Zealot Page 5

“Guten Morgen!” MacLeod said cheerfully to the surprised German, then punched him hard in the face, knocking him out against the pavement.

  Climbing into the cab, he saw that the copilot had already bailed out. He threw the truck into gear and started to drive.

  As he did, he sensed the presence of another Immortal nearby.

  Shit, he thought, not now. He drove on for several blocks, taking the truck far from the line of fire, but still he couldn’t shake the sensation. Once sure that his passengers were safe for the moment, he stopped the truck and knocked against the back of the cab, yelling “Go! Hutry! Gai a’vek!” The rocking of the truck assured him his charges were taking his advice and getting the hell out.

  Just as MacLeod turned to get out of the truck and face the other Immortal, the other Immortal came to him. The passenger door opened and a young man of slight build jumped in. His skin was smoky dark, very different from that of either the Poles or the Jews who inhabited the area. He had black, almost bottomless eyes and a boyish face that could have been considered friendly under other circumstances—circumstances where he wasn’t holding a pistol to MacLeod’s head. MacLeod slowly raised his hands.

  “I’m Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod,” he said, “and we don’t need guns.”

  “I am Avram ben Mordecai of…” he thought for a moment, trying to match MacLeod, “the House of Judah. And I don’t have time for this Immortal bullshit right now. Get out of the truck.”

  MacLeod got down from the truck and Avram slid across the seat to exit behind him, gun still trained on the back of MacLeod’s head.

  “Why are you here?” Avram demanded.

  “I came to help.”

  “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.” A threat.

  MacLeod turned to face him. “I didn’t realize that was a prerequisite for compassion.”

  “These days, it is.” Avram studied him closely, taking in the too-small coat, the Star of David. “You know, goy, I could shoot you right now and take your head.”

  “You could,” MacLeod acknowledged. “But I think you have more important things to do. And I have a promise to keep to Zalman Mendelsohn.”

  “The Rebbe?” Then he realized, “You wear his coat!” He pressed the gun closer to MacLeod’s face. “What have you done to the Rebbe, you bastard?”

  “Tzaddik, don’t!” a young voice cried out. Keeping his pistol to MacLeod’s face, Avram turned his head to see Rivka racing down the block toward them.

  MacLeod called to her in alarm, “Rivka, stay back!” but she kept running.

  “Tzaddik, don’t hurt him. Shimon sent him—all the way from Paris!” Reaching them, Rivka threw her arms around MacLeod protectively. “We’re going to get the Rebbe out of the Ghetto!”

  “Shimon? You’ve seen Shimon?”

  MacLeod nodded. “He made it to Paris. He’s with the Resistance.” Avram stepped back from him, regarding him intently but not dropping his gun. The two men sized each other up. MacLeod thought he could sense that Avram was much like himself, a man of honor. From blocks away, they could still hear the sound of sporadic gunfire. “Listen to your heart, Avram,” MacLeod appealed to him urgently. “Believe me. Trust me. I’m not here to hurt anyone. I just want to help Shimon’s father. And your people need you back there.” Avram’s expression didn’t change. “If you don’t believe me, then send the child away and we’ll settle this honorably.”

  “Tzaddik, please …” Rivka begged.

  In the distance, another explosion sounded. Avram was torn. This was the moment he and the surviving youth of the Ghetto had worked and drilled endlessly for—when the Germans would return in force to eradicate the last remaining Jews in Warsaw and the Jews would finally rise up with weapons and face their murderers in battle. His people needed him. But, this Immortal, this Gentile, this goy MacLeod…he could prove a danger to his people as well…He looked from Rivka’s eager eyes to MacLeod. “Well,” he said after a long moment, praying he was making the right decision, “if Shimon and Rivka vouch for you…” Sometimes he could only go with his gut feeling. He reached into a pouch at his waist and pulled out a grenade, handing it to MacLeod. “Here, you’ll probably need this. Now go, you and Rivka keep your promise. Give Shimon my regards. Tell him he still owes me two tickets to the pictures.” He turned and climbed into the cargo truck.

  “Avram!” MacLeod called after him, and Avram hung out the window. “I’ll be back to help when the rabbi’s safe.”

