The Prophet Conspiracy

by Bowen Greenwood

  After a few minutes, he heard “Come!” from inside.

  Getting back into the air-conditioned trailer felt wonderful, even if the tiny quarters put him closer to Godwin than he liked.

  “What is it, Segal?”

  “Haaris Toma was here at the dig, Director Godwin.”

  She blinked. Hard.

  “What? Impossible.”

  “One of the workers saw him. He described Toma’s scar.”

  “Just one witness? We can’t treat that as reliable.”

  “But such a perfect description of Toma’s identifying feature? ‘A real nasty scar under his left eye.’ We know that’s Toma.”

  “Segal, it was barely dawn. You can’t trust anything someone claims to see in light like that. This has nothing to do with Toma. It’s Dorn, pure and simple. We already traced the connection between the kidnapped professor and Dorn’s American accomplice. The connection is obvious. This is his work. He and the woman kidnapped Kendrick. What we don’t know is the exact motive.”

  “But—”

  “It was Dorn, Segal. No one else.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Cameron kept them underground until night had well-past fallen above ground. The two of them took turns catching a few winks by leaning up against the wall. They were pressed so closely together falling down wasn’t a risk. As they waited there, immobile, the pain in Siobhan’s ankle slowly subsided.

  Only after midnight did they climb up out of the hole and make their way back to the opening to the tunnel. Cam poked his head up from the tunnel. Once he was sure it was clear, he climbed out and then stretched out his hand to help Siobhan up as well.

  Cam led the way quickly toward the nearest structure. On other digs in the Holy Land, it was common for workers to live in a nearby kibbutz — the communal farms of Israel. But there was nothing like that in the middle of the Negev, so the workers lived in semi-permanent canvas tents or RV-style trailers.

  They passed yellow tape stretched across the area where they had initially confronted Toma and Kendrick. It was easy to recognize as the local equivalent of “Police Line; Do Not Cross.”

  Siobhan stepped delicately, avoiding stray pottery shards because they might crunch under her boots and make a noise. She followed Cam as he wound his way among the tents and trailers. He peaked through the windows of each until he found what he wanted.

  Siobhan’s eyes went wide as he casually picked the lock of one of the trailers and went in. He motioned for her to wait outside, but he needn’t have worried. She had no desire to go in.

  Before long, she barely heard his voice from inside.

  “Come on in; no one’s here.”

  She poked her head in far enough to see him and then replied, “Cameron, this is someone’s home!”

  “I know, but we need their stuff.”

  “Breaking and entering, stealing… Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of government agent?”

  “Former,” he replied. “And look: I don’t like stealing but unless you want to turn yourself in to my former colleagues and spend three weeks being interrogated before they finally decide you’re innocent, we need supplies. I’ve got some cash in my wallet. I’ll leave them a couple hundred shekels for what we steal.”

  “Why is it empty?” Siobhan asked. “Shouldn’t they be here sleeping?”

  Dorn replied, “This whole dig is now the site of a government investigation. My former colleagues almost certainly sent everyone away from here to preserve any evidence.”

  The trailer was tiny. There was a bed in the far rear, a tiny little bench masquerading as a couch, and what at first blush appeared to be a closet too small for brooms but was actually a toilet and a shower.

  To judge by the type of clothing scattered throughout, the resident of this particular trailer was apparently a male. With only moonlight streaming in through the windows, Siobhan watched, mystified, as Cam gathered up a pair of scissors, a razor, swim trunks, and a flash light.

  “This is what you mean by supplies?” she whispered.

  “I have a plan. We’re going to—”

  He cut off in mid-whisper when he heard footsteps outside. At once, he dropped down to the floor, motioning for Siobhan to do likewise. Outside, two voices conversed in Hebrew.

  Lying on the floor to avoid being seen through the windows, Cameron inched silently toward the back of the trailer. Without a word, he pointed at Siobhan and then pointed at the minuscule bathroom. The message was clear: “Hide in there.”

