The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  The general smoked. “Not that I understand the English any better, but the last part was French.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do these words mean?”

  “They mean, ‘This is the watcher, this is the hour.’”

  “Is it a prayer?”

  “No, it’s not a prayer.”

  “Then why did you say these words to Major Amini as she died?”

  Harper flashed Chana’s amber-colored eyes. She was trying to stay with him, but she was slipping away. He opened his irises, flooded her eyes with light . . . but she was already gone.

  Harper blinked and looked at the stocky man in olive green. “It’s a translation of ancient words of comfort.”

  “From where? What is the root language.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The general smoked. “The wound is not serious.”

  “Sorry?”

  The general pointed to Harper’s thigh. “Where you were stabbed. It is not critical, but I’m sure it is painful. I chose not to give you any pain medication. For the moment I thought it best if you remained clear in the head. We were not sure about the gloves on your hands, so we left them. We took X-rays and found gashes on your palms. From a previous wounding, I take it. The gloves are an exceptionally advanced medical technology. May I ask where it was done? I only ask because I assume it was done by the same people who made sure there is no trace of your identity in any fingerprint or facial recognition database anywhere in the world. Do you even have a name?”

  Harper did not answer.

  The general walked in a wide circle around the room.

  “Major Amini had a good way with people, no matter their religion or race. She spoke eleven languages fluently. She worked alone, apart from the rest of the intelligence section. She kept an office next to the boiler in the basement. She ran a network of Palestinians in the Old City. ‘Al the’ab,’ she called them. It is Arabic for ‘the wolves.’ She never told me their names, only that they wanted to protect Jerusalem from evil as much as she did. She said those very words to me once. Most officers here did not appreciate her. They found her odd and could not understand why I kept her on. The fact is she knew more about the history of this city than anyone I know. She had an uncanny ability to put intelligence in a historical context. We would share a bowl of hummus for lunch sometimes. She would tell me stories full with visions. My grandmother often said it is a wise man who listens to a woman of vision, and our history has many of them. Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and Anna.”

  Harper ran the women’s names. “Those are the names of prophets from the Bible.”

  “True.”

  “Are you telling me Chana Amini was a prophet?”

  The general was at Harper’s back now and stopped. He did not answer the question. Harper listened to him smoke, exhale, then continue his slow walk around the room.

  “She had two daughters, you know. Identical twins. They are ten years old.”

  “She told me.”

  “Really? In our business we have a practice of not revealing personal information to strangers.”

  Harper pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “What will happen to them? Her daughters?”

  The general came full circle now. He retook his position against the wall facing Harper. He smoked again.

  “Her husband died of lung cancer six years ago, and both her parents are dead. But she has, or had, an identical twin sister. Her name is Batya. She paints desert landscapes, very well known in Israel and New York. Major Amini told me identical twins ran in the family like an old joke. Chana and Batya were close. They lived in the same building in the German Colony. The daughters are with the sister now, sitting shiva. I was there before I came here. I am curious: When did Major Amini tell you about her daughters?”

  “Just before the job at the courtyard near Lions’ Gate.”

  “The job?”

  “Stopping the attack on the Dome of the Rock.”

  The general nodded. “Stopping the attack, yes. Messy, wasn’t it?” he said.

  “It always is. Sometimes less than others.”

  “But this was not one of the lesser times.”

  “No.”

  The general tapped a long ash from his smoke. Harper watched it fall to the concrete floor.

  “Do you know what is happening in our world tonight?” the general said.

  “How would I? I’ve been locked up in here.”

  “Yes, you have, so I will tell you. Six million Jews living within Israel are facing annihilation at the hands of tens of millions of Muslims who believe God has commanded them to annihilate Israel and wipe Jews from the face of the earth. Think about it. Less than a hundred years ago, six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. How can it be that the world is burdened with this hideous number again? If I were a religious man I might say God is punishing us for our sins. After all, in the eyes of some of our best friends, we have committed many sins in Gaza and the West Bank. But I am not a religious man, I am a realist. And this is reality: Times have changed since the last time fanatics tried to annihilate the Jewish people. Right now Israeli rockets, jets, and submarines are being armed with nuclear-tipped munitions. One word from the Prime Minister, and Tehran or Baghdad or Damascus will disappear and six million Jews will have annihilated tens of millions of Muslims in the blink of an eye. And it is not just the Middle East. In America, tens of thousands of Christians are praying in their churches; not for peace but for the end of time. I saw it on CNN this afternoon. And Fox News conducted a poll of its viewers. Seventy-five percent believe the end of the world is at hand. Fifty-nine percent of those people think this is a good thing. Can you imagine it?”

  “Yes, actually,” Harper said.

  The general stared at him. After a moment he shook his head and smiled a little.

  “You know, when Major Amini told me about a joint mission with someone she only identified as ‘the stranger,’ I did not know what to think. But as I said, she was a very good storyteller, so I gave her the go-ahead. Besides, she said if you turned out to be a false prophet then you would be disappeared. That was her specialty: tracking down false prophets and making them disappear. Do you know what she told me to really convince me to allow her to go ahead? She said she had received solid intelligence that your enemies were the enemies of this ancient land. She said if this was true, then your enemies were our enemies.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Harper said.