  “Sure you will, goy,” Avram called back, unconvinced. He threw the truck into gear and drove off.

  Chapter Four

  Paris: The Present

  MacLeod pulled his Citroën close in behind the truck stopped in front of the Hôtel Lutétia, tossing his keys to a uniformed doorman as he got out. As he adjusted his gray turtleneck sweater and buttoned the single button of his blue sports coat over it, he thought he could almost detect the vaguest shiver of nervousness in his stomach.

  Some things never changed, not even after four hundred years. Certainly first dates hadn’t changed—all the possibilities, all the uncertainties. At least he wouldn’t have to meet Maral’s parents. The thought brought a rueful smile to his lips. Fighting the most despicable Kern or Kalas on the planet had always been easier than facing a girl’s parents for the first time. With a deep relaxation breath he entered the great revolving doors and passed into the grand lobby of the hotel.

  Four Arab men in suits and surly looks were waiting for him inside. They surrounded him as soon as he entered. “Masá al-kháyr,” MacLeod bade them good evening in his friendliest voice, flashing his most sincere smile. It never paid to piss off guys carrying automatic weapons under their coats before finding out what their problem was.

  “Duncan MacLeod?” asked one of them, an older man in a traditional Arab headdress, the kaffiyeh, and MacLeod nodded.

  “Dr. Amina is expecting me,” he said and immediately two of the other suits each grabbed him by an arm. This wasn’t exactly what he expected on a first date. He looked at the two men holding him, then at the older man in the kaffiyeh, who was regarding him sternly. “You wouldn’t happen to be her father, would you? Look, I promise, I’ll have her home by midnight,” he joked, but the Palestinian was not amused.

  “Search him,” he commanded, his face implacable. The suit holding MacLeod’s right arm pulled MacLeod’s wallet and a small box in colorful gift wrap from his jacket and tossed them to the older man. The fourth suit proceeded to pat down MacLeod’s chest and under his arms.

  “Hey, watch it, that tickles,” MacLeod protested. The Palestinian, ignoring him, frisked him around the waist, then up and down each leg. MacLeod pulled away. “Sorry, buddy, you’re not my type.” The friendly edge was beginning to wear off his voice.

  “He’s clean,” the one frisking him reported to his boss. The two suits restraining MacLeod released him.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen.” MacLeod casually tugged the sleeves of his jacket back into position. “What do we do next? Retinal scans? IQ tests? Or do I get to see Dr. Amina now?” At the older man’s nod, one of his men began to speak quietly into a small walkie-talkie.

  Kaffiyeh tore the paper from the box and opened it, scrutinizing the contents. Apparently convinced the palm-sized box didn’t contain an incendiary device, he closed the box and made a halfhearted attempt to stuff it back into its wrapping. Then he opened MacLeod’s wallet and gave it a cursory look before handing them both back. “Our apologies, Mr. MacLeod,” he said, anything but apologetic. “She will be down directly. Please wait here.” He indicated a chair in full view of all corners of the room.

  “And you’re not going to tell me what this is about, are you?” MacLeod asked as he put away his wallet and tattered gift. The Palestinian merely turned and walked away. “Somehow, I knew that was a rhetorical question.” MacLeod sat down in the specified chair, drumming his fingers on his thighs as he waited for Maral. There were others in the lobby seemingly going about their bus
iness, all of them careful not to be caught watching him, but he could feel a dozen eyes burning into him in secret. It was a relief when he saw Maral coming across the lobby toward him a few minutes later.

  He moved toward her, took her hand in his and kissed it gently. “Káyf hálik?” he greeted her in her native language, asking her how she was.

  Maral smiled at him. “Mabsúta, Duncan,” she assured him she was well, and the words were warm and throaty. Her hair was still worn up in combs, but she had exchanged her conservative suit for a moss-colored dress that swirled around her calves and brought out the burnished gold in her skin. It was Paris haute couture and yet somehow still the epitome of Arab modesty. MacLeod couldn’t decide whether it was the dress that enhanced Maral’s natural beauty, or Maral who enhanced the dress’s.

