The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  Harper flashed his meet with the dream catcher on the esplanade of Lausanne Cathedral. She was telling Harper of Ella’s dream. A baby cow with a red face; men slaughtering the beast on a black rock in the City of the Three Gods. But the beast struggles to live as its blood drains away. Its hooves catch the blood on the rock, it sparks, and a great fire consumes the world. Harper blinked to nowtimes. Chana was watching him with her amber eyes, knowing he had just gone somewhere.

  “Will you be able to contain the fallout in Jerusalem, Inspector?”

  “I am afraid not.”

  “Understood.”

  He closed the phone, handed it back to Chana. “Do you have children?”

  Her face was Israeli MI blank, but her eyes flashed a touch of fear. “Two daughters, twins,” she said.

  Bloody hell.

  “You should leave,” Harper said.

  “Why?”

  “There is every chance this will go the wrong way. If it does, then war will engulf this place, completely, utterly.”

  She looked to the ground, shook her head. “Lo.”

  “You have no idea what is coming.”

  She lifted her eyes to him. “And you still have no idea what is really going on in Jerusalem. Look behind you again, look through the gate. Good. Forget the Muslim holy places you see now, forget the Jewish Temples that once stood there, forget Yeshua ben Yosef prayed there. That ancient ground is what is left of Mount Moriah, the most sacred ground on the face of the earth, not because of what men have built on it, but because of what men have forgotten about it. This is where heaven and earth collide. This is the shortest distance between the Creator and mankind. If I will not abandon Jerusalem to fanatics of any religion, what makes you think I would abandon it to the sons of darkness? That is what is coming, isn’t it?” Fierceness flared in her eyes.

  “Actually, we call them goons,” Harper said.

  She nodded. “Good name.”

  “How much time left?” Harper said.

  Chana checked. “Ninety seconds.”

  Harper pulled his SIG Sauer from his kill kit, loaded a round in the firing chamber.

  “There will be six of them. They will appear as Israeli civilians, like the right-wingers at the Wailing Wall. But make no mistake, these are not human beings. One will be carrying a bomb, probably in a backpack. One will have a camera of some kind. Bomber is primary, then the camera, then the rest. They can only be killed with a head shot between the eyes or by slicing their throat and separating the spine from the brain.”

  “I don’t have a knife.”

  Harper pulled his killing knife with his left hand. “No worries. If you only wound them, they will get back up again, so don’t miss.”

  Chana raised her assault rifle, flipped off the safety, set the weapon for single fire. She switched on the laser targeting.

  “This is a modified TAR-21. It fires a single sixty-two-grain M855 round at three thousand feet per second. By 2018 every Israeli soldier will have one. Until then there is me and the Special Forces, and I never miss.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  They backed up to the open gate to Temple Mount and waited.

  “Do you smell smoke?” Chana said.

  “No.”

  “I smell smoke. Twenty seconds.”

  Harper started counting them down in his head: Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen . . .

  “Amini,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “When we met at Qumran you asked if there was anything more to my name. It is Amini.”

  Harper ran the name. Amini: Sanskrit in origin, meaning priest.

  “It’s a good name,” he said.

  “Toda.”

  Just then a swell rolled through the ground under their feet, and for a moment, the walls and buildings surrounding them wobbled.

  “What was that?” Chana said.

  “Look at your watch.”

  She did. “It stopped with two seconds to go.”

  “Welcome to a time warp, Chana Amini.”

  She looked up. She saw the sun moving through the sky; she saw wisps of clouds and birds racing by at high speed. It all shuddered to a stop.