  “But Major Amini was not your friend, was she?”

  Harper pulled his blanket tighter. “I don’t follow you.”

  “She went off radar seventy-two hours ago, chasing after one of her false prophets. Then strange things happened. The power outage at Allenby Bridge, for one. That is how you got in, isn’t it? And she helped you.”

  “She wasn’t a traitor, if that’s what you think.”

  “I do not think she was a traitor. I think she was used.”

  “I still don’t follow you.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, asshole. I have eight bodies at Lions’ Gate and three on Temple Mount with no fingerprints. And the three terrorists at the preschool from Silwan? Bullshit. I know every Palestinian in Silwan and I have never seen those girls before. I went to the morgue to check. None of the girls had fingerprints, either. Then I checked the burned corpses from the Wailing Wall. Guess what? Two corpses with no fingerprints. Do I need to mention the black blood, or do you get the fucking picture?”

  Harper gave it ten seconds.

  “You forgot the bomber in West Jerusalem a few days ago, General. The bomb killed a Swiss newspaper reporter and an Israeli who worked with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The bomber had no prints,” Harper said.

  The general gave it five.

  “I did not forget about him. I only wished you to prove my point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Major Amini is dead because of you.”

  Harper nodded. “You’re right.” />
  The general dropped his cigarette on the concrete floor and stepped on it. “So, what should I do with you? Kill you? Throw you in a hole so deep no one would ever find you? Or should I let you make a phone call to your superiors to clear up the situation?”

  Harper laughed quietly to himself.

  “Something is funny?” the general said.

  Harper looked at him. “I wouldn’t know how to call.”

  “You do not know how to use a telephone?”

  “I don’t know any numbers to call. They always call me.”

  “I see,” the general said. He reached to his back, pulled a small combat knife from inside his belt. He walked toward Harper. “Hold out your hands.”

  Harper did. The general cut the cable tie binding Harper’s wrists, then resheathed the knife. He looked up at the camera in the high corner and snapped his fingers. He went back to his wall, did not speak. Ten seconds later, the cell door opened. A soldier walked in carrying Harper’s clothes and two cell phones. The phones he handed to the general; the clothes he gave to Harper. He took two steps back and stood with his hand resting on his sidearm, watching Harper with a bitter glare.

  “Leave us, Seren,” the general said.

  He waited for the officer to exit and close the door. The general lit another smoke, looked at Harper.

  “Your trench coat was badly stained with her blood. It was dealt with according to Jewish religious practices. The rest of your clothes were examined for traces of her blood, found clear, then cleaned. Dress quickly.”

  Harper wondered about his weapons, but decided it would be a wasted question. He stood, keeping the blanket around his shoulders as he dressed in his boxers and trousers. He sat on the stool, put on his socks and shoes. He stood again, dropped the blanket, put on his shirt and sports coat, shoved his still-knotted regimental tie in the pocket of his coat. He tapped his pen pocket; the matchbox with the dented five-franc coin was still there. Harper looked at the general.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The general held up one of the cell phones. There was dried blood on it.

  “This is Major Amini’s encrypted cell phone,” the general said. “Like everyone in MI, her calls were recorded by an agency of the Israeli security services. Every communication on this phone in the last seventy hours has vanished. There is not a trace of a call or text message to her or from her anywhere in our system. Our computer experts called it an unexplained glitch. That would be the second unexplained glitch in twenty-four hours.”

  “It happens.”

  “Yes, that is what I was told by the head of signals, right before I ordered him to shut down Israel’s links to the outside world.”

  He pulled another cell phone from his other pocket, swiped the screen.

  “This evening, more than five hours after Major Amini was buried, I received an encrypted message from her. Do you know when I received it? Two minutes after I left the Prime Minister’s office to come here. Until today Israel could hack any computer in the world, and believe me, no one could hack us. But Allenby Bridge and these two phones tell me someone has breached our firewall. That someone used that power to make sure Major Amini’s last words were delivered to me at a moment of their choosing, presumably when it would have the greatest impact. Which would be now. You see, I was coming here to torture you until you explained things. Her message saved you from that fate.”

  For a second Harper didn’t know what the hell the general was talking about. Then he flashed the race through the Old City. Dropping off the reliquary box with the old Arab man, running again . . . Chana pulls her cell phone, types a text as she runs. The general was right; Inspector Gobet was pulling strings as only he knew how.

  “What’s the message?” Harper said.

  The general swiped the screen of his phone, turned it around, and held it out for Harper to see.

  “Do you know what these words mean?”

  Harper read the Hebrew script.

  .

  “It says: ‘Jerusalem falling. If I die, throw the stranger to the wolves.’ More or less.”

  The general shook his head. “‘Means’ and ‘says’ are two different things. You would not make a good Israeli intelligence officer. Do not bother to apply.”

  “Sorry?”

