Thunderstrike in Syria (2 page)

Leah turned to me and placed her hand on my arm. "You've been very silent, Nick." Her voice was as soft as rose petals. "But you shouldn't worry about me. I've seen my share of violence."

I realized that like all Israeli girls Leah had seen service in the small Israeli Army. Just the same, if she came unglued if and when the shooting started, the whole damn deal could fall apart. I was going to have enough to do without having to watch out for her. But only a fool or a philosopher ever tells a woman what he's really thinking. I was neither.

I looked at Leah and mused, "It's ironic… some would say sacrilegious, that the SLA should have a cell functioning within the Jerusalem Temple Area, just a short distance from the famous Wailing Wall. On the other hand, the Moslem Dome of the Rock is also close by. I suppose that sort of evens things out." I lit one of my gold-tipped cigarettes. "Actually, the Wall and the Rock are only symbols, symbols that reach their highest state of power in struggles between good and bad principles of social orders personified in heroes and villains, gods and devils, allies and enemies, and the like. Your Wailing Wall is a good example of symbolism. A million Jews would go out and gladly die to protect that wall, the most precious of all their symbology."

Leah's laugh was low and amused. "You're right. Nick. But don't say 'your wall. I'm an atheist. But to those who believe, it's the Wailing Wall, more than anything else, that convinces them that they're living in the City of God. Yes, the Wall is a symbol. Yet no monument has ever given a people such a collective strength."

The driver of the car turned his head sideways and said in a voice tense with emotion, "It's because of the Wall that we Jews in Israel are able to say, 'We are surrounded by millions of Arabs, but we have no fear. »

I didn't comment. If the man wanted to believe in a wall of stones that was his business. As far as I was concerned it had been U.S. military aid that so far had saved tiny Israel, not a pile of ancient rocks that, supposedly, had once been part of Solomon's Temple.

The House of Medals popped up in my mind again. If and when the shooting started, the Shin Bet would make a two-pronged attack on the building, coming in and rushing both the front and back entrances. The trap would be closed, hopefully, on at least one SLA agent. With some forceful persuasion, he or she might provide some clue to the location of SLA headquarters in Syria. If we got really lucky, the captured agent might even have some information about the LNG plot.

The driver called back, "I'm going to have to park up ahead. The streets are getting too narrow. I'm as close as I can get to the Holy Sepulchre."

Leah checked her large shopping bag resting on the floor of the car. In the bag, underneath a few dummy packages, was an Israeli-made UZI 9mm submachine gun.

I checked to make sure Wilhelmina was resting securely in her shoulder holster, then held up my right arm and looked down my sleeve. Hugo was secure in his chamois case: a flick of my wrist and the stiletto would slide into my hand, handle first.

I took another long drag from the cigarette and flipped it out of the window.

"The way you smoke!" Leah chided. "Don't you believe the warning of your own Surgeon General?"

"You have it backwards," I said. "The tobacco industry has determined that it's the Surgeon General who's dangerous to the health of smokers. Are you ready?"

Five minutes later, Leah and I were walking along on the ancient stones of St. Francis Way, or rather, we were hobbling as though slowed by the passage of years. While Leah held onto my elbow, I walked with the aid of an old-fashioned hickory cane with a curved handle.

We were ignored by the people brushing past us — tourists from a dozen nations and Arabs wearing the
kqffiyeh,
the white headdress bound with black ropes. But some Arabs were dressed in Western business suits or wearing shirts and slacks; others wore the traditional burnoose, a hooded mantle or cloak. The clothing of the Arab women was equally as diversified, the older women traditionally veiled, the young ones in Western blouses and skirts.

It was easy to spot an Israeli. The men were wearing white shirts, open at the neck. The national costume of Israel, I thought. At least for men. A necktie salesman would starve to death in this small nation. In contrast, the Orthodox Jews wore a long dark tunic, or caftan, and the broad-brimmed hat called a
streimel.

"It's difficult to believe that many of the older people passing us survived Hitler's death camps and the
Judengasse,"
Leah said. "1 believe that was the German name for ghetto.

