A Premature Apocalypse Read online

  Moshe Karlin was their leading candidate for the role of Messiah in the cosmic drama. The resurrected man had stormed the political scene overnight, winning over the country with a clean campaign that promised to end corruption and cronyism. He was also the man that God had told Eli to anoint. At least, so Eli thought.

  Five months ago, the Thin Voice had sent Eli, also known as Elijah the Prophet, to anoint the Messiah at the Mount of Olives Cemetery. Eli had spotted three people at the rendezvous point. Later, he would identify them as Moshe Karlin, Rabbi Yosef Lev, and a mysterious blond Russian woman who worked at the Dry Bones Society.

  Unfortunately for humanity, before Eli could anoint the Messiah, he crashed his Harley into a truck and woke up in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The Thin Voice had fallen silent ever since. In the hospital, Eli met Noga. She stole his heart, rekindled his faith in humanity, and saved him from the head of neurology, Dr. Stern, who had developed an unhealthy interest in Eli’s speedy recovery.

  In hindsight, Eli’s motorcycle accident was yet another step in the Divine Plan. God had led him to Noga, but not merely to jump-start an ancient prophet’s rusty motivation. Noga’s doctoral research project identified Palestinian Arabs as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a demographic that Elijah the Prophet was to uncover during the Messianic Era. To reunite the Twelve Tribes of Israel in the Holy Land was high on the to-do list of the long-overdue Messiah. Without the Lost Tribes, the moment of Redemption might slip away yet again.

  As for Moshe Karlin, a charismatic new leader of the Jewish State made sense as the Messiah. His layers of Secret Service security, however, made bumping into him on the street impossible. “Hey, Moshe. How you doing? And by the way, you’re the Messiah. Good luck!”

  But the publication of Noga’s findings in one of the world’s most esteemed peer-reviewed academic journals would open the path to Moshe Karlin. Noga had submitted her paper last week, and they used the wait to hone the rest of their plan.

  Eli frowned. “We’re forgetting one critical thing.”

  Noga’s face became a battleground of fear and uncertainty. “What?”

  “Breakfast.”

  Eli fixed shakshouka in a frying pan—heavy on the tomato, light on the chili—and popped a few slices of bread in the toaster. Sitting at the island of his designer kitchen, they munched away while the sun warmed the Jerusalem skyline through the French windows.

  “Things were easier in the past,” he said. “If I wanted to give King Ahab an earful, I’d just wait in the woods for his chariot to pass by.”

  “You should speak with archaeologists,” Noga said. “They’d learn so much.”

  Memories from his earlier life used to freak Noga out. After she located the Ten Lost Tribes and discovered that dead people were rising from their graves throughout the country, her boyfriend’s longevity no longer seemed so far-fetched.

  “Nah,” Eli said. “Even if they believed me, it’s anecdotal evidence.”

  “Right.” Her eyes narrowed as she thought. “How did you know where to wait?”

  “For Ahab? The Thin Voice.”

  “Figures. Everything’s easier with a direct line to God’s Mind.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed.

  Without the Thin Voice, he’d never know for sure whether Moshe was the Lord’s Anointed. He was flying blind. But maybe that was the point. After centuries of false messiahs, maybe this time really was different. Maybe this time the Final Redemption would arrive.

  Noga’s phone rang. She washed down a mouthful of shakshouka. “It’s Hannah.” She answered. “Hi, Hannah. How are you?”

  Noga listened, her brow tense. They hadn’t expected to hear from her doctoral supervisor for weeks. Academic journals took their time to analyze and reproduce results before including a paper in their next edition.

  “Aha,” Noga said. She stared into space, and her expression slackened. Something was wrong. “I see.”

  She put down the phone. “They’re not going to publish the paper.”

  “Did we miss the deadline?” A delay would set back their plans by months.

  “No,” she said. “We submitted in time, but they still won’t publish it. Not now. Not ever.”

  Chapter 6

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” Ahmed asked Dara. He did not ask, “Is it legal?”

