Read The Scorpion’s Bite Online
Authors: Aileen G. Baron
Tags: #FICTION, #Mystery & Detective, #General
Lily sat in the visitor’s chair next to Gideon’s bed at the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. Gideon had insisted on being flown back to Jerusalem. Jalil had stayed behind in the military hospital at Azraq.
“A broken pelvis,” Gideon told her. “Upper and lower pubic symphysis. The doctor said I’d have trouble giving birth if I get pregnant.”
“You’re planning on getting pregnant?”
“The doctor is a gynecologist. It’s all he knows.”
“Why a gynecologist?”
“They’re short on orthopedic surgeons.”
“I thought Jerusalem had a surplus of doctors.”
“Most of the orthopedic surgeons joined the Jewish Brigade, and are off in the Western Desert.”
“At el Alamein.” Lily felt a twinge of sorrow remembering Rafi, looked down at her lap, clasped her hands, unclasped them, looked out the window toward the university across the road.
“Who do you suppose killed Klaus?” Gideon asked her.
“Probably the Rashidi,” Lily said after a while. “Under orders from Gerta.”
“What makes you say that?”
“They took his gold tooth, but left the Schafhausen, smashed the camera. A European would have done the opposite.”
“And Gerta ended up with his knife.”
“I took the film that he left to be developed,” she said.
“And?”
She handed him the packets of photographs. “Mostly what he said it was. Desert vistas, rock drawings.”
“And the rest?”
“Some forts, defenses, inside of some pumping stations. Some of Azraq.”
He opened one of the packets and fanned through it. “Take them a while to train someone to replace Gerta and Klaus. We bought time, that’s all.” Gideon sighed and adjusted his legs under the blanket. “We bought time.”
“Meanwhile, Faisal is safe a little while longer.”
Gideon put the photos back in the envelope. “I’ll look at them later.”
“I heard from Glubb,” Lily said. “Rashid Ali is back in Berlin.”
Gideon shifted under the blankets again and sat up, leaning on his elbows. “At least we did that much.”
***
She sat in the chair by the window while Gideon dressed to leave the hospital. The young kibbuztnik in the next bed was in visible pain.
She had met him the day before when she visited Gideon.
His name was Moshe. He was a member of the Palmach force fighting in Syria, and had lost an eye. In spite of his visible pain, he flirted with her and exuded sexuality.
He had told her that archaeology was his hobby, that he had a collection he had gathered from archaeological sites, and she said that was looting, that artifacts out of context lose their meaning as voices of the past.
Moshe smiled at her and winced at the pain and told her she was beautiful.
Gideon had just limped back into the room, leaning on a cane. He was dressed and ready to leave.
“Watch out for Moshe. His hero is King David,” Gideon said.
“He intends to conquer Judea?” Lily asked.
“And make love to all the women in it, just like David.”
“One can only hope,” Moshe said.
***
Gideon stood outside the hospital while they waited for the taxi. He crossed over the road toward the university, and leaned on his cane.
He stood at the edge of the hill on Mount Scopus and looked down at Jerusalem, at the Old City enclosed in its ancient walls, at the Tower of David, at the new city growing around Jaffe road and reaching to the far horizon.
“It’s all there,” he said. “Jerusalem, thou art builded as a city, that is compact together.”
He took a deep breath, sighed, then shambled back toward the hospital. Lily helped him into the taxi and they rode down the hill to the American School.
They ate dinner at the American Colony in the courtyard. Omar Jibrin, the cook, chief bottle washer, and majordomo of the American School had gone to spend the weekend with his family in Ein Karim.
Lily had ordered lentils and rice and chocolate gateau, specialties of the house. A journalist from the Associated Press from the next table over approached them.
“Just back from Trans-Jordan?” the man from the Associated Press said. “Maybe you could clarify something.” He put both hands on their table, leaned down, and said in a confidential voice, “I heard a rumor that little Faisal, king of Iraq, was kidnapped.”
Lily looked at him and inclined her head. “Let not your heart faint, neither fear ye for the rumor that shall be heard in the land.”
Gideon gave her a sideways glance, a look of astonishment on his face. Then he smiled.
“It’s from Jeremiah,” she said.
Gideon nodded. “I know.”
“What about it?” the journalist asked. “Was he kidnapped?”