  “These words mean the sons of darkness have brought the world to the eve of destruction and that you may be the only person to stop it. Though if I were a betting man, I would say you are already too late.”

  ii

  In the back of an Israeli jeep, speeding along a four-lane thoroughfare through West Jerusalem. Two soldiers up front: one behind the wheel, one riding shotgun. Both of them wearing Israeli MI tags on their blue jackets. The one riding shotgun was the same officer who’d drilled Harper with a bitter glare. Just now he was following Major General Somebody’s orders to throw the stranger to the wolves.

  Harper looked out the side window. The world ripped by in a rain-soaked haze at first, then he could see it. Rows of apartment buildings, lights burning in windows. But except for army jeeps and police vehicles, the streets were devoid of life. The driver made a right and went down a hill, and they came to a traffic circle. There was a small mosque across the road. Even with the jeep’s windows closed the Muslim call to prayer was blaring. The driver turned right, drove by a joint called the American Colony Hotel. Looked swell. The kind of place that would have a decent bar. A drink would go down well at the moment, Harper thought. Too bad about the end of the world. Then he was in a neighborhood of rough-looking buildings, then he was passing piles of trash in the street where scrawny cats clawed for food. The driver made a fast left. There was something called the Tomb of the Kings on the left and Saint George’s Cathedral on the right. Harper looked for the cathedral but could not see it through the rain. Then came two Israeli government buildings protected by riot-proof fences. There were squads of Israeli Border Police behind the fences. Rocks and broken glass in the street said the coppers had had a tough day. Harper saw a sign on a wall: SALAH AD-DIN STREET. The street was lined with shuttered shops. All the signs above the doors were in Arabic. There were stones and sticks and rubble everywhere. Harper saw fresh graffiti on a wall in Arabic: Islam is the solution! Then there was a long line of Israeli Army jeeps and police cars. At the end of the street Harper saw the walls of the Old City across another traffic circle. He realized that he had returned to the border of nowtimes and beforetimes. Then another bunkered government building on the corner. An entire company of Border Police mustered outside. The building was an Israeli cop shop, and it looked like it had been used as target practice for most of the day. Stones, steel bars, and broken glass lay scattered at the policemen’s feet; there were scorch marks on the walls from Molotov cocktails. Like a bloody combat outpost in Afghanistan, boyo.

  “Swell,” Harper said.

  The jeep slowed, rounded the circle, and pulled onto the pavement beneath the city walls. The soldier riding shotgun got out of the jeep and told Harper to do the same. He walked to an open arch in the wall; Harper limped after him.

  “You go through there,” the soldier said.

  “And do what?”

  “Maybe one of Major Amini’s wolves will find you. Good luck. This is the roughest end of the Muslim Quarter. There are a lot of angry Palestinians inside who would love to kill a Jew today. But frankly speaking, any Westerner would do. There are also a few hundred Israeli settlers living in the Arab Quarter. They are armed, and tonight, they are very dangerous. They could mistake you for someone they want dead.”

  The soldier pointed to the hundreds of kitted-up Border Police gathered across the street. They were attaching extensions to the barrels of their M16s.

  “Over there the Border Police are fixing their rifles to fire rubber-coated bullets. As soon as they get the order, they’re going into the Muslim Quarter. Here, through Lions’ Gate and Damascus Gate. The PM is under pressure from the Americans to keep our jets on the ground. He’s also un
der pressure from radical nationalists in his cabinet. And they want the Old City locked down and all Arabs confined to their homes as a show of force. It is going to go to shit in there.”

  Harper checked the kitted-up cops across the road. They were securing their helmets, lowering thick plastic face shields.

  “Any clues on getting myself found?” Harper said.

  The soldier shrugged mockingly. “None of us have seen one of Major Amini’s wolves in the Old City. It always sounded like bullshit to me. No one but the general listened to her stories. Who knows? Perhaps the general knows how bad it’s going to get, so he’ll try anything. Personally, I was surprised he let you go. I would have put a bullet in your head. We don’t have time for bullshit. We have a war to fight.”

  Harper looked at the gate. It was different from the other gates he had seen in the city walls. This gate was smaller, darker. The soldier was already heading for the jeep.

  “Hang on,” Harper called.

  The soldier stopped, looked back.

  “Seeing as you didn’t shoot me, maybe you could answer a question. Does this gate have a name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Everything matters in this place, doesn’t it?”

  The soldier looked at the gate. “Arabs call it Flower Gate, Jews call it Herod’s Gate.”

  If Harper had the energy, he would have laughed himself silly.

  “Which one? The Great or Antipas?”

  “Antipas,” the soldier said.

  The soldier jumped in the jeep. The driver looped around the traffic circle and headed for West Jerusalem. As Harper limped toward the Gate of Herod Antipas, a line dropped into his head from Luke’s Gospel: Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad; for he had desired for a long time to see him.

  “Here we go.”

  Harper stepped through, keeping his eyes on the uneven cobblestones, checking the shadows. Inside the gate he came to a narrow, wet lane. He went left till it rounded south. Farther on was a fenced-in compound with an Israeli flag hanging from coils of razor wire. Security spotlights flooded the lane, and security cameras watched everything that moved. All that was missing was the sign on the fence: ARABS OUT OF JERUSALEM!