The Joshua Stone

by James Barney

  “You said that Franz Holzberg told you everything. Did he ever tell you where all these stones are located?”

  “Other than the two stones he had, you mean?”

  Ana nodded.

  “No. Franz never mentioned knowing anything about where these other stones are located. As far as I know, that’s still a mystery to this day.”

  “You mean you never heard him mention that ten of these stones are located together in the same place?”

  Opal looked genuinely surprised. “No.”

  Is she telling the truth? Ana wondered. The idea of a lie detector test suddenly came to mind. But Admiral Armstrong beat her to it with a more simplistic approach.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Dr. Fulcher knows all about this grouping of ten stones. In fact, that’s what he and his men were asking your son about today. So, if these ten stones do in fact exist somewhere, Fulcher is most likely on his way to get them right now.”

  Opal appeared to be listening intently.

  “Now, do you really want Fulcher to get his hands on those stones?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then can you tell us anything about where they might be?”

  Opal shook her head remorsefully. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

  Ana and Armstrong glanced at each other at the same moment and with the same thought. She was telling the truth.

  47

  CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Who ordered the pepperoni pizza?” asked Steve Goodwin as he entered the DTAI workroom with three take-out bags of Italian and a small pizza box.

  “Yo,” said Califano, raising his hand.

  “Chicken parm for me,” said McCreary.

  “Caesar salad,” said Ana.

  Several minutes later, Thorne, Goodwin, and McCreary were all seated at the conference table, unpacking their late dinners. Califano remained at his computer across the room, wolfing down slices of pizza between bursts of keyboard activity.

  “I feel like we’re missing something,” said Ana, poking at her salad. “I was sure Opal would have some information about that sketch and the remaining ten stones.”

  “I know,” said McCreary as he sawed off a huge piece of chicken parm. “I’m worried about those stones, too. There’s no telling what kind of havoc Fulcher and his Russian friends might inflict on the world, even if their intentions are perfectly innocent . . . which I doubt.”

  “Well, what are we missing?” asked Ana. “The spec op guys scrubbed Hillcrest and found nothing of particular interest. Neither of the two Ukrainian knuckleheads they took into custody seemed to have any knowledge about the ten stones or the Madaba map. In fact, all we know for sure from those guys is that Vladamir Krupnov was in charge of their group, and he and Sashko Melnik somehow managed to escape today. Whereabouts unknown.”

  “Yeah, Fulcher seems to have dropped off the grid, too,” said Califano from across the room.

  “They know we’re on to them now,” said McCreary. “They won’t be so sloppy anymore. You can count on that. That’s why I doubt they’re traveling commercial.” McCreary gobbled down his slab of chicken parm and then turned toward Califano. “Any luck tracking private aviation?”

  “Nope. There’s way too many flights, and I can’t seem to find any meaningful pattern or connection between any of them. Just random, typical private air traffic.”

  “Keep working on it,” said McCreary glumly. He turned his attention back to his meal.

  “What about the stuff Holzberg said before he died?” asked Ana. “Are we sure we’ve accounted for everything?”

  “Pretty much,” said Califano. “I’m still updating the relevancy engine with the stuff we learned today from Opal and some of the stuff you got from Tom Reynolds. Should be ready for a new data crunch in a few minutes. Maybe it’ll point us in the right direction.”

  McCreary sighed. “Look, even if we can’t locate the ten remaining stones, you guys did a hell of a job preventing the Thurmond material from falling into the wrong hands. You should be really proud of that.”

  Ana wasn’t having any part of that consolation prize. “It won’t mean a damn thing if ten other pieces of the material fall into Fulcher’s hands. I shudder to think what he could do with that much material.”

  “I know,” said McCreary with a heavy sigh.

  “Holy shit!” Califano exclaimed.

  McCreary swiveled in his seat. “What is it, Michael?”

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “That’s your big revelation?” said Ana with a dry laugh.

