Part 21: Leaving Mecca

"No, Mohammed left Meccah, he didn't go to Meccah."

Dean looked at Zak with exasperation. It bugged him that Zak knew so little of the Middle East—maybe some Jewish history and a little about Israel and that was it. The American disease.

"The Hijra was when Mohammed left Mecca and went to Medinah, or Yathrib as it was known then. Moslems date their calendar from this event: Year 1 for the Moslems, but 622 A.D. in the West."

"I thought Moslems made a pilgrimage to Mecca," Zak said. To Dean he sounded defensive.

"That's right. It's known as the hajj, and is one of the 5 pillars of Islam. Make a pilgrimage to Mecca before you die."

"So why do they do that? I mean, Mohammed left there, right?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Listen. I'm just telling you what is. I don't have to justify any of this. I assume they go to Mecca because that's where Mohammed was from—like Bethlehem for Jesus. Also that's where the mysterious black rock is, the Kaaba. It was previously a site of pagan worship, but now has a huge mosque surrounding it."

"A black rock?" Zak's face showed his interest had perked up.

"Yes," Dean replied. "You know, an alien artifact. I wouldn't be surprised if your Council of Nine didn't have something to do with it." He said this in an innocent tone of voice.

"Can't you just accept it as a hypothesis that mankind has been—may have been—in contact with other beings for thousands of years? Really, it explains a lot."

Dean shrugged. "Okay." He wasn't offended by the idea. "And maybe the Kaaba is a receiving station. Who knows, maybe even for your Nine."

"Keep in mind that the square root of nine is three," Zak said thoughtfully.

Dean laughed. He rolled off the couch in laughter. He lay on his back on the rug wiping his eyes.

"No, wait. Three—the Christian Trinity, right? Where did that come from? Maybe from a tradition, or just an intuition, about the Nine."

"Right," Dean said, attempting to contain his mirth. He decided to go along: "Hence that fake verse in the New Testament. Where is it?" Dean pulled a book off the shelf and paged a moment. "Here it is: 1 John 5:7. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

"Fake verse?" Zak asked. "In what sense is it a fake verse? I mean, how it is more fake than any of the others?"

Dean grinned. "Good question. I mean it didn't appear in the original canon which was fixed by the Church in the 4th century. The verse wasn't in any of the Greek manuscripts. Instead it was inserted into the third edition of Erasmus' Greek New Testament in the 16th century. The verse was taken from the Latin Vulgate. Catholics didn't accept the idea of the Trinity until the Council of Constantinople. When was that? 380 A.D.? But afterward it was embarrassing that there was no mention of the Trinity in the Bible. So some priests got creative and manufactured the evidence."

"Three-in-one. So. The father, the son, and the holy ghost. What the hell is the holy ghost?"

"I don't know. Didn't they make a movie about that with Bill Murray? Holy Ghost Busters?

Dean and Zak were both cracking up now. It was good to relieve the tension of the last several days.

"Anyway," Dean said, "that is the error of the Christians in the Moslem view. There is only one God, Allah. God the Father, if you will. Jesus was a prophet, and worked miracles, but he wasn't God. And neither was this Holy Ghost."

The door to the library opened and a woman entered.

"Oh, hi mother," Dean said. He stood. "This is my friend Zak, the one from America I was telling you about." Dean turned to Zak, and watched Zak turn red and trip over his own tongue.

"I'm very pleased to meet you," Zak finally managed. Dean looked at Zak appraisingly.

"Make yourself welcome in our home," she smiled at Zak. And then to Dean: "Will dinner at nine be suitable?"

"Fine," Dean said. She nodded, smiled again at Zak, and left the room.

"Yes?" Dean inquired, looking at Zak.

"I thought your mother would be, oh, I don't know, a grandmotherly figure, maybe in her 70s. She's— She's beautiful!"

"So she is," Dean said dryly. He knew that for a woman in her 40s, his mother was a strikingly voluptuous figure. But he didn't care to discuss that with Zak. "Why don't I leave you here for a bit while I go see how everyone is. Remember, your room is just down the hall, to the left."

"Okay," Zak said happily.

After Dean had left the room, Zak looked around the library. Many of the books were bound in leather, most of them in Arabic or French. A few were in English. Zak recognized The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas, and saw another called La Bas, by J. K. Huysman. Even the English books are French, Zak thought to himself. Perhaps the French books are all Arabic.

Zak leaned out a window and looked down the street. He could see the sidewalk café on the corner, and between two buildings the Seine. Here he was in Paris. He had never been out of the U.S. before.

