Vicious Circle (35 page)

The Doctor ground out his cigarette on the sole of a shoe and dropped the filter tip into an ashtray on the table. “There
is no place in Islam for a god who permits his enemies to execute him on a cross,” he exclaimed, caught up in Apfulbaum’s
fantasy.

“No place in Judaism, either,” the Rabbi agreed eagerly. “The putative son of God, the King of the Yids, oy, oy, he maybe
never walked on water but he got one part of the myth right:
Messiah has to die for his people
!”

“What does he babble about?” Aown asked his brother in Arabic.

“It can only be the odor of kosher food that has unsettled him,” Azziz replied.

Sweeney looked from the Rabbi to the Doctor and back again. Clearly, the constant menace of a bullet in the brain had pushed
Apfulbaum over the edge. It was common, in situations like this, for the victim to fall in love with his captor as a way of
protecting himself. But the Rabbi seemed to have fallen in love with death. The Renewer! The Messiah! They were both mad as
hatters.

The Rabbi, his voice pitched half an octave higher, rambled on. “I’m not perfect, who is? But you don’t have to be perfect
to be Messiah. King David wasn’t perfect. When he coveted Bathsheba, he excarnated the competition by rerouting her husband,
Uriah, to certain death in the forefront of the battle.”

“Even the holy Messenger Muhammad was not perfect,” the Doctor observed. “The Qur’an, 93:7 if my memory serves, records that
God found the Prophet
erring
and gave him guidance.”

“Perfection,” the Rabbi noted, smacking his lips in satisfaction at the end of each phrase, “is like the horizon. You race
in a motor boat towards it from morning till night … at the end of the day it’s still beyond reach.”

“That is beautifully put,
ya’ani
.”

The Rabbi turned on the journalist. “You are not in the same league as Ishmael and me, Mr. whatever your name is. You and
I don’t talk the same language. The so-called Western liberalism about
which you’re so smug is
man
-oriented. Its pride and glory are Hollywood films and slick magazines with naked ladies on the cover and upwardly mobile
Wall Street yuppies clambering over each other to get to the top of the garbage heap known as Western civilization. And at
the top of the heap is what? Oy, I’ll tell you what. At the top of the heap are penthouse apartments with wrap-around stereo
speakers playing dirty rap music, and dope and divorce and abortion on demand, not to mention extra-marital monkey business
and same sex marriages.
Same sex marriages!
My God, what will they invent next?” The words were spilling out so fast the Rabbi had difficulty catching his breath. “So
what, in your opinion,” he said, gasping for air, “is America’s greatest contribution to the Middle East, Mr. whatever your
name is? I’ll tell you what. Air-conditioned supermarkets with junk food on one side of the aisles and health food on the
other.” Apfulbaum lowered his voice. “For God’s sake, don’t print this in your newspaper but an Israeli, when he wants good
food, eats in an Arab restaurant.”

The Doctor rocked back and forth in agreement. “An Arab who wants good medical care goes to a Jewish doctor. This is well
known.”

“And what today stands against your man-oriented Western liberalism?” Apfulbaum demanded, cocking his head. “I’ll tell you
what.” He hissed like a snake. “Torah Judaism, and its kissing cousin, Koranic Islamism, stand against it. Torah Judaism and
Koranic Islamism are
Allah
-oriented. Their pride, their glory are God and God’s word. At the top of the heap is Paradise—”

“‘
Gardens of Eden
,’” the Doctor breathed, “‘
underneath which rivers flow
.’” He peered through the haze of his impaired vision, trying to perceive the Rabbi’s saintly features as he added, “‘
God is well-pleased with them who fear the Lord
.’”

Apfulbaum’s head bobbed deliriously as he batted the compliment back. “‘
Blessed is he who blesses you
,’” he whispered huskily.

“You are talking too much and not eating,” the Doctor chided his neighbor. “Here—you will need your strength. Think of the
press conferences you will hold after your release. Think of the talk shows you will be invited to. You will have the entire
world at your feet.”

He edged the bowl closer to the Rabbi. Apfulbaum picked up a
fork and toyed with his food. He filled his mouth with couscous and a morsel of zucchini, then spit it back into the bowl.
He was too excited to swallow. Glancing in the direction of Petra, he mumbled an apology with a well-turned Arabic phrase.
She pulled the scarf up around her face as her eyes wrinkled at the corners in a pleased grin.

