Cement mixers churned and growled. Yitzhak wished for earplugs, as he would have at a raucous concert—except he didn’t go to raucous concerts. He’d wondered whether the religious authorities would insist that the Third Temple rise by hand, as the First and Second had. But they were limiting that to the Holy of Holies. For everything else, their motto seemed to be, Get the Temple up and running as fast as we can.
The Temple would be bigger than the Dome of the Rock (which wasn’t getting reassembled nearly so fast). Even Yitzhak had to admit that it wouldn’t be so beautiful. The Dome of the Rock had delicacy, subtlety. None of that in the plan for the Temple. Its court and buildings were big rectangles. Most of it would be reinforced concrete, with thin stone veneers on the outside for decoration. That only added to the brutalist massiveness.
Computer re-creations of what the Temple would look like showed it shining with gold leaf. On a monitor, that looked fine. Yitzhak was less sure about the real building. Gold leaf slapped onto those big square spaces? They made him think the architect knew Donald Trump.
Nobody’d asked his opinion. He wasn’t an architect himself. And what difference did looks make? The Second Temple lasted 500 years before Herod redid it in style. Nobody’d had the money or anything else to fix it up till then. God hadn’t seemed to mind. Chances were He wouldn’t this time, either.
Just watching this happen, watching Judaism reclaim something most people had thought lost forever, made his heart beat faster. To him, this was Judaism as it was meant to be. After the Romans sacked the Second Temple, Jews had had to figure out how to go on without it. They’d done a good job, but it was an adaptation. He imagined Islam trying to get along without Mecca. How would the Muslims do it? He had no idea. But now the real faith, the Biblical faith, would return after a hiatus of more than 1,900 years. If that wasn’t a miracle, what was?
He looked around. Jews in hard hats were yelling at other Jews in hard hats to go faster. It might have been a battlefield, except the stench was different. Diesel exhaust was a constant; so was hot metal. But he didn’t smell shit or burnt meat or fear. Without fear, you didn’t have a battlefield.
Here came a camera crew, with a soft bald guy telling the camera where to go and how to set up. An American: he was talking English, his accent half New York, half L.A. He looked like the kind of American Jew who would boss a camera crew.
The people with him who’d be on-camera were fish from a different pool. The man was tanned and elegant, with capped teeth, an expensive haircut, and a more expensive suit. He deferred to the stylish woman in the brown pants suit, but did more of the talking. Though the day was warm, he didn’t glow or glisten. Maybe he’d had his sweat glands removed.
When he spoke, his voice penetrated the racket around him. That, and the Southern accent Yitzhak followed because of his dealings over the red heifer, shouted preacher to the Israeli. The woman had an equally strong voice but spoke as general American as anyone could.
In the States, Jews and Christians teamed up all the time. Yitzhak had spent enough time in America to know that. It wouldn’t happen here. Here, each Christian sect clung fiercely to what had been its for generations. The Jews wished they’d all go away, but they wouldn’t.
“They’ll build a causeway across to the Mount of Olives,” the preacher said, pointing east from the Temple Mount. “That’s where they’ll sacrifice the red heifer, to help them sanctify the Temple and the people and holy implements that will serve here.”
Plenty of goyim hadn’t the faintest idea what they were talking about when they did deal with Jewish affairs, but he wasn’t like that. The trim woman said, “That’s fascinating, Reverend Stark, Tell me—”
“Cut!” the bald guy yelled. “We gotta do it again. Background noise is just too loud.”
Then Yitzhak recognized the woman. An American would have been quicker on the uptake, but even he’d heard stories about how a too-spicy dinner had kept her from trying to take the lid off the Ark of the Covenant—and, almost surely, kept her in this world.
He walked over to her. “You’re Gabriela Sandoval, right?” An American would have said Excuse me first, but he wasn’t.
“Yes, I am.” She nodded. “You’re one up on me, I’m afraid.”
“Yitzhak Avigad. You and Brandon were going to do a show about the red heifer before Tel Aviv.”
