“Look at the faith and confidence. ‘And we know!’ it says. Not ‘we hope.’ Paul was right when he wrote that to the Romans. The Roman Empire tormented and killed our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They thought they settled Him forever. But the Roman Empire is gone, while Christianity thrives today.”
He wouldn’t say the Jews had anything to do with crucifying Jesus. He didn’t believe it, and it would infuriate his hosts. He didn’t fear taking on the Israelis, but he wanted reasonable cause first.
“Terrorists trying to delay the rebuilding of the Temple launched a cowardly attack against the Temple Mount. They killed and wounded several people who never harmed them. Maybe they think they accomplished something—besides making decent folk all over hate them, I mean.
“But they did more. They opened the gate in the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, which has been closed for centuries, through which the Messiah will enter Jerusalem: the Golden Gate, also called the Gate of Mercy.
“Could they have done that by themselves or by chance? Maybe. Coincidence has a long arm. But, after the other remarkable things lately, which is more likely? Coincidence or God’s plan?
“Believe whatever you choose—now. You’ll learn the answer, and I don’t think you’ll have long to wait.”
The red light went out. He was off camera. He sighed in relief. Preaching to a real congregation was a joy. This felt like hard work.
“Nice job, Reverend.” Gabriela Sandoval made silent clapping motions: emoji brought to life.
Lester smiled. “Thanks. Is it good enough to persuade you?”
“That you know more about how religion and history fit together than I ever will? You bet it is,” Gabriela said. “I figured you would when I asked you to join me, and boy, was I ever right.”
“Not quite what I meant, though I’m grateful,” Stark said. “What I meant was, is it enough to persuade you the Second Coming of the Messiah—of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—can’t be far away?”
Gabriela coughed in faint embarrassment. “I’ve always worried more about this old world than the next one. I think I still do. It’s a hard habit to break, if you know what I mean.”
“I suspect I do. I have many other friends who feel the same way,” Stark said. “But can you go on doing that when you see more plainly by the day how your eternal soul’s fate depends on your relationship with God?”
“I’ve never spent much time worrying about what happens to my soul when I’m gone,” Gabriela said slowly. “When I’m dead, it will do…whatever it does. Are you sure your ideas are any better than Rabbi Kupferman’s, say? If they locked the two of you in a room, who’d come out on top?”
That made Stark chuckle. He was between ten and twenty years younger than Kupferman. But would that matter in a brawl, or in a theological disputation? How do I know I’m right and the Jews are wrong? Stark asked himself.
Because the New Testament tells me so. The argument carried weight for him. It wouldn’t for a Jew, though. A Jew would deny the New Testament was the word of God.
You couldn’t even say it came down to faith. Jews had plenty of that. Their religion never would have survived without it. Muslims had it, too. Without faith, you wouldn’t blow up a truck full of explosives and radioactives when you were sitting in the driver’s seat. Which leaves me where? Stark wondered. Either you believed what you believed for reasons you found good, or you believed in nothing and found that good.
Depressing numbers of intelligent, caring people—people like Gabriela, for instance—had turned their backs on faith. Maybe what was going on in the Holy Land now would bring them back to it. Something needed to, or hell would overflow. And wouldn’t that return almost be miracle enough in itself?
“I won’t bother you with the question any more,” Stark said. “I’ll tell you what I told Yitzhak Avigad. You’ll do what you’ll do, I’ll do what I’ll do, God will do what He’ll do, and when it’s over we’ll see what it means.”
“Hard to be fairer than that, Reverend,” Gabriela said.
But Lester Stark still thought he was right about what the passage in Romans meant.
* * *
—
Some who’d fired at the causeway leaping east from the Haram al-Sharif and at the Haram itself were no longer around to be questioned. The Zionist entity’s helicopters and tanks started hunting before the last mortar bombs landed. In spite of everything the Jews could do, several gunners got away.