At a nod from the Doctor, Petra cleared away the bowls and set out kitchen tumblers and a pewter pot filled with steaming
sweetened tea. She sank cross legged onto the floor behind the Doctor as he filled the tumblers. He began pouring with the
spout touching the glass and deftly swooped up the pot until the tea was cascading through the air into the tumbler. He could
tell from the sound when the glass was full. From somewhere in the streets below came the electric whine of a loudspeaker.
Gradually the clamor grew louder and more distinct. Everyone around the table heard it. Conversation stopped. Sweeney angled
his head, straining to make out the words. “It’s Hebrew,” he said. “What’s she saying?”

“It’s one of those Israeli state lottery sound trucks,” the Rabbi said. “The voice of Western liberalism is telling people
they can win twelve million shekels if they pick the right number.”

Petra said in Hebrew, “This is the first time I have heard them advertise the lottery in the Old City.”

“At least they had the decency to wait until Ramadan was over,” the Rabbi noted.

Sweeney took hold of Aown’s wrist and pushed up the shirt sleeve to see his wristwatch. Aown, annoyed, jerked his arm free.

The Doctor slid a glass filled with tea across the table to the American journalist. Sweeney, his brow creased, seemed lost
in thought. “What? Oh. None for me. I’m not a tea drinker.”

“Well, we won’t oblige you, will we, Isaac?”

But the Rabbi, his eyes glazed over, was in another world. “If I am to survive after all, there is no hope for me,” he whispered.
Then he remembered Hertzl’s famous dictum and brightened. “To succeed in a great enterprise,” he murmured, “it is necessary
to be without hope.”

His lips kept forming words long after sounds ceased to emerge from his throat.

A
VELVETY DUSK SETTLED LIKE SOOT ON THE ROOFS OF THE OLD
City. High on the Temple Mount, the golden dome of the great mosque seemed to tarnish in the deepening shadows. Along the
narrow cobblestone streets, shop owners winched metal shutters down over store windows as the last tourists started back toward
their hotels. Arab men in Western clothing crowded into coffee shops and plucked the backgammon boards off the shelves and
talked in excited undertones of Abu Bakr’s stunning triumph over the Jews. At seven, they interrupted their games to crowd
around giant color television sets and catch the latest news bulletin: two buses with blackened windows, preceded and followed
by a flotilla of police cars, had been spotted heading north from Haifa toward the Lebanese border; the Isra’ili Prime Minister,
under heavy fire from the opposition, which was calling for a vote of no-confidence in the Knesset, had scheduled another
press conference for an hour from now; in the great mosque of Al Aksa on the Temple Mount, the faithful had already begun
offering thanks to Allah for the release of the imprisoned Palestinian warriors.

Outside the Jaffa Gate, a large bus crawled up the ramp and into the Old City. In the bus window, a cardboard sign read, in
English: “Maccabean Friars of the Holy Order of the True Cross.” Hardly anyone paid attention as the bus pulled to a stop
in front of the steps leading to David’s Tower. Priests and friars and monks of every religious order were a common sight
in the streets of the Old City. With a hiss, the doors of the bus swung open and forty-seven friars—all
dressed in identical coarse brown robes tied with rope belts, the hoods drawn low over their heads, their heads bowed, their
hands folded across their chests—filed off. Walking in twos, they started down Latin Patriarchate Road. The hems of their
robes dusted the ground, concealing the fact that the friars were all wearing black Reebok sneakers. The occasional clank
of metal drew a sharp look from one of the friars at the head of the column. Several Christian Arabs, locking up their shops
for the night, stepped back and crossed themselves as the procession filed past. One pious old woman bowed from the waist
to the lead friar, who bowed back to her. At Saint Peter Road, the procession jigged right and then left again through the
now deserted streets, coming upon the Casa Nova Hospice from the rear.

