The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5)

by David S. Brody

  Perhaps Zuberi had underestimated the old Scot.

  Chapter 9

  Tamara hated working on Saturdays. It wasn’t that she ascribed literally to the Ten Commandments, including observing the Sabbath. It was more that she appreciated the tranquility and peacefulness and rejuvenative powers of a weekly day of rest spent with her family. Her body, and her soul, had grown accustomed to it, in the way others grew addicted to exercise or meditation. But Israel was at war, and her job was to fight to protect it.

  Moshe had phoned, waking her, and asked her to meet him in their Brandeis offices. He shuffled in and dropped into the chair opposite her desk. “I just heard from Tel Aviv,” he said, scratching at some dry skin on his forearm. “They want us to take Thorne’s fiancée and daughter.”

  Tamara’s body clenched. “Why?”

  He gave her a funny look. “As leverage, of course.”

  “But he said he’d cooperate.”

  “That’s what he says now.” Moshe shrugged. “People change their minds. Or they get cold feet. We can’t take any chances with the stakes this high.”

  “But how do we gain leverage over a man by kidnapping his family? That’s how we make enemies.”

  “One can have leverage over one’s enemies. And also over one’s friends. Leverage is leverage.”

  She stared out the window. Just yesterday Thorne had sat in this office with her, offering to help if he could. And this is how they repaid him. She sighed. “You know, Moshe, in many ways we’re no better than the terrorists we are fighting.”

  “Not true. They would abduct the fiancée and the girl and abuse them, rape them, probably behead them. We are not animals. We will do only what is necessary.’

  Cam woke early on Saturday, walked Venus, and went for a long run along the beach. His body relished the release of endorphins, and his mind appreciated the quiet solitude to think and analyze.

  He had spent yesterday afternoon and evening writing, turning his thirty-page outline into what would eventually become a three-hundred-page manuscript. In truth, the hard work was already complete—the outline contained all the information, all the arguments and conclusions, needed to tell the fascinating story of Scota and Moses and the Cult of the Head and the Druids and the North American stone chambers and the Templars and Prince Henry Sinclair. He just needed to add the connective tissue.

  The big question, of course, was whether to include the Isaac Question research. Dean Maxson made a compelling case: In Zuberi’s hands, the material could, quite literally, alter the history of the Middle East. Who was Cam to play God with the fate of millions of lives?

  On the other hand, he and Amanda both held strong beliefs that the truth was paramount in these types of situations. He had once heard the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel speak, and his words resonated even these many years later: ‘May I never use my reason against truth.’ There were many reasons for suppressing this particular truth, but who was Cam to decide which truths were fit for the world to hear and which were not? Suppression of this information sounded distressingly similar to the medieval Church burning books it didn’t agree with—and murdering those who read from them.

  Whatever Cam decided, he was relatively free from the financial pressures of the Superfund case. He still had no idea who had set up the ruse—Zuberi, the Freemasons, and the Mossad all seemingly had both the capability and motivation to do so. Eventually someone might offer to make the problem go away as some kind of incentive, which would reveal the culprit. But, again, in the meantime he could make decisions on the content of his book without fear of imminent bankruptcy.

  Like the Superfund problem, he also had no good sense who had sent the fake photos to Amanda. The same three suspects were in play, all again having both motivation and capability. At some point someone might offer to make the photos, like the Superfund problem, go away.

  For the murder of Randall Sid, he assumed the Masons were not involved, though he suspected both Zuberi and the Mossad. And Bartol as well—he could have been working with an accomplice, and he had expressed anti-Masonic opinions.

  He picked up the pace, his bare feet slapping against the wet sand. He was in a strange place, on an imaginary island surrounded by sharks. While on this island he had been tasked with writing a book. The contents of the final chapter of that book would determine which of the sharks would attack him when he attempted to flee.

  Amanda and Astarte ate bowls of cereal on the porch, huddled in sweatshirts against the early morning chill. “So, do you like it here?”