“Oh, of course! Good to meet you in person.” She held out her hand.
Yitzhak shook it. Her grip was smooth and practiced, but it wasn’t like shaking a man’s hand. “Who’s the fellow with you now?” he asked. Brandon Nesbitt would never be part of Gabriela and Brandon again.
“The Reverend Lester Stark. He’s an important minister in the States,” Gabriela answered.
“What’s he doing here? How come you’re working with him?” No, Yitzhak didn’t cotton to ministers, important or not.
“He’ll do some narrations and commentary about all this,” Gabriela said. “We’ll add those together with what Brandon did before he, uh, died, and we’ll have programming and streaming video and DVDs lots of people will want to see.”
And so? But Yitzhak didn’t ask that. He could see the answer. And so we’ll make lots of lovely money. Living on a kibbutz largely insulated him from the urge to pile up cash. Some who got rich bailed out of kibbutz life. Others plowed the money back into the general fund. Yitzhak didn’t know what he’d do. Since he wasn’t likely to get rich, he’d never worried about it.
Stark coughed when dust blew in his face. So did Yitzhak. Gabriela didn’t. Waving to the preacher, she said, “Reverend, I’ve got someone here I’d like you to meet. This is Yitzhak Avigad, from Kibbutz Nair Tamid.” Yitzhak was impressed she remembered that.
He was more impressed when Stark knew what it meant, literally and metaphorically. “Eternal Light Kibbutz! The people with the red heifer! Pleased to meet you, Mr. Avigad.” That baritone was made for preaching or TV, all right. It was made for preaching on TV, too.
“Nice to meet you.” Yitzhak also shook hands with him. “What do you think of all this?”
“It’s wonderful. Prophecy is being fulfilled,” Lester Stark answered. “The Last Days really do seem to be upon us.” He was more cautious than some Christian preachers. If you listened to them, Jesus would be buying shawarma and coffee in the Jewish quarter of the Old City day after tomorrow.
Which reminded Yitzhak…“And what happens when the Last Days do come?”
Stark’s cough this time had nothing to do with the dust. “As I’m sure you know, Mr. Avigad, Christians believe Jesus Christ will return to judge the quick and the dead.”
“And the Jews will get left behind again, same as they did the last time?” Yitzhak didn’t know why he pressed it. Probably for the same reason Christians pressed Jews where they had the numbers. Because he could.
Lester Stark wasn’t easy to press. “You said it. I didn’t.”
“You’ve got—what do they say in English?—the courage of your convictions.” But Yitzhak wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily. “The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has his, too.” He wished something permanent would happen to the Grand Mufti.
“I don’t think his convictions are accurate,” Stark said.
“You don’t think mine are, either,” Yitzhak pointed out.
“Yours come from the Old Testament, which is divinely inspired,” Stark said. “I don’t think the same is true of the Qur’an.”
“I don’t think the same is true of the New Testament.” To Yitzhak, Christians and Muslims stole the parts of Judaism they liked, then made up other stuff to go with them.
“You’re frank.” Stark smiled when he said it, anyhow.
“Why not? This is my country.” It doesn’t belong to Christians. Jews were here first. That goes double for Muslims.
“Well, so it is.” Stark was smooth and slick.
Was he good olive oil? Yitzhak had trouble deciding. The preacher went on, “Tell you what, Mr. Avigad. We’ll see what happens. Then we’ll have a better idea of who was right and who was wrong and what it all means.”
This time, Yitzhak stuck out his hand. “That’s a deal.”
* * *
—
Eric and Orly got fewer hassles from the guards around the Shrine of the Book than he’d expected. “I remember you guys,” a trooper said. “You were part of the mob that came behind the Ark.”
By the way he looked at Orly, he remembered her better than Eric. If you were male, straight, and alive, that wasn’t a hot headline. “Can we go in, then?” Eric asked.
Fewer hassles didn’t mean none. The guard pulled a phone from his pocket. “Let me call Professor Louvish, make sure he wrote this,” he said. For a wonder, he got Yoram. They talked for a minute. Then the guard nodded. “Yeah, he wrote it, and you’re you. Go on in.”
