TCB

TCB00: Being a wickie at St. Catherine's Lighthouse on the Isle of Wight had its good points, Benjamin thought. His wife Edith and daughter Judith aided him in  his work, so it  was a family endeavor. Benjamin was a  meteorologist  by  training and  the lighthouse doubled as a weather outstation. During daylight the Margolies family faithfully sent hourly reports of temperature, humidity, cloud height,  cloud formation,  wind direction,  and wind force to the Meteorological Office in London by Teletype.

TCB01: When Benjamin  was paid  his  salary a  small amount  of petrol  was  delivered  to  power the  engine  that  turned  the lighthouse shaft. He was never tempted to divert a  portion of this petrol to his motorcar, as he  had none, but he did have to keep one eye out for neighbors who did.

On weekday mornings Judith  trudged up  from Undercliff  to the village of Niton for her  primary school. Sometimes her mother accompanied her when  she attended  to shopping. At sunset on Friday his family ceased all work.

TCB02: Benjamin took his family by ferry and bus on such modest holidays as they could afford. Sometimes they went to the Lake District in the northwest of the country to camp in the treeless hills called fells that qualified as mountains in England.

In 1944  American,  Australian,  En  Zed  and  Canadian  troops were transported to  the south  of England  in preparation  for the invasion of  France. To ensure their  success  a wall  of operational deception was created that  the world had never seen before.

TCB03: A world of false radio traffic was created and maintained to let the German High Command  conclude US Army General  G. S. Patton  was  gearing  up  to  lead the  entire  force  over  the narrowest part of the  Channel where Dover  could be  seen from Calais. The Germans knew that was the smart move.

Admiral Sir Bertrand Ramsay, in overall command of the invasion, left absolutely nothing to chance. On June 4, 1944, just before D-Day, Ramsay spent his precious time  visiting St. Catherine's lighthouse.

TCB04: Benjamin showed the admiral the room  where the Teletype and the transmitter associated  with his hobby  were installed. Ramsay thanked Benjamin personally for his service to the King, but Benjamin, for his part, considered it prudent not to mention the assistance he received from Edith and Judith with his hobby.

The Admiral seemed to be captivated by a wall chart and he asked Benjamin to identify it.

"That's my moving five-day weather forecast for Undercliff, sir. Where we are."

TCB05: "This weather forecasting, is it perhaps a second hobby?"

"A bit more than just a hobby, Admiral Sir Ramsay. My calling is meteorology. Now I know we've all got to pull  together to stop Jerry, sir, and I'm sure other  professional men are in the same predicament as  myself, but all  the same, one must  continue to use the skills one has, or one's mind gets in a bit of a rut."

Benjamin led the admiral into the white octagonal  tower of the lighthouse proper to show him the Clarinet antenna.

TCB06: The array mounted to the central shaft of the lighthouse was identical in  appearance to  the decoy  antenna constructed nearby on the grounds of St. Catherine's, but  the one outdoors was a sacrificial offering  for the  Germans. They had already made one attempt to bomb it out of existence. Benjamin and his family were entirely unharmed, but they sat idle while the Royal Air Force set the largely undamaged structure aright. After that Benjamin resumed his part of the so-called Wizard War.

TCB07: Twice a week at  odd hours  of the evening  the Teletype alarm woke up the Margolies family with a transmitter frequency and a line of bearing. The lighthouse lamp was extinguished and the central  shaft  was  disengaged from  the  motor. Benjamin rotated the antenna to  the ordered  compass heading. Half the time this was followed by dozens of bombers pivoting overhead to follow the beam to some target area in Germany. The other half of the time the beam marked the location to drop their bombs.

TCB08: The genius of the system was that while  the concrete of St. Catherine's  lighthouse was  nearly transparent to  the long radio waves of the transmitter  they were completely  opaque to the short light rays used by prying German eyes and cameras.

The admiral said, "Mr. Margolies, the following  few weeks will be rather lively ones for you, I'm afraid. Your Clarinet tasking orders will be coming in at a greater rate than ever before. You should lay aside your weather reports and sleep days."

TCB09: "Has something gone badly awry?" Benjamin asked.

