Birthright

by Alan Gold

  Anastasia Bistrzhitska’s body sat in the armchair, her hands tied at the back and her body tethered. She didn’t appear to have struggled. Somebody had placed her there and shot her up through the mouth, the bullet exploding in her head and splattering her brains and skull over the back of the chair and onto the ceiling and floor behind her.

  Judit looked at the woman she once loved as a friend, as a mother, and felt sick. She felt the gorge rise in her throat and ran toward the kitchen, banging her shoulder on the doorpost as she rushed down the hall. She vomited into the kitchen sink once, then again, and finally retched nothing but bile.

  She ran the cold-water tap and washed her mouth, face, and hands. She gulped volumes of water and threw up again. And then her training kicked in. She had to remove herself immediately. Any thoughts she had of untying Anastasia, laying her friend to rest in the cold earth of Jerusalem, were for another time and place. Now it was her own survival.

  Judit’s mind raced over the possibilities of who had done this to Anastasia. Arabs? Unlikely. They were known for random attacks and sniper fire, not strategic assassination. British or American? Possibly. If Anastasia’s cover was blown, she could well be a target for Allied forces looking to leverage the selfsame influence in the region after the war to come. Who else could it have been? Had the Irgun leadership uncovered their plot? Had Berin ordered the assassination? If so, it would be only a matter of days before they found and tried to eliminate her.

  She had to get in touch with her Russian control, to find somewhere to disappear. And then it dawned on Judit that Anastasia had deliberately kept her as the sole protégée. She’d never introduced Judit to any other people in the MGB hierarchy. It was a weakness they’d discussed once, but Anastasia had dismissed it with a casual wave, assuring Judit that she’d always be there for her special little dove.

  Judit was alone, with nowhere to run and no one to call for help. Her only move now was to see the mission through, to kill Berin before he killed her.

  Judit arrived outside her apartment building after midnight. The journey by foot from the safe house to where she lived normally took under half an hour, but after what she’d seen of Anastasia, she was more cautious than ever.

  Certain there was nobody outside or inside her building who would do her harm, she unlocked her front door as quietly as she could, and with the door just ajar, she listened for any sound from within. It was as quiet as a grave, but she walked in wearing only her socks, turning on no lights, and tried to sense any presence in the dark. She clasped her knife tightly in her sweating palm.

  The door to her bedroom was open, and she saw Shalman lying in their bed, fast asleep, with Vered’s cot close beside him. She watched him silently in the darkness, feeling the deepest imaginable regret that what could have been such a happy life with a lovely man and a beautiful child in a new and exciting country should have come to this. It was at that moment, looking at him peacefully asleep beside their innocent daughter, that she understood how much she had cost those she loved: her mother, brother, and sister by her absence, her husband and daughter by the neglect that resulted from her actions.

  Judit felt giddy. She grasped the handle of the door to steady herself and felt that she was on the edge of madness. Not even tears would come to relieve the dam inside her head, a pressure about to burst.

  She breathed softly but deeply, using her training to control her thoughts. To think logically, to see the big picture, and not the small inconveniences. But nothing could prevent her from looking at Shalman and seeing his innocence, his openness and goodness. It was what had drawn them together and what had torn them apart.

  She saw him stir and then heard his soft, sleepy, half-awake voice. “Judit?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Sorry it’s so late. Look, darling, don’t get out of bed. I have to go somewhere urgently. It’s a big deal. We’re all mobilized. I have to take some clothes with me. I hope to be back in a week, when I’ve sorted out what’s happening.”

  “But a week . . . What is it? Are the Arabs—?”

  “Yes, shush, now. Don’t wake Vered. Big attack. We’ve got early intelligence. Big meetings tonight.”

  She walked into the bedroom and, in the darkness, opened a suitcase and threw into it some underclothes, a couple of dresses, and a hairbrush.

