By the Rivers of Babylon (30 page)

She began to shake and her voice came in short breaths. “If . . . if your parents had stayed in Europe—you would have grown up a Nazi. They would have recognized one of their own.”

Hausner hit her with his open palm. She fell onto the wing and rolled a few meters down the incline before she came to a stop. She lay there with the metal burning her bare legs. She refused to stand up, although she was able to do so.

Hausner finally reached down and yanked her to her feet.

The people on the tail section were staring openly.

Hausner held her up by her arms and pressed her face near his. “We’re never going to get it together if we keep knocking each other around, Miriam.” He stared into her eyes and saw the tears well up and roll down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She pulled away from him with surprising strength. “Go to hell!” She raised her fist, but he caught her by the wrist and held her.

“That’s the spirit, Miriam. Now, doesn’t that feel better than turning the other cheek? You’ll be a fighter yet.”

She pulled loose, walked quickly across the shimmering delta wing, and disappeared through the emergency door of the fuselage.

Hausner walked slowly down the earth ramp. Burg was waiting for him. Hausner sighed. “Well, what’s next?”

“I feel like your adjutant.”

“Yes. And my intelligence officer. Dobkin is my executive officer. Leiber is my supply sergeant. Everyone has a function, or will have within the next few hours.”

“Even Miriam Bernstein?” ventured Burg.

Hausner looked at him. “Yes. She has a function, also. She keeps us honest. She reminds us that we are civilized.”

“I’d rather not be reminded of that now. Anyway, she’s only an amateur guilt-producer. The professional wants a word with you. That’s what’s next.”

“The rabbi?”

“The rabbi. Then I think you should speak with McClure and Richardson. As your intelligence officer, I think there is something there that is not entirely kosher.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. Anyway, as your adjutant, I think they could
use some morale boosting, being the only foreigners with us. If I were them, I would have taken a walk long ago.”

“McClure is steady as a rock. Richardson is a little shaky, I think. I’ll speak to them. Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of, unless you want to take that vote about accepting Rish’s terms. It’s getting late.”

Hausner smiled. “We’ll take it in the morning.”

Burg nodded. “Yes. We’ll sleep on it.”

“Where’s Dobkin?”

“The last time I saw him, he was giving a class in breastworks, trenches, foxholes, and parapets.”

“Is that a graduate course?”

“I think so. And the final exam is tonight.”

Hausner nodded. “Tell him that before nightfall I also want him to give a class in weapons training. I want as many people as possible cross-trained. If a gunner falls, I want anyone to be able to pick up the weapon.”

“All right. If you need me I’ll be at the shepherds’ hut. I promised those two stews I’d pull a few hours of orderly duty.”

“If we do nothing else right up here, we’ll do our best for them. See that they have everything they need.”

“Of course.”

Hausner found Rabbi Levin speaking with Becker. Becker was digging a grave on a little knoll that overlooked the Euphrates.

Hausner stood some meters off until the rabbi saw him.

The rabbi said something to Becker, then walked over to where Hausner stood. “Jacob Hausner, the Lion of Babylon. Did you see your namesake on your journey to the Ishtar Gate?”

“What can I do for you, Rabbi?”

“You can begin by telling me precisely the terms that Rish offered.”

“What difference does it make? We’re not accepting them.”

“You’re not and I’m not and most people here are not. But there are some people who wish to. The Law teaches us that each man should make his own decision as to his fate in situations like this.”

“I don’t remember that in the Bible or the Talmud. I think you make these laws up to fit your needs.”

Rabbi Levin laughed. “You’re a hard man to fool, Jacob Hausner. But I’ll tell you what The Law does say. It says suicide is a sin.”

“So?”

“So? You should keep better informed. There are about six young interpreters and secretaries—two girls and four boys, I think—who are members of the hardcore Masada Defense League.”

“And?”

“And they are running around proselytizing a Masada solution if we can’t hold out. I won’t have that, and I suspect you won’t either.” He looked at Hausner sharply.