  Astarte was nothing if not introspective. She swirled her bran flakes around in the bowl before responding. “I would like it if it were a vacation. But it feels like … we’re hiding.” She looked up sadly. “When do we get to go home?”

  The short answer, of course, was when it was safe. But that didn’t seem like a fair response. “I think that once Cameron finishes the book he’s working on, it will be time to go home.”

  “A whole book? How many pages?”

  “Perhaps three hundred.”

  “Won’t that take, like, a year?”

  “Not nearly so long as that. He has outlined it already, and he writes very fast.”

  “So how long?”

  Working from an outline, she had once pushed out a ten-thousand-word university term paper in a day-and-a-half. Cam was equally motivated to put this behind them. Amanda did the math in her head for an eighty-thousand-word manuscript, some of which Cam had already written. “I reckon ten days.”

  Astarte bit her lip, then brightened. “Why don’t you help? You’re a good writer. Then it would only take five days, right?”

  Not a bloody bad idea. Amanda knew the material as well as Cam did. “It would mean you would have to keep yourself entertained.”

  Astarte nodded. “I have homework. And books to read. And Venus to play with.” She smiled. “And maybe you can let me watch a little extra TV?”

  When Cam returned from his run, Amanda bounced the idea off him.

  “Sounds great. We could alternate chapters,” he said, stretching his legs.

  “We keep saying that someone is trying to stop you from finishing your research. The sooner this book is done, the sooner that someone will leave us alone.”

  “Okay,” he said, “but first I need to talk to you about something.” He quickly explained that Dean Maxson had told him Zuberi was an arms dealer, and that Zuberi himself had confirmed it.

  She pondered the revelation, not really surprised by it. “I suppose it doesn’t really change anything. The plan is the same: Finish the manuscript so we can put this chapter of our lives—no pun intended—behind us and get back to normalcy.”

  He nodded. “I’m glad you said that, because I’m not sure Zuberi is the type we want to back out of a deal with.”

  Putting the plan of two authors into action, they spent the rest of Saturday on dueling laptops, tapping away in a friendly competition. “How many words,” Amanda asked, stretching as the late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the beach.

  Cam checked his word count. “Just over six thousand.” He smiled. “A few dozen of them actually make complete sentences. But it’s rough. Definitely a first draft.”

  She nodded. There was no way to write that fast and maintain quality. “Well, you beat me. I’m under five thousand.”

  “Given that you’re working from someone else’s outline, that’s pretty impressive.”

  She smiled back at him. “You’d be even more impressed if you knew what a dingbat the person who made the outline is.”

  “Let’s break for some dinner, then we can get back to it tonight. I hear that dingbat makes a mean grilled chicken.”

  She nodded. If they kept up this pace they could be finished before the week was out, as she had promised Astarte. Then, finally, they might be able to get their lives back to normal.

  Tamara took an early Sunday morning flight out of Logan Airport to Chicago and immediately checked into a hotel a
t the airport. By nine o’clock she had put on a wig, changed her eye color with contacts and added ten years to her face with some simple makeup tricks. As far as she could recall she had never met Rachel Levitad, but she couldn’t take the chance of being recognized.

  She hailed a taxi for the twenty minute ride to the modest cul-de-sac north of the city. She would be arriving unannounced, relying on the odds that on a Sunday morning most people would be home at half past nine. And that their college-aged daughter, just back from a three-day tryst with her boyfriend, would still be asleep.

  In her younger days Tamara would have prepared a speech, or at least made a list of key talking points. But there was no right way to ask what she was about to ask. She decided instead just to follow her instincts. She tapped gently on the door of a neatly maintained split-level, hoping not to wake Rachel. A thin, unshaven man in a bathrobe answered the door. She recognized Martin Levitad from their surveillance photos.

  “May I help you?” he asked not unkindly. This was his second marriage, Rachel a product of his late forties, which made him in his late sixties.

