‘You weren’t looking for the connection.’ Melman shifted in his chair. ‘You’re not perfect, Sarah, but you’re closer than anyone I’ve ever worked with before. Occasionally, everyone misses things.’
‘Strauss knew Lourds in Vienna. Lourds knew Frau Von Volker in Vienna.’ Sarah pursed her lips. ‘It’s hardly a stretch to believe that Strauss knew Frau Von Volker. She could be the reason Strauss left the safe house.’
Melman scratched his beard. ‘So the knots are falling neater and neater.’
‘Yes.’
‘One thing I do detest, Katsas Shavit, is Lourds’s blatant disregard for our efforts at keeping tabs on him.’
Sarah smiled at the comment. Melman had a very dry sense of humor that was seldom exercised. ‘He’s hardly aware that we’re onto him.’
‘Even so. The man’s habit of popping here and there is very irritating. I hate playing catch-up on a mission as important as this. So I was thinking we might correct our inability to stay apace with him.’
Interested, Sarah watched him. ‘With Miriam Abata?’
Melman smiled broadly. ‘You anticipate me so well, Sarah. Between you and my wife, I have no secrets.’
‘Agent Abata hasn’t fully recovered from her ordeal in Namchee Bazaar.’
‘No, I wouldn’t expect that she would have yet.’ Melman took a breath. ‘But you know as well as I do that these things are better dealt with by throwing an agent back out into the field as soon as possible. If she is broken, the sooner we know, the more lives we save. Including her own.’
‘I know.’ Sarah contemplated the idea. ‘She’s also exactly the type of young woman that Professor Lourds would allow close to him.’
Melman raised his eyebrows. ‘Type? Dear woman, any female that’s breathing and vertical appears to be his type.’
‘The vertical appears to be negotiable. Horizontal would be more appealing, I would think.’
Color flushed Melman’s cheeks, but he laughed.
‘Let me talk to Abata. I’ll get back to you.’ But the more she thought about the idea, the more Sarah liked it. Also, after what Miriam Abata had been through, maybe tough love was the answer.
34
Lourds took a taxi up the hill to the college campus in northeast Jerusalem. The land was pretty, falling away in graceful curves equally decorated with dwellings and wilderness.
Mount Scopus peered down on Jerusalem, and it had been the staging point for several efforts to sack the city. The Romans and the Crusaders had gathered there and initiated maneuvers, and the area was hotly contested during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, then again in 1967 during the Six-Day War. Today, the mountain was zoned within the municipality of Jerusalem.
Looking out over the city, Lourds could pick out all the landmarks that would have been visible to those Roman Centurions in AD 66, and to the French and English Crusaders so many years later. The mind-set of those warriors would not have changed much. Whether armed with a gladius or an assault rifle, those men would have mentally poked and pried at Jerusalem’s weakness till the city fell.
Rome had supported Herod as the king of the Jews, and he’d kowtowed to the city’s every wish. Under Herod’s guidance, though, Jerusalem had prospered and grown, and the Temple Mount area had more than doubled. His descendants had ruled the city till the Great Revolt in AD 66. That was what had brought the Romans to fill the streets with blood. It had taken them four years to break the city’s defenses, but eventually they’d done it. Agrippa II, Herod’s descendant and the last of the seven Herodian kings, had fled to Galilee with his sister.
General Vespasian had led more than sixty thousand troops into Galilee and crushed the rebellion in the north. From there, he and his son Titus stalled at Jerusalem’s walls. The army had dug a trench around the city and set up camp. Citizens caught fleeing the city were crucified and left to rot on crosses on the earthen walls the Romans had built to trap Jerusalem. Historians reported that as many as five hundred crucifixions took place in a single day.
Studying the city now, Lourds could see where the battles had been staged. Gardens and new buildings covered many of the old scars, but they were still there, still ingrained in a culture that would never forget the injustices, the hatred outsiders had poured on them, and the oppression they’d suffered at the hands of foreign invaders.
Some said Jerusalem would never heal until God Himself descended from the heavens and ministered to the city. But which God? That had been the question for so many ages.
And, as always, predators around the city awaited the moment to strike. Most of those were descendants of those who had gone before, and everything they did was in God’s name.
‘Professor Lourds.’
Startled, Lourds turned from a group of beautiful coeds sitting in the shade of trees near the entrance to the Botanical Gardens.
A short, well-kept man in his early sixties and a good gray suit approached him. He was hawk-faced, bald, and wore a neat salt-and-pepper goatee.
‘I’m Aaron Jacob, president of the university. We talked on the phone this morning.’ Jacob offered his hand.
Lourds took the man’s hand and shook. Jacob had a strong, practiced grip, but there were no calluses. He’d shaken a lot of hands over the years — as university president that would have been a prerequisite — but he’d pushed pencils more than he’d shifted rock and dirt in the field. ‘Just call me Thomas.’
‘Of course. Call me Aaron.’ Smoothly, Jacob slid his arm around Lourds’s shoulders and guided him up the steps toward the main building. ‘I’m told this isn’t your first visit to our university.’
‘No. I’ve been here a few times, actually. As a visiting professor and as a lecturer.’
‘Really? I must have missed those opportunities to hear you. My loss.’
‘There are recordings.’
Jacob smiled at that. ‘Yes, I’ll have to familiarize myself with your work when I have the opportunity. You said this morning you wanted to look around Professor Strauss’s office?’
‘If I may.’
‘The two of you were good friends?’
‘Very good friends. We studied in Vienna together, did some fieldwork among the Uighur tribes in the Himalayas, and Lev saved my life in a plane crash a few years ago. That’s how he lost the leg.’
‘I never did hear that story.’
‘Lev didn’t like bragging.’
‘He seemed like a quiet, intense man.’
‘Get a six-pack and a pizza in him, and he could be quite different.’
Jacob grinned. ‘I suppose that can be said of most men. Can you tell me what you’re looking for?’
‘I just want to put Lev’s papers in order, perhaps finish some of the work he’d started.’ Lourds shrugged. ‘It was a drunken promise we made to each other one night. We were young and idealistic. It’s one of those foolish promises you make to a dear friend, but while I’m here, I thought I’d see what I could get sorted.’
‘You left that marvelous discovery in the Himalayas to come here?’
‘Lev sent word to me, asking me to be here. I didn’t know we had lost him till I arrived.’
‘I’m sorry. That had to have been hard. As for Professor Strauss’s office, you could actually help us. We don’t know where to get started as far as packing things up.’ Jacob looked at Lourds and grimaced. ‘Sorry. That came out rather more cold and bureaucratic than I’d intended.’