MILAN, ITALY—SEPTEMBER 27, 2020—16:20 / 4:20 P.M. CEST
Even on an average day, Milan was a city of beautiful women, young and old. During Fashion Week, though, you couldn’t walk a city block without being disdainfully ignored by the thousand-yard stares of a dozen world-class supermodels.
But the long-legged struts weren’t what drew Nir’s attention as he rested on a bench surrounding the base of a large statue of King Victor Emmanuel II, uniter of all Italy. Across the plaza, rising 108 meters into the sky, stood the Metropolitan Cathedral-Basilica of the Nativity of Saint Mary—or simply, the Milan Cathedral. A classic Gothic design, it was breathtaking in its ornate detail. Spire after marble spire jutted high into the sky.
Using his phone, Nir had looked up the history of the church and was amazed to read that, although work on it had begun in 1386, the structure had not been declared complete until 1965, nearly six hundred years later.
It took Noah only a hundred years to build his massive ark. They should have hired him as foreman for the project.
Something caught his eye, and he smiled at what he saw. The only thing more beautiful than a massive marble cathedral.
He stood and opened his arms. “Nicole,” he said as they embraced.
When they separated, he could see the look in her eyes didn’t match the smile on her face. “Want to sit for a second?”
“No, let’s walk. I’ve got to let off some steam.” She slipped her arm under his, which gave him a little relief. He didn’t seem to be the one she was upset with.
“Bad day at the office?”
She gave a humorless laugh. “Females are just the worst.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Nicole slapped his arm. “I get to say that. You don’t.”
They strolled across the plaza toward another large structure. Nir figured she’d let him know what was going on when she was ready. They walked through the doors, and he was surprised to find stores lining the walkway.
“What is this place?”
“The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It’s like a nineteenth-century shopping mall.”
Nir felt like he’d walked into a steampunk lover’s dream. Although the names on the signs were all modern and high-end, the store façades made it look as though they were walking down the streets of old town Milan. Covering them from high overhead was an intricate dome and vault system of iron and glass. “This place is amazing.”
“It is. It makes me feel like I should be wearing a long dress with a bustle and carrying a parasol.”
“Speaking of your last fashion show, are you ready to tell me what happened?”
She gripped his arm a little tighter. “Not funny. You know, it’s not a big deal. The other model was probably having a bad day, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Suddenly, she had a little bounce to her step. “But now I’m in the right place at the right time, right here next to you.”
“You sure you don’t want me to flush her goldfish or make her disappear?”
“Wow, those are my two options? Fish-i-cide or homicide?”
“I have a very limited skill set.”
Nicole laughed, then stopped to look up at the canopy. “I love walking through here. It’s hard not to feel transported back a century and a half. More innocent times. Less evil in the world.”
Nir shook his head. “I don’t know about that. Every era has its own evil. It just comes in different forms.”
“Well, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine?”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that this last op has got me thinking. What are we really accomplishing? We take a guy out of Iran’s nuclear program, but with the kind of money they’re paying, a hundred more are waiting to jump into his place.”
“Kind of like Whac-A-Mole. Every time you hit one head, another pops up.”
“Exactly. I don’t know, Nicole. I’m getting tired of feeling like I’m just playing a dumb arcade game that gets us nowhere. The stakes are too high. The danger is too real. I feel like if we’re going to do something, we need to do something big.”
“What about what happened in Natanz?”
Back at the beginning of July, an explosion had ripped through the Iran Centre for Advanced Centrifuges in Natanz, Iran. This facility was there to calibrate the centrifuges used to enrich the uranium needed to create a nuclear weapon.
“No doubt, Natanz was brilliant. First, they fill construction materials with explosives, then they pose as wholesalers of those same construction supplies. They get the Iranians to purchase the stuff, the Iranians install the explosives into their own centrifuge hall, and then a year later—boom! If it hadn’t really happened, nobody would believe it.”
“Exactly, and that was a huge setback for their nuclear program.”
“True, but it’s still the same thing. It just slowed them down. We need to do something to actually halt Iran’s progress. Slowing them down just delays the inevitable destruction of Israel. Eventually, even the tortoise reaches the finish line.”
They started walking again.
“How was the tenachesh mi?” Nicole asked.
Nir smiled at her growing Hebrew vocabulary. Tenachesh mi meant “Guess who?” and that was what his team had taken to calling their occasional middle-of-the-night visitations.
“The good doctor assured me he’s feeling a call to a new career path.”
“I’m glad of that. I sometimes feel bad for how terrified they must be in that moment, but I know it’s better than the alternative.”
“I don’t feel bad for them at all. They know exactly what they’re doing. I doubt there are many people alive who don’t know Iran is pushing for nuclear weapons, and when they get them, they’re going to use them on us.”
Nicole stopped to look in the window of a sweetshop, where chocolates of many designs sat on intricate racks. “I don’t know. Some of them just don’t seem to think ahead. They only see the money.”
“Would you like something from this shop?” Nir asked.
Nicole laughed and moved on. “No. Just looking. Wishing I didn’t have an athletic wear photo shoot at the end of the week.”
“Then it’s good we’re leaving. I was gaining weight just looking at those.”
They walked past several more shops, then Nir said, “You know, I don’t really care if they’ve thought it through or not. The result of their work is the same. Whether you kill millions intentionally or unintentionally, millions are still dead.”
“That’s fair. I just have motives on the mind. There’s this preacher I’ve been watching online.”
Nir groaned. Again, he was happy for the big change in Nicole’s life. And if it was her Jesus that made the difference, then that was perfectly fine with him. He just wished she didn’t feel the need to talk about it all the time.
“Just listen to me. Something might actually break through that cynical, Bible-schmible wall you’ve put up in your brain,” she said, laughing and tapping the side of his head. “So this guy was talking about how when Christians are judged before God, their motives are what will be judged. It’s not so much about what you do but why you do it.”
“Okay. Interesting. Go on.”
“You can do the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and that’s wrong. You can do the right things for the wrong reasons, and that’s wrong too. The only actions that count are when we do the right things for the right reasons. Everything else will be burned up.”
Nir thought about that for a moment. “What about doing the wrong things for the right reasons?”
It was Nicole’s turn to think as they exited the opposite end of the galleria. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’m not sure if motives can turn something wrong into something right. That slips into an ends justify the means philosophy.”
“Well, if you get a verdict from on high for that one, I’d like to know. Because that’s pretty much where I spend my life.”