"You would, if you were Jewish," Leah said. Anyhow, it was Pope Paul IV who established the first Roman ghetto for Jews. But it was the Moslems who pointed the way for the earliest forced segregation — which doesn't have anything to do with why we're here, does it?"

Leah laughed as if enjoying some secret joke, and I looked at her with a puzzled expression on my wrinkled face.

"I'm sorry, Nick," she said. "I was only laughing at fate. A few months ago if someone had told me that I'd be in Jerusalem disguised as an old woman and walking down St. Francis Way with the famous Nick Carter, I would have said impossible. But here I am! Here we are!" Leah sighed. "I suppose it's all relative. There's a saying in the Talmud that a baby comes into the world wanting everything, its fist clenched, while a man leaves the world wanting nothing, his hands open. All Israel wants is peace."

I wasn't in the mood for philosophy. "Let's make certain that we don't go into eternity ten minutes from now, with our hands open and our eyes closed," I warned. "We're almost to the shop."

"Suppose none of the clerks speak English?" Leah asked.

"One of them should, with all the tourist trade they get," I said.

"But suppose they don't?"

"Then we'll have to speak in Arabic."

"But won't it seem suspicious for a tourist from the West to speak Arabic?"

"Should it come to that we'll have to risk it." I shrugged. "Mental telepathy is out of my line."

"Well, no matter what," Leah whispered and gave my arm a little squeeze. "I'm with you all the way."

The front of the House of Medals was made of stone, and, like tourists everywhere, Leah and I looked at the items displayed in the small, glassed-in window, articles of Roman Catholicism. There were medals and medallions; statues of Christ and His Mother; of the Apostles; of the various saints. There were beautiful lithographed prints; candles of various sizes and shapes; crucifixes and tiny bottles of holy water; round vials containing soil from the Mount of Olives.

I leaned heavily on the cane and whispered, "Listen. Don't take any chances. You move when I move, understand?"

Leah nodded, and we went into the shop, passing a young couple on their way out.

A sullen-faced young man, who was wearing a clerk's white coat and whose head was shaved, was behind one counter. An older man, also an Arab and also wearing a white coat, sat on a high stool behind the opposite counter. At the rear of the long room, a pinched-faced woman was arranging brass candlesticks on shelves. The woman, in her forties and reminding me of a spinster from some Victorian novel, glanced up as Leah and I walked in, then returned to her work.

Only a few years older than Leah, which made him about 26 or 27, the dour-faced clerk was brusque to the point of rudeness.

"You will have to please hurry," he said in heavily accented English. "We are about ready to close for the day."

I had begun to analyze the setup from the moment I had walked into the place, and already had put together a plan. Close to where the woman was working in the rear, a heavy curtain hung in a large arched doorway. Quite obviously the archway was the entrance to a back room, or to a hallway that led to a back room or a series of rooms.

The clerk was impatient. "Did you hear me, old man?" he said crossly. "We are getting ready to close. You buy now or go."

With pseudo timidity, I stepped up to the counter and cackled, "Me and my Missus here, we're interested in a statue of St. Joseph. Like the kind on the shelf there."

With the tip of my cane, I pointed to a foot-high statue on the shelf behind the clerk, who then turned, picked up the statue and placed it on the marble-topped counter.

I turned to Leah who was playing her part perfectly. "Is this the one you wanted, dear?" I asked.

Leah smiled, nodded and patted my arm.

"One Israeli pound," the clerk said in a bored voice.

I picked up the plaster-of-Paris statue and pretended to study it, turning slightly, my movement giving me an opportunity to glance in the direction of the other Arab who was behind the opposite counter. Short, heavyset and cruel-looking, the man had gotten off the stool and was leaning against the shelves, his thick arms folded across his chest. He kept looking in my direction. The more he stared, the less I liked him.

I turned to Leah, looked directly into her eyes and silently told her,
This is it, baby!

But I said in the voice of a senior citizen, "Check your souvenirs, dear. We'll put the statue in the bag."

Nodding, Leah bent down and began to fumble with the dummy packages in the canvas shopping bag, glancing up at me every now and then.

