"Ich nicht ein Juden!"

"Let's check." The Indian officer motioned to the two soldiers, and they pulled down Lemmy's pants, exposing his circ.u.mcision.

Elie sat next to Sanani, controlling his impatience as the Jeep slowly advanced at the pedestrian pace of the merchants and their carts. Finally, at the next roundabout, Sanani was able to speed ahead.

They approached the roadblock at the intersection with Jericho Road. Elie pulled the UN blue cap down to his eyebrows. "Don't stop."

The Jordanian soldiers stepped into the road, blocking it.

"Drive," Elie said. "They won't shoot at a UN vehicle."

Sanani slowed, rolled down his window, and waved. One Jordanian lifted his hand while his partner aimed a machine gun.

Sanani kept going at a slow pace and stuck his head out the window. "Ahlan Wa'Sahalan!"

The Jordanians didn't move aside, and Sanani had to hit the brakes. They approached the Jeep, one on each side.

"Let him come to your window," Elie said. "When he's close enough, open your door fast and hit him as hard as you can."

"Are you crazy?"

"Do as I say!"

The Jordanians came closer. Elie's window was down, and he held up a blank piece of paper he had found on the floor of the car. Meanwhile, his right hand unsheathed the shoykhet blade. "Here," Elie said, "my credentials."

The Jordanian came to the window and extended his hand to take the paper.

Pulling up his pants, Lemmy took a step back. "You can't do this! The Jordanians will kill me!"

"That," the UN officer yelled, "is between you and His Majesty's troops. Out!"

The two soldiers positioned themselves behind Lemmy, and the Indian officer led the way. They left the room and marched down a long hallway, pa.s.sing a dining room that still smelled of fried eggs. The lobby let them out to the courtyard, where UN personnel ran back and forth with buckets of water.

The fire had spread to a field of thorns and tumbleweed beyond the reach of the hoses. The smoke was overwhelming, and flecks of ash drifted in the air. Lemmy was shocked to see the enormous radar reflector resting in the courtyard, its ma.s.sive center hinge pointing up, mangled as if it had been torn out of its housing.

The officer headed to the main gate. When they were two-thirds of the way across the courtyard, Lemmy saw a Jordanian army truck arrive at the gate, the open box filled with soldiers in camouflage uniform. A Jordanian officer stepped down from the cabin.

The UN officer ordered the gate opened and exchanged salutes with the Jordanian. "This man," he said, pointing at Lemmy, "is an Israeli spy." He held up the burnt remnant of the UN s.h.i.+rt Lemmy had worn.

The Jordanian officer yelled something in Arabic, and the soldiers started jumping off the back of the truck. Two of them grabbed Lemmy by the arms and marched him toward the side of the road, where a telephone pole waited as an ideal place of execution. Meanwhile the soldiers lined up with their rifles.

The Jordanian sentry's hand entered through Elie's window, reaching for the paper. Making like he was handing it to him, Elie instead grabbed his hand and ordered Sanani, "Hit your guy now!"

Sanani's door flew open, followed by a loud bang.

Elie pulled the Jordanian's hand downward, bringing him closer to the window, and jabbed the blade upward at the Arab's exposed neck, right under the chin, into the brainstem. He opened the car door and used it to shove away the sentry, who collapsed, no longer in control of his limbs.

With the dripping blade pointed at the ground, Elie got out of the Jeep and walked around the hood. He found Sanani locked in a wrestling match, the Jordanian on top, his hands clasping Sanani's throat. Elie rested his hand lightly on the back of the soldier's head, searched with his thumb for the soft spot just under the cranium, and slipped the blade in with little effort, all the way to the handle, its tip emerging through the gaping mouth.

Sanani's eyes popped wide as he watched his opponent fall sideways onto the road. "What the h.e.l.l!"

"Let's go." Elie wiped the blade on the dead soldier's pants and sheathed it. Up the road, where they had come from a moment earlier, a few merchants lifted their long robes and gave chase, yelling in Arabic.

Sanani drove forward, between the two corpses. "We're being pursued by a mob," he said in a tremulous voice as he glanced at the rearview mirror.

"Make the turn and go fast. It's too far for them to catch up."

He pressed the pedal all the way, and the Jeep raced up the hill.

Four minutes later, they cleared the crest and saw Government House engulfed in smoke. On the right, Antenna Hill was burning. A Jordanian army truck stood by the gate.

"Not good!" Sanani slowed down.

"Drive up to the gate and stop."

They turned into the access road and reached the gate, which was open. The UN guards saluted.

"Oh, no!" Sanani pointed. "They're executing him!"

Elie saw Lemmy stand with his back to a telephone pole, blindfolded, his upper body exposed to the sun. A line of Jordanian soldiers stood in the ready. An Indian UN officer watched from the gate.

Elie punched Sanani's leg under the dashboard. "Stop the car."

The soldiers c.o.c.ked their weapon while their officer raised his arm, ready to give the order.

Lemmy knew he was doomed. The Jordanian officer tightened the blindfold and said something in Arabic that included the word Allah. Weapons were being c.o.c.ked, and he heard an engine roar nearby. He was struggling to stay on his feet, erect and proud, not to show them how terrified he was. Would it hurt when the bullets pierced his chest? Or would he die before the nerves managed to transmit the pain to his brain?

