Avraham Azrieli - The Masada Complex

She silenced him with her hand. “Did my friend leave a backpack for me?”

“The reporter? Yes.” He hefted the video backpack over the counter. “Careful. It’s heavy.”

“I know.” Masada shouldered it. “Have you seen Professor Silver?”

The clerk directed her to the cafeteria, where she found him alone, spreading butter on a piece of bread. He wasn’t wearing his thick eyeglasses, and the black beret was replaced by a white baseball cap sporting an extra-wide visor. The table before him was scattered with documents.

“May I join?” She sat down.

“Look who’s here!” He collected his papers into a large, padded envelope. “What a nice surprise!”

“Working on a new book?”

“Always.” The professor pulled the cap’s visor lower over his face. “How was your day?”

She realized he must have missed her speech at the rally. “Uneventful.”

“Mine too. Practically a vacation.” He sipped milk and put down the glass, his hand shaking.

She felt sad. Clearly he was putting on a brave face. “Your eyes bother you, right?”

“Not too bad.”

Masada tore a piece of bread and chewed on it. “Let’s skip that memorial. You don’t seem too well.”

“I’ll get some sleep before we leave.”

“Dress well. It gets chilly up there at night.” Hesitating, she added, “I could go by myself.”

“Absolutely not.” He waved both hands. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

It occurred to Masada that he didn’t even know what had happened to Srulie. “You have to promise me not to ask questions about my family or my past. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Agreed.” Silver squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry so much, meidaleh. Everything’s going to be fine.”

A guest walked in and turned on the TV. The U.S. Senate podium came into view. A female senator with blondish hair and red lipstick declared hoarsely, “It’s especially painful when you find a friend turning that knife in your back. In upstate New York we have a saying: It’s not who’s sharing the fire with you in winter, but who’s gathering your calves when you’re sick. I say, this great nation need not share its firewood with a country that-”

Masada stood. “I’ll meet you downstairs at 2:30 a.m. If you’re not there, I’m back to bed. Please be late.”

“I doubt it.” Professor Silver chuckled. “Good night.”

The cool night air from the barred window soothed Rabbi Josh’s burning eyes but did nothing for his sore feet. He had paced the cell for hours, going from wall to wall, glancing at his broken wristwatch as if it could tell the time. Masada’s words had torn him apart. How cruel he had been to this woman, whose heart had repeatedly been broken by devastating losses. Now she was in mortal danger, and he was caged like an animal by his own people.

It had been hours, and his hands hurt from pounding on the door. Silver’s conversation with the taxi driver played repeatedly in his mind. Panic rose in his throat. He hit the door again. “Let me out! Please!”

What if they didn’t release him until the morning?

Masada would be dead.

Suddenly God’s plan became clear: Raul had died for a reason, for the greater good of Israel, because only his father could stop Silver’s evil scheme from consuming Masada and turning Israel’s only ally into a foe.

Raul died for a reason!

Rabbi Josh kicked the steel table. It shook. He tried to move it, but it was bolted to the floor. He fell to his knees and started to unscrew the bolts. All but one came out. He wiped his hands on his shirt and tried again. The last bolt wouldn’t budge. He wrapped it with the lapel of his shirt and tried, but the bolt was too tight.

He rolled on his back and looked up at the ceiling. Was God testing him again? Was it Masada’s turn to die because of his weakness?

The idea scared him so much that he jumped up, grabbed the table and heaved it upward. The last bolted leg bent, and he pushed the table all the way up until it stood perpendicular to the floor, three legs sticking out, the fourth leg holding it up like a skeletal dancer ready to pirouette. He forced the table down in the opposite direction, three legs pointing at the ceiling, and lifted it up, then down again, repeating it again and again, his muscles aching, until the leg broke off and the table slipped from his hands and fell.

Rabbi Josh lifted the steel table and threw it at the mirrored wall. It left a vertical crack in the mirror. He dragged the table across the room, held it up, and rushed back, ramming the corner into the crack, which got longer, slicing his reflection from the top of his head to his crotch. He did it again, and now the crack reached from the ceiling to the floor. Nearing exhaustion, he swung the table in a semicircle and hit the mirror, hammering it several times. The crack let out additional fissures. His arms and shoulders ached, but he kept going until the left half of the mirror broke and fell into the adjoining room.

They woke Elizabeth up in the middle of the night and made her stand in the hallway. She tightened the headdress and smoothed the yellow galabiya. Imam Abdul, the school principal, was holding a rope.

“Don’t you have respect for the law?” she asked. “Even the Sharia sets limits to abuse.”

“You’re an expert on Islamic law too?”

“I demand to see my father!”

“You will see him in the morning and depart with honor.”

His quick relenting surprised her. “Well, that’s good.”

He placed the rope around her waist, pulled a knife, and cut the rope at the exact circumference. “Go back to sleep,” he said.

As they were leaving, one of them said, “What will she do with seventy-”

The end of the sentence was lost in their laughter. It sounded like “ burka’in ,” which in Arabic meant “ponds,” but it made no sense. What would she want with seventy ponds? And why was it so funny?

Rabbi Josh tiptoed through the adjoining room, avoiding the mirror shards. The hallway windows overlooked the lit-up parking lot. The chicken-wire cage was empty. He tried to open a window, but it was fixed in a wooden frame. He broke it with his elbow and heard the glass fall on the asphalt outside. He got over the windowsill and hung by his hands. Shouts came from down the hall.

Below, the blacktop was strewn with broken glass. To one side was a planter with bushes. He tilted his feet and began to swing like a pendulum.

The voices in the hallway were getting close.

He swung wider, building up momentum, and let go, flying sideways. His bare feet landed just inside the planter, his body falling backward, cushioned by the bushes, the branches cradling his buttocks and thighs.

Someone uttered a curse above.

It was a perfect landing, but the branches sprung back up to their original position and catapulted him forward with force he had not anticipated. He blocked the fall with his hands. Glass slivers broke into fragments that lodged in the skin of his palms.

He sprinted across the parking lot, ignoring the blowing whistles and the pain in his blistered feet and bleeding hands, down an access road, through a small park with swings and a sandbox, along a dark alley and between two buildings, into Jaffa Street.

It was filled with people.

He grabbed a passerby’s wrist and looked at the watch. 2:26 a.m.

Masada had slept fitfully. She took a lukewarm shower and went downstairs at 2:28 a.m., carrying the video backpack. Professor Silver was waiting, dressed in a white shirt and blue suspenders. He was chatting with the front desk clerk. She asked, “You’re still here?”