What kind of defense was this? he wondered as he walked among the dying inside the city walls. These were no soldiers of Jericho. They had no swords, no weapons of any kind, not even food. They were sick and infirm. How could they save Jericho when Hamas had condemned them to die when the walls collapsed on top of them?
Then he understood. It was all clear now.
Hamas had packed the walls with the diseased in case they did fall. Then these veritable zombies could escape to infect the Israelite troops. The troops, in turn, would infect their families. And that would be the end of the Hebrews.
Deker covered his nose and mouth. Cholera, hepatitis B and C, jaundice, dysentery, leprosy—it was all here, and then some, plainly visible on the drawn and blemished faces. And rising above the coughs and hacks of the TB- infected was a madman laughing somewhere down the narrow corridor.
Deker could recognize that condescending laugh anywhere.
Deker knew that he was never going to leave these walls now, never going to see Rahab again. Not if he was to save Israel. He had to entertain Elezar long enough for the Israelites to turn the tunnels into a furnace worthy of Molech and burn them all alive before anyone could escape.
There was a doorway at the end of the section, leading to another beyond. Guarding the doorway were two ghastly-looking Reahn guards who kept the civilian sick at bay. But they didn’t block him from entering the next compartment. It was as if he had been expected.
As soon as he stepped through the door, he felt a blow to his gut and doubled over as Elezar withdrew a bloody dagger from his stomach. Deker began to cough up blood.
“Welcome back, Deker,” said Elezar’s voice from the shadows.
Deker noticed the white salt all over the floor where his drops of blood had begun to splatter. The salt might have been stored there and cleared out, he thought, but something about it felt familiar and threw him off. He slid some of it aside with his boot and saw the flash of color. There was some kind of mosaic in the floor.
A sense of vertigo hit him and the walls seemed to bend before his eyes. As he regained his balance, he saw Elezar emerge from the shadows, laughing louder than ever.
“You did it, Deker!” he said in mock congratulation. “You finally broke.”
Any other day Deker could have taken Elezar. But with the cheap stab, Elezar now had the upper hand. Overwhelmed and losing blood, Deker pulled out his Molotov incendiary.
“Your plan has failed, Elezar. Bin-Nun is going to torch the city. And I’m going to burn us all inside this furnace of death. Jericho is doomed, the future of Israel secured.”
“It’s Israel you have doomed, Deker, and the future of Palestine you have secured once and for all. You’ve just blown the Israeli fail-safe, the secret of the Tehown, the tunnel of chaos the Jews hoped to use to kill us Arabs and save themselves.”
Bits of brick began to fall from the ceiling, and inside, the walls were heating up like an oven as the Israelites began to burn the city to the ground.
But Elezar beamed in triumph.
“You think you are with me in the walls of ancient Jericho 3,500 years ago, Deker. But we’re not really here. We’re back in a safe house in Jericho. You’re strapped to a chair with a fiber-optic line sewn into your skull, and I’m pumping light waves into your brain as I interrogate you.”
Deker felt the sweat coming down his face in the heat. “You’re crazy! You were the one who spent days convincing me that we were in 1400 BC. You’re the one who lost his mind.”
“You’re a fool, Deker,” Elezar said. “This was all a simulation designed to break you, the bad Jew, into revealing the secret fail-safe. It has been such a simple task to guide you to this point, using your brain’s own imagery to reconstruct everything about ancient Jericho along the lines of the Temple Mount to help us find the city’s fail-safe and lead us to what you already knew deep inside your head.”
“And what is that, Elezar?”
“Clearly, Israel’s fail-safe is biological in nature. Most likely a virus created from some ancient bone fragment infected with a disease that doesn’t exist in the twenty-first century. By creating a vaccine from the beginning, the Jews can release the virus and kill as many Arabs as they like and save their own people. But now that we know the threat, we can find a way to neutralize it. Now it’s the Jews who will die, all because of you. Not only have you lost the Promised Land in this reality, Deker, you’ve lost the promised war in ours.”
Deker stared at the Byzantine mosaic on the floor: it was just like the one in the holding house in Madaba—if they had ever been in Madaba. His torture could have taken place anywhere, his delusion beginning with his alleged escape from his captors.
“You’re wrong, Elezar. I didn’t dream this up. I never wanted to be here, so how could I be open to your suggestions?”
“All it took was the ghost of your dear Rachel in the form of Rahab to make you pant like a dog and return to your vomit.”
Deker yelled and swung his torch at Elezar, who ducked. “Was that real enough for you?”
“In your mind, yes,” Elezar said calmly. “In reality, no. In reality I’m about to kill you. But before I do, I thought I’d let you in on a little secret you don’t know.”
Deker brought his torch over Elezar’s head. “It will be the last thing you say.”
“Remember that little explosive you prepared for the assassination of the Black Dove? The ceremonial bowl that your beloved Rachel accidentally blew herself up with?”
“You did it,” Deker accused. “I know now.”
“But it wasn’t me, Deker,” Elezar hissed in pure hatred. “I was under orders from the IDF. The IDF was worried about your impartiality with regard to all sides of the Temple Mount. They wanted to ensure that, if push came to shove, you’d ultimately come down on the side of the Jews, and your guilt over her death was just the thing to do it.”
“That’s a lie!” Deker shouted.
“Is it?” Elezar said calmly. “You know it’s just the sort of dirty trick the Jews have been subjecting their people to for over three thousand years.”
“I’ve got another one here for you,” Deker said, and smashed his Molotov cocktail on the floor, igniting the grains and stores around them.
As fire began to engulf them, Elezar simply looked at Deker and said, “You know what you call an Israel without Jews? Palestine!”
“We are the Jewish people!” Deker screamed, his clothing bursting into flames. “We came to this land by a miracle! God brought us back to this land! We fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land!”
Just then the ground shook like a great quake. Dust came down between the bricks above, and the walls began to collapse on top of them, burying them alive. And still Elezar shouted in the dark void, his words echoing in Deker’s ears.
“From the river to the sea, Deker! A Palestine without Jews!”
The curtain of dust parted, and Deker stared as an unflinching Elezar stood brazenly before him even as his clothing caught fire. His mouth widened into a macabre smile as his hair burst into flames and he was completely engulfed by the inferno.
“From the river to the sea!”
A rock from above struck Deker in the head and he collapsed into the flames. Deker felt his own life seeping from his smashed body under the relentless avalanche of stone.
Dust in his eyes, he blinked at a shaft of light through the rubble. He felt a hot wind and watched it lift the ash to reveal a flash of metal hovering over him. For a second he thought it was the face of Molech come to drag him to hell.
But it was an unmanned RQ-1 Predator drone hovering over him like a modern Angel of Death. A single Hellfire missile remained beneath its right wing. Now the remote-controlled lens of the camera in its nose cone closed in on him and then opened again.
Then the metallic Predator flew away, leaving Deker to fall into the darkness and die.
