The Manger, the Mikdash and the Mosque: The Dan Delaney Mysteries, #5

By David McGill

1975 Former detective and spy-catcher Dan Delaney and his West Auckland family are on a visit to the Holy Land which goes horribly wrong from the moment they land at Ben-Gurion Airport. A plot is underway to desecrate the most sacred sites and incite conflict between the three great religions whose worship centres on a small area of inner Jerusalem. The Jewish authorities are determined at any cost to prevent another terrorist outrage such as that at Ben-Gurion Airport concourse a few years before, or worse, the recent surprise Yom Kippur attack that threatened the nation's survival. Old enemies have put Delaney's family in the crosshairs of their planned outrages when one of Dan's daughters is kidnapped. Dan works with the local authorities to rescue his daughter and locate the bombs primed to cause apocalyptic damage to Jerusalem.   

 

Roger Hall: 'Cracking yarn.'

Fiona Kidman: 'A vivid inside view of Israel as well as rattling along with a fast-paced crime story.'

Graeme Lay: 'The tautly structured plot of this thriller grips the reader from the first to the final page. Set in the so-called Holy Land, the novel's characters and themes are as meaningful today as they were during the 1970s setting. Jerusalem – spiritual home to Jews, Moslems and Christians – is vividly evoked and forms a vibrant backdrop to the conflicts and tribulations of the Delaney family.'

        

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silver Owl Press
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9780995133617

David McGill

David McGill is a New Zealand social historian and fiction writer who has published 60 books. Born in Auckland, educated in the Bay of Plenty and at a Christchurch seminary, he trained as a teacher and did a BA at Victoria University of Wellington. He worked as a feature writer for The Listener, Sydney’s The Bulletin, London’s TVTimes, wrote columns for the Evening Post in Wellington and edited a local lifestyle magazine before becoming a full-time writer in 1984. His book subjects include Ghost Towns of New Zealand and the country’s first bushranger, local and national heritage buildings, Kiwi prisoners of war, the history of the NZ Customs Department, a biography of a criminal lawyer, a personal history of rock music, a rail journey around the country, historical and comic novels, several thrillers and six collections of Kiwi slang and recently seven Dan Delaney Mysteries. He collects owl figurines and reads thrillers. His website www.davidmcgill.co.nz includes blogs related to his books and synopses and reviews by clicking on covers.

Book preview

Preface

The Manger, the Mikdash and the Mosque

The Manger is the cave or grotto at Bethlehem where Christ is believed to have been born.

The Mikdash is the name for a holy place such as the temple believed to be buried beneath the area of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Muslim objections have held up Jewish excavations.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, and the Dome of the Rock, dating from 691 AD, 55 years after Muslims captured Jerusalem, are built on the Temple Mount, where the Prophet Muhammad was believed to have been transported to heaven.

Chapter One

Ben-Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, 7.15 pm, Saturday, November 1, 1975.

The pneumatic sigh of the opening door ushered warm air into the air-conditioned cabin. People were stirring, stretching, swallowing to clear the ears. Maria disobeyed the tannoy instruction to stay in our seats. She twisted away from my restraining hand and stood in the aisle, her new Pentax up and aimed at the blocky young man casually dressed in a faded red plaid shirt and jeans leading two soldiers in green uniforms with their Uzis at the ready.

Groovy,’ she said, as she clicked.

‘You!’ he pointed, moving down the aisle to our seats. Passengers looked anxiously at him, and then quickly away from his granite face, eyes blank as bullets. The soldiers looked absurdly young, but that was no reassurance, not the way they tracked their guns from one side of the aisle to the other. Maria was turning away from his outstretched hand, which took hold of the camera strap and wrenched hard. She was pulled into the aisle, stumbling to the floor as the strap parted. I was out of my seat and trying to reach my daughter. I was too late. The man had the camera held up away from her lunge. He calmly unsnapped the back of it, shook the film cartridge into his hand, and tossed the camera at her.

