Zealot (33 page)

The words ripped into MacLeod’s already painful wound. “You’re one heartless bastard, Methos.”

“Just realistic. So, do you go after his killer?” he pressed. “Maybe.“Fair enough. Now, say you have a friend, a mortal like
that chef friend of yours, Maurice.” As Methos spoke, MacLeod returned to his fire, carefully arranging the kindling, setting
it alight. “One day, Maurice picks up a gun and aces six people who complained about his bouillabaisse, and only you know
it was him. at do you do? Turn him in to face mortal justice, or go after him yourself?” Methos looked at his watch and began
making tick-tock tick-tock noises with his tongue. “Your answer, Contestant Number One?”

MacLeod laid down the bellows he’d been using to flame up the fire. “I can’t just turn Avram in to the police. Don’t you see,
that’s just the kind of publicity he wants. My God, the Palestinians find out that the man who massacred dozens of their people
works with the Israeli delegation … I don’t want to imagine the consequences.” MacLeod sat down heavily on the coffee table,
the weight of the world pressing down on him.

“Point to you,” Methos said. “Now, for the bonus round: Say you do track down and kill Avram Mordecai. Do you honestly believe
it will make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things? Please remember to phrase your answer in the form of a question.”

MacLeod looked at him sourly. “Okay, how’s this: What the hell are you going on about?”

Methos finally sat up, feet on the floor, down to business. “There are three kinds of peace in the world, MacLeod. There’s
the peace achieved by one side defeating and dominating the other—what Marcus would have called the
Pax Romana
. There’s peace negotiated by two sides each seeing the error of its ways and truly dedicated to what’s best for both sides—call
it the Platonic ideal of peace, if you will—and if you give me a week, I might be able to find an example where that’s actually
worked. Then there’s the brokered peace like your friend is working on, each side forced to give up something they can’t live
without. You can see how well that solved that little problem in Korea half a century back. Face it, that’s not peace, it’s
just the absence of war.”

“So you’re saying you don’t think these agreements are going to change anything.”

“No piece of paper is going to change what’s in people’s hearts. Their fears, their prejudices, their thousands of years of
history. So, yes, I do think a year, or a decade, or a century from now, we’ll all be back here again.”

“But that doesn’t mean Avram doesn’t have to pay for murdering all those people.”

“True, but I don’t want you to go out there thinking that whacking one overzealous Hebrew is miraculously going to solve the
crisis in the Middle East.” Methos looked at the floor by his feet, bent low to look under the coffee table, then ran a quick
hand under the sofa pillows. “Don’t suppose you saw where that apple went?”

MacLeod tossed him another. “Whose side are you on, Methos?”

“None but my own.” He bit lustily into the fruit and chewed with obvious relish before trying to finish his thought with his
mouth full. “I find if you stay out of other people’s wars, you live longer.”

Moving back to the fire, MacLeod put some more fuel on. The fire was already blazing, but he just couldn’t seem to shake the
deep chill that had settled into his bones. He poked idly at the burning wood, accomplishing nothing. “I just …” he started,
then tried again. “I really feel for him. All the horror he’s seen, the pain that he bears for his people.”

“And the guilt,” Methos added, thoughtfully.

“What do you mean, guilt?”

“You’ve felt it, MacLeod. We all have to some extent. The guilt of living on while everyone around you dies.” Methos’s eyes
grew dark and far away. “The guilt of knowing that some cruel and capricious fate has selected you to be the one to witness
the suffering of everyone you’ve ever cared for, knowing that you’re powerless to stop it. Or to share it.” Methos spoke from
deep within his own heart. “Or to forget it.”

“To carry the memories of a hundred generations,” MacLeod said softly, “to protect their history and traditions. To ensure
their survival. What an impossible burden.”

“On the other hand”—the brief window into Methos’s soul closed abruptly and was quickly replaced by his usual smug facade—“he
did just try to waste your girlfriend.”

MacLeod sighed. “And he killed Marcus.”

