by Nick Cook
‘There are in excess of fifteen thousand delegates.’ Graham’s voice rises an octave as the implications of our task sink in. ‘Including two thousand clerics.’
‘The device itself,’ Cabot says. ‘What are we looking for?’
‘Something around the size of a baseball,’ I say. ‘Most of it is made up of the trigger mechanism, the outer shell – the ballotechnic. The core – which contains the nuclear material – is no bigger than a thimble.’
I look at the President. ‘When are you onstage?’
‘A little over seven hours.’
‘And the Pope?’
‘Directly before me.’
I share my view that it’s highly unlikely the Engineer will detonate the bomb until he has both star performers in his sights. And the Pope doesn’t land at Ben Gurion for another three hours.
Cabot rolls up his sleeves. ‘OK, so we put the delegate list back under the microscope.’
‘And then some.’ Graham turns to Hetta. As liaison between PIAD and the President’s protection detail, she must mastermind the hunt.
‘OK. So let’s get back to the Hall.’
Cabot glances significantly at us both. We can pull in around a dozen other Secret Service personnel, but they don’t get to know what we are doing.
Hetta and I return to her Suburban and hitch ourselves to the back of the motorcade. We’re joined by four Israeli motorcycle outriders, who fire up their lightbars and sirens.
At the city’s outer limits another huge sign directs regular traffic to the left, badged conference vehicles to the right.
I’m filled with the dread I felt after returning from Vermont, when I sat in the guest room with Hope’s ghost and Jack’s portrait.
The outriders ignore the stop lights at the next junction, wave other road users out of the way, and the motorcade peels off to the right, toward the Hall of the Assembly.
I tell Hetta not to follow.
She brakes as the lights turn red.
‘This isn’t right. Gapes directed us to the Church of St Mary Magdalene.’
‘You heard Graham. There’s nothing there.’
‘Then we need to look again.’
‘No. They need our eyes-on in the Hall of the Assembly.’ She indicates right, grips the wheel and stares resolutely at the lights, waiting for them to change.
‘Why did Lefortz assign you to me that night?’ I ask. ‘At the tower.’
‘I happened to be on duty.’
‘Happened to be?’
‘OK, he said you needed protection.’
‘But why you? You weren’t Presidential Protection. You were PIAD. A threat analyst, not a bullet catcher.’
She drums her fingers on the rim of the wheel. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He told me. You were the only person he could trust. Thompson had charged him with a clandestine probe into the misdemeanors of that part of our intelligence community which is beyond oversight, and using Russian mafia money to fund the Grid and other deeply classified programs. Thompson knew his world was about to turn dark; that the knives would be out for him.
‘There was no one he could trust except Lefortz. And no one Lefortz could trust except you.’
She glances at me.
‘I’m asking you to trust me, Hetta, the way he did.’
The lights change.
She cancels the indicator and makes a left.
62
BY THE EAST WALL OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT, ACROSS THE KIDRON Valley, a narrow road leads up to the Mount of Olives. The sign says Al-Mansuriya Street. We take it.
At this hour, and with all the security in the central part of the city, there are only a handful of tourists making their way to the holy sites and even fewer going to the Mount of Olives itself.
Fifty meters up, there’s another checkpoint. A couple of Israeli soldiers emerge from behind a stack of sandbags, flag us down, check our passes, smile at Hetta and wave us through.
Hetta takes the turning a hundred and fifty meters further on, but a set of gates stops us from going further.
We park and get out.
A sign in Russian and English lets us know we’ve reached the Church of St Mary Magdalene in the Garden of Gethsemane and that it opens at 9 a.m. I try the gates. They’re padlocked.
I stare through the two-centimeter-wide gap. Beyond a grove of trees, I spot the gold domes. A warm wind carries the scent of earth and pine. Birdsong breaks the silence, and somewhere distant a mu’ezzin calls the faithful to prayer.
I haul myself to the top of the gates, turn and give Hetta my hand. Once inside, we make our way through the trees to the steps at the base of the entrance.
I am contemplating my next move when the doors open and a nun appears. We stare at each other for several moments.
Hetta walks up the steps and produces her badge.
The nun peers at it over the top of her glasses. ‘God damn it,’ she says under her breath.
All of a sudden, I’m in New Jersey.
Hetta looks like she’s been slapped in the face. ‘Who are you, ma’am?’
‘Sister Martha. And you’re trespassing.’ She stares at Hetta’s ID. ‘This is the third inspection of our church in as many days.’
‘I know, ma’am. I’m sorry. My associate and I, we were hoping we could come in and take another look around.’
‘I just said …’ Sister Martha checks herself. ‘Of course. Forgive me. You’re doing your job. My sisters are at prayer. You may enter, but he can’t.’
She gestures behind her to the singing I can now hear beyond the thick wooden doors. ‘No men allowed during the liturgy.’
Hetta turns and hands me her phone. ‘Read this. Christy’s intelligence assessment.’
She follows Sister Martha inside. The door bangs shut.
I walk into the garden and sit on a wall that looks out over the Old City. I open the attachment and scroll down.
