Brad spun around savagely. “Listen,” he hissed, “I know where they cut the fence and came in. Is there any other way out of here besides the gates?”
“No. And they are locked.”
“All right. I’ll meet him at the fence. Don’t let anyone follow him and panic him. I think he’ll go out the way he came in unless he’s cornered.”
The Israeli looked doubtful. “What if there are others?”
“This makes a total of six. I think that’s it. If not, I’ve got this.” He waved the carbine.
The Israeli hesitated. “Well—”
“Come on, man!” Brad cried, wanting to shake him violently. “If he sees me leave, he’ll know what we’re up to. I’ve got to go now.”
“Okay. Go!”
“Don’t let anyone follow him,” Brad commanded. As he turned and ran hard for the perimeter of the kibbutz, he heard a man’s voice start to boom out in Arabic.
Fortunately, the terrorists had picked their point of entry well. It was one of the darkest portions of the fence, and the cut lay between two large overhanging oleander bushes. Brad surveyed the setup quickly, then squeezed in against the fence behind the bush. It was tight, severely restricting his freedom of movement, but it was the only place of concealment that would give him a shot at the man’s hand. The rifle was useless in these close quarters, and he propped it under the oleander’s branches. Then he concentrated on trying to settle his breathing down to where it didn’t whistle like a force-six gale. He didn’t dare think about Miri with the Arab.
It didn’t take long. He heard the scrape of their feet on the gravel first, then the sharp commands in Arabic. Brad breathed a quick sigh of relief when they rounded the corner of the equipment shed and came past Mordecai’s body toward the cut in the fence. The young man’s back was to Brad as he watched for possible pursuit, but his grip on Miri was iron-tight. Everything depended now on how this terrified Arab decided to make his exit through the fence. He and Miri couldn’t go through together, and he wouldn’t dare let go of her for an instant.
He pushed her through first, holding tightly to her wrist, cursing her in a steady flow of Arabic. Brad heard Miri gasp as the cut edge of the fence scraped her arm. As the young terrorist crouched down to follow her through, the hand with the grenade arched back toward where Brad huddled in the bushes.
Brad lunged forward, clamping both hands tightly over the grenade. “Run, Miri!” he shouted, jerking the thin young body backwards and breaking his hold on Miri’s wrist. She fell backward, then leaped up and darted away. Brad saw her go and then promptly forgot about her. The Arab was onto his back like a terrified cat, scratching, clawing, screaming, pounding. Brad held on desperately to the boy’s fist and the grenade with both hands and hurled himself backward. They fell heavily against the shed, Brad’s body crushing the boy between it and him. The air whooshed out of the Arab like a popped balloon, and the flailing instantly stopped. Stunned himself, it took Brad almost a full second to realize that he was squeezing an empty hand. The grenade was gone!
With no idea where it had dropped, Brad jumped away in three mighty leaps, then dove for the ground, feeling searing pain as his face skidded in the gravel. The blast roared out behind him, peppering the building and fence with shrapnel.
Dazed, Brad got slowly to his feet, vaguely aware that there was still a very dangerous young man out here with him. He shook his head and tried to move into action. Then he saw the dark mass huddled up against the building and moved slowly toward it. Cautiously, he turned him half over, then felt sick. Like Mordecai, this boy would have no more surprises. The hand grenade had fallen within three or four feet of him, and he had caught a major portion of the blast full in the chest. Brad let the boy slump back again and stood up wearily.
“Miri!” he called, a great relief washing over him. He was dimly aware of the pounding of feet behind him. “Miri! It’s Brad. Everything is okay now.”
He held the fence back as she came running, stumbling out of the dark. She crawled through and threw herself into his arms.
“It’s all right,” he soothed, holding her tight, as great sobs racked her body. “Everything’s okay. It’s all right now.”
Twenty-one
Dawn was just starting to lighten the eastern sky when Miri peeked into the TV room off the main dining hall of the kibbutz. “There you are,” she said to Brad, her voice full of relief.
Surprised, he stood up. “Hi, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“So are you.”
“Fat chance,” he said. The uproar had not finally died down until after two in the morning, with police, military, and press swarming the place. Brad, painfully embarrassed at being the hero of the hour, had finally pled exhaustion and gone to his room. A doctor had forced a sleeping pill down Miri two hours before that, and had sent her to bed. Once it was quiet, Brad had slipped in here and had been staring at the walls ever since, thinking about two young boys—one Arab, one Jewish—and about a dark-haired, dark-eyed Israeli sabra.
Almost shyly, Miri looked up at him. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“I’d like that.”
She came and stood before him, then reached up and gently touched the angry red scratches on his cheek. “How do I ever say ‘thank you’?” she said, her eyes suddenly welling up with tears.
He reached out and pulled her to him. “Teach me how to dive into loose gravel and not lead with my face.” Then the image of the young Arab boy who hadn’t dived at all flashed into his mind. “It isn’t much,” he murmured.
“You know what I mean,” she said, struggling to control her voice. “Me. The children. They told you about the explosives?”
He nodded soberly. There had been sufficient to level a good portion of the two dormitories. Brad reached down and examined the four ugly red welts that ran across Miri’s arm where the fence had caught her.
