The Last Temple td-27

  The Last Temple

  ( The Destroyer - 27 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  The bodies of two murdered Israelis have turned up, hacked to bits and the pieces arranged in a bloody swastika - and Remo and Chiun are on their way to meet the leaders of an Israeli doomsday group, Zeher Lahurban. In the event of Israel losing the war with the Arabs, secretly stored atom bombs will drop on Arab territory. But a group of ex-Nazis discover the plan, and see a way to destroy the Jewish nation once and for all - without any help from the Arabs. Remo and Chiun are up against fanatics with long memories, who are keeping Hitler's schemes alive in their twisted minds.

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  * Title : #027 : THE LAST TEMPLE *

  * Series : The Destroyer *

  * Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

  * Location : Gillian Archives *

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Ben Isaac Goldman separated them, cold and thin, then stuck them into their stainless steel cages and lowered them into the boiling grease and watched them fry.

  Then he watched the frozen golden chunks in their pale dough coffins being lowered alongside into the earth of liquid grease.

  The next day Ben Isaac supervised the grilling of the round, flat pieces of meat, which were USDA inspected and not more than 27 percent fat. When the red light flashed and the buzzer sounded, he would automatically turn them over and sprinkle salt onto their burned backs. As they sizzled and spat at him from the grill, he would lower the solid weight atop them to keep them pressed down flat.

  The day after that had always been Ben Isaac's favorite. He lined them up, bread round, acned with sesame seed, then fed them into the ovens.

  After they were done, he would wrap them in their colorful paper shrouds and stick them in their styrofoam coffins.

  For nearly two years, this daily, rhythmic eight-hour massacre had brought Ben Isaac Goldman a certain cleansing peace.

  For two years, he had changed symbols: he had traded the six million dead from the swastika for the twenty billion sold from the golden arches. And he was content.

  But no longer. He had lost his faith in both symbols, the swastika for which he had worked thirty years earlier, and the golden arches, which he served as an assistant manager in Baltimore, Maryland, spending three days a week controlling the scientifically designed slaughter of helpless food stuffs.

  And so now he just went through the motions, his small paper cap squashed down on his wispy white curls, shuffling in greasy black shoes from section to section, making sure the plastic, non-dairy shakes weighed enough, that the measured-before-cooking semiburgers were not in their waiting bins more than seven minutes, and that the onion, tomato, pickle, and special sauce bins were never less than half full.

  And he waited only for the end of his workday when he could take off the cheap white gloves he bought each day in Walgreen's drugstore, and drop them into the garbage on his way out.

  Recently, he had taken to washing his hands constantly.

  On a Sunday evening in April, a spring that promised a bone-melting hot summer, Ben Isaac Goldman pushed open the swinging top of the garbage can in front of the hamburger store, and watched as someone else dropped a pair of white gloves in. He followed with his own gloves, then looked up and met for the first time Ida Bernard, a tight-boned middle-aged lady, originally from the Bronx, who worked at the ice cream place next door.

  She wore white gloves too, because her hands got cold working with the soft ice cream so many hours a day, making Mother's Day cakes and birthday treats and sundaes and flying saucers and parfaits and simple plastic cones, all under the auspices of an old man who did his own television commercials and sounded like a candidate for a total laryngectomy.

  Besides their use of gloves, Ben and Ida suddenly discovered, talking over the trashcan, that they had a lot of other things in common. Like they both hated hamburgers. And they both hated ice cream. And weren't prices awful nowadays? And wasn't summer going to be hot this year? And why didn't they continue this scintillating conversation over dinner?

  So at 8:30 on a Sunday night, Ben Isaac Goldman and Ida Bernard went off in search of a restaurant that did not feature either hamburgers or ice cream.

  "I love good peas and carrots, don't you?" asked Ida, who had taken Ben Isaac's arm. She was taller than he was and thinner, but they both had the same length stride so he did not notice.

  "Lettuce," said Ben Isaac. "Good lettuce."

  "I guess lettuce is all right too," said Ida, who hated lettuce.