Christy’s team has used a form of artificial intelligence – machine learning – to sift Engineer sightings over the past decade.
Some of the references come from classified assessments; others from open-source accounts: papers, blogs, websites, Twitter feeds, Facebook. They’ve been fed back into something like the pattern-mining search algorithm we used to scan the images from the cabin.
The places name-check against many of those identified by Sergeyev: Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan. Christy’s geeks plotted the sightings against accounts of unrest. They’d matched his reported movements against shootings, bomb blasts, riots: all the usual trace elements of high- and low-intensity conflict.
And they discovered the opposite of what they expected.
The locations he appeared to have visited were remarkable for their absence of violence.
Which is what led Christy and her team to conclude that we were chasing a ghost. Johansson’s blowback. That the Engineer really was a myth.
And the chatter? All those snippets picked up from the jihadist community in the backwaters of the Web?
She doesn’t know.
I do, though. Cover, deliberately planted. The cabal kicking over its traces.
Only, I can’t prove it right now. I can’t prove anything.
I look up. Beyond the Dome of the Rock – the spot where Muslims believe Mohammed was taken to heaven – I can make out the Hall of the Assembly.
It’s coming up to six-thirty. In an hour, Thompson and his fellow leaders gather in preparation for the day’s agenda.
At nine, the Pope lands.
At eleven, he arrives at the venue.
At midday, he makes his speech.
Then Thompson takes to the podium.
I stare out across the Old City, then turn and look back up the Mount to its summit.
What do I see?
Through the trees, a tower.
The doors of the church open. Four or five doves perched above the entrance take flight as Hetta rushes down the steps.
‘Nothing,’ she s
ays when she reaches me. ‘I told you. The place is clear. Just a bunch of nuns.’
Sister Martha reappears.
‘What in God’s name are you looking for?’
As Hetta draws breath to answer, her phone vibrates in my hand. I look at the screen. Graham. She takes it and walks to a part of the garden where she won’t be overheard.
Sister Martha comes and sits next to me.
‘How long have you lived here?’ I ask.
‘Fifty-three years.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Hoboken. You?’
‘No fixed abode.’
‘And right this minute?’
I manage a smile. ‘I was thinking about the priest at my father’s funeral. He spoke about Jesus coming like a thief in the night. I was twelve. I had no idea what that meant – I still don’t – but I’ve just remembered that this is the place Christ spoke those words.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘The day and the hour unknown. Therefore, keep watch, because you know not on what day your Lord will come.’
She takes my hand in hers. ‘What’s your name?’
I tell her.
‘Do you believe in God, Joshua?’
There’s a noise behind me.
Hetta bounds around the corner of the church. ‘Josh,’ she blurts, seemingly oblivious to Sister Martha’s presence. ‘We’ve got to get back. Graham is going nuts and Cabot wants to kill us.’
I let go of Sister Martha’s hand and stare back up toward the tower.
Do I believe in God?
The very first words Gapes spoke to me.
Hetta shields her eyes against the sun. ‘What is that?’
‘It marks the spot where Christ ascended. We’re looking in the wrong direction, Hetta. With all those spooks looking over our shoulder, Duke would never have pointed you and me straight to it. He’s aimed us toward the zone, and left the rest to us. Do you have a secure line to Christy?’ I get to my feet. ‘I need a place name on the Iraq–Syria border.’
‘Something’s going to happen, isn’t it? I feel it.’ Sister Martha takes my hand in hers again. ‘Don’t you?’
The Orthodox Church compound we glimpse through another set of locked gates comprises a chapel, a convent and a hostel. Hetta and I haul ourselves over these too, and drop to the gravel. When I look up, I see a beautifully simple stone church and, behind it, four stories high, arches on each level, stark in the bright white sunlight, the tower.
We walk toward it, past the church and up a flight of steps.
I give the door a tug, expecting it to be locked. It isn’t. The hinges groan as it swings open.
We take a last look around. Nothing stirs. We head inside. The stairwell provides a glimpse of the level above. A breeze gets up and rushes past my face.
I stop.
‘What is it?’ Hetta asks.
‘He’s here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I feel it.’
‘Feel what?’
‘What I felt when I stepped onto the ladder at St John’s. Moments before I climbed into the bell chamber with Gapes. He’s here, I’m telling you.’
I step forward.
‘Josh, wait.’ She draws her .357 and indicates I should tuck in behind her.
But this doesn’t feel right. I indicate that I should go first.
She frowns, shakes her head. ‘We need to do this by the book. Call back-up.’
I agree. But the strangest instinct is telling me that I need to do the negotiation. And that there is no time to waste.
If the device is at the bottom end of the low-yield spectrum, Hetta might survive if she’s able to shelter somewhere in the shadow of the Western Wall, but her refusal to entertain this in our lightning-quick discussion makes it academic.
My fallback position is to point out that the SEALs – or whoever is tasked with taking down a nuclear-armed terrorist – will take ten minutes, maybe less, to get here, and she will need to liaise with them when they arrive.
Which means I get to go on up.