  “Shalman, I have to go immediately. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment we were on that stupid roof together. You were such a nebbish; you were so innocent and unworldly, and clean and pure, and I loved you to bits. And I love Vered. Tell her that when she wakes. Tell her Mummy loves her with all her heart. Tell her—”

  “Judit? What’s wrong? You’re almost in tears. What’s happened?”

  “I told you. There’s a big—”

  “Judit. Stop it. Some men were here tonight, asking where you were. These men had guns and were very serious. They told me they needed to find you for a mission, but I didn’t believe them. What’s going on? What are you up to? Vered was crying because of the men. They wouldn’t tell me who they were or where they were from, but—”

  She sighed. She sat on the bed. “I have to go, Shalman. I can’t tell you anything, but I hope we can see each other again. Don’t ask me questions. Just accept that there’s more to me than you know. And the less you know, the better. But one thing I have to tell you. Tomorrow or the day after, the Irgun is going to go into Mustafa’s village. They’re going to shoot the place up. They’re going there to teach the villagers a lesson. People are going to be killed. I’m telling you this because Mustafa once saved your life, and now you can save his. Don’t tell him the details; just get him and his parents out of there for a couple of days. Just do it. Don’t ask questions—just do it.”

  And with that, she left the apartment without kissing him or touching him. She left Shalman sitting in bed, wondering how his life had become such a minefield of unanswered questions.

  He looked over to Vered, who was stirring. It was as though the little one sensed that her mother had been and gone, had left their apartment, departed her life.

  Shalman was suddenly wracked with an overwhelming feeling that something monumental had just happened; that despite the intensity with which he loved his wife, their brief, extreme, passionate, insane marriage was over; that he’d never see her again; that despite her vows and commitment, she’d walked out of his life, and from that moment on, he’d never know her touch, her softness, her strength, her smell, her taste ever again. He closed his eyes in a torrent of grief and realized in the darkness that he couldn’t remember her face.

  The feeling of bottomless sadness stayed with him as he sat up in bed all night, staring into the black void.

  Foothills of Jerusalem

  1099

  NIMROD THE DOCTOR and Simeon the new and anxious treasurer stood still in the burning heat of a Jerusalem summer. The tympani of insects flying through the air, gripping the bark of trees, and feeding on the dry grasses was deafening. It had begun the previous year and accompanied them on their slow progress south. The incessant noise had diminished at the seaport of Joppa, but as the army walked inland and began to ascend the hills that led to the city of Jerusalem atop the King’s Highway, the noise of insects became louder and louder until it was again deafening.

  Nimrod and Simeon stood amid the parched bushes and dead grasses of the foothills of the holy city of Jerusalem and stared. Like a crown on the head of a monarch, the city of David, of Solomon, of Judah the Maccabee, of Herod the Great, of Jesus of Nazareth, and now of the Fatamid Muslims, stood proud and eternal. Crescents of mosques, crosses of churches, and stars of David atop synagogues were the rooftops of the city. The buildings of worship stood side by side with unadorned white stone houses, where the population of the holy city lived.

  The two men gazed in wonder at the white walls, and neither moved, neither said a word. Their breath came in short and shallow gasps, as though they were confronted by the most beautiful vision they’d
ever seen in their lives.

  And they were not alone. Thousands and thousands of crusading soldiers, the barons, earls, chevaliers, archers, lancers, foot soldiers, and peasants, all were awestruck by the city that had woven itself into their dreams night after night through the long march from Paris.

  The vast host of men wept, even as the tears running down their cheeks dried in the arid air. Some of the men stripped off their tunics and stood naked, beating their heads and chests in expressions of an emotion none had previously experienced. Some of the men fell to their knees and wailed into the ground, incapable of finding words or actions to express their feelings.

  Henri Guillaume, duke of Champagne and count palatin of Meaux and Blois, sat astride his charger and surveyed the scene. He, too, was strangely affected by the sight of the city of Jerusalem, though not moved to tears. When he’d first set eyes on Constantinople, a beautiful city set above the shining blue waters of the Sea of Marble, the Bosporus, and the Dardanelles, he’d been moved by its beauty but nothing more. When he and the other barons and dukes laid siege to Antioch, he hadn’t even noticed the splendor or antiquity of the city; it was simply a citadel to be overcome by force for the wealth it contained.

