By the Rivers of Babylon

by Nelson DeMille

  The silence of the place screamed in his ears as if he were hearing the ghostly crashing of Babylonian chariots, the fleeing enemy, and the shouts of her victorious armies. Opulent Babylon. In the Old and New Testaments, a symbol of human pride, carnality, and sin. To modern Jews and Christians, its utter desolation was a symbol of Biblical prophecy fulfilled. Hausner knew that there must be some meaning in all the nothingness that stretched before him. Yet, perhaps the meaning was nothingness. Sand. Dust. Death.

  Why had Rish brought them here? The Babylonian Captivity? Hausner imagined that was it. Or maybe it was something less melodramatic. Perhaps it was just convenient for his purposes—close to the Palestinians’ camp. But their camp was a hundred kilometers across the desert. . . . Well, the Babylonian Captivity it was, then. In the libraries of the world there were tomes on Babylon, and when they were revised and rewritten, there would be a footnote with an asterisk and it would read, a curious incident involving a supersonic Concorde aircraft and. . . . Hausner put out his cigarette and saved the stub. “Here they come,” he said softly.

  * * *

  From the direction of the road, a group of five men were walking up the slope of the mound. The man in front held up a white flag.

  Haber and Brin, who had not gone far, came hurrying back. Brin had changed to the ten-power day scope and watched them approach. “I don’t think Rish is with them.” Brin handed the rifle to Hausner who knelt and sighted through the scope. Hausner put the rifle down and shook his head. “He doesn’t trust us. He thinks that we would not honor a white flag. That makes me damned angry. General?”

  Dobkin nodded. “It does show a lack of faith on his part.” He thought for a moment. “He really doesn’t understand us—and that scares me.”

  Hausner stood and turned to Brin and Haber. “Pass the word to hold fire. I want everyone to remain out of sight. No one is to leave the perimeter, Nathan. If anyone tries, stop him.” He brushed off his clothes. “General, will you accompany me?”

  “Of course.” He stood, also, and straightened his uniform. “You know, it’s ironic. They want to talk now. That’s what we wanted to do in New York—and on the Concorde. Now I’m not so sure I want to talk.”

  “I agree,” said Hausner. “But I’m sure the peace delegation wants to talk. I don’t trust that bunch, Ben. They are professional peacemakers. They are spring-loaded to see the good side of any proposal. Cursed are the peacemakers for they make the next war harder than the last.”

  Dobkin laughed. “Amen. The generals should negotiate the peaces and the peacemakers should run the armies.” He became serious. “Actually, we are not being fair to the delegation. They are not all alike—some—most are very hard bargainers. They are realists as much as we are.”

  Hausner stepped down onto the slope. “I doubt it. Come on. Let’s go before a dozen professional negotiators descend on us.” He began making his way downhill. Dobkin followed.

  They lost sight of the Arabs for a while as their group descended into a deep draw. A hundred meters down the slope, they spotted the white flag, then they saw the Arabs again. They were armed and advancing fast. Hausner felt a moment of doubt, but he waved a white handkerchief and shouted in Arabic. The Arabs spotted him and responded. Both groups approached each other slowly. The Arabs stopped on a level shelf in the side of the slope.

  Hausner walked quickly up to them and stood very close to the leader, in the Arab manner. “Where’s Rish? I will speak only with Rish.”

  The man stared at him for a very long moment. His dark eyes seemed to burn with hate and contempt. Obviously he didn’t like this mission. He spoke softly and slowly. “I am Salem Hamadi, lieutenant of Ahmed Rish. He sends his respects and requests your immediate surrender.”

