by Mark Alpert
“It also shows the path to Redemption. Once we have the completed code, we’ll know how to change the program.”
He shook his head again, harder this time. “No one can change the laws of physics.”
Tamara bent lower. Michael could feel her breath on his ear. “I bet you finished it, didn’t you? You completed the program? And it’s in your head now?”
He didn’t answer. But when he closed his eyes he saw the code again, scrolling swiftly upward.
To Michael’s great relief, Tamara stood up straight and left his side. But she returned just four seconds later and placed the half-full bottle on the desk in front of him. “We should celebrate,” she said. “Let’s drink a toast.” Bending over again, she opened one of the desk drawers and rummaged inside until she found a couple of glasses. “It’s no sin to drink if our hearts are pure, right?”
She put the glasses on the desk. Then she unscrewed the cap from the bottle and poured some of the brown liquid into each glass. Michael smelled something harsh and sweet. “What is that?”
“Jägermeister. I used to drink this stuff all the time.” She picked up one of the glasses and handed it to Michael. “Brother Cyrus was right about you. He said you’d give us everything we needed.” She picked up the other glass and lifted it high in the air. “You’re a gift from the Almighty, Michael. The Lord has provided!” She threw her head back and drank the brown liquid in one swallow.
Michael put his own glass back on the desk. He disliked the smell. And he didn’t want to celebrate anyway. Solving the puzzle hadn’t made him happy. In fact, it had made him very unhappy, because now he had nothing to distract himself from the things he didn’t want to think about.
“What’s wrong?” Tamara asked. “You don’t like Jägermeister?”
Avoiding her gaze, Michael stared at the curved wall of the hut, which was almost perfectly circular. He tried to estimate its diameter and circumference, but he couldn’t focus on the problem. He kept thinking of what lay beyond the wall—the sand dunes, the trucks, the soldiers in brown uniforms.
Tamara came toward him. She stretched her arm, reaching for his shoulder, but at the last second she stopped herself. Instead, she withdrew her hand and took a step back. “Oh, Michael.” She shook her head. “My brother Jack used to get that same look on his face when he was sad. And nothing I said could cheer him up.”
Michael stared at her. She hadn’t touched him. She’d kept her promise.
Tamara was silent for several seconds. Then she set her empty glass on the desk. “All right, enough fun and games.” She reached for the computer’s keyboard. “Now it’s time for you to show us the solution. Go ahead, start writing the code.”
She rested the keyboard in his lap. It felt very light. He looked down at the keys but didn’t touch them.
“You can’t keep this to yourself, Michael. It’s too important. The Lord is giving us a chance to redeem the world. Don’t you want to help us do that?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. David Swift made me promise.”
“Look, I know something about David Swift. He believes in world peace, right? What’s the name of his organization? The Physicists for Peace?”
Michael had seen that name on some of the papers in David Swift’s apartment. Also on the front of his envelopes. One night six months ago Michael had helped David put stamps on six hundred envelopes. “It’s ‘Physicists for Peace.’ No ‘the’ in front of it.”
“Yes, yes, whatever. The point is, he believes in peace. And once we open the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven, all of mankind will live in peace forever. If David Swift knew that we were—”
“There’s nothing in the program about heaven.”
“No, that’s not true! The program will tell us how to open heaven’s gates.” She moved a step closer. “Brother Cyrus has prepared everything. Once you give him the code, he’ll take care of the rest. No more pain, no more suffering. And you’ll see your mother, remember?”
“My mother is dead.”
“Michael, I explained all this already! There’ll be a resurrection of the dead, just as God promised. That’s the task He gave Brother Cyrus, to prepare—”
“I don’t believe Brother Cyrus. He wants to use the theory to make weapons.”
Tamara let out a cry that made Michael cover his ears again. At the same time, she fell to her knees on the carpet. “I swear to you, Michael! I swear on everything that’s holy!” She clasped her hands together. “Brother Cyrus is a man of peace! All he wants is the Redemption!”
