Zealot (36 page)

MacLeod didn’t have to wait long for his invitation to be answered. Still more than an hour before sunrise, he felt Avram
approach, saw him along the foggy Quai.

“You failed,” MacLeod pointed out, as Avram came within earshot.

“You win some, you lose some.” Avram’s demeanor was calm, resigned. “Arafat and the Prime Minister signed the agreement in
the back of the security van after they evacuated the embassy. Guess I pushed them into each other’s arms.” He approached
the gangplank. “It’s only one battle. You have to fight a lot of battles to win a war. There’ll be others.” Despite his words,
he seemed less than enthusiastic at the prospect.

MacLeod shook his head, standing. “Not for you, Avram.” He climbed down from the top of the pilothouse.

“Guess we have to finish this,” Avram said. MacLeod nodded his head, sad but resolved. Avram tried one more time to get his
old friend to understand. “Duncan, you know why I had to do it.” He started up the gangplank.

“And you know why I have to stop you.” The
katana
was heavy in his hands.

“’Cause you’ll always be the white knight,
goy
, champion to damsels in distress everywhere.” Avram pulled his sword and leapt from the gangplank onto the deck of the barge.
“C’mon, hero,” he challenged, darting to the flat open deck of the bow, “let’s go. Time for the O.K. Corral.”

In two long strides, MacLeod was there, and, with no formality, he laid into Avram, three quick slashes to Avram’s head. Avram’s
sword was ready to deflect, deflect, then he twisted out of MacLeod’s reach.

Avram circled to MacLeod’s left, tried to thrust in behind his blade, but the
katana
that had saved MacLeod’s life more times than he could remember was already there, waiting to block the blow. MacLeod spun
to face him and pressed a flurry of attacks—hip, head, head, thrust—that drove Avram back, then back again as he struggled
to defend against the powerhouse blows.

He realized MacLeod was maneuvering the fight into the narrow prow of the barge. The boat’s hull and the collection of pipes
and winches and equipment would negate what little advantage his natural agility gave Avram against MacLeod’s superior sword
skills.

Avram feinted at MacLeod’s legs, drawing the
katana
down, then an overhead slice at the head, to lure the
katana
into a defensive position perpendicular to MacLeod’s body. Quickly, he slipped inside MacLeod’s guard, catching the
katana
’s blade at the hilt and, putting all his weight and strength behind it, he powered his sword down and away, dragging the
tip of the
katana
into the deck of the barge.

Avram jumped back quickly and swung before MacLeod could raise the sword back into proper position to defend. He caught MacLeod
across the right arm, a wicked slash that severed the tendons. First blood, and a much-needed advantage. He slipped out of
the narrow confines of the barge’s prow.

MacLeod spun away, howling, but he held firm to the sword with his left hand. While the
katana
wielded two-handed was a powerful killing weapon, one-handed it was still formidable. Holding his damaged arm close to his
body, MacLeod spun the sword expertly in his hand to show Avram he had gained no advantage, then attacked aggressively.

They battled across the deck of the barge, MacLeod on the attack. Again and again, Avram found himself forced to retreat to
what he hoped was a better position. With a roar and a mighty slash of his sword, MacLeod locked blades with Avram and pressed
him back against the raised roof of the living space belowdecks. To avoid falling, Avram scrambled on top and over it, running
nimbly across the narrow passage between the pilothouse and the side of the barge, MacLeod on his heels.

Reaching the stem, Avram stood his ground, sword ready, waiting for MacLeod’s attack. He was winded, on the defensive, and
the edge of the barge, where the dark Seine beckoned to shield his escape, was tantalizingly close. But he was not going to
take the coward’s way out—one way or the other, they were going to finish this.

Grimly, MacLeod came at him, to the head, to the gut, to the shoulder. Even Avram’s quickness was not enough, and he took
a painful slice across the collarbone. He howled with the pain and tried to dart away, but MacLeod was right on him.