The admiral replied, "Not at  all! As  you are no  doubt aware, much of southern England has become  an armed camp with some two million soldiers from  several allied countries, as  well as all of their supplies. As we draw near to the day of the invasion we must shape  the beachhead in France  with continuous bombardment of enemy strongholds,  both day and night, or  the invasion will fail. You will be assisting some of the night raids, of course."

TCB10: "I  understand   what  I  am  to   do,"  said  Benjamin. "Perfectly."

He led the  officer  spiraling up  ninety-four  steps with  the Clarinet antenna nearly  filling  the hollow  space inside  the lighthouse. At the top Benjamin  pointed out  where the  large crystal lens had been chipped by a 1943 air raid. They could see thirty nautical miles out to sea. The whole Channel was roiling with whitecaps kicked up from  high winds. "Such weather!" Sir Admiral Ramsay complained. It threatened the whole invasion.

TCB11: "Even so," said Benjamin, "look how clear it  is. We are in  a rain-shadow  here, you  know. And  also a  fog-shadow. Our weather is not  nearly as immoderate as it is  for the Overners. That is, for the rest of the island."

After  the  war   it   was  Benjamin   who   coined  the   word 'microclimate'.

He went on to say, "By a fluke of geography  and wind and water currents, the  weather here  at the lighthouse  has a  very high correlation with the weather directly  across the Channel on the coast of France."

TCB12: "Is that so? How remarkable!"

"I was working towards my doctorate with this research when the war so rudely  intervened. The data I have  collected since then has only confirmed that I'm on the right track."

"What do you forecast for Undercliff tomorrow?"

"A twenty-four hour  break  in this  miserable weather,  partly cloudy, winds drop  to five knots. But elsewhere  on the Channel there will be fog and rain, with winds gusting to thirty knots"

"And the opposite coast will calm as well?"

TCB13: "Weather  is  always  a chancy  business  sir,  but  the correlation should hold."

Admiral Sir Ramsay was elated. Eisenhower's chief meteorologist had predicted the same short break in the weather using aircraft over the Atlantic to gather  the data. Ike was still dithering but now the  doughnut hole  in the  storm was  confirmed by  an unexpected third  party. It might be enough to convince  Ike to get a jump while the Germans were looking the other way. General Rommel wasn't even presently in France.

TCB14: Two  days  later  the  Margolies  family  received  more visitors but  they  were  considerably less  welcome  than  the admiral had been. They paddled in from  the sea. Judith never learned the name of the German officer who led them. To her the man would always  be Felix. Perhaps Felix had been  killed in the  subsequent invasion,  or perhaps  he died  during the  long retreat that followed. Considering Judith's post-war  success moonlighting as an implacable Nazi hunter that  would have been best for Felix.

TCB15: Looking back Judith realized  Felix was a member  of the Shutzstaffel, a  paramilitary  unit  which  observed  no  legal restraint. Perhaps he was a  political officer assigned  to the U-boat to ensure the  crew's loyalty  to the  gangsters running Germany. In any event, the  fact that the Margolies  family was Jewish put him in the dilemma of obeying conflicting orders. But he had the authority to improvise when it became necessary, and he spoke  English  sufficiently  well to  get  this  across  to Benjamin.

TCB16: "When you get your  orders you  will carry them  out, as before,  but you  will be  a little  sloppy when  you align  the antenna. Not too sloppy, Mr. Margolies! Just enough to throw off the raid by a few hundred meters. And the most important part is that you must tell no one  you are sabotaging the raids, or that we were ever here."

"Or you'll return and kill us?"

"Mr. Margolies, you  have my  word  that neither  you nor  your lovely wife  Edith nor  your beautiful  daughter Judith  will be killed."

TCB17: "I, too, am a man of my word," said Benjamin.

"How very fortunate  that  is for  Edith  and Judith,"  replied Felix, "since we will now  to take  them to the  racial hygiene camp near St.-Malo in France."

"No, I beg you!"

"Do not be alarmed, Mr. Margolies. Your wife  and daughter will not be  mistreated. All  the British Jews  we captured  from the Channel Islands have been relocated  there. But if we learn that a future air  raid using this transmitter  is successful, things will not seem so good."

TCB18: When Judith failed to register for  secondary school the constable came calling. He found evidence of  the raid  by the German frogmen and notified army intelligence, who squeezed the truth out of Benjamin. Sir Ramsay intervened to  keep Benjamin out of prison,  but Sir  Arthur  Harris of  RAF Bomber  Command insisted the man be sacked  from his lighthouse job  to prevent more sabotage of Clarinet missions. He moved to a cottage on the beach nearby and was barred from operating his weather station.

