by Elik Katzav
That smile… this was the smile I smiled back at despite all the flashing warning signs in my head.
This camaraderie, unfolding in the car during stakeouts, brings people so close. Long conversations to break the silence and not fall asleep, the heat coming from the body right next to your own, hands brushing up in that narrow space. The intimacy that ensues is of a dangerous kind.
And then it happened. After a mass suicide of an entire cult who figured they were ushering in the coming of redemption by taking their own lives, we found ourselves coming in to work, very close to one another, sharing the pain we’d witnessed only a few hours earlier, the kind of pain someone on the outside would never understand. Then came flittering touches, and she looked at me with those sad, blue eyes of hers and kissed me.
This was a kiss of release, a kiss seeking to know someone was there, by her side, saying all will be well. A kiss born out of pain.
I kissed her back, of course. I too had my own need for intimacy, but when we ceased kissing her hand began to move over my chest, ever so closely. I had to pull her hand away.
Nothing real could develop between us because we’re working together. This was hardly any news to her, but I still said it. She pulled back from me and went over to her desk. She gave me a bitter smile as she turned towards me and quoted one of her favorite movies, Speed, ‘Relationships that start under intense circumstances, they never last.’
I meet Na’ama at Tishreen in Nazareth. She shows up dressed as a tourist from Tel Aviv, complete with huge sunglasses, which she raises to keep her fair hair up as she sits down in her designer jeans and an “I’m-on-tour-but-still-stylish” shirt. Tishreen is a famous restaurant all the Tel Avivians who come up north to Nazareth frequent, making it packed with non-locals, so it’s just the place you wanna be lost in the crowd in and not be observed or gawked at.
- You’re in luck. It was smart of you to leave your pumps behind. They’re so bad in those narrow market alleys, especially if we are on the go.
“Yeah, but you also know I’m practically invisible without them, which is also right on the money,” she replied, her mouth full of knafeh.
“To be honest, I am actually glad I didn’t get this mission. After a month of eating like this, I would have returned to Tel Aviv twice my normal size.”
I smiled at her.
- It takes discipline. Take me, for instance. I’m as steady as a rock when it comes to desserts.
“I don’t know about that,” Na’ama leans over from her chair and gives me the once over. “From where I’m looking, your belly seems to have rounded up a bit on the edges.”
- Funny.
I pat my belly unconsciously.
- We’ll see who’s going to start huffing and puffing first during our stakeout today.
Na’ama and I are on the move. We found this priest in plain clothes leaving some store in the market. He gets in this packed minivan, which seems to be making its way out of the city, and we’re off.
I use the time we’re in the car pursuing him to catch Na’ama up on the case. She’s nodding in attention, focused on driving as well as keeping a distance from the minivan up ahead. When I complete my short update, she sighs.
- What is it?
“Oh, trouble with guys. I don’t think this is something you’ll understand.”
- Why not?
I smile because this category doesn’t really apply, and also because I haven’t been in a relationship for nearly a year now.
Ever since that kiss we shared, Na’ama took to keeping me up to date about every affair she had with men. I guess this is her coping mechanism with another rejection, or is it that she relished watching me turn red at her stories?
She begins updating me about this new guy in her life she used to have the hots for, this hot shot investigator from a hot shot unit, she’s cooling off him, now that he’s talking too much about her being stuck at the CCS—which leads him to believe she’s got no ambitions of her own.
“Those who haven’t walked a mile in our shoes could never understand us,” she concludes. “It takes someone like us to really figure us out.” She turns her eyes from the road and glances at my small smirk.
After about twenty minutes on the main road, the minivan turns to a rural pathway. Na’ama continues along the main road and passes the turn before stopping by the side of the road.
We cannot go after them because we do not want to turn our headlights on and we’re not familiar with the terrain well enough to drive in the dark. The map says the pathway leads to a deserted church, now known as “Bishop’s Palace”, right in front of Mount Precipice, right over the road with the new tunnels. The church itself has been abandoned for over a century now, so what the heck are those priests looking for in the middle of the night?
Na’ama finds a relatively secluded spot, fairly concealed from the road, so we leave the car there and make the rest of the way on foot, going up the dirt road. After few dozens of yards, you can already hear crickets and other bugs all around us, along with the larger nocturnal creatures further away. Na’ama swears softly, seeing as she has never been a fan of the great outdoors. Given the choice between sleeping under the stars and the shabbiest fleabag motel with a roof over your head, you can easily guess what she’ll go for. The harmony with nature is broken every now and then by the sound of the vehicles passing by on the main road behind us, but the further we get, the quieter it gets.
After walking in the dark for about twenty minutes, with only the moon to guide us, Na’ama motions me to stop.
A few yards ahead, we see the old deserted church, right next to a big tree.
