With that much money, the Palestinians could have done it too."

Yehuda opened his mouth to speak, but something clattered on the windowpane like gravel and distracted him.

Obviously relieved to get away from the ar gument, Itzak got up from the table and went to the window . "My heavens. It' s hail! How strange."

"Hailstones? In September? Well, it must be one of those odd summer storms," Sephora said from the table. "It will be over in a few minutes."

Itzak opened the window . "Oh, no!" He shut it as fast as he could, but it was too late. Flies and mosquitoes swarmed in, settling on everything.

Auset waved them away from Nefi 's face and plate.

Hadassah laid her napkin over her plate, but fl ies had already landed in the serving dish, and she tried to spoon them out.

Yehuda ignored the buzzing pests. "You had the blessing of being Jewish, but instead of marrying a Jew and having a family like a decent woman, you went your own perverse way. Don't think this family isn't embarrassed by the dark-skinned bastard from a foreigner you have infl icted on us."

Itzak stood up. "Silence! I will not have that talk at my table. All of my family are welcome in my house and in my heart. Where did you learn such hatred, Yehuda? Hatred is not Jewish."

"Please, everyone, sit down." Sephora raised both hands in supplication.

A cry of horror came from the kitchen.

Itzak jumped up again, and Valerie followed him into the kitchen, where the serving woman stood at the sink.

* 170 *

Vulture's Kiss "Blood. Blood came out of the faucet!"

Trickling from the faucet was a thin steam of reddish brown liquid.

From a space under the window, fl ies and mosquitoes continued to fi nd their way in. Itzak turned of f the faucet. "Blood cannot get into the pipes. It is rust, or some growth in a broken pipe."

Clearly unconvinced, the woman backed away and seized a broom to swat at the tiny brown frogs that appeared under the sink.

"Come, come. It's only a summer storm." He led them out of the kitchen and sat down again at the table. "Please, children. We are four generations here. Let us have peace together."

With a clap of thunder, the lights suddenly went out. "An eclipse too?" Hadassah asked into the air . The lights fl ickered for several moments and then came on again. "It's like the plagues of Egypt!" she exclaimed. "What's next, I wonder."

Auset laid her arm over the high chair that held her fi rst-born child.

The expression on her face showed that, pious or not, she remembered exactly what came next.

"You were a little hard on your uncle, weren'

t you?" In the doorway to the building, Valerie slid her arms into the straps of her rucksack. "I should think by now you'd know how to avoid quarreling with him. He's obviously passionate."

"They're all passionate. Israel could have had peace a long time ago if not for their passion. My grandparents are so loving, and all they ever wanted was a nice Jewish family that went to temple, ate kosher , and had lots of grandchildren. Bad enough that my mother married a Muslim. It took them years to get over that." She shook a tiny frog of f her shoe and continued.

"But Yehuda has gone in the opposite direction. He's always been self-righteous, but now he's more Jewish than Jehovah. He thinks God gave all of Palestine to the Jews and wants the Arabs to be driven out, end of story."

"Funny, I know a Christian minister who believes the same thing."

Valerie glanced up at the sky. "Well, the hail cooled things down a little.

And the vermin are thinning out, too. Strange storm, wasn't it?"

Auset shivered. "With everything that's happened, I get nervous * 171 *

at every little oddity like that and wonder if it' s directed at us. I mean, it was right out of Exodus."

Valerie scraped a bit of red-brown mold from the threshold.

"Here's your 'blood in the water .' Itzak was right; strange weather , but not a plague from the One-God. Besides, if anything, shouldn't the natural forces be more on our side? Maybe it's a sign from our deities."

She slid her foot along the sidewalk and chuckled. "If it is, then all they've done is made everything a little slippery."