TCB19: After  breaking out  of  Normandy  at Avranches  General Patton's Third Army moved across France at an unbelievable pace. They nearly encircled  Hitler's forces  opposing the  invasion. Judith and Edith were moved to different places at least once a month. The constant relocation  was encouraging  in a  way, but things grew progressively worse the  nearer they were  taken to Germany itself. "Racial hygiene" camps were abandoned for work camps, and later for what could only be called punishment camps.

TCB20: After  one final  relocation  Edith  and Judith  reached Ohrdruf-Nord, where Jews  were worked  to death  constructing a railroad center that would never  be finished. Judith saw things so far beyond any boundaries of human evil it defied belief. And Ohrdruf wasn't even the worst camp in the hellish constellation. Those were to  be  found further  to the  east  in Poland. The distant guns of Patton's tanks  were heard not very  long after they arrived, but not soon enough to save Judith's mother Edith.

TCB21: The 89th Infantry Division captured the camp on April 4. Judith was one  of the  few prisoners  somehow still  standing. She was fed,  scrubbed,  and deloused. After she demonstrated her status as  a British  subject  to the  satisfaction of  the Occupation she was placed on a  ship and sent home. Judith met her father on a dock at Portsmouth. She gazed upon him across a great gulf that was the memory of her  unspeakable ordeal. Only twelve months had passed yet  they were utter strangers  to one other.

TCB22: He begged his daughter to tell him what happened to Edith but the girl said absolutely nothing. Every time he pressed he only encountered the stony resolve she learned in the camps. But his beach bungalow was  very small,  and it  was not  very long before Benjamin caught a quick glimpse of the mass of whip scars on his daughter's back. For a year  she sat awake  through the nights watching  the coast  with  her  war surplus  Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle for more Nazi frogmen who would never come.

TCB23: One instant  Judith  was scanning  the  beach below  St. Catherine's lighthouse on the Isle of Wight and the next instant a giant appeared. The manner of his appearance was entirely out of the ordinary, Judith  thought. Then again, so  was standing watch there every night. Judith knew it was possible she wasn't entirely sane. In the feeble light of the full moon in the west and the hint of dawn in the east the giant seemed too dark to be a Nazi, but he could have applied camouflage to his skin.

TCB24: She fired a round into the air to let the giant know she was armed but  still he  advanced closer,  looming taller  than anyone she knew, perhaps a  full eight  feet in height. At ten yards he said, "You have no need of that weapon with me. I will offer no threat to you."

"Who are  you?" Judith demanded. "You don't  sound  remotely English."

"I am called Hamon," he said. "And you are correct, my home is very far from here."

Judith's rifle dropped a little from its  sight-line on Hamon's face.

TCB25: "I've been watching this beach all night,"  she said. "I have no idea how you slipped through."

"I could explain it to you," he answered, "but  you would think me entirely balmy rather than just yourself."

Judith lowered the rifle to point  at the ground and  there was the glimmer of a smile. She said, "And what would you come from so far away to say to me?"

"I would  ask whether  you  would  hunt  real enemies  of  Jews throughout the  world, rather  than the  ones you  imagine might come here."

TCB26: Hamon advanced a bit  closer and  saw the girl  had just reached adulthood, but  there was  an aged  look in  her hollow eyes, as though she  had already lived  four lifetimes,  and it haunted him. A Darwinian process in the  camps had  produced a girl who was able to outwit,  bribe, or intimidate anyone to get what she needed to survive and  he saw the results  on Judith's face. He asked, "Do you live here, at the lighthouse?"

Judith shook her head. "We used to live there, but my father was sacked."

TCB27: Hamon told her, "Benjamin is very famous in our circles, you know.  If he had not  spoken with Admiral Sir  Ramsay before the invasion it would not have come  off when it did, and we are certain  the Germans  would have  been much  better prepared  to repel it. I should very much like to meet him."

She spat at the ground. "He no longer believes the  promise of the Holy One that our people  should live in Eretz Yisrael. Yes, the Crown owes a large marker to my father, but he will not cash it in."

TCB28: "What do you mean?"