We proceed in the shadows for another twenty yards or so in the direction of the ruins, but we stop in our tracks when we notice some movement outside the building. A small light flashes near someone’s head. Then, a red light flickers where the flash had just occurred. Someone’s out for a cigarette, standing by the deserted church. We move along the outskirts of the compound. The moon shines over the walls but this tells us nothing about the goings-on inside. The minivan is parked on the other side of the building, hidden from the view of anyone coming up the main road or over the hill we came up, so anyone taking this route is unaware of the parked vehicle, but the person at the entrance to the old church can see anyone arriving before they would even know he’s there.
Within the peace and quiet of the night, there’s an almost untraceable white noise, akin to the hushed hum of a distant engine. We circle the entire building slowly, keeping close to the shadows, but we have yet to find a spot we can use to enter it without drawing attention to ourselves. We pinpoint the sound as coming from the main entrance—at least that’s where we hear it coming from.
Our position is very tough in a stakeout of this kind. Waiting is a real drag and the open terrain around us adds further difficulties to an already difficult mission, but the sense of frustration at being so close yet still being unable to see or hear what’s happening inside is the worst thing about it. After about an hour, it looks like something’s up when a figure pushing a wheelbarrow comes out of the ruins and reaches the back of the minivan. This figure and the smoking guard open the back doors and load the car with what looks like sacks.
The minivan screeches with each sack. “Either this car really needs some oiling, or this stuff is really heavy,” Na’ama whispers to me.
The figure returns into the church with the empty wheelbarrow, only to return an hour later with another pushcart, which he empties, into the minivan. This dance of the wheelbarrows resumes every hour until about three o’clock at night. After the last wheelbarrow, additional people leave the ruin, eight men in total, including the guard at the entrance. They take the wheelbarrow and some additional stuff we can’t make out in the dark and carry everything into the minivan. But still, they don’t leave the compound. I feel something’s about to happen and
then, when Na’ama whispers, “They’re waiting for something—or someone,” we hear another vehicle approaching up the hill.
The driver of the pickup truck that had just arrived goes over to the men who are standing in waiting. We cannot make out a word they’re saying. When they’re done, four of the men climb into the pickup with him and sit, and the others go back to the minivan, which then turns and follows the pickup down the hill.
When both vehicles disappear from sight and are no longer heard in the distance, we go up to the deserted church. “We should have followed them,” Na’ama says, and I agree. “Let’s wait for them down below tomorrow night and see where they’re headed.”
- Would you like to go first into the abandoned church? I smirk.
“You’re such a gentleman when danger is involved,” she laughs back.
- But of course. A gentleman through and through.
I raise my arms in a gesture of self-defense.
We are welcomed by an iron gate and examine this lock, which is gonna make our night that much more complicated.
“So, shall we pick the lock?”
- I can sure try.
Na’ama lifts her flashlight away from the lock towards my face. “Seriously?”
- You know, people pick up all sorts of skills along the way. Shrugging, I add, I bet you too have a skill or two I’m not aware of.
“I need to know where you acquired this know-how.”
- It isn’t such a big deal, you know. It’s only a lock. It would be so much more interesting if this was a safe.
Lifting her torch to my face again, she reiterates, “Are you for real?”
A twist to the right, a twist to the left, a jiggle with the fine metal wires, and presto, that wonderful click sound as the padlock surrenders.
- Great, it didn’t break this time.
Na’ama taps me lightly between my shoulders. “Does it usually break? Cuz you should have said so right up front, before messing with it, so we could figure out something else.”
- Just kidding.
I open the gate for her and smile as I motion her to enter the dark ruin first.
We use our flashlights to light the inside of the building. Each wall has high windows. Seems completely deserted. The church platform, where the altar used to stand, lays in the center, surrounded by the stone pews the faithful used to congregate at.
The hall itself is pretty small, with thick layers of dust attesting it hasn’t been in use for quite some time.
“We should return by the light of day,” says Na’ama.
- You’re right. We won’t find anything in this darkness and it’s too dangerous to wait here till the sun comes up.
“Hang on,” Na’ama stands by the platform and shines her torch over the floor.
I join her as she bends over to it and examines her beam of light. A piece of burlap sack. Na’ama reaches for it and pulls, but it remains stuck. I give it a go too, but it remains stuck under the platform.
Chapter 3
The following morning, I return to work at the church as usual, but by noon, I ask to leave early on account of I’m not feeling well.
I change into another outfit in my rented room and head out to meet Na’ama, who, unlike me, got a chance to sleep for a few hours. She already has her wide-brim sun hat and large sunglasses on, both of which hide her face. That’s her tourist disguise, which she already tried, before, and highly effectively too.
When we’re together, she’s the excited tourist in sunny Holy Land and I’m the Israeli friend she met here. Twenty minutes later, we arrive at the dirt road. The way up is riddled with potholes and proves almost insurmountable for her rental car, but we make it to the church eventually, not without some effort.
