the pockmarked asphalt. His long purposeful strides and the soft muffled sounds of the leather soles of his shoes gave no hint of the great weight the man bore over his shoulder. The long brown, curled hair of his traditional Hasidic earlock was flattened against his cheek, sandwiched tightly between his face and the load that he carried. For more than six miles the darkly-dressed man carried his load, from the business district of the city, down long straight streets, to a cluster of apartment buildings near the shore of the Mediterranean.
Finally, the man stopped in front of a ten-story apartment building on Ramat Aviz and went to the front entrance. The glass doors, which had been destroyed in a blast the night before, had been replaced with sheets of plywood. The man knocked, and a moment later the door was cracked open and two eyes peered out at him. As recognition registered in the eyes, the door was quickly shut again and a table moved so that the door could be fully opened. A rather plain woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in a blood-stained surgical gown, greeted her unexpected guest.
'Welcome, Rabbi,' she said, as she led him to an area of the lobby that had been converted to a makeshift clinic. Here and there family members of some of the patients were camped out near their relatives to assist with their care.
'Not here with the others,' he said, his words revealing a voice unusually rich and measured. 'You must take him to your apartment.'
Only now did the woman see the face of the man the rabbi carried over his shoulder. The blood that covered his face and soaked his clothes was foreboding enough to his prognosis, but his misshapen skull led her to believe that the patient was as good as dead, and, perhaps, would be better off if he was.
'Rabbi, I think we're wasting our time with this one,' she said.
'You must see to it that we are not,' he answered firmly, as he turned and walked toward the stairwell. 'You are a good doctor. I have full confidence in your abilities.'
'But Rabbi, he's nearly dead if he's not dead already.'
'He is not dead,' the rabbi said, as he opened the door and began to ascend the first flight of stairs, the woman following close behind.
The woman moved quickly up the stairs, dipping and swerving to get around the rabbi, then placed herself in the middle of the stairs, stopping his advance. The rabbi stared insistently, his eyes telling her to let him pass.
'At least let me check his pulse!' she pleaded.
The rabbi paused as she took the man's wrist and checked his pulse. He watched her eyes, entirely certain of what she would find. To her amazement the pulse was reasonably strong. The rabbi moved past her and continued up the steps.
'Okay,' she said, 'so he's alive, but you can see the condition of his head. He's probably hopelessly brain- damaged.'
'There's nothing wrong with his brain. It's an old injury he received when he was a child.' The rabbi reached the third floor and opened the stairwell door.
'Okay, okay, so maybe he'll survive.' She was becoming frantic to stop him as he made his way ever closer to her apartment with his unwelcome patient. She knew that her only hope was to talk him out of his plan. If he insisted, however, she knew she would have to submit: he was, after all, the rabbi. The problem was that as far as she knew, no one had ever talked the rabbi out of anything.
'But why does he have to stay in my apartment?! Why can't he stay downstairs with the others?'
The rabbi, who had now reached her apartment, turned to answer as he waited for her to unlock the door. 'He is unclean,' he answered in a whisper, though no one else was within earshot. 'He is uncircumcised,' he added in clarification. 'Also, he will need your personal care.'
Convinced that it was futile to resist, the woman relented and opened the door. 'Put him in the extra bedroom,' she said as she grabbed some old sheets from the linen closet.
'Is he a gentile?' she asked, as she began spreading the sheets on the bed.
'He believes he is,' he answered. 'In a week or so, when he is better, I will see to his circumcision.'
'Who is he?' she asked, now reluctantly reconciled to her situation.
'His name is Tom Donafin.' The rabbi waited while the woman ran water into a basin and began to clean Tom's wounds. 'He is the one of whom the prophecy spoke when it said, 'He must bring death and die that the end and the beginning may come.''
The woman stopped her work and looked back at the rabbi, stunned at what she had just been told.
'He is the last in the lineage of James, the brother of the Lord,' he continued. 'He is the Avenger of Blood.'
Chapter 13
The Color of the Horse
Derwood, Maryland
It was an extremely pleasant late fall day in Washington, D.C., with temperatures in the upper 60s, and the sky clear and sunny. It seemed to Decker a great day to play hooky from work. On the other hand, he had not been into the office for over three years and he figured he was about due.
Decker boarded the Metro at the Shady Grove station and noticed that the train was less crowded than usual. Several stations later, when the cars continued to be less than fully occupied, he realized the reason: the Disaster. He was aware the D.C. area had lost about fourteen percent of its population – nearly one-and-a-half million people – but seeing the impact in microcosm on the Metro brought the figure home. The thought continued to occupy him as he exited at the DuPont Circle station and made his way to the offices of NewsWorld Magazine. Is this what the world was like after the great plagues that swept Europe in the Middle Ages? he wondered.
When Decker walked off the elevator to the lobby of NewsWorld, the receptionist insisted that he sign in and wait for an escort before going back to the working offices. Decker was not a rude person but he was somewhat territorial, and despite having been gone for so long, to him this was his territory. He had no intention of either signing in or waiting for an escort. Fortunately for the receptionist, Suzy Stites was on the next elevator. 'It's all right,' Suzy told the receptionist, 'he works here.' Very few familiar faces greeted Decker that morning. Over the last three years, most of the people he knew had been transferred to other offices or had retired or taken other jobs; a few were victims of the Disaster.
When Suzy caught up to Decker he was staring unhappily at the person who now occupied what had been his desk and his office. Far worse, though, was the fact that some young jerk was in what had been Tom Donafin's office. 'Mr. Hawthorne,' Suzy called, preventing Decker from saying something to the new occupant that he might regret later. 'Mr. Hawthorne,' she repeated as she got closer, 'Mr. Asher would like to see you.'
Decker gave the young reporter in his old office one last dirty look and proceeded to Hank Asher's office. 'I want my office back,' Decker told Suzy as he walked away.
'This is not going to be a good day,' Suzy muttered, trying to maintain a smile.
'I want my office back,' Decker repeated as soon as he walked in Asher's door.
'That's what I wanted to see you about,' said Asher. 'We're giving you a new office, a corner office with windows and a view.'
Decker's mood changed quickly as he looked around covetously at Asher's office. He knew that Hank's description could only fit one office at NewsWorld, and they were sitting in it.
'Wait a second,' Asher said, reading Decker's thoughts. 'Not this office!'
'So where then?' Decker asked.
'Decker, word just came down today. You're being promoted. They're putting you in charge of the New York office.'
Decker thought for a second. 'What if I don't want the New York office?'
'Why wouldn't you want it?'
Decker thought about his house in Derwood – the house he had told Elizabeth they would make their home. He