"It is a concession of such little import it could not possibly disconcert the government  in the smallest way.  But the Foreign Secretary  refuses to  allow Jews  to immigrate  to the  British Mandate  in Palestine.  Not even  Jews who  are already  British subjects."

"Oil," said Hamon.

Judith nodded. One word, but it explained everything.

She said, "The  admiral who  spoke to  my father  is dead.  The Benjamin you admire  will take his PhD in London  and resume his profession."

TCB29: "Then, Judith, set aside your father for a moment. I can take you to  Palestine myself, right now, if you  are willing to go. Your move."

"My move?" Judith unchambered the remaining rounds and slung the rifle over her back. She said, "Please give me a few moments."

She went  into  her  cottage and  returned  ten  minutes  later carrying a small tote bag  with clothing and  personal effects. Along with her rifle she  also carried on  a strap in  her left hand a metal box of .303 caliber cartridges.

"What would you do if I said I could take you to Palestine this very day?"

"What would I do? Please give me a moment."

TCB30: Hamon drew close enough to  Judith to embrace her. In a heartbeat, dawn on the Channel became desert morning. A wave of vertigo overcame her. She scrambled in reverse, tripping over a stone and falling on her backside. Peering up at him, she asked, not fearfully, "What are you?"

"You already know, do you not? Judging by what you carry in your left hand."

Judith held a small quantity of unleavened bread. The Pesach had trained her to respond without  delay to any divine  command to leave.

TCB31: Hamon said, "What am I, you ask? For now, consider me to be your teacher and a friend.  Never again shall you be alone as I found you on that beach."

Listening to Hamon had  an effect that  Judith could  never put into words. She was silent for many minutes as her  body shook with dry weeping.

Hamon and Judith were soon greeted by Polish Jews. They lived a few miles inland from the Mediterranean at a collective farm, or kibbutz, named Yad Mordechai. It was founded by  immigrants in 1943.

TCB32: The settlement lay on the coast highway only eight miles north of Gaza. Judith could see it near at hand. She spoke no Polish, nor had she learned the Hebrew language  which had been revived from extinction. But all she had to do was brandish the tattoo on her forearm and it was enough for  the pioneers. They were already acquainted with Hamon and on very good terms. They gathered Judith in while Hamon  stood alone in the  desert. She looked back three times, and by the third he was gone.

TCB33: During the War of Independence the Zionists abandoned the coast highway running south from Tel Aviv. Judith's kibbutz at Yad Mordechai was completely cut off. Only two private aircraft maintained any contact  between the  north and  south, carrying newspapers and boxes of medical supplies. The pilots were called mahal, or foreign volunteers. Judith herself was part  of the Gahal, the immigrant  soldiers. Most of the  children at  the little farm were sabra, born in Palestine with no other home.

TCB34: Egypt  hurled  two   infantry  battalions,  one  armored battalion, and an artillery battalion against  Judith's kibbutz in an attack that lasted five days. Much enemy armor was taken out with the PIAT mortar. There was a subtle line  one hundred meters out where the soil of the desert made a sudden transition to the soil of the kibbutz. Perhaps it was an artifact of the water table. Before the battle the  kibbutzim already  set the elevation of the  PIAT  to  strike this  line  by firing  dummy rounds.

TCB35: Now it was only a  matter of rotating the  barrel on its iron pivot sunk  into the  ground  to take  aim at  approaching tanks. When fired each round contained a  shaped charge massing one kilogram, designed to penetrate 100mm of armor. Those tanks which breached the perimeter were set alight at close range with Molotov cocktails or attacked with hand grenades with fragments flying through the view  slit, wounding  the crew,  and forcing them to retire. Other tanks were taken out with buried mines.

TCB36: After five days all the settler's  ammunition was spent. Judith helped carry the wounded through the Egyptian lines under the cover of darkness. Yad Mordechai lay abandoned, and in the morning the Egyptians occupied the  place and burned it  to the ground. But during those five  days of resistance Tel  Aviv was saved from being overrun. The stubborn defense at Yad Mordechai gave Tel Aviv time to bring  in reinforcements and firm  up the defensive line on the road between the city and Gaza.