Eric left his hat on. He didn’t have the urge to uncover here that he might have had in the States or England. When he went to Salisbury Cathedral after visiting Stonehenge, a matron had snarled at him because he left his hat on. But he wasn’t an uncouth American—he hoped not, anyhow. He was just somebody unused to baring his head in a house of worship.
“I should have come here a long time ago,” he said to Orly as they walked into air-conditioning. “Not for the Ark—for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Not seeing them is like going to Dublin and missing the Book of Kells.”
“Oh, more than that,” Orly said. She had a point: the Dead Sea Scrolls were twice as old as the Book of Kells. But they were straightforward manuscripts, while there would never be a more splendidly illuminated Gospel than the one at Trinity College. Which counted for more, history or beauty? Eric supposed it depended on what you wanted.
More armed guards stood inside the Heikhal Ha-Sefer. How much firepower could the Israelis bring to bear to protect the Ark? In a way, having lots made sense. Lots of people were unhappy it was here. In another way…Hadn’t the Ark shown it could take care of itself?
The guards stood close to the Ark, but not too close. You didn’t want to trip and fetch up against it. Not after what happened to Brandon, you didn’t. That was for sure.
Orly stared at the Ark. So did Eric. It drew the eye with irresistible power. The model at the Reconstruction Alliance’s museum was impressive. The real thing went way beyond that.
Or is it my imagination? Eric wondered. If you didn’t know which was the real Ark and which the model, could you tell them apart? Sure you could—the real one laughed at gravity. Assume it didn’t. Could you tell then?
He thought you could. And that was an archaeologist’s professional opinion. He hoped so, anyway. The model was a good reconstruction. The real McCoy was more like a punch in the teeth. Whoever’d made these cherubim was on a wavelength no modern Western man could receive.
Orly eyed them, too. “I swear they change expression,” she said.
Eric almost kissed her, right there in front of the guards and God. The guards didn’t intimidate him. God did. “Oh, good!” he said. “I wondered if I was the only one who thought so.”
She shook her head. “Unh-unh. Now they look…statue-y, you know? But they were licking their chops when Brandon reached for the Ark.”
Eric wouldn’t have put it so strongly, which didn’t mean he was sure she was wrong. Remembering Brandon’s last TV spectacular, he thought the cherubim seemed more attentive then than they had when the Ark came out of its hiding place—or now. Maybe it was all in his head.
Maybe it wasn’t.
The doors opened again. In came several people speaking English. You heard it a lot in Jerusalem. Eric was used to it. Such authoritative, perfectly punctuated English? No.
Then he recognized two of the people. One was Gabriela Sandoval, the broadcaster who’d come down with what had to be the luckiest bad stomach in the history of the world. The other was Lester Stark. He wondered if Barb Taylor knew that Stark was already in town. He also wondered why Stark was buddy-buddy with someone so much more secular than he was. They weren’t quite Felix and Oscar from The Odd Couple, but they came close.
What they were doing together soon became obvious. The people with them were a TV crew: camerapeople, lighting techs, and so on. They were going to film the Ark. With luck, they’d be more careful than Brandon Nesbitt had.
Gabriela walked over to Eric and Orly. “You two are part of the team that found the Ark,” she said. “Eric Katz and Orly Binur.”
“You remember!” Orly sounded as impressed as Eric felt.
Something in Gabriela’s smile made it clear why the cameras loved her. “Being good with names is part of what I do,” she said. “We’re here to get some shots that…didn’t quite happen the last time we filmed the Ark.” The smile slipped.
“Is Reverend Stark, ah, filling in for Mr. Nesbitt?” Eric asked.
“To some degree. We’ve found we do point-counterpoint pretty well together.” Gabriela Sandoval’s smile came back, though a few watts dimmer than it had been. “Would you like to meet him?”
“Um, okay.” Eric couldn’t find a polite way to say no. Orly looked as if she was on the edge of an impolite one.
