Zealot (29 page)

“You’re next, Rivka,” MacLeod prompted.

“Can’t I wait for you?” she asked.

MacLeod laughed. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise. Now, go!” She turned to go.

“Rivka, wait!” Avram told her. She turned to him, eyes wide and questioning. He bent down and kissed her gently on the forehead,
tousling her pigtails with one hand. “Be brave,
Rivkaleh
,” he whispered. Then he swatted her on the backside, saying “Go!” and she took off across the square.

“Avram?” MacLeod could sense something was troubling his comrade.

Avram ignored him, turning to Landau instead. “Send Tosia down, then you follow. Hurry, it’s almost dawn.” Landau stepped
from the shadows and made his way to the manhole.

“You’re not going.” It wasn’t even a question. MacLeod could read the certainty on Avram’s face.

“Take this,” he said, handing MacLeod the rifle. “You’ll need it. I can find another one.”

“Why, Avram?” MacLeod pressed. “Tell me why.”

“My place is here, MacLeod. With my people. As long as there’s one Jew left alive in Warsaw, I have to be here. I have to
help.”

“Then I’ll stay with you.”

Avram shook his head, touched deeply by MacLeod’s gesture, but adamant. “No. You’re their only hope. You get them out of here.
You get them safe.” Then he grabbed MacLeod firmly by both shoulders and stared intensely into his eyes, as if imparting his
commandment upon him: “And then you find a way to stop that bastard, you hear me?”

Both men’s eyes began to tear, and MacLeod could feel his lower lip begin to quiver. “I swear,” he answered in a voice deep
with sorrow, then he embraced Avram to his he.

After a moment, Avram pulled away. “Daylight’s coming,” he said, trying to put on a brighter face. “Time to roll.” He started
across the square toward the manhole, MacLeod following, holding the rifle.

MacLeod started down the ladder into the sewer. “Hey, Tzaddik,” he called up out of the hole. Avram looked down at him from
the street. “God be with you.”

“You, too
goy
.” Avram slid the manhole cover into place, leaving MacLeod in darkness.

Paris: The Present

“You’re a
goy
, you’ve always been a
goy
.” To Avram, there was no longer anyone in the room but MacLeod. Constantine, Methos, both had faded into the background of
his awareness, leaving him alone with the man he felt was his betrayer. “I never expected you to understand what it’s like.
To never have a place you can call your home. To be hunted down like a dog in the street because of what you are. But I never
thought you’d be the one to side with the murderers.”

MacLeod understood all too well. He knew what it was like to be run to ground like an animal by a pack of English butchers
and their hounds, his only offense wearing a kilt in defiance of English law. He knew what it was like to be exiled and outlawed
from his homeland on pain of death. But he knew as well that all explanations would be lost on Avram in his current state.

“She’s
not
a murderer.” MacLeod tried again to get him to hear, knowing as he did he might as well be shouting into the wind. “She’s
trying to create peace between both your peoples.”

“Peace?” Avram’s laugh was without humor. “You think this is peace? They’ll spend weeks of negotiations building up this fragile
house of cards that no one likes, only to tear it down before the ink is dry on the page. They only want one kind of ‘peace,’
MacLeod. The kind that comes at the point of a sword. The kind that comes when the enemy is totally annihilated The kind of
peace the Germans brought.” The two men stood toe-to-toe once again. Avram’s head might only come to MacLeod’s chin, but filled
with rage he seemed larger. “I wonder what Miriam Kavner would think of her ‘hero’ now?”

Behind him, Constantine and Methos exchanged a look. Constantine was horrified at the row taking place between two good friends
in his normally staid and quiet home. Methos was wishing he had popcorn to go along with the evening’s entertainment.

“Miriam believed there were things in life more important than politics,” MacLeod said carefully, stepping away from their
battle stance.

