Tom shook his head. “The mezuzah’s been opened, we broke the code of the message on the scroll. The secret they protected is no longer a secret. Why come after us now?”
“I don’t know,” O’Neill admitted. “But, clearly, they’re after the scroll and mezuzah. And there must be a reason. So, what’s on your mind?”
“Yo . . . here you go, gents.” Jimmie slid the cups and the muffin, wrapped in plastic, across the top of the counter. Tom watched closely where Jimmie put his hands—what side of the cup he touched—as he got up and rescued the order, including a plate for O’Neill’s muffin.
New York City’s police commissioner only came up to Bohannon’s shoulders, but he was a compact, solid ex-marine under a bald head and a face that carried the well-being of eight million New Yorkers in every crease and wrinkle. O’Neill, thought Bohannon, was part of this adventure since the night Winthrop Larsen was blown all over 35th Street by a Prophet’s Guard car bomb. But Bohannon had known the Commissioner for many years prior, as O’Neill and his wife made regular trips to the Bowery Mission to help feed the homeless. And Mrs. O’Neill was a driving force behind the renovations at the Bowery Mission’s Women’s Center.
O’Neill was an honest straight shooter who often revealed true concern, compassion, and consideration—considerable qualities in a man so accustomed to lawlessness and violence. This was a man Tom had learned to trust.
“Two weeks ago, I got a call from Doc Johnson. A colleague of his from the British Museum had come to visit. He asked Doc if our guy Abiathar could have created a Plan B—something that might give additional hope to the Jews for a reestablished Temple. So Doc and this Irishman, Brandon McDonough, closely examined the scroll and the outside surface of the mezuzah. They found some symbols on the mezuzah. I don’t know what they are or what they mean but, now . . . after last night . . .”
Rory O’Neill leaned over the table, bearing in on Bohannon. “Why go after the safe? There must be something in there they want. Or they think there’s something in there they want, something in addition to the scroll and the mezuzah. There must be more than we know. But why go after the safe?” O’Neill unwrapped the plastic and ripped a crumbling chunk from the corn muffin. “Look, they can’t believe we left the mezuzah in the safe, can they? Otherwise, why break into the Collector’s Club, why try to break into the Bryant Park library? There must be something else in the safe that they want.”
Over the rim of his coffee cup, O’Neill eyed Bohannon. “So, what is it, Tom?”
Bohannon twirled the tea bag in his cup. “When we first discovered the safe, and Joe and I were cataloguing its contents, there were three small drawers on a shelf in the middle. The center drawer was where we found the mezuzah, wrapped up in the red silk purse. The other two drawers were locked. We never found a key to open those drawers. Then, with everything else that was happening, I guess we forgot about the drawers. Now . . .”
The corn muffin had disappeared. O’Neill threw down the last of the coffee. “Let’s go find out.”
Washington, DC
The connection was far more sophisticated than Skype—the video more precise and sharp, the sound flawless like the two men were in the same room. Still, Jonathan Whitestone felt like a fugitive from an old Flash Gordon movie when the Israeli prime minister’s face came up on the screen. Deep in the caverns under the White House, Whitestone was in one of the few rooms he knew was safe from all outsiders. Neither surveillance cameras nor the White House taping system were permitted in this small room. Nothing said here would ever appear on any record. Which was a good thing.
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Elie?”
His head and shoulders pushed back into his chair, Eliazar Baruk visibly retreated from the screen.
“Are you out of your mind?” Whitestone’s rage sent shards of pain through his chest. “How can you hatch a plan like this without letting me know? You and I have bargained our souls on what we’ve planned and, now, you could jeopardize it all for the purpose of some stunt? And you don’t even talk to me about it?”
Baruk pulled himself closer to the screen. “Jon . . . do you tell me everything regarding America’s security? It’s our sovereign right to protect our land.”
“Holy heaven, Eliazar. Rebuilding New Orleans is our sovereign right, but it won’t incite anyone to declare war on the United States. But you . . . if you rebuild the Mount, the Arab world will explode. Are you going to let them excavate the Dome of the Rock first? Are you going to allow them to rebuild their mosque, their shrine to Muhammad?”