‘Nazi!’ she yelled as she caught the camera, and I caught her around the midriff. I was aware of my wife shielding our other daughter and a large, red-faced man in a powder blue jacket rising in front of me.

‘Take it easy, fella,’ he managed before he was pushed back into his seat. The soldiers had their nasty little submachine guns coming up to cover us all, until the young man waved them down.

‘You,’ he repeated, looking at me, ignoring my threshing daughter and the obscenities she was delivering. ‘You come, with family. Now.’ His English was accented and missing a few pronouns, but the message was clear.

He didn’t wait for my response, the soldiers parting to let him through, before signalling with their guns that we should follow. I looked at Jas and Ali, who was blinking rapidly behind her oversized glasses and straggly blonde hair. I switched back to Maria being shrill about the camera assault. I hissed at her to calm it, we had to do what we were told. She did not.

‘Fascist bastards!’ she shouted, trying to push past the two soldiers. ‘Give me back my film.’

She was hardly up to their shoulders, and their shoulders were like their weapons, locked and ready.

‘For God’s sake, Daniel,’ my wife hissed, pushing past me, telling me to look after Ali. She hauled Maria back by her thick sheepskin collar, swinging her around to face her. Maria was screeching at her mother to let her go, she was getting her film back, they had no right to take it. She was emphasising her demands by trying to break away, and when that failed she was kicking at her mother’s shins. Jas slapped her face. I heard a few gasps, counterpoint to a squawk of shock from Maria. It quickly changed to tears and something about being hit, it was hard to tell with her gasping and heaving and choking herself into incoherence.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Please, Maria. You can’t fight these people.’

Ali was more sensible, steering her younger sister into following their mother. I brought up the rear of my family, picking up on the muttered objections from the obediently seated passengers. It was not as if they could do anything. They had chosen to come to a land on a war footing. Judging by their pastel loud clothes and presently subdued drawls, they were American pilgrims visiting like us the Holy Land. It was a long haul getting here, and it was not a good start. It was my wife’s idea and I had to wonder if she now regretted coming as much as I did.

We were silently escorted down the shiny, over-lit concourse. In the middle of the corridor was a roped-off area. The young man directed us to circle this, mysteriously pointing at dark stains. We continued and Maria was starting to rediscover her objecting voice when the soldiers directed us through a door scarcely visible, the same grey as the walls and floor. The young man clicked his fingers, held out his hand. ‘Passports.’ Jas dug them out of her handbag. He took them and shut the door, locking it.

It was a small square room, the only furniture a grey metal desk and half-a-dozen collapsible metal chairs lining one wall. Over the hum of air-conditioning coming from a wall grille we could hear the muffled American accents passing by, one vowing to complain to the ambassador.

You might swing a small cat around the room, or a camera by its detached strap. Maria was rummaging in the camera bag, no doubt checking any damage to the brand new wide-angle and telephoto lenses she also demanded to make up for being forced to accompany her family. I suggested we sit, adding more in hope than belief that this would be cleared up soon enough. Maria snorted.

‘You’re determined,’ Jas accused her, ‘to ruin this for all of us.’

Maria shrugged, looking away. ‘I never wanted to come to this stupid Holy Land.’

‘I hope Mr Ahmad doesn’t mind waiting,’ Ali said, sitting and placing her large diary across her lap.

‘Of course he’ll wait,’ Jas said. ‘We’ve paid for the hotel.’

‘How long they going to keep us here?’ Maria complained. ‘We haven’t done anything.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘We just have to be patient.’

‘Trust in Jesus,’ Maria sneered.

Jas started to say something, but a yawn overtook her. That got me and Maria yawning, but not Ali, who sat calm and composed as a nun at prayer. Maria was shifting about on the metal chair, muttering expletives. She was always restless. My father would have said she had ants in her pants, not something I would ever suggest. Jet lag was getting to us, even Ali, I suspected.

The door opened and the granite-faced young man motioned to me.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’ll get sorted now. Probably just have to sign something.’

