The Cup

by Alex Lukeman

  Nick had no problem believing in evil, but he didn't believe it needed a supernatural being like Satan to account for it. He thought it was hardwired into the human psyche. Fortunately for humanity, there was also something hardwired in for good. The problem was that it seemed there were more people at the moment who fell into the evil category than the good one.

  He felt a headache begin. Thinking about the nature of good and evil was enough to give anyone a headache.

  Harker's desk was his for the moment and there was plenty to do. First he had to talk with Hood. Then the team had to plan the mission into Syria. Hood could help there, but it was going to be harder without Stephanie backing them up.

  He used Harker's secured desk phone and called Hood at Langley. Half an hour later, the headache was a lot worse. Hood had confirmed what Adam had said.

  A nuclear bomb, coming soon to a city near you.

  Without explaining the source of the information, Nick told Hood he had learned that the bomb was headed for America. He ducked Hood's questions and after they had arranged a meeting for later in the day he ended the call.

  Nick got up and walked to the bathroom out in the hall. He found a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet, scooped water from the tap into his hand and gulped down four of the pills. As he headed back to Elizabeth's office, Stephanie came in. She had her newborn wrapped up and cradled in her arms. Selena was right behind her.

  "Steph. What are you doing here?"

  "You need my help. Besides, I was bored in the hospital. There's no reason for me to be there. There's nothing wrong with me, Michael is healthy. The worst thing I can do for myself is do nothing."

  "I tried to talk her out of it," Selena said.

  "I won't pretend I'm not glad to see you," Nick said. "But are you sure you can handle this? Things are going to get intense around here over the next couple of weeks."

  "Things are always intense around here. I can handle it, but I'll be taking a lot of breaks."

  "Thanks, Steph," Nick said. "You just took a hell of a load off my mind."

  "You're welcome. I'm going downstairs to fire everything up."

  "I'm going to hold a briefing in an hour. There's something you can do for me before that. I need a current satellite photo of a suburb of Damascus called Darraya. Something detailed that shows the streets and the surrounding area. Can you find one for me?"

  "It shouldn't be a problem. We have satellites and drones monitoring Syria. I'll get right on it."

  She headed for the spiral staircase to the lower level.

  "Where are Ronnie and Lamont?" Selena asked.

  "They'll be here soon."

  "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "I have. Adam is back."

  "What? But he was killed. Wasn't he?"

  "He wasn't in the car. The driver was killed but Adam was somewhere else, talking to me on a link."

  "What did he want?"

  "He told me where the Grail is hidden. It's in Syria, in a suburb of Damascus."

  Selena pursed her lips. "So that's why you want the satellite picture. How come he doesn't go get it? Why us?"

  "I asked him that. He said he wasn't permitted to tell me why."

  "I'm glad that's cleared up."

  "He gave me a map."

  Nick took the folded map from his pocket and opened it up. It showed the city of Damascus and the suburb of Darraya. The location of the hidden library was circled in red.

  "Darraya is a rebel stronghold. It's surrounded by Assad's army and under siege, with daily shelling. People have created a secret library in the midst of all the destruction, under the ruins of a Syriac church. The Grail is in a crypt there. The monk in Turkey misled us. They handed off the Grail to the Hospitallers but it got handed back to them and moved to Damascus."

  "Maybe he didn't know about it. Either that, or he sent us on a wild goose chase," Selena said.

  "Yeah."

  "It's a good thing we didn't end up going to Malta."

  Nick looked at the map and thought about a city in ruins, under attack and surrounded by hostile forces. Once they got inside the city, everyone was an enemy.

  "We might wish we were going to Malta. This one is going to be a bitch."

  "How are we going to go in?"

  "I want to wait until Ronnie and Lamont get here so we can talk it over. I haven't figured that out yet."

  "Speak of the devil," Selena said, "here they are."

  "Let's not," Nick said.

  "Let's not what?"

  "Speak of the devil."

  Ronnie came into the room with Lamont close behind.

  "Feels like we might get some snow later," Ronnie said.

  "That's what I like about you," Lamont said. "Always the optimist."

  "Let me get Steph up here," Nick said.

  Ronnie looked surprised. "Steph? I thought she was in the hospital."

  "She showed up earlier."

  Nick spoke into Harker's intercom. "Steph, can you hear me?"

  "Loud and clear, Nick. I've got the photos you wanted. "

  "Come on up and we'll start."

  "On my way."

  A few minutes later she took her place on the couch with her laptop. The baby was asleep. Nick gave silent thanks for small favors and laid it out for them. He told them about Adam's reappearance and that the Grail was in Syria. He told them what Adam had said about the prophecy. He left out the part about being in a war between good and evil. Then he told them ISIS had built a nuclear bomb.

  "Adam told me when I was in the car. Hood confirmed it."

  "Is he sure?" Ronnie asked. "ISIS has a nuke?"

  "Yes. Hood has an informant somewhere in the organization. He said the analysts think they've found the lab where it was built, a couple of hours out of Raqqa. He was going to send us to look at it but things have changed. He's setting up a Delta mission to go in and check out the site."

  "That's the worst news I've heard since 9/11," Ronnie said.

