Ishmael Covenant

by Terry Brennan

  Lowering his chin, the Turk turned his head to the left and leveled his withering gaze upon his aide, who wisely averted his eyes. “You ask many questions this day, Assan.”

  The words were rapidly mumbled past trembling lips. “Forgive me, Master. I do not wish to offend.”

  Utilizing his silence as a weapon, the Turk willed his consciousness into Assan’s captive mind. Benign curiosity. No threat. Very well, once we have completed …

  “It is Jerusalem, Assan. It is always Jerusalem. The book falsely labels the One as a usurper. That is the prophecy we will defeat. We will ensure that the One enters the gates as savior. And he will enter the temple as ruler, ruler of this world in body, mind, and soul.”

  The Turk turned away from his aide and slowly moved toward the corner of shadows. “But this so-called prophecy of the Lithuanian dreamer,” he said over his shoulder, “is not contained in the book. It would be irrelevant to us, but for one thing. Stealth is our ally, Assan. Darkness is our cloak.” Blackness enveloped the Turk as he turned once more to his aide. “And the Gaon’s message will shed light where darkness must reign. It must be obliterated. See to it.”

  Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv

  July 19, 12:09 p.m.

  After a discreet stop at the Ben Gurion Airport office of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, Mullaney, Hernandez, and Palmyra Parker stood on the airport’s tarmac, under the front fuselage of a Boeing 737, the four embassy vehicles idling quietly behind them. Following the direction of a Shin Bet officer, workers hustled a mobile stairway up to a door in the Jetway while the plane’s crew kept the passengers in their seats.

  Within moments, US Ambassador Joseph Atticus Cleveland’s perplexed face appeared in the open doorway, a leather bag suspended in the grip of his left hand.

  “There’s the bag,” said Hernandez. “I better go give him a hand.”

  The Shin Bet officer came up beside Mullaney as Hernandez offered a hand to the descending Cleveland. “We’ll unload the ambassador’s luggage from the plane and make sure it all gets to the vehicle.”

  “Thanks.”

  “A rather unorthodox welcome, Agent Mullaney—though I’m not complaining.” Ambassador Cleveland was past him before Mullaney could respond, moving quickly to his daughter. He wrapped his right arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, the leather bag still in his left hand. “Palmyra,” he spoke into her hair, “I’ve missed you. I wish I could have stayed longer with—”

  “That’s okay, Dad,” said Palmyra. She stepped back from his embrace and looked into Cleveland’s face. “I know where your heart is.”

  A long, intimate silence made Mullaney feel like he was intruding on a family’s grieving. Cleveland reached out his right hand and caressed Parker’s cheek. “We’ll catch up back at the residence,” said Cleveland. “Unless”—he turned toward Mullaney—“I see we have increased security. Are there other plans?”

  “Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador, but we need to go directly to the embassy. We can discuss this on our way. Mrs. Parker will see to your belongings.”

  Cleveland searched Mullaney’s face, glanced toward his daughter, then turned back to his regional security officer. “Very well. Just give me a moment.” The ambassador moved to his right, gently grasped his daughter’s arm, and guided her—not toward his waiting limousine, but toward the second vehicle that would take his daughter and his belongings to the ambassador’s residence.

  In the back seat of the car, Cleveland placed his hand over Palmyra’s and gave it a squeeze. “Sweetheart, I wish I had more time to go into more detail with you, but I think our time here is limited. Allow me to get directly to the issue.”

  How could he emphasize the critical importance of what he was going to tell her without unduly frightening her? No … she should be frightened.

  Cleveland hefted the heavy leather satchel sitting on the floor at his feet. “I received this from the chief rabbi in Istanbul four days ago, and it has seldom been out of my sight since. Inside the bag is a small wooden chest that contains a sealed metal box. Inside the metal box, the rabbi believes, is a 250-year-old message … the second prophesy written by an eighteenth-century Jewish scholar, the Vilna Gaon. The first prophesy came to light several months ago. It said when the Russians annex Crimea then Messiah’s coming was imminent.”