Hausner wiped the sweat from his neck. The wind was creating swirls of dust across the top of the mound. On the far side of the Euphrates, the flat mud plain stretched forever. There had been trees there once and fields of high grain, but still it must have been possible to see Babylon as you approached with a caravan from the Western Desert along the ancient Damascus road. That’s how the Jews of the Captivity came. Across the burning deserts of Syria. Then they would have seen the cultivated alluvial flood plains in the distance, not at all the way Hausner had seen it from the flight deck of Concorde 02, but it must have looked inviting, even though they knew it was the place of their bondage. And the Babylonians would have stood in the fields and on the walls of the city and watched their great army approach with Israel in chains and with carts loaded with the silver and gold from the sack of Jerusalem.

“Well?”

Hausner looked at him and spoke slowly and softly. “The Captivity . . . the camps . . . the pogroms. . . . You need warm human bodies to commit atrocities against. . . . I mean, when resistance becomes impossible . .
. physically
impossible . . . then you just . . . you just end it, damn it. You don’t deliver yourself up for humiliation, rape, and slaughter. You end it yourself before they—”

“God decides who dies and who doesn’t! Not man. Not Jacob Hausner. I won’t have this! We have no moral right to end our own lives. And I’Il tell you something else about Masada. It was brave beyond comprehension, but not everyone there wanted to commit suicide, either. There were some who were slain by their own kin before the mass suicide. That’s murder. And I think that is what is going to happen here if those hotheads get control. What the hell kind of young men and women are we raising, anyway? I’ve never seen such recklessness.”

Hausner thought of Avidar again. Then of Bernstein. There must be a compromise between the two philosophies. “In the
end, when the situation is beyond saving, those who wish to be taken captive will find a way to surrender. Those who wish to fight to the end will do so. Those who wish to take their own lives will arrange it. Is there anything else, Rabbi?”

Rabbi Levin looked at him with a mixture of pain and disgust. “The wisdom of Jacob Solomon Hausner. Here’s another little piece of unconventional wisdom for you. If those two women had called Solomon’s bluff and agreed to let the baby be split in two, then that would have put King Solomon in the position of murderer and not a revered judge. That’s what you will become—a murderer. Your compromise is not acceptable to me.” The rabbi waved his arm and his voice became louder. “I insist that you let those who wish to surrender do so now, and that you forbid suicide and talk of suicide!”

Hausner noticed that the rabbi was holding something. He stared at the object as it made its way through the air in the rabbi’s hand. Levin was still shouting, but Hausner had tuned him out. He suddenly put his hand on Rabbi Levin’s shoulder and spoke softly. “I don’t know.” He lowered his head. “I just don’t know, Rabbi. I’m getting tired of this. I don’t think I want to be in charge here after all. I don’t feel up to it. I . . .”

Rabbi Levin took Hausner’s hand gently. “I’m sorry. Look, let’s let it rest for now. You look very tired. Listen, you have my word that I won’t bother you for a decision until later—when you’re feeling better.”

Hausner recovered very quickly. He took his hand away from the rabbi’s. “Good. Then that’s the last I expect to hear about it—until later.” He looked down at the object in the rabbi’s other hand. “What the hell is that?”

The rabbi knew he’d been taken by a sharp operator. He was angry, but impressed. “What?” He looked down at his hand. “Oh. This. It’s an abomination. I hate to touch it. A false idol.” He held it up to the sunlight. “Becker found it in the grave he’s digging.”

Hausner moved closer. It was some sort of winged demon fashioned out of what appeared to be terra cotta, although Hausner thought for a wild moment that it was something mummified. It had the body of an emaciated man with an oversized phallus and the most hideous face Hausner could ever remember seeing represented in any type of art. “I think this should make old Dobkin’s day complete. He’s been annoying everyone about sifting through the rubble on their breaks. Let me have it.”

The rabbi turned it in his hand so it faced him. “It’s really too obscenely ugly to be exposed in the sunlight of God’s world. It belongs to another time. It should have stayed in darkness.” He gripped the clay figure tightly until his knuckles went white.

Hausner stood transfixed. A gust of scorching wind picked up the fine dust around him and obscured everything in front of him for a second. He yelled through the wind and dust. “Don’t be a damned fool. We don’t do that in the twentieth century. Give it to me!”

