The Fallen Angel

charged into the museum of the ancient Jews and opened fire.
     
     
    The first shots struck the ancient pillars and sent teardrops of flaming limestone into Gabriel’s cheek. Looking up, he saw Hassan Darwish running across the floor of the cavern, his face contorted with a hatred born of faith and history and a thousand humiliations large and small. Instantly, Gabriel leveled his own weapon and charged toward the imam as bullets flashed past his ears. He fired the gun as he had in the range beneath the Vatican, shot after shot without pause, until nothing remained of the imam’s face. Then, turning, he saw Eli Lavon crumpled on the ground, his arms wrapped around the base of one of the pillars. Gabriel pressed his palm against the bullet wound in Lavon’s chest and held him as the life started to leave his eyes. “Don’t die, Eli,” he whispered. “Damn you, Eli, please don’t die.”

47
     
    JERUSALEM
     
    W ITHIN AN HOUR OF THE Israeli incursion onto the Temple Mount plateau, the third intifada erupted in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Initially, the heavily armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority tried to control the violence. But as images of Israeli troops in the Haram al-Sharif spread like wildfire across the Arab world, the militiamen joined the rioters and engaged Israeli troops in running gun battles. Ramallah, Jericho, Nablus, Jenin, and Hebron all saw heavy fighting, but the worst of the clashes occurred in East Jerusalem, where several thousand Arabs tried but failed to retake the Temple Mount. By sunset, as sirens announced the arrival of the Jewish Sabbath, Islam’s third-holiest shrine was under Israeli control, and the Middle East seemed precariously close to war.
    The king of Jordan, himself a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, demanded the Israelis leave the Noble Sanctuary at once, but he stopped short of calling for violence to expel them. That was not the case, however, in Cairo, where the Muslim Brotherhood, the new leaders of the Arab world’s most populous nation, called for a pan-Islamic jihad to avenge the outrage. Hamas, a branch of the Brotherhood’s Islamist tree, immediately pummeled Beersheba and several other Israeli towns with a barrage of rockets that left ten Israelis dead. In Lebanon, however, Hezbollah remained curiously silent, as did its Shiite masters in Tehran.
    Among the many challenges faced by Israeli officials during those explosive first hours was the presence of His Holiness Pope Paul VII. With the Old City of Jerusalem now a war zone, he took shelter in a monastery in Ein Kerem, the former Arab village just west of downtown Jerusalem that, according to Christian tradition, was the birthplace of John the Baptist. At the request of the Israeli prime minister, the pope agreed, albeit reluctantly, to cancel a planned Holy Saturday mass on the Mount of Beatitudes, along with Easter Sunday services at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Regrettably, the Holy Father had little choice in the matter. The Sepulchre, the sacred Christian shrine that Saladin had wanted to raze, was one of the main targets of Muslim rage.
    There were many in the papal entourage who pleaded with the Holy Father to return to the safety of the Vatican, but he insisted on staying in the misplaced hope his presence might help to calm the situation. He spent much of his time at the Hadassah Medical Center, located not far from the monastery. Needless to say, the pope’s frequent appearances at the hospital generated speculation that he was ill or had been injured in the violence. It wasn’t true; he was simply ministering to a soul in need.
    The patient in question had arrived at the hospital in the first minutes of the uprising, a bullet in his chest, more dead than alive. The staff was told that his name was Weiss, but was given no other information except for his approximate age and his medical history, which included numerous disorders related to stress. The blinds over his window, which looked east toward the walls of the Old City, remained tightly drawn. Two armed guards stood watch outside his door, one to its right and one to its left.
    The pope was not the only dignitary to visit the wounded man. The prime minister came to see him, as did the chief of staff of the IDF, the heads of the various Israeli intelligence services, and, for reasons never made clear to the hospital staff, a large delegation of archaeologists from Hebrew