  Even here, at the foot of Jerusalem, Duke Henri felt none of the emotion of his army, but he did experience the ghosts of its history. He closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he opened them again, Henri saw a city housing an enemy to be captured; a city to be wrested from the hands of the infidel Jew and Mohammedan and reclaimed for its rightful owners.

  Yet he couldn’t help but feel some mystery about the place. There were voices in his head that drove him and visions in his eyes that confronted him; he knew he had to remain silent, keeping his hallucinations to himself.

  The duke kicked his horse’s flanks and drew level with Nimrod and Simeon. He pointed to the prostrate and weeping men arrayed before him. “What is this that seizes my men and makes them wail like women?”

  Nimrod, ever patient but surprised by the question, looked up at the duke and shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun. “The Greek doctors of old believed that a woman’s womb, her hysterika, moved inside her body. This led to an excess of emotions, which philosophers called hysteria.” Nimrod turned back to the huge walls before them. “While these are men,” he said, “perhaps something similar is at work in those viewing the holy city for the first time, a kind of hysteria that spreads from one to the other until it affects all the men who are here.” Nimrod finished the thought with a simple shrug.

  Simeon, ever watchful, as if living on borrowed time, looked around at the army. He had been to the city, knew its walls from his youth, knew many of its secrets, but had little time for religious fervor. In his travels as a merchant, he had seen many faiths, and none had served him well. The business of trade put food on his table, and he was baffled by the response of the Christians around him. “Perhaps what your army feels is simple exhaustion after such a long journey, or perhaps there is something more.”

  “Never just one answer with you Jews, is there?” said the duke, his tone dry as the air around them, but Nimrod ignored the jibe.

  “For two thousand years, people have lived and died in that city for the love of their God, be He Yahweh, Jehovah, or Allah. These three great creeds are centered on this very place. It is the home of the Jews, the Muslims, and the Christians. It is, my lord, the center of the world.”

  Duke Henri sniffed and looked up at the city. “It is a city occupied by a godless infidel called a Mohammedan who performs his heathen ceremonies here, where only Christians should be allowed to worship,” he said firmly. “The Mohammedan and the Jew defile the place!”

  Facing the holy city, Nimrod found a courage that he rarely had, enabling him to speak plainly. “Jesus was a Jew, my lord. And to the Mohammedan, Jesus is revered as a great prophet. The center of the world is perhaps not so simple as you may think.”

  Duke Henri scoffed. “You can keep your religions and your faiths and your sanctity and your goodness. It’s the gold I want, and not the gold of eternity—the gold of now!”

  Henri wheeled his horse around and rode away, leaving Nimrod and Simeon alone with the view of Jerusalem’s massive stone walls.

  “It is now a siege. And with walls such as those, it will be sickness, disease, and starvation that take the men long before the sword and the arrow.” Nimrod shook his head and turned to follow his lord.

  • • •

  “Idiots! Crook-pants! Dankish pottle-deep puttocks!” The duke roared so naturally that it seemed his normal manner of speech; neither Nimrod nor Simeon was much affected by it anymore.

  The duke continued to rant. “Not one stone, not a single pebble, has been taken down from those walls in the two months since we arrived and laid siege! Twelve thousand Crusaders, lancers, ballisters, archers, and catapulteers and still the walls stand! And now a gaggle of addle-brained malcontents say that they’ve seen a vision of Bishop Adhemar and want me to blow a trumpet to bring down the walls like those of Jericho!”

  The stalemate of the siege had stirred a cauldron of rumors, inflamed by the fervent and deluded. The vision of Bishop Adhemar was just the latest.

