able to convince their people that the Temples were a myth. And it’s the reason why they hid these pillars in a hole one hundred and sixty-seven feet beneath the surface.” He looked at Gabriel and smiled. “And it’s the reason why I’m not leaving this mountain until I know these pillars are safe.”
“They’re just stones, Eli.”
“I know,” he said. “But they’re
“Are you really willing to die for them?”
Lavon was silent for a moment. Then he turned to Gabriel. “You have a beautiful wife. Maybe someday you’ll have a beautiful child.
“You’re the closest thing in the world I have to a brother, Eli. I’m not leaving you behind.”
“So we’ll die together,” Lavon said, “here, in the house of God.”
“I suppose there are worse places to die.”
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose there are.”
At that moment, Imam Hassan Darwish was standing in the doorway of the underground structure that had been built on his orders, listening to the two Jews speaking in their ancient language. Darwish recognized them both. One was the noted biblical archaeologist Eli Lavon, a critic of the Waqf and its construction projects. The other, the one with gray temples and green eyes, was Gabriel Allon, the murderer of Palestinian heroes. Darwish could scarcely believe his good fortune. The presence of the two men would make his task more difficult. But it would also make his journey to Paradise far sweeter.
The imam turned his gaze from the men and looked at the explosive device that lay within the ruins of the First Jewish Temple. The man called Mr. Farouk had built a manual override into the detonator in the event of a scenario such as this and had instructed Darwish on how to trigger it. A flick of a switch was all it would take.
Just then, Darwish heard the clatter of boots in the aqueducts. It appeared the Jews had broken through the Waqf’s defenses. History was attempting to repeat itself. But not this time, thought Darwish. This time, the sacred shrines of Islam would not fall into the hands of the infidel, as they had in 1099, when the Crusaders besieged Jerusalem. This time would be different. A flick of a switch was all it would take.
The imam closed his eyes and, in his thoughts, recited the Verse of the Sword from the Koran: “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them, using every stratagem of war.” Then he charged into the museum of the ancient Jews and opened fire.
The first shots struck the ancient pillars and sent teardrops of flaming limestone into Gabriel’s cheek. Looking up, he saw Hassan Darwish running across the floor of the cavern, his face contorted with a hatred born of faith and history and a thousand humiliations large and small. Instantly, Gabriel leveled his own weapon and charged toward the imam as bullets flashed past his ears. He fired the gun as he had in the range beneath the Vatican, shot after shot without pause, until nothing remained of the imam’s face. Then, turning, he saw Eli Lavon crumpled on the ground, his arms wrapped around the base of one of the pillars. Gabriel pressed his palm against the bullet wound in Lavon’s chest and held him as the life started to leave his eyes. “Don’t die, Eli,” he whispered. “Damn you, Eli, please don’t die.”
PART FOUR
EGO TE ABSOLVO
47
JERUSALEM
WITHIN AN HOUR OF THE Israeli incursion onto the Temple Mount plateau, the third intifada erupted in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Initially, the heavily armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority tried to control the violence. But as images of Israeli troops in the Haram al-Sharif spread like wildfire across the Arab world, the militiamen joined the rioters and engaged Israeli troops in running gun battles. Ramallah, Jericho, Nablus, Jenin, and Hebron all saw heavy fighting, but the worst of the clashes occurred in East Jerusalem, where several thousand Arabs tried but failed to retake the Temple Mount. By sunset, as sirens announced the arrival of the Jewish Sabbath, Islam’s third-holiest shrine was under Israeli control, and the Middle East seemed precariously close to war.
The king of Jordan, himself a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, demanded the Israelis leave the Noble Sanctuary at once, but he stopped short of calling for violence to expel them. That was not the case, however, in Cairo, where the Muslim Brotherhood, the new leaders of the Arab world’s most populous nation, called for a pan-Islamic jihad to avenge the outrage. Hamas, a branch of the Brotherhood’s Islamist tree, immediately pummeled Beersheba and several other Israeli towns with a barrage of rockets that left ten Israelis dead. In Lebanon, however, Hezbollah remained curiously silent, as did its Shiite masters in Tehran.
Among the many challenges faced by Israeli officials during those explosive first hours was the presence of His Holiness Pope Paul VII. With the Old City of Jerusalem now a war zone, he took shelter in a monastery in Ein Kerem, the former Arab village just west of downtown Jerusalem that, according to Christian tradition, was the birthplace of John the Baptist. At the request of the Israeli prime minister, the pope agreed, albeit reluctantly, to cancel a planned Holy Saturday mass on the Mount of Beatitudes, along with Easter Sunday services at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Regrettably, the Holy Father had little choice in the matter. The Sepulchre, the sacred Christian shrine that Saladin had wanted to raze, was one of the main targets of Muslim rage.
There were many in the papal entourage who pleaded with the Holy Father to return to the safety of the Vatican, but he insisted on staying in the misplaced hope his presence might help to calm the situation. He spent much of his time at the Hadassah Medical Center, located not far from the monastery. Needless to say, the pope’s frequent appearances at the hospital generated speculation that he was ill or had been injured in the violence. It wasn’t true; he was simply ministering to a soul in need.
The patient in question had arrived at the hospital in the first minutes of the uprising, a bullet in his chest, more dead than alive. The staff was told that his name was Weiss, but was given no other information except for his approximate age and his medical history, which included numerous disorders related to stress. The blinds over his window, which looked east toward the walls of the Old City, remained tightly drawn. Two armed guards stood watch outside his door, one to its right and one to its left.
The pope was not the only dignitary to visit the wounded man. The prime minister came to see him, as did the chief of staff of the IDF, the heads of the various Israeli intelligence services, and, for reasons never made clear to the hospital staff, a large delegation of archaeologists from Hebrew University and the Israel Antiquities Authority. There was one man, however, who never moved from the patient’s bedside. He made no attempt to conceal his identity, for it wouldn’t have been possible—not with those distinctive gray temples and unforgettable eyes.
He drank little, ate less, and slept not at all. When one of the doctors offered him a bed and a mild sedative, he was met by a glare of disapproval. After that, no one dared to ask him to leave—even on the second night, when, for two terrible minutes, the patient’s heart stopped beating. For the next twenty-four hours, the visitor remained motionless at the foot of the bed, his face illuminated by the glow of the ventilator, as if he were a figure in a painting by Caravaggio. Occasionally, the nurses could hear the figure speaking softly. His words never varied. “Don’t die, Eli. Damn you, Eli, please don’t die.”
On Easter morning, the tolling of Jerusalem’s church bells was scarcely audible over the sound of gunfire. At noon, a crude Palestinian rocket fell into the Garden of Gethsemane, and at mid-afternoon bullets raked the exterior of the Church of the Dormition. That evening, a distraught Holy Father paid one final visit to the unconscious patient before boarding his plane to return home. When he was gone, another elderly man took his place. He, too, was known to the staff of the trauma center. He was the one they spoke of only in whispers. The one who had stolen the secrets that led to Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War. The one who had plucked Adolf Eichmann, managing director of the Holocaust, from an Argentine street corner.
