Countdown to Mecca

by Michael Savage

  21

  As they drove back toward Jack’s secret apartment in Sol’s newest car, a factory armored BMW—“This baby gives new meaning to ‘auto erotic,’” Doc said admiringly—Jack filled the mobster in on the latest developments while Doc added his own detailed observations and insight.

  “Do you think the Mossad killed Schoenberg?” asked Jack.

  “Why?” asked Sol.

  “For helping the Iranians,” Doc suggested. “It’s something they would do.”

  “The Mossad wouldn’t assassinate someone on American soil,” Sol decided. “Too risky.”

  Jack shook his head. “Two years ago, I would’ve agreed with you. But now is the idea any more outlandish than the Chinese trying to use San Francisco to poison the country, or turn the Golden Gate Bridge into ground zero for a dirty bomb?”

  “Hmmph.” Sol pressed his lips together.

  “It’s possible,” said Jack.

  “Of course it’s possible,” Sol complained. “Anything is possible.”

  “There’s possible and there’s probable. The Mossad killing someone they consider a traitor: that’s possible. Radical Muslims trying to destroy this country: that’s reality. See the difference? So, can you find out what is possible?” Jack pressed.

  “Maybe.”

  The answer satisfied Jack more than a quick yes or no: it was honest, a word Jack never thought he’d apply to a gangster.

  “What’s your beef with the Mossad?” Sol inquired.

  “How much did you hear before your dramatic entrance in the police station?” Jack asked.

  “I thought I heard plenty, but now I’m beginning to doubt it,” Sol admitted. “What did I miss?”

  Doc cut to the chase. “The authorities are putting all their eggs in Ana’s basket,” he said.

  “They’re buying that she heard what she says she heard?” Sol asked.

  Jack nodded. “So the question is, besides your instincts, how much can we really trust what she says?”

  Sol chuckled. “You don’t have to trust anything she says, Jack. That’s not the point.”

  Jack tried to get it and failed. “What is the point, then?”

  “You know a man or woman by the quality of their enemies, right?”

  “So it’s been said.”

  “Well, look who attacked her. In all my years working the underbelly, I’ve never seen an angry pimp or vengeful drug dealer marshal a team like that, or go after a German industrialist for that matter. Drug lords do it, but Ana would’ve told us if she were in with that crowd. Just thinking about them scares the words out of your mouth. It’s a special kind of fear in their eyes because they all know what these guys do to people.”

  Jack nodded at the sense Sol was making, and was just beginning to find the right track again when his smartphone buzzed. He was expecting the call, so he answered immediately.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Can’t talk long,” Dover said, equally as softly but even more quickly. “The weapon that was used to kill Schoenberg was a high-powered sniper rifle. It’s very expensive and rare, and the State Police and Bureau have already begun helping to check for recent sales. It uses a bullet that’s a little larger than your normal hunting rifle and that is even rarer. They may be able to identify the actual gun model. My weapons expert has two candidates, but there may be more.”

  Jack nodded. Long rifles did not require a permit in California, but the gun that had been used could only have been bought in a few dozen places in the state. That gave them some hope that they might be able to identify the buyer. Dover quickly informed him that they were going over Doc’s video as well as looking for other surveillance camera footage.

  “You won’t find any,” Jack told her with certainty. “Whoever this guy is, he’s better than the Levi Plaza gang.”

  “I agree, but we have to try.”

  Jack totally understood. “Are they really attributing all this to Anastasia’s secrets?”

  “I doubt it,” Dover assured him. “Not by the way they acted after you left. These are very dangerous waters. I think they were trying to lull you into their confidence so they can keep you close.”

  “Bastards,” Jack grumbled.

  “Only sometimes, Jack.” She paused. Jack imagined that someone was trying to get her attention. “Gotta go,” she said, and then the connection was gone.

  Anxious to get back to his workstation, he looked up to see where they were.

  “Hey!” Jack complained as they pulled up to the safe house. “What are we doing here?”