TCB37: After the  war Judith  immersed herself  in honest  toil cultivating the fields and garden  crops and poultry. At least once a month she helped  defend the settlement from  gunmen who infiltrated from the Gaza Strip  to kill Jews simply  for being Jews. Throughout 1950 Judith  was  frequently  mobilized as  a sergeant in  the reserves  to help  carry out  counterattacks on Gaza. The military pay  was small  but so  were her  wants. She turned half of  it over  to the  kibbutz out  of gratitude  for taking her in.

TCB38: A very tall boy arrived at Yad Mordechai. He said, "I am Nuriel of the B'nei Elohim. The one known to you as Hamon would have me  speak with  Judith Margolies,  one of  the kibbutznikim here."

Judith was relieved of teaching  her classes and brought  to an empty house  in the  kibbutnikiyot section  to meet  Nuriel. The newcomer was at least a foot  shorter than Hamon, yet  he still loomed over Judith. And being this close  to him,  she wasn't certain he was a boy. For one thing he had small breasts.

TCB39: Nuriel said, "Peace be with you, Judith  Margolies. I am called Nuriel.  I serve the  one named Hamon  who met you  on an island beach on the English Channel one morning and asked if you would hunt the enemies of Jews throughout the world."

"And it is a token of your sincerity, Nuriel, that you know what Hamon said to me."

"He sent me, first, to see if you were well."

"Well, apart from  my  trusty British-made  rifle  I have  very little in the way of personal possessions. I own some clothing.

TCB40: "I share a radio with  the others in the  Women's House. The tractors belong  to the whole community. All  the profits of the kibbutz are pooled together for the needs of the laborers. I have a  little pocket money  from my  reserve duty. I  have good health. In fine, apart from the occasional firefight with Arabs, you may tell Hamon I am living in a utopia."

"All that is good to hear," said Nuriel, "because it clears the way to my next question. Have  you heard of a man named Hartmann Vogel?"

TCB41: Judith wanted to spit but she realized  she was indoors. "What Jew  doesn't curse  the  name  of  the man  who  deported hundreds of thousands of European Jews to death camps in Poland? I  know he  was  arrested by  the allies  and  testified at  the Nuremberg  trials as  a  witness.  But I  know  nothing of  what happened to him after that."

"Then allow me to pick up his trail where it runs cold for you. Late in 1947 Vogel was placed in an internment camp for Nazi war criminals called Nuremberg-Langwasser.

TCB42: "That camp was guarded very weakly. He easily managed to escape to Austria and made contact with a rat line."

A rat line was a kind of underground railroad for fleeing Nazis. Judith didn't need that explained to her.

Nuriel went onto say, "Specifically, he availed  himself of the Kloster  Line run  by elements  in the  Catholic Church.  He was hidden in a  network of monasteries until a  German bishop named Alois Hudal made arrangements for him to obtain an International Red Cross passport.

TCB43: "He then made his way  to Genoa. Using Vatican  funds he sailed to Argentina to link up  with the likes of Adolf Eichmann and the Mangler.  We're going after those  last two, eventually, but for right  now we're beautifully set up to  get Vogul. Hamon wants you to be part of the extraction so I came here."

"Who else is part of this?"

"Miriam. She's from the Italian alps, whiter than white, and of course any full member of the  B'nei Elohim is a polyglot. She's been working Vogul for months.

TCB44: He prefers a neat home. Miriam has been coming in to tidy things up for him. Along the way he's been flirting  with her, much to Miriam's disgust off the record, but as usual she's very professional about it. Recently she got Vogul to agree it's time for a major field  day. That's where we  come in. We're extra cleaning girls. Are you in?"

Lilith nodded in the affirmative.

Nuriel threw a bundle on the dining table. He said, "You should change into these."

"Now? Not when we're overseas?"

TCB45: We're going first class, B'nei Elohim style, the same way Hamon took you from England to here. I know you have a million questions about that, but they can wait. And I can step out if you want me to."

"That depends on whether you're a bloke or a bird. I still can't tell which."

"I'm both, actually, but I lean  slightly to the bloke  side. I can turn  around while you  disrobe, if  you think that  will be sufficient."

Judith nodded. While she was changing she said, "Where  do you come in?"

TCB46: "At the Academy they call me Arc Flash. I'm going to, ah, prepare the subject so you  can deliver him to  your government alive and fit to be prosecuted."

"Why does Hamon want me to be involved?"

"Someone has to  make the  actual  delivery of  the package  to Mossad Headquarters. Hamon thinks  there are multiple advantages all the way around if you are the point of contact."

