Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest by Roger Herst Page B

speaking
now in the name of the Holy Father!"
    Tim responded for generations of fellow
Protestants in their five-hundred-year dispute with the papacy,
"What Holy Father? Yours perhaps, but not mine!"
    "The Pope speaks for all Christians."
    Tim wanted to move quickly from the monastery
and felt little compunction to debate. But he also wanted the last
word. " Your holy Church, Father Benoit,
not mine. My Savior is not the Christ your Church invented for its
selfish purposes. Jesus is the Christ of history who lived and died
near this place. He was flesh and he was blood. I can prove it now.
Let your Holy Father speak for you, but not for me."
    "You're a thief, Reverend Matternly."
    "And so are you, Father Benoit. We'll share
equally the fate of thieves."
    Tim found the cars by the side of the single lane
dirt track. Having taken all the keys, he could have selected any
vehicle for his getaway. But the sound of Benoit's shrill voice
triggered a transforming thought. Father Benoit had facilitated the
theft of his Hyundai SUV without his permission. Now it seemed
proper to reciprocate by disposing of the Dominican's beloved
Buick. After turning over the sedan's ignition and watching its
headlights illuminate the track, he climbed out and stepped over to
a Fiat and Peugeot belonging to the monastery. There, he tossed two
sets of ignition keys to the ground, thinking that by the time the
monks found them after sunrise, he would be either in, or at least
near, Jerusalem.
    Once on the floor of the Jordan Valley, Tim
stopped the Buick to shed his clerical robe. He considered
abandoning this monastic garb on the roadside, but thought better
of it. Instead, he bundled the frock and stuffed it into the
trunk.
    Dawn was breaking as he looked for the
Damascus Gate, leading into the Arab Quarter inside Jerusalem's Old
City. Palestinian merchants crowded the plaza, weaving pushcarts
heavily laden with winter melons and slaughtered sheep through the
narrow medieval portal. Traffic congestion slowed Tim's progress as
he circled the square looking for a place to abandon Father
Benoit's car. A legitimate space, where the police might do no more
than issue a parking ticket, would not do. Rather, he wanted
somewhere overlooked until nightfall when drug dealers,
black-marketers, and pimps replaced the stall merchants and shop
owners. It took more than twenty minutes to find what he had in
mind, a spot two blocks from the plaza, beside a bedraggled hotel
with bars on the windows dating from the Ottoman presence in
Palestine. Tim parked the Buick, deliberately leaving the keys in
the ignition. Sometime after dark, a car thief was bound to notice
this windfall and drive it away. A little work in a local garage,
perhaps a new paint job, and Benoit's beloved Buick would be ready
to join his Hyundai somewhere in perpetual exile.
    ***
    Itamar normally avoided asking favors from
his colleagues because they would invariably seek a payback, some
privilege which ultimately compromised the Antiquities Authority.
This was particularly true when a government official petitioned
the Agency to keep a particular archeological treasure—that had,
under shady circumstances, found a home in their private
collection—from appearing on a list of protected artifacts. Since
the IDF and the border police had designated Cave XII at Qumran
off-limits to all visitors, Itamar made an exception and sought
special permission for Gabby, thinking that she represented his
best chance of finding, and perhaps arresting, Tim Matternly before
the treasures from Qumran slipped out of the country.
    On the day scheduled for their visit to the
new cave, Itamar insisted on an early start from Jerusalem and
drove Gabby into the desert at breakneck speed in an all-terrain
vehicle, the front doors painted with the official seal of the
Antiquities Authority. Nine kilometers shy of the Allenby Bridge
fording the Jordan River, they left the bitumen road to travel
south on a dirt track, forcing