“You know,” Methos shrugged, “Marcus was a great believer in cosmic justice. What goes around, comes around. Somehow I think
he always knew that when his card came up, it would be at the hands of someone he had wronged in the past. Maybe now, somehow,
honor has been satisfied for him.”

“But not for Assad,” MacLeod said. “Not for those men praying at that mosque. You were right—reasons and motives don’t matter.
I understand why Avram feels he has to do what he’s doing. But he’s got to be stopped before he causes an-other war. Before
more people die.“And?” Methos prompted.

“And,” MacLeod was resigned, “I’m the only one who can stop him.” He grabbed his coat from the sofa and started for the barge
door. “I have to find him.”

Methos called out to him as he opened the door, “Where are you going?”

“It’s a Friday night. Where would you go if you were a devout Jew who’d just killed his teacher?” As MacLeod left, Methos
settled back on the sofa to finish his apple and enjoy the heat of MacLeod’s fire.

The cantor had just intoned the final “
Amen
” when Avram knew with great certainty there was another Immortal in the synagogue. He stayed in his seat, head bowed beneath
his prayer cap, his
yarmulke
, while the rest of the congregation filed out, trusting that MacLeod …for he knew it could be no other—would have sense enough
to wait until they were alone to confront him.

He hadn’t enjoyed killing Constantine. For all Avram’s complaints to the contrary, for all his bitterness, Marcus had been
like another father to him during a very dark time in his life, a time in which his soul was so black he might have considered
suicide had he thought it even possible for one as cursed as he. Marcus had shown him life. Marcus had made him see that his
Immortality didn’t mean he was damned by God; instead, that he was being called by God for a different purpose. Even so, it
was centuries before he truly realized what God wanted—a champion for his chosen people.

And then Marcus betrayed him, plotted against him and, by so doing, betrayed the People of God. He had to be stopped. Avram
had no choice.

MacLeod was close by him now, he could tell, so he didn’t flinch when something metallic dropped onto the bench beside him.
“I think this is yours,” MacLeod’s voice said, and Avram turned to see the bloody boot knife he’d used to silence Constantine.
He looked up to see MacLeod glowering above him—dark eyes, dark coat, dark countenance.

“Is this what you do on Friday nights, MacLeod? Cruise the synagogues? You need a life,” Avram sneered, standing.

“
Oneg Shabbat
isn’t a terrorist organization;
Oneg Shabbat
is you,” MacLeod accused.

Avram gave him a little smile, posturing before MacLeod’s anger. “I’ve always done some of my best work on the Muslim Sabbath.
And you must admit, it was quite a surprise.”

If they weren’t standing on Holy Ground, Avram knew he’d probably be dead now. But instead, MacLeod was forced to swallow
his rage and fight only with words. “You take the work that your friends in the Ghetto gave their lives for and you pervert
it into this … this abomination! The Lutëtia, Hebron, how many people have you killed in their name?”

Avram decided to change the subject. He pushed past MacLeod, out into the aisle, and started to walk toward the front of the
synagogue. “Boring conversation. Let’s talk about Gamal Ali Mustapha, instead. Name ring any bells?” Noting MacLeod’s blank
look, he continued. “It should. You’re screwing his wife.”

“Maral’s husband is dead.”

Avram nodded. “Sad, but true. At the time of his death, he was wanted for questioning in two car bombings and a fire at an
Israeli preschool. Ali Mustapha got off way too easy.”

MacLeod followed Avram. “And that makes him different than you exactly how?”

Avram turned on MacLeod angrily. How could this man he once trusted be so blind? “He was a murdering bastard, MacLeod. I’m
just—”

“A murdering bastard.” MacLeod looked at Avram, searching. “Avram, when did ‘What is hateful to you do not do to anyone else’
become ‘Get them before they get you’? That’s not one of the commandments you used to follow.”

“You do what you have to do to survive. That’s the only commandment we’ve got left, remember?” There was a time Avram would
have given his life for this man. Now he could hardly stand the sight of him. “You remember Rivka, MacLeod? Cute little thing,
always a fighter?”

