“We know where the lab is located, and we have a nuclear team on the way,” the interrogator continued. “It is Iran. You were right, Rendi. Savage told us that. Lamentations Ruggles had met with Iranian agents at an insurance convention in Istanbul. We checked his travel documents, and they confirm the trip. They smuggled the enriched uranium into Haifa in a ship’s container from the Republic of Georgia. He also told us that Iranian agents planted the bomb, made from plastique manufactured in Tehran, at the American Colony. They compromised one of the American security people, a Secret Service agent named Roger Blakely, whom Savage had converted to his cause. He planted the bomb in the football, then went to a movie. We’ve notified the FBI in the United States. The circle is closing.”
Abe, Rendi, Emma, and Habash received this news solemnly. Habash removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I was hoping it wasn’t Iran. You know that the Israeli government and maybe the Americans will have to retaliate against them, don’t you?” he asked the group. “This could cause a major war,” he said despondently.
Abe looked at Emma and Rendi. His only thought was to get them out of Israel before Iran could retaliate against an attack, whether with a nuclear-tipped rocket or a dirty bomb. He also worried that the Israeli nuclear team that was on its way to the lab might not make it in time—surely Dennis’s people knew that he’d been captured. What if they made a move before he could talk?
Then, suddenly, Abe’s skeptical defense lawyer’s mind clicked into gear. “Wait a minute!” he shouted. “How can you be sure Denny is telling the truth about Iran? Is there any corroboration for that part of his story?”
“He was tortured,” Emma said. “He would say anything. Of course he told you what he thought you wanted to hear.”
The interrogator put his hands on his hips. “Our methods are infallible. He described the precise location and dimensions of their lab, and we were able to identify a match by satellite photography. It was self-proving. So was the trip to Istanbul and the Iranian source of the plastique. We don’t rely on his word, especially because he’s a trained agent. We corroborate everything by indisputable physical evidence that can’t lie. He also told us about the nature of the upcoming plot. He said that the Iranians had contacted Revelation Ruggles again after the American Colony bombing and that they agreed to work together on detonating a dirty bomb. And he gave us the money guy behind all of it. His name is Bob Buchanan. He’s an American. Bankrolled the whole thing.”
“If Iran was involved in it, why did Buchanan have to bankroll it? It doesn’t make sense,” Abe insisted. “My gut is telling me Denny may be telling the truth about the dirty bomb and the plastique in the football but lying about Iran.” He turned to Habash. “Hear me out. What if Denny’s real purpose is to ignite a war between Israel and Iran? He’s a disciple of an apocalyptic religious leader who lives in Megiddo and who is trying to bring about the End of Days.”
“Go ahead,” the interrogator said, looking warily at Abe. Abe understood that the interrogator would be insulted by any suggestion that Denny had successfully lied to him even about part of his account, but he also knew that the interrogator had to learn the whole truth.
“Okay,” Abe began. “Here’s what I think happened. It all fits together. Occam’s razor.”
“Whose razor?” the intelligence officer scoffed.
“Occam’s. William of Occam postulated that the simplest explanation—for our purposes the one involving the fewest people—is probably right.”
“Well, what is the simplest explanation?” Emma wondered.
“That the Christian cult, funded by the like-minded American, did all this on their own and are trying to bring the Iranians in—to frame them. It’s like 9/11,” Abe pronounced. He was speaking to his family, Habash, and the investigator as if they were his jury.
“You had me until you said it’s like 9/11,” Emma countered. “How, exactly?”
“The evil geniuses who planned 9/11 figured out how to use American airplanes as weapons against America. These guys are trying to use America and Israel as weapons to attack Iran as a beginning to the End of Days. Their first attempt at sparking Armageddon was the mass assassination at the American Colony. It failed.”
“What do you mean, failed? It killed the president, the prime minister, and so many others,” Emma answered.