She looks like she’s about to argue, then says, ‘Here, you’d better take this,’ and hands me her .357. ‘I’ve got a back-up in the vehicle.’
63
YES, SISTER MARTHA. SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY IS GOING TO happen. I feel it, too.
I’m on the second level when I hear what sounds like bell ropes vibrating in the breeze. I stop and listen, straining to hear over the hum of traffic in the valley. It’s coming from somewhere above me.
I move up one more story, clasping the Beretta with both hands, stop and listen again. This time, it’s more distinct. Not the bell ropes. A low murmur. A voice.
I look at my watch. The second hand has stopped. I must have damaged it when I jumped off the wall. What do I do when I get to the top? Do I shoot him? I look at the gun and place my foot on the step that will take me up to the final level – the level from which the murmur has become the sound of a man at prayer.
When hope is lost, Joshua, faith can still be found.
I set the gun down. It makes the slightest of clinks, metal on stone.
The murmuring stops.
I reach a doorway, take a breath and step through it, into the bell chamber.
A warm wind blows through the eastern arch. A man, taller than me, is standing in the far left corner. He is wearing the black robe of a monk or a priest. His back is to me. His head is bowed.
A backpack sits on the floor in front of him.
‘You’re here,’ he says in English. His accent is somewhere between Russian and Arabic.
‘I’m not armed.’
‘I know.’
He turns.
Pale skin, bearded, framed by flowing black hair. His blue eyes have an intensity Gapes’s sketch captured precisely. They seem to look right through me, into the depths of my soul.
I glance at the backpack.
‘You’re afraid,’ he says.
‘Of course.’
‘Fear kills our ability to think – but you don’t need me to tell you that.’ He inhales deeply. ‘So let us agree not to be.’
He leans back against the wall and lowers himself to the floor. ‘This isn’t going to end the way you think it is.’ He gestures in front of him.
I hesitate.
‘Itfadl,’ he urges. Please.
I sit too.
We are less than a meter and a half apart. He turns and gazes out across the city.
‘The fifth surah of Verse 32 of the Holy Qur’an tells us: Whoever saves a life, it is as though he has saved the world.’ He looks at me. ‘Do you know this verse?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘From Iraq.’
He studies me.
‘I’m a doctor. I was supposed to save lives there.’
‘And did you?’
‘Not enough.’
The breeze rises. He turns his face toward the arch and breathes it in.
‘What do you know about me?’
‘Your name. Where you’re from.’
‘What they made me do?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why I am here?’
I hesitate. The backpack is sitting between us. I can’t take my eyes off of it. ‘What does it take to trigger the bomb?’
‘The same energy it takes to save a life.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means there comes a time when the two go hand in hand,’ he says. ‘It means also that I am here for you.’
‘Me?’
He stares beyond the arch again. The silence starts to vibrate in the space between us.
‘You said you are a doctor.’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet it is very clear to me you are the one in need of healing.’
‘My wife … I …’
He raises his hand and holds his thumb and forefinger fractionally apart. ‘You know, don’t you, not even this much separates you.’
I nod. Yes. But without he
r, life has lost all meaning.
He shakes his head. ‘No, Joshua, it hasn’t.’
I hadn’t told him my name. I hadn’t even articulated the thought. ‘Mind games, Danilovsky?’ I glance again at the backpack.
‘Close your eyes,’ he says.
‘Is this the end?’
‘No. The beginning. Close your eyes. For Hope. Pray.’
My skin prickles. The wind drops.
I do as he says.
‘What do you hear?’
Nothing, except the rush of blood in my ears.
‘Listen,’ he says.
I breathe in and hear it: a heartbeat that’s not mine.
I open my eyes.
I’m standing on the porch of our beach house. Hope is beside me, her head tilted to one side as she considers the brushstrokes she’s just applied to her canvas. The portrait of Jack. Not the work in progress in my guest room, but the finished portrait from the cabin.
There are tears in her eyes. She turns to me, smiles and brushes the hair from her cheek.
I breathe in her perfume, a gentle undertone to the scent of the ocean. Feel the breeze on my face.
Oh my God. Am I dreaming?
‘No, Josh.’ She takes my hand and lifts it to her face. ‘I’ve been here all along. You just haven’t been able to see me clearly.’
‘Jack’s portrait?’
‘You knew what it meant as soon as you opened your mind.’
‘The voice?’
‘Of course.’
‘In the V-22?’
‘And all the other times you’ve needed it.’
I don’t dare move. If I take my eyes off of her, even for a second, I’m going to wake up.
‘What is this place?’
She smiles. ‘What does it feel like?’
‘Home.’
She touches my face. ‘It is home.’
‘The little girl holding the balloon. On the peace march in Stockholm. Is she …?’
‘Beautiful. Just beautiful. Her father’s daughter.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Out playing. With friends. We’re together. You, me, her. And we’re happy. I promise. Where we were – where you are – is where we learn, where we grow. And it’s so very nearly over.’
‘What is?’
‘What you have to do.’
‘I don’t want to leave. I want to stay. With you.’