The Prophet Conspiracy

by Bowen Greenwood

  “Climb on the back,” he said. “Let’s get you to the authorities.”

  Remembering her encounter with the Israeli soldiers earlier, Siobhan replied, “I’m not really big on the authorities right now. Is there somewhere else we can go?”

  **********

  Supervising the dig workers was becoming too frustrating to manage. Sorting through the endless stream of pottery shards and goat bones depressed him. The heat never let up and neither did the boredom.

  Wilson Kendrick tried to keep his thoughts in productive places, but it was almost impossible. Pondering the subject of ultimate justice only made everything seem worse, but keeping his mind away from it proved too great a task. At this wretched dig, it was just too easy to feel like he was getting what was coming to him for the way he had dealt with Siobhan McLane’s paper.

  When she enrolled in one or more of his classes each semester, he simply appreciated the feeling of validation that comes with students who really look up to a teacher. She possessed a kind of girl-next-door beauty; more than a few of his colleagues might have taken advantage of her obvious respect. Kendrick wasn’t that kind of man. In those days, he congratulated himself on his ethics… until her paper crossed his desk.

  Anyone who came near the world of academia heard the phrase “publish or perish.” Back then, Kendrick had been no exception. Whatever Siobhan may have thought of him, his colleagues formed their own opinion. They believed him lazy, unintelligent, and occupying a professorial chair that should have gone to a better man. His prospects for advancement seemed dim indeed. The other members of the department didn’t take him seriously.

  He had been passed over for a full professorship many times by then. And as the brass ring came around again, he knew what was coming. None of his research went anywhere. None of his grants received funding. He offered no new finds or contributions to the field in years. He was going to be passed over for a full professorship again.

  And then an unknown grad student handed in the most incredibly-researched paper he had ever seen. She connected disparate facts about the Quran, secular history, and more, then injected them into an idea no one would have believed.

  Did Muhammad really come to Jerusalem? What if he left evidence behind?

  On its own, the theory would have been useless. However, Siobhan had done more than just put forward the idea; she had compiled a list of locations most likely to produce such evidence.

  Kendrick remembered the moment well. He sat in the tiny cubicle that passed for his office. He daydreamed of the full professorship that would never come as he half-heartedly marked grades between B- and A+ on the spoiled children’s papers. He had been ready to attend an archaeology conference where he was scheduled to present another boring paper on a theory that would attract no interest.

  His mouth fell open as he read the one paper that had changed everything. It was brilliant. The analysis of why each potential dig location could contain evidence was perfect. No one would believe it had come from someone so unknown.

  If he presented them with a more likely explanation… they would believe it.

  His face burned so hot when he stood at the podium and read Siobhan’s paper as his own. He cried when he wrote out the allegations of plagiarism against her for the Dean.

  He planned to build his career on that paper. He felt like he needed a shower afterwards, but at the time, completely discrediting her seemed necessary. If she hung around the university while he was off getting famous based on her work, there would have been too much opportunity for her to cause trouble. He still hated the memory.

  But it all proved worth it. Everyone loved the paper. He won his professorship. The University paid to send him to Israel to seek the funding for a dig.

  And the lady from the Fund for Mideast Harmony drove up to his hotel in a black Mercedes sedan with red leather trim, took him out to a fine dinner, and offered him the kind of funding he’d never seen in his whole career.

  Getting there had been nerve wracking. He danced along the edge of failure the whole time. He pitched the theory — his theory — to the Israeli government, but that went nowhere. He pitched it to a young official at the UN, who promised to show it to the head of the mission. But then he never heard from them again.

  The call from the Fund for Middle East Harmony seemed like a miracle. Being in the Holy Land made it easy to believe in such things. He could not figure out how they could possibly have heard of him or have been aware he was in Jerusalem seeking funding for a dig. They claimed they heard of his presentation at the conference, but it was hard to believe. He had never even heard of them until they called his cell phone out of the blue.

  The ride around Jerusalem in the luxury car had been wonderful. The wining and dining exceeded his wildest dreams. And the exorbitant financial offer impressed him so much he set aside his better judgment about a dig location.

  Now, he was stuck digging in a place where nothing was likely to be found — at least, nothing remotely related to his — his! — theory. The cold shadow of that same failure which had driven him to steal the idea now loomed larger than ever.

  Kendrick didn’t know what it would take to salvage this situation but of one thing he was sure: whatever he had to do to turn this into a success, he would do it.

  CHAPTER 10

  Cam lived in a high rise apartment building. As he unlocked the door and held it open for Siobhan, she observed at once he was among the rarest of creatures: a bachelor who took care of his space. Black and white landscapes of the Negev desert adorned the wall. Potted cacti decorated corners. A light tan carpet and black furniture completed the theme.

  Inside, she saw the kitchen neat, no dishes in the sink, and a personal space completely in order. A small bar separated the kitchen area from the living room, and two stools were parked in front of that in lieu of a table.

  Cam shut the door behind her and said, “Whoever they are, they have no idea who I am yet, so they’re not going to come looking for you here right away. We’ve got at least a night of safety. You can have my room. I’ll sleep out here on the couch.”