A soldier shut the door and took up position. I resisted any objection and followed the young man down the corridor. It was eerily empty, the Americans no doubt processed and heading for their hotel bar and/or telephones. He opened another door and motioned me through. He pulled the door to and I was in a slightly bigger room with even brighter strip-lighting bouncing glare off a grey metal desk and several of the same matching chairs designed to be ergonomically uncomfortable. A grim-faced man not quite as late middle-age as me but his darker complexion hosting a more comprehensive scribble of worry lines was standing behind the desk. His green khaki uniform was tailored to his trim frame.

‘Uri Cohen,’ he said in a low, pleasant, tobacco husky voice. ‘Major,’ he added, noticing my glance at his shoulder pips. ‘You must excuse my young colleague Benny. He takes his job very seriously.’

I accepted his handshake, which was as hard as any of his furniture. I took the nearest chair and declined his offer of an unfiltered cigarette. I murmured I had no objection as he lit up, not that he had enquired. He drew hard and expelled a deep lungful towards the whirring grille. He sank back into his high-backed and undoubtedly more comfortable chair, watching me through narrowed eyes as he drew on the cigarette. His desk was clear of paperwork and host to an empty thick glass oblong ashtray, a small black notebook and pen next to the olive green telephone, and one of these new IBM portable computers with the monitor like a small television set. My son brought one back from his trip to Germany, claimed it would get us a jump on the bureaucrats. I didn’t confide this. Major Cohen did not strike me as one for small talk.

He patted the top of the monitor as you might a pet dog. ‘Useful little things,’ he said. ‘We learned very quickly about your service in your police force and security service. Perhaps you are still required to perform some duties?’

‘Emphatically not. And that was a very long time ago. Look at me, I’m damn near 60.’

Cohen ground out the scarcely smoked cigarette in the ashtray and flipped open my passport. ‘Yes, 59 on 8 February. Age is not necessarily a barrier to action. Our recent prime minister, Golda Meir, ran our country well into her 70s. You think that’s funny?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of something LBJ once said.’

‘Yes, we know that one. The older I get, President Johnson said, the more I look like Golda Meir. It didn’t stop them running countries, or Winston Churchill defeating Hitler.’

I felt that there was a slight relaxation in the atmosphere. ‘For my part,’ I said. ‘Well, my family makes wine, and that’s all we do. Obviously I regret my daughter’s outburst, but she’s only 15 …’

‘And somewhat rebellious. Still, unfortunate choice of words to use against Jews, I am sure you would agree.’ He stubbed out his cigarette, waving away the acrid smoke and a pungent odour, perhaps Turkish. ‘You are no doubt aware, Mr Delaney, that two years ago we were invaded by Egypt and Syria. We deal with regular incursions from Lebanon and Syria. In March terrorists rowed ashore and commandeered the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv. Eight hostages were killed along with three Israeli soldiers before the militants were subdued. Not long afterwards the first missiles struck Jerusalem, rockets made in Czechoslovakia. A terror cell from Lebanon killed two hostages and one soldier. Last year the so-called liberators of Palestine killed 18, half of them children. Another militia invaded a school and killed 22 children. Almost all of the invaders were killed by our defenders. We are at war with ruthless Arab terrorists. We do not surrender. We will never again turn the other cheek.’

‘I don’t see what this has to do with my family.’

Cohen picked up his crumpled packet, but then put it back down on the desk. ‘My wife wanted me to give up. Filthy habit. Are you familiar, Mr Delaney, with the Baader Meinhof gang?’

I nodded, recognising now what the floor stains signified, the infamous terrorist outrage of a few years back. ‘Red Army Faction. Wasn’t it some Japanese branch responsible for the incident outside?’

‘Yes. The PFLP -- Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- recruited three of the Japanese Red Army. There were 26 killed, 80 injured, mostly tourists. The roped-off area with the blood stains is a reminder to visitors. The reason I asked you about the Baader Meinhof terrorists is we have picked up rumours of a cell from your part of the world which may be active here.’

