The Tears of Dogs
That night Decker and Tom stayed at the Rosens' home. They were invited to stay during their entire six week stint in Israel, but both men felt that would be an imposition. Besides, NewsWorld had already made arrangements for them and they said it was best not to let the company get out of the habit of paying the bill.
Decker had trouble sleeping that night. During the day he had catnapped at every opportunity, so sleep now seemed to lose its priority. He thought of home. It was nearly midnight in Israel. He wasn't sure what time it was in Washington, but decided that late or early, Elizabeth would appreciate the call. Walking quietly toward the kitchen to use the phone, he stopped dead in his tracks when he heard hushed voices and saw a light. At first he thought he might be imagining it, and then he became concerned that intruders might be in the house. As he stood motionless it became clear that one of the voices was Joshua Rosen and another was Liana, but there were others: two or three men. By the time Decker realized that there was no danger, his reporter's instincts had taken over. Later the guilt of spying on his hosts would eat at his conscience, but for right now he let curiosity rule.
"Don't you understand?" said one of the men. "We must not let cost stop us. God will provide what we cannot."
"Of course," responded Joshua Rosen, "but we must not foolishly rush into this unprepared. If this is the task God has set before us, we must begin it, but not haphazardly. When God told Noah to build the Ark, He provided adequate time for its completion. If we are faithful, God will not allow the need to arise before the answer is provided."
"Yes!" responded the first man with undiminished zeal. "But Petra must be protected!"
"Yes, yes," said Rosen, "Liana and I agree, Petra must be protected. All we are saying is that cost must be considered – not as an issue in whether to proceed, but rather to allow us to know how to proceed, as well as how much we must raise. We are not a large group, you know."
"How well I know it!" the man responded.
"How are things progressing in getting the permits to obtain the equipment from America?" asked Rosen.
This time another man answered. "I'm having a little trouble from some of my fellow Knesset members. Most trust me implicitly in these matters, but a few of the opposition members are constantly watching over my shoulder and have caused some delays."
"But you will be able to do it?" asked the first man.
"Yes," the other responded. "I think so."
"Good. Then, if there is no other new information," said another man with an unusually rich and measured voice, "let us plan to meet again after the Shabbat two weeks hence." Clearly this was the voice of the group's leader. "In the meantime, Joshua, continue your design work; James, continue to arrange for the permits; and Elias, please work with Joshua to determine the costs. I will continue to speak to those of our number from around the world who believe as we do that Petra must be protected, so that we can raise the necessary funding."
"Yes, of course, Rabbi," answered at least two of the participants, respectfully.
As the meeting broke up Decker quietly crept back to his room. He would call Elizabeth later.
Jerusalem
The next morning Decker and Tom went to the Jerusalem Ramada Renaissance Hotel, which was serving as the temporary Middle East headquarters of NewsWorld Magazine. The office was nothing more than a hotel room with a southern view of the old city of Jerusalem and an adjoining room for the correspondents to sleep in. The room stank of stale cigarettes which lay in a half-dozen overfull ashtrays around the room. It had apparently been some time since the trash had been taken out. A laptop computer and a small printer sat on a table, along with several crumpled sheets of paper, and a day-old cup of coffee.
"Nice place you've got here," Decker said dryly as he surveyed the condition of the room. "What's the matter, no room service?"
"Better get used to it," responded lead reporter Hank Asher.
"Why, what's going on?"
"Most of Israel's service workers are Palestinians," answered Bill Dean, the other News World reporter. "When the protests started four months ago they all refused to go to work. This is the result."
"It was the same back in the late eighties and early nineties during the last major episode of this never-ending battle," continued Asher, as he took another drag from his cigarette.
At that moment the phone rang and Asher answered it. "When?" he asked the caller after a moment. "Are you sure?" Hank Asher hung up the phone and grabbed his camera bag while the other three men moved instinctively toward the door. "I hope you guys ate your Wheaties this morning," Asher said. "This looks like a big one."
The four men crammed into a small car and sped off. "Where are we going?" asked Decker.
"Jabaliva, on the outskirts of Gaza City," answered Asher. "There's a major riot in progress. If my source is correct, there may be as many as several thousand Palestinians involved. Israeli security has been using rubber bullets so far, but with that many people throwing rocks and fire bombs, there's no telling what will happen."
"What's going on?" asked Tom. "Why so many?"
"Don't know," answered Asher. "So far the riots have been scattered and limited to a few dozen Palestinians at any one time. This is very unusual."
When they arrived near the site of the riot, the road had been roped off by Israeli security forces. Asher pulled the car to the checkpost and showed the soldier his press credentials. A moment later they parked the car within a hundred yards of the riot and Asher and Dean put large "PRESS" signs in their front, side and rear windows. "Most of the time they won't bother press vehicles," Dean explained as Tom and Decker looked on.