As MacLeod swung again, Avram ducked to a crouch and came up under the larger man’s guard. He shouldered MacLeod into the
side of the pilothouse, and the sword went flying from MacLeod’s hand.

Avram pressed in closer, going for the kill. An instant later he found himself on his ass, swordless, the
katana
to his neck. In one seamless move, MacLeod had caught the
katana
midair with his healed right arm and pulled Avram’s feet from under him with a sweep of his leg.

“Duncan!” Avram gasped, and the plea in his voice made MacLeod stay his hand. Avram held him with his eyes for a long moment.
Then he folded his hands in front of him and closed his eyes in prayer. “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe,
Whose judgments are true.” Then, with a sigh, he tilted back his head, exposing his throat.

MacLeod could feel the tears rise up in his throat. “
Shalom
, Avram. Peace.” The keen edge of the
katana
sliced cleanly.

Avram’s body fell to the deck of the barge, and, a moment later, the
katana
followed, as if its owner could no longer bear to hold the weapon that had slain his former comrade. The gentle breeze along
the Seine stirred into a wind that caused currents of fog to dance around the barge.

The shattered vessel that was Avram gave up its Quickening like wisps of smoke which curled into the air, intertwining with
the dancing fog. Suddenly, the wind became a gale, the dance a frenzy, as the Quickening writhed in the whirl-wind, then sought
shelter in Duncan MacLeod.

Its touch was the touch of liquid fire that seeped through his pores and overwhelmed his soul, stripping away all that he
was, all that he is, all that he would be, and leaving in its place an acute, never-ending loneliness that filled him up until
he could hold no more. He fell to his knees from the ache and a deep moan, torn from the very fiber of his being, escaped
from his throat.

Shafts of lightning exploded from Avram’s body, shattering the windows of the pilothouse, scarring the deck and the sides
of the barge with their intensity before snaring MacLeod in their web. Power shot through him unrestrained, and the moan became
a scream as cosmic fire sparked his nerves, his cells, his very atoms.

Through the pain, through the loneliness and the despair that held him prisoner, he reached into the maelstrom within his
essence and grasped the memories churning there, desperate for identity. Lightning pierced the physical form once called MacLeod,
sending it writhing to the deck of the barge, but he was Avram, son of Mordecai the Pharisee, and he was marrying the most
beautiful woman in Judea. He lifted Deborah’s veil and looked into her chestnut eyes, and they were the lifeless eyes of Debra
Campbell and he was Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod and his world was coming to an end at the base of a cliff in the Highlands
of Scotland. Tongues of fire shot from the bilge pipes quenched with a hiss in the waters of the Seine and he was assailed
by the smell of burning wood and burning flesh and he was Avram the schoolteacher fighting on alone in the village that had
died around him as the Cossack’s horse rode him down and he rode and he rode on the heels of that butcher, Kern, who’d destroyed
his family, and he vowed someday MacLeod of the Lakota would have his revenge.

He roared, a wild howl filled with anguish and sorrow, and he reached for heaven as if he could almost touch it, first one
hand, then both. Almost, but not quite.

Suddenly, the lightning ceased, the fog blowing past the barge on a gentle breeze as if nothing to disturb the fabric of space
and time had just occurred, and he was once again MacLeod, Duncan MacLeod, born in Glenfinnan in the Highlands of Scotland
in 1592, and he was the victor.

But there was no joy in this victory. MacLeod collapsed back onto the deck, a puppet with no strings, exhausted. And he wept.

*    *    *

Minutes, hours, days later, he felt the approach of another Immortal. Barely lifting his head, he reached out for his sword.
Then he looked up to see Methos mounting the gangplank. “You,” MacLeod said.

“I came to watch the fireworks.” Methos picked his way carefully across the shattered glass and blasted decking. “I hear it’s
Palestinian Independence Day.” With the tails of his grungy raincoat, he wiped off a spot on the deck and sat down beside
MacLeod.