The hill overlooks impressive vistas, including the deserted quarry on Mount Precipice. From this observation point, it would seem some reconstruction work has begun on the quarry; even though it was announced a few months ago, it seems to be going very slow.
Below the mountain, a few hundred yards right under our feet, is the underground road. The Valley of Jezreel lays further below, but from this angle, we can only see a very small part of it.
Na’ama is taking pics of the landscape, the church, and me. A herd of goats passes through the church compound and along the ridge. She draws closer and asks me to take her pic with the mountain background. She leans over and tells me the shepherd with the sheep has been watching us closely from the moment we got out of the car.
- Goats.
I grin at her.
- Besides, he’s a 21st century goat herder, complete with a cell phone, which he’s been glued to the whole time since he spotted us.
I take several pics of Na’ama, with the mountain and the whole environment set in the background.
The goat herder rises from his position under the tree overlooking the ruin and gets closer to us from the moment I begin to take pics of the church. I return the camera to Na’ama for her to take my pic and both of us proceed to stand in church entry way. I walk over to the iron gate. Sunlight fills the inner hall, coming through the bars and the tall windows. Looks the same as what we’d seen at night with the aid of our flashlights.
The church is in bad shape. Apart from the stone pews and the raised platform there seems to be nothing else there.
“You should be careful in a place like this,” the goat herder catches up with us.
I turn towards him and put a beaming smile on.
- Really? Why? There’s nothing here.
“Dangerous here. Falling apart. Anything can go to break here,” the goat herder says in broken English, answering my sheepish question. His Arabic accent is unmistakable.
He looks at least forty, but his face is so scorched from the sun he might be younger. He’s wearing a dirty pair of jeans and a shirt that used to be green. His sleeves are folded all the way up to his elbows. He has a blue hat with folds, where he keeps a cigarette box.
His sandals look very old. His feet are so dusty, they’re as white as the local sand.
“Dangerous here. Don’t stay here,” he implores in a tone that conveys little success with other people. I hope he’s more persuasive telling his goats to move along.
He points to the gallery ceiling. “Falling on your head, this.”
I ignore his warning and proceed.
- Tell me, is there a way to get in? My friend here is from America. She’d really love to get a selfie inside.
I smile and wink at him.
His dark face seems to be turning pale. “No. Getting in very dangerous. Everything may be falling on you,” he’s like a broken record.
Na’ama is acting as though she cannot understand why she cannot go inside. She returns to the car and pulls out a big picnic basket-looking hamper from the back seat, brings it over right behind me at the gallery and begins to lay the contents out: the blanket, then the cutlery, the food and the bottle of wine.
The goat herder is staring at her. He returns to his senses when she lifts the bottle. “Danger here. No sitting.”
He seems to be freaking out for real.
“What is he saying? Why is he so angry?” Na’ama asks, a bit impatient.
“Can we have our lunch now?” She adds in a sweeter tone, waiving the bottle at me.
The herder rises to his feet and makes a last-ditch attempt.
“No sit there. No good. Look there, nice view there, Mountain of Precipice. You go,” he points to the mountain. He keeps panting and pointing.
“Here thorns, sand… tell her snakes here! Snakes!!!” His voice grows louder, feeling he’s come up with the best excuse to drive us away from there.
- There are no snakes here.
I make a dismissive gesture.
- It isn’t warm enough for snakes. Are you absolutely sure there’s no way to
enter the church, only for a little bit?
He shakes his head and begins to mutter incomprehensibly in Arabic as he makes his way back to the tree and his goats. When he thinks he’s far enough, I notice him pulling out his mobile again. He takes another look at us, shakes his head again and moves further away from us, his face still pressed against his phone.
I return to the gallery and sit beside Na’ama.
- The food you’ve brought looks good.
She’s still not smiling, “Is he gone?”
- Yeah, at least for now. He’s still sitting there, looking in our direction.
“He’s probably here to keep unwanted visitors from entering the church. I don’t know who he’s texting with. I just hope they decide we’re not that dangerous, or else he’ll be more set on driving us away.” She gives me one of her looks.
I take another peek at the goat herder.
- I don’t think we’ll get a chance to make it inside.
“Maybe not,” Na’ama smiles, content. “But we could still have a look at what they’re doing inside,” she points at the cross above the door.
“I put a finger cam at the bottom of the cross in order to capture the inside of the church while your buddy was moving away from us. It’s a high-def camera especially designed for low-light environment, like at night, complete with motion detection, so it will only take pictures when there’s some movement in there. Problem is, we’ll have to go back for it tomorrow.”
I grin at her.
- It’s hardly standard issue. Where did you get it?
“You’re not the only one with secrets, Mr. pick-locks. Besides, you know I’m always up for anything that will help me wrap things up quickly,” she smiles again.
