Blood Mixes with Blood

The small, bloated body was almost indistinguishable from the bleached rocks of the hill. It was not surprising that it had gone unnoticed for the better part of two days, as search parties scoured the wadi below and the nearby Arab village. From a distance, the killing hill looked as familiar and unassuming as it had every day for the past 25 years, since the settlers first adopted this land as their own.

Zalman was virtually on top of the body before he noticed it. He had scrambled up the hill from the far side, the village side, having broken away from the main group of searchers down below. It was hot and flies pestered his ears and neck where the sweat gathered. He clambered awkwardly over the rocks, breathing heavily and holding his side as the jarring steps sent arrows of pain through his wound. His ankles flopped alarmingly and his knees ached. It had been a long time since his hiking days. He stopped when he came to the crest of the hill and looked around, squinting in the pitiless sunlight.

It was not much bigger than the white clumps of rock that littered the hill.

She was naked, hunched over on her knees as if genuflecting deeply in prayer. Her head was bent grotesquely upwards and to the side, virtually severed from the neck. Her hands, purple and swollen, were tied behind her back with rope. The ground seemed to churn beneath the girl's head, where a mass of flies feasted on the blood that had drained out of the body and gathered in a pool on the ground. Other flies swarmed around the brown patches of dried blood that clung like lichen to her face and, Zalman noticed, her pathetically exposed backside. The air seemed to shimmer from the flies and the heat and the stench.

Zalman felt sick. He backed away, losing his balance and falling heavily on a rock behind him. He sprawled there for several moments, his stomach heaving and his right arm hanging numbly from breaking his fall. Dust and decay invaded his nostrils and burning bile filled his throat. Jagged flashes of light pierced his eyes. Then he heaved himself up, needles of sensation returning to his arm, and stumbled down the hill to report his find.

The girl was dead. And the alehum had begun.

++++

"Like sheep to the slaughter."

The hoarse voice thrust through the dense hubbub in the crowded room. Slumped against the wall, supported on both sides by women, the girl's mother confronted the general who was squatting on the floor opposite her. Slowly, she turned her ravaged face towards him, her eyes blistered with pain and anger and hate.

"We knew this would happen; it was only a matter of time. What do you think? That we can live in peace with these people? With these animals? They should be wiped off the face of the earth. Look what they did; look what they did ... nine years old ... look what they did ..."

As her voice trailed off into sobs, the woman beside her took over. The sister of the girl's mother, she, too, was dressed in a long, shapeless smock and sneakers, her hair covered by an incongruous flannel hat.

"Our blood is cheap," she shrieked, her voice rising from a whisper in the space of four words.

"The Arabs are a cancer; they should be cut out. They should be destroyed. Instead, what does the army do? It let's them butcher our children, that's what it does. They butcher our children."

The general kneeled silently on the floor, head bowed, as the emotion swelled around him. He had no words of comfort for these people. Anything he could possibly say would be pathetically inadequate in the face of the bottomless, almost frenzied, anger of the girl's family. What could he tell them? That the army and police would find the perpetrators and bring them to justice? They didn't want justice; they wanted revenge. They wanted a biblical kind of retribution, not the meager solace that a hamstrung officer, however senior, could offer.

Through lowered eyes, he examined the mourners, lining the walls of the large living room like a fallen, ancient frieze. Most were sprawled hopelessly on mattresses or irregular sofa cushions, as if drained of life. Three or four, all women, were leaning towards him aggressively, their sharp voices clashing as they shouted to make themselves heard. Above the mourners, towels and prayer shawls had been draped over pictures on the walls and a sheet shrouded the large mirror in the entrance hall. The room had an air of hasty conversion; some ceramic bowls and other knickknacks were thrust into a corner, reminders of a family life that had been abruptly shattered.

His eyes found the girl's father, hunched on a mattress near the door. The general hadn't seen him when he entered the room and had gone directly to the girl's mother instead to pay his condolences. The father had cut his plain, white tunic as a sign of mourning and the breast pocket drooped like the crippled wing of a bird. He sat alone and detached, unfocused on the activity around him. He seemed to be praying or talking to himself, his bloodshot eyes like beacons under his pale brow and flecks of spittle mottling his untidy beard.

Zalman came up to the general and helped him to his feet. The two men stood mutely as the calls for vengeance slowly wound down.

"The army will do everything in its power to find the people behind this abominable murder," he announced quietly to the girl's mother when he could finally speak. "The security of the settlements is our paramount concern and we will spare no effort to ensure that your lives carry on as normal. The entire country grieves with you tonight. My condolences."

The general and Zalman walked to the door, passing grave, bustling women with cups of coffee and plates of biscuits for the mourners. At the door, the general stooped down to the girl's father, placing both his hands on the man's shoulders and murmuring condolences in his ear. The fathered nodded solemnly, without losing his faraway look. Then the general stood and walked outside with Zalman

It was a warm, starry night with a languid breeze that the general found refreshing. He leaned against the low wall of the veranda and lit a cigarette.

"I understand that you were the one who found your granddaughter," he said abruptly.

"Yes."

"A terrible thing. I'm really sorry. My condolences."

"Thank you."

The general and Zalman had known each other a long time, usually as adversaries but seldom with rancor. It was the general's duty to maintain order in the occupied territories and it was Zalman's duty, as he saw it, to upset that order. Zalman had dedicated his life to settling the Land of Israel, legally or illegally. As it turned out, most of the time it had been illegal, though often with the connivance of the politicians of the day.

Despite that, the two men got along. The fiery passion of Zalman's youth had been tempered by age, injury and experience, though he had lost none of his ideological rigidity. And the general, never a believer in much, apart from an instinctive Zionism and his own advancement in the career force, found the veteran settler to be a useful ally in surviving the interminable and tortuous politics of the settlement movement.

The general was a frequent guest at Zalman's near-legendary mansion, a massive stone and concrete structure perched on top of a bare hill on the edge of one of the earliest Jewish settlements. The strange bulk of the house stood in stark contrast to the emptiness of the surrounding hills and the subtle conformity of the Arab village of al-Baidat in the wadi. It was a home that announced: "I am here to stay," though the general would often add silently "even though I clearly don't belong here," as he drove up the hill to the house and through the electric gates.

The two men would drink strong, black coffee and swap snippets of information like young boys swapping baseball cards. The general needed to know the prevailing mood in the settler leadership and didn't trust the pseudo-academic reports he got from Military Intelligence. Zalman's sources were better and his instincts more finely-tuned than those of the raw military recruits with degrees in spoken Arabic or Middle East studies. In return, the general would relay gossip from inside the General Staff and had, on occasion, bent the rules in Zalman's favor. Theirs was a friendship of mutual convenience and a shared taste for bitter coffee with hel.

"I've put the entire area under curfew and we'll be picking up suspects," the general said after a long pause. "We'll find whoever did it."

"That won't be enough. You saw them in there. We need something stronger."

"It's not up to me."

"Tell the minister we need something stronger. A nine-year-old kid, for fuck sake. God knows what those animals did to her. I can't go back in there and tell them that our response is a curfew and a few arrests. That those savages can violate and murder my grandchild and we announce another curfew. There'll be hell to fly. We need to do something big this time."