  Sol looked at him knowingly as he turned off the purring engine. The locals didn’t think twice about the luxury car. Many luxury cars came to the neighborhood to visit their wayward children in the halfway house. “You wanted to know if the Mossad was involved in this.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  Sol motioned for Jack and Doc to follow him. He led them into the public part of the halfway house rather than upstairs. He moved through the cafeteria to the far side of the counseling room. There they saw Ritu working with a young resident along with the safe house’s manager, a ruddy, young, tall, brown-haired man.

  Jack thought he saw the hands of the Indian escort and the manager touch, but he couldn’t be sure. The man stood swiftly, almost as if coming to attention, at the sight of the halfway house’s benefactor. Jack did notice Ritu smile before returning her attention to the resident.

  “Boaz,” Sol said to the man. “Could we see you for a moment?”

  “Of course, Mr. Minsky,” he said in a low, slightly accented tone.

  He motioned toward a plain door in the corner. They followed him there, but Jack noticed a smile was growing on Doc’s face.

  “What?” he asked his experienced old friend.

  “Wait for it,” Doc replied, further noticing that the door looked wooden, but was actually metal.

  The manager brought them into a plain room that reminded Jack of the police station’s interrogation room, except that it had a fridge, coffee machine, and simple computer table.

  “Please, gentlemen,” the manager said, motioning toward the plain chairs around the plain table. Then, with a flick of the bolt, they were sealed in.

  “Gents,” Sol said as he sat, “May I introduce Boaz Simonson. Boaz, this is Jack Hatfield and Doc Matson.”

  “Good to finally meet you both,” Boaz said, shaking each man’s hand.

  “Israeli, right?” Doc said as the two men shook, not bothering to check each other’s strength.

  Boaz nodded, grinning. “If the name doesn’t peg me, the accent does.”

  “Hey, should we be talking like this in here?” Jack wondered, crooking his head toward the seemingly thin walls separating them from the recovering alcoholics, addicts, and prostitutes.

  Boaz’s smile widened. “You are now in one of the most secure places in the city, Mr. Hatfield. This building was basically built around this room. And this room took us years to secure, design, and build.”

  “Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Sol added.

  Doc, his own smile widening, crossed his arms and sat on the table edge. “I’m guessing the money did not just go into soundproofing.”

  Sol winked. “Boaz, was the Mossad involved in the assassination of Schoenberg?”

  Boaz shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “How would you know?” Jack asked dubiously.

  Boaz looked to Sol. Sol looked at Jack. “Because Boaz is this region’s central Mossad sleeper agent.” Sol motioned sweepingly. “My entire staff is comprised of them.”

  Jack shook his head. “Sol, don’t tell me—”

  “Jack,” said the alleged mob boss, “you are the first people outside of my organization I’ve ever said this to. This facility is not a front for my crime activities. My crime activities are a front for these people.”

  22

  Doc acted as if he suspected it all along while Jack’s face was infused with growing u
nderstanding.

  “Genius,” Doc drawled. “You needed a position where you could seed sleeper agents all over the world, but also a base where both the underworld and Feds would be watching your criminal activities so closely they’d miss the real operations.”

  “Hide in plain sight,” Jack said.

  Sol nodded. “We needed a Mossad presence here, especially after the events you were involved with over the last few years, so I moved my headquarters from the East to the West Coast—to find my reputation had preceded me. The move started bearing almost immediate fruit.” He nodded at Jack, and then turned back to Boaz.

  “The assassination of Schoenberg was not done by us,” his top agent repeated.

  “CIA?” Jack asked.

  “Definitely not.”

  “No possibility?”

  “Never say never, but we found no hint of it. And we’re very good at finding hints.”

  “Who would kill him then?” Jack asked.

  “Someone who didn’t want him talking about the very special switches he ‘sold’ and shipped to Saudi Arabia.”

  “You stressed ‘sold,’” Doc pointed out.

  “The cost was so nominal as to be ridiculous,” Sol explained.