His chest constricted. His breathing stopped. His muscles tensed up, expecting the sound of shots and the bullets to tear into him. He heard the Jordanian officer yell something in Arabic-an order to shoot!-and his mouth opened to scream.

But no shots sounded.

The air raid sirens on the Israeli side of the border continued to whine. He heard voices arguing and shook his head to loosen up the blindfold, which dropped to the bridge of his nose.

The Jordanian officer stood by Bull's white Jeep. The UN general was sitting in the front pa.s.senger seat, and Lemmy realized with a sinking heart that Sanani was not coming. Would General Bull step in to save an Israeli saboteur from execution? Considering the enormous mayhem he had caused, Lemmy doubted the angry general would show any mercy.

General Bull's door opened, and he came out.

Lemmy gasped in shock. It wasn't Bull, but the skinny little man from Zigelnick's tent! Agent Weiss! He was dressed in a UN uniform with lots of insignia that made him very important as long as no one realized he was a fake.

The Indian officer stared at the unfamiliar UN general. The guards at the gate stood still, unsure what to do.

Elie Weiss shook hands with the Jordanian officer. "Good morning," he said in heavily accented English. "I'd like to question the spy for a couple of minutes. You can shoot him when I'm done." He turned and marched through the gate into the UN compound.

After a brief hesitation, the Jordanian officer untied Lemmy and led him by the arm after Elie. The Indian officer sent the two UN soldiers off to a.s.sist in the fire fighting and joined the procession. Sanani drove the Jeep across the courtyard.

Elie entered Government House and strode across the lobby. UN soldiers, running back and forth with buckets of water, noticed his rank and stopped to salute him. He turned down a side corridor and entered an office on the left, which Lemmy realized he'd chosen because it had no windows facing the front of the building. The group followed him, and a moment later Sanani joined them, shutting the door.

The office had a single desk, file cabinets, and family photos on the walls. It probably belonged to a low-ranking UN administrator. Elie sat in the chair behind the desk, adjusted his blue cap, and grabbed a pen and a few blank papers.

Lemmy positioned himself to the side, against the wall. It gave him a clear vantage point and forced the Jordanian officer, who carried a pistol in a hip holster, to stand beside him, rather than behind him.

Elie's black eyes focused on the Indian officer. "Identify yourself."

"Major Raja Patel, operations commander for this United Nations facility. And who-"

"Thank you," Elie cut him off. "What's the situation with this young man?" He gestured at Lemmy.

The Indian officer started describing the events that led to Lemmy's exposure. When he reached the part about his clever idea, that the former n.a.z.i now running the West German BND would not employ a Jew, he turned to Sanani, who stood the closest to him. "We pulled like this," he demonstrated, reaching down to pantomime on Sanani's pants, but paused and took a second look at Sanani's face. "Who are you? I don't recall you!"

Sanani was caught unprepared. He smiled and looked at Elie.

The UN officer switched to Hindu, uttering a long sentence.

"Well spoken," Sanani said, regaining his edge. "As Mahatma Gandhi said, An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

The Indian officer stepped back and drew Lemmy's Mauser. "Who are you people?"

Elie stood up. "Calm down, Major."

The Jordanian officer hesitated, shocked at the sudden conflict between the UN officers.

Major Patel stepped backward toward the door, aiming the Mauser at Sanani. "What is going on here? Tell me!"

Lemmy heard Elie whisper to Sanani in Hebrew, "He hasn't c.o.c.ked it. Knock him down!"

"No!" Lemmy reached forward to stop him, but Sanani had already leaped forward and tackled the Indian officer. A shot sounded, m.u.f.fled by their intermingled bodies.

Lemmy rammed the Jordanian officer, and they both fell to the floor. Lemmy started rising, but what he saw stopped him. A long blade appeared in Elie Weiss's hand, the s.h.i.+ning steel at least as long as his forearm. He swung it across, almost too fast for Lemmy to see, the point pa.s.sing under the chin of the Jordanian officer, leaving a thin red line on his throat. The blade continued over Sanani's bowed head and swished below Major Patel's jaw. It returned in a figure-eight for another cut across the Indian officer's neck and pa.s.sed by Lemmy's face, its glistening point swiping just above the s.h.i.+rt collar of the Jordanian officer, who attempted to draw his gun.

The two men held their twice-cut throats. They dropped to the floor, writhing.

"Sanani!" Lemmy kneeled by his friend, whose s.h.i.+rt was soaked red. "Sanani!"

Elie felt his neck. "Your friend is dead."

"No!"

"Put on this guy's uniform." Elie gestured at the Indian officer.

"But-"

"Quick, before his blood soaks it!" He fished the car keys from Sanani's pocket.

In a daze, Lemmy undressed the dead Indian officer. Meanwhile, Elie was removing the uniform from the dead Jordanian, whose eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. He tossed away the s.h.i.+rt, pants, and boots, and removed the identification tags from the Jordanian's neck, replacing them with tags that Lemmy recognized as his own IDF tags.