Habib al-Bedwani was a lean, scarred man with one finger missing from his left hand. “Did you aim at the Golden Gate?” Jamal Ashrawi asked. “Why would you try that?”
“We aimed where we should have aimed,” al-Bedwani said stolidly. “The bombs came down where God willed they come down.”
That was the last thing Haji Jamal wanted to hear. “Do you think God wanted you to open the Golden Gate? More likely Satan did, Satan or the djinni!”
The fighter shrugged. “Well, what can a mere man do against God and Satan and the djinni?” he asked.
“You were supposed to hurt the Jews! Instead, you made it easier for their Antichrist to do his work.”
“We blew up a bulldozer, I hear,” al-Bedwani said. “We killed Jews and wounded more. How can you complain?”
“You opened the Golden Gate! The Zionists might have, but you did. Do you think they won’t thank you for it?”
“Be careful how you talk, old man, or you won’t get much older.” Habib al-Bedwani turned his back and walked away.
“Wait!” Haji Jamal sputtered. That a nobody should talk to the Grand Mufti this way…! What the other man did have was skill with weapons. He thought he could use it to make Ashrawi afraid—and he was right.
A bodyguard must have understood the way his mind worked. “Shall we teach that son of a poxed she-camel to regret his bad manners, Haji Jamal?” The man hefted his Kalashnikov.
Any lesson he taught would have a funeral at the end. The Grand Mufti shook his head. “No, let it go,” he said. “We need to fight the Zionist entity, not our brethren.” Arabs had too much trouble remembering that obvious truth. The Jews didn’t fight among themselves about anything that mattered.
“Anyone who insults you is no brother of mine,” the bodyguard said, which proved he couldn’t see the obvious, either.
But Ashrawi repeated, “Let it go. He is angry at me because he didn’t hurt the Zionists more.”
“Let him be angry at them, then,” the man replied. “A one-eyed donkey could have aimed better.”
“It is as God wills,” Jamal Ashrawi said.
Inshallah was usually a commonplace. Here, though, he wondered if it wasn’t true. Had God willed that that heavy mortar round should fall on the long-closed Golden Gate? Hard to imagine such bad shooting from an experienced mortar crew unless some power stronger than mortal was involved.
The Zionists and their Christian stooges believed God had a hand in opening the Golden Gate. To hear them talk, the Messiah or Jesus would lead souls into Jerusalem through the gate any minute now.
Ashrawi’s first instinct was to deny they could be right. But what if they were? A slow smile spread across his face. They thought God was paving the way for the Messiah? They’d let the Antichrist seduce them even before he appeared.
They would be judged. But God would not dispose of them the way they expected Him to. “Truly there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God,” Ashrawi murmured.
“Well, of course,” his bodyguard said.
* * *
—
Despite everyone’s best efforts, working with a sincere believer proved more complicated than Gabriela had looked for. She was getting good TV out of it, but her stomach lining paid the price. She watched the Israelis grind their teeth at some of the things Lester Stark said, which also made life harder for her. This even thoug
h they liked Stark, at least compared to most televangelists.
When she grumbled, the preacher only smiled. “I didn’t come here to censor myself. You wouldn’t want me to censor myself, would you, Ms. Sandoval?”
“No-o,” Gabriela said, and clenched her own teeth. Stark knew how to push buttons, all right. Censorship was a dirty word to her. But when she thought about it, she meant dirty words, tits and ass too early in the evening, or maybe too much violence. She hadn’t worried about suppressing religious opinions that still struck her as medieval…till now.
Weird thing was, even medieval religious opinions might be too modern. God’s comeback was looking more impressive and unlikely than George Foreman’s. As Brandon had found out the hard way, God still packed a punch—and He probably hadn’t got fat sitting on the sidelines the past 3,000 years.
Whenever Stark talked about the Last Days, he talked about the Second Coming of Jesus. That made the Israelis jerk and twitch. They didn’t just not believe it. Hearing anyone suggest it might happen pissed them off.