  Palmyra tucked her leg up onto the seat in order to face her father directly. “And the Russians are now in control of Crimea,” she said. “So the clock may be ticking. What’s in the second prophecy?”

  “Nobody knows, not even the rabbis who have protected it. It is assumed the message is written in code. I’ve promised the chief rabbi in Istanbul that I will deliver this bag and its contents to the Gaon’s disciples at the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem. But none of that is why I needed to speak to you alone.” Cleveland took a deep breath and met his daughter’s gaze. “Possession of the box inside this satchel is very dangerous. It could be deadly.”

  He was alarmed by the sparkle that entered her eyes.

  “Now, that sounds interesting.”

  “This is nothing to trifle with, Palmyra,” he snapped. Cleveland tried to slow his heartbeat. “There are two critical points. You are not to touch the metal box inside this bag under any circumstance. Anyone who touches this box without the proper anointing will lose their life. I know it sounds like a bad movie plot, but I assure you this is a warning we need to heed. Second, as soon as the box was in my possession, my car and my security team were attacked. The synagogue in Istanbul suffered three terrorist attacks in the time the box resided there. I believe there are forces at work here that are determined to prevent this bag from reaching the Rabbinate Council at the Hurva.”

  “And you want me to take this bag back to the residence?”

  Cleveland struggled under a growing burden of fear for his daughter and guilt for asking her to take this risk. Mullaney and Hernandez would be traveling with him to the embassy. There was no one else to trust with the package. “Yes.”

  “Cool,” said Palmyra. Cleveland’s heart plummeted to the floor of the car. “What about this anointing? Do you have it?”

  When there was a knock on the window, Cleveland nearly jumped into the front seat. “Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador. We need to get moving.”

  “One moment, Mullaney.” Cleveland closed the window and redirected his attention to his daughter. He took his right hand and laid it on the crown of her head. “I’m taking the rabbi’s word on this, and his word has not been tested. So don’t touch the box. But just in case …” He closed his eyes and willed whatever power was in him to flow over and into his daughter “The Lord bless you, and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.”

  Palmyra covered her father’s hand with her own. “The Aaronic blessing, that’s appropriate,” she said. She pointed to the leather bag at his feet. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  Cleveland nodded. “When you get to the residence, find a place that is totally secure and out of the way. Hide this well. We’ll talk about it more when I get home. And we’ll make sure the box gets to the Rabbinate Council as soon as possible. But for now, we need to keep both you and the box safe. Promise me, Palmyra”—he took both of her hands in his—“you will not open this satchel and you will not go near the box inside. Understood?”

  She squeezed his hands, but Cleveland felt anything but comforted. “Don’t worry, Dad. You’ve left this package in good hands. I’ll keep it safe.”

  Tommy Hernandez was at Mullaney’s side.

  “What is that all about?” said Hernandez.

  Through the smoked-glass windows, with the sun behind the car, Mullaney could see the outlines of the ambassador and his daughter. The ambassador had his hand on top of her head.

  “Either she’s been grounded,” said Hernandez, “or Atticus just bequeathed her all his earthly possessions. I’d bet on door number two.”<
br />
  “I’d bet your lame attempts at—”

  “Oops … sorry, they’re getting out.”

  Mullaney glanced at his watch as Hernandez helped Cleveland out of the car. It wasn’t until later that Mullaney realized that the ambassador got out of the car—but the leather bag didn’t.

  Parker stood next to the car and watched the ambassador’s limo and security escort make a right turn at the end of the terminal as her driver loaded luggage into the trunk.

  From his vantage point in the terminal, the Turk’s watcher could not see the leather satchel. But the ambassador had exited from the car empty-handed. The bag must be in the back. It would ride with Cleveland’s daughter.

  He brought the cell phone to his cheek.

  “There has been a switch. The package is no longer with the ambassador,” he said. He expected no reply. “The package is with his daughter, in a second embassy vehicle, a dark blue Ford. It is leaving now. She has two guards with her, and two more in an escort vehicle behind her.”

