Elezar shook his head. “I hope she’s fucking worth it, Deker,” he said, and disappeared out the window.
It was now just him and Rahab left in the cellar, along with the quiet girl in the corner who had been invisible the entire time.
“Hamas will suspect you lied to him,” Deker told Rahab. “Come with us.”
“No,” she said. “You come back for me.”
She looked at him in a way that told him that she had been saving her soul for him all along, even if she had been unable to save her body. Then she kissed him on the mouth and wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight.
Something was released in Deker at that moment, a primal desire to love and protect her, body and soul, no matter what. Like he had always wanted to love and protect Rachel. He didn’t want to let go of her, but knew he couldn’t protect her unless he did.
“I will,” he promised as he moved to the window.
The wind had died down and the desert was an empty sea. Holding the rope, he climbed over the ledge backward, feet planted against the wall below the window until he was staring back inside at Rahab.
“Don’t worry about the rope,” she told him. “I’ll pull it up as soon as you reach the bottom.”
Deker hesitated, the nagging sense that he was forgetting something. Something was off here, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. But time was running out.
He rappelled down the outside of the city wall, stopping twice on the way down. Seconds later his feet hit the ground and he was staring at the concrete revetment wall at the bottom. But there was no sign of Elezar, who had already taken off for the hills.
He gave the rope two sharp tugs and watched it disappear into the dark somewhere beyond view.
He took off into the darkness. Only once did he stop and look back at the city, trying to pick out which window among several in the north wall was Rahab’s. But he wasn’t sure.
Suddenly he realized what he had forgotten and Elezar most certainly had not.
They were supposed to have told Rahab to tie a red scarf in her window as a sign to General Bin-Nun.
21
The clouds had parted and the moon shone down on Deker like a beacon as he crossed the fields toward the cliffs of the Mount of Temptation. At any moment he expected a horn to sound and a rain of arrows to strike him down, or to fall into one of the many trenches dug around the city. But in less than twenty minutes he reached a pomegranate grove and could hear the roar of a creek at the base of the cliffs. He found the narrow goats’ path up the side of the mountain, but no Elezar.
Deker swore and started his steep and winding hike along the eastern slope. A couple of times his boot slipped and he heard a waterfall of stones cascade down the cliff. The higher he climbed, the more he could see of the desert moonscape and Jericho below. All the while he thought of Elezar’s betrayal, seething with rage.
There were a few dozen caves, and it took Deker an additional fifteen minutes to find Elezar by a small fire deep inside one of the larger caves. Elezar didn’t even bother to look to see who entered, although he cocked his ear when Deker removed the sword from his sheath.
“So young Deker didn’t completely forget his years of Hebrew school back in the States,” Elezar said in a calm and even voice.
“The scarlet cord, Elezar,” Deker said, putting the tip of his blade to the back of Elezar’s neck. “We were supposed to tell her to put one of her red scarves in her outside window, to mark her house for invading troops to spare. You left out that little detail. You left her to die for no other reason but your self-righteous religious sanctimony.”
Elezar stiffened only slightly. “Six million reasons, Deker. Six million Jews.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The book of Matthew lists Rahab as part of the human lineage of Jesus,” Elezar said. “No Rahab, no Jesus. No Jesus, no Christianity. No Christianity, no Crusades, no Nazis, no Holocaust.”
Deker paused, horrified at Elezar’s logic.
“You’re assuming that those who do evil in the name of Christ in the future won’t simply create another religion to justify their slaughter of Jews,” Deker said. “You think that by letting Rahab get slaughtered you’re going to prevent the Holocaust? You don’t know that. But you do know that she’s also the great-great-grandmother of King David. You’re going to murder Israel’s greatest king and erase the Psalms from history. You’re insane!”
Elezar sat calmly, tending to the fire with a small stick. “Rahab corrupted and poisoned Israel. You know this now just from the blazing star. The emblem of Israel isn’t even Jewish, confirming what Moses and Bin-Nun feared all along: the Israelites will conquer the Promised Land, only to take up the religious practices of its enemies. We can stop the infection now, before it enters our nation’s bloodstream. God deposed Saul and raised David. He can always find another king of the Jews. And we can make new Psalms. You said it yourself, Deker: if this is really happening, if we are really back in time, then history has already been changed. We make the most of it.”
“This is so wrong, Elezar.”
“No, Deker. This is the cry of six million Jews thanking us. This is God’s judgment on the Amorites or Reahns or whatever they want to call themselves. You saw the whoredom, the oppression and the infanticide. It’s been building for four centuries. We just happen to be the hand of God like the angels that nuked Sodom and Gomorrah. We have been chosen. You should be grateful.”
Deker stepped around Elezar toward the fire, slowly drawing a white scratch with the tip of his blade across Elezar’s neck until its point rested at his throat. The slightest drop of blood formed out of the line where the skin had broken.
“You make a mockery of our national character,” Deker said. “She trusted us, Elezar. She trusted Yahweh. She has more faith than any of you hypocrites. We gave her our word. We gave her our word, and now our word is worth shit. You betrayed our people, Elezar. You will make the world hate us.”
Elezar looked up at Deker, fire in his eyes. “I’m saving our nation both now and in the future, Deker,” he said defiantly. “But you would show less devotion to your Jewish brothers than your foreign whores.”
It was all Deker could do to hold himself back. “Damn you, Elezar. You know that little prick Phineas is going to run a blade through her if Hamas doesn’t beat him to it.”
Elezar said nothing, and silence filled the cave.
Then came the crunch of pebbles outside the entrance, and instantly they went on guard.
“Hear that?” Elezar asked, cocking his ear.
Deker nodded. “Could be goats.”
“Or the sound of your beloved’s betrayal.”
Elezar kicked dirt on the fire, and they quietly made their way to the mouth of the cave and looked outside.
“There,” Elezar said, pointing.
Immediately beneath them on the winding trail, a line of soldiers was moving toward their cave. Were it not for the glint of their spears in the moonlight, they would have been invisible against the cliffs.
Deker said, “The famous shadow army?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Elezar said. “I told you she’d betray us.”
22
Deker edged close to the cave’s entrance and looked out. The troops with their torches were already halfway up the narrow path toward the cave. Another unit was coming down from the top of the mountain, where the
