Bollinger signed off, still grumbling. Feldman switched on the car radio. Finally, Israel Radio was back on the air. Feldman had to wait for the English version before he heard more appalling news of the night before. The widespread, global panic. The violence, the destruction, the death. This only reinforced in his mind his earlier argument to Anke.
Underscoring Hunter's claim, Israel Radio also confirmed Bethlehem as the epicenter of a major earthquake measuring seven point one on the Richter scale. With the exception of a mild tremor reported in Rome, apparently none of the other millenarian stronghold cities around the world had suffered like disasters.
22
Bethlehem, Israel 9:33 A.M., Saturday, January 1, 2000
Arriving in Bethlehem from the north, Feldman overlooked a picturesque hillside town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, primarily Christian Arabs whose families had lived here for hundreds of years. Other than in the ethnic origin of its residents, Bethlehem had changed little since the birth of Christ. From rolling, sparse pasturelands that surrounded the town, shepherds still drove flocks of sheep and goats along worn, narrow, cobblestone alleyways into the central marketplace bazaar. Side by side with ancient, historic structures, newer construction had been randomly squeezed in over the centuries. But built of the same indigenous stone, most were hardly distinguishable from their predecessors.
Interspersed among this maze of densely packed dwellings were the elegant white-sandstone spires of a dozen churches. Including the center-most focus of the town, the fourteen-hundred-year-old Church of the Nativity, located in Manger Square over the grotto that Stephen Martyr had identified in A.D. 155 as the precise spot where Christ was born.
Feldman was amazed there was no visible damage from the previous night's violent quake. Instead of a disaster zone, he found the town swarming with millenarians. Shops and cafes were bustling and there were no signs of interrupted municipal services. No cordoned-off areas for utility repairs, no emergency crews digging through rubble.
The crowds were densest not near revered Manger Square in the center of town, as Feldman had anticipated, but at a large, parklike common on the north side. The common was encircled by connecting loops of Sderot King David on the north and Sderot Manger on the south-
He knocked at the door, a bolt unlocked, and he was greeted by an unfamiliar, bookish-looking, middle-aged man in a tie and horn-rimmed glasses who, conversely, recognized him instantly.
“Mr. Feldman, we've been expecting you.”
Feldman was still not used to his newly acquired celebrity status.
“Good, you made it!” Hunter's voice came from somewhere out of the darkness inside.
Before the door shut and enveloped him in temporary blindness, Feldman spied Hunter seated at a small table next to a very attractive young woman in glasses. She wore a pin-striped business suit with a scoop-neck blouse. Her intelligent face was framed with a straight dark, banged hair style cut at the nape of the neck and set off with the perfect makeup of a runway model. Behind her was a wall of flickering TV monitors.
His eyes adjusted quickly to the blue light.
“Jon,” Hunter began, “let me introduce you to Erin Cross, WNN's expert on Middle East religious history and antiquities, and Robert Filson, senior news editor, who you just met.”
Feldman smiled and shook hands. Robert's was soft, damp and weak. Erin's was cool and firm. As she stretched across the table to Feldman, the low-cut neck of her finely tailored blouse effected a rather unavoidable presentation of cleavage.
“It's a pleasure to meet the famous Mr. Feldman,” she said in an interestingly textured voice, smiling, her dark lipstick contrasting sharply with her milk-white skin.
A phone on the wall lit up and Hunter warned everyone to ignore it. “It's Bollinger again,” he snorted impatiently. “We'll fill him in when he gets here, but no more interruptions for now.” He snatched the plug from its socket.
Filson arched an eyebrow, but Hunter was oblivious and launched immediately into his explanation. “Last night, after I dropped Cissy off, I went back to headquarters to work on a few things. Like everyone else, I guess the weight of all this wasn't sitting well with me and I wanted to review the footage we shot at the beginning of the quake. I was trying to pinpoint the location of that lightning storm when these guys and their teammates”-he gestured to Erin and Filson-“showed up a little after daybreak.
“They've got a ham radio in here, and on their ride up from Cairo they got a report out of Turkey about the epicenter of the quake being here at Bethlehem, exactly where I'd figured on a map to be the site of that electrical storm.”
Feldman interrupted. “Well, where's all the damage around here? I didn't see a thing coming in, and Jerusalem's a mess.”
“That's the least of the weirdness,” Hunter replied. “Once we connected both the lightning storm and the quake to Bethlehem, we made the unanimous decision to check things out. And it's paid off. Big. Look at this.” He gestured toward a monitor and everyone turned.
“This is selected footage from a bunch of stuff we shot earlier this morning here in King David Square,” Hunter explained. “We're in the process of editing it down right now.” He picked up a remote control from the table and started a video clip. “Okay, now take a look at monitor C.”
There appeared on the screen the remains of an old, rock-walled enclosure, about waist-high, rectangular, approximately fifty meters long by twenty-five meters wide.
“This is an archaeological
Feldman did not quite understand, but he didn't want to interrupt.
“David's Wall is about a stone's throw from here on the west side of the plaza,” Hunter went on. “There are all kinds of excavations going on around this area.”
The camera turned a corner and arrived at an open entranceway into the enclosure. Isolated in the middle of the courtyard was a water-filled cistern carved from solid rock, about two meters in diameter, from which people were carefully ladling water into jugs and bottles and miscellaneous containers. “Okay, now we're inside the wall,” Hunter narrated, “and you're looking at the ancient, sacred Well of David.”
Feldman had been expecting something with a little more drama to it, and he shifted impatiently in his seat. But Hunter was not to be rushed.
“Erin,” Hunter addressed the young woman at his elbow, “tell Jon about the well.”
Erin, who had perhaps the best posture Feldman had ever seen, turned her swanlike neck toward him and smiled coquettishly. “I'd be happy to. Mr. Feldman, both the wall and well are the oldest historic landmarks in Bethlehem, dating back to about the year 1000 B.C. The well still supplies potable drinking water to the residents here. Legend has it that three thousand years ago, a young shepherd filled his goatskin with water from this well and went off to watch the army of the Israelites do battle against Philistine invaders.
“This shepherd boy, who was born in Bethlehem, whose name was David, and who would later become the greatest king of ancient Israel, supposedly drank the water from this well before engaging and slaying the Philistine giant, Goliath.”
Hunter interrupted. “Not a bad little anecdotal beginning, eh?” He beamed, self-satisfactorily. “Now look at monitor E, Jon.”
With the punch of a button Hunter brought up a wide shot of the common. The camera was looking east, away from the well. Standing about thirty-five meters directly across from the entranceway of David's Wall was a large, partially excavated mound in which a flight of stone steps had been exposed. The steps led up to a flattened area at the top of the mound on which the remnants of massive stone columns could be seen.
Feldman surmised that these were the remains of a once-magnificent structure, like much of Israel, its glory