  "They plan to set it off here, in the states. If they succeed, it will make 9/11 look like a preview to the main attraction.”

  "They have to get it into the country first," Lamont said.

  "You know they can do it," Ronnie said. "Our borders make Swiss cheese look like a brick wall."

  "Langley's on it," Nick said. "It's not our job to deal with the bomb."

  "Can't say I'm sorry about that," Lamont said.

  "ISIS knows the Grail is in Syria. Our job is to retrieve it before they do."

  "Do they know it's in Darraya?" Selena asked.

  "Adam didn't say that, only that they knew it was in Syria. But it's safe to assume that if they figured out that much, Darraya can't be far behind."

  Stephanie said, "I don't know if it's relevant, but I think I've identified the man who's been sending people after you, the one who's looking for the Grail."

  She put a picture up on the monitor of an unsmiling man with grim eyes.

  "Everything's relevant," Nick said. "Who is he?"

  "His name is Abu Abdul Haddad. He's close to al-Baghdadi, one of the ranking members in ISIS leadership. He's in charge of foreign intelligence, surveillance, things like that."

  "Our spymaster," Selena said.

  "Yes. He thought his phone was secure but he was wrong."

  "If ISIS finds out the Grail is in Darraya, he'll send someone after it," Selena said.

  Nick drummed his fingers on Harker's desk.

  Now I see why she does this all the time, he thought..

  "I'll tell Hood. If we can spot him, we can take him out. It might buy us some breathing room. Good work, Steph."

  She smiled at him. "My pleasure."

  Nick pulled out Adam's map.

  "This shows where the Grail is supposed to be hidden."

  "Let me have it," Steph said. "I can put it up on the monitor."

  She came over to the desk and he handed it to her. There was a scanner on the corner of Harker's desk. Steph
smoothed the map out on the desktop and placed it in the scanner. With a few keystrokes on her laptop, the map appeared on the wall monitor where everyone could look at it.

  Stephanie entered a new command and a satellite photograph of Darraya appeared on the screen next to the map. She zoomed in on the area Adam had circled in red.

  "Man, that place looks like pictures of Berlin in 1945," Lamont said.

  Darraya had been a popular tourist spot known for its crafts and cafés, but it wasn't a place to visit anymore. The satellite photograph showed streets lined with the pockmarked shells of buildings and filled with piles of rubble. Everything had been bombed or hit by artillery shells and heavy weapons fire. It was hard to imagine that people still lived there.

  "Zoom out a little," Nick said.

  From a wider point of view they saw that the city was surrounded by hostile forces. Assad's troops were everywhere, supported by tanks and heavy artillery.

  "More like Stalingrad than Berlin," Ronnie said. "You gotta hand it to the rebels. Those guys are tough bastards. Too bad they're not on our side."

  "That's one of the problems," Nick said. "They're not."

  He opened the drawer of the desk. Elizabeth kept a laser pointer in it. He found the pointer, clicked it on and pointed out the spot on the satellite photograph where the library was indicated on the map. It was almost in the center of the city.

  "Hell of a place to go just to get a book," Lamont said.

  CHAPTER 50

  Getting into a city surrounded by enemy troops and under siege was bad enough. The surrounding region was equally hostile and that made it worse. If they went overland they would almost certainly be discovered. Nick had no illusions about what would happen then.

  They talked it through and decided the only way in to the target was a high-altitude, high opening jump. Nick and Ronnie had each made one during their time in Marine Recon. Lamont and Selena had never done it.

  HAHO jumps were dangerous and difficult and were only used when the risk of the aircraft being shot down on approach was extremely high. For Darraya, coming in over the target low or high was not an option. They would be over enemy territory, lighting up enemy radar. Assad's antiaircraft missile batteries wouldn't miss. They were modern and deadly, courtesy of the Iranians.

  The advantage of a HAHO jump was that they could leave the plane some distance away from the target and glide in undetected. They could approach the Lebanese coast without being blown out of the air. The distance from the coast to Darraya was at the edge of HAHO capability, but it could be done.

  That left the problem of getting out again. Nick called Hood and told him the Grail was in Darraya and that he wanted to take the team in to get it. He didn't tell Hood about Adam.

  "I'm beginning to understand how good Director Harker is at this. I never thought much about how she got us the support we needed or where it came from. I just figured it was part of her job."

  "You're the acting director now, Nick, and you seem to be doing rather well at it. You're going to have to learn on the run. Stephanie can help you with some of it. But Elizabeth had all the threads in her fingers."

  "I need your help," Nick said. "The only way in there without being detected is a HAHO jump."

  "That makes sense, given the situation," Hood said. "Give me a day and I can line up what you need."

  "Getting in is one thing. I'm wondering how the hell we're going to get out."

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Hood said, "Let me call you back in about an hour."

  Hood disconnected. An hour and a half later he called.

  "I had to get your security clearance upgraded before I could tell you this," he said. "You need it anyway since you're running the Project until Elizabeth recovers. DARPA has developed an experimental stealth helicopter for penetration into enemy territory. It's fast, well armed and damn near invisible. It's also quiet. It's perfect for what you need."