  9

  Jerusalem, Israel

  July 19, 12:39 p.m.

  Colonel Benjamin Erdad slammed his fist on the table so hard the prime minister’s water glass tumbled sideways. Luckily, there were no important documents sitting before David Meir. No one was taking any notes for this unusual but necessary Sabbath cabinet meeting.

  “Blind? Blind! We have no choice but to accept,” Israel’s minister of internal security raged, his anger directed at the cabinet members from Yesh Atid, the most conciliatory party in Israel. “Do you think we don’t understand the reality here? I trust that Prince Faisal is a man of good conscience. But Prince Faisal does not rule the Muslim world. We can never take these men at face value. I have no faith in their proposed covenant. If it were in force for ten years, I would not trust in it for ten years and a day. If we lose our focus, our determination for one day, Israel may be only a memory. But in spite of my utmost skepticism, we must accept this treaty. There is no other choice for Israel. Are we going to refuse to sign a peace treaty with a mutual defense pact with nearly every one of our closest Arab neighbors when they are the ones proposing this peace? We would be excoriated, standing alone. Even the Americans, with this president, would turn their back on Israel.”

  David Meir, prime minister of Israel only as long as he could hold together a fragile coalition of mismatched parts, was grateful. Erdad was taking the offensive, taking point on an issue where it would be much too easy for Meir to get dangerously ahead of his cabinet. The Ishmael Covenant, as Faisal called it, put the Israelis in a devilish position, caught in a trap of their own making. The Arabs were offering everything the Israeli government had for years claimed as prerequisites for a two-state solution to the “Palestinian question.” Recognition of the state of Israel without a demand to return to the boundaries from before sixty-seven, a mutual defense pact that tied their security together, joint offenses against Hamas and Hezbollah to guarantee the safety of Israel’s borders, and Jerusalem—intact and under Israel’s dominion. They even offered a space for the Jewish temple connected to Temple Mount.

  In return they asked only for East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron—and the eternal wrath of thousands of transplanted Israelis who now lived in settlements the world condemned as illegal, settlements that would now exist in a new Palestinian state or cease to exist at all.

  Still, as far as Meir could see, there really was no option for the government. Israel must accept.

  “Israel must accept,” Erdad concluded.

  “What is this ‘must,’ Benjamin?” asked Moshe Litzman, minister of the interior and fellow Likud party member. “Since when is Likud willing to accept a ‘must’ in connection with an independent Palestinian state? And do you think there will ever be peace with Hamas?”

  Meir looked around the large oval wooden table and considered the odds. If he couldn’t get the cabinet members from his own party to support the treaty, what chance did it have with the members from other parties?

  “Thousands of Israeli citizens will feel abandoned.” Avi Lentz, leader of the Jewish Home, an ultra-right wing party, leaned into the table, his right index finger pointing at Erdad as if it were an Uzi. As the minister of housing, Lentz was a relentless evangelist for expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank and draconian methods of dealing with the Palestinians. “We’ve asked them to risk their lives, their family’s lives, and now we’re going to toss them into the hands of the terrorists?”

  Down at the end of the table, another of Meir’s coalition “partners” stood from his chair. “This Faisal thinks us fools?” said Menachem Herzl. “He offers peace with one hand while he protects Wahhabi clerics with the other—clerics who preach the annihilation of Israel.” Leader of the orthodox religious party Shas, Herzl was the ultimate power broker. With twelve active political parties holding seats in the Knesset, and another twenty political parties presenting candidates in each election, it was nearly impossible for one party to win a majority of the 120 seats in the Knesset. Shas was the glue that for decades held together the tenuous governing coalitions for both Likud and Labor governments. And Herzl played that card to its fullest.

  Meir was about to answer when Erdad stepped to his defense once more.