MacLeod sat up, looking at his
katana
as if it was a stranger to him. “I didn’t do it for the Palestinians.”

“I know,” Methos said with more compassion. “Still, I suppose it had to be done.”

Now that the deed was done, MacLeod was firm. “He couldn’t keep on killing innocent mortals.”

“True,” Methos said, examining a shard of glass he’d picked up near his feet. “Much better to let the mortals go on killing
each other.”

MacLeod looked at him oddly. “What do you mean by that?”

“Me?” Methos shrugged, tossing the glass fragment into the river. “I dunno. Sometimes I just like to hear myself talk.”

MacLeod stood, putting away his sword. “I’ve got to go.” Methos nodded sagely. MacLeod walked to the gangplank and off onto
the Quai. Methos looked around the wreckage of the barge.

“Guess I’ll just tidy up a bit.”

It was dawn when he knocked on Maral’s door at the Jordanian Embassy and he was surprised when she opened it almost immediately.
Her eyes were red and shadowed. She hadn’t slept.

“Duncan!” She thought that she’d never see him again, that by coming so close to whatever secret he was forced to conceal,
she had lost him forever. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into her room.

The door closed, he pressed her back against it and kissed her, a soul-searching kiss, as if he never wanted to let her go.
A kiss so full of hunger, so full of need, she could tell something had happened. Something had changed him almost imperceptibly,
had left him with this deep aching loneliness.

“Duncan … it’s all right.” She stroked his head, brushed back his hair, trying to comfort him. “Let me help.”

“Just hold me,” he whispered. “Please …” There was nothing he could tell her.

Author’s Notes

Working on
Zealot
, I’ve come to appreciate how very different writing fiction for the printed page is from writing for the TV screen. So many
more words are needed! You can’t just map out the dialogue and rely on an actor to provide the character’s description, expression,
and reactions. When writing a book, you don’t have the luxury of an Adrian Paul or Peter Wingfield calling the writers to
say, “You don’t need to put in that line—I can say it in a look,” and they do, beautifully. On the other hand, you don’t have
the producer calling to say “Masada? Have you gone totally insane? Where am I supposed to double Masada in Paris?”

One luxury that you have when putting a book together, unlike a television show, is what you’re reading right now—the author’s
notes. Many’s the time the writers of “Highlander” would have loved to put a banner across the bottom of the screen that said
something like, “Well, it was
supposed
to be Waterloo, but it snowed the day of filming.” So, having been given this precious opportunity. here are a few notes.

On May 16, 1943, SS Major General Jürgen Stroop reported to his superiors that “The Warsaw Ghetto is no more.” The 50,000
Jews who had remained in the Ghetto after the mass deportations of nearly 500,000 to the death camps, and the roughly 1,000
young Jewish rebels who had risen up in arms against the Nazi war machine to try and protect them, were gone—captured and
sent to Treblinka, shot where they stood, or consumed by the fires the Nazis set to ravage the Ghetto. Of the actual heroes
and villains involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I’ve put my words in the mouths of only a few—Ghetto commander Mordechai
Anielewicz and his companion Mira, Jurek, Issachar Schmuel the gangster king, General Stroop.

Little is known about the last hours of Masada, except what is reported in Flavius Josephus’s
The Jewish Wars
. Josephus, a one-time Jewish rebel turned Roman collaborator, purported he got his facts from two women who survived Masada
by hiding in a cistern. Recent archaeological evidence does support much of what Josephus wrote, including the pottery shards
inscribed with the commanders’ names which were used to draw lots. The shards confirm the presence of Eleazar ben Yair the
legendary commander of Masada, who I’ve borrowed for this book.

A note about Jewish naming conventions. According to Rabbi Morrison David Bial, the practice of naming children only after
deceased relatives was originally an Ashkenazic tradition (Jews from Central Europe), not biblical or talmudic in origin,
and so wouldn’t have been adhered to at the time of Masada.