Deker raced across the rooftops of the lower city toward Rahab's, jumping down into the narrow alleys between the battened-down homes as arrows started flying from the fortress archers behind him. He made it to the red-scarf district, opened the gate in front of Rahab's villa and ducked into the courtyard. The inn was deserted. He climbed down the steps to the cellar.
"Rahab!" he called out.
The door was ajar. He pushed it open and found Salmon and Achan on the floor, hands and feet lashed together, mouths gagged, eyes on fire. Rahab slipped from behind the door and rammed the tip of a sword between his shoulder blades.
"Turn around slowly or I'll kill you."
Deker slowly pivoted and saw her frightened look turn to relief as she dropped the sword and wrapped her arms around him and sobbed.
"Samuel," she sobbed. "It's all lies. I didn't betray your friends."
Deker grasped her firmly at the throat, catching her by surprise as he rammed her against the wall, next to the skulls of her own sisters.
"Then what do you call that on the floor?"
"Elezar said they were traitors."
"Elezar is dead."
"No, he's not. He left not long ago."
Deker was confused. "Where's the detonator?"
"Here." She held up her tight fist, her thumb on the button.
Slowly he lifted her thumb and then unfurled her fingers to see the detonator, and he cursed Elezar for thinking he could kill two birds-Rahab and the outer wall-with one stone.
"Untie them," he ordered, and Rahab quickly loosed Salmon and Achan, who worked his aching jaw as he rubbed his sore wrists.
Deker looked around and realized there were dozens of people huddled in the shadows of the cellar. They were all members of Rahab's family, or at least she had counted them as such. He hadn't noticed them before. The crushing gravity of the situation and lack of time pressed unbearably down upon him.
"Where are my mud bricks?" he demanded.
"In my hiding place," Rahab said.
She wiped some dirt from the earthen floor to show him a door with a thin knotted rope attached. She then lifted the door to reveal a small compartment with the explosives.
They were rigged to blow.
"Elezar," Deker cursed as he carefully deactivated the wiring and removed the bricks. "Where is he?"
"I don't know," Rahab said. "But he left you a sign. He said you would know what it means."
She pointed to the inside of the trapdoor she had propped up against the wall. Burned into it was the black outline of a dove.
The Black Dove.
Deker stumbled back on his feet, his mind reeling. As much as he hated Elezar, Deker-who questioned everything, even the legitimacy of the State of Israel itself-had never thought to question his loyalty as a Jew. And yet, the evidence was there all along that Elezar was the Black Dove, the legendary Palestinian mole within the IDF.
Suddenly it all made sense: the right-wing posturing, the image of a Jew beyond reproach, the finger-wagging at the less-than-Jews like Deker in the IDF. Most of all, it was now perfectly clear why Elezar wanted to eliminate Christianity-as well as the State of Israel before it could ever be born out of the Promised Land-by eliminating Rahab.
Worse than this revelation about Elezar was the realization that this was Deker's fault, the result of some deep, psychological defect on his part. He had been so wounded about what it meant to be a good Jew, so painfully aware of how much he fell short, that he couldn't see the hypocrisy and pretense of Elezar, who knew the Torah backwards and forwards. He was a zealot. Just not the kind of zealot that Deker had thought he was.
"What does it mean?" Salmon asked.
"Elezar has betrayed us all," Deker said as Reahn soldiers began to pound on the villa's doors outside. It would be only minutes before the Reahns stormed the cellar.
But the stab of betrayal that Deker felt didn't come from Elezar but from himself. Deker now had to question everything. Because if he missed this, what else had he missed his entire life?
In his mind he went back to the beginning, to what Elezar could have been doing while he was testing the Temple Mount. Could Elezar have actually been the one who killed Stern? Then he went back even further in his memory, to when he had first met Elezar after the botched attempt on the Black Dove that killed Rachel.
Jesus Christ, he thought. Elezar killed Rachel.