Deker saw a lot of strange faces and could hear a number of different languages around the tavern as he and Elezar made their way through a large crowd of drunken Reahn soldiers and the bar wenches who served them. At the counter in back, the inn manager, a slight, dark man, looked visibly irked at being pulled aside on a busy night.
"We're looking for Rahab," Elezar said.
"You and everybody else," the manager said, looking them over. "You don't have the rank."
"Maybe this does," Deker said, and removed from his neck the necklace with the crescent-shaped pendant that Caleb had given them and handed it to the manager.
The manager frowned and looked up at him curiously. "Two specials for our guests," he called to one of his bar wenches. He then disappeared into a back hallway while a young girl served them a couple of locally brewed drinks.
Deker looked out over the tables to the plaza beyond, watching for trouble. Elezar's ears, meanwhile, were up like antennae as they sipped their drinks. The brew tasted like a cross between beer and ouzo.
"They're all talking about Bin-Nun," Elezar whispered. "The Israelites are undefeated in war and marching to Canaan. The bets are that he'll hit Jericho first once the Jordan is past flood stage in a month or two. Then they'll swarm Canaan like cockroaches. If only all the cities united with a national army, it would be the end of the vermin. If anyone can stop them, it's Hamas. He's got a secret army to defeat even Yahweh."
"What is it?" Deker asked.
"Nobody knows. But some are worried Hamas is talking about doubling Reah's offerings to Molech."
Before Deker could ask what that meant, the inn manager returned and said, "We've got rooms and girls for you both."
"I'm not interested in your girls," Elezar scoffed.
"Then I've got boys for you."
Elezar's face turned red. "That won't be necessary. I only want a room for the night and privacy."
"You, old and ugly, follow me," the manager told Elezar, and then looked at Deker. "You, young and handsome, follow her. She'll take you to Rahab."
The manager was pointing to a young girl no older than thirteen-a belly dancer, by the looks of her satin top, flowing pants, bells and glitter, and not a professional yet.
As Deker followed the girl down a long hallway, he began to wonder what he would actually have to do with this woman Rahab in order to secure her help in escaping capture. Elezar had suggested she was likely two decades Deker's senior, and old Caleb had warned from the outset that she was not to be trusted and should be treated only as their last resort. Apparently there was no such thing as a hooker with a heart of gold in this world, only a hooker with a heart for gold.
Deker and the girl emerged into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by walls. One of those walls was the city wall itself, rising up five meters before his eyes. He could see a Reahn helmet and spear floating at the top.
There was a gate at the far end of the courtyard and, on the right, stone steps leading to the upper levels of the villa, a level higher than even the city wall. This was where the girl stopped and allowed him to continue alone.
As Deker climbed from one level to the next, a magnificent view unfolded below him. There were the catwalks and guards on the walls, and beyond the city he could see the dark hills to the north rolling beneath the moon.
At the top of the steps he emerged onto a broad terrace. There was the scent of almond trees as he passed through an iron gate into a semitropical paradise. The sound of water was everywhere, splashing in fountains and gurgling in the conduits as it dropped from terrace to terrace between palm trees.
In the center was a large divan with a rainbow of colorful pillows. To the side was a long table of jars and bowls of fruit beneath a pergola. The pergola had golden flax stalks piled on top, no doubt to dry during the day, which lent a Polynesian air to the terrace.
Deker watched the door in the wall on the opposite side, waiting for Rahab to appear. But the door remained shut, and he walked over to the table beneath the pergola and helped himself to some dates. There he noticed one of the ornamental bowls was filled to the top with gold coins.
Only then was he aware that she was already there. He put the dates down and turned to see her. She was standing at the balustrade of the terrace, looking out across the desert at the pillar of fire in the distance: the signal tower at Shittim.
Her silhouette against the stars was a thing of beauty, and as his eyes adjusted to the nighttime, he could see her black mane of hair dropping between her bare shoulder blades.
Elezar was wrong. This is a young woman.
She was in some kind of silk wrap that rippled in the breeze, the moonlight revealing a flawless figure underneath. And when she turned to face him, he caught his breath.
Rachel.
The high cheekbones, the wide-set and intelligent eyes and the birthmark over her soft upper lip he could never forget. She could be nobody other than Rachel. Even the way her lustrous hair framed her perfect face was exactly the way he remembered her.
Deker could feel her smoky gaze study him as she floated toward him, charging the air around her with palpable electricity. Then she unclipped the bronze clasp on her wrap, and he watched the silk fall like feathers to the tiles to reveal herself to him.
She was wearing the necklace he had brought. The pendant dangled between her full breasts, round as the moon in the sky.
"I've been waiting for you," she told him in Hebrew. Her voice was soft but confident.
"Waiting for me?" he asked, astonished. "How long?"
"My whole life," she said, and then she kissed him with the most delicious lips he had ever tasted.