  “Further,” Boaz added, “we found no evidence of even the bargain basement price having actually been paid.”

  “Meanwhile, we now know that what was most likely a biological agent was stolen from a Russian depository a few weeks ago,” Jack said. “I’m guessing that the Russians had tracked it to an airliner that crashed in the Caspian Sea. They must have planted an agent on board to bring it down and reclaim the contraband.”

  “They didn’t,” Boaz corrected.

  “Then who?” Jack challenged.

  Boaz considered the question but said nothing.

  “He doesn’t answer unless he’s sure,” Sol said. “Or unless I don’t want him to.”

  “Which is it now?” Jack asked Sol.

  “I’ve got no secrets from my partners,” Sol replied.

  “So the toxin is still out there somewhere and no one is entirely sure who’s got it,” Jack said. “I thought Iran might be involved, but they are focused on uranium. So it wasn’t a CIA operation, and neither the Mossad nor another Western intelligence was involved. That leaves the Muslims or the Russian mafia.”

  Boaz frowned philosophically. “Why not both?”

  Doc lowered, and shook, his head. “I’ve worked with the Russian mob on just this sort of thing for years,” he admitted. “They abhor the idea. None of them want anything to ruin their ‘fun,’ especially something that can wipe a city off the map. They bring me in to help prevent that kind of thing, not cause it.”

  “So,” Jack concluded. “Al Qaeda? Those guys can’t blow their noses anymore without us knowing it.”

  “I’m not sold on the Middle East being involved at all,” Doc said.

  “Why not? You know as well as I do that they’d love nothing better than to get another crack at killing thousands like they tried here two years back,” Jack said.

  “Saudi Arabia basically funded Pakistan’s bomb. We looked the other way for a lot of reasons. The Saudis were allies, they weren’t crazy about India being the only nuclear power in the region, and we needed Saudi oil. More importantly, the princes had an understanding that, if things got tough in the Middle East, they would borrow a few nukes from the Pakistanis to keep everyone honest. That lend-lease hasn’t happened so obviously Riyadh isn’t losing any sleep about the missing material.”

  “Not yet,” Jack said. “Privately, they may be as concerned as we are. We don’t know what’s in motion there … or what they may know.”

  Sol and Boaz shared a look. “I think we may know someone we can ask.”

  Sol motioned for the others to join him behind Boaz, whose fingers were already flying over the computer keyboard. Like the room itself, the computer was deceptively simple-looking. But by the way it responded to Boaz’s prodding, it was exceptionally powerful. The screen quickly filled with a face and a name. “Riad al-Saud.”

  “Member of the House of Saud, a small clan that runs Saudi Arabia,” Boaz informed them. “He’s the nephew of Prince Tirki al-Faisal, the ambassador to the United States and the country’s spy chief, who publicly said in 2011 that Saudi Arabia would do more than borrow Pakistani weapons if Iran exploded its bomb. They’d make their own.”

  “And it wasn’t an idle threat,” Sol continued. “Interstrat, a website that tracks international relations, had published an article six months before ticking off a number of steps the country had already taken, including establishing bunkers and underground development areas. There was even the skeleton of an organization, known to Western analysts as the ‘bomb committee.’”

  “Riad al-Saud was a member of that committee,” Boaz went on. “As the only one with family connections to the country’s rulers—he had the right to be called prince—it was logical to conclude that he was the one in charge. He was also a government minister, whose portfolio included the ministry of minerals and resources, giving him ready access to funding and considerable power.”

  “Saudi Arabia with oil and nukes,” Jack said. “Remember when we thought the Cold War was scary?”

  “The spawning ground of Osama bin Laden armed with cash, weapons, influence, and idealogues,” Boaz agreed. “And the United States dares to call Israel paranoid?”

  “The problem we’ve had until now,” Sol interceded, “was not who to ask or what to ask, but how to ask. As you can imagine, al-Saud wouldn’t be interested in talking to me or the Mossad.”

