The Fallen Angel

anymore. It’s as if it was . . .”
    “Looted,” said Gabriel.
    “Yes. Looted.”
    “We’ll get it out, Eli, but you really should go now.”
    “I’m not leaving these things here alone,” Lavon answered. He was drifting from pillar to pillar, his face tilted skyward. “The contemporary models and drawings of the First Temple oftentimes put a roof over the heikhal , but there wasn’t one. It was an open courtyard with two-story chambers on three sides. And at the far western end of the structure was the debir , the Holy of Holies, where they kept the Ark of the Covenant.”
    Lavon approached the spot slowly because it was there that Imam Darwish had chosen to place the bomb. It was no ordinary bomb, thought Gabriel. It was a Western Wall of explosives, wired and primed and waiting to detonate. Were it something small, Gabriel might have been able to disarm it with a sapper whispering in his ear. But not this.
    “How do you suppose they were able to do it?”
    “I’m sure Imam Darwish will be happy to tell us.”
    Lavon shook his head slowly. “We were fools to let them have complete control of this place. Who knows? Maybe we should have behaved like every other army that conquered Jerusalem.”
    “Tear down the Dome and al-Aqsa? Rebuild the Temple? You don’t really believe that would have been the right thing to do, Eli.”
    “No,” he admitted, “but at a moment like this, I’m allowed to imagine what it might have been like.”
    Gabriel looked at his watch.
    “How many minutes left?”
    “If Dina is right—”
    “Dina is always right,” Lavon interjected.
    “Twenty-five minutes,” said Gabriel. “Which is why you need to get out of here.”
    Lavon turned his back to the bomb and lifted his arms toward the avenue of pillars. “There isn’t a single authenticated artifact from the First or Second Temple. Not one. It’s the reason why Palestinian leaders have been able to convince their people that the Temples were a myth. And it’s the reason why they hid these pillars in a hole one hundred and sixty-seven feet beneath the surface.” He looked at Gabriel and smiled. “And it’s the reason why I’m not leaving this mountain until I know these pillars are safe.”
    “They’re just stones, Eli.”
    “I know,” he said. “But they’re my stones.”
    “Are you really willing to die for them?”
    Lavon was silent for a moment. Then he turned to Gabriel. “You have a beautiful wife. Maybe someday you’ll have a beautiful child. Another beautiful child,” he added. “Me . . . these stones are all I have.”
    “You’re the closest thing in the world I have to a brother, Eli. I’m not leaving you behind.”
    “So we’ll die together,” Lavon said, “here, in the house of God.”
    “I suppose there are worse places to die.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I suppose there are.”
     
     
    At that moment, Imam Hassan Darwish was standing in the doorway of the underground structure that had been built on his orders, listening to the two Jews speaking in their ancient language. Darwish recognized them both. One was the noted biblical archaeologist Eli Lavon, a critic of the Waqf and its construction projects. The other, the one with gray temples and green eyes, was Gabriel Allon, the murderer of Palestinian heroes. Darwish could scarcely believe his good fortune. The presence of the two men would make his task more difficult. But it would also make his journey to Paradise far sweeter.
    The imam turned his gaze from the men and looked at the explosive device that lay within the ruins of the First Jewish Temple. The man called Mr. Farouk had built a manual override into the detonator in the event of a scenario such as this and had instructed Darwish on how to trigger it. A flick of a switch was all it would take.
    Just then, Darwish heard the clatter of boots in the aqueducts. It appeared the Jews had broken through the Waqf’s defenses. History was attempting to repeat itself. But not this time, thought Darwish. This time, the sacred shrines of Islam would not fall into the hands of the infidel, as they had in 1099, when the Crusaders besieged Jerusalem. This time would be different. A flick of a switch was all it would take.
    The imam closed his eyes and, in his thoughts, recited the Verse of the Sword from the Koran: “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them, using every stratagem of war.” Then he