As they approached the rioting, the size of the crowds became clear. Asher's source had been right about the number. The Israeli security forces had broken the Palestinians into six or eight smaller groups. From the direction of each of the groups, the sounds of breaking glass and the pop of rubber bullets being fired by Israeli soldiers could be heard above the anti-Israeli shouts and chants. Decker and Tom split off from Dean and Asher to cover a larger area. Several of the groups were moving slowly in the direction of Gaza City, and houses and shacks now gave way to larger buildings with shops protected by steel bars and garage-door type retractable metal fronts.
Decker and Tom got as close to one of the crowds as they could and then decided to try to circle around behind them. This required the pair to swing wide some five blocks and approach from the side of the conflagration.
Still two blocks from the riot, Decker's pulse suddenly quickened as the pop of rifles firing rubber bullets was replaced by a far more familiar but deadly sound, which Decker recognized from his time in Vietnam as the crack of live ammunition. At first there were just a few shots, but the number grew. The sound echoed around them in the distance; then Decker realized that what he was hearing was not an echo. From the streets around them, in every direction, hundreds of shots were being fired. Decker's first response was to look for cover, but that same reporter's curiosity which sometimes caused him to do things he wasn't proud of, now drove him on toward the conflict. Tom readied his camera for the scene that awaited them. Then suddenly the guns were silent and the streets were filled instead with sounds of weeping and cries of pain. On the street before them, more than fifty Palestinians lay dead or wounded. Above the cries, an order went out and was repeated to unload live ammunition and to reload rubber bullets. Israeli soldiers ran from storefront to storefront, routing any Palestinians they found huddled together. Showing some mercy, they ignored those individuals in the street aiding the fallen.
Near where Decker stood, a young boy, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, held the head of a dead man in his arms. As Decker watched, an Israeli soldier came near the boy. He was staggering and bleeding heavily from a rock-inflicted wound above his right eye. In anger and grief the boy abandoned caution and reached for the first thing he could find: a brick, broken in half, with corners rounded from being thrown so many times already.
The soldier seemed dazed and unaware of the boy until he was only a few yards away. Through his tears the boy hurled the brick with very poor aim at the soldier, hitting him in the right shin, which sent him into a fit of pain. Grasping his leg and seeing the boy running away, he raised his rifle. With blood dripping from the wound above his eye, he took aim. As he did, the boy approached the corner of the building where Decker was standing. Decker reached out and grabbed the boy, pulling him from harm's way just as a bullet whizzed by. The sound of the shot made it clear to both Decker and to the Israeli soldier that he had fired live ammunition. In his dazed state he had failed to respond to the order to reload rubber bullets.
Decker held tightly to the boy, who was struggling to get away. After a moment he stopped fighting. The soldier did not pursue the boy. Soon the riot was over. All that was left was to count the casualties, clean up, and start over.
Decker and Tom asked the boy, who spoke some English, where he lived. The boy responded that he was from Jenin, a town several miles from Jabaliva and Gaza City. Apparently the riot had been an organized effort which brought Palestinians in from towns throughout Israel. Decker told the boy that they would take him back to his home in Jenin.
Tom continued taking pictures of the destruction while Decker carried the boy piggyback along the route the riot had followed. When they arrived at the car, Dean and Asher were waiting for them.
"What do you have there?" asked Asher.
"A witness," answered Decker. "He lives in Jenin. He was recruited to come here today for the riot. That's how they managed to stir up such a large crowd: they recruited extras from outside. If we take the boy home we might be able to get a lead on who the organizers were." It was a long shot, but Decker didn't want to have to depend on Asher's generosity to help get the boy home.
The previously crowded car now felt like the Washington subway at rush hour. The boy did his best to direct the Americans to his home, and after losing about forty minutes to bad directions, they finally stopped in front of his cement slab house. Decker and Tom went to the door with the boy and deposited him with his mother. The boy hugged her around the waist and began speaking to her. Seeing her tears, Decker guessed that the dead man the boy had been holding must have been his older brother. Through her tearful attempts to speak, they ascertained that she spoke almost no English. Nevertheless, it was evident that she realized that they had helped the boy.
"If we're going to get any of this in Monday's edition we've got to get back to the office now," Bill Dean called to them from the car. "You can follow up on this later."
Back at the hotel Decker and Hank Asher compared notes while Bill Dean and Tom contacted Israeli officials on the phone for their reaction to the riot and the killing of the Palestinians. When they completed their report they e-mailed it to the United States.