  Hausner looked at the man. Unlike Rish, Hamadi had never been captured and there existed neither an identikit nor a psychological profile on him. There was not even a comprehensive listing of his activities. All Hausner knew was that the man had started life as a Palestinian orphan and then became head of the Ashbal program for the various Palestinian liberation organizations. Values? Morality? Honor? It was hard to say. You couldn’t even count on the strong religious upbringing that most Arabs were exposed to. The man who stood less than a meter from Hausner was short but well proportioned. He wore a neatly clipped goatee and apparently practiced somewhat more rigorous personal hygiene than Hausner had observed among the terrorists at Ramla. Hausner moved even closer. “Where is he? I demand to speak to him.”

  Hamadi nodded slowly. “You are Jacob Hausner.”

  “I am.”

  “Will you accompany me?”

  “I might.”

  Hamadi hesitated. “You have my personal assurances.”

  “Really?”

  Hamadi literally bit his lip to control his growing impatience. “My word.” He paused. “Believe me, we want to talk this over as much as you do.” He smiled suddenly. “This is not a trap to kill Jacob Hausner. We could do that right here and now. Besides, you are not that important.”

  “Rish seemed to think I was. He said he would kill me when we landed.”

  Salem Hamadi looked off into space. “He rescinds that vow.”

  Hausner turned and waved to Brin, who was watching through the scope. Brin acknowledged. Hausner could see heads staring discreetly over the newly fabricated breastworks of baggage and earth. He noticed that some of the baggage was too brightly colored. He would have to see that a layer of dust was put on everything. He turned back to Hamadi. Hamadi had seen the glint of light from the scope and was committing its location to memory. Hausner bumped him on purpose as he moved past him. “Well, let’s go. I have other things to do.”

  * * *

  The group started down the slope. They came off the incline and began walking parallel to a meter-high ridge that Dobkin explained was the city’s inner wall. Hausner saw the spot where the Concorde’s rear bumper wheel had hit it, what seemed like a century before. They turned south and headed toward the main ruins.

  The ruins of the city were barely excavated. It took a lot of imagination to picture a teeming metropolis of living souls—young girls with jangling bracelets, soldiers eating and drinking, colorful bazaars, awesome processions, and the famous astrologers of Babylon drawing up horoscopes on wet clay for a few coppers. But Hausner, as an inhabitant of the Middle East, was used to excavations. He could see it all, and more. He could almost feel the presence of the spirits as they jostled him on the busy street. A ringing in his ears seemed to turn into semidistinct voices speaking an ancient Semitic language. Then there was a word or a snatch of a phrase in ancient Hebrew. He suddenly felt that right where he was walking, a Jew had walked and had spoken with his wife. They had their children with them. They were going somewhere. Toward the Ishtar Gate. Out of the city. They were leaving Babylon, and captivity, for good.

  Hamadi said something, and Hausner became aware that they had come a long distance. He looked around. The excavations were more thorough here. Hamadi was speaking to Dobkin, who was asking incessant questions about the ruins. Hamadi seemed unsure of his answers and finally told Dobkin to be quiet.

  Hausner knew something of the history of Babylon even if he did not know the city itself. He knew Babylon as a name, a symbol, a conception, a state of mind. He hardly credited the fact that it existed as brick and mortar. Dobkin was interested in the brick and mortar. Hausner, if he was interested at all, was interested in something more enduring. And what could be more enduring than total obliteration and destruction? That’s what made Babylon a living symbol. Its place in history was secured by the fact that it had fallen as predicted.

  So Babylon had died as cities do die, and the dust blew over her endlessly through the centuries, covering it all. The site could hardly be located by modern archeologists, and even local legend, which had kept alive the location of the sites of other buried cities, ceased to mention Babylon, so utter and complete was the desolation.

  And now the d
igging out had begun, as it had in Israel and other parts of the Middle East. Each mound that was excavated was a reminder not only of the transitory nature of man’s works, but also of the human peculiarity for self-destruction. For Hausner, the associations with Babylon, with Jews being here again, was both ludicrous and sad. The fact that they had arrived by supersonic transport was beside the point. The point was that they were there—there against their will. The human dimension had not undergone any major changes in thousands of years. Only the externals had changed.

