By the Rivers of Babylon (24 page)

Hausner sat with Brin and Naomi Haber at their firing position. He looked down the eastern slope, smoking a cigarette and speaking to the young couple. “Are you teaching her to use the scope and rifle?” he asked Brin.

Brin shrugged. “She doesn’t want to learn.”

Hausner turned to her. “Why not?”

She brushed some dust off her blue jumpsuit. “I can’t shoot anyone. I’m a good and fast runner, and that’s what I volunteered to do.”

Hausner started to answer her, but Dobkin suddenly appeared. Hausner glanced at him quickly and looked for a gun, but did not see one. Brin tensed up, also.

Dobkin seemed to have forgotten the incident in the Concorde. He nodded and sat down on the ground. No one spoke for a long while.

Hausner turned and pointed across the top of the flat mound toward the southwest. “What’s that?”

Dobkin looked. The morning shadows lay over the brown
land. Swirls of mist rose out of the scattered marsh. “The Greek amphitheater. Built by Alexander the Great. When he captured Babylon in 323
B.C.E.
, the city was already ancient and on the skids. He attempted to revive it, but its day was over. Alexander died here. Did you know that?”

“No.” Hausner chain-lit a cigarette.

“They’ll be coming to parley soon,” said Dobkin.

“Who? The Greeks?”

Dobkin allowed himself a smile. “The Greeks I could parley with. It’s the Arabs I’m worried about.”

Hausner smiled back. There was a little less tension between them. “
Maybe
they’ll come.” He turned to Brin and Naomi Haber. “Why don’t you two take a break in the shade?”

The girl stood. Brin hesitated, then stood also. He took the M-14 and walked off, followed by the girl.

When they were out of earshot, Dobkin spoke. “No maybes about it. They won’t try a daylight assault, and they don’t want to wait for nightfall to resolve this thing.”

“You’re right,” said Hausner.

“What are we going to tell them?”

Hausner looked at him. “Are you with me?”

Dobkin hesitated. “I . . . the Foreign Minister and Burg are
our
superiors.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Dobkin changed the subject. “I’m going on a one-way mission tonight.”

“I know that.”

“There isn’t much chance for me to get through. I’m going only so that the people here can keep their hopes and morale up.”

“That’s why I’m sending you. I don’t think you’ll make it either. There are not many people who would go after figuring that out. You’re all right, General.” He looked at him. “So, are you with me?”

Dobkin shrugged. “What difference does it make? You hold all the cards. The political leaders are cowed. Your men hold five of the six automatic weapons.”

“I just want to know for myself.” He pointed to the south. “What’s that, by the way?”

“I’m not going to make you feel good by going along with you. Let’s just say I’m neutral.” He looked to the south. “That should be the Kasr mound. On the other side are the excavations
of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and the ruins of the Hanging Gardens. Close to that is the Ishtar Gate and the museum and guest house.” He paused. “I’m looking forward to seeing it tonight.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Hausner. There was a long silence.

Suddenly, Hausner came to attention. He pointed southwest toward the Euphrates. “Is that smoke? It looks like a village among the ruins.”

Dobkin nodded without looking. “It is. The village of Kweirish.”

“I wonder if they would be of any help.”

“I don’t think so. They’re peasants. They have no connection with the outside world. Besides, I’m sure the Ashbals are running the place.”

Hausner could see the squalid mud huts, huddled like some medieval Italian village in a corner of a ruined Roman city in order to survive.

The whole of the surrounding countryside was a spectacular study of contrasts. Patches of desert and marshland to the east and beyond that the Tigris and then the towering mountains. On the west bank of the Euphrates, endless mud flats stretching to the horizons, wet now, but soon to be cracked by the hot sun like a jigsaw puzzle. A few bulrushes and date palms struggled on both banks of the Euphrates.

In the foreground, around the mound they were on, Hausner could make out bricks and rubble, smaller mounds and marsh. There were the low ridges of straight city walls, punctuated every now and then by higher mounds that had been the watchtowers. Wind, water, sand, and thousands of years of brick quarrying by peasants had combined to obliterate what was once the wonder of the world’s cities. Hausner knew that scenes of desolation such as this were common in Mesopotamia. The largest and most opulent cities of the ancient world lay for thousands of years undisturbed beneath the dust. A sense of emptiness assailed him as he looked out across the Euphrates. Flat, bare plains of wet mud were crisscrossed here and there by the fabled irrigation canals, now disused. The very wildlife that should have flourished here seemed to have abandoned the place. This was a strange and somehow malevolent corner of the world. A place where huge temples had been raised long ago to gods that no one remembered and palaces built for kings and kingdoms that had vanished without a trace.

