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  MACLEOD THOUGHT FAST AS

  HE WATCHED THE GERMANS

  PILE OUT OF THEIR TRUCKS

  “Take off your coat,” MacLeod ordered the rabbi.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just do it. There’s no time to explain.” MacLeod helped him off with his coat and guided him by his shoulders to the basement door.

  They could hear the Germans fanning out through the neighborhood. “Raus! Juden, Raus!”

  MacLeod lifted the hat from Rabbi Mendelsohn’s head and placed it on his own. “You can’t do this!” Rabbi Mendelsohn protested, beginning to realize what MacLeod had in mind. “I won’t let you.”

  “Quiet!” MacLeod commanded, “I’ll be back for you.” He could hear soldiers banging on the front door.

  “Jude Mendelsohn! Raus!”

  “My life is not worth losing yours,” the rabbi whispered urgently, begging. “Please!”

  MacLeod gave the old man a gentle push onto the basement stairs and swiftly locked the door. “I will be back. I swear it.”

  The pounding grew louder, more insistent. “Mendelsohn!”

  “MacLeod!” the rabbi cried. “Do not do this! No one comes back!”

  ALSO IN THIS SERIES:

  Highlander: The Element of Fire

  Highlander: Scimitar

  Highlander: Scotland the Brave

  Highlander: Measure of a Man

  Highlander: The Path

  Available from

  WARNER ASPECT

  Copyright

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1997 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  “Highlander” is a protected trademark of Gaumont Television. © 1994 by Gaumont Television and © Davis Panzer Productions, Inc. 1985. Published by arrangement with Bohbot Entertainment and Media, Inc.

  Aspect is a registered trademark of warner Books, Inc.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56564-6

  Contents

  Macleod Thought Fast as he Watched The Germans Pile out of their Trucks

  Also in this Series

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgments

  To Dennis DeYong,

  who said if you’ve got yourself a dream,

  go for it.

  To Gillian Horvath and Amy Zoll,

  who befriended a lonely computer geek

  on a bus late one night and showed her a

  whole new world.

  To David Abramowitz,

  who showed me how to use his toys

  and let me share his wisdom.

  To Bill Panzer and Betsy Mitchell,

  who had faith in me.

  Blessed is he who was not born,

  Or he, who having been born, has died.

  But as for us who live, woe unto us.

  Because we see the afflictions of Zion,

  And what has befallen Jerusalem …

  —Baruch

  Prologue

  Hebron, in the territories of Judaea and Samaria (aka The Occupied West Bank): The Present

  Allahu Akbar!

  The tinny sound of the tape recording rang through the narrow streets of the ancient village of Hebron. The sound echoed from the uninspired facades of government housing built by the Israelis after the occupation. It echoed from the remains of massive granite walls built by invading Crusaders a millennium earlier. Wherever it went, it called the Muslim devout of Hebron to their Friday midday prayers.

  Allahu Akbar! God is the Most Great!

  The Akhirah Mosque just south of the Old Quarter wasn’t the best mosque in Hebron. That honor fell to the majestic al-Haram al-Ibrahimi al-Khalil, a splendid edifice of gold and mosaics rising high above the cave where Abraham, Beloved of God, and his wife Sarah were buried, a site sacred to all of the People of the Book—Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike.

  Allahu Akbar!

  It wasn’t even the second-best mosque in Hebron. Many in Hebron were larger, more elaborate, or simply more ancient than the Akhirah Mosque, which was a fairly new and nondescript block of utilitarian concrete at one end of the open market on the road to Jaffa. It was built near the site where a far grander mosque had stood for over five centuries before it was accidentally destroyed during the Six Day War. Only by its dome and minaret could the new mosque be distinguished from the shops and offices surrounding it.

  Allahu Akbar! God is Most Great resounded from the loudspeakers in the minaret. The modest Akhirah Mosque couldn’t even claim a live muezzin to climb the tower and issue the traditional call to prayer.

  Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah, the tape crackled. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.

  What the Akhirah Mosque had in its favor was its location. This Friday, like any Friday in Hebron, the Jaffa Road market teemed with Arab buyers and sellers, haggling over the price of a lamb, arguing over the quality of a crate of lemons fresh picked from a nearby orchard. Women hurried to finish their shopping before the market closed at midday, their heads and bodies covered despite the hamsin winds blowing hot off the desert, making a normally gentle spring feel like the blasting heat of summer. Old men, their dark faces wrinkled by the sun, filled the nearby coffeehouses, content to watch the constantly changing scene, while a few young men in crisp uniforms—members of the newly formed Palestinian police—patrolled the market as had their Israeli predecessors not too long before. At times the din of the market could nearly drown out the call to worship.

  Ash-hadu ana Muhammadur rasululla. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah.

  Those Muslims who had the leisure streamed toward the magnificent al-Haram al-Ibrahimi al-Khalil for their Friday prayers alongside the many Muslim tourists on pilgrimage in Hebron. Those whose lives and work revolved around the Jaffa Road market preferred to stay close by and perform their ritual worship at the more humble Akhirah.