With difficulty Lemmy b.u.t.toned up the UN s.h.i.+rt, whose collar was warm with Major Patel's blood, pushed it into the oversized pants, and buckled up the Indian's belt. He glanced up to see what Elie was doing and would have vomited had there been anything in his stomach.

The long blade was dancing in his small hand, making rapid cuts in the Jordanian officer's dead face. Pieces of skin and flesh flew up from the blade as the face grew naked, the pink bones emerging in unnatural clarity. He poked the eyes, carved off the brows, and removed the ears. Then he held up each hand and peeled the skin off all the fingertips with quick slicing motions.

Lemmy managed to say, "What are you doing?"

"Amazing how similar we all look under the skin."

He gagged, covering his mouth.

Elie took a hand grenade from his pocket and placed it on the corpse's groin. "And this should count as a kosher circ.u.mcision, right?"

Voices filtered through the closed door, men talking excitedly, someone issuing orders.

Lemmy cleared his throat. "What now?"

"Now?" Elie reached down for the fuse on the hand grenade at the corpse's groin. "Now we're going to kill you."

Chapter 44.

A clear sky spread over Jerusalem. A gentle breeze stirred thousands of blue-and-white flags, which flew from every pole and balcony. The reunited city was celebrating its return to Jewish sovereignty.

Elie Weiss leaned against a pine tree on the hillside overlooking the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. He watched the army truck crawl up the path between the graves. A group of paratroopers marched behind it, olive-green uniforms clean and pressed, red berets tilted to the right. A military rabbi followed the group, reciting from Psalms in well-rehea.r.s.ed mourning. Farther back, dozens of black hats cl.u.s.tered around Rabbi Abraham Gerster.

Operation Mokked had succeeded beyond expectations. Within two hours, the Egyptian air force had been decimated, hundreds of jets left smoldering on the runways. When the Jordanians joined the war with a murderous artillery barrage on West Jerusalem, Israeli jets attacked. During the fighting at Government House, which the UN had handed over to the Jordanians at the outset of hostilities, Israeli sh.e.l.ls destroyed General Bull's Jeep Wagoneer. And while strafing a Jordanian airstrip in Amman, an IDF bomber hit the UN general's private plane, which burnt down to its steel frame. A formal apology was issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, but it did little to calm Bull's ire. It took four more days to push the Jordanians back from East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Fooled by President Na.s.ser's false claims of advancing on Tel Aviv, the Syrians also joined the war, forcing Israel to fight on a third front. The IDF reservists-farmers, teachers, laborers, lawyers, and shopkeepers-took the battle to the enemy's territory, away from their families and homes. They suffered heavy casualties, but managed to drive the Syrian army to the gates of Damascus, the Jordanian Legion over to the east bank of the Jordan River, and the Egyptian army across the Suez Ca.n.a.l. Egyptian soldiers, most of them poor farmers pressed into service, took flight with bare feet, leaving the Sinai Desert dotted with Soviet-made boots. Many died of thirst, and hundreds drowned trying to swim across the Suez Ca.n.a.l.

After six days of battle, when the guns finally quieted down, Israel had tripled its size. The stunning victory over those who had sought the Jews' total annihilation was mixed with grief for the many civilian and military casualties. Funeral processions followed each other from sunrise to midnight in every cemetery in Israel, and the hospitals were filled with the wounded and their tearful families. But the short war had changed the Middle East forever, and Elie was eager for the future.

Only a few powerful men knew how Elie's UN radar operation had saved the day. The risk to Israel's position at the UN General a.s.sembly in New York required that the operation would forever remain secret. No record was made of the bodies recovered from a ground-floor office at Government House. Instead, two paratroopers' names were added to those who fought courageously on the northern front. Sanani's large family had attended his military burial in the morning, and now it was Lemmy's turn.

Elie lit a cigarette and gazed through his binoculars.

The bearded black hats followed the military procession slowly, heads bowed, cylindrical payos swaying back and forth by their faces.

The truck stopped by an open grave. Six paratroopers carried the coffin out of the truck. It was a wooden coffin, draped in a blue-and-white flag, the Star of David on top. They lowered it into the grave while the military rabbi chanted a prayer. The paratroopers lined up, c.o.c.ked their rifles, and aimed at the blue sky. The captain, stout and muscular, stepped to the head of the grave. Elie remembered him from the tent in the desert.

Rifle shots cut through the air. Frightened birds flocked from a nearby tree. At the sound of a second salvo, Elie stirred and moved his hand over his bald head. Another round, and they lowered their Uzis and stood in attention while the military rabbi recited a final prayer.

A shovel rested by the grave. The paratroopers took turns to cover the coffin with soil. The captain was last. When the grave was filled, he saluted and marched off, followed by the others.

Only then did the bearded men approach the grave. Their black coats fluttered with the wind. Benjamin Mashash helped Rabbi Abraham Gerster kneel down by the fresh mound of soil.

A small cardboard sign on a wooden stick had been placed at the head of the grave. Through his binoculars, Elie could read it: Private Jerusalem ("Lemmy") Gerster.