An Accidental Messiah

by Dan Sofer

  Moshe strained against his bonds, curling inward like a spider, but the straps on his wrists and ankles were leather belts threaded in brass buckles, and they held fast.

  He pressed his thighs against the handle of the throwing knife between his legs. If he could just get hold of a blade…

  No. His legs were too far apart, so he tried a new tactic. He shifted his weight from side to side, pushing against the flat edge of the blade with the inside of each thigh. After a dozen swings, the knife shifted out an inch and lurched downward. Now, to press the blade between his thighs…

  The knife clattered to the cement floor. He had hoped to launch the dislodged blade closer to the other two captives, but this would have to do.

  “Avi,” he said. His ex-friend and nemesis looked up at him, sweeping the greasy fringe out of his eyes with a flick of his head. Or was that “former” nemesis? They had spared each other’s lives, after all.

  Moshe sent a meaningful glance toward the knife on the floor. “Shift closer,” he said. “Topple over near enough and you’ll get to the knife.”

  Understanding glimmered in Avi’s eyes. He rocked on the chair, the legs lifting off the floor and edging toward Moshe.

  “That’s it. Keep going.”

  Avi rocked harder, inching faster toward the circular target, his nostrils flaring over the knotted cloth in his mouth.

  “Easy does it.”

  The warning came too late. Avi lost balance and fell sideways, groaning as his bodyweight crushed his forearm between the metal frame of the chair and the hard floor. He writhed and wriggled, shifting the chair in useless circles, until he gave up, moaning and sweating.

  So much for that.

  Moshe glanced at Galit. She nodded, made a valiant effort to shift the chair with the tips of her toes, but made no progress.

  I guess it’s up to me.

  Avi’s failed attempt gave Moshe an idea. He leaned forward, then threw his weight back against the wood. It barely moved. That won’t work.

  He shifted to the side and soon he wished that he had not. The wooden circle rolled on its edge like a wheel, grating against the rough floor and turning him upside down before it slowed to a stop. Blood drained to his head, a dizzying sensation that made him want to puke. The fallen knife lay on the floor—now the ceiling—far off to the side.

  He shifted in the opposite direction and the wheel rolled back, coming to rest two feet behind where he had started. His plan had not worked out, but at least he was right side up. The knife glinted on the floor.

  One option remained. The new plan might just bring the knife within grasp. On the other hand, it might impale or crush him. Either result beat waiting for Mandrake to return.

  He lunged forward, straining against the straps. The target tilted forward, then slumped back. Galit shook her head and groaned in protest. She didn’t seem to think that toppling the heavy wooden tabletop onto his body was a good idea and she was probably right. But with only one path left to freedom, he had to take that chance.

  He lunged forward again, a Samson straining at the pillars. This time, he leaned back on the rebound, adding momentum to the next forward swing and, for two fateful seconds, the table teetered on a fragile equilibrium before succumbing to gravity.

  Oh, crap!

  Galit shrieked. Moshe cried out as well, closed his eyes, and clenched every muscle in his body as the unforgiving floor of hard cement rushed up toward him.

  The crash echoed against the warehouse walls.

  Moshe opened his eyes. He lay, face down, in the newly formed crawl space between the overturned target and the floor, supported by the knives that their mad captor had lodged into the wooden target.

  He laughed, a tense, happy-to-be-alive, teary laugh. “I’m OK,” he said. The knives had saved his life, and his spread legs had ensured that the base of the target had not crushed his feet.

  But the sound of the falling target would not go unnoticed. He waited ten seconds, catching his breath, listening for the return of heavy footfalls. None came.

  Although alive, Moshe lay suspended from the toppled target like a turtle under an oversized shell, unable to move.

  He craned his neck. The loose knife lay directly below his shackled right wrist, but twenty centimeters of air still separated his grasping fingers from the key to freedom.