"I'll speak with the minister," the general said. "You know it isn't easy. In the meantime, keep your hotheads under control. I've got enough on my plate right now."

++++

The men set out that same night. There were eight of them; two of Zalman's sons, though not the girl's father, Zalman's eldest grandson and five men from the settlement. They were armed with M-16 rifles and hand guns and carried flashlights, walkie-talkies and a megaphone. Some had knives.

They left the settlement in two all-terrain cars which were normally used by the settlement security squad. Driving east, they skirted the roadblock at the nearby junction before turning off the road and heading into the valley in the direction of the small village of al-Baidat. The darkness enveloped them. Jittery and tense, high on adrenaline, they gripped their weapons tightly, careening into each other as the cars thrashed over the rocky surface. Mad spirals of dust pirouetted in the powerful headlights. There was no sign of the army.

The cars turned onto the dirt track leading to the village. Military bulldozers had gutted the track during previous curfews, throwing up mounds of rubble to obstruct the passage of vehicles. For many months now, villagers wanting to visit the nearby town had been forced to walk the five kilometers to the main road to flag down a taxi. The men who weren't driving went ahead on foot, clearing away boulders and heaving the cars out of craters when they got stuck.

Just short of the village, the cars stopped and the men got out. The night was still warm and fragrant with citrus and wild marjoram. A vast smudge of stars cast a dull glow over the low, bulky shapes of the village houses ahead of them, rising in terraces on either side of the dirt track. Getting to this point had been hard work and the men paused to get their breath back and drink water. Then they checked their equipment, loaded magazines and cocked their rifles. After a final, whispered repetition of the plan, they returned to the cars and, with headlights off, rolled silently into the village.

The cars traversed the village once, passing the low stone walls where the village men would congregate in the evening for a smoke, the mosque, with its squat, graceless minaret topped by a brass crescent, and the old concrete water cistern, now no longer in use. Simple stone houses loomed silently above them, shuttered and dark. Many of the buildings on the lower level were tattooed with graffiti and posters. A smell of sewage and dung clung to the place.

At the far end of the village, they stopped and turned the cars around with a gap of several meters between the two. Leaving only the drivers in the cars, the men took up positions on either side, rifles at the ready. At a hand signal, the drivers gunned their motors and flipped on the searchlight mounted on top of each vehicle. Emergency strobe lights pulsated. In an instant, the night erupted in a violent spasm of light and noise.

“Thus saith the Lord God,” intoned the driver of the lead car through the megaphone as he began to edge his vehicle forward.

“Because the Philistines have dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance with a spiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred.”

The shock troops flanking the cars were firing now. Furious volleys sundered the night.

“And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”

The first victim was a donkey, shot where it was tethered beside a building on the edge of the village. Then the settlers kicked in the door of a small, prefabricated structure and destroyed the village's electricity generator. As the cars crawled down the track, with lights blazing, motors screaming and a harsh, spectral voice calling down biblical vengeance over the megaphone, the assailants scrambled up the rocky terraces to target the houses higher up. They methodically punctured water tanks and shattered solar heaters perched on the roofs of the houses. They fired wildly, their bullets ricocheting drunkenly off the metal shutters.

Shooting and cursing, yelling and throwing stones, the rampaging settlers extracted cruel retribution from the sleeping villagers of al-Baidat. The blood debt incurred by the murder of Zalman's grandchild was repaid in a cacophony of bullets, screams, shattering glass and the agonized bellowing of a dying donkey. But that wasn't all.

A small child appeared on the balcony of one of the house on the upper terrace. Confused, petrified, she clutched the bars of the railing surrounding the balcony, mutely witnessing the mayhem below. Later, the attackers would deny that anyone had shot at the child; it was too dark to see anything clearly, they would tell the police. Besides, maybe one of the villagers had opened fire on the settlers and hit the girl instead. They left the child dangling limply over the railing, a small bundle in flannel pajamas with one, thin arm pointing downwards as if in protest.

The operation was swift and lethal. Several of the vigilantes were graduates of army combat units and knew their job well. It took less than ten minutes for the Jewish settlers to teach the villagers of al-Baidat a lesson they would never forget.

On leaving the village, the settlers detoured into the adjacent olive grove, where they slashed the tarpaulins used for gathering the ripe olives and lunged frenziedly at the fruit still on the trees. And then it was over. Their job done, they returned to the cars and drove soberly back to their homes. They were tired and subdued. The manic fervor of earlier that night was gone. Behind them, the first, pale pigments of daylight diluted the black sky. It had been a long day.

++++

At 69, Zalman had lived an eventful life. He had raised three sons and two daughters and they, in turn, had given him 17 grandchildren.

From the Giborei Shomron Web site:

"[The girl's] grandfather is Zalman Kirsh, patriarch of one of the leading clans in Yesha and a pioneer of the settlement movement. Zalman fought with distinction in all of Israel's early wars, among them the battle for the Mitla Pass during the Suez Campaign. He started buying land in Judea and Samaria soon after the Six Day War and was instrumental in the establishment of many of the early settlements, including the settlement at Sebastia. Arrested as a member of the machteret in 1984, Zalman spent seven months in prison before being released. Today, he continues to be in the vanguard of the establishment of new yishuvim."

He was a religious man, as were most of the so-called "ideological" settlers, an uncomfortable label that distinguished between themselves and the non-ideological, usually secular, Israelis who had moved to the territories to improve their standard of living. But his religion was a very different beast from the ghetto Judaism of the black-garbed ultra-Orthodox who usually typified religious Jewry to the outside world. Zalman's was a tough, muscular religion; not the religion of the wandering Jewish smous, the Jewish convert cowering in front of the Inquisitor or the Jew marched naked and helpless into the German gas chamber. His was a biblical Judaism, a religion of Jews who slew and smote their enemies and lived on the land promised to them by God.

Zalman liked to think that he had played a role in the creation of the Old-New Jew. He had done a bit of slaughtering and smiting in his time but his prime contribution had been the Land. Reclaiming the Land of Israel had been Zalman's mission virtually from the moment he landed on a dark beach somewhere north of Tel Aviv after a miserable journey from Europe on the deck of an illegal refugee boat; a wizened, 12-year-old survivor of Hitler's death camps. He had renounced the ghetto Jew in the daily battle for survival in the camps and found the new one in the stark hills and wadis of the Holy Land.

By the time Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in the spectacular Six Day War, Zalman was primed. The war itself he regarded as miraculous, an unmistakable signal from God that the Jews of Israel had a job to do: to settle the newly-redeemed land. By now religiously observant, Zalman threw himself into the mission. He crisscrossed the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria with the passion of a lover, marveling at its stark beauty. With a bible in his pocket, he sought out and identified the sites of ancient Jewish settlement, most now covered over, abandoned and bearing Arabic names.

