When David finished telling them of Rafi's doubts, all except Dov stared at the floor.
"He's wrong, David. You solved it and he's jealous." Dov smiled. "It's as simple as that."
"Screw Rafi anyway," Shoshana said. "Who wants to be in an outfit where the fucking commander doesn't know what the fuck is going on?"
Rebecca Marcus, offended by Shoshana's language, sat ramrod-straight in her typing chair.
"It felt great to arrest Katzer," Uri said. "His breath stank. He must have eaten sausage before he went to bed."
"He's already out," Micha said.
"He keeps a lawyer on tap. His thugs called the guy and he turned up all bristly with a writ."
"Gati wanted to strangle me," Shoshana said. "He gagged when I told him the charge." She made her voice severe: "Obstruction of justice and conspiracy." Then she broke down and giggled.
"Ephraim played it cool," David told them. "'So what did I do? Called a doctor for an injured American, a good friend to Israel.' He laughed in my face. But he was faking it. One side of him thinks he's immune; the other side knows he's in very deep shit."
"We did right, David," Dov's voice was steady. "Those guys play rough. They don't worry about the rules."
"Anyway, we're the Rabies Squad." Shoshana's black eyes flashed.
David loved them: They were his people, they'd done something extraordinary, and now, like a small commando unit reassembled after a dangerous operation, they were reliving the drama of it, laughing, exchanging stories, astounded by their own audacity.
Even Rebecca Marcus, normally distanced from their camaraderie, seemed excited by their tales. When the telephone rang she snapped it up.
"For you, David. It's Anna. She says it's urgent."
At 2 P.M. every Friday, tourists throng the sides of narrow Via Dolorosa while pilgrims gather near the First Station of the Cross waiting to be led along the route by priests. Church groups from Mexico, the Philippines, rural France, men, women, and children, many obsessed with martyrdom and stigmata, some even bearing huge oversized crosses on their shoulders, assemble to make the march and relive their Savior's Passion.
It was amid this throng that Targov now found himself. The procession was already in progress. He could barely push his way past the stream of pilgrims.
But oh!,
he thought,
the faces!
Targov studied them: Haunted faces with jutting chins, and stern determined glowering eyes. Fanatical faces, otherworldly and smug. Superior scowls that said: "We Know. We are the elect. We have seen the Light. And now we own the Truth."
Suddenly Targov hated that burning look, and hated the passions, generated within this city, which powered it. He too had longed to wear it, to die intoxicated by righteousness. But now, seeing it on others, he understood the arrogant pride in which he'd spun his plan. In that same instant of awareness, he was flooded with self-contempt, for he finally understood the idiocy of the notion that a man can achieve redemption by acting out another's pain.
David entered the Old City by Jaffa Gate, then followed narrow David Street, unmarked dividing line between the Christian and Armenian Quarters, jammed that Friday afternoon with pilgrims, shoppers, tourists, and miscellaneous Jerusalemites. Pushing past people and mules, through the aromas of sewage and roasting meat, David fought his way into the tunnel that connected up with the old Roman Cardo. Recently excavated and restored, it had been turned into an underground street of fashionable Israeli shops.
Anna was waiting for him in front of Steimatsky's newsstand. He ran up to her, planted a kiss on her brow.
"What's going on?"
"It's Sasha. Rokovsky called. He said the old man's acting crazy, wandering around in here, babbling something about Sokolov being party to a plot to bomb the Dome of the Rock. Sasha demanded a confrontation at David's Tower, and Rokovsky gave Sergei the message. Now he's scared. He thinks they're both crazy and there's a real danger one or both of them will be hurt."
The Citadel, called David's Tower, was attached to the Jaffa Gate. Here Targov stood on the highest parapet awaiting Sergei Sokolov. There was no breeze this torrid August afternoon. The tower was deserted and the Old City baked. His ears took in its sounds. Shrieks, moans, and wails of Arabs, Christians, and Jews thronging below in the labyrinth, each scheming to increase his fraction of the precious space.
"I am summoned!"
Targov stared down. Sokolov was standing legs apart in the center of the courtyard while a nervous looking Rokovsky waited several meters behind.
"The Great Sculptor wants to see me. He
demands
my presence." Sokolov made an exaggerated bow, then began to scamper up the first flight of narrow steps. Watching him approach, Targov saw something new in his face. The deadness, the emptiness were gone, replaced now by mockery and spite.
"It's about
the nose,
isn't it?" Sergei's tone was bitter. Charging up the second flight, his entire face was animated by rage.
"Fuck your goddamned nose!" Targov yelled when Sergei was just one flight from the top.
Stunned, Sergei paused on the landing. "What do you mean—my goddamned nose?"
"Yours,
idiot! You were the model for The Martyr, but too stupid to recognize it." Targov laughed. "You shot off your own nose, don't you see? Shot it off to spite your face!"
Sokolov reddened. His body began to shake. A perfect portrait of a vandal, Targov thought, at the moment he realizes he has inadvertently defaced himself.
"You stole my face!"
"Stop whining. I know what you've done. It would be pathetic if a masterpiece weren't at stake."
"A masterpiece! Ha! That's what you think of that big black ugly thing of yours?"
"I'm talking about the map, you fool—the map you got ten thousand dollars to sign. You hate that dome, don't you, Sergei? It's just too perfect, isn't it? Nothing you could ever make, could ever dream, could ever be compared to it. Mediocrity! Trinket carver! Impotent little man!"
Grasping hold of Anna's hand, David plunged into the mass of pilgrims, shoving, pushing, elbowing his way through. At last ahead of the procession he looked back upon it, the leading priests chanting, costumed like actors, the pilgrims following them, a delusioned mob.
