“No idea.” He cursed under his breath. Had Donovan sought refuge in any other country in the EU or anywhere in the Middle East, he could have easily deciphered the local dialect, even read their lips if the volume was insufficient.
Then Donovan slipped through a doorway, as if to get something for the patron.
Kwiatkowski immediately reacted, making to get up from his stool.
Orlando grabbed his arm. “Give it a moment.”
Moments went by. No Donovan.
“My heavens! What did you order, my son?” Orlando called with playful sarcasm to the laborer.
“Coffee, just like you, Father.” The scraggly man gave another toothy grin. “If it’s good for your soul, it can only help the fire in me.”
This caused both men to push back their stools and spring into action.
The laborer’s eyes widened as he saw them darting his way—particularly the tall one, a giant of a man. He coiled into himself. “I’ll drink tea if it’ll make ya ’appy!” he said, cowering.
But the two paid him no mind as they whisked by, rounded the corner of the counter, and disappeared through the door.
7
******
It was easy for Orlando to see that the rear room was meant for storage: it was filled with dried goods and cans lined neatly on shelves, and stock glassware. There was a large walk-in refrigerator to one side, its door open wide. “Check it,” he said.
Kwiatkowski reached it in three strides and poked his head in. Lining the floor and shelves were crates of milk and eggs, cases of soda and beer, bins of cheeses, wrapped meats, and butter. No Donovan. “Not here.”
Then just outside a solid metal door in the room’s rear, they both heard the muffled sounds of an engine coming to life.
Donovan had considered blocking the door with something, but in the narrow alley, there was only a large Dumpster that wasn’t budging. Hopping onto his motorcycle, he jammed the key into its ignition and started it up, forgoing the helmet in the rear stow box. He pulled back on the throttle just as the door swung open behind him.
The cold V-twin sputtered before yanking the Kawasaki Vulcan forward with a squeal of rubber. Donovan shot a glimpse over his shoulder and spotted the two men dressed as priests scrambling out the doorway and into the alley—each brandishing a handgun.
Donovan’s eyes shot forward, sharpening on the opening ahead—a good fifty meters, nothing but brick wall corralling him on both sides.
An easy target for a straight shot.
Pressing his chest down against the fuel tank, he cranked the throttle to the max and serpentined the bike as best he could, trying to avoid skidding out on the rain-slicked pavement. The first shot ricocheted low off the wall in front of him. A second punctured the exhaust pipe and made the bike produce an ear-numbing grumble. Clearly the men could shoot. But they didn’t seem to be aiming directly at him. Were they attempting to blow out a tire?
In a panic, Donovan made a split-second correction to maneuver around a pothole that caught the rear tire. The Kawasaki jerked hard and forced him close to the wall just as a third shot nearly grazed his calf and pinged off the chrome engine block. Another five meters and he gripped the brakes and skidded out into the roadway, leaning right to force a wide turn. In the process, he clipped the bumper of an oncoming truck, whose horn was blaring.
The bike slid hard to the opposing curb, forcing Donovan to throw out his leg to keep from rolling into an older woman who was walking her poodle. The muffler’s throaty rumbling covered her shouted obscenities as he pulled the bike upright and raced away.
8
******
Jerusalem, Isr ael
Descending the precipitous steps from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, Rabbi Aaron Cohen gazed over at the fortified Temple Mount complex, which covered thirty-five acres of Mount Moriah’s summit like an artificial mesa with its huge filled rectangle of retaining walls, parapets, and embankments. A second, lesser platform rose up from the Temple Mount’s center to support the shrine that had dominated the site since the late seventh century—an elaborate building with a massive gold cupola perched upon an octagonal base of marble and colorful Arabian tiles.
The Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-most-holy shrine.
And when Cohen’s eyes defied him and caught a glimpse of it, he cringed severely. He muttered a prayer to suppress the deep-rooted emotions that surged every time he thought of the grand Jewish temple that once graced the world’s most hallowed hilltop. The feelings of loss and insult came in equal measure.
At the bottom of the steps, he made his way to the security checkpoint for the Western Wall Plaza. As always, he set off the metal detector. Casually stepping aside, he held up his arms. The young IDF soldier, dressed in olive fatigues and beret with an Uzi slung casually over his left shoulder, shook his head as he got up from his stool. He grabbed a black security wand off the bag scanner. “Shalom, Rabbi.”
“Shalom, Yakob.”
The soldier lackadaisically ran the handheld metal detector over the Hasid’s limbs and torso. As always, it let out a high-pitched screech along the left thigh and hip. Sighing, the guard discreetly patted the area to confirm nothing was there. “No way to get rid of that stuff, Rabbi?” he asked with a polite smile as he rounded back to his stool.
“Not if I want to keep walking.” Cohen shook his head. “Better get used to it.”
The deeply embedded shrapnel was a physical reminder of the suicide bombings at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market that left sixteen dead and dozens more wounded, including Cohen, who’d stood mere meters away from the shaheed ’s detonation. Despite four surgeries and five months at Hadassah Medical Center, nails and pellet-shaped metal remained where surgical extraction would guarantee paralysis. For two years following the incident, he’d relied on a cane for walking.
Normally, Cohen would present a medical badge prior to triggering metal detectors. But that badge wasn’t required here. Everyone here knew Rabbi Aaron Cohen—very well. Over the past two decades the fifty-threeyear-old Brooklyn-born Haredi had become one of Israel’s most influential religious and political voices—a staunch proponent of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, the return of Zion, and the official state adoption of the Halakha— Jewish laws of the Torah—to govern public life. As a younger man, he’d served two terms in the Knesset’s leftist National Religious Party, whose credo had been “The land of Israel, for the people of Israel, according to the Torah of Israel.” And his teachings at Israel’s most prestigious yeshivas had earned him much acclaim. Jewish and secular Israelis considered him the next contender for Chief Rabbi.
“Have a great day,” the soldier said.
Cohen tipped his wide-brimmed zayen to him, then strolled outside with a slight hobble, the white tassels of a prayer scarf worn under his black vest swinging in rhythm with his quick shuffle. The strands of his long black beard and tightly twisted payess danced against a gentle breeze.
The spacious open plaza led up to an exposed section of the Temple Mount’s western retaining wall that was fifty-seven meters wide and nineteen meters high—the Kotel. Normally the place would be full of Jews chanting prayers, rending their garments, and shedding tears for the lost temple—all of it exemplifying how the place had earned its most famous nickname: the Wailing Wall. And for good fortune, tourists would stuff prayer notes into the razor-thin seams between the wall’s enormous Herodian stone blocks.