Highlander - Donna Lettow [0]
HE WATCHED THE GERMANS
PILE OUT OF THEIR TRUCKS
“Take off your coat,” MacLeod ordered the rabbi.
“What? Why?”
“Just do it. There’s no time to explain.” MacLeod helped him off with his coat and guided him by his shoulders to the basement door.
They could hear the Germans fanning out through the neighborhood. “Raus! Juden, Raus!”
MacLeod lifted the hat from Rabbi Mendelsohn’s head and placed it on his own. “You can’t do this!” Rabbi Mendelsohn protested, beginning to realize what MacLeod had in mind. “I won’t let you.”
“Quiet!” MacLeod commanded, “I’ll be back for you.” He could hear soldiers banging on the front door.
“Jude Mendelsohn! Raus!”
“My life is not worth losing yours,” the rabbi whispered urgently, begging. “Please!”
MacLeod gave the old man a gentle push onto the basement stairs and swiftly locked the door. “I will be back. I swear it.”
The pounding grew louder, more insistent. “Mendelsohn!”
“MacLeod!” the rabbi cried. “Do not do this! No one comes back!”
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
Highlander: The Element of Fire
Highlander: Scimitar
Highlander: Scotland the Brave
Highlander: Measure of a Man
Highlander: The Path
Available from
WARNER ASPECT
Copyright
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1997 by Warner Books, Inc.
All rights reserved.
“Highlander” is a protected trademark of Gaumont Television. © 1994 by Gaumont Television and © Davis Panzer Productions, Inc. 1985. Published by arrangement with Bohbot Entertainment and Media, Inc.
Aspect is a registered trademark of warner Books, Inc.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56564-6
Contents
Macleod Thought Fast as he Watched The Germans Pile out of their Trucks
Also in this Series
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Author’s Notes
Acknowledgments
To Dennis DeYong,
who said if you’ve got yourself a dream,
go for it.
To Gillian Horvath and Amy Zoll,
who befriended a lonely computer geek
on a bus late one night and showed her a
whole new world.
To David Abramowitz,
who showed me how to use his toys
and let me share his wisdom.
To Bill Panzer and Betsy Mitchell,
who had faith in me.
Blessed is he who was not born,
Or he, who having been born, has died.
But as for us who live, woe unto us.
Because we see the afflictions of Zion,
And what has befallen Jerusalem …
—Baruch
Prologue
Hebron, in the territories of Judaea and Samaria (aka The Occupied West Bank): The Present
Allahu Akbar!
The tinny sound of the tape recording rang through the narrow streets of the ancient village of Hebron. The sound echoed from the uninspired facades of government housing built by the Israelis after the occupation. It echoed from the remains of massive granite walls built by invading Crusaders a millennium earlier. Wherever it went, it called the Muslim devout of Hebron to their Friday midday prayers.
Allahu Akbar! God is the Most Great!
The Akhirah Mosque just south of the Old Quarter wasn’t the best mosque in Hebron. That honor fell to the majestic al-Haram al-Ibrahimi al-Khalil, a splendid edifice of gold and mosaics rising high above the cave where Abraham, Beloved of God, and his wife Sarah were buried, a site sacred to all of the People of the Book—Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike.
Allahu Akbar!
It wasn’t even the second-best mosque in Hebron. Many in Hebron were larger, more elaborate, or simply more ancient than the Akhirah Mosque, which was a fairly new and nondescript block of utilitarian concrete at one end of the open market on the road to Jaffa. It was built