A Premature Apocalypse Read online

  Moshe stifled a chuckle, stepped back, and enjoyed the show. The old man gave Savta a run for her money, but even he was no match for that indomitable force of nature. In the end, Moshe had to cut the negotiation short and handed over twenty thousand shekels in crisp two-hundred-shekel notes. The wily pawnbroker had made a tidy profit. Moshe didn’t mind. There was no need to create rumors that the Prime Minister was stingy. Besides, he felt sorry for him. While haggling, the old vulture had pulled out most of his remaining hair, and alarming blue veins had bulged on his forehead.

  Moshe removed his golden Omega, the gift from Isaac Gurion during the honeymoon days of Moshe’s early foray into politics, and he strapped on his grandfather’s Rolex. The watch was heavier, the strap a little tighter, but it felt right. The timepiece was the last purchase his grandfather had made before the war had taken everything. He had sworn never to sell the watch. It was a reminder of the life he had wanted to regain. “A Karlin never quits,” his father had always said. It was the motto that had kept Moshe going in his darkest hours.

  Secret Service agents held the door as Moshe and Savta climbed back inside the ministerial SUV.

  “Twenty thousand shekels,” she said, shaking her head. “I could have got him down further if you’d let me.”

  “That’s all right, Savta. You did very well. And we can’t spend the whole day bargaining. We have another important appointment today, remember?”

  Chapter 99

  A cool morning breeze greeted Moshe at the top of the Mount of Olives when he stepped out of the SUV.

  This was where it had all begun. Six months ago, he’d woken up in the ancient cemetery, naked and alone. He had lost everything. The muezzin call to prayers on the loudspeaker had sent a thrill of fear through his mind. This morning, he had arrived in a cavalcade, wearing his finest suit. The voices on the loudspeaker spoke in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and they called every man, woman, and child to join their gathering.

  Secret Service agents lined the path to the raised platform which faced the Old City below.

  Galit waited on the curb, her hands clasped, looking as radiant as that first moment he had glimpsed her. She kissed Savta Sarah on the cheek, then turned to her husband.

  “You’re late,” she said, a playful smile curling her lips.

  “I got here as fast as I could.”

  “Daddy!”

  Talya jumped up and down and hugged his waist. Moshe picked her up and mussed her thicket of dark curls.

  The first two weeks after the asteroid strike had kept them both very busy. He had a country to patch up, foreign relations to mend, and international relief efforts to coordinate.

  The fact that they had survived the impact at all had required some explaining, and Professor Stein was happy to oblige. As it happened, PK-7 was not an asteroid but a comet, a ball of rock and ice, and so the nukes had not only bumped the threat off course but broken it apart. Comets hang out in the Asteroid Belt too. Who knew?

  The larger of the comet’s two remaining chunks had landed in the Mediterranean Sea, which had softened the blow but still sent tsunamis racing toward every shore.

  Galit had faced her own tsunami challenge—getting her parents to move out of the Prime Minister’s Residence—and Moshe had not envied her. With hard work and a lot of collaboration, they completed both missions successfully.

  Then Moshe did something unexpected—he took off an entire week. Instead of flying to exotic islands or hiking up north, Moshe, Galit, and Talya stayed home. No phones or emails, no Internet, only quality time together. They slept in, ate ice cream, watched movies, and played board games. Most of all, they had talked. The results were spectacular.

  At the Mount of Olives Cemetery, Galit linked her arm in his, and they walked along the line of security agents.

  “Ready to conquer the world?” she said.

  “I’m not sure ‘conquer’ is the right word.”

  “You did save us all.”

  “Well,” he said, noncommittally. “That still sounds a little grandiose. I suppose we did avert a global extinction event. And achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament. Within twenty-four hours and by means of a few conference calls. We can be proud of that.”

  “Not ‘we,’” Galit corrected him. “You. You did all that.”

  As much as the idea tickled Moshe’s ego, he couldn’t abide the lie. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” he said, “it’s that no one man can fix a country, never mind the world. I had a lot of help. And I’ll need more yet.”

  Galit, Talya, and Savta made for their seats in the front row, and Moshe continued onward.

