The Shroud of Heaven

by Sean Ellis

  His measured tone left little room for negotiation. Chiron had become a true believer, as driven as any suicide bomber. There would be no turning him from his path. Kismet had one card left to play. He spoke very slowly, afraid that the older man would panic in the face of an ultimatum. “Pierre, I can’t let you do this.”

  “You cannot stop it,” Chiron replied, matter-of-factly. There was no defiance in his tone, only grave certainty.

  “I already have. Before I came up here, I had the Tower engineers start wrapping the corner pylons in copper wire. As of—” he made a show of checking his wristwatch, but paid no real attention to what the face showed, “—about five minutes ago, they started running an electrical current through that wire.”

  He saw comprehension in the other man’s eyes, but continued talking, hoping that the sound of his voice and the confidence he projected would be enough to disarm Chiron where reason had failed. “You see, I was paying attention when you talked about this in Babylon. I know that you think the Eiffel Tower is your Solomon Key, your magic staff to control—or destroy—the magnetic fields. So I had to come up with some way to neutralize it: magnetism. We’ve turned the Tower into an oppositely polarized electromagnet. Right now, whatever sort of interaction this structure had with the radiation in the atmosphere has diametrically changed. I’ve taken away your Solomon Key. You can still hurt a lot of innocent people, but that’s all. It’s over, Pierre.”

  Chiron stared back at him like he was speaking a foreign language. But as the weight of the words settled in, he seemed to deflate. “Two million,” he mumbled. “For nothing. What have I done?”

  Kismet advanced on Chiron, but the latter paid no heed. Chiron buried his head in his hands and sagged onto the stairs. Kismet muscled past him and ascended into the turret. Only there, as he caught sight of the detonator, did the reality of the situation finally hit home. His employer and mentor, a person almost as close to him as his father, had assembled an atomic weapon with the sole intention of wiping out all life on earth. He bit his lip and banished the paralyzing emotional response. Rage and incredulity weren’t going to help him avert this catastrophe. Only a clear head and rational thought process stood a chance of doing that. But as he reached the turret and gazed at the now completely assembled detonator, even his best attempt to remain dispassionate failed.

  Bomb disposal was not something Kismet had been trained for, but he understood the principles of making and detonating most devices. Everything from a stick of dynamite, to a hand grenade, to this, a medium-yield nuclear device, worked on the basic principle of pushing an unstable chemical to its flashpoint. This was typically done through the introduction of a blasting cap—a small explosive that, when activated by a very low voltage electric charge, would trigger a cascade reaction in the larger payload. A nuclear detonator required engineering at an unparalleled level. The titanium sphere had to be machined to meet the highest tolerances, and the timing of the primary explosions had to be precise to within nanoseconds. Yet, for all the necessary exactitude, it remained a simple, electrically activated fuse. The trigger could be anything from a barometric device designed to activate at a preset altitude, to a radio-controlled detonator, but the end result would be the same: a tiny electrical charge would activate the blasting caps impregnating the plastic explosives, and a chain reaction lasting less than a tenth of a second would begin.

  When Kismet saw the device moderating Chiron’s bomb, his heart fell. It was nothing more complex than a kitchen timer, affixed to the metal body of the detonator with two strips of black tape, but its humble origin was deceptive. Sprouting from the back of the cheap timer were no fewer than eight wires which disappeared into the larger device and gave an implicit warning: cut the wrong wire and everything goes away. But even more shocking was the innocuous black display which methodically counted down the remaining minutes until detonation.

  5:48…5:47…5:46

  “Pierre, we have to stop this thing. Tell me what to do.”

  Chiron shook his head without looking. “You cannot. I knew that someone might try to prevent me, so I made it impossible to disarm. Stop the timer or cut any of the wires, and it will detonate.”

  “Damn it.” His oath was barely a whisper. If the bomb could not be turned off, what did that leave? He glanced down at the illuminated park lawn below where the aerodynamic fuselage of the Panther lay like a slumbering wasp. It was conceivable that the pilot could have the helicopter airborne in less than a minute, but then what? He could not hope to remove the bomb to an area remote enough to minimize loss of life in the very few seconds that would be left.

