Edward Whittemore

"But to Stern at that moment it wasn't a hand grenade at all but a no longer distant cloud high above the Temple of the Moon, a driftin memory in the desert of dim pillars and fountains and waterways, mysterious places where myrrh grew, the ruins of his youth. Blinding light then in the mirror behind the bar, sudden death merging the stars and windstorms of his life with darkness in the failure of his seeking, bright blinding light in the night sky at last and Stern's once vast vision of a homeland for all the peoples of his heritage gone as if he had never lived, shattered as if he had never suffered, his futile devotion ended on a clear Cairo night during the uncertain campaigns of 1942 when the eternal disguise he wore to his last clandestine meeting, his face, was ripped way and thrown against a mirror in the half-light of an Arab bar, there to stare at a now immobile landscape fixed to witness his death forever."

"The Great Jerusalem Poker Game for secret control of the city, the ruin of so many adventurers in the period between the two world wars, continued for twelve years before it finally spent itself. During that time thousands of gamblers from around the world lost fortunes trying to win the Holy City, but in the end there were only three men at the table, the same three who had been there in the beginning."

"Now I think you'll both agree that through my various illicit enterprises," Cairo Martyr said, "I control the Moslem Quarter in this city." "The mummy dust king is about to strike," muttered O'Sullivan Beare. But at the same time he knew the claim was true, just as was his own secret control over the Christian Quarter and Munk Szondi's over the Jewish Quarter, religious symbols and trading in futures being just as essential to Jerusalem as mummy dust. "Now then, that's my bet. Control of the Moslem Quarter. I'm putting the Moslem Quarter on the table. If either of you wins, which you won't, it belongs to you. But first you have to match my bet. No openers. The real thing."

"Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?"