O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King

Author:Laurie R. King
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780553664898
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 2009-05-23T21:13:54+00:00

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Since desert life is clearly the source of bravery, the more savage the group, the more brave, and the more able to defeat other peoples and take from them their possessions.

—THE Muqaddimah OF IBN KHALDÛN

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I felt remarkably well physically, for a person who had been bashed about in a motorcar accident. The bruises were going to be spectacular and my head throbbed mightily, but I was all right, as long as I did not move suddenly or think about the crash. Thinking about it brought on a rush of cold sweat accompanied by dizziness and a roiling stomach: hard, cold panic.

So I did not think about it, just pushed it implacably away from me, with such success that I never did remember the details. Instead, I gave all my attention to what Mahmoud was doing, and concentrated my entire being on the thought of Holmes and getting him back.

We slipped out of the back entrance to Rahel’s inn into the stillness of a Palestinian town at midnight. A third figure fell into place behind us as we passed the back of a shop—not Ali. I thought he carried a long rifle in his arms.

The town did not take long to leave behind. Mahmoud marched ahead, his swirling robes casting wild shadows in the bright light of the full moon. The road stretched palely on ahead; the lights of Ram Allah dropped behind us, and Mahmoud slowed his pace. When I was beside him he began to speak—in English again, that there might be no misunderstanding.

“There were three men in the ambush. The car slowed to climb the hill, and the minor land-slide they had engineered across the road ensured that we should slow even more. They shot the driver from the hill behind us and over our right shoulder, and we went straight into a shallow ravine. Very neatly done.

“The driver was killed. You hit your head on the side of the car when we went off the road. Ali pulled you out. I followed him into the rocks. We waited for Holmes to come, but he did not, and when I went back for him, two men had him in another motorcar that had been hidden around a bend in the road. The third man was still above us with his rifle. An extremely good shot, he was. Had we not left our equipment in Jericho, if I had my rifle, I should have gone after him, but I did not.” He shrugged, as close to an apology as he could come, and I gave him the Arabic hand gesture that said maalesh.

“You know where these men went?” I asked.

“Now I do. We have people in that area.”

“Was he hurt? Holmes?”

“There was no blood on the road,” he said, a clear equivocation.

“Was he on his feet?” I insisted.

“He walked to their car under his own power. They held a gun to his head.”

“How did they do it? How did they know we would be there?”

Mahmoud sighed deeply, a sound, I thought, of shame, but did not answer me directly.

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