  Rubi, the owlish Government Secretary, waited for him at the ramp of the raised platform.

  “Is everything in order, Rubi?” Moshe had finally yielded to his eager helper’s requests, entrusting him with the logistics of the day’s event.

  “Yes, sir! Thank you for the honor, Mr. Prime Minister!”

  “No, Rubi. Thank you. You've done an excellent job. And I'm sure I'll have many more projects for you in future.”

  Rubi swallowed hard. “Thank you, sir. I'll convey your message to the team.”

  Careful what you wish for, Moshe thought. He patted the man on the shoulder and continued on his way.

  As he climbed the ramp to the raised platform, Jerusalem opened up like a flower in bloom. Sections of the ancient Old City walls peeled back like petals, and in the open heart of what was once the golden dome and Temple Mount, the tiny figures of innumerable people stood in white, black, and the full spectrum of colors. The hills flowed with humanity as far as the eye could see, right up to the rows of seated dignitaries among the tombstones.

  At Moshe’s entrance, hands clapped and voices cheered, the sound of rolling waves rushing to greet the seashore.

  Two figures sat at the table of honor beside the podium, Rabbi Yosef and Elijah.

  “Thank you for your patience.”

  “After two thousand years,” Elijah said, “what’s a few more minutes?”

  Moshe smiled. If anyone had asked Moshe to picture Elijah the Prophet, he would have gone for flowing robes and white beards, not jet-black hair and leather jackets. Reality never ceased to amaze.

  “Is she here?” Moshe asked.

  Eli smiled, touched that Moshe had remembered. “Front row,” he said. He pointed to a girl with long dark hair. Noga, Eli’s injured girlfriend and the discoverer of the Ten Lost Tribes, waved up at them. She and Dr. Stern sat among the dignitaries and world leaders who had turned out for the occasion.

  Noga had figured out the hardest part of the Messianic equation—how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and for that, he was eternally grateful. If not for that, and the biker’s earlier unfortunate attempt to meet Moshe and Rabbi Yosef at this very spot, Moshe might have doubted Elijah’s credentials.

  Moshe nodded at Irina and Alex in the second row. The day of the asteroid strike—or Day One, as people were calling it—the Russian couple had faced off another branch of Adams’s criminal organization. During the confrontation, Boris and King Kong had met their end.

  Moshe nodded at the new Police Commissioner in the second row. Alex’s testimony had put the former Commissioner, Golan, behind bars for his collaboration with organized crime. Rooting out the Organization’s tendrils would take time, but the process had begun, and Interpol would do the heavy lifting.

  With the rustle of fluttering wings, a black crow alighted on the table before Elijah, cawed once, and flew off.

  “What was that about?”

  “An old friend,” Elijah said. “He said it’s time we got started.”

  “Right.” Moshe approached the podium, cleared his throat, and the cheers rose again across the Holy City. His face appeared on projector screens along the hillsides to give even the most distant spectators a good view of the ceremony. What to say?

  Moshe, Rabbi Yosef, and Elijah had met several times to discuss the way forward. Three things became clear
. A new era had begun. They had saved the planet from extinction, brought peace to their corner of the Middle East, crippled a global consortium for organized crime, and defeated death. Secondly, they needed to mark this fact to give the people closure and guidance. Thirdly, none of the three men had a clue what they were doing.

  So they’d worked with what they had.

  Moshe waited for the hubbub of the murmuring crowd to settle. He had written up his thoughts earlier but decided against cue cards. From here on he’d improvise.

  “My friends and fellow citizens,” he said into the microphone. His amplified voice bounced off the Jerusalem hills under the warm sun of a clear autumn day. “For millennia, we have waited for the End Times. We have hoped for the end to our suffering and striving, for a brighter future of truth, peace, and justice. Some have taken advantage of that hope, cynically manipulating our beliefs to further their own greedy agendas. Today, the wait ends.”

  Cheers and wolf whistles rose from the masses of rapt humanity.