  He threw his weight to the left, the target tilting like an unsteady table, then rocking to the right, the heavy wooden surface now pressing against the side of the knife legs, threatening to loosen the blades from the base and crush Moshe. His fingers had just brushed the knife handle, when pain flared in his right foot, which was now pinned beneath the edge of the table and the floor, and he cried out again.

  Working fast, his fingers jabbed at the knife, at first rotating it out of reach—no, please no!—then caught the blade as it rotated back. Yes!

  He shifted to his left again, pushing the floor with his right knee. The target rose off his foot and settled back onto the knife legs.

  His fingers managed to hold the blade—barely—but they couldn’t slice the straps from that angle.

  Now what?

  He ran the blade along his fingers and grasped the handle. He couldn’t saw through the strap, so instead he inserted the point into the buckle and between the straps, pushing down on the handle, using the lower strap for leverage, teasing the tongue of leather out of the brass buckle.

  Encouraged by his success, he inserted the point inside the buckle a second time, slipping the strap over the brass prong, and his wrist fell free to the floor. After some stretching and painful contortion, he unstrapped his right ankle, heaved the table upward, and tended to the remaining restraints. The turtle had slithered out of his shell.

  He limped over to Galit and Avi, his limbs trembling. “You OK?” He pulled the gags from their mouths.

  “Thank God!” Galit said. “I thought you were dead.”

  “They were messing with you all along,” Avi said, from his painful position on the floor.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t really throw the knives.”

  “But he did. I heard them. The balloons…”

  “Vitaly stuck them in by hand. When you passed out, they did CPR, then split. They weren’t trying to kill you, just scare you.”

  “Well, they succeeded.” All of this, just to freak him out. Gagged and bound, Galit and Avi had no way of telling him that it was all a show. Mandrake was one seriously deranged criminal.

  Moshe faltered on his feet. This was too much. If they managed to escape tonight, he would withdraw from public life. He had stood out from the crowd once and become a target for dark forces. For all his good intentions and honest desire to fix the country, few things were worth losing his life, and nothing was worth losing his family.

  As he stood over the bound couple, knife in hand, a memory triggered in his mind, a dark moment that he had buried deep in his subconscious.

  “We should get out of here,” Avi said. “Before they come back.”

  “He’s right,” Galit added. Then, “What’s the matter?”

  The girl had pressed her high-heeled foot to the man’s thigh, her dress rising up her leg.

  “You were there,” Moshe said. “Both of you. In the garden.”

  “What garden?” Galit said.

  Avi hissed, “Moshe, we need to go. Now!”

  “At the Botanical Gardens.”

  Galit and Avi exchanged glances and fell silent.

  “Against the tree,” Moshe continued. “He had his hand on your waist, your leg over his.”

  Moshe’s brain added one strange fact to another. The morning of his return, Galit had screamed and climbed the walls. She had not been surprised, but terrified.

  Avi had given a nervous laugh at the offices of Karlin & Son. “Why did you come back?” he’d asked. “To haunt me?” Then, “You don’t remember, do you?” Remember what? “Dying.”

  Galit had sat on the wall of the
Tayelet overlooking the Old City. “Can you forgive me?” she’d asked. There’s nothing to forgive.

  Moshe towered over the chained couple in the abandoned warehouse. “You cheated on me,” he said, choking on disbelief. “Before I died.”

  Galit teared up and Moshe felt as though he had died all over again.

  “That’s what killed me—that’s what brought on the heart attack. And you both just stood there and watched me die.”

  Galit began to bawl and could hardly get the words out between sobs. “I’m so sorry, Moshe. I thought you had cheated on me!”

  Moshe shook his head and squeezed the handle of the knife. He should have let Mandrake kill Avi—kill them both, for what they had done.

  “She’s right,” Avi said. “It was my fault. I screwed everything up.”

  Moshe remembered Avi’s earlier confession. “You just wanted to be like me?” His words dripped sarcasm like venom.