“Yes.” Abe wagged his finger as he made his point. “But it didn’t produce the kind of massive retaliation against Iran that they were hoping for. Somehow they managed to get plastique explosives that were ‘consistent with’—a fudge—those manufactured in Iran, but that alone didn’t prove that Iran planted the bomb. They might have gotten the plastique from Hezbollah, who got it from Iran for use against Israel. The plot was too complicated. It required too many leaps to involve Iran. They left too few clues. It wasn’t clear enough to justify a full-scale attack on Iran, certainly not after the WMD fiasco in Iraq.”
“They were probably hoping that Husseini’s conviction would be enough,” Habash speculated. “But your father ruined that approach by proving that his client was innocent.”
“That’s why they tried to poison Faisal—to protect against the possibility of an acquittal. Everyone believed that Faisal’s group did it, but they were wrong,” Abe continued.
Emma shook her head. “It may have failed in that sense, but it certainly had an impact on the world.”
“Yes, but not the impact they were seeking,” Habash said quietly. He quickly understood Abe’s theory and was inclined to believe that the defense attorney was right.
Abe smiled at him. “Their End of Days scenario required massive retaliation, hopefully nuclear retaliation, by Israel and/or the United States, which would lead to further retaliation, again hopefully nuclear, against Israel. And remember that the United States has promised to regard a nuclear attack on Israel as an attack on the United States and has pledged massive retaliation.”
“The final battle,” Rendi added. “Beginning at Megiddo.”
“Exactly. The small cult was emboldened by how easy it was for them to kill so many leaders with one blow. Since they were on no one’s radar screen, they weren’t even suspected. This encouraged them to take it to the next level: a nuclear attack on Israel with even more and clearer Iranian fingerprints. Israel would have no choice but to attack Iran.”
“Where did they get nukes?”
“We’ll know that as soon as Arish’s team gets to the lab,” Rendi said.
“Wait a minute,” the interrogator interjected. “We know that Denny told us the truth about the lab. Why would he lie about Iran?”
“Because he could,” Abe replied. “He couldn’t lie about the lab. It’s either there or it’s not. It’s self-proving. If you didn’t find it where he said it was, he was fearful that you guys would continue whatever you were doing to him—whatever opened his mouth in the first place. But the Iran stuff couldn’t be proved or disproved. He knew that if his information about the lab turned out to be true, you would probably believe the Iran accusation, because it seemed so connected and so plausible. He also told you about the trip to Istanbul, which was true and helped to confirm his story. But it doesn’t prove that Lamentations actually made a deal with Iranian agents. It does, however, point yet another finger at Iran. It was enough to lead you to believe that Iran was the guilty party.”
Abe paused to see if his argument was succeeding. It was, so he continued to its conclusion. “And if you believe the accusation against Iran, the United States would be bound to retaliate against Iran. Israel would urge an attack by the United States against Iran. They’ve been pressuring the United States already. At the very least, Israel would be forced to attack Iran, and Iran would retaliate against Israel.”
“The End of Days. The Apocalypse. The biblical prophecy fulfilled. It all makes sense—at least to them,” Rendi chimed in.
“It was their best chance to bring the Second Coming.”
Emma sat silently. It all made se
nse. Rendi only hoped that the Mossad agents got to the lab before Denny’s cohorts had a chance to strike.
LV
The Lab
LAMENTATIONS RUGGLES WAS at the lab in the woods of Megiddo, under a building that had been used as part of an abandoned garbage dump. The lab had been constructed in the cellar of the building. When Revelation lost cell-phone contact with Denny, he’d directed his son to try to detonate the material they had assembled. They’d previously agreed that if contact were lost, they should assume that Denny was captured and that it would be only a matter of time before the plot was discovered. They had hoped for more time, in order to smuggle in more nuclear material, but they already had enough for one dirty bomb. They also had enough conventional explosives—a combination of fertilizer, ammonium-nitrate fuel, and PETN—to detonate the nuclear material. Lamentations would not live to see the End of Days, but he would know he was responsible for bringing them about, and he would be rewarded with the only reward that mattered.
