Zealot (22 page)

“You didn’t start the war, Duncan,” she said after a moment.

“No,” he agreed, “but I wish it was within my power to take you away from it.”

“You already have.” Miriam arched her body in his arms so her mouth could reach his once again, her dress falling back, baring
her shoulders, her breasts, her eager body to his touch.

MacLeod’s mouth traveled from her lips down her throat. Miriam tilted her head back over his arm, exposing more skin to his
caress. Tongue and lips guided by his fingers, he roved over her throat, lingered on the hollow at the join of head and torso,
then buried his face between her breasts.

And suddenly felt the telltale presence of another Immortal.

MacLeod closed his eyes and sighed. He’d have to speak to Avram about his timing. But before he could begin to say a word
to warn Miriam to dress, the rooftop door flew open and MacLeod found himself looking up into Rivka’s widening eyes.

“Duncan?”

At the sound of Rivka’s shocked young voice, Miriam sat up with a start and quickly pulled her dress closed, covering her
body. Mortified, she turned her back on the twelve-year-old, unable to look her in the eyes.

“Rivka … ?” MacLeod was flustered. As he tried to stand up, Avram came pounding up the stairs behind Rivka.

Avram took in the strained tableau and understood the situation immediately. He quickly placed one hand over Rivka’s eyes
and spun her around with the other so they both faced the opposite side of the roof.

“Hey!” she protested, squirming in his grasp.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?” Avram scolded her playfully as MacLeod helped gather Miriam’s things. “And you,
goy
,” he said over his shoulder to MacLeod with a laugh, “no one ever teach you to lock the door?”

MacLeod helped Miriam button her dress in a fraction of the time it had taken him to lingeringly unfasten it. “What is she
doing here?” MacLeod wanted to know.

“Miriam’s
supposed
to be reporting to her station,” Rivka said with more than a trace of petulance. “Gutman sent me to tell her.” She squirmed
harder. “Let me
go
, Tzaddik.”

Avram looked back at MacLeod, who signaled it was safe. Avram released her. She turned around with an icy glare for Miriam
and MacLeod. “It’s time to go,” she announced.

MacLeod moved to her, touched her arm, “Rivka, I’m sorry,” but she shrugged him off and ran down the stairs. Miriam, with
a weak smile, turned to follow. “I guess I should go “

Avram gave her a brotherly peck on the cheek. “Be careful,
tsatskeleh
.”

She smiled at the term of endearment and moved to the doorway. Then she stopped, one last look at MacLeod. “God be with you,
Miriam,” he said.

For a moment she looked tearful, then she smiled again. “And also with you, Duncan MacLeod.” She closed the door to the rooftop
behind her as she left.

Avram moved across the roof toward MacLeod. He picked up the empty wine bottle and regarded it with a wry smile. “I asked
you to keep my seat warm. I didn’t say get it hot and sticky.”

“You knew, didn’t you?”

Avram shrugged. “I suspected.” MacLeod was silent, clearly troubled. Avram put a hand on his bare shoulder. “You did the right
thing.”

“Did I?” MacLeod wasn’t so sure. “Miriam’s so … young.”

Avram’s eyes were frank, his words brutally honest. “And she’s probably not going to get much older. None of them are. And
they know it.” MacLeod looked away, blinked hard. “Look, I know you don’t want to hear it, but that’s our reality here. Old
morals, old standards, they don’t apply anymore. You do what you have to do to survive. That’s the only commandment we’ve
got left.”

MacLeod’s voice was tight. “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not,” Avram answered, matter-of-factly. “No one should have to die like this. Least of all someone like Miriam.”

“Then why can’t we stop it?”

Avram could hear the weight of centuries in his friend’s cry. It wouldn’t help him to know that more centuries didn’t bring
the answers. They only brought more pain. “Look, Duncan, you made her happy. You gave her light in the middle of darkness.
You let her know she was worth something when the whole world tells her she’s more worthless than a dog. It’s a
mitzvah
, MacLeod, a blessing. Don’t rob it of its Joy”

MacLeod Looked around for his shirt. “What about Rivka?” He found it in a heap behind the munitions crate. He shook it out
and slipped it on.

