“All right, Floyd. Take a team of four and get to the Hurva as quickly as you can. I’ll call Shin Bet and let them know you are going to be on-site shortly. Stay there until you get some information about any victims—and whether any of the victims are American citizens. And also check into the status of the rabbis at the synagogue. The chief rabbi there, Israel Herzog, was working with us on something very important. See what you can find out and call me back.”
Hurva Square, Jerusalem
July 20, 1:20 p.m.
Gray clouds of grit floated in the air, blocking out the sun as Chaim Yavod ducked under the skewed portal and entered the deeper darkness of the devastated Hurva. He left behind a swelling symphony of sirens and a frantic, growing assemblage—some with yarmulkes bobbing on their heads with every effort, others in shorts and T-shirts—frantically digging in the stony rubble that was once the most beautiful of synagogues.
Before him to the left ran a still discernable corridor, half of it collapsed, now an obstacle course of crushed stone and concrete shards, twisted reinforcing rods, and piles of rubble. Every few feet, a shaft of light sliced in through the shattered walls, now partially open to the sun, illuminating a frantic dance of dust and encasing the remnants of the corridor in a pallid fog. Yavod skittered around the fallen masonry, unaware of the blood trail left behind by his lacerated fingertips.
He had only been gone a moment to get the car requested by Rabbi Herzog. He had only been gone a moment when the great dome was cloven down the middle, when the earth was rent from beneath his feet, when the unleashed roar of the explosions ripped past him like thunder down a valley’s rift. Only a moment, but his world rested in ruins as devastating as the destruction under his feet.
He had to find the rabbi. He had to.
He reached the end of the corridor where three steps led left, to a lower level and the offices of the Rabbinate Council. What was once the ceiling had collapsed, reducing the corridor’s height by half. Yavod lowered himself down the stairs, then bent over in a crouch, keeping his feet under him to navigate the ongoing debris field as he inched along the corridor toward the council’s offices. The light faded. Yavod had to feel his way through the darkness. A gaping yaw of black stopped him. The front wall of the council’s offices had been blown across the corridor, blocking most of it with a massive pile of ruin, leaving the interior of the offices wide open but shrouded in gloom.
Yavod scuffed his shoe through some of the rubble at his feet and found a broken piece of Shabbat candle in the dust. He lit the candle, held it in front of him at arm’s length, and moved into the blackened office, pulling along an anchor of despair.
Ishmael Covenant Page 36