  Before she could reach it, though, the voices receded into the distance. Cam rose to his knees to peek out the window.

  “They’re gone,” he said. “But I should have known they would be here. This just got a lot harder.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Shin Bet guys. I recognize one of them. Of course, they left a guard here. Since they didn’t find us, they just left a minimal guard while the rest went on looking for wherever the infamous terrorist Cameron Dorn will strike next. We’re lucky we didn’t run into them coming out of the tunnel. In all likelihood, they’re patrolling the whole dig.”

  “What do we do?”

  Cam replied, “We need to be a lot more careful while we’re gathering your half of the supplies.”

  Cam broke into three more trailers until, again judging by the clothes, he hit one that turned out to be a woman’s home. The layout was exactly the same as the others; Kendrick, like most other archaeologists who have to arrange workforce housing, had obviously leased them all from the same supplier. This one was the recipient of a greater decorating effort. Some kitschy signs about friendship hung on the walls. All of them were in English, which didn’t surprise Siobhan all that much. Kendrick likely recruited most of his workforce from American archeology students.

  Cam sat down on the tiny couch and began roughly cutting off that curly black hair she loved.

  “What are you—”

  “This isn’t going to be pleasant. We have a decision to make, Siobhan. Each of us has to make our own. Mine’s already made, but yours may not be.”

  His voice remained in a low whisper, not even as loud as the snip of the scissors as he cut his hair.

  “I invested too much of my life in capturing Haaris Toma. I gave up my job rather than giving up on catching him. So maybe I was wrong about them trying to build tunnels with all that digging equipment. I guess they’re going to blow up your dig instead. Either way, I’m not letting him get away with it. Not when everything I used to live for has already gone up in smoke over him.”

  Cam casually cut his hair while he talked.

  “I’m going back to Jerusalem. I’m going to your dig. And I don’t care whether Toma comes out of there in handcuffs or in a body bag. If I’m alive, he’s not coming out free.”

  Siobhan blinked. That was blunt. It made her wonder how she sounded when she talked about Kendrick.

  “I’ve got to be honest here. I gave you my word I’d get you back to America. There are three ways left to do that. One, you go to the Shin Bet and you turn yourself in. You make sure you’re in their custody when Toma blows up the dig. Then, when he tries to frame you for it, he’ll actually be undoing everything he’s already done because you will have the perfect alibi. You were sitting in a cell when it happened. The investigation will drag on a week or so, and then the Shin Bet will send you home.

  “Or else maybe things at the dig go another way. I capture or kill Toma, and that provides evidence you were innocent all along. Either way, the Shin Bet sends you home.”

  Awkwardly gathering his hair into fistfuls to attack with the scissors, Cam went on.

  “The third way is through the fire with me. Come with me; help me prove this whole thing is a frame up. When we catch Toma in the act of trying to blow up the dig, it will change everything as far as the accusations against us.”

  He paused to stare directly into her eyes. He said, “The first two ways are long and it might be traumatic depending on how the interrogati
on goes. Worse, when you go back to America you won’t have any resolution about your find. If I stop Toma from blowing it up, who knows what the government will do about it. But they’ll probably give the credit to the professionals you worked with through the Dig for a Day program.

  “On the other hand,” Cam concluded, “The third way, we could both die. It’s going to be much worse than just hard. First, you have to get through one of the most heavily patrolled cities in the world where every single soldier and cop has been given your name, photograph, and identifying information. And if you make it through all that, there’s likely to be a gunfight at the end. I accepted the risk of death when I first moved to Israel. But I can only make the choice for myself, not for you.”

  Siobhan met Cam’s eyes.

  “This is what I need to know.”

  His reply was only to raise his eyebrows and wait.

  “Is it the right thing to do, Cameron? Ibrahim talked about how this might lead to war. You did, too. If we try to stop Toma and save the inscription, will we be responsible for a war?”

