Ishmael Covenant

by Terry Brennan

  She was looking at Mullaney as if he had stolen her hope.

  “Two died? For me?” She shook her head. “No life is more important than another. That’s not right. That’s not fair. How can I be responsible for …”

  “They were doing their duty,” said Mullaney. “That’s what they sign up for. Shoot, that’s what we all sign up for. Not that your life is more important than theirs, or more important than mine. But soldiers … law enforcement officers … we honor our duty as much as we honor our lives. Our honor is our lives. Innocent people would be victimized and violated if there weren’t men and women who willingly put their lives at risk to maintain some semblance of order and safety. People of duty do it all the time. And sometimes it costs them dearly. But they wouldn’t … couldn’t … live any other way.”

  Mullaney sat down in the open bay by her side. “It’s not your choice to make, whether someone risks their life for you. It’s a choice they make. And for the same reason you mentioned. Every life is important. Every life is valuable, needs to be protected. That’s the only way evil is defeated—if good men and women are willing to stand against evil and do whatever it takes to vanquish it.”

  They sat in the bay of the helicopter in silence, watching the last colors of sunrise leave the sky. Once the medics had finished their chores and left, Mullaney broke the silence.

  “Did they say what they wanted?”

  “Sure,” said Parker. “They wanted the box. Why, I don’t know.”

  They looked into the distance.

  “I’m sorry about Haisha,” said Parker.

  “Maybe we should just give them the box.”

  “No,” she shook her head and winced at the result. She took a deep breath. “No, there’s too much going on here, a lot more than I think we understand. There’s a reason my dad was given that box and the responsibility of getting the box to the rabbis at the Hurva Synagogue. I don’t know why. Perhaps we’ll never understand the why of it. But no … we protect the box and get it to its destination. Besides”—she pointed into the distance where more than a dozen bodies were laid out and covered with sheets—“I don’t think we have to worry about those guys anymore.”

  “Not those guys, specifically,” Mullaney agreed. “But I want to know who is behind all this. Any idea who those guys were?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Parker. “They seemed pretty good at their profession. I was talking to a little girl between two of the stalls at the open market, and before I could react, I was down on the ground, a hand clamped over my mouth, and something injected into my neck. I came back to the world bound to a chair, blindfolded, and gagged in a freezer.”

  “Meat locker, actually.”

  “Smelled like something died in there. I was hoping it wasn’t …”

  Mullaney empathized with Parker’s flashbacks to her fears, but right now he needed more information. Now that Parker was safe, he wanted to find those who were responsible.

  “And they were talking to you in Turkish?”

  “No!” Parker snapped. Then she took a breath. “Sorry. Still feel pretty jumpy. They were talking to me in English most of the time, asking their questions and making their threats in English. But the one behind me, Hamid, spoke Turkish. Then when the leader needed to make a phone call, he talked to Hamid in Turkish and said Don’t let her die. Comforting. Then he walked away and made what sounded like a phone call, and on the call he was speaking in Turkish. I couldn’t understand everything he said, but I could understand the language.”

  Parker shivered under the blanket. Mullaney considered putting his arm around her shoulders. “But then, after the call, everything changed. Suddenly,” said Parker, “they got more belligerent, more animated, their threats got more vicious. That’s when I really started to feel … well, afraid that …” Her hand burst from beneath the blanket and grabbed Mullaney’s right arm. “What happened, Brian? What happened while I was … gone?”

  Mullaney shook his head. What happened? Was it only eighteen hours ago they had landed at Ben Gurion Airport?

  “Too much,” said Mullaney. He turned to his right to watch Parker’s face closely. “They came after us on the road to Jerusalem. The car crashed. Atticus—all of us—got shaken up. Your dad suffered a few cuts, a nasty bump on his head. But he’s okay.”

  Parker’s shoulders started to shiver. But she caught it and held his gaze with the fierce determination of a wounded warrior who knew the mission wasn’t over.