“If I can’t take better care of you than that, you’d better shop around for a more efficient bodyguard.”
“Oh, Brad,” she cried, throwing her arms around him and clinging to him fiercely. “When I think—” She shuddered and held him even more tightly.
“Hey! Hey!” he said gently, tipping her head up and wiping the tears away with his hand. “I’m supposed to be the soft-hearted American, and you’re the stoic, brave Israeli. Remember?”
“I know, just give me a minute, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, and held her close to him.
Finally she pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “It’s tomorrow now.”
“It is?” he asked, not following the sudden switch in the conversation.
“Yes. We said we would talk tomorrow. Can we talk now?”
Brad nodded, and they moved over to a couch and sat down. He took her hand and began tracing the lines on her palm lightly with his finger. For the last two hours he had been asking himself if he could really leave this woman and return home. And yet the reply followed quickly. Can you be happy setting aside your goals and staying in Israel with a nonmember wife? After two hours, he was less certain of the answers than when he had started. “You know, Miri,” he said, trying to keep his voice light, “in some ways this could be even harder than what we’ve just gone through.”
“I know, Brad,” she said softly. “So let me start.”
Gratefully he nodded.
Miri took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then put her hand over his. “I love you, Brad Kennison.”
If she had jabbed him with a pin he wouldn’t have jumped more visibly. Completely taken by surprise, he stared at her.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she stammered, finding it very difficult to explain her feelings. “But it is not just because of what you did last night. It didn’t take a hand grenade to convince me of my feelings for you. I have known I love you for two weeks now. Last night only convinced me that I can’t hide it from you—or from myself—any longer.” Once again the dark eyes threatened t
o spill over. “When that young Arab grabbed me, I was terrified, of course. But over and over I kept thinking, if I die Brad will never know how I feel. So…”
“Miri,” Brad began, still half surprised, half overjoyed, “I—”
“No,” she said quickly. “I want to finish. If I don’t say it now—” She shook her head, her face determined. “I have finally had to face the fact that I feel something for you that I have never before felt for anyone. Remember David?”
“Do I ever!” Brad said, pulling such a face that it caused Miri to laugh. But the smile disappeared almost instantly.
“I thought for a while that I was falling in love with him. He’s handsome, charming—”
“Wealthy,” Brad added sourly.
“Yes. He is an Israeli girl’s ideal. He is a decorated war hero, has a brilliant career ahead of him. Then you came along.”
“Yeah. Poor, klutzy, abrasive.”
She touched his cheek. “And brave and gentle and kind. And so intensely committed to your convictions.” Her eyes were luminous as she looked into his. “This isn’t supposed to happen, you know. Guides don’t fall in love with their clients. Israelis don’t fall in love with Americans. And,” she paused, “and Jewish girls most certainly do not fall in love with Christians.”
Brad took her face in his hands and pulled her to within an inch of his own. “And good Mormon boys don’t fall in love with non-Mormon girls, Jewish, Catholic, or Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And yet I did. I have.” He kissed her, a long, gentle kiss that was returned fully and completely.
“I’m so glad,” she whispered, leaning against him snuggling in against his shoulder.
“Are you really, Miri? All things considered?”
She nodded. “Loving you is creating some real problems. But to not have you love me back would be infinitely worse.”
He thought about that, knowing she was right, wishing she weren’t. They sat quietly for several minutes, lost in their thoughts and basking in the warmth of their discovery. Finally she spoke.
“Tell me about marriage in the temple.”
Once again she brought him bolt upright.
Miri blushed furiously. “Oh,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean it that way. I wasn’t suggesting—” She stopped, thoroughly embarrassed.
Brad put his hand over her mouth. “Shhh!” he said gently, kissing her on the tip of her nose. “I didn’t take it that way. What I want to know is how you know about temple marriage. I’ve never said a word about it.” His eyebrows furrowed. “Has Ali been talking to you?”
“Only after I asked him about it,” Miri admitted.
“Then how—?”
“I read about it.” Seeing the question on his face, she continued. “There is a book in the library at Hebrew University called Meet the Mormons. It said that Mormons believe in marriage for eternity and that it is performed in their temples.”
Brad suddenly remembered Miri’s surprising knowledge of Mormons at the party in her father’s home. “Is that all it said?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her eyes had that gentle teasing look that he was beginning to recognize. “But President Marks explained it in much greater detail.” She looked up at him, waiting for his reaction.
“President Marks!” Brad had been up now for twentyfour hours—and an exhausting twenty-four hours at that. That was the only explanation for how sluggishly his mind was working.
“I’ve been meeting with President Marks for the past two weeks,” she confessed.
“You’ve what?” If she had just announced that Moshe Dayan had become a Franciscan priest and entered a monastery, he could not have been more surprised.
“I wanted to ask some questions,” Miri explained quickly, “and I couldn’t trust my reaction to you anymore. I couldn’t be objective. So I called him and asked if we could talk. Does that make you feel bad?”
“Bad? No, I’m delighted, Miri.”