Not satisfied with merely identifying the biblical landmarks, Zalman wanted to embrace them, to return them to the descendants of the patriarchs. With the government vacillating between keeping the territories it had occupied or vacating them in return for peace treaties with its Arab neighbors, Zalman resorted to private enterprise. He began to purchase land. When there were willing sellers, he negotiated hard and paid cash, most of it raised from sympathetic Jewish circles in America. When the owners were not willing to sell, he was not above forging land sales contracts or bribing Arab witnesses to testify falsely to his claim to the land. Sometimes, when faced with a particularly recalcitrant land owner, he would simply arrive with a bulldozer or two and level the buildings that stood on the land he coveted.

With the benign concurrence of the political authorities, the first Jewish settlements were established on land that Zalman had acquired. It began slowly, with all the false starts and confusion of a new and immature enterprise. But soon the crusade hit its stride. Tight clusters of red-roofed settlements sprouted on West Bank hilltops, dominating the Arab villages in the wadis below like the manors of feudal lords. Roads were built connecting the settlements to the hinterland, power lines were strung and water and sewerage pipes buried in the rocky earth. Within little more than a decade, a massive, concrete and steel grid had been overlaid on the original topography, squeezing the native population into increasingly stressed pockets of poverty and resentment.

The inexorable momentum of colonization spawned an inchoate, bitter resistance. Only a few Arab landowners initially stood their ground in the face of the Israeli juggernaut but far larger numbers of their children and grandchildren did. Forced off the land and confined in the seething, hopeless towns, they turned to crime, violence and Islam. The militant nationalism of the Jewish settlers was mirrored in a nihilistic Islamic fundamentalism amongst the displaced and disenfranchised Arab masses. The two sides faced off in a bleak, uncompromising contest of mutually exclusive divine right.

Zalman was no longer a young man when he joined the machteret, a clandestine settler group that rejected state-sponsored repression in favor of less ambiguous forms of action. He did so with no small measure of hesitation. Though he fully identified with the group's commitment to fighting terror with terror, he had profound doubts about its other central tenet: a doomsday scenario of all-out conflagration between Jews and Arabs out of which would emerge the promised Jewish kingdom. The trigger was to be the destruction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Arab shrine that stood on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple.

Zalman's world view had always been a pragmatic one, composed in equal parts of realpolitik and religion. He had never been comfortable with the messianism that had taken root in the second generation of the settlement movement and that saw the rebuilding of the temple, preceded by the destruction of the mosque, as the ultimate expression of Jewish national identity. Zalman had survived Armageddon once and didn't fancy his chances, or indeed those of the reborn Jewish people, a second time around. He participated in the underground's attacks on Arab notables but steered well clear of the plot to blow up the mosque.

When Zalman emerged from prison, well over a year after the uncovering of the machteret and seven months after his sentencing to a five year prison term, he had lost a lot of the ardor of his early years. He returned to his land dealing and became wealthy, raised his family and, eventually, became a grandfather. A patriarch in his own right, Zalman exercised his authority in the movement he had founded while inwardly disavowing the messianic madness of its younger devotees.

In his 68th year, he was attacked by an Arab gunman while driving his car on a quiet road near his home .Soldiers quickly arrived on the scene and a helicopter evacuated him to hospital, where a large part of his right lung was removed, along with the bullet that had eviscerated it. After several weeks in hospital, Zalman returned home, where, now semi-retired, he tramped the beloved hills of the land he had made his own.

++++

Zalman stepped out into the sharp, afternoon sunlight to greet the deputy commander of the local police district. He was grateful for any excuse to escape the oppressive mourning inside the house.

The police had arrived in a plain car, accompanied by a drab, olive-green Border Police jeep. Zalman ushered them to seats in the shade of the large verandah and disappeared inside for refreshments. The three police officers, in jeans and T-shirts, sat in silence, surveying the baked, naked landscape, while the two uniformed border policemen lit cigarettes and lounged in the shade of their jeep. Though relatively new to the territories, the deputy commander was already familiar with the mansion on the hill. Working with Zalman was a pre-requisite for any representative of the state who wanted to succeed.

He had interviewed the girl's parents the previous day, soon after Zalman discovered the body. The discussion had been brief and difficult. Angry and dazed with grief, the girl's mother had lashed out at him, while the father was submerged in a unanimous, enveloping silence. Now, with the funeral over and armed with the results of the autopsy, the time had come to investigate.

While waiting for Zalman to return with the refreshments, the deputy commander retraced in his mind the contours of the murder scene.

He had spent almost three hours at the site the day before, pacing the flat crest of the hill while forensic experts in white overalls scoured the area for evidence. The body, covered by a rough, gray blanket, awaited the arrival of the state pathologist.

He had been a crime scene officer in the Serious Crimes Unit in Tel Aviv before being promoted to his current position and missed the challenge of solving difficult cases, of pitting himself against the cunning and calculation of a deliberate murderer. Crimes of passion or of drunkenness held little interest for him; they were tawdry sideshows, the pathetic detritus of human folly. But a premeditated killing was something else entirely. As a young trainee officer he had taught himself to play the ancient Eastern game of Go in order to understand strategy, deduction and, above all, patience. But his partner had been killed in action soon after and he had never met anyone else who knew, or wanted to learn, the game. Still, he thought, as he studied the ground around the gray heap in the center of the hill, he had learned a lot from Go.

A pile of twigs and branches was lying at the girl's head, partly obscured by the blanket that covered the body. He moved closer and bent down, breathing shallowly into the sleeve of his shirt to filter the smell of decomposition. The wood was slightly charred, as if someone had tried unsuccessfully to light it. Like kindling, he thought. Hesitantly, he lifted up a corner of the blanket where it covered the partly-severed head. Through the seething mass of flies, he saw that the branches extended down under the girl's head and below her knees, over which the small torso was hunched.

Dropping the blanket, the deputy commander lurched away, acid bile filling his mouth. He spat it out and ground it into the earth with his shoe, gasping for breath. Slowly, he straightened up and looked around, his vision blurred by the tears that flooded his eyes. The hill was bare of trees or bushes. The only vegetation was the stringy grass that grew in clumps amongst the innumerable, smooth, white boulders. For whatever purpose, someone had carried the branches to the top of the hill.

Pulling rubber gloves over his hands, he reluctantly went back to the body and gently withdrew two twigs from under the girl's head. Then, rubbing his eyes and breathing in short spurts, he walked over to where one of the forensic men was kneeling on the ground a few meters from the body and asked him to bag it.

"Hang on a minute," the man said as he took the twigs from the deputy commander and dropped them into a clear plastic bag. He pointed to a small heap of sand and pebbles on the ground. "What do you think this is?"

The deputy commander bent down and examined the heap. "No idea," he said eventually. "An ant hill maybe?"

"Could be," the forensic expert said skeptically. "I've never seen ant hills in this area before, though.”

The deputy commander could not recall ever having seen an ant hill.

"How about termites?" he suggested. The forensic expert looked at him quizzically and shrugged.

"I'll get it photographed," he said helpfully and walked off.

The deputy commander examined the baked ground. The earth surrounding the heap seemed scratched or lightly gouged. He moved a meter or two to the side till he found a relatively clear patch of earth and swept up the sand into a mound with his hands. The ground was hard and he had to push forcefully with the sides of his hands to get a reasonable pile of dirt. Then he compared the two. His mound was lacking the pebbles that made up the bulk of the original heap but the marks in the earth were identical. He hauled himself to his feet and began a methodical search of the area around the body.