He still didn’t believe her. She was his enemy, not his friend. She’d killed Dr. Parsons. “I can’t tell you!” he shouted back at her. “David Swift made me promise!”
She stopped arguing with him. Lowering her head, she pressed her hands to her face. For a long time she rocked back and forth, swaying on her knees. She made a wet, choking, groaning noise that Michael could hear even though he was still covering his ears. She was crying. He understood that much.
Finally, after about two minutes, she rose to her feet. She went to the door of the yurt and opened it. Before she stepped outside, she looked over her shoulder. “If you don’t tell us the code by seven o’clock this evening, Brother Cyrus will have to speak to you. And he won’t be as patient as I’ve been.”
Then she closed the door behind her and threw the latch.
14
AFTER TREATING MONIQUE’S GUNSHOT WOUND, THE EMERGENCY-ROOM DOCtors at Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital decided to keep her overnight. It wasn’t a life-threatening injury—the bullet had missed the bone and the major artery in her upper arm—but she’d lost a fair amount of blood, so the doctors hooked her up to an IV line and gave her a mild sedative. She fell asleep just as Lucille arrived at the hospital, along with a unit of Israeli Army commandos who took up positions at the building’s entrances just in case there was another attack. David gave Lucille a rundown of everything that had happened at Beit Shalom Yeshiva, including what he’d learned about Olam ben Z’man, whose real name was Loebman or Loehmann or something similar. Then Lucille returned to the Shin Bet headquarters to relay the information to her Israeli counterparts so they could track down the former computer scientist. Meanwhile, David went to Monique’s room on the hospital’s fifth floor and fell asleep in a comfortable chair by the window, getting his first good night’s rest in three days.
He awoke at 6 A.M. The room’s window faced south, toward the Old City, and in the distance David could see the Dome of the Rock again, now ablaze with the sunrise. Monique was still asleep, lying on her left side in the hospital bed with a white blanket half covering her bandaged right arm. She was in the fetal position, with her knees bent and her hands clasped under her chin, as if she were praying. There was no tension in her face now. In the early-morning light she looked young and unworried, a beautiful woman blithely sleeping through the dawn. The bustle of the day had yet to begin and the hospital seemed unusually peaceful. The room was so quiet that David could hear the drip of saline solution through the intravenous line, which snaked downward from the plastic bag on the IV pole to the needle inserted into the back of Monique’s hand.
David studied her. Whenever he looked at Monique for any length of time, he was struck by a feeling of disbelief. He was unfathomably lucky to have her as his wife. And not just because she was funny and smart and beautiful. Karen, his first wife, had been all of those things, and yet she and David had made each other miserable. The difference was that Monique understood him. She knew his reasons, his motivations—why he lost his temper over stupid things, why he sometimes retreated from the world and brooded in his office, staring at the paneled ceiling for hours. She knew his whole history—his drunk of a father, his cowering mother, his own ugly descent into alcoholism—and she didn’t try to bury it. Instead she tried to understand it, because it was a part of him. She focused on him with the same intensity that she applied to physics. She considered the problem from every angle and didn’t re
st until she solved it.
After a while David turned away from her bed and looked out the window. The walls of the Old City were brightening as the sun rose. Closer to the hospital, half a dozen sparrows picked their way across a yellowing lawn, and as David gazed at the birds he thought of Michael again. Perhaps the most miraculous thing David had seen in the past two years was the relationship Monique had developed with the teenager. Even though she was frenetically busy these days, taking care of a demanding one-year-old daughter while doing all her research and teaching at Columbia, she always found time for Michael. She’d given him an entire library of science books to read, everything from An Introduction to Modern Physics to The Fundamentals of String Theory. At dinnertime she enjoyed quizzing the boy to see how much of the information he’d memorized. And during the day she sent him e-mails from her office, each presenting a tricky problem in geometry or calculus, which Michael would spend hours joyfully solving. David’s chest tightened as he thought of those messages. They had to find the boy. They had to.