  “We have enemies, Palmyra, deadly enemies. And I don’t even know who they are. But there’s not enough time to go through it all. And we need to get you home. Your father won’t be at peace until he sees you with his own eyes. But … first … I need to know everything you can tell me about what happened while you were being held. What kind of questions were they asking you?”

  Parker shrugged her shoulders. “Where’s the box? Does the ambassador have it? What is he going to do with it? Did anybody touch the box … did we look inside? I didn’t understand why they asked some of those questions. Seems like they had pretty good surveillance on us from the outset, and they would have known where it was and whether Atticus had it. I kept thinking two things: What do you really want, and am I going to get out of here alive?”

  A quizzical look came to Parker’s face, and she turned to Mullaney. “Did they ever make a ransom demand?” she asked.

  Mullaney shook his head. “Not a ransom demand. An exchange. They wanted the box. We wanted proof of life.”

  “Yes … the FaceTime call. I figured something like that.” Parker pulled the blanket tighter around her, looking off into the dunes.

  “Brian.” Parker pushed herself farther onto the deck of the helicopter’s bay and leaned against the open doorway. “When I first came to my senses in the freezer, my captors seemed … well … there was a sense of urgency to their demands. Like it was critical they got their information right away. That’s when they started on this,” her hand went up to the unruly tufts of hair that were sticking out between patches of bandages.

  “I was going to ask you about your new hairstyle,” said Mullaney, allowing himself the shadow of a smile. “Doesn’t really look good on you, you know?”

  “Thanks. I’ll put in a complaint.”

  “What were they trying to do?”

  Parker waved her hand in front of her face. “Oh, they had a black box with a lot of wires running out of it. They scraped off chunks of my hair and pasted electrodes on my scalp. Said they would give me one chance to tell them the location of the box or they would start killing off my brain cells a couple hundred thousand at a time. But that’s not the point. They knew that box had to be in one of two places—with my father or in the residence. They weren’t asking if it was in the residence. They wanted to know where in the residence it was. Like, if they knew where it was specifically, they could get to it.”

  Mullaney knew where this was going, and it was getting him angry.

  “And there’s something else,” said Parker, interrupting his thoughts. “There was a second phone call, but this one was a call that came from outside. The leader answered it. There wasn’t much of a conversation. Yes … yes … I understand.”

  Parker stood to her feet and started walking away from the helicopter, her head down as if she was processing information.

  Mullaney didn’t need to hear anymore. He was already waving toward Hernandez and Levinson, who were talking with the helicopter crew and medics about twenty yards away.

  “And then we were packing up, fast.” Parker was still lost in her thoughts, kicking a stone on the ground, but her voice carried back to Mullaney. “That’s the first time I realized there were more people in the room than just the leader and Hamid, the guy whose breath smelled like a dumpster. Suddenly there were a number of people moving around, gathering things up. Two came to me, untied me from the chair, picked me up under the arms, and hustled me out of that room and into the back of a vehicle.”
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  Hernandez ran to Mullaney’s side. “What’s up?”

  That’s when Parker swung her body around toward Mullaney. The look on her face matched the rage in his heart.

  “They knew you were coming, didn’t they.” It was a statement, not a question. Parker’s eyes opened wide. “Brian … there’s someone inside. Someone giving them infor—”

  The blanket dropped from her shoulders and she moved faster than Mullaney expected, getting right in his face. “Where’s my father? Please … I need to see my dad.”

  The bodies of eight dead terrorists, covered with shrouds, were stretched out in the gritty sand of the Nitzanim Reserve. Brian Mullaney’s problem was that he didn’t know how many more of this terrorist band remained alive. Or who their next victim would be.

  “Look, Kat,” Mullaney barked into his iPhone, “I don’t care if the Eleventh Fleet is parked outside the residence, I don’t want Cleveland left alone. I want someone I can trust—I want you—by his side every minute. And take three other agents with you. I want him covered front and back, even if he goes to the bathroom to …”

  “Hey, Boss, that’s where I draw the line!” Kat Doorley was an eleven-year veteran of the Diplomatic Security Service and one of Mullaney’s most trusted agents. She took her orders seriously … and literally.