He found the second heap on the other side of the girl's body, directly opposite the first. This one was thinner and more conical, with a pointed pebble at its apex. Like a burial mound for a small animal, he thought The third and fourth heaps were at the other end of the girl's body. Together they formed a square, as if demarcating the area around the body.

Intrigued, the deputy commander paced out the distance between the heaps. He was not surprised to find that they formed a perfect square, or as perfect a square as he could estimate, using his stride to measure. There were eight meters between each heap, vertically and horizontally, with the girl's body at the epicenter.

Everything else seemed untouched, dancing in the intense heat and light.

Trying another tack, he walked partly down the side of the hill until he could no longer see the top. Then he turned and walked up again, squeezing his eyes almost shut and squinting as one does when trying to find a hidden shape in one of those trick pictures. At the top, still squinting, he looked straight ahead and tried to spot something unusual in his peripheral vision. Nothing. He repeated the exercise three times, each time coming at the crime scene from a different side of the hill.

On the fourth attempt, approaching the body from the direction of Zalman's house, he thought he noticed a vague pattern in the random distribution of the boulders on the hill. He retraced his steps and looked again. It was as if a number of small rocks had been placed in parallel lines, creating a rough path that led to the girl. He got down on his haunches and looked closer. On either side of the two lines of rocks he found fresh, bare patches of earth, where the rocks had been removed to form the trail. He stood up and followed the rocks to where they ended just before the body. No doubt about it. Someone had marked out the place.

"Smells fucking awful."

Jolted out of his train of thought, the deputy commander turned to see the state pathologist coming up to him. He nodded.

"So, what do you think?" asked the pathologist, as he pulled on gloves and surveyed the scene.

"You tell me."

The pathologist grunted and approached the body. An angry cloud of flies assailed him as he lifted the blanket. "Shit," he exclaimed, flailing at them uselessly. The deputy commander stood back, holding his shirt to his nose, as the coroner got to work.

++++

Zalman emerged from the dank interior of the house, accompanied by a young woman carrying a tray with glasses of water and juice. Behind him, as if in a trance, shuffled Yehuda, the girl's father.

Yehuda was Zalman's youngest son. Like his father and his siblings, Yehuda was a fervent believer in the righteousness of the cause. But unlike his brothers, who were both hard-edged and stridently militant, Yehuda was far removed from politics; he was a mystic, something of a recluse.

The deputy commander had done his homework. It was said that Yehuda had turned an outhouse of the extended family home into a workshop, dedicated to the creation of articles of worship for the rebuilt Jewish Temple. He also bred a unique strain of cattle in an enclosure behind the outhouse, aiming to produce a single, pure red heifer. During temple worship, he had read, the ashes of the red heifer were used to purify those who had come into contact with dead bodies.

Father and son sat down at the table opposite the police officers. The deputy commander recoiled at the sour, pungent smell of sweat that rose from the girl's father.

Yehuda was wearing the same clothes as he had worn the previous day. He had on a rough, white tunic, which he wore over shapeless gray pants, and had simple, leather sandals on his feet. The breast pocket of the tunic was torn in mourning and hung down limply. Food stains were splattered carelessly on the front and sleeves. His head was entirely covered by a large, crocheted yarmulke, out of which his long, lank hair protruded.

"Do you mind if my men look around?" the deputy commander asked.

Zalman nodded his assent. Without a word, the two plainclothes police officers downed their glasses of juice, stepped down from the verandah and disappeared around the side of the house, leaving the deputy commander alone with Zalman and his son.

"When did you last see your daughter?" he asked Yehuda.

The father's face, where is wasn't covered by an unruly beard, was blotched with red. Pearls of perspiration gathered at his temples and on the narrow bridge of his nose. His eyes were feverish and unfocused. Yehuda's mouth opened but no words came out.

Zalman put his hand lightly on his son's shoulder. "Yehuda, come on. Stay with us now."

"I ... I don't know." Yehuda's cracked voice was like the sound of an old-fashioned phonograph. "I don't remember, really. I, I think maybe when she went to school that morning. I was in the workshop. In the morning, I'm always in the workshop in the morning. Maybe she came out to say goodbye. She did, sometimes..."

Yehuda's voice trailed off. The deputy commander scrutinized him. Yehuda was sweating profusely and refused, or was unable, to make eye contact. His thin, bony fingers were clasped tightly on the table, under which a leg jerked spasmodically.

The deputy commander knew the elementary rules of his profession. In the death of a child, the first suspects are always the parents. In the death of a daughter, look to the father. Understand the dynamics between the parents. Children are all too often victims, cannon fodder in the interminable war of the sexes.

Too simple. Before him sat a father whose daughter had been horribly murdered; a man who had hardly slept in three days. Besides, Yehuda was not an unknown quantity. Although the policeman had never met him before the girl disappeared, he had certainly heard of him. Yehuda was well-known in the settler community as an eccentric and a temple zealot, the odd black sheep in a prominent fighting family.

"Were you close to your daughter?"


Yehuda was silent, rubbing a finger up and down his right cheek, besides his mouth. "She was my blood," he said finally, flatly. "She was my blood... I loved her." His body trembled and tears swamped his faraway eyes.
"Can you think of anyone who would want to do this to her?"

Yehuda shook his head.

"Does your family have any enemies that might want to harm you?"

"Of course we have enemies," Zalman cut in sharply. "They're all around us; they hate us. Who do you think did this?" His voice was harsh, as if in protest at the line of questioning.

The deputy commander paused, giving due weight to Zalman's outburst. It would not be wise to alienate the old man. Then he turned back to Yehuda.

"Has there been any background to this? Any incident that preceded it? I mean, has anything happened recently that might be related?"

"One of the villagers has been hanging around here," Yehuda said quickly, gesturing vaguely in the direction of al-Baidat. "I saw him near the fence when I was with the cows last week. I didn't know him."

"Did you speak with him. Do you know what he wanted?"

"No."

The policeman turned to Zalman "Did you notice anything suspicious?"

Zalman considered the question. "I didn't see anyone but I haven't been getting out much recently." He paused to change gears. "But you don't need to get too carried away with the detective work, commander. The Arabs don't need an excuse to murder us. They do it for fun, for pleasure. They're animals. Only an animal could have done that." Zalman's voice shuddered.
"They're down there, commander. The cursed murderers are down there. All you need to do is go and get them." He was shouting now.

"I understand that someone already did that," the deputy commander murmured, regretting the words as soon as they had left his mouth. But the older man didn't respond. He drank deeply from his glass and looked away. Yehuda sat hunched, silently mouthing prayers.

"Deputy commander." One of the police officers was standing below the verandah. He turned to him.

"Yes?"

"We've looked around. Can we have a word?"

++++

While the police were at the house on the hill, other members of the security forces were sifting through the village of al-Baidat in the wadi below. The task force had entered the tiny village at dawn in half-tracks and jeeps. Calling through megaphones, they assembled the men and boys into the open area in front of the mosque and ordered the women to stay in their houses. Troops in combat kit cordoned off the village, taking up positions in the scant shade of the old olive trees that surrounded it. When the area was secured the shabak moved in.