In a few  moments  Judith  was fully  dressed  as an  Argentine housekeeper. "Go ahead and turn around, Nuriel," she said.

TCB47: After a quick glance  at Judith the scenery  around them changed from a home in  the kibbutz to  a back alley  in Buenos Aires. They had gone there so no one could see the transition.

"Physics," Nuriel assured her, "not magic."

Judith marveled at this once more,  but she was not  stunned to near incapacitation  by the  sudden change as  she had  been the first time. She followed Nuriel out of the alley  to one of the better-looking homes on the street where the front door was held open by Miriam.

TCB48: They  followed  the  blonde  woman  inside. Judith saw Hartmann Vogul standing  in his  den and  tried to  control her emotions. She had picked up enough German in the  camps to know he was asking if these were the housekeepers Miriam spoke of.

A miniature bolt of lightning  played between Nuriel  and Vogul with a loud snap. He fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Miriam now wore  a bone  halo just  like Nuriel. It seemed to appear in a jump cut. She said, "Please sit on the floor next to him, Judith."

TCB49: She did as she was instructed. Nuriel lifted the torso of the unconscious man and propped up his knees to give him a small profile. Then Nuriel said, "I'm sorry about this  next part. It will  probably disgust  you more  than Miriam's  undercover work disgusted her, but  Judith, you need to hold  his knees together so he  doesn't spread  back out,  at least  until you  get where you're going."

While they gathered  him  into a  smaller configuration  Miriam rapidly went through the drawers of his desk.

TCB50: She threw a small  book down at Judith's  side. "There's his ill-gotten Red Cross passport." Then she threw down a thick ream of correspondence right  next to  that. "Letters from the other assholes. Your country's government should find this stuff to be very interesting reading  indeed. But now, Judith, off you pop back to Israel. I'm glad we met, and I hope we work together again soon."

"Wait! How do I explain all this to the Mossad?"

"That's your homework assignment for tonight, Judith."

TCB51: "Congratulations, Judith  Margolies," said  Nuriel. "You have been accepted for enrollment at the B'nei Elohim Historical Institute. The  Be-Hi  Academy   was  awarding  degrees  before Pythagoras  and  his  school  ever shit  their  togas  over  the irrational nature of the square root of two."

The next thing Judith knew she was still crouching with Vogul on his kitchen floor, but the  floor had  become a circle  of wood lying in front of Mossad headquarters at the Red House on Yarkon Street in Tel Aviv.

TCB52: In the morning a nephil of the B'nei Elohim came calling on Judith at her hotel in Richland, Washington. Judith had seen hem before. It was Beleth, an ambi slightly  more feminine than Elin but just as tall. Beleth insisted people use the classic pronouns of the nephilim, on 'hem' rather than  'her' or 'him', 'che' rather than 'she' or 'he', and 'hez' rather than 'hers' or 'his'. Judith was delighted by  the surprise visit  and invited Beleth to step inside, but Beleth had a word of warning.

TCB53: "They're  watching this  door,  Judith,  and now  you've gotten your first visitor so you should treat this room as wired for sound when you get back tonight."

"I'm shocked they haven't already done it."

Beleth shook hez head. "If you decide to  join us you  need to give Robyn this." It was a tube of mascara but Judith guessed it was something else entirely. "She'll know how to open it."

Judith put  the container  in  her  purse. Smiling, she  said, "Beleth! I haven't seen you since Be'er Sheva!"

TCB54: That was soon after the Vogel extraction in 1951. Beleth said, "Those twenty-two years seemed to just fly right by. Then again, Hamon's second best trick  had something to do with that. You remember your first time, don't you, Judith?"

At Tel Aviv Mossad had taken delivery of Hartmann Vogel with all his supplementary documentation but there where  many questions Judith found impossible  to  answer. She flunked the  homework assignment Miriam had given  her. But David Ben-Gurion  to the rescue.

TCB55: Such was  Judith's  growing fame  that the  intelligence service was severely constrained by the prime minister himself, who simply told Mossad to  back off. In his ancillary role as Defense Minister he brevetted Judith to the rank of Segen in the Israeli Defense Force, equivalent  to a junior  lieutenant. For the time being, as a  brevet officer,  she retained the  pay of Samal  (Sergeant)  from her  service  in  the reserves. In the clutches of  the IDF  officer  corps  she undertook  her  first physical.