  They stood on the edge of a dirt road on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the surrounding hills strewn with stones and wild grass. His new friend handed him a large rock from a large mound. Ahmed hefted the stone in one hand, wondering how far he could throw it.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ve done it many times. And if you get shot, they pay more.”

  Ahmed hesitated. As much as he hated eating from dumpsters, he did not like the idea of getting shot. But he needed money. A roof over his head would be nice too, instead of that old tomb at the edge of the Mount of Olives. His friend’s promise of employment had sounded too good to be true. And when something sounds too good to be true, you run for your life. He had learned that the hard way.

  Still, he had to start somewhere. And if he had a job, maybe Samira would want to see him again.

  “Murderer!” the older Israeli man had roared. In the group session room at the Dry Bones Society, he had tried to throttle Ahmed. He had recognized Ahmed from the bus, the day Ahmed had pressed the detonator button threaded through his sleeve and thrown the commuters into a fiery hell.

  Keep dreaming, you fool. Samira knew what he had done; she’d never want to look on him again.

  “What if we get arrested?” Ahmed asked.

  He feared capture more than injury. If the authorities found out who he was, they would imprison him for sure. And they weren’t the only ones who wanted to put his head on a spike. In his nightmares, Boris the slave driver found him, and his henchmen dragged Ahmed back to the life of hard labor he had fled.

  His cousin Hasan would be next in line. “A double martyr,” he had told Ahmed. “You will be a hero. No, more than that—a legend.” Ahmed had accepted the second explosive belt but then aborted his mission. How would the suicide bomber pimp receive him now? Probably not with hugs and kisses.

  “You worry too much,” Dara said. “Here.” He pulled a white-and-black-checkered kaffiyeh from a plastic bin and handed it to Ahmed. “Put that over your face and you’ll be invisible. OK?”

  Ahmed glanced at the clump of young Arab men in rough clothes, loitering across the road. What other options did he have? “OK.”

  An unmarked bus barreled down the road, kicking up dust, and stopped beside the mound of stones. The two friends got on, along with the other desperate young men. Instead of buying a ticket, they scribbled their names on a lined sheet of paper using a pen attached by a string. Walid, Ahmed wrote. The word meant newborn. His new life was not progressing as he had hoped.

  “Where does the money come from?” Ahmed asked when they had found a pair of seats at a dusty window.

  “Europe,” Dara said. “Germany, mostly.”

  “What do Germans want here?”

  “To help the Palestinians.”

  Ahmed chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?” He got that too-good-to-be-true sensation again.

  “Their money is no joke. Their non-governmental organizations spend millions of dollars here.”

  “Wow.” A million dollars was an unimaginable amount of money. Where did those millions go?

  When they got off the bus, he found out. Ten other buses offloaded similarly wretched Arabs at the meeting point. A few dozen more arrived with the same cargo as they waited. Some were kids; the youngest looked seven years old.

  An army of Europeans in flak jackets and sunglasses smoked cigarettes and joked around in foreign tongues. Most of them held microphones or shouldered television cameras.

  “We’re starting,” cried an Arab man, who seemed to be in charge. “This way.”

  Two hundred Arabs pulled kaffiyehs over their faces and marched down the dirt road, the cameramen flanking them. The c
rowd stopped twenty meters from what looked like an oversized call box surrounded by cement blocks where two Israeli soldiers watched cars passing on a paved road. The soldiers wore helmets, bulky equipment jackets with high lapels, and machine guns across their chests.

  “Wait for it!” the Arab leader yelled. The cameramen were still setting up their tripods.

  One soldier talked to the other and pointed toward the waiting crowd. Inside the call box, another soldier spoke into a telephone handset.

  “Now!” the leader cried.

  “Let the show begin,” Dara said.

  The first rock hit a soldier on the head. The man collapsed behind the cement barrier, and two of his colleagues dragged him into the call box. To Ahmed’s surprise, none of the soldiers returned fire.

  Ahmed turned to see whether the reporters had caught that, but they had their cameras trained on the Arab rioters.

