He wanted only to lie on the ground and rest, to let the hammering in his chest subside and swallow air, but he knew he could not do that. He had to keep going; he had to be ready; above all he had to take someone alive. These people were after his son! Information had to be learned… all manner of death to follow.
He heard the sound of an engine in the distance… and then the sound disappeared. Bewildered, he side-stepped slowly, cautiously, between the trees to the edge of the woods and peered out. A car was coming up the road from Mesa Verde, but either it was idling or coasting or the wind was too strong. It was coasting, for now only the rolling tyres could be heard as it approached the wall of tall hedges, barely moving, finally stopping before the first entrance to the circular drive. Two men were inside; the driver, a stocky man, not young but not much over forty, got out first and looked around, obviously expecting to be met or signalled. He squinted in the dark afternoon light and seeing no one crossed the road to the wooded side and started walking forward. Weingrass shoved his automatic into his belt and bent down for the second killer’s pistol with the perforated silencer attached to the barrel. It was too large for a pocket so, like the Arab, he placed it at his feet. He stood up and stepped farther back into the overgrowth; he checked the weapon’s cylinder. There were four bullets left. The man approached; he was now directly in front of Manny.
‘Yosef!’ The name was suddenly carried on the wind, half shouted by the driver’s companion, who had left the car and was racing down the road, his quickening steps impeded by a pronounced limp. Manny was perplexed; Yosef was a Hebrew name, yet these killers were not Israelis.
‘Be quiet, boy!’ commanded the older man gruffly in Arabic as his partner stopped breathlessly in front of him. ‘You raise your voice like that again—anywhere—I’ll ship you back to the Baaka in a coffin!’
Weingrass watched and listened to the two men no more than twenty feet away on the edge of the road. He was mildly astonished, but now understood the use of the Arabic word, walad, or ‘boy’. The driver’s companion was a boy, a youngster barely sixteen or seventeen, if that.
‘You’ll send me nowhere!’ answered the young man angrily, a speech impediment obvious, undoubtedly a harelip.
‘I’ll never walk properly again because of that pig! I could have become a great martyr of our holy cause but for him!’
‘Very well, very well,’ said the older Arab with a Hebrew name, not without a degree of compassion. ‘Throw cool water on your neck or your head will explode. Now, what is it?’
‘The American radio! I just heard it and I understand enough to—understand!’
‘Our people at the other house?’
‘No, nothing like that. The Jews! They executed old Khouri. They hanged him!’
‘What did you expect, Aman? Forty years ago he was still working with the German Nazis left in northern Africa. He killed Jews; he blew up kibbutzim, even a hotel in Haifa.’
‘Then we must kill the murderer. Begin, and all the old men of the Irgun and the Stern! Khouri was a symbol of greatness for us—’
‘Oh, be quiet, boy. Those old men fought the British more than they did us. Neither they nor old Khouri have anything to do with what we must do today. We must teach a lesson to a filthy politician who pretended to be one of us. He hid in our clothes and used our tongue and betrayed the friendship we offered him. Now, boy! Concentrate on now.’
‘Where are the others? They were to come out on the road.’
‘I don’t know. They may have learned something or seen something and gone inside the house. Lights are being turned on now; you can see through those high bushes. Each of us will crawl up from either side of the half-circle entrance. Go through the grass to the windows. We will probably learn that our comrades are having coffee with whoever is there before slicing their throats.’
Emmanuel Weingrass raised the silenced pistol, firming it against the trunk of a tree, moving it back and forth between the two terrorists. He wanted both alive! The words in Arabic referring to the ‘other house’ so shocked him that in fury he might well blow both their heads away. They wanted to kill his son! If they had they would pay dearly—in agony—misguided youth or age irrelevant. Terrible pain would be the only consequence. He levelled the weapon at the pelvic region of both killers, back and forth, back and forth…
He fired just as a sudden gust of wind swirled along the road, two rounds into the older man, one into the boy. It was as if neither could possibly comprehend. The child collapsed screaming, writhing on the ground; his elder companion was made of stronger—much stronger—stuff. He staggered to his feet, turning to the source of the fire, and lurched forward, the stocky hulk a furious monster in pain.
‘Don’t come any closer, Yosef!’ yelled Manny, exhausted beyond endurance and holding on to the tree. ‘I don’t want to kill you, but I will! You of the Hebrew name who kills Jews!’
‘My mother!’ screamed the approaching giant of a man. ‘She renounced all of you! You are killers of my people! You take everything that is ours and spit on us! I am half Jew, but who are the Jews to kill my father and shave the head of my mother because she loved an Arab’? I will take you to hell!’
Weingrass held on to the trunk of the tree, his fingernails bleeding as he dug into the bark, his long black overcoat billowing in the wind. The broad dark figure lunged out of the forest darkness, his enormous hands gripping the old man’s throat.
‘Don’t!’ screamed Manny, knowing instantly that there was no choice. He fired the last shell, the bullet penetrating the wrinkled forehead above him. Yosef fell away, his final gesture one of defiance. Trembling and gasping for breath, Weingrass leaned against the tree, staring down at the ground, at the body of a man who had been in torment over an insignificant territorial arrangement that had forced humans to kill each other. In that moment, Emmanuel Weingrass came to a conclusion that had eluded him from the moment he was capable of thinking; he knew the answer now. The arrogance of blind belief led all the mendacities of human thought. It pitted man viciously against man in the pursuit of the ultimate unknowable. Who had the right?
‘Yosef… Yosef,’ cried the boy, rolling over in the undergrowth by the edge of the road. ‘Where are you? I’m hit, I’m hit!’
The child did not know, thought Weingrass. From where the wounded boy lay writhing he could not see, and the wind from the mountains further muffled the muted gunshot. The maniacal young terrorist did not realize that his comrade Yosef was dead, that he alone had survived. And his survival was uppermost in Manny’s mind; there could be no new martyr for a holy cause brought on by self-inflicted death. Not here, not now; there were facts to be learned, facts that could save the life of Evan Kendrick. Especially now!
Weingrass shoved his bleeding fingers into his overcoat pocket and dropped the silenced weapon on the ground. Summoning what strength he had left, he pushed himself away from the tree and made his way as quickly as he could south through the woods, stumbling again and again, his frail arms pushing the branches from his face and body. He veered towards the road; he reached it and saw the killer’s car in the darkening distance. He had gone far enough. He turned and started back on the mercifully smooth surface—faster… faster! Move your goddamned spindly legs! That boy must not move, he must not crawl, he must not see! Manny felt the blood rushing to his head, the pounding in his rib cage deafening. There was the young Arab! He had moved—was moving, crawling into the woods. In moments he would see his dead companion! It could not happen!
‘Aman!’ shouted Weingrass breathlessly, remembering the name used by the half-Jew, Yosef, as if it were his own. ‘Ayn ent? Kaif el-ahwal?’ he continued in Arabic, urgently asking the boy where he was and how he was. ‘Itkallem!’ he roared against the wind, ordering the young terrorist to respond.
‘Here, in here!’ yelled the teenage Arab in his own language. ‘I’ve been shot! In the hip. I can’t find Yosef!’ The young man rolled over on his back to greet an expected comrade. ‘Who are you?’ he screamed, struggling to reach under his field jacket for a gun as Manny approached. ‘I don’t know you!’