  * * *

  When the small group reached the heights where the Greek amphitheater stood, they turned west toward the Euphrates River and followed a goat path. An emaciated donkey nibbled on the ubiquitous salt-white clumps of thorn. A slight breeze rustled through the yellow-green fronds of a solitary date palm. The heat was growing more oppressive. Hausner was reminded that there was less than twenty-four hours’ supply of liquids on the hill. The available food might last twice as long. Sections of the aircraft’s aluminum skin had been shaped into basins to collect rainwater, but rain seemed as unlikely here as snow.

  They walked silently, Dobkin taking both a military and an archeological interest in the route. They stopped on a small ridge. Hausner could see the hill where the Concorde rested, about a kilometer and a half to the north. The top of the Concorde was barely visible from here. The hill—or the buried citadel—looked formidable from this perspective, and he could see why the Ashbals wished to negotiate.

  To the west was the Euphrates, about five hundred meters further down the goat trail. Hausner could see the squalid village of Kweirish, on the bank of the Euphrates, more clearly now. It was a village of sarifa—rough mud huts, unwhitewashed and unadorned. As they came closer, he could see women wrapped to the eyes in long black abbahs and men in long shirtlike gellebiahs, their heads draped in kheffiyahs. Someone was scraping a thin music from a stringed instrument. Goats, the color of the earth, grazed the scrub and were herded by Biblical-looking figures in long robes and flowing headdresses, doing the same work under the same conditions as their ancestors had done thousands of years before. The whole scene, Hausner realized, had hardly changed in four or five thousand years. The people were Moslems instead of idol worshippers, they no longer kept swine herds, and Babylon was no more. But otherwise, life on the Euphrates went on and, in fact, changed considerably less than the course of the wandering, restless river.

  The group turned off the goat trail and began climbing a huge mound. They reached a flight of steep brick steps and ascended further. On the way, they came to a flat area hollowed out of the side of the mound. Here, mounted on a stone plinth, stood the Lion of Babylon. Nothing was known of it, neither its age nor its significance, but it looked awesome, striding perpetually over a fallen victim. Hamadi spoke. “We search you and blindfold you here.”

  Hausner shook his head. “No.”

  Hamadi turned to Dobkin. “It is standard military procedure throughout the world when bringing an enemy into your lines. You know this. It is no humiliation.”

  Dobkin had to agree.

  Hausner agreed reluctantly.

  They undressed and were searched thoroughly. They dressed again and were blindfolded and taken slowly up the remaining steps. The ground leveled out, but it was covered with what seemed to be clay bricks. They descended a flight of steps and the air suddenly felt cooler. The blindfolds were removed. Hausner strained to see in the darkened room. He heard voices whispering.

  “I am Ahmed Rish,” said a soft voice from the shadow in passable Hebrew. “It is an event to see Jacob Hausner—again. And an honor to meet the famous General Dobkin.”

  Hausner and Dobkin remained silent. They both sensed that there were other men in the shadows along the walls. The ruined chamber had no roof, but the sun was too low to penetrate into it. They looked around slowly, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  Rish spoke again. “We are in the excavated ruins of the South Palace. The throne room where Belshazzar, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, saw the fatal handwriting on the wall. You will be familiar with the story from the Book of Daniel, of course.”

  Silence.

  Rish spoke again from the darkness. “I am standing where the royal throne stood, in a recess of the wall. If you squint into the darkness you may visualize the scene of feasting—the gold and silver vessels taken by Nebuchadnezzar when he sacked Jerusalem, the flickering candle, the apparition of the hand that emerged from the shadows and wrote the words of Babylon’s doom upon the wall.” He paused for effect. “That is one of the Jews’ favorite stories. That is why I brought you here. A special treat.”

  Hausner and Dobkin did not respond.

