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  But while recent history separated Joshua Krantz and Fala al-Shohada, ancient history brought them together. Besides a physical attraction, they both had an intense interest in archaeology. He was an expert on the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine empires. She fancied the Minoans, the Persians, and, of course, the dynasties of the pharaohs of Egypt. And, they were both secularists. Both disdained the fundamentalism of their countries, be it Muslim extremism, with its religious fatwas, jihads, and praise of suicidal martyrdom; or Jewish orthodoxy, with its own faithful fanatics who believed Israel’s borders were mandated by the Bible and fellow Jews were deserving of stoning for violating the Sabbath. Floating beyond the breakwaters of Acre Harbor, they stayed focused on each other and the past. In the study of ancient history, the truth of past events was already known, or mostly known. Their work provided them great peace because it successfully removed them from the fury of an irrational world.

  “It’s a world gone mad,” Joshua Krantz had said time and again, “because of beliefs in scriptures–the Torah or the Koran—written thousands of years ago by God knows who, or who knows God.”

  Krantz picked up his T-shirt, already soaked with sweat. He’d been using it as a towel for the last hour. They had started their work at dawn, but it was midday and the temperature was well over one hundred degrees. He wiped sweat from his brow again and listened. The engines had stopped. A problem? He looked up at the bridge to Fala for the answer. Her body glistened in the noonday sun. She was indeed beautiful. With a high forehead, thick black eyebrows, and full lips that seemed to always frame a serene smile, she bore a striking regal resemblance to those Egyptian pharaonic statues of Nefertiti—except, of course, for that damn American baseball cap. Her every movement was pleasing, Krantz thought—no, more than that, with a bikini enhancing and revealing every curve, she was seductive. How many times had they set aside their work aboard ship to enjoy each other? Was she in the mood now? Her long fingers tipped with cherry red polish were gracefully pointing toward something astern. His eyes followed.

  An Israeli coastal patrol boat was fast approaching. Krantz was familiar with the boat, a U.S.-built Cyclone-class ship about 180-feet long. It had a complement of four officers and thirty enlisted crew. It was heavily armed with Stinger ground-to-air missiles, grenade launchers, four machine guns, and it was fast. It had considerable success interdicting weapons supply vessels and low-tech Palestinian terrorist attacks from the sea.

  The patrol boat stood off his stern about thirty meters—standard routine—and sent a small skiff with a crew of four to board Krantz’s boat. The patrol boat’s .50-caliber machine guns were all manned and all pointed at him. Krantz didn’t mind. They were just doing their job. The price of staying alive in Israel, a tiny island of Jews in the midst of a sea of Muslims, was persistent vigilance.

  “What do they want?” Fala asked.

  “Don’t know,” Krantz replied, stowing a bit of gear and slipping on some pants. “They probably have some intelligence that makes our boat seem suspicious. But they’ll check our documents, look around a bit, and we’ll get back to work. No worry.”

  An Israeli major, Chaim Ben-Benjamin, came aboard. The gangly, bespectacled young man, an accountant when he wasn’t on active duty, was army, not navy, and, unsteady on his sea legs, wobbled a bit as the boat rolled.

  “Colonel Krantz?” he queried.

  “Yes.”

  The major saluted. Krantz lazily waved a salute back. The Israeli navy was clearly looking for something in particular—him.

  “I’m not in the army, Major. I don’t need a salute anymore.” “Yes, sir.”

  “Are we at war again?” Krantz asked, as if that was the only explanation for the Israeli military to disturb his idylls.

  “No, sir.”

  “Would you like a drink, Major?” Fala interrupted, stepping up from belowdecks, where she’d wrapped a robe about herself and, with some residual Arab modesty with strangers, had covered her head with a scarf.

  “B’vac a shah.” Please, the major responded.

  She retrieved a bottle of water from an ice chest on deck, wiped it dry, and handed it to the officer.

  “Todah.” Thank you, he said, and turned again to Krantz. “Colonel, you do not answer your phone. You do not listen to your radio.”

