Ishmael Covenant

by Terry Brennan

  “Does anyone, other than your servant, know of our plans?”

  “No, Exalted One.”

  The red halo flared behind the piercing eyes.

  “You must protect the secret!”

  Pride suffused throughout the Turk’s consciousness. He was entrusted with this awesome responsibility. The One was relying on him.

  “The secret is safe. No one suspects,” said the Turk. “Eroglu and Kashani believe our support is for a transcendent Ottoman Empire. The Disciples believe we pave the way for the emergence of the Mahdi. They believe we serve the spirit of jihad.”

  “Excellent.” The pleasure of the voice was soft, liquid, warm, sliding across the floor. But like a rolling swell on the ocean, it now grew in stages of size and power. “And that is what we will allow them to continue to believe until the armies of Islam have followed me and conquered all the earth. We will establish a new world order, a global Islamic empire. Even Jerusalem will fall beneath our battle flags. And then our day will come. We will demolish the Quran and destroy the Bible … annihilate all false prophets who claim to foretell of another.”

  The Turk returned the gaze of the countenance with confidence, without fear, and with the same malevolent yellow eyes. “You,” proclaimed the Turk, “will rule, Exalted One.”

  “Over all the earth!” The voice crested, the thunder of roiling sea. “There will be one government, one law, one religion, one time—the time of power, the time of wealth, the time of dominion. Our time. A time we have pursued for ages. Now we see it. Now we see the opportunity before us. We will use the forces of Islam. We will use the armies of Persia. We will use the hordes of the Ottomans. All together. All to forge one world order. Not only are the times of the Gentiles complete, but the times of the Jews are complete and the times of the Muslims. All three—these three self-proclaimed great religions—will swear fealty to me … or they will lose their heads and their lives. We are so close.

  “This time”—the yellow eyes closed to pinpoints, the voice a venomous whisper—“we must not falter.”

  In mockery of the heat on his face, a chill ran down the spine of the Turk as he recalled the failures of the past.

  How many ages had they waited? How many empires had they corrupted? Each empire proclaiming its power and permanence, pursuing and persecuting Jew and Christian alike. Each time their treacherous schemes and design for global domination had collapsed. Each time, the Turk had failed.

  “The time is yours, Exalted One. Everything points to your ascendancy. You will finally prevail.” And I will ultimately succeed, thought the Turk. And I will rule with you.

  “What of the box and the prophecy? Have you recovered the Lithuanian’s message?”

  Raptures of glory were vomited from his brain. The Turk’s reverie came crashing back to reality.

  “No, Exalted One. It eluded us at the residence.”

  The rings of smoke surrounding the countenance whirled like dervishes preparing for battle.

  “Do not forget!” The Turk’s eyes grew wide as the power of the voice squeezed more urgently against his body, driving breath from his lungs. “The Lithuanian knew how to stop us. He was given the knowledge and the power and the words by those who seek our annihilation, the other immortals, our sworn enemies. You must destroy the message before it destroys us!”

  Like a hot poker scalding his skin, the Turk’s memory returned to that awful night over two hundred years ago. His riders of the storm had come so close to snatching the message. The roiling, flood-stage Prieglius River was prepared to swallow up the Lithuanian and his companions. But the Lithuanian had found refuge in the home of that Jewish cleric. And then their enemies appeared. When the Lithuanian returned home, this lethal message, now secured in a bronze box, remained in Konigsberg, protecting a secret that could destroy the plans of the Exalted One. Centuries had passed, and still his task remained the same. He must destroy the message and the box, or those carrying it.

  “The Disciples will locate and destroy the box.” The words croaked from the Turk’s throat. “Of that I am confident.”

  “The box?” declared the voice. “That box is not our enemy. It is the message that threatens us and the message we must destroy. The prophecies of the Lithuanian have power. The box only receives power from what rests inside.”