  The light dawned on Jack’s face. “My documentary.”

  “Exactly,” Sol smiled. “The Saudis have a vested interest in assuring America that we have nothing to fear from them. They at least have to pretend to be an ally.”

  But the light faded quickly. “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Wouldn’t my reputation for mistrusting Muslims proceed me?”

  “Mistrusting?” Doc sniffed. “You issued a call to arms that got you thrown off TV!”

  “All the better,” Sol assured him. “To convince the great American devil of their sincerity would be a coup indeed.”

  “But what about General Montgomery and his cronies?” Jack asked. “How are they involved, and, maybe more importantly, why?”

  “Oh,” Doc said, elbowing Jack. “So now we’re putting all our chips on our hooker again?”

  “I believe whole-heartedly in the bullets that were shot at her, and me,” Jack stressed.

  By the time he looked back at the computer screen, Boaz had hacked Morton’s office PC.

  “How did you do that?” Jack marveled.

  “No miracle,” Boaz said humbly. “The day-to-day office computers are far less fire-walled than the interoffice communication devices.”

  Sol shook his head at his agent’s false modesty. “We’re hacked in now, and it only took us two weeks to get this far.”

  “Mr. Minsky,” Boaz interrupted. “Look. We’ve got something new.”

  They all stared at what Morton had typed in before the end of the workday. It was General Thomas Brooks’s “farewell tour” schedule.

  “Well, that explains that,” Jack said, his eyes on the glowing screen.

  “What explains what?” Doc asked.

  “General Thomas Brooks is due to leave his command in a few weeks. Maybe that’s why he’s been so willing to speak his mind.”

  Doc shook his head, his glower darkening. “No, Jack, that’s not how it works. A retiring general protects his pension. The only sort of military man who acts the way Brooks did is one with nothing to lose.”

  Jack was struck by the gravity of his veteran military friend’s words and was only distracted when Sol spoke.

  “Look at Brooks’s venues, Jack.”

  Jack looked. The general was going to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Israel, and then the city of Hejaz, in the capital of Makkah Province, in Saudi Arabia. “Mecca,” h
e breathed.

  Their realizations were like an elaborate domino maze clicking into place. All the disparate pieces came together in a nearly unbelievable whole.

  “Jack,” Doc asked slowly. “If you were Brooks, and you had a bomb, what would you do with it?”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. Then each of them, in turn, took the next step.

  “Crap,” Jack blurted. “Let’s get Ana. She may have ladies who are on the tour route. Maybe they can help.”

  The four men barreled from the safe house panic room with Jack thinking that there was no way he would be able to convince any of his FBI or CIA contacts of what had occurred to all of them. Not in the short time before Brooks arrived in Mecca. Even he still didn’t want to believe it, though it all now made perfect, albeit insane, sense. Still, they had to try.

  Ritu looked up and her expression changed from kindness to worry at the sight of Boaz’s grim visage. He came over to assure her everything was all right as Jack, Sol, and Doc headed for the stairs.

  They all but burst into the loft apartment, only to find it empty.

  “Ana?” Jack called. “Sammy?”

  Sol was about to call their caretaker Ric when the man appeared in the door of the bathroom, soaking wet, a towel around his waist.

  “Where are Anastasia and Jack’s half brother?” Sol asked his assistant.

  Ric looked around the room, blinking, as if expecting to see them there.

  “Don’t tell me they’re gone!”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Minsky. We were doing research on the computer, then I took a break—”

  Sol started, before shouting, “A break? We don’t take breaks here!”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Did you lose the Asian girl, too?” Sol yelled. “This isn’t Hebrew school where you push and shove and knock a yamulka off the other kid’s head! These bastards play to kill.”

  But then Miwa was there, also soaking wet, standing sheepishly behind Ric.

  Sol looked from one to the other. “Screwing? On my dime?”

  Jack was in no mood to reprimand. He just had to know that the others were okay. “Miwa, do you know where Ana is?”