At six o'clock that evening Decker and Tom took Asher and Dean to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv for their flight home to the U.S. After several months covering the Middle East, they were looking forward to a few weeks at home. Before they boarded their plane, Decker pulled Bill Dean off to the side. "Bill, let me ask you a sort of strange question," Decker began. "You've been over here for a while. If you overheard a conversation in which the people talking said 'Petra must be protected,' what would you think they were talking about?"
"Hmm… " Dean began thoughtfully, "You hear so many strange things around here. I guess it depends on who said it. 'Petra' is Greek for rock, so they might have been talking about a lot of things. They could have meant the Rock of Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea. Or, if the people talking were Muslims, I'd guess they were talking about the Dome of the Rock. But those are both pretty cryptic references. There's an ancient city called Petra in Jordan, but it's been abandoned for centuries. It's mainly just a tourist attraction now. There's also a reference in the Bible where Jesus refers to the rock on which he would build his church. So, I suppose they could have been Christian zealots referring to protecting the church from some perceived devil or false doctrine or something. That's really all I can think of right off the bat. I don't know if that helps you any. What's this all about, anyway?"
Decker shook his head. "At this point I really don't know. If I come up with anything, I'll tell you when you get back from your vacation."
For the next week things seemed strangely quiet compared to their first day on the job. Israel braced for a Palestinian response to the shootings, but it was slow in coming. There were a few small disturbances, and the strike by Palestinian workers and shopkeepers continued, but there was nothing that the Israeli authorities couldn't handle. On the international scene, a United Nations vote to condemn the Israeli action in Jabaliva passed by a large majority, with the United States abstaining. Decker and Tom found plenty of time to engage in such things as taking out the trash and airing out the rooms.
Tom, who seemed to be more interested in sightseeing than Decker, picked up brochures on all the historical and religious places to visit that they had missed on their whirlwind tour with Joshua Rosen. Decker looked over a few of them, making mental notes of where to take Elizabeth and the girls when they arrived the week before Christmas. Since Decker's stay in Israel would last into January, Elizabeth thought this would be an excellent opportunity to take advantage of an otherwise bad situation, and spend Christmas with Decker in the Holy Land.
At about four in the afternoon of their eighth day, Tom returned from visiting one of Jerusalem's many shrines and sat down just as the phone rang. On the other end was a man whose accent gave him away as a Palestinian. "I need to speak to the American, Asher."
"I'm sorry he's not here," Tom responded. "May I help you?"
"Tell the American, 'Many dogs shall weep tonight, but their tears will find nowhere to fall.'"
"What?" Tom asked. "What are you talking about? What does that mean?" But the man had hung up.
"What was that?" Decker asked, responding to Tom's excited but puzzled expression.
"I don't really know," he answered. "I think it must have been one of Hank Asher's informants; either that or a kook."
Decker waited a second for Tom to continue and when it seemed that he might keep the mystery to himself, Decker finally asked, "Well, what did he say?"
"He said to tell Asher 'Many dogs shall weep tonight, but their tears will find nowhere to fall.'"
"Any idea what it means?" Decker asked.
Tom picked up the phone and began dialing as he answered. "None, but I know who might." Tom was calling Hank Asher in America. It took four calls to locate him and when they reached him he had no more idea what the message meant than did Tom or Decker.
"The only thing that I can think of," said Asher, "is that sometimes one or more of the Palestinian groups will call after a bombing or a kidnapping to take credit for it. There's quite a bit of rivalry that goes on among the different factions of Palestinians. Maybe the guy that called is trying to establish responsibility before the fact so his group will get credit for it afterward. If so, you can expect a second call from him after the fact. I suggest you call the Israeli police and tell them about the call. In any case, it doesn't seem like you'll have long to wait to find out what he meant. Whatever it is, he said it will happen tonight."
"Okay," said Tom. "Listen, give us a call at the hotel if you think of anything else."
"Sure thing," said Asher. "Oh, one other thing: when you call the police, don't tell them the guy asked for me. I'm trying to take a vacation over here."
Tom called the police, who wasted no time responding to the call. Figuring out what to do about it was another thing. The police inspector, Lt. Freij, said that since the caller was apparently Palestinian, the use of the term 'dogs' must refer to Israelis. "We call them dogs and they call us dogs," Freij said. '"Weep and tears' obviously means that something will happen that will cause grief for Israel. 'Tonight' must mean just that: whatever is going to happen will occur tonight. Beyond that it's guesswork." Lt. Freij also suggested that it might all be just a hoax and that such things were not that uncommon. "Just in case, though," Freij said, "I'll order all the standard precautions and see that all the appropriate authorities are alerted to the possibility of a terrorist attack."
Tom and Decker discussed the caller's message for a while longer but came to no conclusions. A little after eleven o'clock Tom decided to go to bed and Decker went up on the roof of the building for some fresh air.
