“We have all agreed to see this through to the end,” said Johnson. “We’re not there yet, so there are more steps to be taken. Please, make the calls. And then we can all hope in Tom’s faith that God is in control. Because, now, we will need that divine intervention you told me about, Tom.”
Krupp set his jaw and nodded his head. This was the moment.
“Guys,” Bohannon said softly, “would you mind if I said a prayer?”
In the silence and the shade of the terrace, Krupp joined the others. He bowed his head, opened his heart, and waited to see if God would show up.
49
Using all of his billion-dollar clout, Krupp was immediately on the telephone across the secure lines he used for his most sensitive communications, speaking with the prime minister of Israel. Krupp proposed a secret meeting in Switzerland, to convene in no less than seven days, bringing the key Arab and Israeli decision-makers together in one room. His enticement was that they could, possibly, walk out of the meeting with a secure and lasting peace for the Middle East.
“Mr. Prime Minister, I know there is an inherent danger in this,” said Krupp. “I admit I could be wrong. But at the same time, I am also convinced that this may be our best hope, our last hope, to discover what has been impossible to discover for generations. A road not only to peace, but also to peaceful coexistence for Jew and Arab in Jerusalem, in Israel, in Palestine. Eliazar, this could be your moment to change history. For your children, Eliazar, for all our children, come to Switzerland.”
Krupp could nearly touch the tension and fear on the other end of the line.
“You may be asking for the impossible, Mr. Krupp. I’m sure you understand the dangerous implications of what you are proposing. If you gave them a choice, half of Israel would vote against a temple. And you really think there is a possibility the Arabs won’t respond even more emphatically? This is foolishness. Alexander, you cannot ask me to make this decision.”
“Mr. Prime Minister, with all due respect, this is a decision you cannot avoid,” Krupp pleaded. “These men told me the Arabs were also pursuing them. Why would that be, except to keep this discovery from becoming public? They know. At least two Arab groups out there know what these men were seeking and that it’s possible they found. How can any of us keep the existence of the Temple a secret? In today’s world? Where everyone appears to have their own blog up and running on the Internet? No, my friend, this is not a time to dwell on our concerns; it’s a time for practical politics and unprecedented diplomacy. We have the chance for peace. Something none of us ever expected. Eliazar, you and I have admitted that we both feared the endgame with the Arabs was inevitable. Well, perhaps we will face it sooner than we expected. But, Mr. Prime Minister, we must allow ourselves to take a step for peace, when peace is possible. Peace is worth a risk, is it not?”
As Krupp gauged the responding silence, he felt the eyes, and the hopes, of Bohannon, Rodriguez, and Johnson on the back of his neck, but he dared not turn to meet their fear.
“Alexander, you must do two things before I can give you an answer. First, you must provide me evidence that what you say is true. Forgive me, my friend. It’s not that I doubt your honesty or your sincerity. But I would be a fool to move forward with this request of yours unless I had conclusive proof in my hands that this Temple exists. How you get that proof to me, I don’t know. But nothing will happen without it. Secondly, if we receive such proof, I must require you to keep this conversation confidential for the time being. I imagine you were prepared to make additional calls to our neighbors to enlist their participation, correct?”
“Yes,” said Krupp, “I already prepared lines to contact King Parvez in Jordan and President Ghasaan in Egypt.”
“You must not, you must promise me that, Alexander,” said Baruk. “I must consult my cabinet and my military leaders. I can’t take this step alone. That would be political suicide. You know that. We must have at least twelve hours of silence once we receive your evidence. I have no other choice. These two things I must demand.”
Krupp was faced with an impasse. Refuse the prime minister’s demands and this whole thing would blow up. He would not only alienate the Israelis, but he could also give them an excuse for considering a preemptive, first strike against the Arab states—get in the first punch if it was going to come to a nuclear punching match. In spite of the warm sunshine flooding into the room, he shuddered.
“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, I agree,” said Krupp. “We will transmit to you, electronically, as much of the existing evidence as we possibly can. Once we’ve received confirmation that you received the evidence, we’ll just hunker down until we hear from you. And, Eliazar . . .”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. Thank you, Eliazar.”
“Farewell, Alexander.”
It took an hour to decide what they needed to send to the prime minister and how they were going to transmit it. With technological skill and dexterity, Rodriguez took point on the assembly and transmission of the material, just enough to conclusively prove the accuracy and validity of their discovery—photos, sections of the video with the GPS units, the voice transmission from Sam Reynolds.
Then they waited.
Baruk pushed the button, ending the conference call, and looked around the table at his closest advisors.
No one blinked.
“Lukas, now you know where they are,” said the prime minister, endorsing the blank check he had presented to the Mossad chief not that long ago. “How long before you can have mission planning complete and a force in the air?”
“Our teams have been ready to go since your first orders,” replied Painter. “All we need to know is where and when you would like us to intercept them.”
“Intercept?” Baruk physically recoiled in his chair. “No, let me be more precise, Mr. Director. How long before you have wheels up for an operation into Germany? You have eleven hours and fifty-seven minutes to silence these men, however that may be necessary, and to recover all of their evidence. How soon will you be airborne?”