  "Better than all right. There is something great about lettuce."

  "Yes?" said Ida in a tone that tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the question mark.

  "Yes," said Ben Isaac Goldman forcefully. "And what is great about lettuce is that it is not hamburger." He laughed.

  "Or ice cream," said Ida, and laughed with him, and their strides lengthened as they searched more diligently for a restaurant that served good vegetables. And lettuce.

  So this at last was the promised land, Ben Isaac Goldman thought. What life was all about. A job, a place to live, a woman on his arm. The meaning of life. Not revenge. Not destruction. Here, there was no one checking on him, no meetings, no bugged telephones, no dust, no soldiers, no sand, no desert, no war.

  He talked all through dinner at a little place with wrinkled peas, white carrots that grew soggy, and lettuce no crisper than wet blotting paper.

  By the time their coffee came, weak and bitter as it was, Ben was holding Ida's hands in his on the table.

  "America is truly a golden country," he said.

  Ida Bernard nodded, watching Ben's broad, jolly face, a face she had seen every day going to work at the hamburger palace, and that she had finally conspired to meet at the glove-disposal unit in the parking lot.

  She realized she had never seen Goldman smile until now. She had never seen the twinkle in his deep brown eyes or color in his pale cheeks until now.

  "They think I am a dull old man," Goldman said, waving his arm to sweep together every frizz-haired hamburger jockey in the country who resented assistant managers who told them not to pick their noses near the food. Goldman's swinging arm bumped against a newspaper tucked precariously into the pocket of a man's raincoat hanging on the coat rack. It fell to the floor, and Goldman, looking around embarrassedly, bent to pick it up. As he leaned over, he kept talking.

  "Aaah, what do they know?" he said. "Children. They have not…" His voice trailed off as his eyes fixed on a corner of the newspaper.

  "Yes?" said Ida Bernard. "They have not what?"

  "Seen what I have seen," said Goldman. His face had gone ash white. He clutched the paper in his hand as if it were a baton and he were a world-class relay runner.

  "I must go now," he said. "Thank you for a nice evening."

  Then, still clutching the paper, he stumbled up out of his seat and left, without looking back.

  The waiter tiredly asked Ida if that would be all. He did not seem surprised at Goldman's sudden departure. The restaurant's culinary arts often had that effect on the digestion of senior citizens, people old enough to remember when things had been better.

  Ida nodded and paid the check, but as she got up to leave, she noted Goldman's hat on the coat rack. He was not to be seen on the street outside, but on the inside band of his hat, his name and address had been printed twice in indelible ink.

  His address was only a few blocks from where she stood, so she walked.

  She passed the devastated blocks of business, their doors chained and their windows fenced in against the hu
man storm of Baltimore. She passed the open doors and boarded windows of a dozen bars. The Flamingo Club and the Pleze Walk Inn. She passed a block of squat four-family houses, each with the same design, the same television aerials, and the same fat old mommas out on the stoops in their rocking chairs, fanning the soot away from their faces.

  Goldman lived in an apartment building that was, to Ida's eyes, a forbidding brick square, chipped and worn, like a stone castle that had been under attack by the Huns for the past two hundred years. The street on which he lived had survived the murderous race riots of ten years ago, only to die, instead, of natural causes.

  Ida felt another twinge of pity for the little man. The maternal instincts that had lain dormant since the death of her husband, her dear Nathan, rose up like a desert wind. She would sweep away Goldman's past and give them both something to live for. Then she would cook for him, clean for him, remind him to wear his rubbers on wet days, buy him new white gloves every day, and never serve hamburgers or ice cream.

  Ida found the barely discernible "Goldman" inked under a button inside the front door, and pushed it. After thirty seconds of silence, she pushed the button again. Could he have gone somewhere else? She pictured him wandering the city, being attacked by roving groups of winos and junkies.

  The intercom crackled. A small voice said, "Go away."

  Ida leaned up close to the intercom and shouted: "Ben, it's Ida. I have your hat."