  “Sababa.”

  ii

  “BBC World Service. I’m Will Austin, with The World Tonight. Some Israelis are calling it the ‘Day of Judgment.’ So far eighteen Israelis including six members of the Israeli Defense Forces are dead and scores more injured, some critically, after a day of violence and rioting. Three Palestinian teenagers involved in a terrorist act have also been killed. And as the day ends, the Middle East is on the brink of all-out war. Islamic leaders from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq have issued a joint communiqué calling for the annihilation of Israel. The terrorist organization Da’esh has said a million-man army will march on Israel in three days. Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan have severed diplomatic relations with the Jewish state and put their own armed forces on high alert as a protective measure against mounting civil unrest in their respective countries. Severe rioting has broken out throughout the Muslim world, claiming more than fifteen hundred lives. Overnight in Kuala Lumpur, the American embassy was under siege by more than twenty-five thousand protestors. Malaysian troops fired into the mob to keep the protestors from gaining access to the embassy compound. Sources say more than two hundred people are dead. All across Europe, governments are on high alert for terrorist strikes. And in the last hour, rockets have been launched into Israel from Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria, but there are no reports of casualties as yet. In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Yossi Borstein held a press conference this evening announcing the general mobilization of Israeli forces. All ports, borders, and commercial airspace above Israel have been closed. Mr. Borstein stated in clear terms that if attacked, Israel would respond with every weapon in its arsenal. Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, but is believed to have up to four hundred strategic and tactical nuclear systems. There have been frantic efforts by the United States, Great Britain, and the European Union to defuse the crisis, and a meeting of the UN Security Council is scheduled for later tonight. And from the Vatican, Pope Francis has asked people of all faiths to pray for peace.

  “The crisis began when three Palestinian teenage girls dressed as Israeli students attacked a preschool in the center of the Old City. Two guards and a teacher were killed outright, while eleven children and three more teachers were taken hostage. The school’s CCTV system was used to show the hostages bound together and surrounded by explosive devices. The Palestinian teenagers, who claimed to be from the Arab village of Silwan, demanded the release of prisoners from the Israeli prison at Megiddo and threatened to detonate their bombs if the demand was not met by seventeen hundred hours GMT. The hostage-takers cut the CCTV feed and said there would be no further communication. Israeli Special Forces mounted a counterstrike in the early afternoon, and after a short firefight all the hostages were released unharmed. A government spokesman has confirmed the three hostage-takers are dead.

  “Shortly after the preschool was attacked in the morning, violent clashes erupted near the Wailing Wall when hundreds of right-wing Jewish activists stormed a ramp leading to the compound known as Temple Mount. The area within the compound is revered by Jews and Muslims alike and is under the control of the Waqf, the Islamic trust overseeing Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Jewish activists involved in the clashes claimed they were taking back Temple Mount in retaliation for the kidnapping of Jewish children. It is not clear what happened next, but a fire broke out on the ramp and the flames quickly spread. Nine activists and five Israeli policemen were burned to death. Nineteen more Israelis, including three policemen, sustained serious burn injuries.

  “But it is today’s third event that has taken the region to the brink. The BBC’s Sophie Orr is in Jerusalem and joins us by telephone to talk us through what happened. We must warn viewers that these images are disturbing. Sophie?”

  “Good evening, Will. Exact circumstances sur
rounding what happened on Temple Mount are unclear. Both the Israeli government and the Waqf are not commenting on the details. All we know is what was seen in ninety seconds of video footage first broadcast by French television earlier today. A TF1 cameraman gained access to a high location near Temple Mount to transmit live pictures of the ongoing riot at the Wailing Wall. His footage suddenly pans to the interior of the Temple Mount compound as a man with a backpack is seen running from the north gardens toward the Dome of the Rock. The footage is shaky, and by then smoke from the fire at the Wailing Wall was drifting across Temple Mount, so the man’s identity is unknown. Unconfirmed sources say he was an Israeli activist with the Third Temple Movement. Chasing after the man is a female Israeli soldier with an assault rifle. She appears to be badly wounded but manages to shoot the running man in the legs before he can get anywhere close to the Dome of the Rock. The soldier then shoots the man once in the chest and once in the head, point-blank, as if executing him. Then two more unidentified men with backpacks run into the frame and attack the soldier from behind with knives. Despite being wounded, the Israeli soldier manages to kill one of these men, but the second man stabs her in her throat. As the soldier falls, a man in a trench coat hobbles into the picture. He fires his handgun and kills the soldier’s assailant. He hurries to the backpack, cuts it open with a knife, and appears to disconnect something. Now, he did this with the two other backpacks as well, and an independent munitions consultant on Sky News has said this looks very much like someone defusing a bomb in a desperate and hurried situation. The man then limps to the Israeli soldier and kneels next to her, leaning close to her face. He removes his coat and covers the dead soldier. The footage then pans wildly and stops. TF1 has told the BBC that it was at this point the Israeli police burst onto their live location and shut down the broadcast. But the damage had been done. The shocking footage has been seen around the world, and it set off a firestorm across the Middle East. Earlier today, the President of the United States appeared in the Rose Garden of the White House and pleaded for calm, saying it is important for the world to remember an Israeli soldier lost her life defending an Islamic holy site. The coming hours will tell if the President’s plea has fallen on deaf ears. Will?”