  "Will the Pentagon go along with it? They're protective of their toys."

  "They'll go along with it," Hood said. "It gives them a chance to put it through its paces and see if everything works in a real life combat situation."

  "To see if everything works?"

  "I told you it was experimental. It's never been tried in combat."

  "You mean we'd be guinea pigs."

  "In a way. Unless you have a better idea...?"

  He left the question dangling.

  "Could we use it to go in?"

  "I don't think I can persuade them to do that," Hood said. "They'll risk it for an extraction if I tell them it's important. They won't want to make a double run, it's too much to ask."

  "Half a ride is better than none," Nick said.

  CHAPTER 51

  Darraya was a city pulled from a madman's darkest dreams. The deserted shells of burnt out buildings formed black and menacing shapes against the night sky. There were no lights to be seen. A light would have drawn an instant hail of sniper fire or worse. The only illumination came from smoldering fires and artillery flashes in the distance, or when a shell landed and exploded.

  The streets were empty except for an occasional, furtive figure. Occasional shots punctuated the night as one of Assad's snipers fired.

  Haddad had encountered little difficulty crossing the government lines. Confident in their ultimate victory, Assad's men were getting careless. Now Haddad was on the street leading to the ruined Syriac church and the library hidden beneath it.

  It hadn't taken more than a few hours to discover someone who could tell him where the library was located. His informant had resisted at first but then had been most cooperative. Haddad was a master at inflicting unbearable pain and it always worked. Before he died, the student he'd questioned told him the library was often empty at night. The shelling and bombing were greatest during the day. That was when the people who knew about it sought shelter. If his luck held, there would be no one there to interfere with the search for the cup.

  The street had been heavily shelled. Not a single building was intact. In the dark it was difficult to determine which was the one he sought. The student had said there was a door in a side wall that opened onto a path leading through the rubble to a wooden trapdoor. The door concealed steps going down into a basement far below street level, safe from the bombs and shells. The library was as much a place of physical refuge as a place where the mind could find a moment of normalcy in the midst of so much insanity.

  Haddad stumbled on a piece of masonry and saw part of the Syriac diamond cross carved into the stone. He had found what was left of the church.

  The shell of the church was mostly intact. An alley ran between the church and a burned out apartment building next door. Haddad turned down the alley. A shell screamed overhead and exploded, sending bits of debris raining down on him. In the flare of light from the explosion, Haddad saw the door. He readied his AK and went through, picking his way along a path barely visible in the rubble.

  The heavy wooden trap door was there, just as he'd been told. Haddad bent down, grabbed the edge and lifted it up. A faint light shone below, at the foot of a flight of stone steps.

  Haddad started down the steps. As he neared bottom he heard voices.

  They will help me look, he thought.

  At the bottom was a large room. All four walls were lined from floor to ceiling with shelves filled with books salvaged from the ruins of the city. Anyone would recognize the room as a library. There were even couches and chairs, where one could sit and read at leisure. The room provided surreal contrast to the devastation above, an illusion of safety.

  Two men stood talking. They hadn't heard him come in and had their backs to him. Haddad raised his AK.

  "I'm looking for something," he said. "Perhaps you can help me find it."

  The men turned around. Haddad saw they were young, students no more than twenty or twenty-one years old.

  "You don't need your weapon here, brother," one of them said. "Here, we leave the
war upstairs."

  "I'm not your brother," Haddad said.

  Haddad looked at the walls filled with books. There was no obvious door or place where something could be hidden. The floor was stone, covered with tattered rugs.

  Where was the cup hidden?

  "You." Haddad gestured with his rifle. "Begin pulling those rugs off the floor."

  "I won't," one of the two students said. "You can't do that."

  Haddad drove the butt of his rifle into the man's stomach. He doubled over in pain. Haddad stepped back and aimed the rifle at him.

  "I won't ask again."

  "Do as he says, Ibrihim," his companion said.

  "But…"

  "Just do it."

  The second man began pushing furniture off a rug.

  "A good decision," Haddad said. He turned to the Ibrihim, bent over and holding his stomach. "Help him. Now."

  Haddad watched as they moved the furniture and took up the rugs. He followed them around the room, looking for the telltale lines of a crypt set into the floor.

  He found nothing.

  "Start pulling those books away from the walls."

  Ibrihim opened his mouth to protest but one look at Haddad's expression and the way he held the AK silenced him. Books and shelves began to pile up along the walls. On the third wall, Haddad saw the arched outline of a passage bricked up centuries before. It had been hidden behind the shelves

  "Take that floor lamp. Break down the wall where you see the arch."

  Grumbling, the men picked up a floor lamp with a heavy base.

  "You are thinking you can use the lamp to attack me," Haddad said. "Is it worth your life? Use the lamp like a battering ram. Break down the wall."

  "Why are you doing this?" the second man said. "We're students. We are not part of this war."

  Haddad pointed his rifle at the man.

  "All right, all right."

  "Don't provoke him, Jalal. Do as he says."

  The men swung the heavy base of the lamp into the bricks. The ancient mortar cracked. Dust dribbled down the face of the wall. They swung the lamp again and then again. A few bricks tumbled out of the wall.