  Cam replied, “It’s simple for me. Whether or not the inscription actually says what we think, I trust my people. As a society, we won’t vote to destroy the Dome of the Rock. We don’t start wars. So if anything’s going to happen, it will be from extremists on one side or another. Maybe there are Jewish groups who will try to blow it up. I hope not, but it’s possible. Maybe there are Islamic terrorists who will commit violence in Israel just because of some ancient words on a stone. If they do, we’ll beat them. We always have.”

  “Will I be a hindrance if I come? Will I just be getting in your way? I don’t even know how to use a gun, let alone have a gunfight.”

  “You won’t be in the way. I’ll just leave you behind when things get dangerous. Before then, you’ll actually be a help. I don’t know my way around the inside of that dig.”

  Cameron was finished with the scissors. He held out his hand, offering them to her.

  “If you do go, we both go all in. That means you do what it takes not to be caught in advance, and that means you’re next for the scissors. I was hoping for hair dye for you. That red hair is way too much of an eye catcher in this country. But I guess people who work underground in the middle of the desert don’t bother with that kind of thing. So we just need to get your hair short enough to hide under a hat.”

  Siobhan took the scissors and headed into the bathroom to use the mirror. Maybe Cam could just cut his off, but she had standards.

  ********

  While Dawn was still some time off, Siobhan and Cameron got ready to leave the trailer. The American whose trailer they had robbed had left her passport behind when the Shin Bet cleared out the dig. Siobhan now had it.

  The passport was only the beginning of what Cam stole. The dig site wasn’t far from the Dead Sea, that lifeless body of water in the middle of the desert. Lifeless it might be, but it was still good for swimming. And after a week working outdoors in the sun, most of the workers apparently liked to spend their weekends there. Swimwear had been easy to steal.

  She understood as soon as Cam did it and felt foolish for not thinking of it herself. Toma and his terrorists were either already back in Jerusalem or on their way. Once there, they would control the main entrance to the original dig site. That made Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the way she had come out the last time, the most likely way for her and Cameron to get in. Her initial slog through that tunnel had been miserable for a lot of reasons, but one of them was her clothes had gotten soaked. The stolen swimwear would help solve that problem.

  And if they were going to fight at the end of it, doing it in wet clothes would be worse than stupid.

  Cameron left behind all of his shekels to compensate for everything they had stolen, and then the two of them set out into the darkness.

  She was about to walk blithely around the corner of the trailer when Cameron grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

  Voices around the corner reminded her the dig was guarded.

  Cam peeked around the corner quickly, and then pulled his head back. He held his finger to his lips, and Siobhan froze against the wall, silent.

  On the other side of the trailer, she could hear voices speaking in Hebrew. As usual, she caught a word or two but not enough to learn anything useful. She knew Cam would hear everything, but that did nothing for her at the moment.

  The people on the other side of the trailer – one voice was distinctively female – said something that made Cam reach for the pistol tucked into his pants. He caught Siobhan’s eye and, with the barrel of the gun, traced a motion like going around the corner.

  At once, his reasoning became apparent. She could hear the agents walking around the east end of the trailer as Siobhan and Cameron crept around the west end.

  She held her breath, hearing them talk to each other as they walked. If the guards turned left at the trailer, they would walk past the door through which she and Cam had just exited. There would be footprints there.

  Finally, it became clear the voices were receding, and Siobhan allowed herself a slightly deeper breath. As the agents walked away into the night, Cameron led her toward the parking area.

  There was a work truck the archaeologists had left behind, and Cam quickly discovered a spare key magnetically held in the wheel well. He opened both doors and waved Siobhan in.

  “Put it in neutral,” he whispered, handing her the key.

  She did. Releasing the brake seemed like a good idea, too, since she saw him go to the front of the truck and begin to push.

  Silently, it rolled backward away from the dig. Only when they had gone about a hundred yards did Cam run back to the driver’s door and climb aboard.

  He started the engine, and Siobhan assumed he must believe they were far enough away from the dig to get away with some noise.