“You said it yourself—this isn’t ‘politics.’” Avram spit out the word. “This is about murder. This is about Treblinka. This
is about Warsaw. This is about making sure they never happen again. Never again!”

MacLeod knew there was nothing more he could say to Avram to sway his mind. Maybe later, some other time, they could talk
as they once had. Friend to friend. Man to man. “I’m sorry you feel this way, Avram.”

“You’re sorry, all right. One sorry piece of shit.” He grabbed MacLeod tightly by the forearm, forced him to look him in the
eyes. MacLeod didn’t pull away. “You remember what we did with collaborators in the Ghetto, MacLeod?”

MacLeod answered, “I remember,” but gave no ground.

“You’d better.” Avram shoved him away and stormed out of the study. They could hear the slam of the front door echo through
the house.

MacLeod stood where he was, staring at the study door until long after his sense of Avram’s presence had faded into the night,
replaying in his mind what had just happened. Was there any way he could salvage Avram’s friendship? And yet still not compromise
his own values? If there was an answer, he couldn’t see it.

“Well, that went about as well as could be expected.” Methos’s cheery voice split the silence once again. Unfolding himself
from the settee, he reached for his raincoat. “I think I’ve had about all the entertainment I can stand for one evening,”
he said with a self-satisfied grin.

Constantine looked at Methos askance. “You don’t have to look like the cat that swallowed the canary, Pierson. Don’t tell
me you actually wanted that to happen.”

“Of course I did,” Methos said with no trace of remorse.

MacLeod was more than a little annoyed. “And I suppose for your next trick, you’ll rub salt in old wounds?”

Methos heaved a dramatic sigh, as if he couldn’t believe he actually had to explain himself. “Look, the first step toward
peace is always getting the grievances out on the table. Drag them out into the light of day, and suddenly they’re no longer
the monsters under the bed. They’re something rational human beings can discuss and, with luck, come to terms with. But the
first step is to get them out in the open.”

Both MacLeod and Constantine seemed unconvinced. “If that was your clever scheme, it failed,” MacLeod said, sagging into the
leather chair and retrieving his drink.

“I’m afraid Avram is far from rational at the moment,” Constantine added.

“Hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know. Patience. You have to wage peace like you wage war. This was only the first skirmish,
not the whole battle.” Methos slipped his coat on as he headed for the door of the study. “
Ciao
, guys,” he said, then stopped, turning to Constantine. “We still on for Saturday?”

“Of course we are. I feel lucky,” Constantine said with a greedy smile. Methos’s wicked “ha ha ha!” could be heard down the
hallway as he left. Constantine saw MacLeod’s raised eyebrows and explained, “Departmental poker game. Pierson’s been on a
winning streak lately. I intend to crush him like a bug.”

“He never struck me as the gambling type.”

“Ah, one hell of a poker face, though. And if he thinks he’s got a winning hand, he’s unstoppable.” Constantine could tell
from his face MacLeod’s mind was not on poker. “Look, Duncan, two thousand years ago Avram watched the Romans drive the Jews
out of Palestine, and there wasn’t a day in those two thousand years—certainly not even an hour, when he was with me—he didn’t
think about returning. And now, finally, the Jews have it back. Giving it up again … it must be impossible for him even to
contemplate.”

“But does that give him the right to do what the Romans did? To drive people out of their homeland? To rob them of their culture?
Their identity?”

Constantine poured himself another drink. “Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? That’s the problem with the politics of Palestine.
Everyone is in the right. Everyone is in the wrong. Everyone believes that God is on their side. Meanwhile, people are dying
on both sides. More?” He offered the decanter to MacLeod, who shook his head. “And God, in his wisdom, seems to have decided
to stay well out of it. Which is what I would advise you to do, if you weren’t already in the middle of it up to your ears.”

“So what do I do?” MacLeod hoped that Constantine’s millennia of experience would yield an answer he had yet to think of.