  Silence.

  "Ben? Really. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's me. Ida."

  Silence.

  "Please, Ben. I just want to give you your hat."

  A few seconds later, there was a piercing buzz that nearly separated Ida from her stockings. The door popped open, and Ida quickly went inside.

  The hallway smelled of urine, vomit, and age, which had scored a knockout victory over a heavy layer of Lysol. The stairs were concrete with a metal bannister. A naked forty-watt bulb illuminated each landing.

  As she climbed each flight of stairs, the sounds of Pennsylvania Avenue assailed her, the honking of the white seven-year-old Cadillacs, the screeches of black kids and hookers.

  She found Apartment A-412 in the corner. Ida stood on the cold floor under the loose, gray acoustical tile ceiling for a moment, then knocked.

  The door opened immediately, to her surprise, and Goldman, who seemed to have aged in an hour, gestured quickly and said, "Hurry, come in, hurry."

  Inside, the street sounds were dimmed by the sheer weight of plaster. The only light was from a bathroom bulb, but that was enough to let Ida see the environment Ben Isaac lived in.

  As she took in the dirty beige walls, the worn green carpet, and the one broken-down brown chair, she thought the place was enough to give anyone nightmares. Her mental redecorating stopped as Ben Isaac came before her.

  His eyes were haunted and his hands were shaking. His shirt was untucked and his belt was undone.

  "You have my hat?" he said, grabbing at it. "Good. Now you must go. Hurry!"

  He tried to move her out without touching her, as if contact would mean instant contamination, but Ida dodged nimbly and moved for the light switch.

  "Please, Ben. I won't hurt you," she said as she flicked the switch. Goldman blinked in the stark one hundred and fifty watts.

  "You must not be afraid of me. I would hate that," Ida said.

  She moved toward the bathroom to switch off that light. She saw the wall and the seat of the toilet covered by wetness. The tile wall was imprinted with oily fingerprints, and the towel racks were empty so that they created a makeshift arm rest.

  Ida ignored it only with an effort and switched off the bathroom light. Her care was tinged with pity as she turned back to Goldman, who looked ready to cry.

  She looked into his eyes and opened her arms.

  "You must not be ashamed, Ben. I understand. Your past can't hurt you." She smiled, even though she didn't completely understand and she had no idea what his past was.

  Goldman's wide face was completely white, and he stood unsteadily. He stared into Ida's open, friendly, dream-filled eyes, then collapsed onto the bed in tears.

  Ida came over to the old man and sat next to him. She touched his shoulder and asked, "What is it, Ben?"

  Goldman continued to cry and waved his hand at the door. Ida looked but saw only a crumbled newspaper. "You want me to leave?" she said.

  Ben Isaac was suddenly up and moving. He hung up his hat, picked up the newspaper, gave it to Ida, then went over to the kitchen sink and started to wash his hands. It was the newspaper he had picked up in the restaurant.

  Ida glanced at the headline, which read, "SEX ROMPS THROUGH TREASURY DEPT.," then turned back to Goldman.

  "What is it, Ben?" she repeated.

  Goldman left the water running while he pointed to an item in the lower righthand corner. Then he went back to washing his hands.

  Ida read as a soapy drop of water began to soak through the news item:

  MUTILATED BODY FOUND IN NEGEV, Tel Aviv, Israel (AP) -A mutilated corpse was found early this morning on an excavation site by a group of young archeologists. The remains were originally described as being in the shape of a swastika, the Nazi symbol of power in Germany over three decades ago.

  Since then, Israeli officials have negated that report and identified the remains as those of Ephraim Boris Hegez, an industrialist in Jerusalem.

  When asked about the murder, Tochala Delit, a government spokesman, stated that the remains were probably left after an Arab terrorist attack. Delit said that he doubts that the excavations for evidence of Israel's two original temples, dating as early as 586 b.c. will be interrupted in any way by the grisly discovery.

  The Israeli authorities have no comment as to the motive or murderer and no suspects have been named.