“It’s not safe,” Baruk replied.
“Not safe? Don’t play with me. It’ll be safe enough for you to erect the Tent of Meeting, won’t it?”
Baruk smiled—guilt masked as relaxed calm. “Cartwright is very good. Give him my compliments.”
“This is a fool’s game, Eliazar. And it’s likely to endanger everything you and I have been trying to accomplish.”
Baruk leaned even closer to the camera and the screen. “Put away your sanctimony, Jon. You and I have been trying to accomplish something that will be condemned in every capital in the world. So don’t preach to me about the sanctity of the Temple Mount to the Muslims. It is a much more sacred place to my people, and we’ve been forbidden to even walk on its surface for the past thirteen hundred years. The Mount is in our hands. The future of the Mount is ours to decide. We . . . I . . . am determined that Israel will establish lasting sovereignty over the Mount, once and for all. Get used to it, Jon. We’re not giving it back, and the Arabs are not coming back.”
President Whitestone’s anger roiled like thunderheads on the horizon. But his lot was cast with Baruk, and there was no turning back now.
“Jon, listen, it’s not going to affect anything we’ve planned,” promised Baruk. “We do need to rebuild the Temple Mount. It is dangerous the way it is now . . . who knows what could fall next? As far as the Arabs are concerned, we’re just making the place safe. Our Muslim brothers think they have us in their grip . . . promise peace talks, speak of friendly coexistence, while the Muslim Brotherhood topples one government after another and Essaghir is hatching his own plot to control the world.
“We will not wait for the Arabs to move,” said Baruk. “We will never again stand by and watch our people murdered by madmen who want to wipe us from the earth. We will destroy this threat, Jon. Our plans are still in place. Our commandos are already safely in northern Iraq. The Kurds don’t even know they are on the ground, but they are in prime position. It’s only a short jump into Iran. We will succeed. We must succeed.”
Whitestone opened a mental cupboard and stashed both his anger and his anxiety inside. They weren’t gone. They were just set aside until he was ready to unleash them and prove to Baruk that no one sandbagged the president of the United States without being wounded in return. He pulled himself up straight in his chair and slipped on his presidential aura.
“I want you to allow Kallie Nolan—the archaeologist who helped find the Temple—to return to Jerusalem—”
“I can’t allow her—”
“Just wait, Eliazar,” Whitestone snapped. “Give her permission to return to Jerusalem. Nolan’s put in three years of study and research to write her thesis as a doctoral candidate at Tel Aviv University. The thesis is finished, submitted to her readers and review board. But it all goes to waste is she fails to stand for her dissertation in front of the faculty in Tel Aviv. I need you to open the door.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking.”
Baruk spread his hands in surrender. “Of course, Jonathan. After all,” he said, “if we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?”
New York City
Standing in front of the battered safe, Bohannon now noticed that it was not standing straight. It was slightly cockeyed, twisted and torqued from the lower left to the upper right corners, where a long, green stain marked the safe’s crash landing on FDR Drive.
<
br /> Tom approached the double doors on the front of the safe. He swung to the side one of the large, floral-design ornaments that covered the combination dial, then retrieved the combination from his BlackBerry. He dialed it in, heard a faint click, and pulled on the door’s handle. It didn’t move. He pulled again, harder, with both hands. The door didn’t even twitch.
O’Neill gestured and his two bodyguards stepped forward, each grabbed a handle of the side-by-side doors. There was a good bit of groaning—from the cops, but not from the doors—before they gave up, defeated by the stressed metal.
“Those things are not budging,” said one of the bodyguards. “We could burn it with acetylene, or take a sledge and a wedge to drive them open.”
Bohannon winced at the thought.
“No need for that,” said O’Neill. “Tom . . . the department has an expert on safes who we use as a consultant. But we just sent him to Syracuse to help with an investigation. He won’t be back for at least a week.”