  Rish went on. “Close by, there has been uncovered a huge furnace. It is no doubt the fiery furnace into which Nebuchadnezzar threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. A miracle was wrought by God and they survived. However, the Jews have not always been saved by such miracles.” He paused and the sound of men breathing filled the dark chamber. Rish spoke softly, almost below the threshold of hearing. “Babylon is a place of infinite sadness for the Jews, but it is also a place of miracles. Which will it be this time, Mr. Hausner?”

  Hausner lit a cigarette. “You have been very eloquent, Ahmed Rish. I shall be very brief. What do you want?”

  “That was foolhardy, landing that huge aircraft on that mound. You could have all been killed.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Excuse me. I neglected to ask you if you would like some refreshments. Water? Food?”

  Dobkin answered. “We have plenty of both, Rish.”

  Rish laughed. “I think not.”

  Hausner almost shouted. He didn’t have any patience with this Arab habit of circumlocution. “Get to the point. What do you want?”

  Rish’s voice sounded a little harder. “I want you all to be my hostages while I negotiate with your government. I want to avoid further bloodshed.”

  Hausner’s eyes were adjusting to the light. He could make out Rish standing in a recess of the wall. He was wearing a simple white gellebiah and sandals. He looked about the same as Hausner remembered him from Ramla. He was exceptionally tall and fair for an Arab. Hausner remembered that he was thought to have some Circassian or Persian blood. “You took a bit of a beating last night. You lost about thirty killed and wounded, I suspect.”

  “I am not here to trade after-action reports, Mr. Hausner. And I am not going to go into a long political harangue about why we did what we did, what our objectives are, or any of that with you. I will take those matters up with your government. I am only going to give you one guarantee and one ultimatum. The guarantee is that no Israelis will be killed if you surrender. The ultimatum is that you surrender before sundown. Is that acceptable?”

  Hausner spoke. “What if my country rejects whatever demands you make? How then can you guarantee that we will be safe as hostages?”

  “If they call our bluff, I will release you anyway. Only you and I know that, of course. But you have my word on it.”

  Hausner and Dobkin conferred quietly. Hausner spoke. “I think we know your game, Mr. Rish. Your primary objective was to create an incident to try to wreck the Peace Conference. You may have succeeded there. Maybe not. But your second objective was to grab two planeloads of top-ranking Israelis and interrogate them for political and military intelligence. That intelligence would be worth a fortune on the open market, wouldn’t it? And your last objective was to hold us hostage for some unspecified demands. And even if you are willing to let us go if those demands are not met, it would not be before we are vigorously debriefed. Am I right? Do I have your guarantee that none of us will be interrogated or subject to duress of any sort?”

  Rish did not answer.

  Hausner went on. “How about the Israeli Arabs? I don’t think you included them in your guarantee.”

  Again Rish did not answer, but Hausner could see, even in the bad light, a remarkable change come over his expression. Rish
considered the Jews his traditional enemy. But as nonbelievers, by a curious quirk in Arab and Moslem thinking, they were not liable to the ultimate penalty for most offenses. However, a Moslem, especially if he were also Arab, could expect no mercy for transgressions against his people or his religion. Jabari and Arif were dead men as far as Rish was concerned, and Hausner knew it. Rish spoke. “You are making me angry, Mr. Hausner. The lions’ den is not the place to be when you wish to provoke the lion. Do it from a distance, Mr. Hausner.”

  Hausner nodded and looked at Rish closely. He wanted very much to ask Rish about the girl he had seen him carrying away from the battle. But was that Rish, and if it was, who was the girl? Was she dead? To ask, however, would confirm what Rish must already suspect about the existence of a night scope. And to ask might send him into an uncontrollable rage. Rish seemed calm enough now, but you couldn’t tell with unstable personalities. And that’s what the psychiatrists at Ramla had labeled him. Unstable and psychopathic. But like a lot of psychopathic killers, he had a certain charm. The charm could lull you, and then you would make a mistake and that’s when he would tear your throat out. “How do I know that you are not so filled with hate that you will not kill us all? What guarantee do I have that you are not . . . insane?”