The silence of the place screamed in his ears as if he were hearing the ghostly crashing of Babylonian chariots, the fleeing enemy, and the shouts of her victorious armies. Opulent Babylon. In the Old and New Testaments, a symbol of human pride, carnality, and sin. To modern Jews and Christians, its utter desolation was a symbol of Biblical prophecy fulfilled. Hausner knew that there must be some meaning in all the nothingness that stretched before him. Yet, perhaps the meaning was nothingness. Sand. Dust. Death.

Why had Rish brought them here? The Babylonian Captivity? Hausner imagined that was it. Or maybe it was something less melodramatic. Perhaps it was just convenient for his purposes—close to the Palestinians’ camp. But their camp was a hundred kilometers across the desert. . . . Well, the Babylonian Captivity it was, then. In the libraries of the world there were tomes on Babylon, and when they were revised and rewritten, there would be a footnote with an asterisk and it would read,
a curious incident involving a supersonic Concorde
aircraft and. . . .
Hausner put out his cigarette and saved the stub. “Here they come,” he said softly.

From the direction of the road, a group of five men were walking up the slope of the mound. The man in front held up a white flag.

Haber and Brin, who had not gone far, came hurrying back. Brin had changed to the ten-power day scope and watched them approach. “I don’t think Rish is with them.” Brin handed the rifle to Hausner who knelt and sighted through the scope. Hausner put the rifle down and shook his head. “He doesn’t trust us. He thinks that we would not honor a white flag. That makes me damned angry. General?”

Dobkin nodded. “It does show a lack of faith on his part.” He thought for a moment. “He really doesn’t understand us—and
that
scares me.”

Hausner stood and turned to Brin and Haber. “Pass the word to hold fire. I want everyone to remain out of sight. No one is to leave the perimeter, Nathan. If anyone tries, stop him.” He brushed off his clothes. “General, will you accompany me?”

“Of course.” He stood, also, and straightened his uniform. “You know, it’s ironic. They want to talk
now.
That’s what we wanted to do in New York—and on the Concorde. Now I’m not so sure
I
want to talk.”

“I agree,” said Hausner. “But I’m sure the peace delegation wants to talk. I don’t trust that bunch, Ben. They are professional peacemakers. They are spring-loaded to see the good side of any proposal. Cursed are the peacemakers for they make the next war harder than the last.”

Dobkin laughed. “Amen. The generals should negotiate the peaces and the peacemakers should run the armies.” He became serious. “Actually, we are not being fair to the delegation. They are not all alike—some—most are very hard bargainers. They are realists as much as we are.”

Hausner stepped down onto the slope. “I doubt it. Come on. Let’s go before a dozen professional negotiators descend on us.” He began making his way downhill. Dobkin followed.

They lost sight of the Arabs for a while as their group descended into a deep draw. A hundred meters down the slope, they spotted the white flag, then they saw the Arabs again. They were armed and advancing fast. Hausner felt a moment of doubt, but he waved a white handkerchief and shouted in Arabic. The Arabs spotted him and responded. Both groups approached each other slowly. The Arabs stopped on a level shelf in the side of the slope.

Hausner walked quickly up to them and stood very close to the leader, in the Arab manner. “Where’s Rish? I will speak only with Rish.”

The man stared at him for a very long moment. His dark eyes seemed to burn with hate and contempt. Obviously he didn’t like this mission. He spoke softly and slowly. “I am Salem Hamadi, lieutenant of Ahmed Rish. He sends his respects and requests your immediate surrender.”

Hausner looked at the man. Unlike Rish, Hamadi had never been captured and there existed neither an identikit nor a psychological profile on him. There was not even a comprehensive listing of his activities. All Hausner knew was that the man had started life as a Palestinian orphan and then became head of the Ashbal program for the various Palestinian liberation organizations. Values? Morality? Honor? It was hard to say. You couldn’t even count on the strong religious upbringing that most Arabs were exposed to. The man who stood less than a meter from Hausner was short but well proportioned. He wore a neatly clipped goatee and apparently practiced somewhat more rigorous personal hygiene than Hausner had observed among
the terrorists at Ramla. Hausner moved even closer. “Where is he? I demand to speak to him.”