  “I’ll make it up to you, Moshe, I swear to God, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “You ended my life, Avi. And now you’ve ruined it.” Galit’s tears continued to flow, but he kept on going. “How are you going to make that up to me?”

  Avi swallowed. “You’re right. I can’t. Do what you want with me—whatever it is, I deserve worse.” He hung his head. What did he deserve? A knife in the heart, right here, right now? Moshe wanted that. Mandrake had wanted that too.

  “But,” Avi added, “don’t take it out on her. I practically forced myself on her. It wasn’t her fault.”

  Moshe stood there and the urge for violent retribution subsided. She had thought he had cheated on her. She had felt the way he did now. He drew three deep breaths, then got to work, cutting the tape that bound their wrists and ankles.

  Galit stepped up to him and threw her arms around his chest, clinging to him, her body trembling. She looked up at him, a plea in her eyes. He put his arm around her and touched her shoulder, a reflex, mechanical gesture, unsure what he felt. He would not figure it out here.

  A car engine growled outside and yellow light flashed in the gap between the warehouse doors.

  “Quick, get a knife,” he hissed to Avi.

  Avi hurried to the overturned target, while Moshe pulled Galit by the hand and ran to the doors of the warehouse. Bringing knives to a gunfight, they’d stand no chance against Mandrake and his thugs, but if they hid behind the opening doors, they might escape into the night.

  Or they’d surprise them and fight for all they were worth. He gripped the handle of the throwing knife.

  Outside, car doors opened and closed. Avi joined them at the corrugated wall, a knife in each hand. Moshe put his finger to his lips for silence. He peeked through the crack of the doorjamb. A black car idled beside a dormant brown van. A man and a woman crossed the beams of the headlights. They peered into the windows of the dark van, then walked around it. The man wore a ponytail; the girl had the leafy blond hair of a fairy.

  Alex and Irina! Were they walking into a trap? “Wait here,” he whispered to the others.

  “Don’t go,” Galit said, but he pushed the doors open.

  “Moshe!” Irina cried and ran to him. “Thank God we found you. Are you OK?”

  He blinked back the bright lights of the car and shielded his eyes with his arm.

  “I think so. For now.”

  Alex joined her. A large bruise around his eye shone in the headlights. “The whole country has been looking for you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “They have,” Irina said. “We won the elections.”

  His heart thumped in his chest. Had he heard her right? “We got a seat?” That was amazing. Unbelievable. He had lost hope of Restart ever making an impact.

  “More than one, Moshe. Far more. And there’s something else you should know.”

  She told him.

  “What?” Moshe said, trying in vain to wrap his brain around the words. His recent trauma had taken its toll.

  She told him again and, for the second time that day, Moshe passed out.

  CHAPTER 89

  Eli punched in the code for the front door of his apartment, nausea spreading through his gut. On the bike ride home, he had not expected the Thin Voice to speak inside his head. The Divine whisper had remained adamantly silent for months; why would that change?

  But now, as the door clicked open and Noga followed him into the penthouse with the calm confidence of a trusting disciple, he realized that, in a secret corner of his heart, he had hoarded a desperate hope of hearing that guiding voice in the nick of time. In other words, he still had no idea what to do next.

  Noga found her laptop on the coffee table and tucked the device under her arm.

  “OK,” she said, primed for action. “What now?”

  “We anoint the Messiah.”

  “And where do we find him?”

  “Or her,” Eli said, and gave an awkward laugh. She glanced at him, expectant. He swallowed. He licked his lips and opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “But if you don’t, who does?”

  He plopped on the couch. “The Thin Voice usually tells me what to do.”

  She sat down beside him. “The Thin Voice?”

  “Only I can hear it, like my brain is tuned into God’s will.”

  She nodded, but her mouth became a short, tense line. Apparently, she had not factored obstinate Divine voices into her new life’s mission.

  “I haven’t heard the voice in months,” he continued. “Not since the accident.”