Dean had led the escape from America. For that Zak was grateful—he had been at his wit's end. Zak had returned home, tired from a day of pouring concrete. The dust from the clay had permeated his hair and clothes and dissolved in his sweat, and he was looking forward to a long shower. But first he popped open a can of beer and turned on the T.V. to the news. They were doing an update on the Oral Jerry Swagger story—the one about the dead man who had been found on his lawn. But now the station announced that it had obtained exclusive footage of a cash transaction Swagger made with an unidentified man the day before the dead man showed up on Swagger's lawn.

Zak straightened out of his slouch and stared at the T.V. It was the footage he had Dean shoot of the dinner at L'Orangerie. He sat there stunned, his mind racing. It had been another one of the "Sally Rand" drops. He had carefully wrapped the developed film, placed it into the bottom of a large brown grocery bag, put two mason jars on top of the film package, written "Sally Rand" on the bag, and dropped it at a place in San Marino.

He had been betrayed by Hoova. True, his own image always seemed a little obscured on the film. Dean's cameramen had done their job well. But he could recognize himself easily, which meant someone else could also.

Zak did the only thing he could think of. He called Dean. Dean listened to the story in silence. Finally Dean said, "Do you have a passport, Zak?" The answer, surprisingly enough even to Zak himself, was Yes. He had gotten one on impulse after a long Hoova message that talked of ambassadors to mankind, and embassies, and passports, and other analogies he couldn't remember now.

"We should take a trip. Now, traveling isn't cheap," Dean warned.

No problem, Zak had replied. He had kept his "tithe" from the Swagger money, like Hoova had instructed. He in fact had $32,000 in cash. Yes, he was very grateful to Dean. Dean had even dropped that bit about him being a Mossad agent, taking Zak's obvious panic and plight at face value.

But, maybe he should thank the Nine also. True, they had betrayed him. But now here he was in Paris. Perhaps it had all served a higher purpose. Zak couldn't escape the feeling, however, of having been used. In all his previous missions Zak had performed behind the scene, and had remained behind the scene. But then he had participated in the . . . hit—the transfer of money—on Oral Jerry Swagger, and later had seen himself in flagrante delecto on local T.V.

The messages via Hoova, messages from the Nine had assured him there was nothing to worry about. Sure, that's what they said. "Once bitten, twice shy," Zak thought to himself.

Zak began to explore the book shelves. The books had been collected mostly by Dean's father. Dean had told Zak his father had been much older than his mother. His father was already a successful engineer of 40 when he married her at 15. There was a dam named after him somewhere in France. Dean's mother had barely attained 20 years of age when her husband had been killed in Caan, only a year after having been appointed the Lebanese Consul in Marseilles.

Zak took La Bas from the shelf, and went to his room. He stripped to his shorts, stretched out on the bed and had managed to read a page or two before falling asleep.

It was a troubled sleep. Voices and images haunted him. Accusing fingers, pointing, "That's the man on the tape," whispering as he tried to move to a different spot where he couldn't be seen. A table behind a pillar, a different aisle of the grocery store, around the corner and into the arch of a doorway.

Zak woke up several times, for a few seconds, his mind showing him the actual reality of his safety here in Dean's house in Paris. Eventually Zak relaxed and the images became more pleasant. Trips he had taken with Dean up and down California. In one of them they were stopping in Carmel, and when Zak got to his room at the Inn, there was Dean's mother waiting for him. They kissed, and she said, "Feel my breasts."

Now in Zak's dream Dean's mother was naked on hands and knees, pressing the side of her face against the bed as she looked back at him. "Come on," Zak, she was saying, "slip that big Jewish schlong inside me." Grabbing the sides of her buttocks, Zak pressed himself firmly into her moist tunnel.

Zak suddenly opened his eyes to the now darkened room. Damn, he thought, why does the mind always conk out just when it's getting exciting?

Zak's erection was painful. Bladder pressure, he thought. He got up and made his way in the darkness down the hall to the bathroom. And when he swung open the door, there was Dean's mother, in slip and panties, slip pulled to the waist, one leg perched on the toilet, a leg naked and exposed to the top of the thigh as she rubbed it with body lotion.

"Oh, hi Zak," she said. "We usually don't lock doors around here. Just a quick knock will do."

"I'm sorry. Excuse me," Zak said in confusion, backing out of the bathroom as he watched her rub cream into the inside of her left thigh.

As he closed the door he realized she had been looking at his crotch. In the hallway darkness he quickly felt the front of his shorts and found he was sticking straight out of the opening.

Zak began to wilt as he stumbled back to the bedroom. He crawled under the covers, his face burning, and prayed that dinner time would never arrive.