  Hayya alas salah! Come to prayer!

  By midway through the prerecorded adhan calling the faithful of Islam to gather, the inside of the tiny mosque was full of men ready for prayer. Most of the women of the market had hurried home to worship in the privacy of their houses. Those men arriving at the mosque too late to be accommodated inside simply spread their colorful woven prayer rugs on the ground, on the sidewalks, in the marketplace, wherever there was room, always facing holy Mecca to the southeast. For the Prophet said, “Wherever the hour of prayer overtakes you, you shall perform it.”

  Hayya alal falah! Come to salvation!

  The din and clamor of the market, a place of chaos only minutes before, disappeared as if by magic, replaced by orderly rows of the faithful silently preparing their hearts and minds for communication with God.

  La ilaha illallah! There is no God but Allah!

  As the last echo of the call to prayer faded away in the ha
msin winds, a serious young man joined the faithful in the marketplace outside the mosque. He hurriedly spread a prayer rug near the back of the throng before the communal prayers began. His skin was smoky dark, like that of the others, and he was dressed as any one of hundreds of Palestinian students from the nearby Islamic University, in his white dress shirt and dark slacks. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, covered by a knitted lace prayer cap, and he had a worn leather rucksack for his texts and research. He was a small man of slight build. With his boyish face, he looked nineteen, maybe twenty.

  But as he stood at attention, his right hand over his left on his chest as prescribed by the Prophet, chanting “Glory and praise be to You, Oh God” in Arabic with the others, the eyes he raised toward Mecca were seemingly without bottom, round and dark. He might be seeing all the way to the spires of the holy city itself with those eyes.

  “Bismillahir rahmanir rahim,” his prayers continued, followed by ruku, bowing to God in a show of love and respect. Three times the young man chanted “Glory be to my Great Lord and praise be to Him,” and three times he bowed low in the presence of God with the other faithful.

  Then the ultimate act of humility: proud men prostrate before God on the gravel of the marketplace, hands, faces, knees touching the ground. “God is greater than all else.” As the worshipers returned to their knees for their personal prayers, no one noticed the young student in the back of the congregation reach into his leather bag.

  The eerie quiet of a hundred men’s silent petitions to Allah was suddenly shattered by the howl of an automatic weapon. Soundlessly, a row of pious men toppled from their knees to the ground, dead before their “Amen.”

  Then the screaming, the wailing, as the followers of Islam tried to struggle to their feet, to run in horror, to flee, but the young man, dark eyes burning with centuries of hate and vengeance, was merciless, cutting them down in the same orderly rows in which they’d prayed.

  Before those inside the Akhirah Mosque even realized that their worship had been interrupted, forty-three Palestinian men lay dead or dying, their blood drenching their prayer rugs and seeping into the gravel of the Jaffa Road marketplace.

  The avenger with his finger on the trigger of the automatic stopped firing only when he saw the squad of Palestinian police coming for him across the market, guns drawn. Whispering a sweet prayer to the God of his ancestors, the God of Moses and of David, he turned the muzzle of the weapon toward himself and pulled the trigger once again.

  Chapter One

  Paris: The Present

  April in Paris. Despite all the threadworn clichés, there really was something magical about the City of Lights in spring. When the incessant winter rains and the graying slush finally went away, the city was reborn, dressed as if by way of apology in the finest Mother Nature had to offer. With the clouds gone, there was no doubt that whatever force had created the heavens, He or She had deliberately placed the sun so it would shine its brightest on the streets of Paris.

  As he walked along the sunny Boulevard St. Germain crowded with shoppers and tourists, Duncan MacLeod wondered what it was that always seemed to draw him back to Paris in the springtime. After all, spring in Seacouver was perfectly nice, if a bit damp. In fact, he’d been in any number of cities and hamlets around the world with pleasant springs. He remembered lying beneath the cherry blossoms in old Edo with particular fondness—with Keiko, that was her name, he hadn’t thought of her in ages—not to mention an occasional roll in the flowering heather in his native Highlands. But they just couldn’t compare with Paris. Maybe it was something carried in the breeze that ruffled his hair as he walked. Maybe, he thought, looking around, just maybe it was the Parisian ladies, freed from the dour wool coats and boots of winter and allowed to bloom like the city. “Bonjour,” he said, and smiled his most charming smile as he caught the eye of a passing young mademoiselle in a daring skirt that went up to … there. He saw her blush just a bit and walk on with her girlfriend, giggling. When they thought he could no longer see them, they turned and watched him with great appreciation.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen Paris. It had been spring then, too. It was a crowded, noisy place filled with more than its share of squalor and disease, but to an overgrown boy fresh out of Glenfinnan, it had seemed a place from a fairy story. Funny how some things don’t change in four hundred years. He hadn’t stayed long in Paris that first time. Eager to see it all and do it all, he was out and on his way to Italy before the first frost turned the leaves. It would be a long time before he learned that the real gift of Immortality was the chance to stop and savor the sights and smells of springtime.