TCB56: In the main  Judith was in  excellent condition  but the doctors noted the ugly mass  of scar  tissue on her  back which limited her movement to a degree. They also noted the rough six digit tattoo on her forearm and knew how she got the scars.

Women fought alongside men  in the  War of  Independence. Since then religious factions  in the  government maneuvered  to keep women out of combat roles. Ben-Gurion arranged for Judith and dozens of  other  female  soldiers  to  be  exempt  from  these restrictions.

TCB57: Soon after that Beleth checked Judith out on "loan" for a day-long excursion by jeep. They drove about fifty kilometers across the Negev desert to the  vicinity of Be'er Sheva  in the southeast.

Along the way, Beleth  made an effort  to answer  the seemingly endless questions that poured out of the young  woman, but many of them, Beleth knew, would be impossible to answer to Judith's complete satisfaction  until she  was brought more  closely into Hamon's project. And that might take years.

TCB58: Judith wanted to know more about Hamon.

"He thinks of himself as a  teacher. Officially he is  the head of  our  organization,  which  equally officially  we  call  the B'nei Elohim  Historical Institute.  Unofficially it's  just the Academy."

"So he teaches history?"

"Lately, yes, that's true. Before that he taught science. In the very beginning Hamon taught philosophy with a focus on ethics."

Beleth did not  elaborate on  how long  ago "in  the beginning" truly was: Thirty-third century BCE.

TCB59: "How did Hamon bring me here in the blink of an eye? How did Elin send me to Argentina, and from there to Tel Aviv?"

"Ah yes, Hamon's third-most impressive trick. OK! The Euclidian three-space we live in has a  structure that can be squeezed and stretched  if sufficient  energies are  involved, such  as those produced by, let  us say, a star. Shortcuts can  be punched into it. Getting to  that job in Argentina, that wasn't  Elin, it was Hamon again. But today we're just driving out to the site."

TCB60: "The site? Where are you taking me?"

"There's a hill we call Tel Sheva just a little  to the east of Be'er Sheva.  It's the  original location of  the city,  the one mentioned in  the Tanakh. Tel  Aviv University wants  to uncover the whole  dig but for right  now we've got permission  from the government to cherry pick it."

"How did you find it?"

"You've seen a few B'nei Elohim in action by now. You know each one of  us has a talent.  Hamon can whisk you  around without an airplane, for example."

TCB61: "And Elin can knock people out. Miriam can  make you see things, or not see things. What about you?"

"At the Academy they call  me the  Historian. Its like  being a prophet, but in reverse. I  can see things that already happened instead of what's going to happen.  There's a few Rabbis who say that's how  Moshe could  live in  the time  of Exodus  and write everything in the book of Genesis."

"Is that how he did it?"

"Absolutely not. For one thing,  there never was a  Moshe. Does that shock you?"

TCB62: "That depends on how  you think  you know Moshe  did not exist," Judith said.

"Hilkiah delivered a parody of  the Abrahamic covenant  to King Josiah.  This pastiche  introduced  the character  of Moshe.  It eventually became the  book of Deuteronomy, but  when the scroll was first rehearsed  in the ears of the people  Hashem dealt out an array of  punishments that ended with the temple  on fire and Jerusalem  sacked.  The B'nei  Elohim  helped  set up  Hilkiah's brother Lael as high priest in another place."

TCB63: "Right! Don't tell me then, Beleth!"

This outburst elicited only a  grin and silence from  Beleth as che drove the jeep south and east across the Negev desert.

On the radio "Sixty Minute Man" by the Dominoes was playing. Now that she was through talking, Judith was able to concentrate on the lyrics. The song was some dirty blues from  America, quite popular over there, apparently, but the more she listened to it the  more  Judith grew  astonished  it  wasn't banned  from  the airwaves in Israel.

TCB64: There were about a  dozen men  working at the  site with picks and shovels,  clustered  in  groups of  two  or three  at various places on the broad hilltop. Judith asked about them.

"Palestinian Bedoins," answered  Beleth. "Hired help. I  can't really say  they're local,  because they move  around a  lot, as they have  always done. My spouse  Ithuriel must be down  in the first dig. I'd like for you to meet him."