They had gotten the nuclear material through contacts in the Khan network. It was part of a shipment destined for Iran and had the same characteristics—the same chemical signature—as nuclear material identified in Tehran by American and Israeli agents. When detonated, it would leave unambiguous Iranian fingerprints. The man in the United States had paid a fortune for it, more than he would have had to pay for Ukrainian nuclear material. But it was worth the extra money to get the material from the Khan people, who believed they were selling to an Iranian intelligence operative—their initiate in Tehran. A false-flag operation, as Rendi had suspected. By purchasing the material in this way, it was far more likely that the Israelis and Americans would see Iranian fingerprints, even though they were planted prints. This would set off a series of retaliatory attacks and counterattacks, which would culminate in a nuclear exchange, the final battle and the End of Days. It was a good plan. It could work. If only Lamentations were able to detonate the dirty bomb before the Israelis found it and stopped him.
Lamentations knew exactly what he had to do. He didn’t worry about contamination. If things worked out, he would lose his mortal coil within hours. So what did a little nuclear contamination matter? In heaven there were no bodies, only incorporeal souls. He took the priceless uranium from the lead boxes in which it was stored and began his process. His research on nuclear technology had paid off. His father knew what he was doing when he’d sent him abroad to learn this esoteric science of destruction.
In the meantime an Israeli commando unit, trained to find and disassemble nuclear bombs, was rushing by helicopter to find the lab. Using sophisticated Geiger counters and other highly classified technologies—technologies that had been developed for possible use in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities—the unit zeroed in on the area in which the lab was hidden. Suddenly the Geiger counters spiked, indicating that nuclear material had been exposed to the air.
“They’ve taken the nuclear material out of the lead cases,” Uzi Ramon, the head of the unit, announced.
“Everyone put on your nuclear shields. You’re exposed.”
The commandos placed their protective garments around their bodies as their helicopters circled over the small building from which the nuclear signals were emanating.
“It may be booby-trapped. Take all precautions,” Uzi warned. “We can’t attack by bombing the lab from the air. It will risk detonating the nuclear material. We have to come in from on top of the house, which is less likely to be wired. Lower the ladder,” Uzi ordered. “Acharai.”
Acharai was the battle cry of the IDF. It meant “after me.” The leaders of Israeli elite units—and there was no unit more elite than Uzi’s—prided themselves on always being the first into battle, on leading their soldiers into harm’s way rather than commanding from the rear. That’s why casualties were always so high among Israeli commanders and officers.
Uzi lowered himself down the ladder, followed by the other commandos. They landed on the sloped roof of the house and quickly found a small attic window, which they opened and crawled through. They raced downstairs, with stun guns drawn, expecting to meet armed resistance. What they saw shocked them.
Lamentations Ruggles—a small, bespectacled man, dressed in a suit and tie—looked like a pharmacist filling a prescription. He kept working, ignoring the commandos, even as they ordered him to back away from the table. The explosive trigger was neatly arranged and ready to start the chain reaction that would disperse radiation into the windy air. Uzi shot him with his stun gun, and he fell to the floor.
Uzi rushed to the table and saw that the man on the floor had been just minutes away from detonating the nuclear material on the table. Uzi made sure there were no timers, booby traps, or other materials capable of causing a detonation. Then he ordered everyone out and back to the copter, to reduce the risk of nuclear contamination.
“Take this guy with us. He’s contaminated. Treat him accordingly. Then secure the premises and call in the ground team. Make sure to disable any explosives, if you find anything I might have missed. Tell them to gather up the material and put it in lead boxes. Then we’re out of here. Job well done,” Uzi commended his unit as he ascended the ladder back to the hovering helicopter.
EPILOGUE
The Gulfstream
WOW, A PRIVATE PLANE. I’ve never flown in one of those,” Emma gushed, looking around the posh Gulfstream V. “How did you score this, Daddy?”