  5:18…5:17…5:16….

  A plain gray box lay next to the oblong cube-shaped bomb. On an impulse, Kismet flipped it open and found inside a variety of electrician’s tools and a small rechargeable drill-driver. “What about the nuclear core, Pierre? Can I remove it without triggering a detonation?”

  Because of the precise engineering requirements of such a device, even a partial disturbance of the titanium sphere surrounding the plutonium fuel would prevent it from going nuclear. It would still explode, right on time, conceivably bringing down the tower and certainly killing anyone in close proximity, but millions of lives would be saved.

  Chiron did not immediately answer, so Kismet chose to recognize his silence as an implicit affirmative. If he was wrong… well, that would only hasten the inevitable by a mere five minutes.

  5:00…4:59….

  He took up the handheld drill and selected a five-millimeter socket head. It was a perfect fit with the machine screws that secured the cowling over the guts of the bomb. Fixing it into the chuck of the drill, he commenced unscrewing the cover. He was so focused on the task at hand that he failed to register the significance of the declaration that broke the stillness, until in a more strident tone, the speaker repeated the threat.

  “Step away, Kismet!”

  4:49…4:48…4:47….

  He glanced sidelong at the person who had joined Pierre on the platform below the turret. He wore the coveralls of a Tower maintenance engineer, but his physical appearance gave lie to the façade that he was just another Parisian in the employ of the city. His face was a dark bronze hue that could only be gained through a combination of natural swarthiness and long hours under a desert sun, and looked like distressed leather. Capping the classic Arab countenance was a mane of black hair shot through with streaks of preternatural white, a hint of some unspeakable trauma in the man’s recent past. It was his eyes however that told the tale. The muscles at the corners of each eye were bunched tight, in a perpetual squint, as though he had gazed upon the face of God and been struck blind. Kismet knew the look well. The desert sun had left its brand on his eyes too. He did not have to study the man’s face for signs of familiarity. This was the same man whom he had encountered in the cavern where the Hind had been hangared. The unarmed Iraqi whom he had knocked senseless and left for dead. Kismet had almost remembered the man then, and in the days and hours that had passed, the memory had congealed into recognition. This was the man who had tortured him on that fateful night in the desert twelve years before.

  “Colonel Saeed.” The statement was terse, barely escaping through unconsciously clenched teeth. “Pardon me for not being more excited at this little reunion, but I’ve got bigger…”

  The gun in Saeed’s hand discharged and the sound of the report was almost simultaneous with the metallic noise of the bullet ricocheting from the side of the turret less than a meter from the opening where Kismet stood.

  “I said, ‘Step away.’ I won’t say it again.”

  Kismet glanced at the timer. Less than four and a half minutes remained. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Saeed.”

  “Oh, I understand.” A cryptic smile creased the Iraqi’s otherwise pained visage. “I’m pleased that you recognize me, Kismet. That makes this easier.”

  “Makes what easier? Revenge? Whatever it is you think I’ve done, it
doesn’t involve the two million people who will die if you don’t let me finish.”

  “No?” He gave a bitter chuckle. “I don’t care about them. But I shall enjoy watching you suffer as that clock ticks down, knowing that you are powerless to save them.”

  “You’ll die too.”

  “Yes.”

  Kismet lowered the drill but did not move away from the bomb. Saeed couldn’t possibly know that only about four minutes remained, and revealing the urgency of the situation might only feed his suicidal resolve. “I have to confess, I didn’t recognize you right away. The truth is, I hadn’t thought about you in years.”

  Saeed’s eyes narrowed as he searched the comment for some hint of an insult. “I too would have forgotten the events of that night but for one thing. I never understood why I was ordered to let you escape.”

