coming out of the east.
Good, Feldman thought to himself, surveying the threatening clouds. It
For the rest of the morning, Feldman, Hunter and the WNN staff worked on their preparations for the upcoming telecast. After final equipment check, the crew assembled in the front room to give the two men their send-off. It was as if he and Hunter were soldiers leaving their families for the front. The accustomed frivolity and irreverence were gone. The solemnity of the handshakes and hugs he received told Feldman that, despite the secular convictions his associates had been touting, millenarian fears had crept in.
They left in a car with Bollinger driving, slowly picking their way down the mountain road through the dense crowds. The closer they drew to the Old City, the slower the going. At length, they reached the Dung Gate, so called for the heaps of rubbish and horse manure once piled here by the Romans and Byzantines during ancient times.
Bollinger pulled over to the side to assess the situation. “Anyone see a female corporal anywhere?”
“I see IDF soldiers manning the gate over there, and they don't seem to be letting anyone in or out,” Hunter reported, angling around in his seat to better inspect things. “But I don't see a female soldier yet.”
“We've got five minutes.” Feldman checked his watch. “They said twelve-thirty, let's not get nervous.” This was hypocritical advice.
“I hope you brought your raincoats,” Bollinger cautioned, glancing up at the sky. “It looks like we could get some weather. Maybe this damned drought is about to break.”
“Yeah, nice day for a Judgment, eh?” Hunter opined.
“Or a Rapture,” Feldman added.
At precisely twelve-thirty, a new group of soldiers pulled up to relieve the old. The officer in command was a no-nonsense, capable-looking young female with dark hair and eyes to match. She saluted the departing soldiers and stationed her fresh men in front of the gate, machine guns drawn.
Feldman slid out of the car, grabbed his equipment bag and leaned back in through the side window. “Okay, Arnie, I'll check this out. If all goes well I'll signal for Breck. We'll keep in touch by cellular phone once we're settled inside.”
“Check.” Bollinger gave Feldman the thumbs-up. “Be careful now. I don't have to tell you it could get rough in there.”
Feldman returned the gesture, smiled grimly, and trotted over to address the corporal. In a few minutes he was receiving papers and waving Hunter to join him.
After repeating the formalities with the cameraman, the corporal picked up what looked like an empty coffee can, and along with three soldiers, silently escorted the two newsmen through the huge gate. Once inside, the reporters could see, high above the dense crowd, a platform erected at the northeastern end of the plaza, flush against the great East Wall. Unfortunately, Feldman and Hunter were being led in the opposite direction.
“I don't suppose there's any way we might influence you toward a better location?” Hunter suggested to the young corporal, flipping the corners of a large bankroll. Without losing her stride, she looked first at the money, then at Hunter, pulled the bolt on her rifle and silently continued on her way.
“Maybe I should've offered my body,” Hunter whispered to Feldman, loud enough for the officer to hear.
It was slow going through the standing-room-only crowd of chanting, singing, praying millenarians. The entire quadrangle was a sea of mixed cults, ethnicities and ages. It reminded Feldman of the eclectic crowd he'd witnessed the night of Millennium Eve, only the mood here was considerably more intense.
Passing out of the plaza into the heart of the Old City, the party crossed several narrow alleys, turned down a side street and then stopped in front of what appeared to be an old four-story warehouse. It bore on its door the same bold, yellow signage, in multiple languages, that appeared on the other buildings nearby: “Roof access prohibited as of 4.20.2000 by order of the IDF. Violators subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment.”
The corporal withdrew a key from her breast pocket and unlocked the door. “Up here,” she said, motioning with the muzzle of her gun toward a dark, dank stairwell. Her adjutants stood aside to guard the entryway and the two newsmen accompanied her up four flights of wooden stairs all the way to the rooftop. Swinging open a door, they stepped out into a cool breeze.
“The roof is bad over here.” She gestured with her gun to her left. “So keep to your right and you'll be fine. The street-level door locks from the inside, so you shouldn't be disturbed. When you finish, let yourself out as you came. There are no toilet facilities.” She dropped the coffee can to the roof. “Use this as necessary and carry your waste away with you. Any questions?”
“Will you be back to walk us home?” Hunter flirted.
She looked the big man up and down with a raised eyebrow and snorted, “I would rather experience doomsday!” Both Hunter and Feldman burst out laughing, appreciating the break in the tension. This was not shared by Corporal Lyman, who wasted no time ducking back into the darkness of the stairwell.
Hunter hooked a thumb in the direction of her departure. “From the Goene school of charisma,” he smirked, and began unloading his equipment.
Feldman walked out toward the edge of the roof in the direction of the stage to survey the scene. He saw that their budding was connected directly to the one in front of them, one story below him, which was connected to the budding in front of it, and so on. From the looks of things, the two newsmen could work their way from roof to roof to the very front row of buildings at the perimeter of the huge quadrangle. If the opportunity presented itself. Beyond the rooftops, directly adjacent to the stage, Feldman was comforted to see a military helicopter resting on its pad.
As the mystery voice on the phone had promised, the stage in the Wailing Wall plaza was certainly visible from here, but it must have been a good hundred meters away. All of the other news crews were far better situated on the periphery of the plaza, either on the surrounding walls, or on the tops of buildings at the edge of the open common. No one was set as far back as WNN.
“We're not going to get any decent audio from up here,” Feldman stated the obvious.
“No,” Hunter agreed. “Headquarters will just have to fall back on simulcast audio from some other network, like we anticipated. But hopefully, you and I'll be able to hear her speech. They've got a decent sound system set up on the stage,” he pointed over at the series of horizontal, two foot by eight foot speaker boxes placed on their sides along the front of the platform.
“What do you make of the empty rooftops out there?” Feldman asked. He guessed he was standing on the sixth row of buildings back from the edge of the plaza, and was surprised to see that there were no spectators on any of the roofs in front of them. The viewpath was deserted.
Hunter dropped a camera case and walked over next to Feldman. “Hmmph. Bad roofs, like the corporal told us? Or maybe security. See how we look down a bit on the platform from up here? That would make it easy to lob a rocket or grenade over the top of the glass shield. All the windows facing out onto the square are probably stationed with militia. But I don't know why the hell they couldn't have gotten us a little closer, anyway.”
“I guess we're lucky to be here at all,” Feldman conceded.
Hunter pulled up a tripod and positioned his camera on top. “Yeah, only I don't like the angle. I'm too low. I can't get you and the speaker's platform in the same shot.”
Feldman walked over to squint through the lens. “What do you suggest?”
“Well, with all the open access in front of us, maybe we should just try moving a little closer?”
Feldman considered this for a moment and then observed the large number of Israeli military stationed around the perimeter areas. “No,” he sighed. “If we get kicked out of here, WNN will be completely dark on this whole event. We'd better play it safe.”
Hunter peered around and fastened his gaze on the higher roof of the building behind them to their left “Up there,” he proposed. “Let me see what it looks like from up there. You hand the camera up to me.”
Before Feldman could object, Hunter was off. “Watch out for the roof,” he called after him.
The new position worked perfectly, Hunter decided. He could hold Feldman full frame and then adroitly zoom in over his shoulder, directly into the stage and speaker.
“I don't like the looks of those clouds,” Feldman observed, casting his eyes on the sky. “You're target practice if a lightning storm kicks up suddenly, you know.”
“No problem. I'll skinny offa here slicker ‘n shit if I have to,” Hunter assured him. “Come on, give me a hand