But the preacher proved professionally charming, or a bit more than professionally. He kept Orly from spitting in his eye. Given what she thought of preachers in general and televangelists in particular, that put him way ahead of most of his kind.
“I understand you were the second person to see the Ark, after Professor Louvish. Is that right, Dr. Katz?” Stark asked.
“Well—yeah.” Eric felt reluctant to admit it.
“And what did you think when he called you to the opening?”
“Wanna know? I wondered if he was playing a joke on me. Archaeologists do that. I was waiting for him to give me the horse laugh. But it turned out to be real.”
“Yes. It did.” Stark’s gaze swung toward the Ark. If you were anywhere near it, you looked at it. You couldn’t help yourself.
“Would you like to go on the air and talk about the discovery, Dr. Katz?” Gabriela asked.
Reluctance again. Eric wondered if it was just that he wanted nothing to do with televangelists. That wasn’t PC. Weren’t you supposed to tolerate everybody’s beliefs? But Stark was bound to haul in the Apocalypse. Eric didn’t want his name associated with that. It wasn’t what he believed, and he didn’t want anyone imagining it was.
“I’ll pass,” he said. “Archaeologists don’t need much publicity.”
“Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” That wasn’t Gabriela; it was Stark. “You have a unique perspective, and your contribution would be valuable.”
“We’d make it worth your while, too,” Gabriela Sandoval added.
Retro me, Satanas went through Eric’s mind again. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Thanks, though. I appreciate it.” He didn’t say he’d lose his colleagues’ respect if he went on a show with Stark and Gabriela, which was also true. But it wasn’t the main reason he didn’t want to perform.
“Too bad.” Gabriela recognized no when she heard it. But she didn’t quit. She turned to Orly. “How about you, Professor Binur?”
“I’m not a professor. I’m only a grad student.” Orly might have said, I’m not a master. I’m only a slave. In Academese, she had.
By the way Gabriela chuckled, she understood that. “All the same,” she said. “You’re a researcher on the project.”
Orly shook her head. “I don’t want to do it.”
“Are you sure?” Reverend Stark asked, which proved he didn’t know her.
“I’m sure,” Orly said. This was her country and her religion. If he didn’t like it, too bad. By her look, too bad anyway.
Stark also saw as much. “However you please,” he said easily. “I hope
you’ll excuse us, because we’re going ahead.” Orly didn’t seem thrilled about that, either. But she couldn’t do anything about it, not when Stark and Gabriela and their crew obviously had permission to be here.
“We’re ready,” a cameraman called. With a small shock, Eric recognized the guy. He was the one who’d tried to revive Brandon after he touched the Ark. As many people had seen him as any cameraman ever born.
“Thanks, Danny,” said an older man who looked like a producer or director. He raised his voice: “Places! Quiet on the set!”
Orly bristled anew. So did Eric. Calling the Shrine of the Book, with the Ark as its new centerpiece, a set…Why did the God Who killed for setting a fingertip on the Ark let that go unpunished?
Gabriela said, “You’re welcome to watch if you stay quiet.”
Gee, thanks went through Eric’s mind. Being American rather than Israeli, he swallowed the sarcasm. “What do you think?” he asked Orly.
“I’ve seen plenty,” she said. If that wasn’t enough to damn Gabriela and Lester Stark and all their works…Eric was also glad to escape the Heikhal Ha-Sefer.
* * *
—
Tanks squatted by the churches on the Mount of Olives. Chaim Avigad knew he wasn’t seeing them all. Walls and trees hid some, and camouflage paint and branches made them harder to spot. But he could hear engines rumbling: a deep bass background note that never went away.
In the foreground was ordinary construction noise. They needed a causeway from the Temple Mount to the Mount of Olives. The firepower was there to make sure nobody started lobbing mortar bombs at the causeway or the workers.
You had to sacrifice the red heifer on the Mount of Olives. That was in the rules, like everything coloring Chaim’s life these days. When you said it like that, it didn’t sound so bad. Sacrifice the red heifer…
They were going to kill Rosie!
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