‘You think I’m involved?

Cohen sighed, picked up his packet and shook out a cigarette. He put it back. ‘I don’t think anything, Mr Delaney. I am only interested in my nation’s security, and that of our visitors. For the first time in our history we permit freedom of worship here for Christians and Muslims as well as Jews. There are obviously those who do not approve.’

‘And you think … you have some evidence my family is linked to this cell? That is absurd.’

‘No, Mr Delaney. I have no evidence. I do want to warn you and your family to be careful about being inadvertent conduits. It only requires a moment, perhaps a package you are asked to take with you inside some holy place.’

‘You warn all visitors?’

‘In general, yes,’ Cohen said, waving a vague hand. ‘Specifically in your case we know of the event which threatened your parliament, and the part you played in its resolution.’

‘The perpetrator Morrison was never caught. He has resurfaced?’

‘We do not know. Unfortunately we have no record of such a person, no passport image. If he is involved, we have no idea what this person looks like.’

‘And I do. Of course I would inform you if I saw him, though I don’t doubt he would look somewhat different now. But tell me, were you always intending to pull us off the plane in such a, well, hostile fashion?’

Cohen tapped our passports. ‘Your daughter, you could say she facilitated matters. We knew you were the only people on the flight from your part of the world. The others are American evangelists, probably hoping to witness something apocalyptic, the End of Days, perhaps. Benny had instructions to escort you off the plane. We do make a point about boarding all arriving flights, and we do not permit photographs of our personnel. Nor can we ignore provocative name-calling.’

He paused, subjecting me to a rather lengthy eyeballing. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you were fortunate you were on British Airways, not an El Al flight, where two armed guards are always aboard. They have a license to shoot at any sign of suspicious behaviour. In fact, we recruited Benny from El Al, where he was their most effective security guard.’

I wondered momentarily if he was winding me up, but rejected the idea. He did not strike me as a kidder. I apologised again for my daughter’s language, assured him it would not happen again, without any confidence I could rein in our volatile teenager. Nothing had so far, one of the reasons we could not leave her with my wife’s parents. There was no way they could stop her contacting the teacher who introduced her to the only subject she showed any interest in, photography. He also engaged her in a totally inappropriate relationship involving nude photography. He was dismissed but we knew he was still in Auckland. I did not confide any of this to the military intelligence officer, instead sat and waited out another lengthy scrutiny.

Was he waiting for me to crack and confess something, like he was some stern secular priest? He was wasting his time. My days of confessing imaginary sins were well behind me, put aside with my childhood, as St Paul proposes. Did Major Cohen know something I didn’t? It was impossible to read him. His eyes were sunk deep beneath bristly grey-black eyebrows, well concealed from any chance of assessing whether they were windows to his soul. All I could be sure of was the intensity of his assessment. It was like being too close for comfort to a well-trained attack dog poised and ready to strike.

The image came to mind despite it being three decades since my stint in a concentration camp observing the terrifying stillness of the Alsatians awaiting the signal from their Nazi masters. In fact, the image never left me. Every time I saw a large dog approaching, I could not help a surge of anxiety and an urge to flee. To man and beast the Reich was distinguished and feared for its iron-clad discipline. I imagine my daughter’s regrettable use of the word ‘Nazi’ was what brought it to the fore. I thought it best to wait him out and keep the comparison between him and a German attack dog to myself. Even thinking about those Alsatians made me uncomfortable.

‘Could you tell me, Mr Delaney, what brings you all this way? We are better known for our oranges than our wine, at least in recent times.’

‘It’s a little convoluted.’

‘Perhaps the short version then, if you would not mind?’ He spoke calmly whilst eyeing his packet of cigarettes again, resisting the temptation. He looked as if he might instead tear them to pieces, scatter tobacco with a sudden strike.

‘It is our first family holiday outside New Zealand. My wife is very religious. Catholic. Are you familiar with the Catholic practice of making novenas?’

‘I assume some kind of prayer cycle?’