  “I don’t know how long their patrol route will last. Based on the size of the dig, it should take them no more than 20 minutes. Sooner or later, they’re going to pass the place where employees used to park. Then they’re going to call this truck in. We can’t stay with it for longer.”

  And with that, he floored the gas pedal, trying to gain as much distance toward Jerusalem as he could before time ran out.

  CHAPTER 24

  The Fund for Middle East Harmony existed only on paper. In the real world, it was nothing more than an extension of Hamas. When the terrorist organization had learned an American academic was asking Israel to fund a search for proof Muhammad had never been to the Temple Mount, the leadership had agreed at once something had to be done.

  The Fund had been created using money from Iran and other sympathetic countries. Hurriedly, they had helped support a couple of random, irrelevant digs to give the Fund a track record. They had assigned responsibility for preventing this sacrilege to Haaris Toma. They had read Kendrick’s published paper on the subject and had determined the most likely places to find the so-called “evidence.” And then they had offered Professor Kendrick a vast sum of money to dig in the wrong place. At first, he objected they were asking for a dig in the least likely location.

  The Hamas operatives posing as board members of The Fund had a simple answer. Their understanding of Islam was greater than his, and the place he was most likely to find evidence was in the Negev.

  They also increased the amount of money they were offering until he said yes.

  Once Kendrick had been dispatched on a fool’s errand, Hamas had also funded the real dig. At the site that seemed most promising based on Kendrick’s paper, they funded a few local archaeologists, with one significant requirement: they had to hire Toma as a worker. That way, he would personally be able to contain any find that might be unearthed. If the idiot American’s theory bore fruit, no whiff of the heretical artifacts would be allowed to reach the public.

  What the Fund had brought into existence, the Fund could eliminate. Toma had already made the phone call that would close down Kendrick’s dig site in the southern des
ert. That had never had any purpose except to keep the meddling academic out of the way.

  Moreover, the American woman’s evidence was now destroyed. There would be no picture in the newspapers proclaiming falsehoods about the Prophet.

  One thing remained: the artifact itself. No one living had seen it but Toma and the American woman. The American was thoroughly discredited and had no more proof. But as long as the ruins existed at all, the risk existed with them.

  Godwin had made sure there was no investigation at the site so far, despite the disturbance caused by the American.

  But that wasn’t good enough.

  The ruins from the seventh century must be destroyed.

  Which was why Maya Godwin slid into the back seat of Umar’s sedan, directly behind Kendrick. The latter was still hooded and gagged, so he could not see her. Besides, he would not live to tell anyone what he saw.

  “You know how dangerous this is,” Godwin snarled. “If I’m seen with you, it’ll be the end of me.”

  Toma smiled as he taunted her.

  “It’s not yet dawn, or I would not have this man in my car. Even if anyone was looking, there is no light by which you could be seen. Stop being so fearful.”

  “Just tell me the plan.”

  “This is the part I told you about back in that parking garage where we first made each other’s acquaintance. We go down to the dig. You wire up a nice bomb. We come back out. We go far away. Boom, that is the end of this fool’s” — here he elbowed Kendrick — “blasphemy about the Prophet’s night journey.”

  “Why does it have to be me who sets the bomb?”

  “Because I am not an explosives expert, and you are.”

  “You had no trouble blowing up that apartment building.”

  “Why are you stalling? Do you think there are no bomb-makers in Hamas? It’s what we do.”

  “Then why me for this?”

  “The elders of my organization have ordered that none of our people see the inscription. Rumor of this sacrilege must end completely. To be honest, I think they underestimate the faith of our people. I read Kendrick’s book about what might be written on that wall, and I have not fallen away from Islam. I doubt my belief is stronger than the rest of my people. But I promised the elders a very amusing plan to blow the dig up without any of our own people going inside. You are not in Hamas, obviously, so perhaps you didn’t know this: If you like to be alive, it’s unwise to go back on your promises to the elders.”