Ismael saw the lone soldier on the northern slope. Actually, he saw his boot, a black smudge on a tan landscape. How the man had managed to get behind the rocks in the first place was reason enough for concern. No ordinary soldier would have made it so far without revealing himself.
So they were sending someone after him—the Israelis had never been short on spine. But he still had the clear advantage, and he would play the game his way. In any other situation he would have already killed the two sentries posted on the road to the west. And at any other time he would probably draw a bead on that boot and shoot the man’s foot off—it was only two hundred meters, he could make the shot easily. Like shooting the hand off a Jew as he ate supper in his home.
But this was not any ordinary situation. He hadn’t come here to kill Jews. He had come to kill Rebecca Solomon. And to keep her from finding the Ark—although he doubted there was an Ark to find. So really he was here to kill the woman who had killed his brother.
“Jew-witch,” he whispered.
A thought suddenly screamed through his mind. He had seen one of the monastery’s residents flee out the back and thought nothing of it—a stray Ethiopian was of no concern to him. This soldier had come from the back as well, which only made sense, since he had shot the other soldier by the front gate. But what if the fleeing man had been Caleb? And what if Rebecca decided to go after him? What if she went after him under cover of darkness?
He had to get over there before nightfall. And he had to do so without being spotted by this soldier.
“Allah in heaven, give me grace.”
Caleb stumbled over the lumpy ground, fighting panic with each step. He had to get help; he had decided that much minutes after losing sight of the monastery. But he couldn’t actually leave before seeing whether his father had put that white flag on the fence or not.
And what if Jason didn’t put the flag on the fence? Dread floated through his chest like a hollow bullet. He’d cycled back to the crest two hours earlier and peered over the ledge to the monastery below. There’d been no white flag. Which meant that whoever had fired in the monastery were holding his mother and father. He’d fled back towards the desert.
“Dear God, help me.”
Tears blurred his vision and he tripped over a boulder. He stumbled to his right knee and lurched forward. A shaft of pain shot through his femur, but he ignored it.
“Father, I beg you for guidance. Don’t let any harm come to Jason and Leiah, I beg you.”
And who was he to beg? A child who had become a man only to lose his . . . No, he hadn’t lost his faith. He had lost the need for it. He had put it in a closet and forgotten about it.
But he still loved God, didn’t he? Yes, yes he did. And he loved his neighbor. The lepers might not have seen him as regularly as before, but then everyone had their cycles. He was simply in a downcycle.
“I beg you, Father, forgive me.”
Caleb felt as helpless as he could remember feeling. He stumbled over the rocky ground, panting, up one hill and down the next, without having any clue as to where he was going. He stopped and decided that he should circle back one more time. Night was coming. What if he met the soldiers on the way back?
He groaned and headed back.
At least he wore pants, which made movement easier. Beige khakis and a white shirt. His hair had flattened with sweat and stuck to his neck and cheeks. It occurred to him that he was worthless. Weak in his faith and now powerless, stumbling on the hills, bleeding from one knee and covered in dirt.
“Father, I beg you.”
God wasn’t answering right now.
The sun was setting when Caleb found his way back to the ledge overlooking the monastery from the north. He pulled up and dropped to his belly. He’d been gone hours now—maybe as many as six. If there was no flag down there . . .
He swallowed against a dry mouth and pulled himself forward like a lizard. He peered carefully over the ledge, blinking sweat from his eyes.
The valley lay quiet, no different than on any other summer evening. A gentle breeze pushed through bedsheets that hung out back—the same sheets one of the servants had hung there this morning. The camels sat under an acacia tree in the corner of their corral, but otherwise there was no sign of life.
And the brown fence was bare. No flag.
Caleb dropped his head and clenched his eyes against pinpricks of light that flooded his vision.
“Dear God.”
He’d hardly expected otherwise, but still he had hoped. Now the last of his hope was jerked away.
He looked again, just to be sure. The fence stood small, so far away, but it was as bare as the day he and Jason had pounded it into the ground, singing an old Ethiopian nursery rhyme about the desert’s beauty.
He had to get help, and waiting for morning would just delay the inevitable. Adwa was the closest town with police and Adwa was a hundred kilometers away. Three days’ walk. If he could get to a radio, he could try to raise someone—but not even the leper colony had a radio.
Caleb rolled onto his back and stared at the dimming sky.
The soldiers below had spoken Hebrew. What could Israeli soldiers want with the monastery? Unless it was Falasha . . .
A voice filled his memory. The voice of Father Matthew, speaking to him as a child.
“I want you to promise me something, Caleb.”
“Yes, Dada.”
“If you are ever in a place where you don’t know what to do, or if men ever come to the monastery to hurt you, I want you to find a man for me.”
“Find a man where?”
“I want you to go to the desert and ask for a Father Joseph Hadane, a Falasha Jew. He will know what to do.”
“Just go to the desert? The Danakil?”
“Yes. Will you promise me?”
“I promise, Dada.”
The conversation rang in Caleb’s mind as if Father Matthew had come back to life and spoken from the rock. He jerked up and sucked a deep breath.
The desert!
He spun around and stared east. The salt flats shimmered beyond the hills, white and red in the sinking sun. By appearances you might be able to hurl a rock and watch it bounce off the surface, but in reality the flats themselves were thirty kilometers away. Geologists called it the Danakil Depression because much of it was actually well below sea level. Caleb had never known any westerner to cross the wasteland, at least not in his lifetime. Some had tried, but failed.
Fifteen years ago his father had told him to find a Father Hadane in the desert. A Falasha Jew. The soldiers’ use of Hebrew in the monastery had triggered the memory.
Caleb turned back to the south, towards the monastery and far beyond, Adwa. He would never make it to Adwa.
And the desert? How could he find a lone Falasha Jew in the desert? These were his options? A known destination a hundred kilometers over rugged terrain, and an unknown destination in the desert, thirty kilometers away.
Caleb blinked and turned back to the desert. “Okay, Dada.” He swallowed. “Let’s hope fifteen years hasn’t washed away Father Hadane.”
He stood to his feet, glanced at the monastery one last time, and set off at a jog. Only when he’d run a couple kilometers did it occur to him that he had no water. There was a spring about sixteen kilometers towards the desert. He would need water for the desert. And what about animals at night? Or the Afar tribe? He’d never met the natives of the desert, but he’d heard a hundred stories. The headhunters of the Amazon were like lambs next to these natives. Their tradition which prohibited a male from becoming a man and marrying until he had taken another human’s life did nothing to encourage safe passage through their territory. Only their isolation kept the Ethiopian government from stepping in and enforcing some sort of restriction on their ancient practices.
On the other hand, he desperately needed help. Father Matthew’s insistence that he find a Falasha Jew named Hadane sounded distant, maybe even impossible at the moment, but only without considering Father Matthew himself. Dada had rarely been wrong. And it seemed as though he’d anticipated this day.
What if Jason or Leiah had been killed already? The thought stopped him midstride on the hillside.
But he couldn’t go back. Not now. In fact, avoiding the soldiers might be the only way to keep his parents alive. If they were after him, then once they had him they might have no qualms about killing his parents. Until then, they would keep them as leverage. Hopefully.
Caleb groaned softly in the night and resumed his jog east. The questions flogged him with each footfall.
“Dear God, I beg you. Please I beg you.”