Ostensibly, they were conducting two simultaneous investigations into the killings of two children, one Jewish and one Arab. In fact, they were under strict orders to produce a suspect in the killing of the Jewish girl - and fast. The gruesome murder had outraged the insular settlement community, which made up for its lack of numbers in political clout. Zalman's colleagues in the community leadership had mobilized their political patrons with blunt, emotional demands and the politicians, in turn, had bullied the heads of the security forces. Appropriate orders had gone down the ranks.

In the dusty mosque square, dozens of village men squatted submissively in three rows under the harsh sun. They had been there since dawn, stripped down to their underwear and without water or food. In the shade of the mosque entrance, plainclothes security men with rifles slung over their shoulders studied intelligence material and talked on radios with the men searching the houses higher up on the terraces.

They did not seem to be in any particular hurry. Every now and again, they would pull a man out of the sullen rows and take him behind the mosque for interrogation. Those whose stories did not satisfy their interrogators had their hands bound behind their backs with tight plastic straps and were led blindfolded to a waiting jeep.

A dour quiet hung over the village, disturbed only by the whining of vehicles and the static of the radios. Every so often, a yelp of pain could be heard from behind the mosque. The villagers waited in passive, defeated silence, faces to the ground. They neither spoke amongst themselves nor looked at their tormentors.

The general arrived to take charge, several young, serious officers with maps and papers in his wake. He consulted with the shabak and took crisp reports on a radio from the men searching the houses. Then he inspected the grim rows of men in the sun, handing a bottle of mineral water to the first man in each row and ordering him to drink and pass it on.

Suddenly, a shot erupted from the terraces behind the mosque. Pigeons scattered into the air, their wings thrumming violently, and the quiet, almost laid-back, diligence of the army convulsed instantly into a storm of uncoordinated, energized activity. Rifles in hand, soldiers and shabak set off in a headlong rush up the terraces, shouting orders which no-one heard or obeyed; a babble of voices spewed from the walkie-talkies.

The general yelled to make himself heard above the chaos and sent the members of his entourage sprinting after the attacking men. For a few moments, senior officers and enlisted men grappled with each other in confusion, the soldiers swearing in frustration at the intrusion. The villagers on the ground stared at the scene in bewilderment.

Within minutes, the general had succeeded in restoring order. He hastily gathered his officers together and ordered them to form two ad hoc units. The shabak remained in the square with the detainees, rifles cradled hopefully in the crooks of their arms and their eyes scanning the terraces. One unit, with the general at its head, went directly up the terraces to the source of the fire, moving deliberately in single file and taking cover behind the houses as they ascended. The other unit set off at a jog down the dirt track that ran through the village in an attempt to flank the enemy.

They had barely reached the end of the village and turned onto a path up the slope when the radio crackled into life. "Medic, we need a medic. We have one wounded. Over."

"One of ours? Over," asked the officer in charge.

"No," replied the tinny voice on the other end. "One of them. Trying to escape. We're all OK."

By the time the wounded man was brought down on a stretcher, the pursuing soldiers had returned to the square. They gulped water from their canteens, slipped the safety catches back on their rifles and discussed the incident heatedly in testosterone-charged voices.

One of the search parties had come across a young man cowering in the basement of a house. They had dragged him out of his hiding place, slapped him up against a tree outside the house and demanded to know what he was doing there. Instead of responding, the man had spat at the soldier closest to him and set off on a frenzied, hopeless dash for safety. He hadn't run ten meters before one of the soldiers dropped him with a single bullet in the thigh.

The wounded man lay on the stretcher on the ground, groaning in pain as a medic wound a bandage around the field dressing that covered the bullet wound. The senior shabak man on the scene searched him roughly, finally withdrawing a battered identity document from the back pocket of his torn, grubby pants. He walked off to check the document against the lists that had been dropped at the entrance of the mosque when the firing started.

When the secret serviceman returned a few minutes later, the wounded man was already hooked up to an infusion bag held aloft by one of the medics and the stretcher was surrounded by a gaggle of curious, but not overtly hostile, young soldiers.

"We have our killer," he said to the general, who was standing at the head of the stretcher and discussing the incident with the group of soldiers that had discovered the man.

"Who is he?" asked the general.

"Jamal Faris al Bashir. A hamasnik. We've been after him for quite a while."

"Is he from here?"

"From Jenin. I don't know what he was doing here. Hiding out probably."

"What's he wanted for?"

"The shooting attack on the bus outside Ganei Urim. You remember? About four or five months ago. We also want to speak with him about some other things. We think he's been working with Abu Hashahsh in Jenin. He's a nasty little bastard."

"Has he done anything with children?" the general asked.

"I wouldn't put it past him."


"Has he?" the general persisted.
The secret serviceman hesitated. "We don't know... But we'll get it out of him."

"Take him away," the general ordered.

The wounded man's hands were tied and he was strapped to the stretcher. Then the stretcher was shoved into a jeep and the infusion bag fixed by duct tape to the metal piping of the jeep's roof. He moaned loudly as the stretcher was maneuvered into the vehicle but did not utter a word. Two of the bound and blindfolded men who had aroused the suspicions of the shabak were thrust in beside him. The others were released and the men who had been squatting on the ground since dawn were told they could return to their homes.

One of the men, wearing only underpants and with rank trails of sweat crisscrossing his dusty brown body, approached an officer standing beside the jeep. "He's my cousin," the man said simply "He's been staying with me because he got into trouble in Jenin. He didn't do anything wrong. He's been helping me with the olive harvest."

"We'll see," the officer said as the jeep drove off, bucking on the rough dirt track.

++++

An enormous, beaten copper urn guarded the entrance to the workshop. It seemed to balance precariously on its pedestal, the slender base thickening into a rotund belly from which protruded a circle of spigots. It reminded him of the antique Russian samovar that had presided over the sideboard in his grandmother’s small living room when he was a child.

Water was dripping from one of the spigots and had spread into a small puddle on the floor. Avoiding the puddle, the deputy commander stepped into the large, cluttered room and glanced around. The night outside the windows was an impenetrable black. For a brief moment he felt disoriented, as if the entire universe had been suddenly reduced to this single, muggy room, suffused in an abrasive fluorescent light. Behind him, Zalman shut the metal door.

A photo-montage of the rebuilt temple, superimposed on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in place of the golden-domed mosque of Omar, dominated the far wall. The deputy commander knew the poster well. His first posting after entering the force had been to the police station inside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, a dank, crumbling building thrust up against the outer wall of Jerusalem’s ancient citadel. There, he had dealt with the Temple Zealots and other groups of temple devotees. They had differed on a multitude of esoteric, fiercely-argued issues, he recalled, but the one thing they shared was this poster, the lowest common denominator of temple cultists.

Unlike many of his colleagues, the deputy commander had never grown blasé about intruding into people’s lives. He felt like a alien presence in the workshop, an interloper. He recalled a picture he had seen of Tutankhamon’s tomb immediately after Carter had broken through the seals to reveal an artless, haphazard assortment of possessions for the pharaoh’s use in the after-life. This place, too, was an ante-chamber to the after-life, he thought.