  Or that of a duck in—what was that? Rosemary? The smell greeted him on the sidewalk. MacLeod stopped outside a crowded café and checked the address against a card he pulled from his blazer pocket. Chez Nous. He was in the right place. A little pretentious for his tastes, but he’d heard the food was good. “Constantine, party of two,” he told the maître d’. He knew he was a little late, but some days just seemed made for walking.

  “One moment, Monsieur.” MacLeod looked around the bistro, jammed with the well-to-do of Paris as well as a number of well-heeled tourists, all having a late lunch. Tessa had always said it was never hard to tell the two apart.

  MacLeod had his own favorite restaurants in St. Germain. Café de Flore was one, where he and Sartre had argued ’til all hours, until finally the proprietor had bolted the door and gone home to bed, locking them inside until morning. And there was no counting the number of times Hemingway had stuck MacLeod with the check at Les Deux Magots. He still frequented them both, as much for the memories as the food. But the young upstart Chez Nous had recently received glowing reviews and a surprise two stars from the Guide Michelin and become The In Place to dine. It was just like Constantine to choose it—the Immortal curator could so rarely be pried out of his museum, the only restaurants he knew were ones he’d read about. “Is a table inside acceptable to Monsieur?”

  “A table outside would be preferable to Monsieur.”

  “Right this way.” He followed the maître d’ to a small table on the patio near the entrance, which boasted a fine view of the busy boulevard. “Monsieur Constantine has not yet arrived,” the maître d’ informed him, handing him a menu and wine list before departing.

  That was not like Marcus Constantine. MacLeod checked his watch—twenty minutes late. Not like Constantine at all. Although nearly a score of centuries had passed, Constantine still conducted his life the way he must have commanded the great legions of Rome, with discipline, punctuality, and a meticulous attention to detail. It had won an empire for Rome, but it sometimes made Constantine a pain to work with. Pity the poor museum archivist twenty minutes late for a staff meeting—at one point in Constantine’s life, that offense would have merited flogging. Today, perhaps only a stern talking to. Still, MacLeod didn’t envy Constantine’s staff.

  But now it was the General’s turn to be late. MacLeod’s first thought was of a chance encounter with another Immortal. Marcus Constantine may have taken himself out of the Immortal Game, but that didn’t mean the Game wouldn’t inevitably catch up with him. It was a part of being Immortal, like eating and breathing, that at any time another of your kind could challenge you for your head. But MacLeod didn’t dwell on the possibility for long. It was more likely he’d been delayed by a traffic accident or a student demonstration, much more common in Metropolitan Paris than the occasional beheading.

  The wine steward appeared by MacLeod’s side, hovering in officious silence while he scanned the wine list. Arriving before Constantine meant that for once he got to choose the wine. Constantine’s taste in wine tended to run to sweet, cloying vintages or wines aged practically to vinegar. While these may have been the height of fashion in Nero’s day, MacLeod’s tastes had been cultivated in far more civilized times. A quick glance at the menu told him Chez Nous specialized in the cooking of the south of France. Perfect. “L’Hermitage from
Chavi. The 1990 if you have it.” A proper wine for Provencal cooking.

  While he waited for the wine, and for Constantine, to arrive, MacLeod watched the crowds go by along the boulevard, past the galleries and designer boutiques. He found himself, almost without thinking, naming where the obvious tourists had come from. The middle-aged couple in the matching brown coats and sensible shoes? German. The elderly man and woman? French, but not Parisian. Probably up from the South. It was a game he and Tessa would play for hours over coffee at a café or while strolling along the Seine. The only rule was you had to guess before hearing them speak. The two young lovers, no more than eighteen either of them, were too easy—English, his football jersey gave them away. Three blond women window-shopping at the jewelers across the way were more difficult. Obviously sisters, probably Scandinavian … Norwegian?

  The woman walking past them caught his immediate attention. Her skin, the golden brown of sunset, bespoke a Middle Eastern heritage, but her walk, the way she carried herself, sure and confident, betrayed her time in the West. American, perhaps? But not by birth, he thought—she still carried the glow of the sands of Araby in her veins. She dressed simply, modestly. On most women her dark conservative suit would be severe, out of place on the fashion-conscious streets of Paris; on her, it created an aura of power and heightened, not hid, her natural beauty. MacLeod watched her with interest as she moved through the crowd until the wine steward offered him a taste of the wine he’d ordered for his approval.

  MacLeod took a sip. “Delicious,” he said, and the sommellier filled both his glass and the one at Constantine’s empty place before departing. MacLeod scanned the passing crowds again for another glimpse of that woman. But she was gone.

  The maître d’ stepped into his line of sight. “Duncan MacLeod?” he asked, and MacLeod nodded. “There is a call for you.” He handed MacLeod a portable phone and returned to his post.