  Rocks bounced off the cement barriers and cracked the windows of the call box.

  “Why aren’t they firing?” Ahmed asked.

  Dara laughed. “They’re too scared. If they kill any of us by mistake, they’ll go to prison. C’mon, throw something.”

  Ahmed looked at the rock in his hand.

  “C’mon, give it to those sons of pigs! Killers of prophets!”

  In his first life, Ahmed had worked at the Rami Levi supermarket in Talpiot. His boss, Yigal, had joked around with him in Arabic, asked after his family, and let him take Fridays off. And when Ahmed’s own mother had turned him out on the street, the Dry Bones Society had given him food and shelter. Moshe Karlin and Rabbi Yosef had saved Samira from Boris and his henchmen. What if these soldiers were their brothers and sisters?

  Dara glared at him. “No stones, no money.”

  Ahmed lunged forward and threw the rock with all his might. It bounced into a clump of grass at the side of the road.

  “Man!” Dara said. “You have the worst aim ever.” He chuckled.

  While Ahmed threw wide, the others had no inhibitions. Rocks rained on the call box, then targeted the passing cars. A windshield smashed, and the car veered off the road, almost colliding with oncoming traffic, then returned to its lane and sped off.

  After that, the soldiers stepped out of their shelter and aimed their rifles in the air.

  Some rioters fled to the back of the crowd.

  “Go! Go!” the ringleader said, and a group of Arab kids advanced on the soldiers, hurling curses and stones.

  Camera shutters clicked as they captured the scene: Israeli soldiers firing over the heads of seven-year-olds.

  Ahmed swore. He had seen a lot of messed up things in his life, but the choreographed riot with its pint-sized human shields left him speechless. Where were their parents? And how much would they earn for an injured child?

  He had been one of those boys once. And so, the wheel turned.

  A military van pulled up outside the call box, and soldiers poured out the back. Weapons fired, and Ahmed ducked out of the way. A cloud of white smoke billowed nearby. The gas burned his eyes and seared his throat.

  “Fall back,” Dara shouted. They ran away from the tear gas and back to the meeting point where the buses idled.

  The show was over.

  Chapter 7

  Beneath the tall dome of the empty hall in the Knesset building, Avi reread the coalition agreement for the tenth time. The document was the answer to his prayers.

  The Plenum Hall of the Knesset stood three floors high, the rows of seats arranged before the Speaker’s dais in the shape of a candelabrum. As a member of the Opposition, Avi sat at the back.

  Within a month, he had gone from sleeping on benches in Sacher Park to dozing off on the comfy chairs in Knesset. Who would have believed it?

  His new fortune in life had placed him in a bind. He had landed his spot on the Upward party list by stirring up popular discontent for the Dry Bones Society and their “undead zombies.” Boris the gangster was his patron, Isaac Gurion his mentor, Moshe Karlin his sworn enemy, and Galit his rightful girl. But on Election Day, his worldview had flipped one hundred and eighty degrees. Nothing makes a man see the error of his ways like a gun pointed at his head.

  Mandrake, Boris’s sadistic and psycho boss, had tied up Avi and Moshe and urged them to blow each other’s brains out—right in front of Galit. When it came to the crunch, Avi couldn’t do it. He had never wanted to kill Moshe, he realized; he had wanted to be Moshe. His rash entry into politics had almost killed the two people he cared about most. No longer could he blame Moshe for his own failings.

  The revelations had not faded after his narrow escape from death, not even after Moshe’s resounding victory in the elections. And so Avi found himself in Knesset, on the Opposition bench, while secretly he was rooting for Moshe.

  For two weeks, he had haunted the corridors of Knesset, trying to be invisible. He avoided his party leader, Isaac Gurion, who radiated pent-up rage and frustration and often vented both on his subordinates. Avi had skipped as many Knesset sessions as possible, preferring to creep into the Plenum Hall when vacant, like now.

