Pharaoh

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  He did not want to admit it, but he knew very well, in his heart, that on the other side of the chessboard there was a player just as cunning and as dangerous as himself. A man whose appearance was humble and unassuming like his own, capable of keeping a thousand different situations under control at the same time, wary and tireless, probably lacking any human sentiment save an arrogant pride in himself and his capabilities: the head of Mossad, Gad Avner. In the end, it would be the two of them playing the game to its finish and the stakes would be the City of God: Jerusalem.

  The world would not be any better, or any worse, than it already was, whoever the winner turned out to be, but you play to win, you fight to prevail; offences must be avenged and wrongs must be righted.

  After many millennia, Ishmael had returned from the desert to which he had been banished, to lay claim to his role as Abraham’s firstborn son.

  ABU AHMID remained in his tent in the desert for ten days and then returned, first to Damascus and then to Amman, to resume contact with the men who would fight his battle on the field: the bishops, the rooks and the knights of his gigantic chessboard.

  He waited a few days in a hotel in the centre of town until he received the message he had been waiting for: the date and time of an appointment in the middle of the desert, thirty miles north-east of the F7 oil pipeline pumping station.

  Towards evening he hired a taxi and travelled on the road to Baghdad until he’d crossed the border, then he left the taxi at a service station and joined a small caravan of Bedouins headed south-east, towards the pipeline.

  They left him at the agreed spot and he waited, alone, until the roar of a helicopter engine could be heard coming from the east, a large M1–24 Russian-made combat helicopter armed with missiles, cannons and rocket launchers.

  It was flying just a few metres from the ground, raising a dense cloud of dust as it passed. It flew over the oil pipeline, came to a standstill in the air and then landed about 100 metres away from where he was standing. The rotor blades continued to spin for a few minutes, then slowed down and came to a complete stop. The door opened and an officer wearing a tanker’s beret and a leather pilot’s jacket came towards him on foot. The helicopter turned off the lights on board, plunging the area into darkness and silence.

  The two men were now standing opposite each other.

  ‘Salaam alekum, General Taksoun,’ said Abu Ahmid.

  ‘Alekum salaam,’ replied the officer with a slight nod of his head.

  ‘I’m glad that you agreed to meet me.’

  A cold wind was blowing and the sky threatened rain. The general was a thick-set man of about fifty. He had the dark complexion and large hands of the peasants from the south, but an uncommon pride in his bearing and gaze.

  ‘This meeting is very dangerous, Abu Ahmid,’ he said, ‘and it will have to be as quick as possible.’

  ‘I agree, General. I asked for this face-to-face encounter because what I have to tell you is so important that no message from any intermediary could communicate its full impact. Furthermore, the response can pass through no middleman; I must hear it directly from your lips. I will lay out my plan and my proposal. You have to abandon your . . . collaboration with the Americans and come over to our side.’

  The man started. ‘I will not remain here one more minute if you attempt to insinuate—’

  ‘Don’t bother protesting, General. We have indisputable evidence of what I’ve just said, and we are ready to hand it over to your chief if you don’t calm down and listen very attentively.’

  Taksoun looked at him in astonishment, without attempting a reply. He could see only the man’s eyes, because the rest of his face was covered, and it was difficult to catch the expression in them, the fleeting light of an unstable, restless spirit.

  ‘You need not modify a single detail of your agreement with them. You can even count on our collaboration. We are much more reliable than those friends of yours, who know nothing about the men or the territory.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said, seeing the other’s bewildered expression, ‘no one, besides myself and another person whom I can trust completely, is aware of this situation, so you have nothing to fear. You are actually quite highly considered in this part of the world. The Iranians, in particular, are pleased to have a Shiite like yourself on their side. As am I. To demonstrate my own esteem I have brought you a little gift.’ He took a photograph out of his pocket and handed it to the general.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘A jihad combatant sworn to suicide, a soldier in the President’s guard. He will be the one to blow up your Reis the day of the parade, much more reliably than the commando unit you have chosen for the same task. It’s quite likely that you would be exposed before you managed to succeed in your goal, which would mean your immediate execution. So allow us, if you don’t mind, to take care of this one.

  ‘After the explosion, you will preside over the solemn funeral rites for any bits and pieces of al Bashar they may find scattered over the parade ground, and then you will take supreme command of the armed forces and have yourself named temporary head of state that very day, pending elections to be held at a future date.

  ‘Your first step will be to confirm official diplomatic relations with the Americans. Then you will immediately establish, secretly of course, a plan for a close alliance with the new Syrian president, who supports our project. You will contact the Iranians as well, who are already behind us, and several fundamentalist groups in Egypt and Jordan, according to our instructions.

  ‘I will take care of arranging the appointments and meetings, in absolute secrecy.’

  General Taksoun raised his eyes to the clouds gathering in the sky and tried to make out Ahmid’s expression in the darkness beneath the keffiyeh that hid most of his face.

