Highlander - Donna Lettow [2]
The eerie quiet of a hundred men’s silent petitions to Allah was suddenly shattered by the howl of an automatic weapon. Soundlessly, a row of pious men toppled from their knees to the ground, dead before their “Amen.”
Then the screaming, the wailing, as the followers of Islam tried to struggle to their feet, to run in horror, to flee, but the young man, dark eyes burning with centuries of hate and vengeance, was merciless, cutting them down in the same orderly rows in which they’d prayed.
Before those inside the Akhirah Mosque even realized that their worship had been interrupted, forty-three Palestinian men lay dead or dying, their blood drenching their prayer rugs and seeping into the gravel of the Jaffa Road marketplace.
The avenger with his finger on the trigger of the automatic stopped firing only when he saw the squad of Palestinian police coming for him across the market, guns drawn. Whispering a sweet prayer to the God of his ancestors, the God of Moses and of David, he turned the muzzle of the weapon toward himself and pulled the trigger once again.
Chapter One
Paris: The Present
April in Paris. Despite all the threadworn clichés, there really was something magical about the City of Lights in spring. When the incessant winter rains and the graying slush finally went away, the city was reborn, dressed as if by way of apology in the finest Mother Nature had to offer. With the clouds gone, there was no doubt that whatever force had created the heavens, He or She had deliberately placed the sun so it would shine its brightest on the streets of Paris.
As he walked along the sunny Boulevard St. Germain crowded with shoppers and tourists, Duncan MacLeod wondered what it was that always seemed to draw him back to Paris in the springtime. After all, spring in Seacouver was perfectly nice, if a bit damp. In fact, he’d been in any number of cities and hamlets around the world with pleasant springs. He remembered lying beneath the cherry blossoms in old Edo with particular fondness—with Keiko, that was her name, he hadn’t thought of her in ages—not to mention an occasional roll in the flowering heather in his native Highlands. But they just couldn’t compare with Paris. Maybe it was something carried in the breeze that ruffled his hair as he walked. Maybe, he thought, looking around, just maybe it was the Parisian ladies, freed from the dour wool coats and boots of winter and allowed to bloom like the city. “Bonjour,” he said, and smiled his most charming smile as he caught the eye of a passing young mademoiselle in a daring skirt that went up to … there. He saw her blush just a bit and walk on with her girlfriend, giggling. When they thought he could no longer see them, they turned and watched him with great appreciation.
He remembered the first time he’d seen Paris. It had been spring then, too. It was a crowded, noisy place filled with more than its share of squalor and disease, but to an overgrown boy fresh out of Glenfinnan, it had seemed a place from a fairy story. Funny how some things don’t change in four hundred years. He hadn’t stayed long in Paris that first time. Eager to see it all and do it all, he was out and on his way to Italy before the first frost turned the leaves. It would be a long time before he learned that the real gift of Immortality was the chance to stop and savor the sights and smells of springtime.
Or that of a duck in—what was that? Rosemary? The smell greeted him on the sidewalk. MacLeod stopped outside a crowded café and checked the address against a card he pulled from his blazer pocket. Chez Nous. He was in the right place. A little pretentious for his tastes, but he’d heard the food was good. “Constantine, party of two,” he told the maître d’. He knew he was a little late, but some days just seemed made