“She’ll get over it. Or she won’t. She’s just a kid. Kids’ dreams get shattered all the time, and they survive it. She will,
too.”

But sometimes dreams are all you have to get you through, MacLeod thought. But he knew Avram was right, they had more urgent
things to worry about than the hurt feelings of a twelve-year-old. In less than two hours, the army of the devil would be
massing outside the gates.

He and Avram passed the intervening time in relative silence, each preparing for the coming struggle in his own way. Back
in the Highlands, the warrior MacLeods would prepare for battle with glad hearts, with boisterous songs and loud war cries,
with the clanging of steel to bolster their courage and throw fear into the hearts of their enemies. A glorious sight it would
be, the clans arrayed for battle, confident in their bravery, sure in their victory, raising a ruckus that could wake the
dead. But here, so far from the green fields of Scotland, victory was far from sure. And it was a very long time since the
prospect of war had gladdened MacLeod’s heart.

May-Ling Shen, who had helped open the door to the Eastern philosophies to him, had taught him another way to prepare—the
kata
. Visualizing the opponent, practicing defense and attack over and over first in the mind, then again on the practice floor,
calmed and readied the spirit for battle. But that required an adversary whose method of attack could be known, whose moves
could be predicted, and who would fight honorably. The evil facing them was none of those.

In the end, after physically checking his weapons a dozen times, making sure they were cleaned and armed, ensuring that their
makeshift incendiary devices were free of cracks and leaks, and then making sure again, he resorted to a battle-preparedness
technique centuries older than himself—vigil. He sat in silence under the stars, unmoving under the nearly full moon that
ushered in the Passover, and opened his heart and his mind … to God, to the universe, to whatever source whence enlightenment
might come. But none came.

After checking and double-checking the detonator and wires that led to the store of explosives buried beneath the Gesia Street
gate, Avram prepared himself in a similar fashion. But where MacLeod had been able to empty his mind, Avram’s was full of
thoughts and images he couldn’t erase. The light fading from his beloved Deborah’s eyes as she accepted death at his hands
over enslavement to a Roman master on another Passover eve. The defiance in the face of his teacher and friend Rabbi Isaac
as he offered his mortal life to the sword of the Crusaders storming the archbishop’s palace in Mainz, a place that should
have been sanctuary for all. And the children torn from their mothers’ arms in the streets of Warsaw, the mothers sent to
certain death in the ovens of Treblinka, their squalling children to God only knew where.

His nostrils filled with the smoldering ruin that was once the tiny Russian
shtetl
of Onyetka, and he choked from the memory. He could hear the agonized screams of those consumed by flames as the Great Temple
fell around them, their escape blocked by the mighty Roman legion. Slowly, he began to take hold of the memories, to focus.
Painstakingly, he folded them together in his mind, building a foundation. And on that foundation of anger and hate and pain,
Avram carefully centered himself. When he finished, he was ready to face the enemy. He was more than ready.

MacLeod spotted the shadows at a couple of minutes past four. A truck passing outside near the Wall, stopping every fifty
yards or so to discharge a handful of Germans. MacLeod indicated them to Avram with a quick nod of his head as he dropped
to all fours on the rooftop. Avram joined him.

“Guess they’re here to make sure we don’t try to leave the party early,” MacLeod said as he made his way over to the detonator.

“I’d never think of being so rude,” Avram said. So far there was no action at the gate itself.

Silently they waited, watching over the narrow brick wall that formed the boundary of the rooftop. All around the outside
of the Ghetto Wall they could see the German soldiers taking up their positions, readying their weapons. But MacLeod knew
that these soldiers were simply laying siege to the Ghetto, ensuring that no one got out. It remained to be seen how many
soldiers would be poured into the Ghetto itself.