  “No, I mean I’ve been trying to track private flights all over the world by their tail numbers. But then I thought, what if the tail numbers are changing? So I wrote a little algorithm to test out that theory, and here’s what I got. A Gulfstream 550 took off from Moscow yesterday morning, bound for Almaty, Kazakhstan. Six hours after it arrived, another Gulfstream 550 with a different tail number took off from Almaty bound for Lisbon. And then, about five hours ago, another Gulfstream 550 with a different tail number left Lisbon en route to Istanbul. That flight touched down in Istanbul about forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Same plane?” asked McCreary. “Just repainting the tail number each time?”

  “Could be. And I bet you anything it’s Fulcher. He’s on the move.”

  “But why would he be hopping all over Europe like that?” asked Ana. “And what’s in Istanbul?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out right now.” Califano let loose a torrent of keystrokes and mouse clicks for the better part of a minute until he finally finished with an exaggerated click of the Enter key. “You guys want to watch?”

  They all nodded.

  Califano pushed a button, and his display suddenly showed up on the large screen at the front of the room. A stream of data was cascading down the screen, so fast that it was impossible to read. “It’s crunching now. It’ll take a little while.”

  Several minutes later, the cascading data finally came to an end, and a small window popped up showing the top five paired IIEs that had resulted from this particular data crunch. Califano expanded the window and centered it on the screen.

  Everyone in the room stared at the result, which showed two columns labeled IIE 1 and IIE 2, each pair representing two related pieces of data with particular relevance to the information Califano had fed into the system. The first column consisted of the following five items:

  Benjamin Fulcher

  Vladamir Krupnov

  Sashko Melnik

  Joshua Stone

  Jasher

  The second column consisted of a single geographic location, repeated five times.

  “Oh my God,” whispered Ana, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “You two better pack,” said McCreary. “Looks like you’re going on a trip.”

  48

  JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA

  You two are crazy,” said Akeem bin Nayef over his shoulder. He was driving a white Infiniti JX35 SUV with heavily tinted windows, which was inching east toward Mecca on a jammed Highway 40. The sun was just now rising over the horizon.

  In the backseat, Mike Califano and Ana Thorne glanced at each other, both thinking the same thing: He’s right.

  “Look at this traffic,” said Akeem. “We’re in the middle of the hajj. Millions of Muslims from around the world are descending on Mecca this week.” He shook his head in frustration. “I’ve lived here most of my life. I’ve been a CIA regional coordinator for more than fifteen years. And even I don’t go anywhere near Mecca during the hajj. I mean, have either of you even been to Saudi Arabia before?”

  Califano and Thorne both shrugged and shook their heads no.

  “Oh my God,” groaned Akeem. “Listen to me. People literally get trampled to death every year during the hajj. And God help you if anyone finds out you are not a Muslim. It’s a crime in this country to enter Mecca if you are not a Muslim. Five years in prison, followed by deportation. And that’
s if the crowd doesn’t kill you first. Are you guys sure you’re up for this?”

  Califano shrugged. “Yeah, sounds like fun. I mean, I went to a Springsteen concert at the Meadowlands back in ninety-five. Couldn’t be any worse than that, could it?”

  Ana rolled her eyes. “Nice mustache,” she said.

  “Thanks.” Califano gently smoothed out the thick black mustache that the CIA disguise people had provided him with just before he and Ana left for their middle-of-the-night flight from Dulles to King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah. In addition to the mustache, Califano was dressed in traditional Ihram attire: a white cloth wrapped around his waist like a skirt, and another white cloth gathered at his shoulder like a tunic. He felt ridiculous. He turned to Ana and sized up her outfit. “Nice burka. Really compliments your figure.”

  “Hey, at least I don’t need sunblock.” Indeed, her white burka covered every square inch of her skin except her eyes. And even there, the CIA disguise folks had left nothing to chance. They’d changed her eye color from green to dark brown using tinted contact lenses. They’d tied her hair back and covered it with a black wig to prevent any stray locks of blond hair from suddenly poking out from beneath her veil. And, as with Califano, they’d applied makeup to her face to help her blend in better with the local population. “What are you reading?” she asked.