  “You know what I meant—get a couple of guys on the team—but don’t let the ambassador out of your sight. This gang we’re facing, I don’t know who they are. But there are a lot of them, they are resourceful, and they are determined. They snatched Mrs. Parker from just outside the residence, and I’m not about to underestimate their capacity.” Mullaney almost said again. And perhaps that was true. But now was not the time for self-examination.

  “Okay, Brian. I’m walking to his quarters now,” Doorley responded, “and I’ve asked the marines on duty at the checkpoint to go in and sit with him until we get there. When will you be back?”

  Mullaney, head of the Diplomatic Security Service contingent assigned to the protection of the staff and facilities of the American diplomatic mission to Israel, surveyed the field of battle before him in the early morning light. A line of four black SUVs—three of them bullet-ridden and burned out hulks—lay shattered and smoking in the cleft of a wadi fifty yards to the east. Agents from Shin Bet were loading two flag-draped litters into the hold of a military helicopter. On the other side of the wadi lay the bodies of the eight dead terrorists. Six others, most of them wounded, knelt in the dust, hands and feet shackled, their grim-faced Shin Bet guards watching as the back end of a canvas-topped truck was opened to transport the prisoners.

  Mullaney turned to his left and leaned away from the phone, toward Levinson. “Where are you taking them?” asked Mullaney. “Will I get a chance to question them?”

  Levinson was a professional. There was grief in his eyes for the two Israeli agents killed in the dawn ambush that had rescued Parker. But there was calm resolve in his voice.

  “We’ve got a place we can take them for questioning,” said Levinson, his eyes moving from the loading truck to the helicopter that was lifting off with the bodies of his men. “Someplace a bit more secluded than Shin Bet headquarters. Give us an hour or two, then we’ll give you a crack at them.”

  Mullaney waited until Levinson looked in his direction and then held Levinson’s gaze. “Will there be anything left to question?”

  Years ago, Mullaney and Levinson forged a strong friendship during Levinson’s tour as head of security for the Israeli embassy in Washington. If Levinson gave his word …

  “They’ll be alive when you get there, Brian.” Levinson’s eyes didn’t waver. “They won’t be very pretty, and they may be wishing for a glorious death that will catapult them to paradise, but they’ll be alive. Call me when you’re ready, and I’ll send a couple of my guys to pick you up. And no, we don’t want you to know the location of our little hideaway. Sorry … but there are some things we keep rather close.”

  Mullaney could tell that was all he was going to get from Levinson. But it was good enough.

  “Any news on the two who got away?”

  “Not yet,” said Levinson. “We’re still looking. We’ll get them, unless they make it to Ashkelon and disappear into those streets.”

  “Let me know if you pick them up, okay?” Mullaney nodded his head toward the second helicopter where Parker was pacing impatiently. “Can we get a lift back to the residence?”

  “Sure,” said Levinson. “Not a problem.”

  “Okay … Kat?” he said, turning once again to the phone.

  “Yeah … I’m still here. We’re walking into the ambassador’s quarters now.”

  “Great, thanks, Kat. An Israeli chopper is ferrying us back to the residence. Tell Ambassador Cleveland we should be there in ten minutes. And then we’ve got some serious talking to do.”

  31

  US Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 20, 7:10 a.m.

  “The first thing we need to do is get that box out of this house,” said Cleveland.

  Three other voices jumped on top of that comment, and the “summit meeting” in Cleveland’s office teetered on the edge of anarchy.

  “Dad,” said Parker, “you’ve got a major international announcement coming in five hours. The box can wait.”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere with that box until we’re sure it’s safe to move,” said Mullaney.

