huddled together. Showing some mercy, they ignored those individuals in the street aiding the fallen.
Near where Decker stood, a young boy, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, held the head of a dead man in his arms. As Decker watched, an Israeli soldier came near the boy. He was staggering and bleeding heavily from a rock-inflicted wound above his right eye. In anger and grief the boy abandoned caution and reached for the first thing he could find: a brick, broken in half, with corners rounded from being thrown so many times already.
The soldier seemed dazed and unaware of the boy until he was only a few yards away. Through his tears the boy hurled the brick with very poor aim at the soldier, hitting him in the right shin, which sent him into a fit of pain. Grasping his leg and seeing the boy running away, he raised his rifle. With blood dripping from the wound above his eye, he took aim. As he did, the boy approached the corner of the building where Decker was standing. Decker reached out and grabbed the boy, pulling him from harm's way just as a bullet whizzed by. The sound of the shot made it clear to both Decker and to the Israeli soldier that he had fired live ammunition. In his dazed state he had failed to respond to the order to reload rubber bullets.
Decker held tightly to the boy, who was struggling to get away. After a moment he stopped fighting. The soldier did not pursue the boy. Soon the riot was over. All that was left was to count the casualties, clean up, and start over.
Decker and Tom asked the boy, who spoke some English, where he lived. The boy responded that he was from Jenin, a town several miles from Jabaliva and Gaza City. Apparently the riot had been an organized effort which brought Palestinians in from towns throughout Israel. Decker told the boy that they would take him back to his home in Jenin.
Tom continued taking pictures of the destruction while Decker carried the boy piggyback along the route the riot had followed. When they arrived at the car, Dean and Asher were waiting for them.
'What do you have there?' asked Asher.
'A witness,' answered Decker. 'He lives in Jenin. He was recruited to come here today for the riot. That's how they managed to stir up such a large crowd: they recruited extras from outside. If we take the boy home we might be able to get a lead on who the organizers were.' It was a long shot, but Decker didn't want to have to depend on Asher's generosity to help get the boy home.
The previously crowded car now felt like the Washington subway at rush hour. The boy did his best to direct the Americans to his home, and after losing about forty minutes to bad directions, they finally stopped in front of his cement slab house. Decker and Tom went to the door with the boy and deposited him with his mother. The boy hugged her around the waist and began speaking to her. Seeing her tears, Decker guessed that the dead man the boy had been holding must have been his older brother. Through her tearful attempts to speak, they ascertained that she spoke almost no English. Nevertheless, it was evident that she realized that they had helped the boy.
'If we're going to get any of this in Monday's edition we've got to get back to the office now,' Bill Dean called to them from the car. 'You can follow up on this later.'
Back at the hotel Decker and Hank Asher compared notes while Bill Dean and Tom contacted Israeli officials on the phone for their reaction to the riot and the killing of the Palestinians. When they completed their report they e-mailed it to the United States.
At six o'clock that evening Decker and Tom took Asher and Dean to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv for their flight home to the U.S. After several months covering the Middle East, they were looking forward to a few weeks at home. Before they boarded their plane, Decker pulled Bill Dean off to the side. 'Bill, let me ask you a sort of strange question,' Decker began. 'You've been over here for a while. If you overheard a conversation in which the people talking said 'Petra must be protected,' what would you think they were talking about?'
'Hmm… ' Dean began thoughtfully, 'You hear so many strange things around here. I guess it depends on who said it. 'Petra' is Greek for rock, so they might have been talking about a lot of things. They could have meant the Rock of Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea. Or, if the people talking were Muslims, I'd guess they were talking about the Dome of the Rock. But those are both pretty cryptic references. There's an ancient city called Petra in Jordan, but it's been abandoned for centuries. It's mainly just a tourist attraction now. There's also a reference in the Bible where Jesus refers to the rock on which he would build his church. So, I suppose they could have been Christian zealots referring to protecting the church from some perceived devil or false doctrine or something. That's really all I can think of right off the bat. I don't know if that helps you any. What's this all about, anyway?'
Decker shook his head. 'At this point I really don't know. If I come up with anything, I'll tell you when you get back from your vacation.'
For the next week things seemed strangely quiet compared to their first day on the job. Israel braced for a Palestinian response to the shootings, but it was slow in coming. There were a few small disturbances, and the strike by Palestinian workers and shopkeepers continued, but there was nothing that the Israeli authorities couldn't handle. On the international scene, a United Nations vote to condemn the Israeli action in Jabaliva passed by a large majority, with the United States abstaining. Decker and Tom found plenty of time to engage in such things as taking out the trash and airing out the rooms.
Tom, who seemed to be more interested in sightseeing than Decker, picked up brochures on all the historical and religious places to visit that they had missed on their whirlwind tour with Joshua Rosen. Decker looked over a few of them, making mental notes of where to take Elizabeth and the girls when they arrived the week before Christmas. Since Decker's stay in Israel would last into January, Elizabeth thought this would be an excellent opportunity to take advantage of an otherwise bad situation, and spend Christmas with Decker in the Holy Land.
At about four in the afternoon of their eighth day, Tom returned from visiting one of Jerusalem's many shrines and sat down just as the phone rang. On the other end was a man whose accent gave him away as a Palestinian. 'I need to speak to the American, Asher.'
'I'm sorry he's not here,' Tom responded. 'May I help you?'
'Tell the American, 'Many dogs shall weep tonight, but their tears will find nowhere to fall.''
'What?' Tom asked. 'What are you talking about? What does that mean?' But the man had hung up.
'What was that?' Decker asked, responding to Tom's excited but puzzled expression.
'I don't really know,' he answered. 'I think it must have been one of Hank Asher's informants; either that or a kook.'
Decker waited a second for Tom to continue and when it seemed that he might keep the mystery to himself, Decker finally asked, 'Well, what did he say?'
'He said to tell Asher 'Many dogs shall weep tonight, but their tears will find nowhere to fall.''
'Any idea what it means?' Decker asked.
Tom picked up the phone and began dialing as he answered. 'None, but I know who might.' Tom was calling Hank Asher in America. It took four calls to locate him and when they reached him he had no more idea what the message meant than did Tom or Decker.
'The only thing that I can think of,' said Asher, 'is that sometimes one or more of the Palestinian groups will call after a bombing or a kidnapping to take credit for it. There's quite a bit of rivalry that goes on among the different factions of Palestinians. Maybe the guy that called is trying to establish responsibility before the fact so his group will get credit for it afterward. If so, you can expect a second call from him after the fact. I suggest you call the Israeli police and tell them about the call. In any case, it doesn't seem like you'll have long to wait to find out what he meant. Whatever it is, he said it will happen tonight.'
'Okay,' said Tom. 'Listen, give us a call at the hotel if you think of anything else.'
'Sure thing,' said Asher. 'Oh, one other thing: when you call the police, don't tell them the guy asked for me. I'm trying to take a vacation over here.'
Tom called the police, who wasted no time responding to the call. Figuring out what to do about it was another thing. The police inspector, Lt. Freij, said that since the caller was apparently Palestinian, the use of the term 'dogs' must refer to Israelis. 'We call them dogs and they call us dogs,' Freij said. ''Weep and tears' obviously means that something will happen that will cause grief for Israel. 'Tonight' must mean just that: whatever is going to happen will occur tonight. Beyond that it's guesswork.' Lt. Freij also suggested that it might all be just a hoax and that such things were not that uncommon. 'Just in case, though,' Freij said, 'I'll order all the standard precautions and see that all the appropriate authorities are alerted to the possibility of a terrorist attack.'
Tom and Decker discussed the caller's message for a while longer but came to no conclusions. A little after