“A rumor shall come one year,” she said. “And after that in another year a rumor, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.”
Lily thought the meaning was obscure and the translation awkward, but the journalist seemed satisfied, smiled, said thanks, and went back to his table.
Lily was dumbfounded. “What did I say? That was from Jeremiah, too.”
Gideon cocked an eyebrow once again. “I think you gave it all away.”
Sukenik, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University, and his son, Yigal, came into the garden, nodded to Gideon and Lily, and sat down at the next table, and said “Shalom.”
Gideon answered “
Shalom, shalom, ve ein shalom
. Peace, peace, there is no peace,” and took another forkful of the chocolate gâteau.
Although much of the book is based on historical fact, I fudged on the date of Glubb’s Syrian campaign, moving it up a year. The Allies were already in control of Syria when this book takes place.
Glubb Pasha is a real historic character, as are Emir Abdullah, and the children, Prince Hussein (later King Hussein of Jordan) and the child King Faisal II. There really was a plot to kill Faisal, and there really were raids on the pumping stations of the oil pipelines.
And, for that matter, there really were Nabateans. Their capital, Petra, has changed much since it became a tourist attraction after it was declared a World Heritage site and one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. I was there when Bedouin still lived in the caves. For an interesting take on some of the legends encouraged by tourist guides that have grown up around Petra, see an article, “Petra—Myth and Reality” written for the
Saudi Aramco World
, and now on the Web by Philip Hammond, one of Petra’s excavators.
An archaeologist, Nelson Glueck, really did do a survey of Trans-Jordan for the OSS, and he really was on the cover of
Time
magazine. The media tried to make another Lawrence of Arabia out of him, but he would have none of that.
Most of the rest is fiction. The last name of Moshe, the young kibbutznik in the hospital who lost an eye in a raid in Syria is Dayan. He really did conquer Judea, and loot archaeological sites.
Yigal Sukenik, the son of archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik, who founded the Department of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, did exist. He studied archaeology under his father, and later changed his name to Yigal Yadin, the code name that he used when he was in the Hagganah.
After the war, in 1946, the Emirate of Trans-Jordan under the British Mandate became the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan and Emir Abdullah became King Abdullah I. Trans-Jordan became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1949.
Prince Hussein and his cousin Faisal did go to Harrow. Hussein went on to Sandhurst, the prestigious British military academy equivalent to our own West Point. Faisal went back to Iraq to take up his duties as king and was murdered during a coup d’état at the age of nineteen, along with his uncle, Abd-al-Ilah, who had acted as his regent and advisor.
My thanks certainly go to the intrepid archaeologist, theologian, and university president, the master of archaeological surveys, friend of Bedouin and Kings, Nelson Glueck, who could spot a micro-blade no bigger than your fingernail from the back of a camel. His experience doing an archaeological survey of Trans-Jordan was the inspiration for this book, and he was the model for Gideon Weil. In his spare time, he was also President of Hebrew Union College, and spent numerous years as the Director of The American School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, now known as the Albright Institute. Although many of his pioneering conclusions have been modified by subsequent research, for those interested in further exploration of Glueck’s work in Jordan, you might look into his publications:
Exploration in Eastern Palestine
, published in 4 volumes between 1934 and 1951 by the American School of Oriental Research, a scholarly presentation of his Trans-Jordan survey;
The Other side of the Jordan
, a popular account; and
Deities and Dolphins
, a popular work based on his excavations at Nabatean sites.
I have also used
The Story of the Arab Legion
, an account by Brigadier John Bagot Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, who directed the Arab Legion and helped bring order and control to the chaos of independent warring tribes for the establishment of a peaceful government in Trans-Jordan, and the memoirs of King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, published by the Philosophical society in 1950 as references.
Many thanks go to Jessica Kaye, literary lawyer and agent extraordinaire, to Cherie Skinner, Department of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside, to Donna Todd, Sandra Battista, Ann Van, Laurie Thomas, and Craig Strickland for numerous suggestions in the course of writing this book.
And my eternal gratitude goes to the indomitable Barbara Peters, to Annette Rogers, Robert Rosenwald, Jessica Tribble, Marilyn Pizzo, and the rest of the staff at Poisoned Pen Press, for their skill, encouragement, and patience.
—Aileen Baron.
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