Newton’s Fire

‘Of course I’m in.’ He sounded baffled. ‘Why would you even ask?’

‘Forgive me, Reverend,’ said Croke. ‘But my experience has been that, whenever there’s been an urgent decision to make, you’ve notified your colleagues on your Third Temple Committee. You’ve solicited their opinions. You’ve preached long and no doubt worthy sermons at each other. You’ve checked your scriptures for relevant texts and you’ve prayed for guidance. And by the time you’ve all reached a conclusion, the opportunity is across the border and into another country.’

‘I sit on a committee,’ said Thaddeus. ‘That’s how committees work.’

‘Today’s Sunday,’ said Croke. ‘As Avram no doubt explained to you, this has to happen tomorrow night or not at all. Let me say that again: tomorrow night or not at all.’

‘I know the schedule.’

‘Add in the time difference and we now have less than thirty hours to find this thing and ship it to Israel. So there’s no time to notify your colleagues. There’s no time for sermons or for prayer. It’s go for it or let it slide. Me, I’m in. I’m all in. I’m on my way to England now, because I’ll be needed there, my plane and me. But I need to know that everyone else is all in too; because if anyone holds back, we all go down.’

‘God created our universe six thousand years ago, Mr Croke,’ said Thaddeus. ‘It says so in the Bible. Four thousand years before Christ, two thousand years since. Those six thousand years are the first six days of God’s creation. And on the seventh day He rested. On the seventh day. The thousand year rule of Christ on earth is about to start, Mr Croke. The Rapture and the Last Judgement. That is a plain biblical fact. Look around you. The signs are everywhere. Wars, famines, pestilence, earthquakes, the demise of the whore of Rome. I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. So yes I’m all in, as you put it. I was born all in. What do you need?’

‘I need you to call the White House for me.’

Thaddeus laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘You just said you were all in.’

‘You don’t understand how these things work,’ said Thaddeus. ‘There are rules. There are protocols. The biggest of which is that I never contact her. She contacts me.’

‘You said last year that she knew about all this. You told me she was excited and had asked to be kept informed.’

‘She was and she did.’

‘Well, then. Inform her. Let her know that we’ve found the papers, that they’re pointing us to some buildings in Central London. Tell her that you believe absolutely that we’ll find it there, because this is God’s plan and His seventh day is about to dawn, and He wouldn’t have sent us all these signs unless He meant for us to succeed. Convince her that this is the mission God has appointed for her, that this is her time, that she is the one.’

‘This is the time,’ said Thaddeus. ‘She is the one. She’s the Esther for our age.’

‘It’s not me you need to convince, Reverend. It’s her. And when you’ve convinced her, you’re going to need to fly up to Washington to be with her and keep her strong, or her advisors will talk her out of it again.’

‘I can’t. I have duties here. My congregation.’

Same as it ever was, sighed Croke. All in until he actually had to do something. ‘I remember the Book of Esther,’ he said. ‘My mother used to read it to me at bedtime. There was a Thaddeus in it, wasn’t there? That old Jew who refused to bow to the prince, the one who sparked all the trouble.’

‘His name was Mordecai.’

‘Mordecai, Thaddeus. I knew it was something like that.’ He shifted his phone to his other ear. ‘And don’t I recall that this Mordecai-Thaddeus guy had another important role in the story? Wasn’t he was the one who, when Esther got scared, convinced her that God had made her queen precisely for that moment, that she needed to do His will whatever the consequences?’

Silence as Thaddeus digested this. ‘You don’t know her very well, do you,’ he said. ‘She isn’t the kind of person you can give orders to.’

‘I’m not suggesting you give her orders. I’m suggesting that you tell her what we’re on the brink of, then see how she responds.’

‘How do you expect her to respond?’

‘I think she’ll ask what she can do to help,’ said Croke. ‘And when she does, this is what you’re going to tell her.’

SEVEN I

The earthquake had torn fissures in many of Jerusalem’s streets, yet the resultant congestion wasn’t as bad as it might have been, for tourists had cancelled their bookings by the planeload, spooked by the threat of aftershocks, food shortages and riots, by reports of sewage on the streets and the first whispers of contagious diseases.

A bus took Avram from Jaffa Gate to King George. From there he had to walk. He hurried up Strauss into the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Mea Shearim. The streets here were strewn with torn fly-posters and other litter, and there was graffiti everywhere. The squalor dismayed him, as it always did, for it reflected so poorly on the devout, and gave unnecessary fuel to those who mocked the Haredim as all prayer and no fasting.

He paused outside a grocer’s, picked up a lemon, glanced back. Only men in view, all of them dressed in the distinctive black frock coats and broad-brimmed hats of the ultra-Orthodox. This wasn’t his favourite quarter of Jerusalem, sure, but it made it child’s play to check for a tail.

He turned right at Yesheskel. The earthquake had sheared the front off an apartment building, leaving the street narrowed by skips and scaffolding. He entered the religious bookshop to find Shlomo himself behind the counter. He looked startled to see Avram, but he covered it quickly. ‘Yes?’ Shlomo asked. ‘May I help.’

‘My great-nephew’s bar mitzvah is next week,’ said Avram. ‘I’m looking for something special.’

‘We keep our special stock in the back.’ The bookseller handed over to an assistant, a plump and soft young man, beard wispy as undergrowth after a drought. Then he led Avram back to his office, where they greeted each other more warmly. ‘This must be important,’ said Shlomo pointedly. ‘You wouldn’t have come here otherwise.’

‘It’s time,’ said Avram.

Shlomo nodded. ‘And you decided this yourself, did you? Without consulting me or my men?’

‘The Lord decided, praise His Name,’ said Avram. ‘It’s tomorrow night. We need to start preparing now.’

‘Tomorrow night? Are you crazy? Haven’t you seen the extra soldiers they’ve brought in?’

‘They’re guarding the perimeter,’ said Avram. ‘We’ll be attacking from inside the perimeter.’

‘And the Waqf? They’ve doubled their numbers too.’

‘The Waqf!’ mocked Avram. ‘Old men with sticks.’

‘And the heifer?’ asked Shlomo.

The question blindsided Avram. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten about the heifer. But he didn’t let it show. ‘What about her?’

‘You have her?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How could we do this otherwise?’

Shlomo looked stunned. ‘You never said.’

‘No. Because last time we got anywhere close, we found her one morning with her throat slit. So this time I kept my mouth shut. Can you blame me?’

‘How old?’

‘Her third birthday was three weeks ago,’ he said. ‘The day of the earthquake. The