  “I hope so, Mr. Levitad. I am here to speak to you and your wife.” She held his eyes. “I work for Israeli intelligence. The Mossad.”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes alert. “I’m guessing you don’t carry any identification.”

  She pursed her lips. “No. For obvious reasons. You can call me Leah, though of course that is not my real name.”

  A smile crept onto this face. “I don’t suppose the boys from the swim club put you up to this?”

  “No. I’m afraid not.”

  He looked past her toward the street, ascertained she was alone, and stepped aside to allow her to enter. “I imagine this has to do with Rachel’s new boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me get my wife,” he exhaled. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Five minutes later they gathered in a sun room off the rear of the house, Martin’s dark-eyed wife Audrey wearing a damp t-shirt from a workout Tamara had obviously cut short. She dabbed at her face with a towel and sipped water from a bottle. Martin took her hand and smiled. “My wife is training for a triathlon.” He picked up a half-eaten bagel smeared with cream cheese. “I am training to watch her.”

  Audrey didn’t share her husband’s casual attitude. “I’m sorry to be rude, but why are you here?”

  The words tumbled from Tamara’s mouth. “I’m here because the Jewish people are under attack. In Israel, in Europe, in America.” Sometimes she felt like crying when she talked about this, or stomping her feet, or ripping at her hair. Why did no one else see the dangers? Had the nightmarish memories of the Holocaust already faded? “I’m here because we need your daughter’s help.”

  “She’s just a girl,” the mother said.

  “She’s a young woman,” Tamara corrected. “Were she living in Israel, she’d be serving in the armed forces.”

  “Well, she’s not living in Israel,” came the retort.

  Tamara nodded. “Thankfully for us, you are correct. I say ‘thankfully,’ because she is in a rare position here, at Brandeis, to be of invaluable service to her people.”

  Martin leaned forward. “Can you be more specific?”

  “My understanding is that you are not happy about her new boyfriend.”

  “He is Muslim,” the father said. “We are not racists, but we did not send our daughter halfway across the country to date a man whose religious leaders criticize Hitler for being not efficient enough.”

  “So you do see the danger,” Tamara said. “You understand what we are fighting against.”

  The mother jumped in. “We see the danger to our daughter. Which is why we want to end this little romance now, before it gets going too far.”

  Martin spoke. “You still haven’t told us what you want from us. From Rachel.”

  Tamara took a deep breath. “Amon’s father is an arms dealer by the name of Zuberi Youssef.” She outlined Youssef’s role in the Middle East arms supply game and the danger ISIS posed to Israel. And she explained how Israel was trying to neutralize him. “As you might imagine, it has been very difficult for us to penetrate his inner circle. Now, with your daughter, we have a chance.”

  Rachel’s mother’s face flushed. “So you want us not only to allow our daughter to date this … son of a terrorist, but to spy on him as well? Are you crazy?”

  “No. I’m not crazy.” Tamara looked back and forth, trying to hold both their eyes at once. “In fact, I have a thirteen-year-old daughter myself. So I can imagine how terrifying this must be for you—”

  Rachel strode into the room, interrupting their conversation. In a t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair wild about her face, she spoke with a calm dignity. “You can all stop trying to make decisions for me. I’m not a little girl.” She looked at her mother and father. “I am going to continue dating Amon, with or without your approval. We might stay together the rest of our lives, we might not last the summer. But it will be my decision, not yours. And for the record, he has nothing to do with his father’s business.” And then at Tamara. “And you’re crazy if you think I’m going to betray him like some modern-day Delilah.” She straightened herself. “You know, maybe if all you so-called grown-ups just stayed out of things, my generation would figure out a way to get along just fine.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at her parents.

