mumps. Decker laughed so hard he almost swallowed one of the cotton balls. Fortunately, these ideas usually only hit him when he was alone.

One thing was certain, though. Decker did not want to be wearing a hospital gown when Elizabeth arrived. He tried to charm a nurse into doing some shopping for him, but to no avail. Then he thought of Hansen. Decker figured Hansen owed him and Tom a favor for all the good publicity, so he called the British Embassy. This time he was in luck. Hansen sent over two aides and a local tailor who measured Decker and Tom for suits. The aides did some quick shopping at Polgat's on Ramat Alenby (Alenby Street), an outlet of fine men's clothes. They brought the suits to the hospital, along with the tailor and a sewing machine, and the tailor hemmed the suits on the spot.

When Elizabeth arrived, Decker and Tom were sitting in the hospital lobby sipping tea and reading the English edition of the Jerusalem Post. They looked like transplants from a fancy English gentlemen's club, an appearance which they played to the hilt. Theact worked fine until Elizabeth's and Decker's eyes met. Then it was all hugs, kisses, and tears. Despite the suit, Elizabeth immediately realized the seriousness of Decker's condition as she put her arms around him. The bones in his back were easily distinguishable through the fabric. Instinctively she understood what Decker was trying to do and tried to not look too worried.

Liana Rosen put down her thermos of chicken soup and hugged Tom. Hope and Louisa jointly hugged their dad and somehow the hugs merged. Soon it evolved into a mass hug. Even Scott Rosen, who had come along with his parents, joined in.

After a few moments of this they sat down to talk. Elizabeth sat beside Decker and they held hands as they all talked about what had happened over the last three years. On the other side of Decker, Hope and Louisa took turns sitting next to their father. Decker was amazed at how much his daughters had changed. Hope was now sixteen and Louisa, eleven. He had never noticed how much they both looked like their mother. He had missed so much of their lives. Decker tried not to focus on his regrets.

Joshua and Liana introduced Tom and Decker to their son, Scott, a brawny, 260 pound, 6 foot 3 inch, Orthodox Jew with thick black curly hair and beard. The Rosen family had grown much closer over the past three years.

Everyone wanted to know how Tom and Decker had escaped and what had happened during their captivity. Again, neither mentioned the dream. Sometime later the subject turned to how they became hostages in Lebanon in the first place. Until that moment no one realized that they had actually been abducted in Israel and then smuggled over the border. Everyone assumed that they had gone into Lebanon to pursue some story and were taken hostage while there. Upon learning the truth, Scott Rosen became enraged at the thought of such a thing happening in Israel. He asked if they had reported the details to the Israeli authorities. They had not, but agreed to tell the police later that day. Scott didn't want them to wait. He insisted that they call the police immediately and when they said it could wait, Scott became indignant. 'Well, I'll just go call them for you,' he said and walked off to find a phone.

Liana Rosen, who had been getting more embarrassed by the minute, apologized for her son. 'I'm really sorry, Decker and Tom,' she said. 'He's just so firm in his beliefs that nothing comes before God and Israel.'

'Or is it Israel first and then God?' her husband interrupted.

Liana understood her husband's exasperation. 'When the Palestinians destroyed the Western Wall, Scott went crazy with rage,' she said. 'He wanted to put every Palestinian in Israel on trial.'

'He wanted to do much worse than that and you know it,' Joshua interrupted again, this time earning himself a firm pinch on the leg from Liana. Despite the pinch, or more likely, to spite the pinch, he continued. 'If he had not been with us at the very time it happened, I might believe he was one of those who attacked the Dome of the Rock after the wall was destroyed.'

'What?' asked Decker and Tom in unison. 'What happened?' Tom added by himself.

'Did NewsWorld have a team here to cover it?' Decker asked.

'Oh, Daddy!' said Hope in recognition of the silly unimportance of his question.

