The Prophet Conspiracy

by Bowen Greenwood

  Toma shrugged and said, “I am not convinced, but I pay you well, so I ought to use your opinions. You live. For now.

  “Now we must reacquire her. She's not in her hotel room, she's not at the dig, and we're watching Ben Gurion to see if she shows up there tomorrow to try to get back to the States.

  “But I say we take the simple way. If she stole her phone back, then we can track her. Phones are like bugs people do us the favor of carrying without us having to plant them.”

  The henchman nodded. The Al Qassam Brigade had already acquired cell phone spying software from Russian hackers. They had gotten the necessary data from the American woman’s phone when they had it. It would be easy. He nodded again.

  Toma said, “When you find them this time, we no longer care about holding her or interrogating her or preventing any American interest. Kill her. Destroy the phone. Defend the faith.”

  “With pleasure,” the terrorist replied. “With great pleasure.”

  **********

  The sun edged above the mountains in the east. Siobhan emerged from the bathroom with her hair still wet. The shower had been wonderful. Even though her khaki pants and white t-shirt were the same as she had worn yesterday, she still felt like she’d washed away a week’s worth of dirt and sweat. She walked down the hall to find Cameron sitting on the couch, sipping a cup of coffee. He nodded at the counter, where an empty cup waited for her beside the pot. Siobhan filled it, and then took a moment to look at him.

  Cam was dressed very much the same as she was: tan cargo pants and a t-shirt, though his was gray. However, this was the first time she’d seen him without a baseball cap. The yarmulke over his curly black hair caught her by surprise.

  He noticed her looking and smiled.

  “You can’t be surprised I’m Jewish,” he said. “I mentioned it once or twice when I was your tour guide and last night.”

  “Of course not. I’ve just never seen you without a hat before. A normal hat, I mean. Oh! Not that a skullcap is abnormal…”

  He laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Siobhan. I’m a guide, remember. I deal with questions about Israel for a living.”

  She sat down beside him, sipping her coffee. She leaned in toward him a little bit as she said, “So, you’re pretty serious about your religion?”

  He shrugged.

  “To me, it’s not just about religion; it’s about history and ancestry. Being Jewish is a race, too, not just a religion. I know I was born into a people who consider themselves God’s chosen. What’s important to me is the experience of being Jewish in life. I know persecution, I know constant low-intensity war, and I know the rest of the world can’t be trusted to keep us safe.”

  She nodded.

  “I know what you mean. Right now, I don’t trust anyone but you to keep me safe.”

  At once, she realized that might have sounded over the top. What she meant was she had spent all of yesterday being chased by a killer and kidnapped by some kind of mysterious conspiracy, and that made it easier to understand what Cameron said about Israel. But the way she’d said it…

  “Anyway,” she covered. “I also need to worry about getting to the airport in Tel Aviv before four this afternoon.”

  Cameron sat for a moment, and she was afraid he was still processing her “I don’t trust anyone but you to keep me safe” comment. Finally, he said, “I already called my agency about sending a substitute guide to my group today, so I’m free. I’ll give you a ride there, don’t worry.”

  After, there was an awkward pause in the conversation until Siobhan pulled her phone out of her pants pocket.

  “Let me show you the picture,” she said. In her eagerness to change the subject, she forgot flashing it in front of him last night when they were escaping.

  Siobhan sat closer to him on the couch. Being close enough to him to show him the phone was also close enough to smell him. He was fresh from the shower he had taken not long before hers. The smell of his just-ground coffee twisted around a sharp cologne to make an intoxicating blend of scents. She breathed in and reminded herself her home was seven thousand miles away from him.

  Pulling her head back to reality, she tapped on her phone a few times. There it was: the image of a wall made out of tan stones hewn square and true. There was dirt piled up around it, exposing only a few feet of the wall. But in those few feet, Siobhan’s patient brushing away of dirt had revealed regular lines, loops, and swirls. Carved into the stone itself, they were obviously letters. The regular spaces and lines meant it had to be a language, but Siobhan had known since she first saw it, it wasn’t Hebrew or English.

  She held the phone out for Cameron to take a look. His eyebrows went up, and he peered intently at her phone for a while. Finally, he spoke.

  “You located this on a Dig for a Day program? All by yourself?”

  “Well, one of the archaeologists came in and helped me when I had about half uncovered.”

  Cam nodded. “From what you told me, it sounds like you know this already, but that’s a pretty big deal Siobhan. Ancient writing is something you don’t find every day. That’s a major find. Under normal circumstances, they would want articles about you for archeology magazines.”

  She sighed and said, “Yeah, but everyone who knows I found it is dead.”

  Cam said, “Exactly. So why? Why are people impersonating the government, shooting people, and trying to kidnap you?”

  Siobhan shrugged. “The obvious answer is it has something to do with that find.”

  Cameron replied, “It’s possible, but I want to know a little bit more before we jump to conclusions. Where did you find this?”

  She described the dig site for Cameron: just outside the City of David, near Hezekiah’s Tunnel.