He was three meters down a sturdy wooden  ladder, another giant like Hamon but younger.

TCB65: Beleth  made  the  introduction. "Judith, this  is  my husband,  Professor   Ithuriel  Shalom   of  the   B'nei  Elohim Historical Institute."

He was too  tall to  stand  in the  small space  that had  been accessed, so he begged Judith's leave to remain  seated. It was about the size of a bedroom. Along the walls were wooden racks of great antiquity. Only the parched climate of the  Negev had kept them from rotting away  over their five thousand  years of existence. These racks held many small clay medallions.

TCB66: "It is a  great pleasure to  finally meet  you, Judith," said Dr. Shalom. "My father has taken an interest in  you, and so, as a consequence, has every one of the B'nei Elohim."

Now that she thought about it, Ithuriel's face did remind Judith of Hamon. She noted his horns curving in the usual ring. "Beleth told me  you  each  have  a  special  talent.  What  is  yours, Professor?"

"I really like how Robyn phrased it," Beleth told her husband.

"Ah yes. She called me a sharp cookie. How American!"

TCB67: Judith gestured at the racks arranged  around him. "What is all this?"

"All this is  a finding  so important  by tomorrow  morning the government will  have revoked our  license to dig  here. They'll send in  their own people. But  today we're sliding out  of here with the most important piece."

He very carefully  set a  leather satchel  between himself  and Judith. It was filled  with paperwork,  perhaps  notes of  the excavation, Judith guessed. On top  of that  was  one of  the medallions of fired clay.

TCB68: "All of these little  tablets are official  records from long ago, Judith. Some are tax  records. Some are the decrees of chieftains who styled  themselves kings. This one  happens to be the title to a piece of land in Hebron that has a pair of caves, and more recently, a stone mausoleum."

"The cave of Machpelah?"

Ithuriel nodded his head.

"How can you be sure?"

"I can read the Ugaritic cuneiform. This one has a name: Avraham Haivri. Abraham from across the river. Abraham the Hebrew."

TCB69: "So Moshe was never real, but father Abraham was?"

"In a nutshell," Beleth said.

Judith let that sink in. "I see why you think this dig  is so important. Arabs and  Jews both claim descent  from Abraham. And this tablet is Abraham's claim to a toehold in this land. At the very least it says he was really here."

"Exactly," said Ithuriel. "But right now we need this evidence to disappear for a few years.  That's where you come in. We want you to put it in the museum in at Yad Mordechai."

TCB70: "There is no museum in Yad Mordechai."

"By the time you arrive one will exist."

"I don't understand. If you want this artifact to disappear how would taking it to my kibbutz accomplish that?"

"You will understand very  shortly," he said. He put rolls of undeveloped  film in  the satchel  and zipped  it all  up. "Your homework assignment, Judith, is to  write a detailed  report on this find, complete with photographs."

"I muffed my last assignment."

"I think you'll do better this time."

TCB71: Judith climbed out of  the dig with the  leather satchel and found that the sun, to her great confusion,  had moved from directly overhead to  lower in  the  east, yet  the air  seemed warmer. All the Bedoin laborers were gone, yet  there were many more holes dug into the hill, and that was  even more puzzling, as she had spoken  to Ithuriel  for only  ten minutes  at most. Judith returned to the  dig and  called down  but she  heard no reply. The jeep was gone and  in its place was  a beautiful red sedan.

TCB72: Something about the car didn't seem right to Judith. The lines seemed too masculine. She'd never seen the like. It didn't look like a smooth progression from the  current year's models. Near the tail lights the word "Bel Air" was embossed in a script that looked vaguely  Arabic. The keys were  in the  ignition. Judith opened the  boot  of  the car  and  secured the  leather satchel within. There was nothing more to do but to return home and see if Ithuriel was telling the truth about a museum.

TCB73: On the road home Judith  heard a song called  "Roll Over Beethoven" by  some fellow  named Chuck  Berry. It sounded like someone used "Sixty Minute Man"  as a template, made  it faster and more aggressive,  and stumbled  onto  a whole  new kind  of music. At first she thought it  was a novelty song,  but it was followed by something titled  "Heartbreak Hotel" by  some other fellow and  thus Judith  arrived  in  1956  at the  tender  age of twenty-three  when  she  should have  gotten  there  at  age twenty-eight.