Hamadi nodded slowly. “You are Jacob Hausner.”

“I am.”

“Will you accompany me?”

“I might.”

Hamadi hesitated. “You have my personal assurances.”

“Really?”

Hamadi literally bit his lip to control his growing impatience. “My word.” He paused. “Believe me, we want to talk this over as much as you do.” He smiled suddenly. “This is not a trap to kill Jacob Hausner. We could do that right here and now. Besides, you are not that important.”

“Rish seemed to think I was. He said he would kill me when we landed.”

Salem Hamadi looked off into space. “He rescinds that vow.”

Hausner turned and waved to Brin, who was watching through the scope. Brin acknowledged. Hausner could see heads staring discreetly over the newly fabricated breastworks of baggage and earth. He noticed that some of the baggage was too brightly colored. He would have to see that a layer of dust was put on everything. He turned back to Hamadi. Hamadi had seen the glint of light from the scope and was committing its location to memory. Hausner bumped him on purpose as he moved past him. “Well, let’s go. I have other things to do.”

The group started down the slope. They came off the incline and began walking parallel to a meter-high ridge that Dobkin explained was the city’s inner wall. Hausner saw the spot where the Concorde’s rear bumper wheel had hit it, what seemed like a century before. They turned south and headed toward the main ruins.

The ruins of the city were barely excavated. It took a lot of imagination to picture a teeming metropolis of living souls—young girls with jangling bracelets, soldiers eating and drinking, colorful bazaars, awesome processions, and the famous astrologers of Babylon drawing up horoscopes on wet clay for a few coppers. But Hausner, as an inhabitant of the Middle East, was used to excavations. He could see it all, and more. He could almost feel the presence of the spirits as they jostled him on the busy street. A ringing in his ears seemed to turn into semidistinct
voices speaking an ancient Semitic language. Then there was a word or a snatch of a phrase in ancient Hebrew. He suddenly felt that right where he was walking, a Jew had walked and had spoken with his wife. They had their children with them. They were going somewhere. Toward the Ishtar Gate. Out of the city. They were leaving Babylon, and captivity, for good.

Hamadi said something, and Hausner became aware that they had come a long distance. He looked around. The excavations were more thorough here. Hamadi was speaking to Dobkin, who was asking incessant questions about the ruins. Hamadi seemed unsure of his answers and finally told Dobkin to be quiet.

Hausner knew something of the history of Babylon even if he did not know the city itself. He knew Babylon as a name, a symbol, a conception, a state of mind. He hardly credited the fact that it existed as brick and mortar. Dobkin was interested in the brick and mortar. Hausner, if he was interested at all, was interested in something more enduring. And what could be more enduring than total obliteration and destruction? That’s what made Babylon a living symbol. Its place in history was secured by the fact that it had fallen as predicted.

So Babylon had died as cities do die, and the dust blew over her endlessly through the centuries, covering it all. The site could hardly be located by modern archeologists, and even local legend, which had kept alive the location of the sites of other buried cities, ceased to mention Babylon, so utter and complete was the desolation.

And now the digging out had begun, as it had in Israel and other parts of the Middle East. Each mound that was excavated was a reminder not only of the transitory nature of man’s works, but also of the human peculiarity for self-destruction. For Hausner, the associations with Babylon, with Jews being here again, was both ludicrous and sad. The fact that they had arrived by supersonic transport was beside the point. The point was that they were there—there against their will. The human dimension had not undergone any major changes in thousands of years. Only the externals had changed.

When the small group reached the heights where the Greek amphitheater stood, they turned west toward the Euphrates River and followed a goat path. An emaciated donkey nibbled on the ubiquitous salt-white clumps of thorn. A slight breeze
rustled through the yellow-green fronds of a solitary date palm. The heat was growing more oppressive. Hausner was reminded that there was less than twenty-four hours’ supply of liquids on the hill. The available food might last twice as long. Sections of the aircraft’s aluminum skin had been shaped into basins to collect rainwater, but rain seemed as unlikely here as snow.