  Tamara’s shoulders slumped as Rachel’s parents retreated to a corner of the room, their voices low but heated. Tamara remembered having thoughts similar to Rachel’s as a young woman herself. That was before the piles of dead bodies suffocated her idealism. But how could she convince a nineteen-year-old to give up her ideals? What was that expression? To be young and have no ideals is to have no heart. If the girl would not help, there was nothing Tamara could do…

  Tamara turned to smile at Rachel, but the young woman’s eyes remained focused on her arguing parents. After what seemed like a half hour, but was probably only six or seven minutes, Rachel’s mother nodded abruptly and the two parents, hands linked, returned to the center of the room. The father spoke, his voice soft but firm. “We have always supported you, Rachel, in whatever you do. And we are very proud of you. But in this matter we are going to exercise our rights as parents. You will help the Mossad in this, or you will not be returning to Brandeis. If, as you claim, Amon is not involved in his father’s business, then you will not be betraying him in any way. In fact, there will be nothing at all to report. But to the extent you have an opportunity to prevent war in the Middle East, we must insist you do so. It is your duty as a Jew, as an American.” He held his daughter’s eyes. “It is your duty as a human being. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

  Rachel stood motionless in the sun room while her father walked the Mossad agent to the door and said goodbye. She and her mother held each other’s eyes, neither so much as breathing until the door closed and her father snapped the deadbolt into place.

  Rachel exhaled. “Wow, that was intense. What a way to wake up.”

  Her mother pushed back her chair and gave Rachel a hug. “You did great.”

  “Do you think she bought it?” Rachel asked.

  Her father called in from the kitchen. “I think so. You were very convincing.” He smiled.

  Rachel returned his smile. “All those years of theater training. And you and mom were pretty good yourselves.”

  Her father opened the pantry door. Out stepped a man in his sixties wearing a wrinkled blue suit over a white shirt and yellow tie. “I agree. You were very good,” the man said. From what Rachel knew, the man and her father had served in Vietnam together; he was now a senior CIA official. He and her father joined them in the sun room.

  Her dad turned to his war buddy. “How were you so certain she’d come here?”

  The man, paunchy but with kind blue eyes, reminded Rachel of a math teacher in her high school who used to play Santa Claus in the mall at Christmas. “Once
she got on the plane to Chicago, it was pretty obvious where she was going.”

  “So now what?” Rachel asked.

  “Now we wait.” The man exhaled. “As I explained, the Freemasons are close to brokering a deal with Zuberi Youssef. Very close. The last thing we want is the Mossad poking around and ruining things.” He smiled. “The Mossad is very good at what it does. Unfortunately sometimes it does the wrong thing.”

  “So can I tell Amon?”

  The agent shook his head. “No, sorry.”

  She frowned. “I guess the story would sound a little crazy: The Mossad asked me to spy on you, but the CIA got to me first so I agreed to be a double-agent and feed them misinformation.”

  Her mother said, “Are you sure you’re comfortable with this?”

  Shrugging, Rachel replied. “I’m not really spying on him, so why not? And as Dad said, I’ll be doing the right thing.” She held their eyes as she spoke, confident they had no idea she way lying to them just as she had lied to the Mossad agent…

  She didn’t like lying to her parents, but they had brought this on themselves. They were being racist and bigoted and hypocritical in not wanting her to date Amon, and now they were asking her to spy on him and his family. In essence, they had forced her into lying to them. They had nobody to blame but themselves.

  A Nor’easter had moved in overnight, buffeting their cottage and roiling the ocean. Amanda and Cam sat at the kitchen table, each writing on their laptop, while Astarte bounced a tennis ball off the bathroom door and watched Venus leap to catch it. Amanda exhaled. It was difficult to write using someone else’s outline. But it also afforded her the opportunity to look at Cam’s research with a fresh set of eyes.

  “Hey Cam,” she said. “I think I found another connection between the Egyptians and the Scots.”

  “What?”

  They had found over the years that, when they were on the right track with their research, later evidence tended to corroborate earlier conclusions. “If you’re right that the Scots descended from the Egyptians, then there should be cultural similarities between the groups, right?” She didn’t wait for a response. “The Egyptians were matrilineal—the pharaohs all married their sisters, because it was her sons that were ordained to rule. Well, so were the ancient Scots. Which was pretty rare back then—most of Europe was patrilineal.”