  “I don’t have anything I want to hear. Or anyone I want to hear from.”

  “I’ve been sent to ask for your help.”

  “And by whom?”

  The major eyed Fala with some suspicion.

  “If you could come aboard, I could speak with you in private.”

  “I have no secrets from Fala. We’re partners.”

  The major had orders to encourage Krantz’s cooperation. If that meant being forthright, so be it.

  “I am sent by Aman,” he responded.

  Krantz was taken aback. He had been a soldier, familiar with battlefield tactics and sometimes covert operations, but Aman—

  Aman was the abbreviated name for Agaf ha-Modi’in, or Israeli military intelligence. It was a service independent and coequal with Israel’s army, navy, and air force. It had only a few thousand personnel but provided the daily national intelligence for the prime minister and the cabinet on all Arab countries and, in fact, on all foreign risks. While Shin Bit handled domestic intelligence and the Mossad handled foreign counterterrorism, Aman was the service dedicated to protecting Israel from total annihilation. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, its failures were described as key to Israel’s near defeat and destruction. Since then, it had recovered its prestige and its renown.

  “As to military secrets,” Krantz interjected, “I have no interest and she has no interest.” He made a point of emphasizing his intent to stay out of the military’s business by turning his back on the major and busying himself adjusting the cables to his underwater metal detector.

  “What’s important is that we have an interest in you.” He looked again at Fala. “Miss al-Shohada, she’s an Egyptian national. Is she not?” It was a statement of fact, not a question, but Major Benjamin’s tone was intimidating.

  “She is,” Krantz confirmed, reeled back into paying attention by the unveiled threat. “But unless we are perhaps again at war with Egypt, I believe she would do nothing to harm Israel. I would put my life on it.”

  But there was little need for more small talk. He knew he would go—voluntarily or involuntarily.

  The patrol boat escorted them into the harbor, along the Acre seawall toward the marina.

  “It must be nice,” the major commented, “to live and work here. It’s beautiful.”

  “It is,” Fala agreed.

  The city held meaning, as well, for their relationship. Acre was a glorious town to admire from the sea, and she’d always marveled at the majesty and history of its fortifications. It was the ancient gateway to the Holy Land—a city that had always been difficult to capture and hold. Fala smiled and wrapped her arms tightly around Joshua, a man she had captured and intended to hold.

  “Did you know, Major,” Fala said, easing into a teacher’s role, “Akko is only mentioned once in the Old Testament?”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Well,” she went on, “it’s such an old city, with so much history, but it’s only mentioned once, in the Book of Judges.”

  “You know the Bible?”

  “It’s history, and I’m an historian,” Fala replied. “In Judges,” she quoted, “it says that after the death of Joshua, the children of Israel asked God: ‘Who will go up for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?’ And God said, ‘Judah shall go up and I will deliver the land into his hand.’ But you know, Major, the Jews never drove out the inhabitants of Akko. It says that, in the Bible.”

  “Well, we’re certainly here now,” the major retorted with a serious, rebuking gaze.

  “I think the point she wanted to make,” Krantz cut in, “is that sometimes history is not exactly what the Bible says it is. Even with God’s favor, Akko wa
s one place where the Israelites were unable to dislodge the Canaanite inhabitants. So the Israelites and the Canaanites came to share the land together.” He nodded toward the seawall they were paralleling. “That wall, while it was originally built thousands of years ago, was most recently rebuilt, after Napoleon’s siege in 1800, by Pasha Al-Jezzar under the direction of his Jewish advisor Haim Farkhi. Arabs with Jewish advisors. Can any of us conceive of such a partnership today?”

  “I can,” Fala smiled, hugging Joshua a little tighter.

  At one time the land of Israel had been peacefully shared. In their modern world gone mad, it was only their knowledge of history that allowed Joshua and Fala to hold out hope for the future.