“Not much you can do, I’m afraid. Stop seeing the girl because one of your friends doesn’t approve? Seems rather adolescent
to me. Besides, if you did, and then something should happen to her”—MacLeod’s stricken face at Constantine’s words told him
all he needed to know—“you’d never forgive yourself. Speak to Avram? Certainly not tonight. Maybe in a couple of days, but
you may have more luck talking to a door-post. When he digs in, it’s nearly impossible to move him.”

“That’s for sure,” MacLeod agreed, remembering their time in the Ghetto.

“Or let him hate you, if that’s what he wants to do. It’s not the end of the world. You can’t make everyone happy all the
time, but, no matter what Avram says, you’ve got the right to do what makes you happy.” Constantine looked at his worried
friend honestly. “Sometimes I think you forget that.”

When MacLeod returned to the Lutétia that night, he felt no better than he had leaving Constantine’s. If anything, the security
checks, the bureaucratic red tape, the pervading sense of fear and paranoia that surrounded the sumptuous palace only reminded
him he was caught in the middle of a war. A war without battlefields. A war of words, of emotions pulled so tight the slightest
incident could cause them to break. A war of rocks and bottles and hidden bombs that went off unexpectedly, in a bus or a
school or in the mind of a fanatic.

Assad waited patiently outside the door to Maral’s hotel room. Didn’t the guy ever sleep? He nodded a perfunctory greeting
at MacLeod and stepped aside to allow him to knock.

MacLeod rapped on the door lightly. “Maral?” He could hear her hurry to open it.

“Duncan.” The door opened partway and she pulled him in, closing it firmly behind him. Her hair was down, a hairbrush still
clutched in her hand, and she wore a simple pair of satin pajamas which he found more attractive than any sexy peignoir or
the most revealing teddy. She had the ability to make anything look good.

Maral gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, asking, “How was your meeting with your Israeli friend?” and resumed her nightly
ritual of hair brushing. He didn’t know where to start. What to say? But his anger and disappointment showed in the way his
body moved as he walked into the room. She set down her brush. “Not good, was it? Was it because of me?”

He shrugged and went to sit on a tapestried couch across the room from her. There wasn’t really anything he could tell her.

“Would you like a drink? Something to eat?”

“No, thanks.”

She moved to the couch and sat beside him, concerned about the shadows behind his eyes, the world-weary set of his shoulders.
“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not really,” he said. She didn’t believe him, but she wasn’t going to push.

She put an arm cautiously around his shoulders. They were tense, the muscles wound in knots. When he didn’t seem to mind her
touch, she snuggled a little closer to him. Still no response. Her other hand she laid across his chest and began to unbutton
his shirt. She kissed him softly on the side of the neck, moving up toward his ear. The sinew connecting throat and jaw felt
twisted and taut beneath her lips.

He reached out and gently pushed her away. “Not now, Maral, please.”

She looked at him a moment, a little stung, wishing she could figure out what was going on in that lovely head of his. “Okay,”
she said, “help me understand this. You don’t want to eat. You don’t want to drink. You don’t want to talk, and you don’t
want to play. May I ask why you
are
here, Duncan? You could just as easily be not doing all these things on your barge. Why come to me?”

Why? That was a good question. Because… “I just wanted to be near you. Not to make love or fool around, but … just to have
you close.” He smiled a wan little smile. “Sorry I’m not better company tonight.”

Her heart melted at this peek beneath the white knight’s armor, a glimpse of the vulnerability locked inside. Suddenly, she
wanted nothing more than to hold him, to banish his demons and comfort him. Settling back into the couch and pulling her legs
up beneath her, she put her arm around him once again and gently guided his head against her shoulder. “Close enough?”

She smelled of sandalwood and fresh rainwater, and he nestled against her. “This is nice.” The satin of her pajama top was
cool where it brushed his skin, and her thick jet hair cushioned his head like no downy pillow ever had. Gradually he could
feel the tension and anger start to seep from his body.