highway.
John was becoming more nervous by the minute. “I hope the red-eye flight to Israel hasn’t sold out yet.” He ran his fingers through his hair and looked down at the floor while the streetlights flashed by outside their windows.
“Stay calm, John. It is what it is. If they’re sold out, we’ll find a place in the terminal to lay low until the next flight.”
At last, the train entered the island of light that surrounded the airport before diving beneath the terminal. The platform at the airport station seemed almost deserted as the two men exited the train and walked up the wide marble stairs to the main departure terminal. They scanned the area for security men but saw only a few sleepy- looking passengers pulling wheeled luggage. Leo inhaled a deep breath before he motioned to John and headed directly to the El Al ticket counter.
The Israeli ticket agent looked up as Leo approached. “Good evening, sir.”
Leo gave the woman his biggest smile. “We’d like to buy two tickets to Jerusalem please.”
“Tonight, sir?” Her tone was formal, and she didn’t smile.
Leo’s hopes began to fade. “Yes. We need to go tonight.”
“We have one flight leaving this evening, but the only seats we have left are in first class, sir. Would you like those?”
Leo breathed a little easier. “Yes, that will be fine. Thank you.”
“How will you be paying for those tonight, sir?”
“Cash.” He avoided her eyes and tried to look as nonchalant as possible.
Leo was aware that, since they were paying in cash, plus heading for a country high on the terror hit list, they would be scrutinized by Israeli security and Interpol even more closely.
The ticket agent locked eyes with Leo and picked up the phone on the counter. She spoke in hushed tones to an unseen person on the other end. Within seconds, a man in a dark blue suit appeared behind the agent. He studied the two men briefly before speaking in a flat bureaucratic voice. “May I have your passports please?”
John and Leo exchanged glances before surrendering their only means of leaving the country to the obvious airport security man. Taking their passports, he compared them to their pictures, then turned and disappeared into an office area behind the counter. After enduring a long wait watching the joyless agent typing on her keyboard in front of them, the man finally returned with their passports and handed them over to the ticket agent.
With her endless typing finally at an end, the agent stuffed two tickets into paper folders and placed them on the counter with their passports. “Concourse B, to your left. Your plane is on time tonight, gentlemen. Have a nice flight.”
Leo and John exhaled slowly.
The two men grabbed their tickets and headed across the immense lobby toward the security checkpoint. They were within feet of the metal detector when John suddenly stopped and looked at Leo. “What about the brick with the painting on it in my backpack?”
The look on Leo’s face told John that he had completely forgotten about the stone brick from the chapel. “Damn. It’s an archaeological artifact, which means it belongs to the Italian government. Actually, it belongs to the Vatican, but we can’t say that. They’ll never let us leave the country with it. It’s a crime to take an archaeological relic out of Italy.”
The two men were stopped in their tracks. If they went forward, they would be arrested at the checkpoint. If they turned around and left, they would be stuck in Rome another day, another day running from the unknown and trying to figure out how they would get to Israel.
Leo looked up toward the ceiling as if pleading with God for an answer.
“They won’t know it’s an archaeological artifact,” John said.
“It’s almost two thousand years old.”
“Yes, but it has a painting of a jet plane hitting a modern skyscraper. I don’t think the guards at the checkpoint will think someone two thousand years ago painted it. I’m having a hard time believing it myself.”
“You’re right. It’s too obvious. Good thinking, John. It might raise eyebrows, but it shouldn’t get us arrested. Let’s go for it.”
The two very nervous men made their way toward the tables in front of the x-ray scanner, where they emptied their pockets, took off their shoes, and placed the backpacks on the conveyer belt. The security officer watching the x-ray machine immediately saw the solid rectangular shape and ordered the backpack searched.
“What’s this?” The man was holding the ancient stone brick in his hand.
“A heavy souvenir,” John replied, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I wish I hadn’t bought it, but it was just so weird I had to have it.”
“It’s weird alright,” the officer said. “It looks old.”
“Well, the stone is as old as the earth itself,” Leo said. “But the painting can’t be any older than 2001.”
“That’s true,” a second security officer said. “I wouldn’t want something like that in my house.”
“That’s what I told him,” Leo said, nodding his head in John’s direction. “You should see some of the weird art in his apartment.”
“OK,” the man said, returning the brick to the backpack. “Have a nice trip.”
The security men exchanged amused glances and went back to the tedious process of screening the next passenger. Leo and John grabbed their backpacks and walked away from the checkpoint toward their gate, trying to look as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
“I really need a drink now,” John said, sweat beginning to drip from under his hairline.
Leo’s pulse was still pounding. “Me too.”
They headed straight for a darkened airport lounge that smelled of cigarette smoke and stale beer. Taking seats at the bar, the two watched their reflections in a mirrored wall and sipped from their glasses of red wine until their flight to Israel was finally announced.
“That’s us,” Leo said, picking up his backpack.
John followed along through the departure gate and cast one final glance back over his shoulder. No one appeared to be taking any undue notice of them as they walked through the Jetway and stepped into the plane.
The two weary men watched the flight attendants walking up and down the aisle, slamming overhead compartment doors shut and checking seatbelts. Finally, the doors were closed and the lights dimmed as the plane adopted the muted hum of electrical power that preceded the start of the engines. They felt a slight jolt and saw the terminal begin to recede when a small tractor on the ground began to shove the jet backward, away from the gate. John closed his eyes and drummed his fingers on the armrest of his seat while he listened to the four engines come to life one at a time.
The large jet moved away from the terminal on its own power as John opened his eyes and peered out the window at the rows of blue taxiway lights passing below in the darkness. Without fanfare, the plane turned onto the main runway and started its takeoff run. Leaving the ground behind, the jet streaked upward, and the twinkling lights of Rome were quickly extinguished when they entered the base of some low-hanging clouds.
After drinking some bottled water, the two reclined their seats. Within minutes, they were both sound asleep, thirty-five thousand feet above the Mediterranean Sea. They were on their way to the Holy Land.
Chapter 13
Jerusalem itself had no international airport. All flights from outside the country arrived at Ben Gurion, located between Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast and Jerusalem twenty-eight miles to the east. The sun had risen over the nose of the plane several minutes earlier and Leo and John were now fully awake, watching the scenery grow closer outside their window as the blue and white El Al jet flew in low over the coast of Israel and circled to land.
After touchdown, the aircraft taxied to the ultramodern Terminal 3, where the still-exhausted men shuffled their way out of the big Boeing jet and on through the lines at customs. The two were still paranoid after their ordeal in Rome, and every new situation made them grow progressively more anxious. Israel’s international airport