He looked around. Yehuda’s workshop belied the external peculiarity of the man. It had an air of industriousness about it; the down-to-earth simplicity of a hardware store.

A large loom, with sky-blue warp threaded through the reed and a half-woven fabric suspended between the two beams, took up a good part of the room. Beside it stood a skeletal spinning wheel made of the same light-colored wood as the loom. Raw yarn spilled out of a wicker basket on the floor. Behind the spinning wheel, stacked up in piles resembling mini-pyramids, were large, wooden bobbins of unrefined thread, white, blue, crimson and mauve.

A rope had been strung diagonally across a corner of the room. Suspended from the rope were a dozen or more hangars, each holding what appeared to be an old-fashioned, woven garment. One of the items was a plain white tunic identical to the one Yehuda had been wearing since the deputy commander first spoke with him after the discovery of the girl’s body.

“Is Yehuda the only one who works here?” He turned to Zalman, who was still standing at the entrance, one hand resting on the door handle.

“Yes,” Zalman said simply. His wily, old face was blank.

“He doesn’t have any help?”

“Sometimes he lets the kids help him with little things.”

What are these?” The deputy commander gestured in the direction of the hanging garments.

“Priests’ stuff. Robes, that sort of thing.”

“Is that what he does? Make priests’ clothes?”

“He also makes models.” Zalman pointed to a large replica of the temple on a workbench behind the urn.

The policeman went over to the urn. “And what’s this thing?”

“It’s called a laver. The priests used it to wash their hands.”

He ran a hand over the dimpled, cold surface of the laver, letting the water drip into his palm from the running spigot. Then he pushed the spigot shut.

“What does Yehuda do with all the stuff he makes?”

Zalman wavered. His eyes flickered over the room before returning to the policeman.

“He packs it into crates.”

“And then?”

“He waits.”

The deputy commander decided not to take it any further. Both men knew what Yehuda was waiting for.

The deputy commander stepped over to the model.

Up close, he saw that it was not the same as the one he had once seen in the Jerusalem center of the Temple Zealots. That model had depicted the exterior of the projected Third Temple, situated on a sanitized version of the Temple Mount where the two Moslem mosques stood. The model in front of him seemed to be a replica of the interior of the temple. It had miniature walls and columns, painted to look like marble. Between each set of columns was a perfect little wooden door with tiny hinges and a bulge at the top as one sometimes finds in classical Arabic architecture.

In the center of the model, the center of the temple, if that’s what it was, was a large, elevated structure with a flat surface and a ramp leading down to the floor. It dominated the model building and was almost as high as the outer walls. It appeared to be solid, without doors or windows, and painted to look like stone. The surface of the structure was made of sand, fine grains of real sand.

The deputy commander marveled at the intricate work that had gone into building the model; at the patience of the builder.

He moved away from the model towards the spinning wheel. Then he stopped. Something, a gut instinct, took him back to the model.

He examined it again, this time with the wariness of a detective rather than the admiration of an enthusiast.

Now he knew what had brought him back to the model, what he had seen the first time without noticing. He felt a prickly sensation creep over his scalp. It was a feeling he recognized from previous investigations; the thrill of things beginning to fall into place. His heart pounded in his chest.

At each corner of the raised, flat structure in the middle of the temple was a small, box-like protrusion. He couldn’t tell if the protrusions had some function or were merely decorative. At the center of the square formed by the four boxes was a pile of wood, a bundle of exquisitely carved little branches. “Kindling,” he murmured triumphantly. Fire wood.

The deputy commander clutched the edge of the workbench. He felt lightheaded, disembodied. As if in a dream, he saw the girl, a pitiful, purple-white thing. She was no longer on the hill but perched on the model, on this raised, flat platform in the center of the Temple-to-come. Her small body was hunched over the kindling, hands bound tightly behind her back.

He glanced up at the photo-montage poster on the wall. Instead of the temple he saw the model, superimposed on the hill. He saw the fire wood under the girl. The four box-like protrusions where he had found the heaps of sand and pebbles. The parallel lines of stones leading up to the body, like the sweep of the ramp.

He knew what had happened. He could feel the heat of the hill on his skin and the taste of dust in his mouth. He smelled the damp, charred branches that refused to burn.

“Come here, please,” he uttered, without turning towards Zalman. His voice echoed thinly in the humid space.

Zalman came up behind him.

“What’s this?” the deputy commander asked.

Zalman glanced at the model with mild distaste.

“It’s meant to be a model of the altar,” he said. “It’s nonsense. Temple nonsense.”

He turned away from the model and grasped the policeman’s shoulder.

“Come. Let’s get out of here. You’ve seen what you came to see.”

The deputy commander felt the old man’s hand on his shoulder, hot, heavy and insistent. He didn’t move.

“What did they do on the altar?”

Zalman let his hand drop.

“Sacrifices.”

“Sacrifices.” The deputy commander repeated the word fastidiously.

Zalman stared at the police officer. Comprehension slowly crept over him. He snorted derisively and turned away.

“You’re mad,” he ejaculated over his shoulder.

“Sacrifices.” The policeman was rooted to the spot.

Zalman spun around as if to grab the cop, possibly to hit him. But his body rebelled. He took a shuddering step forward before his legs buckled, tilting him sideways into the replica of the temple. He sprawled on the broken model, splinters of wood dangling from his outstretched arm.

“You’re out of your mind,” he whispered. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“What sort of sacrifices?” The deputy commander insisted.

“Animal sacrifices.” Zalman spat it out like a challenge. “Animal sacrifices.”

++++

The deputy commander pressed the button at his elbow to open the car window. It was not yet seven in the morning and he was en route to Zalman’s mansion, without a warrant and without a plan.

He angled his head into the rush of warm air, letting it massage his temples and caress his stinging eyes. He shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the tingling pressure on his eyelids, before turning back to the road. He pulled his flack jacket closed and checked the M-16 on the passenger seat beside him. Zalman had been shot on this stark, lonely stretch of road a year-and-a-half before.

The previous night had been long and had ended badly. The few hours between returning home and setting out on this mad, unauthorized mission to confront Yehuda had been a restless, sleepless blur. Now, driving unsteadily in the bright, early-morning sunlight, he was unsure whether he had finally decided to resign from the force, go to the press or leave Yehuda to his own, damn conscience and move on. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had a pounding headache over his left eye and craved a cigarette for the first time in years.

To prepare for the encounter, he turned off the car radio and rehearsed the previous night’s events.

Zalman had recovered from his shock in the workshop quickly enough and reverted to form. It was a form that the cop had never seen but that had been described in detail by numerous Arab litigants in disputed real estate cases: by turns bullying, threatening and cajoling. He had flatly rejected the suggestion of Yehuda’s guilt and threatened to bring all manner of calamities down on the deputy commander’s head if he as much as mentioned it outside the workshop.