  Moshe raised his hand for silence. “Today we mark the end of history.” The ominous ring of those words ushered in total silence. “Not because time is ending. On the contrary, life is starting anew. For those who choose it, eternal life. But the story that began with two kids in God’s garden has concluded, the script in which we hang our hopes and dreams on Divine intervention. His story has ended. Our story has begun.”

  The breeze ruffled Moshe’s hair and whistled in the branches of the olive trees.

  “Some have claimed that I am the Messiah.” Another roar from the crowds on the hills. Moshe waited for silence. “Many have pressured me to reach for that crown myself. But I must disappoint you. No one human being can fix society. No individual can beat crime, end suffering, or fight injustice.”

  He drew two deep breaths and used the dramatic pause to recall the exact wording he had drafted with Rabbi Yosef and Elijah.

  “I am not your Messiah. God alone is our Redeemer, and He created us all in His image. Our job is to learn from His example and to complete the process that He started. In short, to fix the world together.”

  Hands clapped, and the hills echoed with applause. A chant carried on myriad voices. “Fix the World! Fix the World!”

  The chant had a certain appeal. It sure beat “Undead Stay Dead!” or “Break the Dry Bones!”

  Moshe smiled as the voices rose and fell. After a full three minutes, the chant subsided.

  “Before we conclude the proceedings, please join me in remembering those who are no longer with us.”

  Moshe spoke of friends and family who had passed away during those tumultuous few months, and those who had not yet returned from death.

  Moshe found Samira in the second row, and their eyes met. She smiled as tears traced shimmering trails down her face. They were both thinking of one lost friend in particular—Ahmed.

  While she waited for the asteroid strike, cowering beneath her bed at the Dry Bones Society, Samira had read Ahmed’s letter. He wrote of his love for her and his decision to heed her advice and not repeat the mistakes of his first life. The Messiah Coronation would bring him face-to-face with the Shepherd, he was sure of it. He promised to confront the Shepherd and end his rule of terror. Samira had not known what he had meant, but the truth soon came to light.

  Forensics experts at the Sultan’s Pool confirmed that Ahmed had saved Moshe’s life. He had detonated a suicide vest beneath his robes, incinerating Adams, Mandrake, and their henchman. His act of self-emollition had decapitated the Hydra of organized crime, freed Moshe from his watery grave, and spared the lives of the three men the criminals had bound and gagged below the stage.

  More than that, his brave words of reconciliation at the Temple Mount had set the table on which Moshe had served the tidings of the Ten Lost Tribes and helped a suffering population digest that vital dish.

  Could noble actions erase a suicide bomber’s past? Did saving one group of innocent lives make up for the snuffing out of another? Shmuel would say no. Moshe for one hoped, wherever the universe had blown Ahmed’s soul, that this time he would find peace.

  “We will remember their sacrifices forever,” Moshe concluded.

  He stepped back as Elijah and Rabbi Yosef took the podium. The rabbi held the long, twisted shofar—a hollowed-out deer horn—while Elijah applied his lips to the pointy end and puffed out his cheeks. The blast came deep and smooth. The single note was long and sad but determined, and as the sound waves echoed off hills and fields and homes, Moshe thought he heard the eternal city answer with hope.

  Then Elijah raised a large rectangular bottle of virgin olive oil and pumped the lever of the spray nozzle. Clouds of oil wafted downwind, anointing every man, woman, and child with tiny drops of the sacred liquid. Moshe had thought this unnecessary, but Elijah was a stickler for protocol. “If they’re all messiahs,” Elijah had contended, “I must anoint them all.” Moshe had relented. The prophet’s Divine intuition and miraculous powers had disappeared for good, and Rabbi Yosef had chalked that up to this new era of human intervention. Moshe didn’t have the heart to deny the prophet his anointing role too.

  The proceedings concluded with the singing of the Israeli anthem, Hatikva. The Hope.

  Od lo avda tikvatenu / Our hope is not yet lost

  Hatikva bat shnot alpayim / The hope of two thousand years

  Lihyot am chofshi be’artzenu / To be a free nation in our land.

  The ceremony complete, Moshe led the way down the ramp, rejoined Galit and Talya, and walked the path back to the street.

  “Masterful speech!” the American President said. “Well done, sir!”