  Califano looked up from the book he’d been flipping through for the past twenty minutes. “Arabic phrase book,” he said.

  “What, now you’re suddenly going to start speaking Arabic?”

  “Ayn al-hammam de mujir?” Califano replied without missing a beat.

  “What did he just say?” Ana asked the CIA driver.

  “He said, ‘Where is the men’s bathroom?’ And he has a pretty good accent, too.” Akeem caught Califano’s eye in the rearview mirror and nodded his head, apparently impressed.

  Ana shook her head. Photographic memory. That’s cheating.

  “Actually,” said Akeem over his shoulder, “knowing just a few Arabic phrases will probably get you by during the hajj. Muslims make up nearly a quarter of the world’s population, and they speak more than sixty different languages. So trust me, you won’t be the only ones here who don’t speak Arabic. But I wouldn’t go around speaking English, either.”

  Califano’s phone suddenly buzzed in his pocket. He checked the incoming text message, which was from Admiral Armstrong. “Fulcher’s here,” he said quietly. “His plane arrived an hour before ours, and NSA’s got a satellite spotlight on his vehicle right now. They’re up ahead of us in traffic about two miles.”

  “You were right about all of this,” said Ana, intending to pay Califano a compliment.

  “Just lucky. Besides, it was you who figured out the Jasher connection.”

  Ana smiled beneath her veil. “Okay, so tell me more about this Black Stone. Where exactly is it located in the Kaaba?”

  Akeem overheard their conversation. “Are you guys talking about the Black Stone of the Kaaba?”

  Ana nodded. “Yeah. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Min-fad-lak,” said Akeem with wide eyes. “Of course I am. It is the holiest relic in all of Islam. Not that we’re supposed to have relics. But if we did . . . that would be it.”

  “It’s got quite a history, huh?” said Califano.

  “Indeed. It is said to have formed part of the altar of Adam and Eve. And it is the original cornerstone of the Kaaba in the center of Mecca, the temple where all of these pilgrims are heading right now. In some sense, the Black Stone is the cornerstone of Islam itself. It was placed in its current location by Mohammed, and has only ever been moved once since then.”

  “That’s when it was stolen, right?” asked Califano.

  “Correct. Stolen by the Qarmatians in 930. Returned twenty-three years later in a most mysterious manner. It was tossed into the mosque in Kufa during Friday prayers with a note that said ‘By God’s command we took it, and by God’s command we return it.’ It is said that the man who stole it suffered a very unusual death. He deteriorated from the inside out, until he was eventually consumed by worms.”

  Califano and Thorne glanced at each other. They were both thinking about the unusual aging pattern they’d seen with Dr. Holzberg and, to some extent, with his son, Daniel.

  “The stone is actually made of several pieces, isn’t that right?” asked Califano.

  “That’s true, although a lot of people don’t realize it. The Black Stone actually consists of ten individual stones, which are held together with some type of cement that was made back during the time of Mohammed.”

  “And I bet no two of them are touching each other,” said Califano quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Is it true that the Black Stone predates Islam?” asked Ana.

  “Yes, according to historians,” said Akeem. “The Black Stone was already an object of worship in Mecca long before Mohammed arrived in the eighth century. No one knows exactly where it came from, other than the myth about it coming from the Garden of Eden. But it was apparently here in Mecca long before Islam.”

  “And which station is it on the hajj?” asked Califano.

  “It’s part of the first tawaf,” said Akeem. “Pilgrims circle the Kaaba seven times. And on each round, they are supposed to kiss the Black Stone.”

  “Kiss it?” said Ana. “Sounds like a lot of germs.”

  “They do it because Mohammed himself kissed the stone. As I said, the Black Stone is very special to Muslims. It is, without a doubt, the most sacred object in all of Mecca.”

  Ana turned to Califano. “What do Dr. Fulcher and his goons think they’re going to do with it today? I mean, do they actually plan to steal it in broad daylight?”