  Heavy lids fell across the hypnotic yellow eyes, the intensity of heat and light waning for a moment. “It appears that the Jew and the Arab will help pave the way for us. This new covenant that will be proclaimed gives the Jew permission to once again build a temple—and it’s the temple we desire. If the Lithuanian’s message is revealed, then our future plans are threatened. The temple might not be built, the treaty might not be signed. Our opportunity to thwart prophesy could be lost. The message must be destroyed.”

  As if a supernatural hand had grabbed the throat of a volcano, clamping it shut to snuff out an eruption, silent stillness joined the darkness.

  Moments passed like eternal heartbeats.

  The Turk stood his ground. He forced his heart to keep a steady beat. He knew the Exalted One could not read his thoughts. But he could smell fear. The Turk waited.

  “What of these new intruders … these new obstacles. You have not eliminated their threat.”

  “They know nothing,” countered the Turk, feeling confidence return. “We have encountered this kind of ignorant opposition for centuries. They know they are in a battle, but they know not who or what they fight. Or why. The ambassador is a formidable follower of the Nazarene. He would be difficult to corrupt. And his chief protector—also a follower, but troubled and insecure—is proving resourceful. They have both been difficult to destroy.”

  “I want them dead!” As if awakened, the invisible constrictor surrounding the Turk’s body flinched. “Now!”

  The coils squeezed harder. Breath fled from his lungs like pumped water. The Turk fought for control, fought for air.

  “Destroy all opposition!” The voice grew in menace. “Take no mercy and waste no more time. Their very existence is a risk you cannot afford to survive. Destroy them. Destroy the message. Destroy them all!”

  Like the scales of a serpent, the heavy lids closed over the yellow eyes. The red light in the middle of the room vanished and blackness reigned. The Turk began to sweat.

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 19, 1:47 p.m.

  Israel’s road system was fine as long as a car remained on the main highways, which were wide and fast and well designed. Once off the highways? Well, that was another story.

  After driving the ambassador around the urban anarchy of Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey, Tommy Hernandez figured he could handle the streets of cosmopolitan Israel. Until he discovered that street names could, and did, change every few blocks.

  He exited the Ayalon Highway at the HaShalom Interchange and made a left onto Derech HaShalom, which turned into Giv’at HaTahmoshet Street, past the Azrieli shopping center, which turned into Eliezer Kaplan Street—all within three blocks. He was ecstatic by the time he reached Bograchov Street which ran straight, with the same name, for twelve blocks toward the sea. The US embassy building was just off to his left when he reached Ha-Yarkon Street, but the street was one-way north so Hernandez drove the loop, around the Dan Hotel, and came up on the rear entrance to the embassy on Retsif Herbert Samuel Street. To their right lay the broad, sweeping sands of Tel Aviv’s perfect beach and the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean.

  Once past the infamous Mike’s Place, a favorite watering hole and hangout for embassy staffers, Hernandez stopped at the anti-tank barriers that blocked the only entrance to the embassy’s rear parking garage.

  “Not much to look at, is it Mr. Ambassador?” said Hernandez.

  The American embassy to Israel resembled a fortress—or a prison, depending on your point of view. It was big, square, solid, and ugly. Utilitarian would be kinder. Like the majority of the architecture in Israel, the embassy was designed to serve a purpose. E
xterior frills? A waste of time and money.

  In the midst of a busy downtown neighborhood, just off the beach promenade, the building hulked over its flanking streets. No buffer, no grass, no garden existed between the front entrance of the embassy and the civilians walking past on the wide sidewalk. Just across narrow Ha-Yarkon Street, behind a flank of parked motorbikes, were a car rental office and an internet café. Two civilians, the same size and build as the half dozen security guards scattered along the front of the embassy, reclined in chairs in the shade of the internet café.

  There was a time, in the distant past, when the embassy sported a ground-level, columned portico on its front side, along with over a dozen diagonal parking spaces just outside the front door. Security soon trumped convenience. This day, the ground floor of the embassy was a solid, windowless stone. Four-foot high, round steel pillars—bollards—were stationed along the edge of the sidewalk every few feet, the bollards connected and spanned by a steel I beam that ran the entire length on both the front and back of the massive building.