  Kismet’s heart seized for an instant. The unexpected admission had ripped away the stone sealing the abyss of his memories. And yet, he had already glimpsed this truth during his encounter with the masked assassin in Baghdad. He remained silent, hoping that the Iraqi would further tip his hand.

  “I should have taken your life that night,” Saeed continued. “No matter the consequences. My brother, in whose shadow I am unworthy to walk, would yet be alive.”

  “I didn’t drag him into that cave,” Kismet countered, affecting a surly unrepentant tone. “If anyone killed your brother, it’s you.”

  Saeed’s smile twisted into something that was not quite pure hatred. “It is true. And I will repay that debt tonight with the blood of a million souls. And yours.”

  “When this goes off, the world will believe only one thing: An Iraqi nuclear weapon fell into the hands of terrorists and was used against innocents. Support for the war will be universal.”

  “I do not care.”

  Kismet could see the truth of the denial in the other man’s eyes. He had only one card left to play. A glance revealed that another minute had ticked away. There was still time to prevent the nuclear detonation, but the margin would be slim. “Poor Saeed. Even at the end, you’re just a puppet.”

  The gun wavered, but the former Mukharabat officer did not answer.

  “When I finally remembered you, I did a little investigative work. I learned all about your little art smuggling enterprise. I’ll bet you never even realized you were working for the Israelis.”

  Saeed’s mask cracked, revealing an even hotter rage beneath. “What are you saying?”

  “That’s right. Your partner in the endeavor—the person who murdered Mr. Aziz and is responsible for the deaths of several American soldiers—is an agent of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. You’ve been working for your greatest enemy.”

  “You are lying.” The gun dropped imperceptibly; Saeed had almost forgotten about it.

  Almost, thought Kismet. “Think about it. You controlled the largest known source of artifacts from the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King who sacked Jerusalem and carried off the holy relics of Solomon’s Temple. Who would want that more than the Israelis? They put one of their best deep cover agents in the perfect position to help you smuggle and fence the artifacts, and in so doing, guaranteed themselves first pick. Who knows, maybe you’ve already given them the one holy relic that will rally faithful Jews around the globe for a final assault against their enemies.”

  The accusation hit Saeed like a blow, driving him back a step, but Kismet did not relent. He turned to fully face the other man, tensing his muscles in readiness as he hurled the final verbal assault. “I’m sure your brother would be proud.”

  As the Iraqi staggered back another step, Kismet saw his chance. But in the instant he leapt from his perch, fully intending to pounce on Saeed in order to wrestle the gun away, the other man was abruptly swept off his feet. From out of nowhere, Chiron had launched a simultaneous attack, tackling the Iraqi to the metal deck. Even before Kismet’s feet touched down, the noise of a gunshot, muffled by the close proximity of bodies, punctuated the violence of the action.

  Kismet landed badly twisting his right ankle and sprawled headlong, but in the grip of adrenaline, barely felt the pain. He sprang to his feet and charged at the writhing tangled shape that was Saeed and Chiron. The gun roared again, and a scarlet mist appeared for an instant in the air above them. Then Pierre Chiron, who had once attacked and defeated a similarly armed killer with only his umbrella, rolled away, clutching ineffectually at the gushing torrent of crimson that boiled from his chest.

  ***

  In the instant that Kismet made his leap from the turret, a very different struggle was reaching its climax three hundred meters below. Phillipe Baudoin, the acting chief engineer stared anxiously at his wristwatch, then wiped a hand across his forehead. He had tacitly promised Kismet that the last-ditch plan to thwart the madman atop the tower would be in place in one hour. That had been sixty-three minutes ago.