  An hour later, they found themselves sitting in the anteroom of the headquarter offices of Aman in the Hakirya district of Tel Aviv. Aman was located in one of several high-rise concrete and glass buildings that made up the Defense Ministry complex, the Kirya, Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon. Krantz had always viewed it as an eyesore because of the needle-topped sixty-story communication tower in its midst. When the new nation was first established in 1948, the Defense Ministry had located their offices in a sparsely populated area on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Today, the heart of the city surrounded it. Although it had been nearly two decades since Krantz had occasion to enter the Kirya on “business,” he walked past the walled compound frequently because it sat right across the street from the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center and he had season tickets. While the Kirya’s well-trafficked location seemed to make it a ripe target for Israel’s enemies, essential business was conducted in an underground command center—“the Bor”—located six floors beneath the Defense Ministry complex in reinforced concrete offices mounted on giant springs designed to withstand a nuclear attack. The entire building could be demolished from the ground up and Israel’s military would still be in business. Unfortunately, Krantz mused each time he entered the theater, while the Kirya would go on, the show would not.

  Fala and Krantz had passed through three metal detectors and a hand search. Snapped to their wrists were plastic color-coded identification bands. A young receptionist wearing crisply ironed olive-green fatigues paid them no mind as she sipped on a Coke and snacked on chips between answering calls. Photos of the chain of command adorned the walls, from the prime minister to the lieutenant general currently in charge of military intelligence. An officer walked by and cast a quizzical eye at Fala. She was wearing a hijab, the traditional scarf-like Muslim head covering. Fala wondered if any Arab, any Egyptian, any Muslim had ever “voluntarily” set foot in this sanctum of Israeli intelligence. What secrets they must know here. Clearly it was something important they wanted from her Joshua to have consented to his demands that she be privy to any decisions he’d be asked to make. When soldiers walked by and inevitably stared at her, she lowered her head and averted her eyes and thought of a verse from the Koran she’d memorized as a young girl.

  “Believing women, they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty. They should not display their beauty. They should draw their khumur over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands.… And O ye Believers! Turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.”

  “We are ready,” a commanding voice announced. Fala looked up. An Israeli officer was standing over them.

  Krantz put his hand on Fala’s arm and squeezed it reassuringly.

  This is all bullshit, she thought and, as she stood up with Krantz, she flipped her hijab off her head and over her shoulders and marched alongside him to a nearby conference room. Modesty was for some moments. This was a moment to feel empowered.

  “Salaam Aleichem,” the aluf, an Israeli major general, greeted Fala as they entered.

  “Shalom,” Fala smiled in polite response.

  Krantz noted the insignia on the general’s uniform. He wore epaulets on his shoulders with the insignia of his rank, a fig leaf and a sword piercing an olive branch. On his sleeve he wore the symbol of the Golani Brigade, a green olive tree on a yellow background. This was the same unit in which Joshua had served, and seeing it always brought back memories of a sense of pride—and loss. As a young soldier he still remembered his indoctrination lectures.

  “Green,” his sergeant had explained, “symbolizes the green hills of Galilee, where our brigade first served when the nation was created. The olive tree is known for its strong roots, roots that penetrate deep and hold firm to the land. It represents how Golani will always hold firm to protect and keep this land. And the yellow background represents how far we have come. Golani took Eilat.”

  The Golani brigade was instrumental in capturing Israel’s southernmost city, Eilat, in 1948. They were also the special forces troops responsible for the rescue of 260 hostages in the Entebbe operation in 1976. They had an unequaled reputation among the Israeli public for esprit de corps and heroism.

  “Colonel—” the general began, nodding a welcome to Krantz.

  Joshua Krantz was quick to interrupt. “Dr. Krantz, please. I’m no longer a soldier.” He was not about to let any cameraderie he was feeling usurp his control of the moment.

  Aluf Daniel “Danny” Echod, vice-commander of Aman, was not upset at being interrupted. While he was a general, he was also an Israeli and a Jew. He was used to a life of insubordination. Privates in the Israeli army had opinions and let them be known. An American general would be court-martialing soldiers right and left for what Danny Echod tolerated on a daily basis. Danny was nearly a decade younger than Krantz but came from the same mold—independent, determined, always ready with “no” as a first response, but then just as ready to accomplish the impossible.

