big green fish spouted a steady stream of water into a scalloped seashell below, as it had done for years. He couldn't hear the fountain's gurgle because of the bombardment, but he could see that it was undamaged. So were all the houses around the square, including the little white one at the end. He began to hope.

He ran to the familiar blue door and turned the handle. The door opened and he stepped inside.

“Naomi? Lena? Mother?” He listened to his voice call their names through the dark house. “Naomi? Naomi?”

He tried the light switch by the door but there was no electricity. Automatically, without bumping into anything, Rehv went to the dining room and felt along the dining room table until he found the candleholder. His mother liked to dine by candlelight. He took a wooden match from his chest pocket and lit a candle.

“Naomi? Lena? Mother?”

He went from room to room. Everything seemed completely normal. A bottle of sherry stood on the drink tray, and American magazines were scattered on the coffee table. Rehv walked quickly through the living room, the study, the kitchen. He opened the broom closet. It was full of brooms.

He climbed the stairs. His mother's bed was made. So was the one in the guest bedroom where Naomi would sleep. An open box of tampons lay on the bedside table. In his old bedroom Lena had left the bed unmade. On the pillow was a book of stories by Edgar Allan Poe, in English. Lena liked scary stories.

Rehv returned to the study. Perhaps, he thought, they've gone somewhere safe and left me a note? He began opening the drawers of the desk. He found bills, receipts, letters, stationery, keys, and 6,420 shekels in Israeli currency, far too much money to be left lying around the house. But no note.

And far too much money to be left behind.

Suddenly Rehv thought of the toolshed in the back garden. He had often hidden inside as a boy, playing hide-and-seek. There was plenty of room for three people, especially three small ones. He ran to the kitchen and threw open the back door.

In the wild light he saw the shed door dangling at an angle, torn off its hinges. Naomi, Lena, and his mother lay in the rock garden. Rehv felt his insides turn to ice. Almost against his will he went closer, as if drawn by magnets.