‘Spot on. My wife made many novenas, and the recovery of our daughter-in-law from a long-term coma, she believed the prayers helped.’

‘You agree?’

I shrugged. ‘I think the ECT therapy played a part. But the point of this is that my wife thought we should make a pilgrimage of thanks to Israel. The Holy Land.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Not quite. My older daughter Alice is going to university next year. She has recently acquired a pen pal in Bethlehem, a blind girl, who also hopes to go to university, the new university there.’

Cohen nodded. ‘I take it she is at the Christian orphanage?’

‘Yes. And Alice wants to study biblical archaeology. So Israel is a pretty good field trip.’

‘These American evangelicals, they have been coming here to find literal Bible validation. Is this what your daughter is seeking?’

‘I don’t think so. My wife has encouraged her to find the Catholic story. The manger, the miracles, that sort of thing. You know, Christ walking on the water, multiplying the loaves and fishes, turning water into wine? To be honest, I’m not really sure, but I imagine it is more mystical than mundane. It does not grab me.’

‘So what does grab you about Israel, Mr Delaney?’

‘I’d settle for what I do back home, turning grapes instead of water into wine.’ I paused to see if my joke about the Jesus miracle at the marriage feast at Cana had registered. He stared, waiting for more. ‘I’d like to visit the monks in Bethlehem. I gather they have been making wine for hundreds of years there.’

‘Your own wine-making must be doing well?’

‘To pay for this trip? Yes, well, we have some contacts that helped. A priest in Jerusalem our parish priest back in Auckland put my wife in touch with. Name of Quinn. He arranged the hotelier we are staying with. His daughter is at the orphanage.’

Cohen consulted the address we had supplied. He looked at me.

‘I did say it was complicated. Is there a problem?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said enigmatically. ‘The priest we know. He was here during your war against the fascists. He is pastor for the orphanage.’ He picked up the passports and handed them to me. ‘They have been stamped and you are free to go. I believe your Arab hotelier is waiting to take you to Jerusalem. Enjoy your stay in our country. I am sure you can handle your family’s sensitivities. I ask you to alert them to our concerns and advise restraint. This number will reach me day and night. Let us hope we do not have to meet again.’

I accepted the card. Cohen stood. There was no farewell handshake. Any relaxation I thought I had detected was most definitely absent now.

Benny held the door open and Jas swept our daughters past him without a glance. ‘Tell me about it later,’ she said to me. ‘These girls need bed.’

Apart from a few dark-complexioned men and women in overalls carrying mops and buckets, the airport was empty, the only other movement figures and service vehicles moving around the flight we came in on. As we approached the exit, a gaunt, dark-haired man in a baggy black suit and white shirt appeared from behind a newspaper stand. He unnecessarily held up a square of cardboard with ‘Delaney’ crudely printed in black capitals. We were the only group of two adults and two minors lugging suitcases. There was nobody else around.

‘Mr Ahmad?’ Jas asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, his swarthy face breaking out in a lop-sided smile, revealing a Pepsodent-perfect set of gleaming white teeth. He was looking at Ali and Maria. ‘Let me guess, let me guess. Yes, you Alice.’ The way he said it sounded like ‘are-lice’, and he got the wrong sister.

‘Not,’ Maria said.

‘Sorry, so sorry. Miss Alice. My precious Sadeen, she love your letters.’

Alice held out her hand. ‘Sadeen writes of you all the time.’

‘You call me Omar,’ he said, awkwardly tucking the sign under his arm and shaking her hand. ‘All call me Omar, yes, this is good.’

We shook hands. ‘Mr Delaney,’ Omar said exuberantly, ‘you have most beautiful family.’ He bowed in turn to Jas, Alice and Maria, hands clasped in front of him, the cardboard sign falling to the floor. Maria was doing her dismissive snorting. I suggested we get going.

‘Yes, yes, Mr Delaney.’ I was distracted by the way he emphasised the middle syllable of my name and missed what he was saying. He