Tom ran his hand over the painted decorations on the front of the doors. Curiosity and anxiety filled the spaces that weren’t occupied by dread. “Couldn’t we find somebody else?”
“Not in here,” said O’Neill. “This is the last place you want to invite an expert on locks. We’ll wait for our guy. Nobody is going to be getting inside that safe, anyway.”
“Yeah,” said Bohannon, “but I sure would like to see what’s inside those drawers.”
Three swarthy men, dressed like construction workers, sat in a booth looking out the front window of Jimmie’s Coffee Shoppe. Their eyes followed Rory O’Neill and his bodyguards to the black, unmarked SUV that waited by the sidewalk. The commissioner shook hands with Tom Bohannon and got in his car. Bohannon walked off down 29th Street toward the faraway subway stop at Penn Station.
“Do you think they know?”
The leader watched Bohannon walk into the distance. “We can’t wait to find out,” he said. He turned to the others at the table. “We come back tonight.”
14
TUESDAY, AUGUST 11
Philadelphia
He walked with the long, loose gait of a hoops star returning to campus, trench coat hanging from his left arm, right arm swaying in balance to an inner rhythm. The color of golden sand in twilight, his hair was cut to the length of a businessman and pampered like that of a movie star—as perfect as the crease in his tan slacks and the cut of his sport jacket. His face was punctuated with a smooth, genuine smile that rarely left his lips. Sam Reynolds radiated warmth that put everyone at ease.
Except Tom Bohannon, who felt a sense of dread as Reynolds approached his table in the upscale sports bar tucked into a corner of Philadelphia’s main Amtrak station flanked by Market Street and the Schuylkill River.
Bohannon was introduced to Sam Reynolds by NYPD commissioner Rory O’Neill, not long before Bohannon and his team embarked on their mission to Jerusalem.
It was Reynolds who arranged for their eclectic assortment of unique gear to be airlifted, through Turkey, to a secure area at Tel Aviv Airport, where it was separated into FedEx and UPS trucks for innocent-looking delivery. And it was Reynolds who was their lifeline under the Temple Mount, who risked his career to keep their mission alive, who served as their witness, over a secure satellite phone, as Bohannon and his team transmitted live video feed of their astounding discovery . . . the Third Temple of God, secretly constructed under the Temple Mount by a Jewish priest and his followers, over one thousand years ago.
And it was Reynolds who called yesterday and asked Bohannon to meet him halfway between Washington and New York, in Philly’s 30th Street Station. No explanation. Just a time of arrival.
Bohannon stood and offered his hand.
“Hi, Tom . . . I’m glad to see you’re still in one piece.”
“So am I, although it looks like we’re still in the crosshairs of the Prophet’s Guard.”
Reynolds motioned toward their chairs. “I know. That’s one of the reasons I’m here today.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Bohannon. “But I was really glad to hear you survived. I know there were some pretty angry people down there in Washington and the first scuttlebutt was that you were treated pretty roughly—about to be tossed out on your ear with no pension. But then Rory told me you held on to your position. How did you pull it off?”
“Trade secret, my friend . . . trade secret.” The easy smile spread across Reynolds’s face, warming the air around their table. “Let’s just say a day dawned when emotions calmed, friends had a chance to whisper in some ears, and ten years of exceptional service finally carried some weight. I got slapped on the wrists, hard, for being off the reservation with you guys, but it didn’t take long before the office realized we were in a lot more trouble now and that State needed all hands on deck.”
The conversation was put on hold while the waitress came and took their orders.
“Thanks, Sam. I don’t know if I’d be sitting here if you hadn’t covered our backs. I owe you a debt.”
Reynolds stopped the spoon he was spinning on the top of the table.
“Good . . . that’s just what I need,” said Reynolds, who smiled like the guy who had snatched the last cookie. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”
Jerusalem
Leonidas was startled when the cell phone rang. A blocked number. He was expecting no calls. But . . .