Gabriela got a text from Shlomo Kupferman after the minister preached on Romans 8:28. She called back with more than a little apprehension. The Religious Affairs Minister could pitch her and Stark out of Israel, and they hadn’t done everything she wanted yet.
She figured she’d reach a secretary or voicemail. But a gruff voice barked in her ear: “This is Kupferman.”
“Oh, hello, Rabbi. Gabriela Sandoval.”
“I know who you are,” Kupferman growled. “What I don’t know is how you put up with Lester’s bullshit. He’s my friend, but he knows about God the way my cat knows about hang gliding…and I don’t have a cat.”
“Heh,” Gabriela said, but then, her spine stiffening, she added, “That hasn’t kept you from working with him before.”
“What did the English say about American soldiers during the war? ‘They’re overpaid, oversexed, and over here.’ Lester’s over here now.”
Gabriela couldn’t say it wasn’t her fault Stark was in the Holy Land. It damn well was. Smooth, she told herself, and tried to turn the subject: “He’s not trying to convert any Jews.”
“He knows better. But I’m so sick of the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger dreck from goyim,” Kupferman said. “You think the Last Days are all about Jesus and the poor stupid Jews’ll get it in the neck again for not believing in Him. And you know what? When Jesus doesn’t show, you’re going to look mighty damn dumb.”
Gabriela had to hide her surprise at hearing the rabbi so profane. “Include me out of that, please,” she said. “I don’t have any idea what will happen.”
“That’s right, you’re one who doesn’t believe in anything. You signed the release that proved it. So did your associate. How did that work out for him?”
“Not too well,” Gabriela said tightly. If Brandon hadn’t been such a thoroughgoing asshole, Kupferman would be having this conversation with him right now, because she’d be dead. Some of what she felt for him was honest hate, which he’d earned. But a little was survivor guilt. She couldn’t help it, no matter how much she wanted to.
“No, not too well.” The Religious Affairs Minister bore down on the words. “And Lester sounds like such a jerk.” Kupferman muttered something that wasn’t English or, by the sound of it, polite. “Still, what the Muslims spew about the Last Days is really poisonous. Breaking all the crosses? Or killing all the Jews? That’s not going to happen again, no matter what the Grand Mufti preaches. He should have an accident—with a rocket or a bullet, alevai omayn.”
“Do they take that kind of vicious propaganda seriously?” Gabriela said. “Or do they just cook it up to keep their people happy?”
“They believe it,” Kupferman said. “That makes it worse, not better, because it won’t end up the way that dumb-ass camel driver told them it would, and they’ll go nuts when they find out they’ve got it wrong, too.”
Dumb-ass camel driver? Gabriela almost swallowed her teeth. In the USA, most Jews were good, tolerant liberals—Saul Buchbinder jumped to mind. Everybody’d dumped on them so much, they didn’t want to take shots at anybody else. Things here were different. Here, Jews were top dogs, and looked down their noses at their neighbors. It felt bizarre.
“If the Grand Mufti is the one who’s getting on your nerves, why worry about Lester Stark?” she said. “His heart’s in the right place.”
“Yes, but his head’s up his—” Kupferman broke off. “I’ve got enough tsuris I don’t need without him.”
Gabriela had heard that word often enough from Saul to know what it meant. “No trouble from me,” she said soothingly. “And none from Reverend Stark, either, not really. He’s talking to his home crowd, with language they understand.”
The Religious Affairs Minister made a discontented noise. “I’d be happier if things were different.”
“If things were different, Rabbi, we wouldn’t be worrying about any of this, would we?”
Kupferman hung up on her. For a moment, she was offended. Who did he think he was? What did the sudden case of dial tone mean? Slowly, she began to smile. What was it likely to mean, except that she’d convinced Kupferman but the rabbi didn’t care to admit it?
* * *
—
“What’s going on now?” Eric eyed the fancy tent going up where the Dome of the Rock had stood, inside the rising Third Temple.