  She replied, “I can take the couch, Cameron. I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”

  He shook his head.

  “Siobhan, it’s highly unlikely we’ll be bothered tonight. But if we are, the only way in is the front door, so any danger would have to come through there. Which means I sleep in front of it, not you.”

  She just looked at him for a moment, and then smiled.

  “Cam, there is so much more to you than I imagined when I first met you. You’re supposed to be a tour guide, not a karate-chopping, motorcycle-riding, knight in shining armor.”

  He looked away from her at the knight in shining armor comment, and then said, “I could say the same thing about you. You’re supposed to be an innocent American tourist who happens to know a lot about Middle Eastern history. Why do I find you being kidnapped by fake Shin Bet agents?”

  “You said that a bit ago, too. You knew they weren’t with Shin Bet. I didn’t figure that out until they pointed a gun on me and put a bag over my head. How was it so obvious to you?”

  Cam stared out the living room window and over the Jerusalem skyline. The lights of houses dotted the surrounding hillside. He waited a long time to speak, and Siobhan let the silence grow, surprised to have stumbled into something that obviously held meaning for him.

  “I used to work there,” he said, without looking back at her.

  Siobhan took a while to process that. It certainly explained his fighting prowess and his tactical approach to their situation. But it raised a whole new list of questions.

  “So it was just, ‘I don’t know these guys from the office, so they can’t be Shin Bet?’” she asked.

  Cameron turned back to her and shook his head.

  “Of course not. Hundreds of people work there; you can’t know them all by sight. Besides, I left a couple years ago. But if they were pulling someone off the streets
for questioning, they would identify themselves differently. Shin Bet is an acronym; Shin and Bet are two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For English speakers, we would say Israel Security Agency.”

  Siobhan nodded, let the silence grow again for a moment, and then asked, “So how did you get to be a tour guide?”

  Cam shrugged and looked away from her again.

  “I had a…”

  He paused, obviously searching for words.

  “Well, I had a disagreement with a superior officer. I was part of the Division for Countering Terrorism. We had what I considered a unique opportunity. There was a terrorist; he rose up fast in the Al Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas. His name was Toma, Haaris Toma, and we had developed some intelligence that he wanted to expand their tunneling program.”

  Siobhan nodded. She had heard about the tunnels on the news and during her earlier tour. They were efforts by Hamas to dig tunnels under the Israeli border so they could sneak terrorists in and kidnap people.

  “Well, Toma wanted to take the same technique and apply it in Jerusalem itself. He wanted to dig out from the Arab quarter — from the temple mount, where the Dome of the Rock is located — into Jerusalem itself. He wasn’t satisfied with kidnapping Israeli citizens; he wanted to start kidnapping tourists.

  “The more intel we turned up on him, the more I cared about catching him and bringing him in. He’s a very violent man. In America, you’d call him a serial killer. Here, we call him a terrorist.”

  Cam paused and looked out the window at the Jerusalem skyline. Then he said, “I remember you asked about Professor Kendrick when you were with your tour group.”

  Siobhan fought back all the old feelings and looked out the same window Cam had just been looking out of. She didn’t say anything.

  When the silence grew awkward, Cam said, “Well, anyway, Kendrick came to the government here looking for funding for a dig. Normally, that just doesn’t happen. The government doesn’t fund archeology. But in this case, he said it had national security implications for Israel, so the Prime Minister’s office at least heard him out. They sent the question over to us, whether Kendrick’s research might really affect security.

  “I was a big proponent of funding Kendrick’s dig. I didn’t know so much about whether he could really find evidence of Muhammad’s night journey. I just knew some of the locations he proposed for his dig would give us a direct approach to the places I expected to find Toma’s Jerusalem tunnel. If Kendrick’s dig happened, I thought we could use it to catch Toma in the act.”

  Cameron paused for a long time. When he continued, it was in an emotionless monotone.

  “My boss was a woman named Maya Godwin. She overruled me. No dig funding. Not from Shin Bet and not from the Knesset — our parliament. We were at a meeting with the Knesset’s Foreign and Security Committee when she announced we had determined there was no security reason to fund Kendrick. I argued with her. She wouldn’t budge. I got a little heated. She still wouldn’t budge. I lost my temper. She fired me.”

  There was a moment when he could have been done speaking. He could have left the explanation there, and it would have been enough. But then he went on.

  “I grew up in the states, obviously. It’s not a surprise to anyone who hears me speak. There’s an organization called Birthright. They give Jewish young people a free trip to Israel to see the country that… well, to see the country that’s their birthright. I jumped at the chance right after college. I was bullied a lot when I was a kid for being a Jew in a Catholic school. After a bunch of punks punch you in the back shouting about being Jewish and crap like that, being a Jew becomes kind of important to you. I paid a high price for my ancestry. That makes it valuable to me.

  “Anyway, Birthright got me over here, and I fell in love. I started asking about how to emigrate, and it seemed like I was getting no results. Then, one day back home in the states, a recruiter from the Mossad came and knocked on my door.

  “In comparison to America, Shin Bet is the FBI, and the Mossad is the CIA. The Mossad actually wanted me to work in America. To them, it’s not spying. To them, they have people who help them understand what’s going on in their main ally. But to me, it felt a bit too much like spying on my own country.”