Baruk liked Lukas Painter, very much. Lukas was a no-nonsense man who got things done. A man in whom Baruk could put his trust.
“We’ll be off the ground within the hour,” Painter said. “Mission planning will be completed while we’re in the air. We will send two Gulfstreams, private, no markings, across the Mediterranean and come in from the west to Calvi, in Corsica. Businessmen, en route to Munich. We will refuel in Calvi and do a HALO drop along the border of Austria and Germany, somewhere in the vicinity of Fussen.” Painter pursed his lip, glanced at the ceiling, then looked at his watch. “We will be on the ground, and on the move, in Germany by eighteen hundred hours, seven hours from now. By twenty hundred hours, the information should be in our possession.”
Baruk cast a withering look at Painter. “By twenty hundred hours the information must be in your hands. There is no alternative.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lukas Painter, who was out of his seat and out the door before his voice faded from the room.
“Chaim,” Baruk said to his chief of staff, “I know it is very early in Washington, but please see if you can reach Jonathan Whitestone. I would very much like to speak to the American president.”
Krupp led Bohannon down the steps from the terrace, along the outskirts of the swimming pool compound, and out into the gardens, a carefully sculpted riot of color stretching for hundreds of yards. They turned a corner at the end of a hedge more than six feet tall. Behind the hedge was a hothouse—half glass-domed nursery, half gardener’s workplace. Krupp entered the potter’s shed, Bohannon in tow, and pointed to a rack of work clothes and overalls. “Better to make yourself comfortable. We’re going to get dirty.”
Shouldering a bag of tools, hefting a wheelbarrow that held a spade and stacked racks of ruby red geraniums, Krupp wordlessly rolled into the depths of the garden. Unlike the searing heat of Jerusalem, summer was just breaking on Bavaria. The tulips and daffodils remained color
ful, but were in their final moments of life. Mountain laurel had long lost its blooms. So the beds were being filled with yellow marigolds, purple salvia, mixed impatiens in the shade, and, Krupp’s favorite, thousands of red geraniums. Most of them he had planted himself.
“This is my therapy,” he said over his shoulder, pointing Bohannon to an open space in the flower bed. “This is where I can think, where I can put everything else out of my head except dirt, sun, rain, and weeds.” Following the call to Baruk, Krupp needed something to take his mind off the twelve-hour wait. He believed that time was of the essence, that any delay now only invited calamity. But here in Bavaria, for Krupp and his guests, all they could do was wait, hope, and pray. And try to keep themselves busy. “It’s simple, straightforward, and has the benefit of immediate gratification. Dig the dirt, plant the flowers, bring the water, and you have beauty all summer. I wish all things in life were this simple. Here, let me give you a hand.”
Smiling at Bohannon’s awkwardness around plants, Krupp lifted one of the flats of geranium plants and carried it to a large bed of soft, loamy soil. “Bring the spade, will you?”
Setting the flat of geraniums at the side of the bed, Krupp took the spade. Quickly, effortlessly, he carved a furrow in the soft earth. “You can do this one of two ways,” he said, turning to Bohannon, “the industrial way or the personal way. Using the spade is the industrial way.” A more-than-willing instructor, Krupp displayed his technique. “Carve out a furrow; pop the geraniums out of their small pots and into the furrow; slide the spade along the top of the furrow to refill it and cover the root ball.
“We can be careful with life, Tom, savoring it, protecting it, luxuriating in its richness, or, we can rush through life, exchanging quality for quantity, mistaking a completed task for a completed life. Each day is a choice.”
Krupp pulled a small hand trowel from the back pocket of his overalls, sat down among the planted geraniums, and waved the trowel in Bohannon’s direction. “You have made some interesting choices lately, my friend. What will you choose today? The industrial way,” he said, waving his hand at the dozen geranium plants where the furrow once was, “or the personal way?” Turning on his hip, Krupp leaned over to smell the very faint aroma of the geranium. When he turned back, Bohannon had also grabbed a rack of geraniums and was making his way to another spot in the bed. He had no spade.
“Where do I start?” Bohannon asked.
Two hours, and several hundred geraniums later, they were back in the potter’s shed, filthy, perspiring, and fully alive. Krupp reached into a corner refrigerator and pulled out two large, very cold bottles of Evian water. He pointed to an open space on the floor, and the two college friends again sat in the dirt, only now they had the potter’s bench upon which to rest their backs. The first few minutes belonged to the Evian, which they poured down their throats and over their heads.
Silence. The smell of decomposing loam . . . chatter of birds . . . buzz of insects.
“Thank you.” Bohannon turned his head, and Krupp saw profound gratitude returning his gaze. “I feel cleansed. Exhausted, but cleansed. As if the weight of the world has just been lifted off my shoulders. Thank you.”
For a moment, Krupp was “Alex K” again, and his heart ached in gratitude for this man who had been so kind, so crucial to him in a very critical time. “There is nothing that you could ever thank me for,” said Krupp. “When you became my big brother, it was as if you had placed a wall of protection around me. As if you stamped me with a seal of legitimacy. You helped me gain the confidence to just be myself. I’m serious, Tom. I owe you my life. My wife, my children, all of us are indebted to you. And I will do anything you ask of me to honor that gift.”