He sat by the window for another ten minutes, staring at the ancient hills of Jerusalem. Then he heard a knock on the door. He started in his chair, imagining men in black uniforms bursting into the room. Although he knew the hospital was full of soldiers assigned to protect them, he was still nervous as he rose to his feet. He tiptoed around the bed to avoid waking Monique and opened the door a crack.
Lucille stood in the hallway, holding a manila folder under her arm. Instead of her bright red suit, she wore a canary-yellow jacket and a matching skirt. Agent Parker was a big fan of primary colors.
“How is she?” Lucille whispered, craning her neck so she could look into the room. “She doin’ all right?”
Her Texas accent was a bit thicker than usual and her face was creased with worry. Her reaction to the shooting had surprised the hell out of David—he’d assumed that Lucille would be furious at them for going into the yeshiva by themselves, but she hadn’t uttered a word of criticism. For now, at least, she was holding back the recriminations. She stood solidly behind them, offering sympathy and support. It was hard to imagine, but David suspected that Agent Parker was growing fond of them. She was acting as if he and Monique were her real partners.
He stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He noticed an Israeli soldier standing guard about ten yards away, but otherwise the corridor was empty. “She’s much better. When I talked to the doctor last night, he said they’d probably release her by noon.”
Lucille let out a sigh. She looked exhausted. “I still can’t figure out how this happened. Why were those bastards following you in the first place?”
David saw them in his mind’s eye, the assassins dressed in black, coming down the spiral stairway of Beit Shalom Yeshiva. “I think they were looking for Olam, too. They must’ve heard about the FBI investigation and decided to follow us just in case we found him.”
“But you and Reynolds aren’t FBI. How did they find out you were involved in the case?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that they had a lot of firepower.” He pictured the assassins again, running through the smugglers’ tunnel. Then he recalled the sight of their bodies on the floor of the Western Wall Tunnel. “Have the Israelis had any luck identifying them?”
She shook her head. “They weren’t carrying any papers, so all we have are their corpses and weapons. Shin Bet is checking their fingerprints and analyzing the ballistics, but so far they haven’t found a match.”
And they probably won’t, David thought. The assassins had been too smart to leave any evidence. They were professionals, just like the people who’d kidnapped Michael and killed Jacob. “Shit, we were lucky to survive. Or maybe God had something to do with it. I usually don’t believe in Him, but every now and then I make an exception.”
Lucille cocked her head and squinted, studying him carefully. And then, unexpectedly, she held out her right hand. “It wasn’t luck. And it wasn’t God either. You did good, Swift. You have a talent for survival.”
He hesitated for a moment, surprised. Then he shook her hand. “Thank you,” he said.
Despite her obvious fatigue, her grip was like iron. “Just don’t get the wrong idea. You got a long way to go before you make up for all the crap you’ve put me through.” Grinning, she squeezed his knuckles for a few more seconds. Then she let go and waved the manila folder. She lowered her voice so the soldier down the hall wouldn’t overhear. “My contact at Shin Bet identified Olam ben Z’man. His real name is Oscar Loebner. Formerly a computer science professor at Hebrew University. But the university job was just a cover. He did most of his work for Aman, the intelligence division of the Israel Defense Forces.”
“So Rav Kavner was right.” David winced as he thought of the rabbi. He remembered the gunshot that had killed the old man, and the fountain of blood that had spurted from his forehead. “He said Olam had connections in the IDF.”
“He certainly did. In his younger days Loebner belonged to Sayeret Matkal, the army’s elite commando force. But he was injured in the early eighties, so the intelligence division sent him to school to become a computer expert. The guy turned out to be a genius at writing software.” Lucille lowered her voice still further and moved her head close to David’s. He could smell her perfume, a cloying lavender scent. “My contact wouldn’t tell me the whole story, but it sounds like Loebner worked for Israel’s nuclear program. They used his software for testing their bombs.”