  “You know me,” Erdad announced. His voice was as rock-solid as his build, commanding attention and respect. A career officer in the Israel Defense Force, Colonel Erdad’s temporary assignment to Shin Bet was entering its twenty-fourth year when Meir invited him into a cabinet position two years earlier. “I would take no step that would weaken our defense or put Israel in jeopardy. All of you,” he said, his eyes sweeping the table in challenge, his close-cropped steel gray hair standing up like a porcupine on alert, “know me.”

  Erdad focused on Menachem Herzl. “Every settler in the West Bank knew they were taking a risk with the future. Those settlers may not want to hear it now, but the settlements were always expected to be a bargaining chip.” Erdad swept the table again. “I understand your concerns, your reluctance to trust the Arab states. Believe me; I don’t trust them, either. But ministers, Israel has no choice. If we decline this offer of peace, this offer of recognition and Arab solidarity in destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, the nations of the world will turn against Israel in a heartbeat. We will be the villains.”

  “Better to be villains to the world than asleep in our beds when the Arab tanks start rolling again,” thundered Lentz. “This fool’s errand of a treaty can only result in a less-prepared Israel. We join in this mutual defense pact, who will guard our border with Syria? Jordan? Who will ensure that the jihadist groups in the Sinai Peninsula are beaten into the sand? Egypt? And what happens when the Muslim Brotherhood rises again in Egypt? Or when ISIS controls Northern Africa? No! There is only one of us. There are many of them, only one of which needs to have a bad day and start throwing missiles into Haifa or Eilat. You, Erdad, from you I would expect more.”

  Meir could see where this discussion was going—nowhere. There was no unity in his cabinet. How did he ever imagine to get this proposed treaty through the Knesset? Impossible. But he must. Somehow he must. There is no other choice for us.

  “In less than twenty-four hours,” said the prime minister, “all the Arab nations of the Middle East except for Syria will offer Israel a peace agreement that our nation has pursued for more than six decades. I suggest we all ratchet down the rhetoric, take a deep breath, and think about the nation we want to hand off to our children and grandchildren. An Israel always at war, or an Israel finally at peace? There are risks with each scenario, and regardless of which path we pursue, Israel must be forever vigilant. We will never again rely on others for the future of our people. But we have before us an opportunity to accomplish what was once unthinkable—not only an independent Jewish state, but a secure, independent Jewish state at peace with all its neighbors.”

  Meir stood from his chair and regarded the men and women of his cabinet. “I would like us to meet again
this evening. Please … think of your children.”

  Highway One, Israel

  July 19, 1:03 p.m.

  Cleveland’s mind strained to stay engaged with the briefing Mullaney was delivering, but his heart, his anxiety, resided with Palmyra.

  Hernandez was driving a specially modified, two-year-old Mercedes-Maybach sedan, Agent Wiley Coates riding shotgun, Mullaney in the back seat with the ambassador. Hernandez was ignoring nearly every motor vehicle rule on the Israeli books as the sedan—often referred to as a limo because of its luxurious appointments—hurtled west on Highway One toward the American embassy in Tel Aviv.

  One of the finest luxury cars money could buy, the Mercedes-Maybach 57 sedan—at three hundred fifty thousand dollars each—was the flagship of Mercedes’s S-Class. The Maybach they were riding in was a modified, heavily armored version of the classic sedan, retro-fitted by State Department engineers. Outfitted so that both its body and windows could withstand hardened steel-core bullets fired from assault rifles, all the Maybach’s safety features were integrated into the car itself, using certified ballistics protection.

  The American engineers designed a layer of protective plating between the inner frame and the outer shell of the sedan and then added overlapping protective material in the joints and seams where the armored plates met to prevent any weak points. All the reinforced windows were coated with polycarbonate to prevent splintering. And the Maybach, its entire underbody fitted with armored plating, was capable of surviving a bomb blast whether the explosion was under the car or alongside it.

  After the attack on his car in Turkey, Cleveland was grateful for the engineered safety of the Mercedes limo, but his thoughts were elsewhere—bouncing between concern for his daughter and confusion about the events transpiring around him.

  “Why,” Cleveland asked Mullaney, “did Deputy Chief Goldberg believe there was no hostile intent to this mobilization?”