Orly shrugged. “Beats me.” She called out to one of the workmen and asked him. Eric grinned wryly. That never would’ve occurred to him. Orly was way more outgoing than he was.
Even if he’d asked, the workman might have told him to stick it. When the guy looked at Orly, he was all smiles. “We’re making the —,” he answered; Eric didn’t know the key word.
“They’re making the what?” he asked Orly.
She repeated it in Hebrew, which did him no good. Then she translated it: “The Tabernacle, I think you would say.”
Eric didn’t think he would say that. Then he got it. “The tent where the Ark lived before the Hebrews took Jerusalem and built the First Temple?”
Orly nodded. “That’s right.”
“So are they going to move the Ark here?” If they were, nobody’d told Eric anything about it.
“Beats me,” Orly said again. She asked the workman another question. It was so simple! Eric wondered again why he didn’t think to do things like that.
“That’s the plan,” the guy said. “If the Ark shows it doesn’t want to get moved, we back off and try something else.”
If the Ark didn’t like something, somebody might end up dead. Eric changed the subject: “How do you know what the Tabernacle is supposed to look like?”
The workman gave him a look he’d seen before in Israel, more often than he would have liked to. It was the look the Orthodox gave their secular cousins, and it said, Call yourself a Jew? Some nerve! This guy, at least, answered: “It’s in Exodus.” He started quoting chapter and verse in Biblical Hebrew, which bore the same relation to Amos Oz as Chaucer did to Martin Amos.
Eric let the archaic language roll over him. Then he said, “All right. I’m convinced,” and walked away.
No doubt the workman would feel smug—he was a hell of a Biblical scholar. Eric didn’t care. He didn’t mean the hard hat’s arguments had convinced him they were right. He just meant they’d convinced him the Bible laid out marching orders for assembling the Tabernacle.
Walking up onto the Temple Mount was a man who looked familiar. When he crushed one cigarette underfoot and lit another at the same time, Eric recognized Munir al-Nuwayhi. He waved to the Israeli Arab before he thought about what he was doing. Al-Nuwayhi ambled over, shook hands with him, and nodded to Orly. Orly nodded back, polite but cool.
“How’s it going?” Eric asked. He knew what Israeli Jews and Arabs too often felt about each other, but told himself he was
above all that. Making himself believe it was harder these days. “Haven’t seen you in too long.”
“You know how it is,” Munir said with an expressive shrug. “I’m not exactly welcome up here. I’m permitted—I give Yoram credit for that—but I’m not welcome.”
“So what are you doing here, then?” Orly asked bluntly. She didn’t add Spying? Not out loud she didn’t, anyway.
Munir shrugged that shrug again. “I came back to visit…” His voice trailed off, as if he also didn’t want to say all of what he was thinking. But then he came out with it: “To visit the scene of the crime.”
Orly bristled. Eric didn’t want a fight. There’d already been too many bigger fights over the Temple Mount, what was on it, and what should be on it. Quickly, he said, “They’re doing the best they can, I think.”
“You would say so,” Munir replied. “It doesn’t look that way to me. But what you think, and what I think, and what Ms. Binur thinks, that doesn’t matter so much these days, does it?”
“How do you mean?” Eric asked, though he feared he knew.
Sure enough, the Israeli Arab answered, “What God thinks is what matters. I prayed in a mosque the other day, for the first time in a couple of years. It felt odd, but I still know what to do.”
“Did it help?” Now Orly sounded genuinely curious. She’d been talking about how everything was in God’s hands, too. Eric kept trying to resist the idea. He had less and less luck with each passing day.
“I don’t know,” Munir said with one more shrug. “I am a sinner, a backslider. I know it. God knows it. Maybe He will forgive me. Maybe He won’t. Inshallah, as they say. Peace be unto both of you.” Away he went, pausing only to fumble for a fresh Marlboro.
“He has the willies as bad as you do,” Eric said to Orly. Then he had to explain what the willies were.
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