I returned my attention to the clerk and smiled. "Very well, young man. It's a fine statue. Guess we'll take it. You needn't wrap it."

"One pound," the clerk said, more sullen than ever.

Nonchalantly, as though reaching for my billfold, I slid my right hand inside my coat, and then went into action. It was now or never! I jerked my hand out from underneath my coat, only now it contained a fistful of Luger. Before the young SLA clerk could put together what was happening, I slammed the barrel against his right temple, knocking him out before he had time to open his mouth. The SLA agent slid to the floor just as I jumped to one side and shoved Leah out of the way. My quick movement saved our lives because the SLA member behind the other counter was extremely fast. I had figured he would be. I could tell by the quick, darting movement of his eyes.

The heavyset man jerked a Soviet 9-millimeter Stechkin machine pistol from underneath the counter and triggered off a stream of fire toward where Leah and I had been standing only seconds before. The line of hot 9mm projectiles stabbed across the room, missed us, but found a resting place behind the counter, shattering a row of St. Joseph statues and a row of Madonna figurines into flying chips of plaster.

In the rear of the shop, the prune-faced woman screamed in Arabic, "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" to whoever was in the back section of the shop. Then she reached into an urn and jerked out another Stechkin machine pistol. But I knew that my sudden action had taken her completely by surprise because she reacted more slowly than the terrorist behind the counter.

The Arab woman was swinging the machine pistol toward me and Leah when Wilhelmina roared, her 9mm 110 grain bullet catching the heavyset SLA man just above the bridge of the nose and knocking him backward against the shelves. With a round hole in its lower forehead, the corpse sank to the floor, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

Leah had surprised me. She had been as quick as a bolt of lightning. During those few blinks of time, she had jerked the UZI submachine gun from the shopping bag and had triggered off a short burst of 9 mm slugs that hit the elderly woman squarely in the chest. The blast of hot copper-gilded lead slammed the woman backward through the heavy red curtain that divided the shop from the back room. Practically torn apart by the UZI slugs, the corpse of the Arab woman crumpled to the floor, the curtain half-wrapped around her like a flowing shroud.

In a low crouch, I whispered fiercely to Leah, "Get down behind the counter to the right. I'll take the left side and we'll work our way toward the back. Stay down until I make my move."

Her face grim, Leah nodded, then jumped behind the counter. I leaped over the top of the counter to the left and began to crawl toward the rear of the shop, the pungent odor of burnt cordite stinging my nostrils.

The young Arab I had knocked out with Wilhelmina lay like a log, a long bloody gash on his temple. I hoped I hadn't killed him. Just to make sure, I felt for his pulse. Good. He was still alive. Whatever information the man possessed, Hamosad interrogators would pull it out of him.

Leah and I were still not out of the woods. I reached the end of the counter and cautiously poked out my head. Six feet away, to my right, was the arched entrance to the rear of the shop. The dead Arab woman was lying on her back, torrents of blood pouring from her chest, flowing down to the floor. A Stechkin machine pistol lay next to her.

I decided to rush the back room and motioned for Leah to fire a round at the top of the archway. That would prevent its occupants, if any, from possibly escaping by the front; if they took a rear route, the Shin Bet would grab them. Leah nodded, then pointed the stubby barrel of the UZI upward. At the same time, we heard shrill police whistles from outside the shop. The Shin Bet was getting ready to rush the House of Medals.

With Wilhelmina ready in my hand and a prayer in my pocket. I tensed myself and gave Leah the go-ahead sign. She triggered the UZI, the short burst of 9 mm slugs stabbing into the back room, a foot or so below the arched entrance.

Now that the curtain was down. I could see that beyond the wide archway was a small open area, empty except for an ordinary wooden chair against the right wall. Ahead, six feet from the chair, was another arched doorway, this one narrow and covered with a green curtain.

I didn't like the setup; yet there was no other way to do it. I first put six of Wilhelmina's bullets through the green curtain. Then I put a fresh clip into the Luger, cocked the old girl, leaped up and zigzagged into the small area, throwing myself against the wall next to the chair.