Rabbi Levin smiled and loosened his grip on the demon. The wind dropped and the brown cloud settled to the earth. He held the figure out toward Hausner. “Here. It’s meaningless. God would laugh at my superstition if I smashed it. Give it to General Dobkin. My compliments.”

Hausner took it. “Thank you.” They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Hausner turned and walked off.

Hausner strode quickly along the crest of the steep slope overlooking the Euphrates. He looked down. It was about a hundred meters to the river, and he wondered how Dobkin thought he was going to descend it without being seen, even at night.

At the base of the slope, once the foot of the citadel, a few dusty little bushes that looked like castor oil plants grew along the bank. There were also clumps of bulrushes, and Hausner knew that Ashbals were posted there.

The Euphrates looked cool and inviting. Hausner licked his parched lips as he made his way south along the perimeter. Men and women stopped digging at their positions to look at him as he walked by. He moved faster.

Hausner stopped at McClure and Richardson’s location. He noticed that they had erected quite an elaborate position. There was a chest-deep firing position with a crenelated wall of earth around it like a miniature castle. There was a small sun shield fashioned from seat covers and straightened seat springs. It blew in the growing wind and looked as though it might not hold up. “It looks like the Alamo.”

McClure bit a matchstick in half and spit out one end. “It
is
the Alamo.”

Both men were covered from head to foot with grime and sweat. Richardson’s blue Air Force tunic lay in a hollowed shelf of the hole, neatly folded and partly wrapped in a pair of women’s panties. Hausner wasn’t angry to see that Richardson
was thinking ahead. He gave him credit for it. Hausner assumed a more formal attitude. “We have been offered terms, as you have probably heard. We cannot accept those terms.
You
can, however. And you can accept them with no shame and no fear. Rish will hold you only as long as it is necessary to keep this location secret from the world. No matter what happens, you go free. I’m fairly certain he will live up to that. They don’t want any trouble with your government. I ask you to please leave here. It would be better for everyone.”

McClure sat down on the edge of the hole and swung his long legs in front of him. “I feel kind of important here. I mean, being the only gun on the west side of the hill. I was the first one here last night, and I think I might have stopped those fellers from trying this slope. Besides, I put a lot of improvements into this real estate. I think I’ll stay here.”

Hausner shook his head. “I don’t want you two here. You’re a complication.”

McClure looked down at his shoes for a while. “Well, if you want to know the truth, I don’t want to be here myself. But I don’t want to take my chances with that Rish feller, either. If you start beating the shit out of him tonight, he’ll forget we’re neutrals damn quick and start squeezing our nuts for information about the weak points in this setup. Think about
that.”

Hausner thought about it. He looked at Richardson. “Colonel?” He could see that Richardson looked unhappy. Clearly, something was going on between these two.

Richardson cleared his throat. “I’m staying. But, goddamn it, I think you might try to parley again before sundown.”

“I’ll take your advice under consideration, Colonel. And if either of you change your mind . . . then I’ll have to think about it in light of what Mr. McClure has said.”

“You do that,” said McClure. “And send over some of them kerosene bombs you’re making. I can chuck one right down into those bushes and bulrushes tonight and light up the whole river bank.”

Hausner nodded. “I’d like that. Incidentally, General Dobkin is leaving the perimeter tonight after sundown and before moonrise. He will be exiting here from your position. Try to observe the patterns and habits of the sentries down there. Give him whatever help you can.”

McClure didn’t ask any questions. He just nodded.

•     •     •

Dobkin was standing near a large, round black ball that came up to his chest.

Hausner, walking back from McClure and Richardson’s position, saw him examining it under the tip of the port-side delta. He walked up to him. “Where the hell did that come from?”

Dobkin looked up. “It was thrown out of the tail section when it blew. It was lying there on the southern ridge, hidden by the terrain. Leiber found it when he was looking for stores. I had it brought here.”

“That’s nice. What the hell is it?”

Dobkin patted it. “Kahn says it’s the compressed-nitrogen bottle.”