'Exactly one week after the wall was destroyed,' Joshua explained, 'a group of about forty Israelis attacked the Dome of the Rock. They killed a dozen Muslim guards and drove the rest out of the Mosque before setting explosives. They totally destroyed it. Some have accused the police of being part of the conspiracy because, by the time they arrived, all of the Israeli terrorists had escaped.' Rosen's inflection on the word 'terrorists' made clear his revulsion. He did not like terrorists, no matter which side they were on.

'Anyway, a lot of people hollered, and the U.N. complained. It would have been a lot worse, I suppose, but many thought that it was fair retribution for the Palestinians destroying the Wall and killing the Israeli guards. The Arab countries rattled their sabers and the Knesset rattled ours. It probably did more for Arab unity than anything in the past sixty years. Even Syria and Iraq are talking again.'

'The police said they didn't have any suspects and when it turned out that no one would be punished for destroying the Dome, the Palestinians protested. Ayatollah Oma Obeji threatened invasion. The Hizballah threatened to kill their hostages… uh,' everyone around Tom and Decker suddenly seemed to grow uncomfortable. '… uh, you,' he concluded. Joshua realized his faux pas and tried to regroup. 'I guess we weren't supposed to tell you about that for awhile. Well, what are we hiding?' asked Joshua, in what he intended to be a rhetorical question. 'After all, you were there. You probably knew about it before we did,' he concluded, trying to defend his slip of the tongue. 'Anyway, you're safe now.'

'Uh… no. Nobody mentioned it to me,' Tom said, unsure how he felt about the revelation that his and Decker's lives had been used as bargaining chips.

Liana was pinching him again so Joshua tried to change the subject. 'Oh! Here's something that will interest you, Tom. Work has begun on a new Temple.'

'What?!' Tom asked. 'When?'

'Six months ago, after Moshe Greenberg became Prime Minister.'

'Prime Minister?!' Decker said in profound surprise, 'that radical?'

'Don't let Scott hear you say that.' Rosen said. 'But, actually Greenberg doesn't seem quite so radical now as he once did. Nowadays he's considered somewhat of a moderate. I don't know if that's because he's changed or that the mood of the country has swung so much further to the right as a result of the continuing threats from our Arab neighbors.'

'What about the Temple?' Tom asked, attempting to bring the conversation back on course.

'Oh, it's really quite a massive undertaking, as you might expect. They removed all the stones from the remains of the Western Wall and from the old steps which had been excavated. They'll use what they can and the rest will be put in a museum or something. They dug out the tunnels, but found only some minor artifacts,' Rosen replied.

'I guess that supports your theory that the Knights Templar took everything and that the Ark of the Covenant is in France,' Tom said. 'So, how long before the Temple is finished?'

'The completion date is set for four years from now. That is, if we don't go to war with somebody about it before then. You may have noticed that the border guard has been increased. There's been no fighting yet, but the Syrians have had a large force amassed near our mutual border since the work on the Temple began.'

'Enough news and politics, already,' Liana Rosen interrupted. 'Maybe Elizabeth would like to talk for awhile.'

Joshua thought hard for a second as though there was something important that he was supposed to remember. 'Uh, oh yes, of course,' Joshua agreed, as though he suddenly recalled his part in some conspiracy with Liana and Elizabeth. 'Maybe Elizabeth has… uh… something to say.'

'Go ahead, Dear,' said Liana, urging her on.

Decker listened intently. 'Decker, while you were gone, you know that Hope and Louisa and I spent a lot of time with Joshua and Liana. They were a great support to us. I don't think we could have made it through all this without them. And, well, I just wanted to tell you that while you were away, I, that is to say, the girls and I… '

At that moment Scott Rosen returned, flanked by two plainclothes detectives. They wanted the address of the house where Tom and Decker had been taken hostage and they wanted it now. They also wanted descriptions of the men who did it, and any other details that Tom and Decker could remember.

When the police left two hours later, Decker and Elizabeth were finally able to be alone for awhile. Scott Rosen had taken a cab to the police station to tell them how to do their jobs, Joshua and Liana took Hope and

Вы читаете In His Image James
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