"So," David Bragford said, directing his opening to Milner, "Alice tells me that you would like my help with something."
"Yes," Alice Bernley said, taking the lead. "As you know, Master Djwlij Kajm many years ago prophesied that both Bob and I would live to see the true Krishnamurti, the Ruler of the New Age. Yesterday, we saw him."
One would never have guessed it from the look on his face, but with each word Alice spoke, Robert Milner was dying inside of embarrassment. Why, he asked himself, had he allowed Alice to do the talking? He should have known this would happen; Alice was not one to control her emotions. This was not the correct approach for the uninitiated. Sure it was all true, they had seen him, but Milner knew damn well that David Bragford did not believe one word of this about Bernley's spirit guide. Bragford, after all, had never been present at a demonstration of the Master Djwlij Kajm's power.
"That's great," Bragford replied to Alice Bernley's introduction. "When can I meet him?"
Though there was absolutely no evidence of it, Robert Milner was sure Bragford was patronizing them, but he was suffering too greatly from the embarrassment to respond.
"Oh, well, that's the problem," Bernley said. "We don't know where he is. He was at the U.N., but then he left with a man, possibly his father."
"His father?" Bragford asked. "Just how old is this… uh," Bragford was trying hard not to say anything that would make his skepticism too obvious, but he could not for the life of him remember what Bernley had called this person.
Alice spared him the difficulty of finishing his sentence. "He's just a boy," she said. "I'd guess he was about, oh, what would you say, Bob?" But Bob wasn't saying. It didn't matter though, Alice was already starting to answer her own question: "fourteen or fifteen, I'd say."
"Fourteen or fifteen?" Bragford echoed.
"Yes," Bernley said, ignoring Bragford's raised eyebrows and the skepticism in his voice. "What we need is your help finding out who he is."
To Milner's surprise, Bragford was ready with an answer. "I think I have just the right person to help you. Just a moment," he said as he reached for the phone on the coffee table. "Betty, would you ask Mr. Tarkington to join us in my office?"
Almost immediately, the door opened and a tall muscular man entered the office. "Come in, Sam," David Bragford said, as he sat his cup down. Bernley and Milner rose to meet him. After the introductions Bragford got right to the point of explaining what was required, but leaving out the stranger aspects of Bernley's and Milner's interest in finding the individuals.
"Do you think you can do it?" Bragford asked.
"I believe so, sir. The security cameras at the U.N. record everyone entering and exiting the guest lobby. I can get the tapes from U.N. Security. If Ms. Bernley and the Assistant Secretary-General can identify the man and boy from the tape, then I'll put our people to work finding out who they are. If they went anywhere in the building that required signing a registry, such as the Secretariat Building or the Delegates Dining Room, it'll make our job a lot easier."
"Great," Bragford said, satisfied with the prospects and confident of Tarkington's abilities.
"Great," echoed Alice Bernley. "Now, once we find out who they are, there's one other thing we may need your help with."
Tel Aviv
The darkened streets were nearly silent as the tall bearded man walked among the rubble scattered across the pockmarked asphalt. His long purposeful strides and the soft muffled sounds of the leather soles of his shoes gave no hint of the great weight the man bore over his shoulder. The long brown, curled hair of his traditional Hasidic earlock was flattened against his cheek, sandwiched tightly between his face and the load that he carried. For more than six miles the darkly-dressed man carried his load, from the business district of the city, down long straight streets, to a cluster of apartment buildings near the shore of the Mediterranean.
Finally, the man stopped in front of a ten-story apartment building on Ramat Aviz and went to the front entrance. The glass doors, which had been destroyed in a blast the night before, had been replaced with sheets of plywood. The man knocked, and a moment later the door was cracked open and two eyes peered out at him. As recognition registered in the eyes, the door was quickly shut again and a table moved so that the door could be fully opened. A rather plain woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in a blood-stained surgical gown, greeted her unexpected guest.
"Welcome, Rabbi," she said, as she led him to an area of the lobby that had been converted to a makeshift clinic. Here and there family members of some of the patients were camped out near their relatives to assist with their care.
"Not here with the others," he said, his words revealing a voice unusually rich and measured. "You must take him to your apartment."
Only now did the woman see the face of the man the rabbi carried over his shoulder. The blood that covered his face and soaked his clothes was foreboding enough to his prognosis, but his misshapen skull led her to believe that the patient was as good as dead, and, perhaps, would be better off if he was.
"Rabbi, I think we're wasting our time with this one," she said.
"You must see to it that we are not," he answered firmly, as he turned and walked toward the stairwell. "You are a good doctor. I have full confidence in your abilities."
"But Rabbi, he's nearly dead if he's not dead already."
"He is not dead," the rabbi said, as he opened the door and began to ascend the first flight of stairs, the woman following close behind.
The woman moved quickly up the stairs, dipping and swerving to get around the rabbi, then placed herself in the middle of the stairs, stopping his advance. The rabbi stared insistently, his eyes telling her to let him pass.
"At least let me check his pulse!" she pleaded.
The rabbi paused as she took the man's wrist and checked his pulse. He watched her eyes, entirely certain of what she would find. To her amazement the pulse was reasonably strong. The rabbi moved past her and continued up the steps.
"Okay," she said, "so he's alive, but you can see the condition of his head. He's probably hopelessly brain-damaged."
"There's nothing wrong with his brain. It's an old injury he received when he was a child." The rabbi reached the third floor and opened the stairwell door.
"Okay, okay, so maybe he'll survive." She was becoming frantic to stop him as he made his way ever closer to her apartment with his unwelcome patient. She knew that her only hope was to talk him out of his plan. If he insisted, however, she knew she would have to submit: he was, after all, the rabbi. The problem was that as far as she knew, no one had ever talked the rabbi out of anything.
"But why does he have to stay in my apartment?! Why can't he stay downstairs with the others?"
The rabbi, who had now reached her apartment, turned to answer as he waited for her to unlock the door. "He is unclean," he answered in a whisper, though no one else was within earshot. "He is uncircumcised," he added in clarification. "Also, he will need your personal care."
Convinced that it was futile to resist, the woman relented and opened the door. "Put him in the extra bedroom," she said as she grabbed some old sheets from the linen closet.
"Is he a gentile?" she asked, as she began spreading the sheets on the bed.
"He believes he is," he answered. "In a week or so, when he is better, I will see to his circumcision."
"Who is he?" she asked, now reluctantly reconciled to her situation.
"His name is Tom Donafin." The rabbi waited while the woman ran water into a basin and began to clean Tom's wounds. "He is the one of whom the prophecy spoke when it said, 'He must bring death and die that the end and the beginning may come.'"