Bohannon wore an embarrassed, self-conscious look on his face. Perhaps, Krupp thought, I’ve gone too far. After all, we’ve only just . . .
An intercom phone, tucked into a corner of the potting bench, rattled its demand. Pulling himself from his friend’s gaze, Krupp reluctantly answered it.
“Yes?” Krupp was quiet, listening, a frown forming at his temples. “Yes, we will be there immediately.”
Suddenly, all the peaceful karma of the afternoon dissipated. Krupp’s neck stiffened, his heart raced, his breathing shallowed. What had they done? O, God, what had they done? It was Krupp, the international billionaire business baron, who turned to face Bohannon. “There is a telephone call in the house,” he said sharply. “It is your president.” He paused, watching the alarm register in Bohannon’s eyes. “He wants to speak to you.”
50
Lukas Painter stepped from the plane dressed in an impeccable, black Italian silk suit, tailored in Naples, and a vivid pale green tie designed in Venice. His silver flattop had been slicked into submission with a fistful of mousse. Painter looked like a typical Italian business tycoon, emerging from one of his two private jets. While the planes were being rapidly refueled, Painter approached the French customs official waiting on the tarmac.
“Good afternoon, Gerard,” said Painter. “It is a pleasure to see you once more.” “The pleasure is mine,” said the official, accepting the envelope containing ten thousand American dollars. “Bon voyage.”
With that brief exchange, Gerard returned to his office, and Painter returned to the Gulfstream and the eight commandos dressed in an entirely different kind of black suit.
He had been awake all of the night and most of the day, following the pursuit of the Americans and positioning his men under the Temple Mount. It was time to pray. The Imam took his prayer carpet and climbed the stairs once again to the roof. He never got there.
Twisting past the landing on the upper floor, his foot on the last flight of stairs, the Imam’s immaculate white kaftan began sprouting rosettes of red down his chest. Quite unusual, he thought as he looked down. It took a moment more, as the red stains began to spread, for the Imam to realize his throat had been slashed. A thought that registered as his body crumpled to the steps, as his eyes locked on a short man, dressed in dusty and tattered clothes, emerging from the shadow of a corner. The Imam noticed the stained, razor-thin blade in his hand, an amulet around his neck and a new, round, brown leather cap on his head. Then his brain stopped, and the Imam’s eyes closed forever.
Rasaf was retreating back into the shadows when he heard a gentle cell-phone buzz. Quickly, avoiding the spreading blood, he reached into the kaftan and found the phone. Without hesitation, he pushed Talk.
“Yes?”
A pause. Then an accented voice on the other end made his heart leap. “They are in Germany, in Bavaria, staying at the home of Alexander Krupp, the industrialist. The Israelis have sent a commando strike team to make an incursion, a HALO jump, with the intention of killing these men and seizing all their evidence. They will be on the ground in four hours. Do what you want with the information. It is the last you will receive from me. It is no longer safe. Goodbye.”
Rasaf pushed the End button, his mind racing with the new information. Perhaps all is not lost, he thought.
Soon, the cell phone was in use again.
When he assumed the office of president of the United States, the voice of Jonathan Whitestone was immediately familiar around the world. Bohannon had no doubt who was on the other end of this phone call.
“Mr. Bohannon, you will not divulge any of the information you have discovered in Israel.” No preamble, no pleasantries, no introduction. Bohannon felt as if he had been punched.
“As the commander in chief of the United States of America, I am ordering you to maintain full and complete silence on your claimed discovery. You are to share this information with no one, do you understand me?”
Bohannon was stunned, in body and mind. “Yes, sir,” was all he could muster.
“Good,” said the president, his voice sounding more relaxed. “Do you have any idea what your discovery could precipitate? You could ignite the complete annihilation of Israel and most of the Middle East. Do you understand that? A nuclear war, that
’s what we’re facing if the Arabs and Israelis get into the ultimate conflict. A war that would not only wipe out all of the Jews and many of the Arab populations, but a war that would also make that region uninhabitable for generations. God knows what a calamity like that might trigger.
“No, sir. You do not have the authority nor the power to make a decision like that,” said Whitestone, his voice recovering its menace. “Who has elected you to make a decision that could cost millions of lives? No one, Mr. Bohannon. No one. You will keep this information to yourself, and you will return to the United States immediately. Or you, and your partners, could spend the rest of your lives in prison. Do you understand, Mr. Bohannon?”
When he had been a journalist, there had been a few foolish souls who tried to bully Bohannon off a story. He grew weary of threats, especially when they came from self-important politicians who were trying to save their hides and their reputations. Threats only made Bohannon dig deeper, look further, turn over more rocks. Threats always meant there was more to the story than he was seeing at the time, that he was close to something really big. Threaten him, and Bohannon became a task-oriented predator, preparing for battle with an adversary.
The Sacred Cipher Page 38
