Chase Baker and the Seventh Seal (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 9) by Vincent Zandri

Arabic,” I say.
    “My father is Arabic, remember? It’s my second language.”
    “Makes sense.”
    The driver pulls out, makes a U-turn despite oncoming traffic. He guns the taxi up the hill towards the Russian settlers’ portion of the city, the eastern wall of the Old City speeding past us on our left.
    “Where is he taking us?” I say, glancing into the back seat.
    “West Bank,” Magda says. “There’s a clinic up near the church of St. Stephen. It’s for the few Palestinians left living in the area. I know someone there who might help.”
    Moshe’s face is paler than the limestone that makes up Golgotha, the skull-like hill on my right-hand side where Jesus is said to have been crucified two thousand years ago . . .
    Correction . . .
    The place where the Anglican Church believes him to have been crucified and buried in a nearby tomb that was owned by Joseph of Arimathea, while the rest of the Christian world believes the crucifixion to have taken place in the center of the Old City in the spot where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher now exists. 
    The Holy Sepulcher is venerated by four different sects of Christianity and the ground it rests upon is considered as sacred as the blood of Christ. It is also visited by thousands of pilgrims day in and day out. Skull Place, on the other hand, is surrounded by a Palestinian bus garage and receives relatively few visitors.
    Moshe begins to moan as we make our way beyond the city walls towards the hills and valleys of the West Bank. From our vantage point, we can begin to make out the razor-wire topped concrete walls that are now dividing the landscape like a dozen maximum security prisons positioned side by side. We drive into the heart of this new maze of roads, fences, and armed security checkpoints until we come to a dirt road lined with pine trees.
    The driver turns onto the road and motors uphill past a boy riding bareback on a brown horse. Up ahead is a car that’s been burned to nothing but a distorted metal frame. The dust from the road merges with the heat, the lack of air conditioning inside the taxi, and Moshe’s pain-filled moans. It all combines to make me slightly nauseous.
    Coming to the top of the hill, we spot the old, Byzantine era, castle-like church of St. Stephen on our left. Once an early Christian church, it’s now a Jewish temple, the bulk of which is surrounded by an archaeology dig. Or so Magda is quick to point out. To the right is a fenced in Palestinian community of ramshackle houses, a building cobbled together with plywood and tin paneling for a school, and more burned out cars and trucks. In a word, the place looks like a war zone.
    The taxi driver pulls up to an old double-wide trailer you might find inside a trailer park in Paris, Texas. He turns to me.
    “Pay me now,” he says in his accented English. “I am not comfortable here.”
    I tell the driver to hold on.
    We pile out, Magda and Itzhak carefully attending to the still bleeding Moshe. Leaning into the open driver’s side window, I ask the taxi driver to wait.
    The paunchy balding man bites down on his bottom lip. “How long?”
    “However long it takes,” I say. “You have a gun?”
    “No,” he says.
    I look over one shoulder, then the other. Other than a few kids playing in what amounts to a garbage heap across the dirt road, there doesn’t seem to be any imminent danger. Digging in my pocket, I pull out five hundred shekels, hand the wad to him.
    “We won’t be long,” I say. “You wait for us; I’ll double that back in Jerusalem.”
    He nods, but I can tell he’s not very comfortable with the idea.
    Pulling my head out of the window, I follow the three to the main, side door of the trailer. But we haven’t even reached the door yet when we hear the noise of an engine revving, tires spitting gravel.
    Itzy turns, despite the deadweight of Moshe pressing down on his shoulders.
    “There goes our ride,” he says.
    “Did you pay him?” Magda