  “Yo,” stammered Hernandez. “I ain’t touching that—”

  Cleveland held up his hands to halt the flow of words coming at him and then pointed to the leather sofa and arm chairs nestled in the corner of his office. “Please, have a seat. We’re all tired.” Parker settled herself on one end of the sofa while Mullaney and Hernandez lowered themselves into the matching armchairs. Cleveland’s body was more than grateful to move from behind his desk to the welcome comfort of the well-worn leather sofa.

  They were all on the same team … and he was blessed and confident that they were all on his team. Especially important now that they realized there was a leak, perhaps a traitor, inside the embassy or residence staff. But he had to get them all on the same page. The challenge was which page came first. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind, and he was going to make that clear to them as well.

  “Okay … okay,” said Cleveland. “We have several major issues in front of us, all of them important, most of them intertwined. But getting that box out of here and into the hands of the rabbis at the Hurva Synagogue is at the top of my list. So this is what we’re going to do.” Reluctantly, Cleveland pushed himself out of the corner of the old, battered leather sofa and stepped out of the seating group so he could face all three of his team at once.

  “I’ve asked Jeffrey to locate the head of the Rabbinate Council—the chief rabbi at the Hurva—and get him on the phone. I’m going to tell him I have something of urgent importance for him and request him to come here to the residence. Brian,” he said, pointing to Mullaney and fixing him with his gaze, “I would like you to remain here with Palmyra to meet with the rabbi and make sure the box is transferred into his possession. I believe Palmyra, since she was the last to receive the anointing, may be necessary to make that transfer.”

  Cleveland turned to his left. “Tommy, you and I will leave immediately for the embassy. Jeffrey is also calling all the senior staff to make sure they all arrive early. Brian, you can join us once the rabbi leaves with the box. But we’ve got to be prepared for whatever comes out of this announcement today. We need to keep the secretary up to date both before and after the announcement so he can brief the president.”

  He was tired. More than tired. Mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion were clamoring for a foothold. Cleveland pushed his shoulders back and stretched to his full height. “As far as finding out who is behind the attacks we’ve come under, or discovering if there actually is someone here or at the embassy—”

  “Or at the State Department,” Mullaney interrupted.

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sp; “Yes … or at the State Department,” Cleveland agreed, “who is providing information to these terrorists, all that will have to wait.” He looked around at his closest confidants. “Is there anything else?”

  “And we need to decide about breakfast,” Hernandez mumbled. When all eyes turned toward him, Hernandez shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, I’m just sayin’. We’ve been up all night, and I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. My stomach’s been talking to me for hours. I just think it might be a good idea for all of us to get some sustenance. I think we’ll need it.”

  Cleveland crooked his head to once again consider Hernandez, who liked to play the clown, but who so very often came up with sound ideas. “Thank you, Tommy. Now that you mention it …”

  “I’ll call the kitchen,” said Parker, heading for the phone on the ambassador’s desk, “and have them send up some coffee and whatever they have for breakfast.”

  “Okay,” said the ambassador. “A few minutes break … and then we move.”

  US Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 20, 8:52 a.m.

  Israel Herzog looked like a banker. He was tall, fit, and muscular and wore a sharply tailored black suit, crisp, spread-collar white shirt, and a muted silver tie with thin, black stripes. Except for the wide-brimmed black hat on his head, there was little to indicate that Herzog was not only a rabbi, but one of the two chief rabbis of the Rabbinate Council of Israel. His beard was short and neatly trimmed, showing only a smattering of gray, and his eyes were a bright aquamarine, filled with questions and intelligence. He was not what Brian Mullaney was expecting.

  And Herzog had the handshake of a bricklayer.

  “Rabbi Herzog,” said Mullaney, trying to free his hand and restore its circulation, “thank you for coming to Tel Aviv on such short notice.”

  A wide smile accented the twinkle in Rabbi Herzog’s eyes. “Well, Agent Mullaney, it’s not every day I get a personal, and urgent, request from the American ambassador. It’s been a challenge to control my imagination on the drive from Jerusalem. What can I help you with that is of such burning importance?”