  “You look magnificent,” he said, meaning every word of it.

  She laughed. “How often does a girl get to Pans?” She did a quick little turn in front of him. “I don’t think I’ve worn anything quite this fancy since my wedding.”

  Over one arm Maral carried a silk shawl in whirls of greens and golds adorned by intricate beadwork. “May I?” MacLeod took the shawl from her and draped it around her shoulders. “Spring nights here can still be chilly, but we don’t have too far to go.” With a light touch, he stroked the silk as it lay across her shoulders. It was soft and cool. “This is lovely,” he said, but he meant so much more than the shawl, keenly aware of the curve of her shoulder, the gracefulness of her arm as he caressed them beneath the silk.

  Maral tied the ends of the shawl in front of her, then playfully guided his hand along the edge of the silk as it passed gently over her breast before holding his hand tight against the knot of the shawl where it lay just beneath her bosom. Her dark eyes met his own and a moment sparked between them. It wasn’t a promise. It was a possibility.

  “This was my grandmother’s,” she finally said, but MacLeod could tell that wasn’t what she really wanted to say. “It was part of her dowry from my great-grandfather.” She abruptly released his hand and his gaze as her bodyguard Assad and yet another man who had obviously been shopping off the rack at Spy City approached them.

  “We’re ready, Doctor,” Assad announced.

  “Then I guess so are we.” Maral offered her arm to MacLeod. “Duncan?”

  He looked at the two men, who were obviously armed to the teeth and who clearly intended to accompany them. “I didn’t realize this was a double date.” He turned to Maral. “I thought you were going to arrange to leave Toto at home.”

  Maral’s face reflected her deep concern. “Farid didn’t tell you?” She looked across the lobby toward the man in the kaffiyeh.

  “I’m afraid they were too busy measuring my inseam. Not a very chatty bunch. Tell me what?”

  She reached out and touched his hand. “There’s been more trouble at home.” Her eyes grew darker, her voice took on a note of pain. “Forty-three people were murdered outside a mosque in Hebron yesterday by an extremist Jewish student with an automatic weapon.”

  That would explain the smell of paranoia in the lobby, the heightened security. He understood immediately. “And you’re afraid of retaliation.”

  Maral nodded. “All of the peoples of Palestine are children of thousands of years of blood feuds and retribution. A Jewish attack like this will only lead to an Arab counterattack Then an Israeli response, then a Palestinian uprising. And then the military will crack down, and the next thing you know, five years of compromise and negotiation and movement—however so slowly—toward peace could be gone. All because of one fanatic. Everything we fought for. Everything we’ve gained. We will be prisoners again in our own country.” MacLeod caught a glimpse of the combination of eloquence and a had edge of steel that bred a strong negotiator. “We cannot let that happen.”

  “Then you are in danger?”

  “No more here than in Ramallah, I think. But you see, don’t you, why Farid and his security people would not allow me to go to dinner with such a charming, mysterious stranger without proper”—she looked at stern-faced Assad and his brooding associate and said wryly—”chaperones?”

  “Well, the more the merrier, I always say.” MacLeod took Maral’s arm and started toward the door. He glanced back at Assad. “You coming, Toto?”

  “I will drive,” Assad announced.

  “I thought we’d walk,” MacLeod said. “The restaurant’s only a few blocks away, and it’s a nice night. C’mon, the exercise’ll do you good.”

  “I will drive,” Assad reiterated.

  “I’m afraid Farid has picked a different restaurant for us,” Maral told MacLeod apologetically, “one he knows is secure. I hope you don’t mind. It was either this, or I would be having room service one in my hotel room again.”

  MacLeod smiled at her. “It’s fine. I don’t care where we eat or what we eat, as long as it’s with you.”

  Maral laughed. “I’m beginning to think you have the patience of a saint, Duncan MacLeod.”

  “If it keeps you from becoming a martyr, I can be anything you like.” He ushered her through the revolving doors to a dark Town Car waiting outside.

  The ride to the restaurant was an uncomfortable one, Maral sandwiched in the backseat between MacLeod and the sullen Arab whose name MacLeod still didn’t know. With the two bodyguards listening to their every word, it wasn’t the best place for conversation beyond remarks about the weather and the sorry state of Parisian traffic. It was to everyone’s relief when they finally arrived at the restaurant.