Miri stood up, walked over to a chair across from Brad, and sat down facing him. “I said I wanted to have my part first in this little talk, so let me say it now.”
Brad nodded, noting the tension in her hands, the stress in her face.
She sighed, then plunged in. “I know it was terribly presumptuous on my part, but once I began to see that our relationship was getting serious—” She shook her head impatiently. “No. Why beat around the bush? Once I realized I loved you and thought that you might come to love me too, I began considering what that meant for us. I suppose I shouldn’t have. But I kept thinking, ‘What if this works out? What if we get married?’ ”
“Don’t apologize,” Brad said softly. “That ‘what if’ has been one of the primary things on my mind for the past two or three weeks. I’m glad you’ve thought about it too.”
She smiled her pleasure at that. “I remembered what I had read in the book about your marriages, so I asked Ali about it. I asked him not to mention it to you, for obvious reasons.”
“He didn’t.”
“From Ali I learned that temple marriage is not just a light thing, not just a slight preference for one kind of ceremony over another. That is when I called President Marks.”
She looked down at her hands as she went on. “He was very kind, but very direct. He said that if you were any kind of a Latter-day Saint, and he thinks you are, then there would be no option. Either I become a Mormon or we could never be married.” She looked up. “He was a little more diplomatic than that, but the message was clear.”
She gave him a long, searching look. “Are you any kind of a Latter-day Saint, Brad?”
There it was, the question he had been hurling himself against for the past two hours.
“Our only hope of working this thing through, Brad,” she said as he hesitated, her voice almost a whisper, “is if we are both totally honest.”
“I know, Miri. I know.” He took a deep breath and began. “All of my life there has never been the slightest question in my mind about my church commitment. Until you, I’ve never even dated anyone who wasn’t an active Latter-day Saint. I suppose it says more eloquently than anything else I could say about how much I love you that for the first time in my life I have seriously considered abandoning that position.” He gave her a rueful expression. “Thou art a sore temptation, Miriam Shadmi.”
“For that much at least I am glad,” she said, her eyes soft.
Brad’s expression was morose. “I guess what it all comes down to is, do your convictions guide your life or not?”
“So when all is said and done, Brad, what you’re saying is that President Marks is right. There is no other acceptable option for you.”
Brad nodded, his expression bleak. “I guess not, Miri. It sounds so selfish that it has to be done my way. But I can’t accept any other choice and live with myself. I can’t.”
“In a way, I suppose that makes me glad. That’s the very thing I admire the most in you. But it puts me in a very strange position. It’s like emotional blackmail. Now I want to accept Mormonism for that reason alone, so I won’t lose you.”
“I would never want that,” Brad said quickly.
“I know, I know,” she said. “But don’t you see? Now I want it, not just because it may be good or true, but because it gives me access to you.”
“That would be a sell-out for you, Miri, just as marrying outside of the temple would be a sell-out for me.”
“Exactly,” she said, grateful for his understanding. “So I have a suggestion, a proposed bargain, as it were.”
“I’m listening, eagerly.”
“For my part of the bargain, I will try to find out for myself if Mormonism is all that you say it is.”
Brad felt his heart leap with elation. “Great!”
“In the past, I have wanted to know what you believed, to understand it. Now my studies will take on a whole new purpose and dimension. I don’t just want to know it, I want to know if it is true.”
“I wouldn’t ask for any more than that,” Brad said, thri
lled at her words.
“In fact, I have already started. That’s why I’ve been meeting with President Marks. I’ve been reading in the Book of Mormon you gave me. I’m now up to—how do you say it? Mos-ee-ah.”
“Moz-i-uh,” Brad corrected softly. “That is tremendous.”
“I have even started to pray about it and the whole idea of Mormonism. Do you know how strange and difficult that is for me, when I’m not even sure whether I accept the reality of God?”
Deeply touched, Brad got up and went to her, pulled her to her feet to face him. “You make me feel ashamed that my belief comes so easily. If you are doing that, what is my part of the bargain?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment,” she said, holding his hand tightly. “But I must say one other thing. Remember, we promised to be honest.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let your hopes rise too high, Brad. I could find it very easy to accept Mormonism. So far I find the Book of Mormon very plausible, and the idea of Joseph Smith as a prophet is not difficult at all. Your religion is very logical and has many parallels to Jewish life. But—”
“But—” Brad repeated, knowing what was coming.
Miri shook her head slowly, her dark eyes deeply troubled. “The idea that Jesus was the Son of God strikes against everything I believe. Every portion of my soul cries out against the sheer illogic of the concept that a god had to become a man to save everybody. That a man who is born of God—is a god—would allow himself to be nailed to a cross while men jeer and spit upon him—it’s so absolutely contrary to what I can accept. I don’t know if I ever can change that, Brad. Not ever.”
“Miri,” he said quietly, “will you pray about that too?”
“To a god who let six million of my people go to their deaths in Germany and Poland?” she asked, the tears welling up in her eyes. “Can’t you see, that is what makes this so difficult for me. You accept a god with feelings and concerns, a god who listens to prayers and answers them. But how can I ask for an answer myself, when he refuses to listen to the cries of my people?”