  She shrugged. “Then we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

  “It’s not that simple. Even if we think we’ve figured it out, how will we know we’re right? With the Thin Voice, there were no doubts. All my intuitions since then have been wrong.”

  She considered his words. “What was the last thing the voice said?”

  “I was to anoint the Messiah on the Mount of Olives. But as I got there, I slammed into a truck.”

  “You didn’t meet the Messiah?”

  Eli searched his memory of that fateful morning. “There was a white car and two men. The one with the beard called the paramedics.” Another memory surfaced. He hobbled out of the neurology ward, one arm supported by a crutch, the other in Noga’s. His fingers brushed against a folded note.

  “What?” Noga said.

  “He must have left that note in my jacket pocket. It had his name and number.”

  “Do you have it?”

  He shook his head again. He had crumpled the yellow note and tossed it into a trash can at the hospital elevator. “The name was Yossi. No, Yosef.” He strained his powers of recollection. “I don’t remember his last name.”

  “There are a lot of Yosefs out there.”

  “There was a girl too,” he said. “She had short hair. Blond, almost white.”

  Noga perked up. “I met a girl like that at Restart, when I spoke with the rabbi. Rabbi Lev. Wait a minute.” She opened her laptop on the coffee table and ran a search.

  The website of a political party loaded and displayed the picture of a rabbi. Streaks of gray ran through his neat brown beard.

  “That’s him!” Eli read the name in the title. “Rabbi Yosef Lev.” He laughed. That was quick. “Restart—that new party?” Eli never bothered with politics or elections. Only God selected potential messiahs and He whispered their names in Eli’s third ear. But the messianic task called for a charismatic and popular leader, and Noga’s theory was showing promise.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The exit polls weren’t optimistic, but last I heard, they were bouncing back.”

  She grabbed the remote control and thumbed on the TV in the corner. A woman sat at a studio discussion table. “It was inevitable, if you think about it,” Liat Arbel said to her father and co-host, Dani Tavor. “For years, voters have felt disenfranchised, so they turned against the Establishment.”

  “But the exit polls pa
inted a different picture,” countered the gray-haired analyst. “How do you explain that?”

  The woman shrugged. “With all the party’s recent bad publicity, nobody wanted to admit that they were voting Restart.”

  “So they lied to the pollsters.”

  “Sure.”

  A chart of election results displayed on the screen. “Wow,” Noga said. “I don’t believe it. Restart took the elections.”

  “Whatever the explanation,” Dani said, “this is the first time an unknown party with an inexperienced leader has trumped all the other candidates in the elections. Who knows what’s in store for our country? So far, the Prime Minister–elect is keeping us in suspense, shying away from the cameras all day. This evening, however, he has promised to deliver a message to the country from his home in Jerusalem.”

  A photo of a clean-shaven man filled the screen.

  “That’s him,” Eli said. “The new prime minister—he’s the other guy from the Mount of Olives.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “One thing is certain,” Dani continued on the screen. “Prime Minister–elect Moshe Karlin has his work cut out for him.”

  CHAPTER 90

  That night, Ahmed strolled in the shadows, while the towering walls of the Old City bathed in spotlight.

  The explosives chafed his ribs. On the train, as his thumb hovered over the smooth detonator button, he had wanted to escape into the black hole of death. But when he gazed into the eyes of his fellow travelers, he hesitated.

  True, he was a monster. He was not worthy of life. Yet God had brought him back from the grave. Why? To torture him—to rub his nose in the suffering he had caused? Ahmed had tasted that purgatory. God might as well turn him back to dust. Or was God not done with him yet?

  In any event, did he really think that his journey would end if he were to repeat his mistakes? There was no escape in this universe. His deeds today would greet him tomorrow. He knew that now. Promises of Paradise had not saved him from his actions and neither would his desire for oblivion.

  “Hey, kid,” the conductor called to him, breaking his trance. “Time to get off.”