The Caliphate André Gallo (list of ebook readers TXT) 📖

car to stop and the other hand on her leg, where she was apparently hurt. There was no other car in sight. Kella could see that Ezra was torn. He probably had been told never to stop, but the situation looked dire.

     “Stop, look at her, and we’ll take her to a hospital.”

     Kella felt sympathetic, given her own recent experiences.

     Ezra stopped the car and Kella immediately got out and ran to the woman. She didn’t speak Hebrew, so she called to Ezra who was still behind the wheel, “Come on, help me, she can hardly stand. Let’s get her in the car.”

     Ezra took a quick scan of the surroundings before opening his door. He then stepped out to help Kella. As soon as he was near her, two men stepped out from tall bushes on the side of the road pointing Uzis at Ezra’s chest. They were still twenty feet away when he wheeled around toward the car, at the same time reaching down for his ankle holster.

     He had his hand on his gun when the bullets hit him and knocked him to the ground. The men were moving quickly toward him and he tried again to reach his gun. But a second burst of machine gunfire ripped into his chest, up his neck, and into his face, blowing out the back of his skull.

     Kella was struggling with the woman who, now acting strong and healthy, had her arms around her and held fast.

     “No! No! Ezra!” she screamed, tears running down her cheeks, as she saw the men fling Ezra’s bloody corpse onto the road. Less than a minute had elapsed from the time she had reached the woman and persuaded Ezra to get out of the car.

     Two more men appeared, also armed. They forced Kella toward a car hidden off the road, an old, four-door Fiat. One man drove the Lincoln off the road into an area with bushes and palm trees. He covered it with a tarp and battened it down. Kella was pushed into the back seat of the Fiat and was surrounded by her captors—one on each side of her and two in the front.

41. Church of the Holy Sepulcher

“Whether you believe or not,” Steve said, “you feel in your bones that something important has happened here.”

     He stood with other aspirants and knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, all in tuxedos, on a small square in front of the church. The Knights wore red capes, each with the white Amalfi cross.

     “I thought the church would be bigger. It’s a tight squeeze with all these other buildings,” he said, sounding surprised. They were waiting for the investiture ceremony that would make Steve a Knight of the Order. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the central shrine of Christendom, looked up at the minarets of the mosques on each side of it. The church’s reddish-brown stone and brick façade rose from street level, without the usual steps leading to a parvis to enhance the building’s profile and status. Half of the double-arched entrance was walled in.

     “Getting this ceremony approved by the church authorities has been a hassle, I’ll tell you,” Marshall said. “The church is managed by six warring orders, running from Franciscan Catholics to Copts, Ethiopians, Greek Orthodox, Armenians and Syrians. Each has jurisdiction over a specific part of the church. The Ethiopians, if I recall, own the roof.”

     He smiled.

     “I’m not making this up. By the way, didn’t you tell me that you had invited Kella? Isn’t she visiting her parents in Tel Aviv?”

     “Yes, I did. I thought she would be impressed, my becoming a knight and all. But she’s not here yet. It’s not like her to be late. I don’t know what could have happened,” Steve said.

     As they were speaking, a patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church walked by with full gray beard and tall black hat.

     They had a few minutes before the ceremony and Marshall brought Steve inside to descending stairs.

     “Look,” he said, pointing to the left wall where scores of crosses had been crudely carved. “The Crusaders made those. Some of them were Hospitallers, which is what the Knights of St. John were originally called. In fact, what you see was rebuilt by the Crusaders after the Fatimids, the only Shiite caliphate, systematically destroyed the building.”

     A Franciscan initiated the investiture ceremony in the Franciscan Church inside the northwest quadrant of the main church. Because of the many nationalities represented, national anthems were dispensed with, although the American, French, Russian, Canadian and British flags were displayed in honor of the countries of those present.

     The grand commander, a Canadian, recounted the history of the Knights of Malta. As Hospitallers, they began in 1099 to assist pilgrims to the Holy Land. Recognized by a Papal Bull in A.D. 1113, they quickly took the form of a military order of chivalry and left the Holy Land after fighting and losing the last Crusader foothold at Acre in 1291. They established themselves first in Cyprus, then for over two-hundred years on the Island of Rhodes, and finally on Malta. There they remained until Napoleon forced them out, and they split in several groups with bases in Russia, the Balkans, Northern Europe, Italy, the Americas and in Australia.

    Then Steve’s moment came. He stepped forward, kneeled and received the light touch of the sword on each shoulder as the grand commander said, “I hereby bestow on you, Stephen Church, the rank of Knight in the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta.”

     The grand commander hung the white, eight-pointed Amalfi cross around Steve’s neck with a red ribbon, and an assistant placed the red cape with the white cross on his shoulders.

     As they were standing