  He had expected that there would be delays. Experience had taught him that events rarely proceeded according to plan. Anticipation of these unpredictable but foreseeable problems had been the reason for his original two-hour estimate, but he had been confident that, if only a few things went wrong, he would be able to have the tower pylons wired ahead of the one-hour mark. True to expectations, those problems had become manifest. The supply of copper wire he had requested from the power company had to be drawn from several locations, requiring an unparalleled feat of logistical juggling. Traffic around the tower had snarled to a halt, making it difficult for the trucks to get through. The last shipment had arrived forty minutes after his request, leaving precious little time to splice and coil it around the last remaining pillar. There had been other setbacks. The team on the north pylon had inadvertently wrapped the wire in the wrong direction, and while it had not actually delayed the operation, it was typical of what Americans called Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will. Even more frustrating was the evident disappearance of one of his crew leaders. Perhaps the man had succumbed to panic or abandoned his post in a futile effort to warn loved ones. Baudoin knew the missing man, and knew him to ordinarily be of unimpeachable character, but these were not ordinary circumstances.

  He had not once stopped to consider the merit of what he had been instructed to do. He had no illusions about the efficacy of depolarizing the tower in order to prevent some kind of catastrophe. Kismet had made it clear that the procedure’s real value was as a psychological bargaining chip with the madman high above, and as such, it really didn’t matter whether they completed the job or not, so long as Chiron believed it done. But Baudoin was driven by a different motivation. He was an engineer, a problem solver, and when he committed to a course of action, he would settle for nothing less than absolute success.

  “Phillipe,” crackled a voice from his walkie-talkie. It was Renny on the south pylon. He held the radio to his ear and glanced up to the sloping column where the last section of wire was being strung. The whole affair seemed like some insane Christmas decoration. “Go ahead.”

  “”Phillipe, it is done!”

  Baudoin heaved a sigh of relief and checked his watch one last time. Sixty-five minutes. “All teams get clear of the tower. I will activate the system in twenty seconds.”

  He continued counting audibly into the speaker as he started the gasoline generator that was spliced into a DC power converter. Although a relatively low voltage was required to create the desired electromagnetic effect, there was no escaping the simple physics. They had used more than a kilometer of copper wire, and it was going to take a lot more than a dry cell battery to make this work. His finger hovered near the switch that would start the flow of electricity into the circuit until finally the moment came. For safety’s sake, he made a final visual sweep of the tower base.

  All clear, he thought, and threw the switch.

  A torturously loud humming noise issued from the power converter, followed by a flash of brilliant light. Baudoin did not need to smell the ozone and burnt wiring to know
that something had gone wrong. The exact nature of the malfunction eluded him. Perhaps the tower’s intrinsic magnetic field was greater than he had believed, or maybe he had miscalculated the resistance in the line. Whatever the cause, there was no escaping the totality of his failure. He had promised Kismet an oppositely charged electromagnet in order to thwart Chiron’s plan. That wasn’t going to happen.

  He could only pray that Kismet had already succeeded in bluffing the madman atop the tower into relenting from his mad scheme. If not…

  If not, Baudoin realized darkly, I suppose I’ll never know.

  ***

  Saeed brandished the pistol at Kismet, but he was a fraction of a second too late. Kismet’s left fist wrapped around the barrel and, with a deft twist, he ripped it from the other man’s grasp, but a flailing blow from Saeed knocked the gun away and sent it skittering across the platform. A second strike, directed with more force and intention, caught Kismet in the chest and redirected the momentum of his charge so that he flew over Saeed’s supine form and crashed headlong. He recovered almost instantaneously, but his assailant had likewise regained his senses. Saeed struck first.

  There was no hesitancy in the Iraqi’s attack. His hands flew toward Kismet’s throat, his fingers digging into flesh like the talons of a raptor. Kismet instinctively struck at Saeed’s forearms and wrists, but his foe merely pulled himself closer to limit Kismet’s range of motion. Kismet felt his pulse pounding in his veins as the stranglehold tightened. Abandoning the futile defense, he instead launched an attack of his own.

  Saeed was a killer, but he wasn’t a fighter. Though his victims during the long years prior to his exile were almost innumerable, they were without exception prisoners, deprived of sleep and food and tortured into submission. As an officer, he had disdained combat training, and now, faced with a battle of the most primitive kind, he had only his atavistic impulses to guide him. It was a poor substitute for skill.