  “Agreed!” chimed in the Russian President. “You brought tears to my eyes.”

  The two world leaders had jetted in for the ceremony and become great pals. Their camaraderie had made the nuclear non-proliferation agreements easier to sign. It also helped that neither side had any nuclear arsenal to speak of. Both presidents had afforded the Israeli Prime Minister every form of aid over the past month in the relief efforts across the Mediterranean. In return, Moshe never mentioned the zombie armies.

  “Have you seen our proposal? For the IGO…”

  “Oh, right!” Moshe has seen the email, but not read the details. “I’ll have a look as soon as possible.” He hurried along the path, leaving them in his wake.

  “The IGO?” Galit asked.

  “International Governmental Organization. Apparently, they want me to head a unified world government.”

  “Wow!”

  “I know. Talk about conquering the world.”

  “Are you going to accept?”

  “I don’t know. I stand by what I said—one small country is more than enough.”

  She chuckled, and he sensed that she wasn’t disappointed. He’d spent enough time away from home and swimming against the stream. From here on, Moshe’s new motto would be “delegate everything.”

  “Irina!” Moshe hugged his friend and her boyfriend.

  She held up her hand, and a diamond twinkled on her finger. Make that fiancé. She deserved a happy ending.

  Moshe teared up. “Congratulations, Irina! I mean Valentina.” He kept forgetting to use her real name.

  “That’s OK,” she said. “I’m sticking with Irina. A fresh start.”

  Moshe understood. “I hope you’ll invite us to the wedding.”

  “Of course! Rabbi Yosef, perhaps you can officiate?”

  The rabbi gaped for a moment. Oops. She had unintentionally put the rabbi in a spot. Irina wasn’t Jewish. Could he marry her to Alex?

  “Um,” Rabbi Yosef said. “I’ll look into it.”

  Irina jumped for joy.

  Moshe thumped the rabbi on the shoulder and moved on. He’d leave the conundrums of Jewish Law to him. That was why God had created rabbis.

  A few steps down the line, a Secret Service agent held back an older Arab man.

  “Hold on a moment.”

  “Mr. Prime Minister!”
the man pleaded, then, spotting Rabbi Yosef, “Mr. Vice Prime Minister!”

  “It’s OK,” Moshe told Alon, and he let the man draw closer.

  “My son,” he said, in shaky Hebrew. “You knew my son?” In his hand, he held a crumpled poster of an Arab kid wearing a black bandana and a suicide vest.

  “Ahmed?”

  “Yes!” He pointed to the picture. “Ahmed. My son. I am Yousef.”

  Yousef. Why did that sound familiar?

  Moshe turned to Rabbi Yosef, whose eyes widened, and Moshe remembered what the rabbi had explained. Tradition had talked of two Messiahs. Rabbi Emden had thought that Rabbi Yosef was the doomed Messiah of Yosef, the leader of the Ten Tribes.

  A shudder tingled down Moshe’s spine. In Arabic, Yosef became Yousef.

  “Your son saved our lives,” Moshe said.

  “Yes! My son.” Then tears came, and the man hugged his Prime Minister and wept on his shoulder for the son he had lost. By the shaking of the man’s body, it seemed he had lost his son a long time ago.

  Moshe whispered to Alon to follow up with the man and see what assistance he needed. Then he moved on. He shook hands with well-wishers.

  With each step, he thought of the thousands of men and women who had come before him. Through untold hardships and hopelessness, they had longed for this day, for the end of the seemingly endless road of history. Each step he took, he took for them.

  At the end of the path waited a bearded man in a shiny dark suit and top hat. He stuck out his chest, and the tails of his coat brushed the pebbly floor of the car park.

  Moshe knew the man, but only in black and white, not in the full color of real life.

  “Grandfather?”

  The man blinked and smiled. “I thought that might be you,” said the grandfather Moshe had never met. He had a thick Eastern European accent. “How many Moshe Karlins can there be?”

  “Galit, this is my grandfather, Moshe Karlin!”

  Moshe Karlin Senior doffed his hat and bowed. “At your service, Mrs. Prime Minister.” He bent over and peered at little Talya. “And who might you be, young lady?”