“Of course I do. I helped her get to Israel after the war. Then I … I had to move on.” Part of the penalty of Immortality,
never being able to stay in someone’s life for very long. Never being able to stay and watch a young girl blossom into a woman.
“We lost touch.”

“I saw her not too long ago. Did you know she helped Antek and Zuvia start a Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz? She served three terms
in the Knesset. An amazing woman. Now she’s raising hell in a retirement community outside Haifa. She thinks of Tzaddik has
a heck of a grandson. And you …” Avram shook his head in amazement. “She still venerates you like some kind of prophet, MacLeod.
Thank God she doesn’t know what you really are. It would break her heart.”

“Your point?”

“Her eldest son served in the Yom Kippur War, was killed in the Sinai. Ten years ago, her daughter lost a leg and her unborn
baby in a terrorist bombing.
My point
is, what had that little pigtailed girl ever done to anyone to deserve a life like that? To lose one family to the Nazis
and another to the Arabs?”

“Nothing,” MacLeod answered.

“Wrong! She’d been born a Jew. Born a Jew in a world where it’s on season on Jews. Well, no more, MacLeod. No more little
girls will ever have to grow up like Rivka, I swear it!”

“What about the little Palestinian girls whose fathers were at that mosque?” MacLeod didn’t want to believe what he was hearing,
but he wasn’t going to let Avram get away with it. “You believe that it’s all right for
you
to murder? That it’s fine for you to butcher innocent men and women, why? Because you’ve suffered, Avram? Because you’ve
been persecuted? And you think God
approves
of this?” MacLeod was livid.

Avram shouted over MacLeod. “Protecting His chosen people is a righteous act in the eyes of God!”

“‘Thou shalt not kill.’
That
is what’s ‘righteous’ in the eyes of God.” MacLeod had had enough. “Okay, Avram. You and me, outside. Right now. It’s time
to settle this.” He was more than ready.

Avram smiled, shook his head. “No work during the Jewish Sabbath, MacLeod.” He looked beyond MacLeod, saw someone entering
the sanctuary behind them. “Rabbi!” he called out. “A word if you have the time.” Then he turned back to MacLeod. “But soon.
Soon enough.”

“Not soon enough,” MacLeod muttered under his breath as Avram hurried away to meet the rabbi, then he stalked down the aisle
and out of the synagogue.

Paris: The Present

“Duncan, I’m all right. Stop fussing over me, you’re worse than my grandfather.” While ordinarily Maral didn’t mind being
fussed over a little bit—it had been a while since anyone had—after three days in the hospital as the constant center of attention
of nurses, doctors, technicians, and a host of security personnel, she’d reached her saturation point. “I can walk, you know.”

“‘Hospital policy, Madame,’” MacLeod mimicked Maral’s doctor as he pushed her wheelchair down the corridor. “Just sit back
and enjoy the ride.” He had become her stalwart protector, standing in for poor Assad, who had made the ultimate sacrifice
so that she might live. More than once she had awakened in the middle of the night breathless and shaking as the dead had
come to claim her in her dreams, to find MacLeod in the chair beside her, awake and ready to comfort her. Sometimes, when
he thought she was sleeping, she would watch him through slitted eyes. He would be far away in his thoughts. Dark thoughts,
she could tell. Thoughts that seemed to haunt him, to make him angry yet sad. She wished he would share his thoughts with
her, but as soon as he knew she was awake, he was all smiles and pleasant conversation again, banishing the dark thoughts
and refusing to speak of them.

Farid led their way to a service elevator. The bulk of his men were downstairs, controlling the members of the press gathered
at the main entrance to the hospital, awaiting Maral’s release. An elite team guarded the hospital kitchen, where the service
elevator let out, and MacLeod’s car, parked around the back of the hospital next to the kitchen door. Together, MacLeod and
Farid managed to spirit Maral out of the building and away from the prying attention of the media.