Abe reclined in the tan leather seat opposite his daughter and poured himself a glass of water. “Anything to get you home,” he joked. “We have some appreciative friends in high places. Don’t get used to it. Back in Boston you fly coach.”
“Or frequent flier, on your account.” Emma grinned. She, too, was sitting in a large leather seat, looking as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She was young, in love, and had just helped solve one of the most infamous mass murders in global history while preventing an even worse one.
It had been five days since Lamentations Ruggles was captured in his lab. He was in the hospital being tested for radiation poisoning, and the Israeli and U.S. governments were fighting over who had first crack at prosecution. With the arrest in Israel of Revelation and the arrests in the States of Roger Blakely, the compromised Secret Service agent, and Bob Buchanan, the bankroller, all the perpetrators of the American Colony bombing were behind bars. The only loose thread was Denny, because of the way they got him to make statements. No Israeli or American court would allow a conviction to be based on the methods used by the interrogators. Rendi was convinced, however, that the Israeli authorities could convict him of his attempt to murder her without his coerced statements. In any event, his career as an intelligence resource was certainly over.
After the plot was aborted, Abe reached out to his former client Rashid Husseini and asked him why he had pointed them in the direction of Iran. Rashid told Abe that he truly believed that the American Colony bombing had been orchestrated by the Iranians, because of their apocalyptic mind-set. “I was wrong,” he admitted sheepishly to Abe. “So were a lot of other people, including the Israelis. Wishful thinking perhaps. Because I do not believe in religion, I was hoping it was religious fanatics, but not my brother. I was wrong. Please accept my apology.”
The entire story had caused a sensation in Israel, and the authorities were only too happy to fly the Ringels home in high style if that meant less media time for Abe.
Abe was as relaxed as he’d felt in a long time. Knowing that his daughter would be taking a job in the capital until her clerkship started, put him at ease. With Habash’s help, Emma had been convinced that Israel was too dangerous for her. At least for now. “I still have more than a million miles accumulated. You can use them to visit your father whenever you want,” Abe offered.
“Better yet, you come visit me. Washington isn’t that far from Cambridge, and I’m going to be busy in my new job.”
“Human-rights division of the State Department. Could there be a more perfect
place for you?” Rendi said proudly.
Emma smiled. She was excited about the job, which she had applied for and been offered via e-mail within days after the story of Dennis Savage and the Ruggles men broke. She decided to take it, because she couldn’t stand to be stationed so far away from Abe and Rendi. “I’ll be traveling a lot! Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East. I can visit the Regels.”
“And Habash,” Rendi said knowingly.
The night before Emma left, Habash had confided that he’d been offered a gig teaching a four-week seminar at the Kennedy School in Cambridge. He’d turned it down three times, but since Emma would be in the States for the foreseeable future, he had reconsidered and accepted.
They agreed to keep open the possibility of intensifying their romance, but Emma turned down Habash’s request for an exclusive relationship. Life was too unpredictable for an adventurous young woman to become tied down to one man. Moreover, the events of the past weeks had pained her into wondering whether her attraction was more toward the excitement and challenge Habash represented than to the man himself. She wasn’t sure whether she loved him or admired what he stood for and did. Perhaps both. Time would tell, and Emma had plenty of time.
“No more Lone Ranger stuff,” Abe insisted. “No more following anonymous leads. No more kidnappers. I don’t know if I can win any more cases. I’m getting a little old for that sort of stuff.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy. The State Department won’t let me go anywhere on my own. They’ll be keeping an eye on me.”
“They’d better. You never know where the enemy lurks. Who would have imagined, when this all began at the American Colony, that it would end with a tiny pro-Israel Christian sect—a sect that traced its roots back to our ancestor Avi—that wanted to bring about the destruction of the world? Who could have imagined?”
The Trials of Zion Page 28
