We were ignored by the people brushing past us — tourists from a dozen nations and Arabs wearing the kqffiyeh, the white headdress bound with black ropes. But some Arabs were dressed in Western business suits or wearing shirts and slacks; others wore the traditional burnoose, a hooded mantle or cloak. The clothing of the Arab women was equally as diversified, the older women traditionally veiled, the young ones in Western blouses and skirts.
It was easy to spot an Israeli. The men were wearing white shirts, open at the neck. The national costume of Israel, I thought. At least for men. A necktie salesman would starve to death in this small nation. In contrast, the Orthodox Jews wore a long dark tunic, or caftan, and the broad-brimmed hat called a streimel.
"It's difficult to believe that many of the older people passing us survived Hitler's death camps and the Judengasse," Leah said. "1 believe that was the German name for ghetto.
"You would, if you were Jewish," Leah said. Anyhow, it was Pope Paul IV who established the first Roman ghetto for Jews. But it was the Moslems who pointed the way for the earliest forced segregation — which doesn't have anything to do with why we're here, does it?"
Leah laughed as if enjoying some secret joke, and I looked at her with a puzzled expression on my wrinkled face.
"I'm sorry, Nick," she said. "I was only laughing at fate. A few months ago if someone had told me that I'd be in Jerusalem disguised as an old woman and walking down St. Francis Way with the famous Nick Carter, I would have said impossible. But here I am! Here we are!" Leah sighed. "I suppose it's all relative. There's a saying in the Talmud that a baby comes into the world wanting everything, its fist clenched, while a man leaves the world wanting nothing, his hands open. All Israel wants is peace."
I wasn't in the mood for philosophy. "Let's make certain that we don't go into eternity ten minutes from now, with our hands open and our eyes closed," I warned. "We're almost to the shop."
"Suppose none of the clerks speak English?" Leah asked.
"One of them should, with all the tourist trade they get," I said.
"But suppose they don't?"
"Then we'll have to speak in Arabic."
"But won't it seem suspicious for a tourist from the West to speak Arabic?"
"Should it come to that we'll have to risk it." I shrugged. "Mental telepathy is out of my line."
"Well, no matter what," Leah whispered and gave my arm a little squeeze. "I'm with you all the way."
The front of the House of Medals was made of stone, and, like tourists everywhere, Leah and I looked at the items displayed in the small, glassed-in window, articles of Roman Catholicism. There were medals and medallions; statues of Christ and His Mother; of the Apostles; of the various saints. There were beautiful lithographed prints; candles of various sizes and shapes; crucifixes and tiny bottles of holy water; round vials containing soil from the Mount of Olives.
I leaned heavily on the cane and whispered, "Listen. Don't take any chances. You move when I move, understand?"
Leah nodded, and we went into the shop, passing a young couple on their way out.
A sullen-faced young man, who was wearing a clerk's white coat and whose head was shaved, was behind one counter. An older man, also an Arab and also wearing a white coat, sat on a high stool behind the opposite counter. At the rear of the long room, a pinched-faced woman was arranging brass candlesticks on shelves. The woman, in her forties and reminding me of a spinster from some Victorian novel, glanced up as Leah and I walked in, then returned to her work.
Only a few years older than Leah, which made him about 26 or 27, the dour-faced clerk was brusque to the point of rudeness.
"You will have to please hurry," he said in heavily accented English. "We are about ready to close for the day."
I had begun to analyze the setup from the moment I had walked into the place, and already had put together a plan. Close to where the woman was working in the rear, a heavy curtain hung in a large arched doorway. Quite obviously the archway was the entrance to a back room, or to a hallway that led to a back room or a series of rooms.
The clerk was impatient. "Did you hear me, old man?" he said crossly. "We are getting ready to close. You buy now or go."
With pseudo timidity, I stepped up to the counter and cackled, "Me and my Missus here, we're interested in a statue of St. Joseph. Like the kind on the shelf there."
With the tip of my cane, I pointed to a foot-high statue on the shelf behind the clerk, who then turned, picked up the statue and placed it on the marble-topped counter.
I turned to Leah who was playing her part perfectly. "Is this the one you wanted, dear?" I asked.
Leah smiled, nodded and patted my arm.
"One Israeli pound," the clerk said in a bored voice.
I picked up the plaster-of-Paris statue and pretended to study it, turning slightly, my movement giving me an opportunity to glance in the direction of the other Arab who was behind the opposite counter. Short, heavyset and cruel-looking, the man had gotten off the stool and was leaning against the shelves, his thick arms folded across his chest. He kept looking in my direction. The more he stared, the less I liked him.
I turned to Leah, looked directly into her eyes and silently told her, This is it, baby!
But I said in the voice of a senior citizen, "Check your souvenirs, dear. We'll put the statue in the bag."
Nodding, Leah bent down and began to fumble with the dummy packages in the canvas shopping bag, glancing up at me every now and then.
I returned my attention to the clerk and smiled. "Very well, young man. It's a fine statue. Guess we'll take it. You needn't wrap it."
"One pound," the clerk said, more sullen than ever.
Nonchalantly, as though reaching for my billfold, I slid my right hand inside my coat, and then went into action. It was now or never! I jerked my hand out from underneath my coat, only now it contained a fistful of Luger. Before the young SLA clerk could put together what was happening, I slammed the barrel against his right temple, knocking him out before he had time to open his mouth. The SLA agent slid to the floor just as I jumped to one side and shoved Leah out of the way. My quick movement saved our lives because the SLA member behind the other counter was extremely fast. I had figured he would be. I could tell by the quick, darting movement of his eyes.
The heavyset man jerked a Soviet 9-millimeter Stechkin machine pistol from underneath the counter and triggered off a stream of fire toward where Leah and I had been standing only seconds before. The line of hot 9mm projectiles stabbed across the room, missed us, but found a resting place behind the counter, shattering a row of St. Joseph statues and a row of Madonna figurines into flying chips of plaster.
In the rear of the shop, the prune-faced woman screamed in Arabic, "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" to whoever was in the back section of the shop. Then she reached into an urn and jerked out another Stechkin machine pistol. But I knew that my sudden action had taken her completely by surprise because she reacted more slowly than the terrorist behind the counter.
The Arab woman was swinging the machine pistol toward me and Leah when Wilhelmina roared, her 9mm 110 grain bullet catching the heavyset SLA man just above the bridge of the nose and knocking him backward against the shelves. With a round hole in its lower forehead, the corpse sank to the floor, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
Leah had surprised me. She had been as quick as a bolt of lightning. During those few blinks of time, she had jerked the UZI submachine gun from the shopping bag and had triggered off a short burst of 9 mm slugs that hit the elderly woman squarely in the chest. The blast of hot copper-gilded lead slammed the woman backward through the heavy red curtain that divided the shop from the back room. Practically torn apart by the UZI slugs, the corpse of the Arab woman crumpled to the floor, the curtain half-wrapped around her like a flowing shroud.