  MacLeod escorted Maral inside to find the place completely empty. “I hope this isn’t a commentary on the food,” he remarked, surveying the empty tables.

  “We have it all to ourselves this evening,” Maral explained. “Just the four of us? How romantic.”

  The owner of the establishment, a rotund Frenchman with a handlebar mustache, hurried over to greet them and ushered them to a table. MacLeod helped seat Maral and then sat himself down opposite her. The two bodyguards took up their positions, standing like twin towers of doom and gloom at the corners of the table.

  Maral removed her shawl and draped it on the back of the empty chair to her right, but the silk was slippery and slid from the chair to the floor. Immediately, both guards swooped in to rescue it as if throwing themselves on a live grenade. Maral had to laugh at how ridiculous they looked, and once she’d started, found she couldn’t stop. “I can’t do this,” she said through her laughter.“This is all too surreal. I’ll never get used to it.” Tears came to her eyes, though whether they were tears of laughter or frustration at their situation, MacLeod couldn’t tell.

  He got up and pulled two nearby tables a little closer to the table where he and Maral were seated. He pulled a chair out from under one table, grabbed Assad by the shoulders and directed him to the chair. “You, Beavis, sit.” He pulled a chair out from under the second table and indicated it to Assad’s partner. “And you, Butthead, over here.” The partner was about to protest, but one glance at the look on MacLeod’s face and he sat where ordered. MacLeod sat back down in his own seat. “Better?”

  “Much better,” Maral agreed. “Thank you.”

  MacLeod reached for the wine list, then stopped. “Would you be offended if I had a drink?”

  “Offended? Why would I be offended?”

  “Islam. You said at lunch yesterday you didn’t drink, and I thought…”

  Maral shook her head. “I’m afraid the last devout Muslim in my family was my grandfather. I don’t drink, but it’s not a religious obligation. You should help yourself.” MacLeod called the owner over and ordered a glass of wine.

  “Would Monsieur like to see a dinner menu?” the owner asked.

  “No…” MacLeod looked over at Maral with a twinkle in his eye. “Surprise us.” The owner hurried off to confer with the chef. “Now,” he said to Maral, “tell me more about your family.”

  “My father was raised in Islam, but he was always full of d
oubt, even as a child. He grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, and he always had trouble understanding why my grandfather believed it was written that peasants from Russia should take away the farm that had been in our family for nearly three hundred years. My mother was a Christian, from Bethlehem. My uncles, who still raise sheep there, like to claim that it was our ancestors who saw the great star over Bethlehem and found the baby Jesus. That’s how long they say my mother’s family have herded sheep in that area.”

  MacLeod could remember many sunny afternoons as a boy spent off adventuring with his cousin Robert, even though they’d both been warned to mind the sheep. And many’s the cold, lonely night spent helping a ewe bring new life into the world. “I come from a long line of shepherds, myself.”

  The owner brought MacLeod’s wine to the table, but MacLeod, fascinated by this glimpse into the complex layers that made up his dinner companion, didn’t touch it. “So, your mother was an Arab Christian, your father an apostate Muslim. How about you?”

  She shrugged. “I guess you could say my brothers and I are interested spectators. Respectful of both traditions and practicing none. That’s why my father wanted to move to America, where race and religion wouldn’t matter so much anymore.”

  MacLeod knew better than that and could tell she did, too. “And did it?” he prompted.

  “Of course it still mattered. “Dirty Arab’ hurts a child as much in English as it does in Hebrew. And we could never truly get away from everything that was happening back home.” She stopped talking for a moment, as if unwilling to peel back a deeper layer on such short acquaintance, then continued on with her story. “My father managed to drink himself to death by the time I was nineteen. So much for that American dream, huh?” Her little laugh was mirth-free. “I’ve seen alcohol. I saw it promise my father the peace he was looking for, then strip it all away from him. And, since I’m told I’m very much like the stubborn old fool in other ways, I’ve decided it’s best I stay away from it.”