  He stared at her. “Siobhan, that’s the dig site I was interested in when I was at the Shin Bet. That’s the one Kendrick was most interested in digging at. It’s the one that would have given me a chance to catch Haaris Toma in the act of digging a tunnel under Jerusalem.”

  She managed not to say anything about Kendrick.

  “So you think that’s why some psycho murdered two people there? And tried to kill me?”

  “It has to be. The coincidence is too big to ignore. Toma was really working on that tunnel, and that dig site interrupted his work. It’s the only logical explanation for this much violence to come out of that place.”

  Siobhan asked, “Do you think the actual find could have anything to do with it?”

  “Well, maybe, but I’m not sure how. On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine Hamas killing you if they saw you as a threat to their activities. They kill people all the time. If you ran into them, even without knowing it, all of this makes perfect sense. Maybe there was something at the dig site that gave evidence of their tunnel, something you might not know you saw. If they think you know they have a tunnel inside Jerusalem, they will kill to prevent you from telling anyone.”

  “But I don’t know. I never saw anything like that.”

  Cam nodded. “But they killed everyone else at the dig. Maybe you’re just a loose end. I can go to my old employers at the Shin Bet and tell them this. It might help me get back in.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Sabbath Day meant Godwin wasn’t in the office. She had a secure telephone line and data connection in her home in case of emergency, but Israel’s culture of observing the Shabbat was so thorough even national security personnel like Godwin stayed home at least one day a week. She might get Sundays off, too, if there were no crises.

  Her apartment was large, and she had the space all to herself. Sometimes, Maya wished she had met a man to share space and life with but, at the moment, she felt nothing but relief over the absence. It was one less person from whom she had to keep her secret.

  There were two bedrooms, but one of them served as a home office. Her encrypted phone sat on a luxuriant teak desk, along with a computer. The two pieces of equipment were the only interruption to the gleaming, l
acquered wood. Now, she sat in the leather executive chair in front of her desk, but the electronics were completely unused.

  She spent the morning contemplating her new life. Toma tried to make it sound hopeful, but Godwin was not so naive as to trust a terrorist.

  Professional blackmail operations usually included both a carrot and a stick. This was no exception. The stick was obvious: disobey Toma’s orders, and everyone above her in the chain of command — from the Director of the Shin Bet all the way to the Prime Minister — would get a copy of those old pictures of her using cocaine.

  The carrot was somewhat more creative.

  Toma, apparently, had an operation running. He intended to destroy an archaeological site. Godwin didn’t particularly care about archeology. Tourists came to see the things archaeologists dug up, but there was already so much of it Israel would never run out of tourists.

  This dig was different. If Toma was telling the truth, there was war buried under the City of David; all out war between Israel and every single one of her neighbors. If he was telling the truth — with a terrorist and blackmailer, that was always a big if — then he was right. That dig needed to disappear.

  Obviously, she didn’t particularly like bombs going off in Israel. It was her job to prevent such things. However, it was also her job to prevent threats to her country.

  Incidents of what could even be called terrorism from Israeli extremists were on the rise. If the dig in the City of David came to light, those people might do something so drastic it could upend the fragile balance of Middle Eastern politics. Israel lived with regular rocket attacks, but there was a big difference between that and all-out war. Israel had won many wars with the surrounding Muslim nations, but it had been very close sometimes. Godwin believed it was far better to prevent a war than to be overconfident about winning one.

  And, of course, Toma had those pictures.

  The other element of the plan — not of any interest to Toma, except it allowed him to create a carrot for her — was it created an opportunity for Cameron Dorn to look bad.

  Godwin and Dorn had clashed over Dorn’s desire to launch a new operation against Hamas. He and the agents he’d been working with had developed intelligence about terrorists gathering up equipment for underground operations. They were gathering this in Jerusalem.

  Dorn had made the logical conclusion and had assumed they were planning to extend their tunneling operations. In Gaza, Hamas dug tunnels across the border with Israel to sneak operatives past security. Dorn had thought they were doing the same thing in Jerusalem and had wanted to strike the storehouse.

  Godwin had resisted the idea. She didn’t like the idea of launching a first strike; she had wanted to wait for Hamas to commit a crime before acting. Dorn had made the usual argument about it being better to hit the bad guys before they hit you, rather than after.

  If the fight hadn’t taken place in a room full of politicians, Godwin might not have let it affect her so much. But any time members of the Knesset were involved, it affected her chances of being the next Director. He’d made her look weak in front of them. That had made Godwin so angry she couldn’t think straight. She’d fired Dorn and still enjoyed thoughts of proving he’d been wrong.

  Now, Toma’s operation would prove Dorn wrong. Hamas wasn’t building tunnels in Jerusalem at all. They were simply preparing to destroy one of the dozens of archaeological digs going on that year.

  Proving that — to the current Director of the Shin Bet, to the Knesset, to the Prime Minister — would undo a lot of the damage Dorn had done to her reputation.

  And it would feel good to show him up.