  Ida Bernard stopped reading and looked up. Ben Isaac Goldman was drying his hands over and over with a used Handi-wipe.

  "Ben…" she began.

  "I know who killed that man," said Goldman, "and I know why. They killed him because he ran away. Ida, I come from Israel. I ran away too."

  Goldman dropped the paper towel on the floor and sat next to Ida on the bed, head in his hands.

  "You do?" she said. "Then you must call the police at once!"

  "I can't," Goldman said. "They will find me and kill me too. What they are planning to do is so terrible that even I could not face it. Not after all these years…"

  "Then call the newspapers," Ida insisted. "No one can trace you through them. Look."

  Ida picked up the newspaper from her lap.

  "It's the Washington Post. Call them up and tell them you have a big story. They'll listen to you."

  Goldman grabbed her hands fiercely, giving Ida an electric thrill.

  "You think so? There is a chance? They can end this nightmare?"

  "Of course," Ida said kindly. "I know you can do it, Ben. I trust you." Ida Goldman. Not a bad name. It had a nice ring to it.

  Ben Isaac stared in awe. He had dreams of his own. But could it be? Could this handsome woman have the answer? Goldman fumbled for the phone that lay near the foot of the bed and dialed Information.

  "Hello? Information? Do you have the number of the Washington Post newspaper?"

  Ida beamed.

  "Oh? What?" Goldman put his hand over the receiver. "Administrative offices or subscription?" he asked.

  "Administrative," Ida replied.

  "Administrative," said Goldman. "Yes? Yes, two, two, three… six, zero, zero, zero. Thank you." Goldman hung up, glanced in Ida's direction, then dialed again.

  "Two, two, three…" his finger moved, "six, zero, zero."

  "Ask for Redford or Hoffm… I mean Woodward and Bernstein," said Ida.

  "Oh, yes," said Goldman, "Hello? May I speak to… Redwood or Hoffstein, please?"

  Ida smiled in spite of herself.

  "Oh?" said Goldman. "What? Yes, of course. Thank you." He turned to Ida. "They're switching me to a reporter," he said,
and waited, sweating. "Ida, do you really think they can help me?"

  Ida nodded. Goldman gathered strength from her.

  "Ida, I have to tell you the truth now. I've, I've watched you before. I have thought to myself, what a handsome woman. Could a woman like this come to like me? I hardly dared hope, Ida. But I could do nothing because I was waiting for my past to find me out. Many years ago I promised to do something. What I did back then was necessary. It was and had to be. But what they are planning to do is mindless. Total destruction."

  Goldman paused, looking deep into Ida's eyes. She held her breath, biting her lower lip, giving her the look of a love-sick teenager. She wasn't even listening to his confession. She knew what she wanted to hear and was only waiting for that.

  "I am an old man," Goldman began, "but when I was young I was… Hello?" Goldman directed his attention back to the phone. He had been connected.

  "Hello, Redman? No, no, I'm sorry. Yes. Uh, well…" Goldman put his hand over the receiver again. "What should I say?" he asked Ida.

  "I have a big story for you," said Ida.

  "I have a big story for you," said Goldman into the phone.

  "About the dead businessman in the Israeli desert," said Ida.

  "About the dead businessman in the Israeli desert," said Goldman. "Yes? What?" Goldman nodded excitedly at Ida, putting his hand over the receiver again. "They want to talk to me," he reported.

  Ida nodded excitedly back. Finally, she thought, I have found him. Goldman is a good man. She would get him out of his trouble-what could he have done that was so bad?-and then they could keep each other company through their old age. At last, something, someone to live for again. The hell of Baltimore wouldn't matter. All those snotty youngsters wouldn't matter. Medicare, Social Security, and pensions wouldn't matter. They would have each other.

  "No," Goldman was saying, "no, you must come here. Yes, right away. My name is Ben Isaac Goldman, apartment A dash four-twelve," and he gave the address on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Yes, right away."

  He hung up. Sweat clung to his face, but he was smiling.

  "How did I do?" he asked.