“I’m told I am to call you Leonidas,” said the shapeless voice. “I’m told you have been of great service to the imam of the Northern Islamic Front. I’m told that, for a price, you have been a distinguished provider of information. I’m told—”
“Enough of what you’ve been told,” Leonidas snapped. “Who are you? Who gave you this number?”
“Ah,” said the voice, “unfortunately, our beloved imam has chosen to embark on a prolonged pilgrimage. We are not aware if he is expected to return any time soon. So, my dear Leonidas, the responsibility of maintaining this relationship has fallen to my unworthy self.”
Leonidas calculated the prudence of severing the connection and destroying the cell phone. He tortured his brain for any crack in his façade, any hint he had been careless.
“You wonder if you have been compromised, yes, my friend? Rightly, you wonder who I am. Most likely you are preparing to end this communication and destroy the only thing that connects us. So, my fine friend, allow me to offer you an overture of security.
“First, if we remain connected until we complete this conversation, you will find one hundred thousand dollars deposited into your account tonight. Second,” said the voice, not waiting for a response, “I will introduce myself and I will inform you how to contact me . . . most definitely a risk on my part. Once you have assured yourself of my identity and that the money has, indeed, been deposited, perhaps then we can do business.”
The addition to his account would be welcome. Still, Leonidas was more than wary.
“Money does not buy trust,” said Leonidas. “You will never have contact with me again unless I can verify who you claim to be—and if, at that time, I am interested in continuing this conversation. So, my friend, to whom am I speaking?”
For a moment, Leonidas wondered if he had called the man’s bluff. Then the silence was broken.
“Find my dossier,” said the voice. “My name is Imam Moussa al-Sadr. I am the founder of the Amal in Lebanon.”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” growled Leonidas. “Whoever you are, our conversation is over.”
“Stop!” Even through the phone, the command of the voice was powerful, arresting. “Look in the dossier. When I disappeared from Libya in 1978, the world assumed I was dead. But there are two things that were never revealed. First, Lukas Painter dispatched a Mossad assassination team into Tripoli that was ordered to eliminate me and lay the blame at the feet of Qaddafi. Second, the Mossad team was intercepted by Qaddafi’s security and one of the team was mortally wounded—sadly, by what is often called friendly fire. The name of that o
perative was Lieutenant Hillel Shomsky, the son of—”
Leonidas snapped the cell phone shut and held it in his tightly balled fist. The rules of the game, he now knew, had irrevocably changed.
Lukas Painter looked at the map of western Jordan displayed on the LCD screen in Mossad’s operations center. Touching the screen, he rotated the image, exposing the southwestern flank of Mount Nebo.
“What do you think?” he asked over his shoulder.
“I think I’m glad this is Mossad’s mission,” said Levi Sharp. “But I’m also thinking that you certainly don’t have to lead it. I wouldn’t want to go that way . . . not having to cross that road. Whoever is given this assignment should go up the other flank, through the little valley to the northeast.”
“It’s a fool’s journey, if you ask me,” said Painter.
“Then don’t do it.”
“But nobody’s asking me,” Painter responded. “And if it is a fool’s journey, I’m not sending my men somewhere I’m not willing to go myself. We have our orders . . . get to the top of Mount Nebo and see what we can find. Find. If there was ever anything hidden on Mount Nebo it was probably stolen long ago.” Painter turned away from the LCD display and sat down at a nearby desk. Sharp pulled up a chair next to the desk.
“It’s the only clue we have, Lukas.”
“Some clue . . . a verse from Scripture that says Jeremiah hid the Tent of Meeting and the Ark in a cave on Mount Nebo. First of all, assuming this clue isn’t just a fable, tell me how Jeremiah got all that stuff up there. The Tent was huge. And where has it been hidden for three thousand years that it’s not been found yet? People have been digging all over Mount Nebo for generations looking for the grave of Moses. Why hasn’t some good-intentioned archaeologist stumbled over the Ark of the Covenant?”
The gentle hum of air purifying equipment laid a hush of white noise over the room.
The Brotherhood Conspiracy Page 12