  So, she had accepted the terms. They were good for Israel and good for her as well. She insisted on only one point: telling Toma she would rather be exposed and deal with the consequences otherwise. She wasn’t really sure how much of a bluff it had been, but it had worked. He promised to fulfill her condition.

  In return, she had already given the orders to close down the archaeological dig Toma asked about. It was the Shabbat, so the academics who worked there wouldn’t be coming in today anyway. But the next time they did try, they would find their project was completely closed.

  That was the easy part. But the second part? The part where he wanted her to build the bomb he would use for his plans? That was a much harder sell with Godwin.

  Toma had to prove he was telling the truth about that dig.

  **********

  Siobhan said, “Do you need me as a witness or something, if this is really something the government should investigate?”

  Cameron shrugged. “I don’t know, I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Why?”

  “Well, my plane leaves today. If you need me to speak to Shin Bet — the real Shin Bet — we better go do it now before I have to get to Tel Aviv to catch my flight. It’s not like I don’t care. I do. I really want to know what happened. I can hardly stand leaving a puzzle like this unsolved.

  “But I’m not crazy. If this is Hamas, I don’t want to do anything but read about it in the newspapers. People are getting real-world killed. I just want to go home. I want to be safe.”

  Cam smiled at her. “That’s exactly what you should want. This isn’t your fight, Siobhan. It’s mine. The fact the other archaeologists from your dig are dead will be enough evidence I think. Let’s get you to the airport and back home to America.”

  Siobhan smiled. “It’s all I can think about. I never want to go through something like being tied up in that room again. But still… I want to know what exactly happened. I want to know if you catch the terrorist. And… I’ll miss you.”

  Cameron smiled at her. “I’ll email you to let you know what happens, and we can keep in touch.”

  The words were like a repeat of his gaze in the hotel lobby. The promise of future contact left her mind unable to take any other path. It was a fool’s errand to fall for a man to whom she’d never speak again. But if there was hope… if they might speak again…

  “When do we need to go?”

  He replied, “It’s only a 45-minute drive. You said your flight’s at four? We’re nowhere near late yet. Are you thinking about going back to the hotel for your luggage?”

  “Oh, I didn’t really think about it. I guess I shouldn’t. I mean, I would assume whoever kidnapped me, Hamas terrorists or whatever, I suppose if I went to the hotel it’d be easy for them to catch me again.”

  He smiled at her. “Well, you’d have me with you this time, which makes a difference. But yes, if you can bear to part with your personal possessions, the wisest course is not to go back to places you’ve been before. Is your ticket in your smartphone app?”

  She nodded, but after a moment’s thought her expression changed to a frown.

  “I’ve been completely focused on getting back home. It’s like a talisman for me. If I can just get back to America, everything will be alright. But the way you talk about them makes me think they’ll never quit chasing me. Do you think they’ll leave me alone once I get home?”

  Cam replied, “Tracking down one innocent civilian in America is a much bigger operation for them than tracking her down in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is home court for them. Operating in the U.S. is a whole different ballgame.

  “Once I tell Shin Bet the evidence about that dig site and the tunnel, and you’re in America, then you won’t be the main source of their problem anymore, and you’ll be too hard to get to anyway. Yes, you’ll be safe there. All we have to do is get you safely to the plane.”

  She liked what he said about the security to be found in the U.S. but didn’t like the bit about getting her safely to the plane.

  “Do you think they’ll be waiting for me at the airport?”

  Cam said, “Maybe, but the airport is swarming with security agents. Real ones, not Hamas impostors like you’ve been dealing with. And like I said about the hotel, you’re a lot harder of a target today than you were yesterday. You have me with you.”

  Siobhan smiled a
t him.

  “I’m glad I do.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Cameron had a spare helmet and leather jacket, the latter of which was much too big for her, but Siobhan wore it anyway. She’d never been on a motorcycle before he rescued her last night, and the idea of riding one on the open road scared her. She wanted all the protection she could get.

  When he got up to cruising speed on the road, all her fears stood up at once and said “I told you so!” in a mocking chorus. She had to fight the instinct to squeeze her eyes shut. Cars roared by beside them. The ground was uncomfortably close and seemed to be rushing past at the speed of light. Sitting behind him on the bike felt anything but safe. Clinging to him like Velcro only helped a little bit.

  The road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem felt to her like a rural freeway back home. There were enough cars to make it seem menacing not to have any walls around her but not enough for a proper traffic jam. Occasionally, they passed an unpaved path between the two directions of traffic for use in case of emergencies or by the police.

  Siobhan tried to distract herself from thoughts of imminent death, but everything going through her head was unhelpful. From her flight through the underground waterway to her kidnapping, her thoughts were universally unproductive, so she went back to watching the traffic.

  A white minivan pulled up alongside them and matched their speed. She had never been out of the country before and still found it surprising to discover the ways in which the foreign country was different from America and the ways it was the same. Minivans seemed like such an American thing, but it turned out they were common all over the world – or at least in Israel.