Suddenly, off in the distance, the sound of gunfire. Sharp, staccato blasts followed by an explosion. “Ours,” Avram identified
the sounds and their direction. “Nalewki Street. Couple of rifles and a grenade.” Then the sound of automatic fire returned
and more grenade explosions. The fiery light from the Molotov cocktails flared and waned in the darkened Ghetto. The battle
had been engaged in earnest. Avram could tell that MacLeod was reining himself in, that he wanted to be at the heart of the
action so badly he could taste it. “Soon enough,” he counseled. “Our time will come soon enough.”

It was hard on them both, not knowing what was happening in the Central Ghetto, hearing the guns and the bombs and not knowing
who was falling, who was dying. But their duty was to their station—this would not be the only battle, just the first in a
long campaign. At one point their spirits were lifted as they heard a loudspeaker outside the Wall warn the men stationed
there “
Juden haben Waffen! Juden haben Waffen!
” The Jews have weapons—they’d surprised the Germans after all. But the element of surprise would only work in their favor
so long.

Finally there was movement outside the Gesia Street gate. Armored vehicles and a troop transport. Avram’s unit had placed
several abandoned cars and an old wagon in front of the gate to block it, and it was obvious the Germans were having trouble
getting it open. But not for long.

With a tremendous crash, the massive wooden gates were torn asunder. Wood fragments flew in all directions as an armored tank
barreled through the gate, pushing the cars out of its way as if they were toys, splintering the wagon beneath its treads.
As the tank entered the Ghetto, MacLeod raised the plunger on the detonator. Avram signaled to MacLeod to detonate the mine,
but MacLeod shook him off.

“Wait for it …” MacLeod hissed. His fingers were itching to blow the bastards to kingdom come but he held back until both
the tank and the transport were in range of the mine.

MacLeod pushed down on the plunger with all his strength. The answering explosion knocked him back from the edge of the roof
as Gesia Street opened up like a pit from Hell, fire and shrapnel erupting from its bowels. Cobblestones flew and walls crumbled.
Windows were shattered for blocks around. The choking cloud of smoke and dust was blinding.

MacLeod crawled back to the edge of the roof and peered through the dust at the street below, where the tank lay on its side,
a behemoth beached by its own weight, belching smoke. Behind it, what remained of the troop transport was in flames. He could
hear the screams of soldiers as they tried to escape the wreckage. Their luckier comrades retreated on foot back through the
gate in terror, abandoning their dead and wounded.

Avram joined him at the edge of the building. His face was eerily highlighted in the glow of the burning transport. “You ain’t
seen nothing yet,” he laughed as they watched the officers scurry back into the darkness beyond the Wall.

Paris: The Present

MacLeod watched the officers frisk Maral, his hands clenched in fists of impotent anger at the brusque manner in which she
was being handled. When the search turned up nothing suspect, another security officer appeared with a portable detection
wand. By this time, a handful of spectators had gathered—other security personnel, junior members of the diplomatic entourages,
even Omar al-Sayyeed, one of the delegates, stayed to watch.

Maral hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, knowing it would do no good to protest, they would find what they wanted to find. They
always did. The hum of the security wand stayed low and quiet as they moved it slowly up her body, then suddenly sang out
as it passed her shoulders. She and MacLeod realized what the problem was at the same moment. Making no sudden moves, she
raised her hands and pulled the iron gazelles from her hair. Her hair tumbled down below her shoulders but she paid it no
mind, handing the combs to a security officer with a steady gaze that said quite firmly she was not embarrassed and by no
means ashamed.

MacLeod, on the other hand, was mortified. If not for his gift, so innocent in its intent, this public little drama would
never have happened. The small crowd disbursed, al-Sayyeed looking a bit smug, and the security guard gave her back the combs
and her purse once a final pass with the wand proved she carried no other “dangerous” objects. “I’m sorry,” MacLeod said when
he was allowed to rejoin her.