  But Moshe’s generous coalition agreement would set the world aright. He and Moshe would be on the same team again. They’d be buddies like in the good old days at Karlin & Son before Avi’s mad jealousy had led him to betray Moshe and ruin everything.

  The memory of Karlin & Son gave Avi an idea. He rushed out of the empty hall and sped down a corridor.

  He found Gurion lounging in a committee room in the Kedma wing and chuckling with Rabbi Mendel of Torah True.

  Gurion looked up at his flushed minion. “Hello, Avi. Getting some exercise?”

  He’s in a good mood. Great. Avi gave a quick smile. “About the coalition—I was wondering: is the Deputy Minister of Transportation position available?”

  “Why, are you interested in going places?”

  Gurion and Rabbi Mendel chortled again. Why were they so happy?

  “I think I can contribute there. Before I entered politics, I worked in the, ah, public transportation industry, and—”

  “You mean at Karlin & Son?”

  The mention of that detail unsettled Avi. Gurion had done his homework. But would he wonder where Avi’s loyalties lay now? “Well, yes,” he said, “but—”

  Another chuckle cut him short. Again, Avi was out of the loop and two steps behind; he hated that.

  “What if you were to head that ministry—wouldn’t you do even more good?”

  Him—Minster of Transportation? “Yeah, sure. But I’m not high enough on our list, and with the amount of positions Karlin is offering…” More chuckles. They were driving him crazy. “What?”

  Gurion motioned for Avi to sit next to him and placed an arm around his shoulders. “We’re not going to join the coalition, Avi.”

  “We aren’t? But then how will we get any ministries?”

  “By taking them. We’re going to bring down Karlin’s government.”

  The floor of Avi’s stomach fell away. “Bring down the government—but how?”

  “That’s easy,” Gurion said. “Together.”

  Chapter 8

  “Mr. Prime Minister!” said a voice in the corridor behind him. Moshe had hurried from the chopper pad into the Prime Minister’s Office building, hoping to slip into his room unnoticed, when the man called his name. Of all people, he had hoped to avoid the Government Secretary.

  Moshe turned as the eager little man ran over. “Yes, Rubi. How can I help you?”

  “The question is ‘How can I help you?’” He gave a nervous chuckle. With his square glasses and rounded features, Rubi reminded him of an owl. “I hear there was a meeting this morning with Opposition MPs. My department’s job is to coordinate between you and Knesset. If I’d only known in advance—”

  Moshe held up his hand, cutting him short. “I know, you would have taken care of everything.”

  Since Moshe’s first day in office, Rubi had pressured him to avail himself of his teams of bureaucra
ts. Moshe had selected an employee from the pool of secretaries but drawn the line at more sensitive roles. Like the intelligence agencies, the Government Secretariat was part of the entrenched establishment. Over the years, they had nurtured relationships with career politicians such as Gurion, and they resented Moshe’s new upstart party that had stormed the halls of power. They probably feared that he aimed to terminate their comfy tenured jobs; on that point, they happened to be right. Could he trust them not to leak top secret information to their old pals? Considering that morning’s events on the Gazan border, Moshe’s decision seemed wise.

  “It’s not just the logistics,” Rubi continued. “We have speech writers and spokespeople. A prime minister who wants to get things done can’t do everything on his own.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Moshe said. “But I prefer to write my own speeches, and Sivan is managing our press relations. I’ll be sure to contact you when the need arises.”

  He continued down the corridor, but the bureaucrat wasn’t giving up. “At least let us help next time, I’m sure you’ll see our added value. Will you be making any announcements soon?”

  Moshe halted outside his office and studied the eager owl’s face. Was he interested in proving his worth, or was he fishing for information? He must have heard of Moshe’s sudden helicopter excursion. What else did he know?

  “Mr. Prime Minister,” said Ettie. Moshe’s elderly secretary peered at him over half-moon spectacles from her desk outside his office. “The American Ambassador is waiting for you inside.”

  Interesting. “Is this a scheduled appointment?” He didn’t recall any diplomatic meetings on his calendar today.

  “No, sir. But he says it’s very urgent.”