Auset laughed softly. "So much for being saved by Rekemheb' s gods. They couldn't even get plagues right." She reached over Valerie's shoulder and zipped up one of the pockets on the rucksack, an older sister gesture, although she, in fact, was the younger one. "Look, I've been thinking about what you said-about the judges, I mean, refusing the underworld to Yussif and Derek. It still sounds like extortion, a death threat to their spirits. I don' t want to fi nd out that the Egyptian religion is no different from the dogmas that are around here now-that it will make us act like Yehuda."

"I think the Egyptian gods are far too disor ganized to inspire passion in anyone. And there's no dogma in animism."

"I suppose you're right, but I still keep imagining Yussif and Derek just waiting-like hostages-for us to do something to help them. So if Nekhbet says it depends on our leaving Jerusalem and fi nding people crazy enough to join us, then, okay, I'll leave."

"You mean all I had to do to get you to leave was suffer lunch with your uncle?"

Auset chuckled. "Thank you, dear. That was a real show of loyalty.

But I also called the lawyer, the one whose name you gave me. He said there was no reasonable case Reverend Carter could make to have Nefi removed from her own country and her own mother . So I think we're safe.""Your parents will be relieved, not to mention the gods of Egypt.

When can we leave?"

"Well, my grandmother has to go to the clinic for her leg tomorrow ,.

and I promised to take her. I'll fl y to Cairo on Sunday. But if Nekhbet really is worried, you can leave ahead of me and take Nefi . My parents would meet you at the airport and take her from there."

"One day shouldn't make that much dif ference." Valerie glanced at her watch. "Oh, I have to go now . Are you sure you'll be okay? I * 172 *

Vulture's Kiss mean, I didn't start a new intifada upstairs, did I?"

"No, it's still the old one. Anyhow, Mr. and Mrs. Sunshine will be leaving for Hebron in a little while anyway. They've got nine screaming children waiting for them at home. My grandparents go to bed like birds, at sunset, so Nefi and I'll have a nice quiet house all to ourselves.

Go and meet your friend. We can talk more tomorrow." She embraced Valerie a second time and went inside.

In a shop doorway at the bottom of the street, a man watched the two women separate and checked his watch.

* 173 *

41.

Siloam Valerie hesitated on the stairs that led down to the ancient pool.

Her mind felt like a room crowded with people ar guing past each other: anxious, indignant, bereaved, and all of them fi lled with a sense of dread. It was defi nitely not the right time for this.

And what was "this" anyhow? A passing acquaintance, a straight, apparently coupled acquaintance was showing her the Old City . There was no "this."

At the foot of the steps, a handful of people in Bermuda shorts stood around the pool. Then, from behind them, someone waved.

Valerie waved back and descended the remaining stairs.

"Hello." Najya Khoury glided toward her both radiant and down-to-earth in a loose white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. She touched Valerie's arm and guided her to the far end of the pool.

Valerie studied the shallow pool, no more than six meters wide and some fi fteen or sixteen meters long. At its head, a high archway covered the beginning of a tunnel, and on the far side from where she stood, a stone wall rose several stories.

"I invited you here because my grandfather worked on this tunnel a long time ago, repairing the clay seams. I've always thought of it as ours. My family has been involved in maintaining a lot of the city' s sites. I've got keys to just about everything."

"What particular miracles supposedly took place here?"

"None, actually. This was the city's main water source in biblical times. It was surrounded by trees up through the Middle Ages and must have been lovely." She glanced back at the Bermuda shorts group taking pictures. "The tourists will leave in a little while and we'll have it to ourselves. Sit down over here where the stones are fl at." Najya brushed off imaginary dirt from the stone next to her. "So, how was lunch?"

Valerie sat next to her facing the pool. "Rather unpleasant, as a matter of fact. By the way , Auset says thank you for the lawyer 's name."

"What happened?"

* 174 *

Vulture's Kiss "Oh, it was Auset's uncle. A settler. From Hebron."

"Umm. The ones in Hebron are the worst. Really aggressive."

"He sounded just like Derek's stepfather. Come to think of it, he also sounded like the mullah that Auset's father goes to for advice.

They all say the same thing."