  He shrugged.

  “So I wound up in Shin Bet instead. But the thing is I came because I love Israel. I love the idea of Israel. I love the cause of Israel. After the Holocaust, Israel set out to be a place where Jews would always be safe. It’s a democracy surrounded by a nest of dictatorships. It’s a force for good in the world, and I wanted to be a part.

  “I lost my job at Shin Bet, but I didn’t lose my love of Israel. Tour guides do important work. They help tourists — usually Americans — understand Israel. They help our main ally know us better and give them more reason to see us as good friends to have.

  “I have a really good friend named Ibrahim. He’s my father’s age. He’s been almost like a mentor to me since I came to Israel. He did some time in the IDF but now works as a tour guide. When I was feeling like my world ended after I got fired, he came and told me all that stuff about guides I just mentioned. He suggested it was a way to still serve the country I loved.

  “I became a tour guide because it was a way to do what the Mossad originally wanted me to do: strengthen the ties between Israel and America by helping both understand each other better.”

  He lifted the left half of his face into a partial grin.

  “Now it’s your turn. How does an American tourist wind up tangled in a conspiracy involving fake Shin Bet officers and her cell phone?”

  She told him the whole story: staying for an extra day to dig, finding the wall with an ancient language carved into it, the murders, the chase, the bad encounter with the IDF troops — all of it.

  “So that’s why you didn’t want to go visit the police tonight. Well, given they faked being Shin Bet officers, it wouldn’t surprise me if they faked IDF soldiers too. Everything you described about them is wrong. They would have been kinder to tourists. They should have spoken better English. Those are standard IDF procedures - for the same reason I became a tour guide. American tourists are the best relationship-building opportunity we have. Most importantly, from what you described about their weapons, those were AK-47s, and the IDF uses M-4s.”

  Cameron saw the blank look on her face and said, “Names of different guns. Not important right now. Just take my word for it, they weren’t the IDF.”

  The conversation drew to a close, and Cameron got up to go prepare his bedroom for her. Siobhan tried one last time to persuade him she would be willing to sleep on the couch. His point was a good one, though. Better to have him covering the most likely point of entry.

  While he was out of the room, she walked over to his bookshelves and knelt down to study what he read. There were so many titles about Middle Eastern history there, she felt instantly at home. Many she had read, others she hoped to read someday. She remembered the conversations they had had when he was her tour guide. He knew this subject at least as well as she did — maybe more.

  And then she saw the book by Professor Kendrick. Siobhan sighed. After all this time, it still came so easily to the surface. The mixture of anger and grief for the lost career felt half boiling hot and half simply empty.

  Kendrick had adapted her paper into a little book; she’d known it for a long time but seeing it on Cameron’s shelf nearly set her off again. She tried to remember what her boss at the church said about letting go of it. She tried to turn her mind to other things. Gradually, the anger at Kendrick receded.

  She heard Cameron return to the room and rose to her feet. By the time she was standing, every nerve in her back prickled with awareness of his physical presence near to her. There was so much strength in him; she thought she could feel it even without touching.

  She said, “I love your books. There are quite a few of these sitting in my own ‘to be read’ pile back home.”

  Cam smiled a
t her.

  “Take any of them you want if you need something to read to help you fall asleep. Tomorrow, we’ll get you to the airport and get you home to the states. This is almost over, Siobhan. Once you’re on that plane, you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The two men greeted each other with hopes for Allah’s favor, ignoring the irony of the fact that they did it in a bar. They occupied a table in a back corner, sitting so each of them could have their back to the wall. They both ordered soft drinks. Toma wore a scowl, and it pulled the scar under his eye into an even more grotesque shape.

  “What happened?” were the only words out of his mouth.

  The other man was a fellow member of the militant arm of Hamas. He was a foot soldier — a thug. His job was to commit violence on orders.

  His voice quavered, and he wiped sweat from his brow as he replied.

  “We had her. We were just getting started wiping her phone when someone rescued her. She's gone.”

  “Who rescued her?” Toma asked.

  “We don't know, yet. He was trained, whoever he was. He took out one of our men in a way that left no doubt he was trained in hand to hand combat.”

  Toma pressed his line of questioning.

  “Should we assume the Israeli government knows what's going on, then?”

  The other man shrugged.

  “I don't think so. I think if the Shin Bet had her, they would have already swooped down on that dig with three hundred soldiers. I think she's still on the loose somewhere.”

  “Why do you think so?” Toma asked, leaning forward toward his compatriot. He was in the other man’s personal space, a looming presence of menace. “I don't believe in coincidence. If a trained operative interfered with our work, we should assume the worst. We cannot fail at this. The girl threatens Islam itself!”

  “It doesn’t have to be that bad!” the hired muscle replied, trying not to let his voice squeak. “In this country everyone serves some time in the military and gets elementary Krav Maga training; that would explain the hand to hand combat. It could have been a boyfriend. She’s an American citizen, so it could have been the CIA. In any case, if the girl were in Israeli hands now, they would already have dropped a bomb on us.”