David nodded. Through his work with Physicists for Peace, he’d learned a few facts about Israel’s nuclear arsenal. “He must’ve worked on supercomputer simulations. Those programs can predict the nuclear blast you’d get from a specific warhead design. The software is crucial to the Israelis because they have no other way to test their nukes. The country won’t even acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons, so they can’t conduct any atomic tests in the desert. They have to rely entirely on the simulations.”
“Well, they can’t rely on Loebner anymore. He stopped working for the IDF four years ago. He had a nervous breakdown after his son died in Lebanon.” She waved the manila folder again. “But Loebner had a lot of classified information in his head, so Shin Bet kept tabs on him. According to his file, he made some friends in the settlers movement, the nationalist Israelis who are stirring up trouble on the West Bank. Beit Shalom Yeshiva is part of that network.”
“Yeah, he was living at the yeshiva until last Tuesday. But where is he now?”
“Shin Bet doesn’t know. Loebner went to ground and they lost track of him. The agency is checking with its informants in the West Bank settlements, but so far no one’s reported anything.”
David grimaced. He thought again of Michael and felt a twinge of panic. Despite all their efforts, they still had no idea who’d kidnapped the boy. Finding Loebner had become their only hope. “Jesus, what are we gonna do? Maybe we should go to the West Bank. We can look for Loebner ourselves.”
Lucille shook her head. “Hold on, I’m not finished. Shin Bet’s a pretty good organization, but no one beats the Bureau for good ol’ American ingenuity.” With a smile, she opened the folder and removed a map of Israel. Across the country’s midsection was a line of red dots, each labeled with a time and date. “One of my agents in Washington sent me this an hour ago. She ran a search on Olam ben Z’man through all our databases, even though I’d told her it was just a code name. She didn’t find anything at first, but last night she tried a few alternative spellings and found a cell-phone account belonging to an Israeli named Olam Bensmann.” Lucille handed the map to David. “The phone company provided the tracking information for the account. These are the last known GPS coordinates.”
David looked closely at the line of red dots. The first location, labeled JUNE 7, 21:05, was in the Old City of Jerusalem, presumably Beit Shalom Yeshiva. The owner of the phone then traveled west, following Highway 1. The last dot was on the Mediterranean coast, about twenty kilometers south
of Tel Aviv. It was labeled JUNE 7, 22:55. David put his finger on it. “This is three days old. Don’t they have anything more recent?”
“No, Loebner must’ve turned the phone off. But this shows where he went last Tuesday night after leaving the yeshiva. He told the rabbi he was going to visit some old friends, right?”
“Yeah, friends from the army, he said.”
“He was telling the truth.” Lucille took the map and pointed at the last red dot. “This location is in the middle of an Israeli military base. It’s the Soreq Nuclear Research Center.”
David recognized the name. Israel had two nuclear-weapons labs, Dimona and Soreq. Dimona was where the Israelis produced the plutonium fuel for their bombs. Soreq was where the nukes were designed. “That’s where Loebner must’ve done his work for the nuclear program. The supercomputer work, I mean.”
Lucille put the map back in the folder. “I’d like to know what Loebner was doing there last Tuesday. I’ve already asked Shin Bet for permission to visit the base and talk to their security people. Shin Bet’s been cooperating with the Bureau so far, so I think they’ll let me in.”
“We’re coming with you.” David stepped toward her. “I know some of the physicists who work at Soreq. And Monique is an expert on supercomputer simulations. She uses them all the time in her research.”
Lucille stared at him for a moment, appraising. Then she nodded. “Yeah, I want both of you there. Right now I need as much help as I can get.”
15
THEY CAME FOR MICHAEL AT NIGHTFALL. TWO SOLDIERS IN BROWN UNIforms stepped into the yurt and yanked him out of his chair. Grasping his arms, they dragged him outside to a Toyota pickup parked on the sand. The soldiers lifted Michael off his feet and heaved him into the truck bed, which was loaded with ammunition boxes and a belt-fed machine gun. Despite the fact that he was screaming and flailing, he recognized the gun right away. It was a tripod-mounted M240, the U.S. Army’s standard-issue medium-caliber machine gun. He’d seen it before in one of his computer games.