"I think we had this conversation before, with fewer clothes on."

Najya laughed softly.

In the late afternoon it began to grow dim in the canyon of walls that surrounded the pool. Najya's voice was as velvet as the light. "Have you accomplished what you came here for?"

Valerie took a deep breath. "Yes. I've convinced Auset to leave, so we'll be fl ying out right away."

"Whatever for? Didn' t she also just get here?" Najya leaned forward, setting her elbows on her knees. "Is this connected with the two deaths? Please tell me if I can help with something. I thought we'd gotten to the point where you knew that."

As she spoke, the sun dropped behind the city walls, and for a moment, the cavern they were in was plunged in gloom. Then a row of lanterns fl ickered on along the four sides of the pool. They bathed the area in a soft orange glow that created an atmosphere of trust and intimacy, a place where one could say anything.

Valerie studied the dark, intelligent face. "Look, if I told you something bizarre, something that fl ies in the face of your knowledge and common sense, would you be able to suspend disbelief long enough to hear me out? I mean before you decided I was a madwoman and ran for your life?"

"Hmm. Excellent opening line. Well, to be honest I couldn' t imagine running away from you under any circumstances. Besides, you're a well-known scientist, accomplished, brilliant. I could trust you quite far."

Valerie stared into the dusky tunnel and chose her words. "In the tomb," she began cautiously , "for which I am so 'well known,' I uncovered...well, forces. Entities that you would never expect, that don't fi t in with anything you know."

"Are we talking about the supernatural here?"

"Well, I suppose... Let me start again. Certain elements of the ancient Egyptian theology are in ef fect, although we tend to see through them. That is, nature itself, on occasion, manifests itself in * 175 *

personifi cations, and the Egyptians recognized them. They gave them names, portrayed them as half human and half nature, mostly animals."

Valerie stopped. "This is the point where you get up and leave, right?"

"No, no. Still suspending disbelief here. Please go on." Najya' s expression was studiously neutral.

"Well, I thought at fi rst I was hallucinating. Believe me, I'm an atheist and a scientist. If anyone did not want to acknowledge the supernatural, it was me. But the four of us-a Christian, a Jew , a Muslim, and an atheist-all saw them. Anyhow, they want to come back, those gods, and they enlisted Auset, me, Derek, and Yussif to make that possible."

"And you learned all of this in the tomb?" Najya asked in a neutral journalist interview tone.

"No. It took a while to piece it all together , and in fact, we had hints much earlier, when Nekhbet began appearing."

"Nekhbet? Who's that?" Najya was leaning on one arm now ,.

lightly brushing against her, and Valerie felt the warmth between them.

She frowned, perplexed. She was being mocked, of course, but only gently. She was also being listened to, and she desperately needed to talk. Valerie took a breath. "I guess I have to start further back. Nekhbet is the Vulture Goddess of Upper Egypt and one of the two divinities.

The other one is Wadjet the Cobra, who protected the royal line. You can see their heads jutting from the front of the double crown of the New Kingdom pharaohs."

"And what is Nekhbet's connection with you?"

"Apparently, I'm supposed to be the chronicler, and so at the behest of the scribe god, Nekhbet was supposed to protect me. However , she hadn't shown up for two years, that is, until Yussif was killed."

"I see," Najya said slowly. "So you came to Egypt and now are in Jerusalem, basically on behalf of these polytheistic forces. And these forces are connected in some way to the deaths of Yussif and Derek?"

"It seems that way. And these forces, or rather the single force that stands to lose from the return of the nature gods, is the sun god. The ancient Egyptians called him the Aton."

"And the Jews called him Jahweh."

"Yes," Valerie said tentatively, then frowned. "You're taking this very well. I can't believe I convinced you so easily."

* 176 *

Vulture's Kiss "Oh, I'm not convinced at all. It's total madness. But it is possible to have a rational conversation about the irrational. Even if this is all pure dementia, it' s consistent, and interesting. But going along with your story so far, I see that you have a problem."