As the friars filed past the little used back door of the Hospice, eight figures detached themselves and ducked inside. The
others continued on through an alleyway that ran along the side of the Hospice to Casa Nova Road. The friars sank to their
knees, as if in prayer, at the foot of the hospice wall, all but vanishing in the murky shadow at the side of the building.
The friar at the head of the procession surveyed the road, then pumped his arm once. Instantly six of the friars dashed across
and disappeared into the side streets on the other side. In three minutes, the last of the friars had sprinted across the
road and started into the maze of alleyways and passageways that cut through the neighborhood, at the heart of which was an
abandoned bathhouse.

A
N
THE DARKENED WAR ROOM OFF THE PRIME MINISTER’S
office, Zalman Cohen paced back and forth in front of the bank of telephones, fanning his puffy face with a sheaf of papers.
Elihu stood motionless in front of a window staring at his reflection without seeing it. He envied Baruch, who was younger
and fitter and had talked his way onto the raid as a representative of the inter-agency Working Group. Waiting, for the
katsa
, was sheer agony; it was psychologically easier to be on a raiding party than in a command center dreading each ring of the
telephone. The chief of the general staff, a barrel-chested general with a crimson beret jammed under an epaulet, growled
orders into a satellite phone fitted with a scrambler; troops were being deployed in anticipation of Arab protests if and
when the so-called
mujaddid
was shot to death by Israeli soldiers. The Shin Bet people, along with the Minister of Defense and two other members of the
inner cabinet, helped themselves to fruit juice at a sideboard and talked in undertones. The Prime Minister, the only tranquil
person in the room thanks to his legendary self control, sat alone at the oval conference table smoking one of the rare cigarettes
he permitted himself. Every now and then he would grip it between his thumb and three fingers, a habit he had picked up from
a Polish uncle, and pluck it from his mouth to watch the end burn down, as if there was a message waiting to be deciphered
in the glow of the embers. On the blotter in front of him were the two versions of the communiqué that Cohen had prepared
for the eight o’clock press conference. Both versions started out by
explaining that the release of the Palestinian prisoners had been announced to give the General Staff commando unit time to
raid the hideaway where Abu Bakr was believed to be holding Rabbi Apfulbaum; that all the prisoners demanded by the hostage
takers were still in Israeli custody, where they would remain for the foreseeable future. The first version of the communiqué
went on to disclose that the raiders had succeeded in freeing the Rabbi. The second version announced that Apfulbaum had been
killed by his abductors before the Israeli soldiers could reach him. Both versions ended with a solemn declaration of the
government’s intention to never give in to terrorist blackmail. “There is no rear area in the war against Islamic fundamentalist
terrorism,” Cohen had the Prime Minister saying. “There are no non-combatants. All of our citizens—the private patrolling
West Bank roads, the mother crossing Jerusalem on a number eighteen bus, the Rabbi returning from Yad Mordechai—are on the
front lines.”

A red telephone on the table purred. The men drinking fruit juice around the sideboard broke off their conversations and wheeled
toward the sound. The
katsa
took two steps in Cohen’s direction as the director of the Prime Minister’s military affairs committee reached out and snatched
the phone off its hook.

“Cohen,” he mumbled. He listened, nodded once, nodded a second time and dropped the phone back on its cradle. “They’re inside
the Old City,” he announced. “Operation
Simon Bar-Kokhba
is underway.”

K
NEELING ON THE FLOOR
, A
ZZIZ AND
A
OWN HOVERED OVER THE
backgammon set, flinging the dice out of small leather cups, bleating like sheep as they slapped the plastic pieces down
on the board. At the field radio, Petra toyed with a dial, tuning in the voice of an Israeli officer broadcasting from a command
car leading the convoy up the coast road north of Acre. She plugged in a headset and handed it to Doctor al-Shaath. He pressed
one of the earphones to an ear and listened intently. “They’re passing the Misrafot Junction,” he announced, “five kilometers
south of the Lebanese border and ten kilometers south of the United Nations post in the Lebanese town of Nakura. What time
do you have?”

“Seven twenty-five.”

“Another twenty minutes and the prisoners should be free.”

At the table, the Rabbi slurped his second glass of sweetened tea. Some of the liquid trickled from the corner of his mouth
into the stubble on his chin, but he didn’t appear to notice. Sweeney took a quick look at the front door of the hideaway—both
steel bars had been driven home, bolting the steel-plated door shut. He stretched his lanky body and got up and came around
the table and squatted down next to Apfulbaum.