  The duke’s voice dropped to a cold rasp, and he extended a finger at Simeon. “You said that there was great treasure waiting for us in Constantinople and in Antioch. And what did I get? Nothing. Trinkets.”

  This was not the first time that the duke had mistaken Simeon for old Jacob. Duke Henri often referred to him as Jacob. Simeon, for his part, had learned not to correct his master. Like Nimrod, he was all too aware of the illness slowly eating the duke’s mind.

  “The other dukes and nobles looted the mosques and were weighed down by fabulous riches; I followed your advice and took the synagogues and the houses of the Jews and came away with little. How do I know that Jerusalem will be different?”

  “My lord, in Constantinople and in Antioch, you took a vast fortune. By our estimate, it accounts for the equivalent of two years of income from your lands,” insisted Simeon.

  “Two years! I could have been shafting whores in France for the next two years and still earned as much. Yet I’ve ridden halfway around the folly-fallen world, been laid low with pox that you cannot cure”—the finger of blame shifted from Simeon to Nimrod—“and spent a fortune feeding and arming the laziest and most cowardly army any duke has ever sent into battle! And my saddlebags remain empty. Where is all the money and jewelry of the Jews that should now be mine?”

  “Jerusalem will be different, my lord,” said Simeon, trying to calm the duke.

  “How so, Jew?”

  “Because in Constantinople and Antioch, the Jews were in a degraded condition. They were a community made poor by the Muslims’ taxes and by the hatred of the Christians. In Muslim lands, my lord, Jews are considered Dhimmi, or non-Muslim residents, and subject to a special tax called jizya, which has been a great impost and has damaged their chances to attain wealth. But the Fatamid dynasty has ruled this land for nearly a century and a half, and they are, for the most part, benign rulers. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are free to follow their own faiths without interference. So the reports that reach me, my lord, say the Jews of Jerusalem are indeed wealthy.”

  The truth was that Simeon had no way of knowing if what he said was true; it was conjecture at best. Yet the frailty of the duke’s mind, the growing discontentment in the army, the long stalemate of the siege, all prevailed upon him to lie. The simmering hatred of the Christian invaders toward any “nonbelievers” was palpable. The duke protected his Jewish advisers for now, but should something happen to the duke—either physically or financially—the fate of Simeon and Nimrod might be sealed. The hopeful lie Simeon told the duke was a ploy to keep the man focused and to keep up the morale of his army.

  Duke Henri pondered the words of his treasurer. “You had better be right or else make your peace with your god!” He flung open the tent flap and looked out toward the city wall
s. “But I’ll not fall to foolishness of trumpets and visions. I will find a way to breach those walls.” The duke raised his voice once more to summon his captain. “Roux!”

  The duke needn’t have yelled, as the gaunt red-headed man was never far away. He quickly appeared in the portal of the tent.

  “I want you to gather ten of your best men. No horses. We go on foot.”

  Roux looked puzzled by the order and glowered at the two Jews behind the duke. “Where are we going, my lord?”

  “There is a way. There must be a way inside. And we go tonight to find it.”

  “My lord, the Genoese siege engines will not arrive until tomorrow. Proper siege engines made of the finest wood and tempered iron. Surely we must wait?”

  “No. No. No. We will go now! Ten of the best, and we will find another way. If we wait, we will lose. They . . .” The duke cast his arm wide to take in the tents of the other lords, his rivals, encamped nearby. “They will take what is mine and what the Jews have told me awaits inside those walls.”

  These words brought the twisted glare of Roux back to Simeon and Nimrod.

  “We will reconnoiter the perimeter of the city under darkness and find the weakness of these walls.”

  Roux knew there was no arguing, and moreover, he saw the misguided order as an indicator of the duke’s failing faculties. At first it had been only Nimrod who had seen the duke’s syphilis spread from his loins to his mind. But the paranoia and hallucinations had become harder to hide, and Roux now saw opportunity in his lord’s demise.

  “Go. See to the men,” ordered the duke, and Roux left quickly.