As they fought their way through the Christian Quarter, he briefly explained to her the history behind the conspiracy: how the site of the original Jewish Temple was now occupied by a sacred Islamic shrine, and how several times Jewish extremist groups had tried to blow it up in order to hasten the fulfillment of the prophecy that the Messiah would appear only when the temple was rebuilt.
"They've tried with dynamite," he said, "but they've never managed to get close enough. We guard the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa Mosque as fiercely as the Arabs. We know the kind of tragedy that will occur if Jews ever manage to destroy it. But if a plane attacked, piloted by a skilled professional who'd practiced his run again and again on a full-scale model like the one Sergei Sokolov pretended he'd designed, then there'd be no defense—he could take it out in a single pass. When Gideon flew the Iraqi reactor mission, he and his squadron practiced for weeks against such a target. That's how I figured it out. I was thinking about Gideon, and then it came to me in a flash."
They'd reached Omar Ibn El Khatab Square. David pointed up at the Citadel. "Look!"
"Sasha!" Anna yelled. But Targov and Sokolov couldn't hear. David could see them high up on the parapet, two distant figures about to come to blows.
Anna turned to him. "This is the place," she said.
"What place?"
"Where the trails you have been following will meet. I dreamed about this, David. But I couldn't see it in my dream."
"Come!" He grasped her hand. "There's a way in around the other side." He guided her toward Jaffa Gate.
Even in his anger Targov wanted a confession. Whatever he'd done to Sergei, it was as nothing compared to this. "Admit you knew," he shouted at him. "Admit you wanted to destroy it! Confess, dammit! Confess, and redeem your wasted life!"
Sokolov rushed at him then, fueled by some new-found fount of demonic energy. The old man, supposedly broken in the Gulag, now charged up the last six steps like a savage, stood before Targov, thrust both his hands at his chest and gave him an enormous shove.
Targov stumbled back, nearly lost his balance.
"Sergei! Be careful!"
But Sokolov charged again. This time he threw his entire weight against him, driving Targov so hard against the railing that he reeled and nearly fell.
It was madness, David thought, the way the two of them were wrestling up there while he and Anna rushed to the center of the courtyard and reed-thin Rokovsky yelled: "Look out! Look out!"
Two old men, locked in combat perilously above them, one husky with a wild white mane of hair, the other bald and cadaverous. Their movements were jagged as they grasped hold of each other's shirts. Spittle shot from their mouths as they screamed obscenities and fought. They swayed together wildly, first toward the railing, then away from it, then toward it once again. Two old men out of control, like robots whose mechanisms had gone berserk. Their wild struggle was etched out against the crenellated tower and the hot Jerusalem midday sky.
Each was battling, brawling, scrambling to kill the other while struggling to maintain his balance and stay alive.
Madness! Madness!
David thought, as he saw the railing start to give. He stared up at them, helpless, and then turned to Anna, standing beside him, who had just let out a scream.
"Sasha..."
They were falling now, twirling together through space, and even as they did they continued to fight like animals. Targov knew that in a second they would both hit the courtyard and die. He saw Rokovsky, the detective, and Anna looking horrified. His last thought, before he hit the stones, was: I
will die here in Jerusalem.
When the story broke in the press the references were discreetly veiled:
Sources within the Ministry of Justice allege...
Sources have revealed that persons as yet unnamed...
Knowledgeable sources suggest that murders were committed to cover up a conspiracy that reached into the highest levels of the government...
But then, when the Ministry of Justice spokesman refused to comment, shrewd editors, smelling something big, sent out their best reporters to dig around.
On the following morning the dispatches were sharply focused. Over breakfast Dav
id translated a story for Anna entitled "The Ninth of Av Conspiracy." He had given a long background only interview to its author and was now pleased to find himself described as "a confidential source within the Jerusalem police":
Wild rumors are circulating at the Etzion Airbase that a Lieutenant Ya'akov Ben-Eleizer, a pilot, has been placed under arrest. Lt. Ben-Eleizer, it is rumored, had been paid to bomb Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock at noon on the recent holiday, the Ninth of Av.
There are rumors too that soon after the arrest a large number of army bulldozers were sent into the Negev to destroy a surreptitiously constructed bombing target there. Unnamed IDF sources confirm that the money used to construct this target was diverted from funds appropriated for the cultural improvement of military personnel.
These same sources state that the designs for the target were prepared under the auspices of an obscure American charitable arts foundation with offices in Jerusalem. Attempts to obtain confirmation have met with official rebuffs.
But a confidential source within the Jerusalem police, who spoke only on condition that he would not be named, has confirmed that the bombing plot is connected to a string of unsolved killings, including the double murders of Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson, which rocked the capital this past spring.
This same police source, who is very close to the investigation, points to a power struggle now taking place between the Police Minister and the Director of the General Security Services. According to this source this struggle revolves around the roles played in these killings by certain unnamed Security Services personnel.
Arrests, this source says, are imminent. Meantime, there are rumors that a well-known religious figure and politician may also be involved. Rabbi Mordecai Katzer has publically called many times for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock. And a retired Air Force general, whose name is a household word, is reported to have left the country hurriedly...
When the phone rang, David and Anna were still sipping coffee discussing the article. It was Latsky's Moroccan secretary, The Claw.
"The superintendent's shitting green," said The Claw. "He wants to know what the hell you think you're doing."
"Right now, dear, I'm reading the papers. Sorry he's having trouble with his bowels."
"Cut the crap, David," she said. "People around here think you're the leak."