  Akeem laughed aloud from the front seat. “Oh, that would be quite impossible. During the hajj, you are lucky to even see the Black Stone, let alone touch it. Most pilgrims are content simply to point in its general direction. The idea that someone could steal the Black Stone from the Kaaba is ludicrous. Especially during the hajj.”

  “Well, they’re obviously up to something,” said Ana.

  Califano nodded in agreement. “And unfortunately, they’re ahead of us. Hey, Akeem, any chance you could bypass some of this traffic?”

  “Impossible,” replied Akeem.

  Three hours later, the Infiniti SUV pulled into the parking lot of a seedy strip mall and came to a halt.

  “Why are we stopping?” asked Ana.

  “From here, you walk,” said Akeem.

  “Where are we?” asked Califano.

  “You are just west of Third Ring Road. I can’t drive much farther into Mecca without a special permit. Which I don’t have. Besides, it will be quicker for you to walk from here anyway. You’re only a few miles away. Just follow that parade of white.” He pointed out the window at the steady stream of pilgrims just outside the car. It was like a human river of white. “Trust me, they’re all going to the same place. Just fall into line with them.”

  Califano turned to Ana and tapped the Transmit button for his radio. “Can you hear me okay?” he said into his microphone.

  “Loud and clear,” Ana replied. “How about me?”

  Califano nodded. Then he tapped the Transmit button again. “Admiral? You on?”

  A second later, the crackly voice of Admiral Armstrong came on the line. “Yes, Michael. I can hear you just fine.”

  “Still painting their vehicle?” asked Califano.

  “Affirmative,” Armstrong replied. “It appears to be stopped about a mile east of your location, in a hotel parking lot. Oops, hold on . . .” Armstrong went off-line and returned a few seconds later. “Two men just got out. Both dressed in white. They’re joining the crowd. We’ll try to paint them both with a beam.” He paused for a moment. “Damn, this is going to be a challenge. We’ve never done this in such a large crowd. And they’re all wearing white, too.”

  “Either of them walking with a c
ane?” asked Califano.

  “Uh, no,” replied Armstrong a few seconds later. “They both appear to be fit and able bodied. They’re moving along with the crowd now.”

  “I bet it’s Krupnov and Sashko,” said Ana quietly.

  Califano nodded in agreement. He was still marveling that Armstrong could track two individuals in a huge mob of people using a geosynchronous spy satellite orbiting 22,236 miles above the earth. Truly incredible.

  Ana tapped Califano on the arm. “Hey, we’ve got to go. You ready?”

  Califano nodded that he was.

  “Rendezvous here when you’re done,” said Akeem. “And good luck.”

  Moments later, Califano and Thorne were out of the vehicle and were almost immediately swept up by the human river of white that was slowly thronging toward Mecca.

  “Stay close,” said Califano into his microphone.

  “I’m trying,” said Ana. She felt herself slowly being wedged away from Califano.

  “Here, take my hand.” Califano extended his hand, and Ana grabbed it just before she was about to be swept away by the crowd. Califano gripped her hand tightly and pulled her close. “This is our only hope of staying together.”

  Ana nodded and squeezed his hand tightly.

  “Admiral, where are they now?” asked Califano over the radio.

  Armstrong’s crackly voice came online a couple of seconds later. “Still about a mile ahead of you, heading east with the crowd. You two really need to pick up the pace.”

  “Easier said than done,” Califano muttered. He and Thorne were in a sea of humanity that was moving at its own slow pace. Nevertheless, in an effort to reduce the bad guys’ lead, they did what they could to cut and duck through the swarming mass of white.

  “How we doing now?” asked Califano over the radio. He and Thorne had been powering their way through the swarming mass of hajji for the past hour, slowly but surely advancing their position in the crowd. It was hot, grueling work. And the stench of body odor was overpowering. Deodorant and perfume were prohibited during the hajj. A true hajji was supposed to enter Mecca “pure.” Even if that meant stinking to high heaven.