The deputy commander had wanted to question Yehuda but Zalman demurred. Without a warrant no policeman was going to enter his house. Both men understood that Zalman would have no problem mobilizing his political benefactors in the time it took the police officer to get a warrant. Besides, the deputy commander had to acknowledge to himself, if not to Zalman, that he had no proof; some branches and a few piles of sand did not constitute probable cause. Given the political sensitivities of the situation, a warrant would not be easy to obtain.

He left Zalman’s house after receiving a message on his beeper that the shabak was interrogating a suspect they had picked up in the Arab village in the wadi. Driving to shabak headquarters outside Tel Aviv, he received a call on his mobile phone. Zalman had already managed to get hold of the commissioner of police.

The deputy commander had never spoken with the commissioner though he had once received a service ribbon from him and shaken his hand. The conversation was brief and succinct. He had better be aware of what he was getting himself into because his arse was on the line. He wasn’t dealing with some petty car thief or junkie selling dope. This guy could ruin him and the commissioner wouldn’t be there to help him. God alone knew where he had come up with the outrageous sacrifice idea but not even God would be able to help him when Zalman got going. So, if he had any sense, he would take some friendly advice and find himself another suspect.

The pressure had begun. He jabbed grimly in the dark at the red button to end the call.

The wounded Arab had been moved to hospital by the time the deputy commander arrived at shabak headquarters, so he spoke with the man’s interrogators. They had no doubt that they had their killer, though, it transpired, he had vociferously denied having had anything to do with the girl. But a small amount of mild pressure had convinced him to confess to participating in the Ganei Urim shooting and the shabak men were confident that it would take just a little more persuasion to close the case.

No, they said, the suspect did not have a history of child crimes, or, at any rate, not as far as they knew. But the coroner had already reported that the girl had not been molested. So, as far as they were concerned, it was a terrorist killing, pure and simple. No, they had not seen the crime scene report or spoken with any of the detectives involved. As they saw it, this was a terrorist case and thus in their domain. Perhaps the police should stick to catching Ukrainian prostitutes?

Seething with anger and frustration, the deputy commander drove home. The cell phone rung again as he was parking. It was well after midnight.

“Deputy commander?” a quiet, male voice inquired. He felt sure it wasn’t a cop; it wasn’t a cop’s voice.

“Speaking.”

“This is Menachem Bar-On.” The minister of public safety and security paused to allow the effect to sink in.

“Good evening,” he responded lamely when it became clear that the minister was not going to continue. The pressure had ratcheted up faster and higher than he had expected.

“Good evening, deputy commander. I assume you know why I’m calling.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I live in Zahala. How about popping by for a chat?”

“Now?” the deputy commander asked?

“Yes, now.” The minister gave him the address and hung up.

++++

The minister lived in a pleasant but unpretentious apartment building. The deputy commander flashed his badge at the security man in the lobby and dragged himself wearily up the stairs to the second floor. The minister himself opened the door. He welcomed the visitor with a curt nod and led him down a corridor to his study. Seating himself in a leather armchair, the minister gestured to the deputy commander to sit in the chair opposite him. The police officer sat. A small wooden coffee table with Holy Land picture books on it divided the two men.

“I understand you had a run-in with my friend Zalman Kirsh today,” the minister began lightly. He was wearing a light blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, dark pants and slippers. A grayish sheen of 12 o’clock shadow covered his jowls. He was a slight, energetic man but his inscrutable brown eyes were bleary.

The deputy commander dipped his head in acknowledgement.

“You don’t really believe that Kirsh’s son killed his own daughter?” The deputy commander wasn’t certain if it was a statement or a question. “I mean it’s preposterous. It’s outrageous.”
“I do believe it,” he responded.

“What proof do you have?” The minister made no effort to conceal his exasperation.

The deputy commander explained about the kindling under the body, the heaps of sand and the parallel lines of stones. Then he told of seeing the model, with its firewood and ramp and boxes at the corners. As he spoke, he realized how feeble it sounded. He was absolutely convinced of his case but he wasn’t certain that he would buy the argument were the roles reversed. He certainly didn’t expect the minister to buy it.

“The murder weapon was a knife, I understand,” the minister said when the police officer had presented his case.

“The autopsy confirmed that the deceased’s throat had been cut, most likely with a serrated knife such as a hunting knife.”

“Do you have the knife?”

The deputy commander shook his head.

The minister nodded sagely. One to him. “And I understand that the girl was naked when discovered,” he said quietly, a murmur almost. “Have you found her clothes?”

Again, the deputy commander shook his head. Two to the minister.

“And other than these … these stones and pieces of wood,” the minister waved his hand dismissively, “do you have any evidence that Kirsh’s son was at the scene at the time of the murder?”

The deputy commander knew where this line of questioning was going. He tried to head it off.

“Without a warrant I can’t search for evidence,” he said forcefully. “I need a warrant.”

The minister held himself in check. “So let me understand this,” he said patiently. “You have no evidence, no murder weapon, no proof that this person was anywhere near the scene of the crime yet you want to accuse the son of one of the country’s most prominent men of murder?” The irony hung in the air-conditioned room like a mist.

“I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything,” the deputy commander retorted, a little more heatedly than he had intended. “All I want to do is follow up probable cause.”

“Probable cause,” the minister cut in, raising his tone a notch or two above that of the police officer. “What probable cause? A harebrain idea of some biblical sacrifice is probable cause? What are you talking about?”

The deputy commander had feared that he would say that. And the minister was right. He’d have a hard time finding a judge who would issue a warrant.

“I have reason to believe that the father might have been involved,” he said quietly. “All I want to do is follow up a suspicion. No-one is being accused and no-one need know about this. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t pursue it.”

“And you certainly won’t be doing your job any more if you do,” the minister expostulated. He seemed to be tiring of the diplomatic approach.

The deputy commander shrugged his shoulders. Now for the tightening of the screws.

The minister leaned towards the policeman, elbows digging into the armrests of his chair. For the first time, the deputy commander noticed the deep, dark pools under his eyes.

“I practiced the law before entering public service, deputy commander. And since taking office I have had to deal with hundreds of sensitive and difficult cases. In my considered opinion, there is no case. No case. Do you hear me? I cannot let you continue with this nonsense.”

The moment had arrived. The deputy commander looked around the study, considering his options. It was a compact, unprepossessing room. An assortment of books lolled on formica shelving and he noticed silver trophies in a glass-fronted cabinet. He seemed to recall having read that the minister had been a fencer in his younger days. Or was it an archer? Some form of domesticated killing, at any rate. He returned his eyes to the minister.

“Are you ordering me to stop my investigation?”

“I am advising you to stop the investigation.” Suddenly, he lost patience with the stubborn officer. “For God’s sake, man, don’t you understand what you’re doing? This didn’t happen in Tel Aviv or in Herzliya. These people are the salt of the earth; they’re heroes. They spend their lives on the front line, surrounded by our enemies. You can’t go around accusing them of murder, of infanticide, without any evidence. Use your head. Don’t you know what this could lead to?”

He had stood up during the outburst and was standing behind his chair, gripping the back like a lectern.

The deputy commander knew that he had to make a stand.

“I understand the sensitivity of the situation, minister, but I’m not a politician. I’m a policeman. A professional policeman. My job is to uphold the law. That’s the only thing I’m trying to do. To uphold the law.”