  Along both Ha-Yarkon Street at the front of the building and Samuel Street to its rear, men in civilian clothes stood under small metal awnings spaced at various intervals along each sidewalk. Part of the embassy’s security force, these men were Israeli—locally hired security professionals who were the first line of defense for the embassy. They would also be Diplomatic Security’s eyes and ears on the local community.

  “I think the architect must have spent part of his youth living near Alcatraz,” said Hernandez. “Welcome to your new home.”

  When Hernandez pulled to a stop at the “active vehicle barrier” at the rear of the embassy—large, thick steel rectangles that lifted from the street level like huge yawning mouths—three of the civilian security agents walked slowly toward the car, one to the driver’s window, the second holding back a few feet, the third wielding a round mirror attached to a long, metal pole, scanning the undercarriage of the vehicle. The two who approached the car wore large, loose-fitting shirts, unbuttoned, not tucked in, a lanyard and ID tag hanging from their necks. One hand was visible, the other near their belt line. Hernandez powered down the window.

  “Hey, Yakov, who’s your tailor?” said Hernandez. “Where can I get some cooler clothes for this desert?”

  His left hand out, the security guard waited for their IDs and passes. “Only your second day here and already you’re harassing the local citizenry? You’ll get a bad reputation, Agent Hernandez. Isn’t that right, Mr. Ambassador?” The agent bent down to look through the window to the back seat. “Welcome to Israel, sir. Agent Mullaney.” He nodded to the regional security officer. “We’re here to be of assistance, sir. If there is anything we can do for you, please ask. For him,” he pointed a thumb at Hernandez’s back, “not so much. Have a good day, sir.”

  Yakov lifted his left hand and flicked his fingers toward a small, block building attached to the back wall, its many windows smoked and impenetrable from the outside. The vehicle barrier descended to street level, allowing access to the underground garage.

  “Look out, world … the eagle has landed.” Hernandez drove the ambassador’s car into the darkness of the imposing and well-defended embassy.

  US Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 19, 1:58 p.m.

  The blue Ford carrying Parker was waved through the open gates of the ambassador’s residence by the marines on duty at the entrance. Down the street, under a low-hanging tree, a dusty Volkswagen beetle rested by the curb. “She is here.”

  “Wait for night,” came the reply. “Then look for weaknesses in the security. Perhaps we can secure the package while the ambassador and his security are busy elsewhere. The box must not elude us. Do not fail. You understand the consequences.”

  Palmyra Parker faced a dilemma. No matter how curious she was about the box inside the leather bag, her father’s warnings were alarming enough to hold that curiosity in check. Her dilemma was what to do with the satchel now that she had shepherded all her father’s baggage into the ambassador’s residence. She remembered the Bible story from her youth—one of the guys with King David reached out his hand to steady the ark of the covenant as it was being carried back to Jerusalem. He touched the ark and—zap!—he was a fried egg.

  Did she believe the box could really kill? Doubtful. But she wasn’t about to risk finding out. One of her favorite sayings was: Good judgment comes from experience; and experience comes from bad judgment. Testing this experience could prove deadly.

  Dressed in a beat-up pair of old jeans and a short-sleeved blue cotton blouse, she stood in the middle of her apartment in the south wing of the ambassador’s residence and tried to figure out the most secure place to hide the bag.

  There was the hide-in-plain-sight theory, that the best place to hide something was out in the open. Probably not a good idea with an object that could make your kids orphans. There was a safe in her father’s room, but she didn’t have the combination and didn’t want to answer questions about why she would need it. Still in the midst of settling into her new living quarters, Parker’s closets were a minefield of half-empty boxes of things that had yet to find a home. Hmmm … minefield. It would be pretty hard for anyone to navigate that walk-in closet without breaking a leg.