  “Sophie, we are showing the pictures as you talk to us, and they are quite shocking. If this was a plot to destroy the Dome of the Rock, it’s obvious the Israeli soldier and the man in the trench coat, as you call him, were working together. Do we know anything more about him? And does the manner of his dress suggest he is a European?”

  “Will, I spoke with an Israeli police spokesman, who says there is no evidence—”

  “Sophie? Can you hear me, Sophie? We seem to have lost the line with Sophie Orr in Jerusalem, but we’ll try to get her back as soon as we can. She was telling us of the disturbing footage shot on Temple Mount in Jerusalem today. She was telling us there appears to have been an attempt by an Israeli citizen to bomb the Dome of the Rock. Actually, I have just been handed a note advising me that the Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs has announced that all civilian telephone and Internet communications in and out of the country have been suspended until further notice.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  i

  In a dark, silent room. Naked on a concrete floor. His wrists bound together in front of him; no idea where he was or how he got here. He sat up, leaned against a padded wall. Pain flared in his right leg. He touched his thigh, felt the tightly wrapped bandage around it.

  He scanned the dark. Not a speck of light. Images fell through his eyes. When it was over on Temple Mount there was a rush of Israeli Border Police. They knocked him to the ground, tased him with fifty thousand volts, then came a whack to the back of his head. The last thing he saw before lights-out was Chana’s dead body on the ground. She was covered with his coat. He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Please, no.”

  He ran his timeline.

  Eleven goons, not six, taking form at the arch across the courtyard. Each of the goons looking like one of the Third Temple crowd, except for the killing knives in their hands. Each one with a large pack on its back and a body camera strapped to its chest.

  “Which one is the primary?” Chana says.

  “All of them. Don’t fire until they completely materialize.”

  Harper waits until he sees the dead black swell in their eyes.

  “Now,” Harper says.

  Chana lets off three rounds and drops three goons in two seconds; Harper nails goon number four with two rounds to its head. Brains and black blood splatter against Jerusalem stone. The standing goons charge, and Harper puts a round in the lead goon’s body camera. The punch knocks the thing back, and Chana finishes it off with a head shot. The surviving goons stall and sniff the air. Black drool drips from their mouths as they turn to Chana and spread out.

  “They’ve got the scent of your soul,” Harper said.

  “Tell them to come and get it.”

  “They’ll come on their own. Draw them away from the gate. I’ll sort backpacks.”

  Chana eases to the side of the courtyard. The goons prowl after her. Harper flies to the dead goons, slices open their backpacks. Each pack crammed with blocks of Semtex connected to digital timers counting down: 06:46, 06:45, 06:44. Basic kit, no trip wires. Harper pulls the detonators, tosses them away, puts a bullet in each body camera. Back to Chana. The goons whirl around her in a blur, dropping her in a trance. Harper runs, pulls a vial from his kill kit. He hits the ground, slides over the cobblestones under the goons.

  “Cover your eyes.”

  Chana does.

  Harper smashes the vial on the ground.

  “Et facta est lux.”