  “Doctor, do not think that your demands are met because you are so mighty. We would not have consented to your lady being here if we did not believe she could be of help in this mission we have for you.”

  “I have no interest in military missions.”

  “We have not called you here to be a soldier—but an archaeologist. You are, it seems, the most scholarly person we have in the field of military archaeology. And”—General Echod smiled toward Fala—“this is something in which I am told you, too, are expert. We want to also hire you.”

  “You want to hire us… both?” Fala responded, somewhat surprised. She was just imagining the string of curses her family would conjure if they knew she’d been offered a job by Israeli military intelligence.

  “Sir, you can’t afford me,” Krantz responded immediately and firmly.

  “Ah, your services are priceless? We are the government. We have plenty of money.”

  “My time is priceless. For my entire life I did what others would have me do. Now, I do only what I want.”

  “Five thousand shekels per day. That is quite more than your usual rate.”

  “As I said, my time is priceless.”

  “So, you want to bargain?” The general smiled toward Fala. “Six thousand.”

  Krantz stood up and walked to the window. It was dusk, and traffic in Tel Aviv was thickening as jobs ended and people headed home. Soon it would slow to the kind of crawl experienced during rush hour in large American cities. He remembered this land in his youth, when the roads were filled with dust and donkey carts, when it was less green but also less paved over with concrete. The skies over Israel were once ethereal blue. Now even the Holy Land had smog.

  “This day is done, General. How much is my time worth, you ask? Is there a price you can pay to give me back my today and my yesterday?”

  “Please. Sit.” The general gestured toward a chair.

  Colonel Krantz instead took Fala by the hand, raised her from her seat, and turned toward the door.

  “I have no desire to sit. I have no desire to listen. I just want to go.”

  “I know you. The hero of the Chinese Farm. They tell stories about you.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I love stories. I come from a rabbinical family, you know. But I am the fi
rst—the first of the sons in my family not to go to yeshiva. Instead, I spent my youth inside Megachs, Nakpadons, and Merkavas.”

  Krantz knew he was referring to a progression of Israeli tanks since the 1980s.

  “I love stories,” the former tank commander went on. “Somewhere inside me is that rabbi.

  “Dr. Krantz,” he began his story, paraphasing a nineteenth-century Jewish fable, “somewhere, somewhere on this earth, a Jew has died—an ordinary man, with a life of virtues and sins. After he was laid to rest and Kaddish said, he was taken to stand before the heavenly seat of judgment. There he saw the scales on which all his earthly deeds, the good and the bad, were to be weighed. His righteous advocate came with a bag of good deeds as white as snow, more fragrant than the finest perfume, and began pouring them upon the right pan of the scales. Then, his evil adversary came with a bag of sins as black as coal, as foul as offal, and began pouring them on the left pan of the scales. The scales of judgment tipped up and down until finally they stopped. A heavenly judge studied the scales carefully and announced his decision. There could be no decision. The scales were perfectly balanced. No judgment could be made. The soul could neither pass through the gates of heaven nor of hell.”

  The general stopped his tale, perhaps to give more meaning to its moral conclusion.

  “You should know, General,” Krantz interjected. “I am not a religious man. Heaven and hell and the Big Bad Wolf are all fairy tales to me.”

  “It is not so much a story about heaven and hell,” the general responded. “Yes, it may be useful to imagine the torment of being in limbo—not being able to be chosen for your good works or your evil ones. But the horror you must imagine today is simply not even taking the time to choose. You must at least listen; then you can make your choice. After all, it takes so little to tip the scales.”

  The general put his hand in his pocket and retrieved something white. He sprinkled it on the table for effect. Krantz pursed his lips, then smiled and conceded to rabbinical wit. And he and Fala sat down again at the conference table.