As he sat on a large gray fixture on the roof, Decker thought back to his discussion with Goodman about the boy, Christopher. In truth, the matter was never very far from his mind. There has to be some way that I can write that story without hurting people, he thought. A dozen scenarios ran through his mind, but all had the same conclusion: too great a risk of exposure; someone was sure to figure it out.
Decker looked out over the beauty of the old city of Jerusalem. For the most part, the city lay silent in the late evening darkness, with only scattered points of light shining in defiance of the moonless night. The gold-covered Dome of the Rock sparkled in the starlight near the Wailing Wall.
"That's it!" he said to himself suddenly. Decker ran at full speed from the roof to the hotel suite. "Tom, get up!" he shouted as he burst through the door. Tom had not gone to bed, but was watching an old John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movie. Decker reassessed the situation and restated his command, "Quick, damn it! Get your shoes on!"
Tom grabbed his camera, coat, and shoes while running toward the door. "What's going on?" he asked.
"The phone call!" Decker said, abbreviating his speech to save time. "They're going to blow up the Wailing Wall!"
Tom thought for a second as he boarded the elevator on the way to the lobby. "Of course, 'weeping' but 'no place for their tears to fall!'" he said, catching Decker's sense of alarm.
Halfway down to the first floor it occurred to them that they should call the police to let them know what was going on. When they reached the lobby Decker went for the car while Tom called and left a hurried message for Lt. Freij.
Decker drove the short distance from the hotel to the Joffa Gate and turned down David Street into the old city. They were only about a mile from the Wailing Wall, but at their present speed Tom felt that the car would shake apart on the ancient roads before they reached it. Because it was late, the one way street was fairly clear and Decker had no trouble as he made the sharp right onto Armenian Patriarch Street, past the Zion Gate and then onto Bateimahasse Street. They were almost there.
Decker pulled the car into the parking lot at the Wailing Wall and slammed the door as he and Tom ran the remaining hundred yards to the Wall. All was quiet and deserted in the cold, late night. Even the tourists had gone to bed. Decker and Tom waited and looked around for signs of activity but found none. The only sound was the wind and the barely audible late night sounds of the new city outside the walls. They looked at one another.
Decker was the first one to speak. "You know," he said, "any minute now Lt. Freij is going to be driving up here with his sirens blaring and his lights flashing and we're going to be standing here looking like total idiots."
They sighed together. "I don't suppose that we could call him back and tell him to forget it," Tom said in strained jest.
"No use," responded Decker. "They'll be here any minute."
That's when it hit them. They stopped talking and looked around them.
"What's wrong with this picture?" Decker quipped, as he scanned the scene more closely.
"Police," Tom answered dryly. The ever-present Israeli security were nowhere to be found.
The next instant they were startled as a young boy emerged from the entrance to the tunnel Joshua Rosen had shown them. Seconds later he was followed by about eight men for whom he apparently had been standing watch. As he ran, the boy passed close enough for Decker and Tom to get a look at him. It was the Palestinian boy from Jenin.
Decker and Tom ran to the tunnel entrance and found the bodies of four Israeli security personnel laying in pools of blood, their throats cut. Decker stooped down over them, vainly looking for any sign of life. He had seen worse in Vietnam, but dead was always dead. Tom turned his head away from the bloody sight and as he did he caught the distinctive smell of a burning fuse.
"Decker! Run!" he shouted as he grabbed Decker's arm.
The two men ran from the tunnel as fast as they could. Sixty yards away they stopped, thinking that they were probably safe. In the distance they could hear the sounds of Lt. Freij's sirens. As Decker looked toward the approaching police cars, the ground shook with the first of a rapid series of huge explosions.
Decker dropped to the ground as dirt and fragments of rock landed all around him. In a moment he looked over to see if Tom was all right and, to his surprise, found him standing there taking pictures. Decker mused at how far Tom was willing to go to get a great picture. But Decker was not that much different than his friend: as he got up he thought only briefly about how glad he was to be alive. And though he was sickened by the destruction of this awesome historical site, he could not help but think of what a great article this was going to make. Exclusive coverage! Exclusive photos! No question about it, this would be next Monday's cover story in NewsWorld.
When the police arrived, Decker and Tom told Lt. Freij what had happened and showed him approximately where to find the guards' bodies under the rubble. They did not, however, tell him about the boy; they would talk to him themselves in the morning and maybe come away with a second exclusive.
By the time they left the scene, crowds of Israelis and tourists from the surrounding area had gathered behind the police lines to look in shock and horror at what had been the last remnant of the ancient Temple. The phone caller had been right: there was much weeping that night. The Palestinians had planted far more than enough explosives to do the job. Bits and pieces of broken stone lay everywhere. The earth of the Temple Mount behind the Wall caved down upon the rubble. And of the Wall itself, not one stone was left standing upon another.