  There is a blinding flash of blue light. The goons squeal and fall back. Harper flies at one, slices open the goon’s throat, and rams his killing knife deep—crack. The thing goes down, and Chana drills a bullet through its body camera. Harper’s form seizes with pain as a goon’s knife cuts across his right thigh. “Argh!” Harper falls, feels himself being hauled back up to his knees. A blade is set at his throat, there is hissing voice in his ear.

  “I bring you forever death.”

  Harper hears a shot. A bullet from Chana’s rifle rips by his head—whoop, whoop, whoop—it hits the goon in the jaw, blows off half its face. Harper knocks away the goon’s knife, spins around, swings his own knife, opens the goon’s throat. It goes down. Harper presses the barrel of his SIG against the goon’s head.

  “Sod off.”

  Bang.

  He defuses one more bomb.

  Chana screams; Harper turns to her. She’s on her knees now, bleeding from her left arm. She’s taken a bad slice above the elbow and her rifle is on the ground. A goon rises behind her, lifts its knife for the death cut at the back of Chana’s neck. Harper plugs two rounds through the goon’s body camera. The thing staggers back, charges again. Chana scoops up her rifle with her right hand; her left arm dangles from her side. She puts sixty grains of lead between the goon’s eyes, and the back of its head explodes with brains and black blood.

  The ground swells; Jerusalem’s walls shake.

  Sirens, faraway screams; thick smoke, a blackening sky.

  Chana looks at Harper.

  “What is happening?”

  “Time warp didn’t hold. We’re back in real time.”

  Chana looks through the gate to Temple Mount. Three goons running through the gardens and breaking into three different directions. Chana goes after them, stays on the trail of the goon making a straight run for the Dome of the Rock. Harper hobbles after her, gets through the gate, keeps moving. He watches her take down the goon with leg shots and finish it off with a bullet to the head. He sees two goons rushing at her.

  “Chana!”

  Light exploded in the dark room, scorching the rods and cones at the back of Harper’s eyes. He put his hands over his face for long seconds, not wanting to be dragged back to nowtimes. Please, no. When he lowered his hands, he sa
w he was in a nine-by-twelve room. No windows, a small vent, a camera built into the high corner of the wall. It took him a few more seconds to see the door. It had no handle or window, and it blended in with the soundproofing covering the walls and the ceiling. He looked at the cable tie binding his wrists together. Wherever this place is, Harper thought, bad things happen here.

  The door opened and a wall of sound flew in. Footsteps and voices, copper radio traffic and distant sirens. Then came a stocky man with gray hair. He wore an Israeli uniform with an Israeli Military Intelligence tag on his left shoulder and the rank of major general on his epaulets. He was unarmed, but he looked tough enough, even behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Two more soldiers followed, each of them with a Jericho 941 semiautomatic pistol strapped to their belt. One of them carried a wooden stool; the other held a gray wool blanket. In quick moves the stool was set in the middle of the room and Harper was lifted from the concrete floor then dropped on the stool. Pain flared through his leg again.

  “Fuck!”

  The blanket was tossed over Harper’s shoulders and the soldiers left the room. When they closed the door it was quiet again. The general walked across the room, rested his back against the wall, facing Harper. He reached in his breast pocket, took out a pack of American-made fags and a Zippo lighter bearing the ensign of the Israeli Paratrooper regiment. He went through the ritual of lighting up. He inhaled deeply and exhaled a cloud of smoke, all the while staring at Harper.

  “What did you say to her?”

  The general spoke with an Israeli accent of East European descent from the sound of it. Lithuania maybe.

  “Sorry?”

  “What did you say to Major Chana Amini as she lay dying on Temple Mount?”

  Harper got a read on the general’s eyes; they were clear. Harper ran rules and regs: It had always been forbidden to reveal truths of the soul to locals. He looked at the bioskin gloves on his hands. But those days are gone from us. These days in the Holy Land the blind lead the blind.

  Harper cleared his throat. “I told her to look into my eyes and listen to the sound of my voice. I told her it doesn’t end for her kind, I told her it never ends. I told her, ‘C’est le guet, il a sonné l’heure.’”