  Parker opened the door to the closet. About seven feet off the floor, a shelf ran around the inside walls of the closet. Her clothes hung from the poles on all three sides. But good luck getting to any of them. The floor of the closet was packed, waist high, with boxes full of “our family things,” those pieces of personal life that were treasures to their hearts: three boxes of her mother’s china, family photos from the time she and her brothers were infants—all the things that made a home intimate for those who shared their lives within its walls. Palmyra was determined to make a real home for her and her father. So she had packed up as much of their history and memories as she could manage and shipped it all to Israel. Now it all sat in boxes in her closet, a surprise to spring on her father … one of these days. But not today. Today she needed to fit something else into that closet.

  Among the boxes, the brown leather satchel would appear obvious. But up on the shelf were about a dozen of her handbags, some nearly as large as the satchel itself. Perfect.

  She pushed her handbags to the left, along the shelf. When she started to lift the satchel, she reminded herself to be careful. The leather bag was much heavier than it appeared because of the larger wooden chest that enclosed the metal box. She grabbed it with both hands, pushed with her legs and lifted the bag to shoulder height. Resting the bag against her clavicle, she took her right hand from the handle and placed it on the bottom of the bag. With a final shove, she got its base up on the edge of the shelf—and nearly dropped it on her head when someone knocked heavily on her bedroom door.

  “Mrs. Parker?”

  “What!” she snapped, wrestling with the precariously balanced bag.

  “My apologies, ma’am. It’s Jeffrey,” said the ambassador’s secretary. “I apologize for disturbing you. I called out but you didn’t answer. Your father is on the phone. He was very insistent that I check on you, personally, when I couldn’t get you on the phone … to make sure you were all right. He wants to speak with you, ma’am.”

  God help me. “Okay.” She pushed once more on the bottom of the bag, hoisting it up onto the shelf, then closed the closet and quickly walked to her bedroom door, opening it as she tucked in the tail of her blouse. “Thank you, Jeffrey. Please put through my father’s call.”

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 19, 2:45 p.m.

  Cleveland returned to the meeting room feeling more confident, at least about his daughter’s health and safety.

  “Sorry for the interruption, everyone.” Cleveland took his seat at the head of the conference table. In this moment of crisis, the ambassador’s closest advisers surrounded him. He would need every one of them—their knowledge, experience, and contacts—if the United Stat
es were to effectively navigate an increasingly perplexing and conflicting array of developments throughout the region. Deputy Chief of Mission Jarrod Goldberg was a veteran of Middle Eastern diplomacy, serving two previous ambassadors to Israel along with stints in Tunisia, Yemen, and Qatar. Jon Lin, FBI station chief, was a relative novice to the area’s politics but his ten-year FBI career included almost exclusive overseas assignments. Mullaney, his regional security officer, also carried impressive credentials. Not only because of his extensive experience in the Middle East, but also because of the glowing praise from Tommy Hernandez, a man whose opinion the ambassador highly trusted.

  Ruth Hughes, the mission’s political officer, was the fifth person at the table—perhaps the most invaluable at the moment. Hughes was the outlier. Neither a State Department nor law-enforcement veteran, she was a lawyer. In her mid-sixties, Hughes was enlisted by the State Department in 1995 after a twenty-two-year career with Aramco—the former US/Saudi oil partnership. She was corporate counsel for Aramco in 1973 when, following the Yom Kippur war, the Saudis first wrested a twenty-five percent piece of the company from the grip of American oil companies. She rose to be a corporate officer and member of the board in 1976. Hughes was considered so valuable to Aramco, she remained with the company for fifteen years after Saudi Arabia displaced Exon, Mobile, and Texaco and took complete control of the world’s largest oil and gas company in 1980.

  Simply put, Ruth Hughes played power politics with every government in the Middle East while negotiating contracts for Aramco. Not only did she know the players personally and intimately, she had access to back doors and private phone numbers that most westerners didn’t realize existed.

  Cleveland knew enough not to be fooled by her white hair, pulled back in a matronly bun. Hughes was as sharp as her pin-perfect black suit, crisp white shirt, and sparkling pearls. He was direct.