The minister didn’t miss the implication.

“No-one is asking you not to uphold the law,” he said soothingly. “That’s the last thing I’d do. The last thing. What I’m saying is that, as a lawyer, I don’t believe you have a case. As a lawyer, not as a politician, you understand? But I can’t close my eyes to what you’re trying to do to a man … to the son of a man who has contributed so much to the state.”

He walked over to the policeman’s chair and stood over him.

“It’s late deputy commander and I’ve had a long day. I understand that the shabak already has a suspect in custody. So, why do we need this? Why do you need it? I understand that you’re one of the most promising officers in the force. I’m sure you’re going to go far. Very far. What do you need this for?”

He held out his hand. The deputy commander suddenly felt an enormous tiredness come over him. He rose to his feet, pushing against the armrests of the chair for leverage. Then he took the minister’s hand. The meeting was over and the decision was now his. He had been left in no doubt as to what was at stake.

Walking down the corridor to the entrance, the minister rested his hand on the policeman’s shoulder.

“Thank you for coming over, deputy commander,” he said sweetly. As they reached the door, he added:

“No-one needs to know we spoke tonight, right?”

++++

The deputy commander turned on the car radio in time to hear the last of the three beeps that preceded the seven o’clock news. The beeps were one of the few constants in his life, he mused. He remembered as a child during the Yom Kippur War how adults would freeze whenever the beeps were heard. Since then, numerous Israeli traditions had fallen by the wayside – it was easier to find a Big Mac than a felafel in Tel Aviv these days – but the beeps announcing the hourly news on Israel Radio were immutable.

His mind meandering, he missed the first news item. The second jolted him back to awareness.
“ … are holding a suspect in the gruesome killing of Yael Kirsh three days ago. The man, an Arab from Jenin, has confessed to murdering the nine-year-old girl, security sources said. He also confessed to participating in the attack on the bus near Ganei Urim seven months ago in which three people died.”

He swung the car to the side of the road and jerked to a stop. Opening the door, he stepped out into the brilliant morning. Only the low stuttering of the motor disturbed the silence. He looked down into the scrubby wadi that dropped to al-Baidat and then rose beyond the terraces to Zalman’s settlement, perched like toy houses on the far hill. Beyond it and to the right, he could make out the killing hill, shimmering slightly in the hazy light. It was going to be another hot day.

It was not that he hadn’t anticipated the announcement. But he had expected at least another day’s grace. A day in which he could somehow, without a warrant and without support, confront Yehuda and prove his case. The shabak must have worked on the Arab during the night. Come to think of it, they probably hadn’t taken him to hospital in the first place. The Arab could have been lying bleeding on the floor of an interrogation room while he was drinking coffee and being duped by the man’s interrogators next door.

The minister and the commissioner, Zalman’s friends, certainly hadn’t taken any chances.
A car stopped abruptly beside him. For a split second he panicked; diving into his car for his weapon.

“You OK?”

The driver was a young man in his twenties, wearing a flak jacket and with the muzzle of a rifle peeking through the open window.

“I’m fine. Thanks.” He felt ridiculous, crouching in the car.

“I wouldn’t stop here, if I were you. Been attacks on this road.”

“I know. I’m on my way.”

“Sorry to scare you.”

The car moved off and the deputy commander sank down behind the steering wheel. He was going to pieces. There had been no reason to panic like that. He shut his eyes and concentrated on controlling his breathing. The radio announcer was concluding an item about forest fires in the Jerusalem hills in which arson was suspected.

The next item concerned two settlers who had been questioned by the police about a recent disturbance in the Samarian village of al-Baidat, during which an Arab girl had died. Sources told Israel Radio that the police were not expected to press charges. He listened without opening his eyes.

It was all wrapped up. Neatly, cleanly just as Zalman knew it would be. They weren’t about to allow the febrile imagination of a district police officer to overturn the apple cart. There was terror to be fought, a country to be run. Enemies within and without. He thought of the girl, a casualty of the war; another dismal victim to add to the roll of the fallen. So be it.

He tried to dredge up the determination, the passion that had compelled him, less than an hour earlier, to set out on this quixotic mission. The quivering excitement he had experienced at seeing the model and deciphering its reproduction on the hill of death. The scorn he had felt for the sweet-talking minister. Nothing. He was beaten. A flat tire on the road to Zalman.

What on earth had possessed him to believe that he could take them on? He flushed, embarrassed and angry with himself. A minor police officer with pretensions. And now, maybe not even that. He had no idea if he still had a job to return to.

He turned the car around and returned the way he had come, driving slowly and enjoying the prickling of the wind on his face. Behind him was the hill with its mysterious sand mounds and path of stones.

++++

The deputy commander saw Yehuda one more time. It was late at night, about six month later, and Zalman’s son was lying on his back a few meters from the road with a single bullet lodged in his shattered skull. Beside him, one finger still curled in the trigger guard, was his father’s pistol.

Yehuda’s body was not visible from the road and the security forces had been on the scene for well over an hour before they came across it while searching the area. What brought them there in the first place was his car, which had been abandoned, its motor still running, on the side of the road, with it’s front wheels lodged in the drainage ditch and the passenger door open. A passing motorist had seen the car and called the police.

Yehuda’s wife, the mother of the murdered girl, was in the front passenger seat. Her neck had been slit through to the spine and her head was lodged between the headrest and the door. Her felt hat had slipped forward over her eyes as if to protect them from the glare of the powerful arc lights that had been erected around the car. The front of her dress was soaked with her blood and a knife, presumably the knife that had been used to slaughter her, lay at her feet.

The security forces had treated it as a terror attack at first, though the circumstances were highly unusual. They had sent out alerts and erected roadblocks at nearby intersections. Only after they found Yehuda’s body and deduced that he had committed suicide after killing his wife did they hand it over to the police. The police handled family crimes.

The coroner was already on the scene and examining Yehuda’s body when the deputy commander arrived. Zalman was there too, surrounded by a shuffling scrum of armed men. His formerly powerful, stocky frame had collapsed like a de-bowled beanbag and was being supported by a younger man. The general hovered over him solicitously.

The ranking cop on the crime scene handed the deputy commander an evidence bag with a folded sheet of paper inside.

“What’s this?”

“Looks like a note. Maybe a suicide note. I found it in his shirt pocket.”

The deputy commander walked over to the area that was lit by the arc lights, pulled on rubber gloves and removed the paper from the bag. He laid the evidence bag on the hood of Yehuda’s car and placed the note on the bag. Then he carefully unfolded it. Blood had soaked a folded corner of the note, creating macabre patterns when it was opened.

It was scribbled in pencil and had neither greeting nor farewell. It appeared to be a few biblical phrases, some of which were illegible due to the bloodstains. The deputy commander thought that it looked more like a private jottings than a suicide note intended for post-mortem examination.

He read Yehuda’s last testament.

“Our daughters have committed whoredom and our wives have committed adultery. … There is no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of G-d in the land. We [illegible] swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery.”

“We have forgotten the law of G-d and our children too have been forgotten. Israel is defiled [illegible] desired mercy not sacrifice.”

“Blood mixes with blood.”