  Abu Ahmid nodded, looking up as well at the thickening black clouds driven by the khamsin. ‘A storm is coming up,’ he said, and seemed to be listening to the sound of the wind growing stronger, ‘a storm the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the last world war. And this will be Armageddon.’

  Taksoun shook his head. ‘You think you can set off another war, Abu Ahmid? It won’t work. There’s only one superpower left in this world and their military supremacy is overwhelming. Alliances or no alliances, the times of Salah ad Din and Harun al Rashid will never come back. My choice was not a betrayal of the Arab cause; rather, it is the only way out, the only way to set this country free from poverty and from civil and political degradation.’

  ‘I believe you, General. But listen carefully. This time there won’t be any superpowers in the arena. The battle will be between the powers in play in our little corner of the world. I can’t tell you yet how this will happen. When the first part of my plan attains its goal, you’ll understand. What I can absolutely guarantee is that the United States will be in chains on the other side of the ocean, without being able to move a single ship, plane or man. America will have a gun pointed at its head and I, in person, will have my finger on the trigger.’

  Taksoun looked hard for a hint of what might be going through the man’s mind, and listened closely as he continued.

  ‘At that point, our forces will move, lightning swift, in two directions.’ He used the tip of a stick to sketch out his plans in the sandy soil. ‘One part will go south, with the backing of the Iranians, advancing day and night until they reach the Kuwaiti and Saudi oil wells, which they will proceed to mine. Ensuring one third of the planet’s energy resources in our hands. The bulk of our forces will move west, where they will join with the other Arab nations at the walls of Jerusalem.

  ‘You will lead the largest part of this army and I can guarantee that you will be the supreme commander.’

  The first drops of rain fell on the sand with small dull thuds, releasing the pleasant odour of doused dust.

  ‘What is your answer, General?’

  Taksoun nervously bit his lower lip. ‘Afterwards . . . what will happen then? A threat
like the one you’ve devised can’t be kept up indefinitely. If you keep a pistol pointed at someone’s head for too long without pulling the trigger, sooner or later he’ll manage to surprise you and disarm you.’

  ‘This has been foreseen as well,’ replied Abu Ahmid. ‘It should suffice for you to know that when we’re ready to negotiate, our position will put us at an absolute advantage. Well, General, what is your answer?’

  ‘You seem very sure of yourself, Abu Ahmid,’ said the officer. ‘But if I were to . . .’

  Abu Ahmid watched calmly as the general’s hand settled on the butt of his gun.

  ‘You forget that there’s another person, besides myself, who knows everything about you. If you were to take such a risk, you would never make it back to headquarters, my friend. Isn’t your pilot, by chance, a young lieutenant from Zahko who served up to two weeks ago at the Erbil base and who has the habit of wearing his gun on his right side?’

  Taksoun took a startled look at the helicopter, then seemed to think for a minute. ‘All right.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, you can count on me.’

  ‘And you on me,’ said Abu Ahmid. ‘At any time of day or night and in any weather.’

  The wind blew harder and a flash of lightning lit the swollen clouds waiting on the horizon.

  ‘But how will I—’

  ‘You will never be able to contact me, for the simple reason that you will not know who I might be or where I can be found. I will come looking for you. And find you.’

  ‘Farewell, then, Abu Ahmid.’

  ‘Goodbye, General Taksoun. The day of the military parade is not far off. Allah Akbar.’

  ‘Allah Akbar,’ answered the general.

  He nodded and turned towards the helicopter. The pilot started up the engine and the blades began to rotate faster and faster until the craft lifted into the air. Beneath them, the man wrapped in his keffiyeh became very small, until he disappeared behind a veil of rain. The general looked away and sat thinking as the helicopter flew over the deserted banks of the Euphrates.

  He suddenly turned towards the pilot. ‘Where are you from, lieutenant?’ he asked.

  ‘Town called Zahko, sir,’ the young officer answered.

  THE SAME DAY, but much later that night, Gad Avner left the National Security Council meeting in a very bad temper. The politicians, as usual, had spent the whole time tearing each other to pieces without reaching any decision regarding his request for a special allocation to reinforce the intelligence services.

  They had asked him for proof, solid evidence that would justify such a large financial commitment, but all he had to offer was an old bloodhound’s sixth sense of danger in the offing. Yes, but something solid, they demanded. Unusual activity in certain circles, edginess in several banking institutes, suspicious transfers of massive sums of capital, disturbing euphoria among political prisoners. And two words: Operation Nebuchadnezzar.

  And you’re asking us to allocate five hundred million shekels on the basis of two words?’ asked the leader of the opposition. ‘What kind of an idiot are you?’

  ‘Do you know who Nebuchadnezzar was?’ replied Avner. ‘The King of Babylon who took Jerusalem in 586 bc, destroyed the Temple and deported the remaining population to Mesopotamia,’ he said, leaving the room and slamming the door after him.

  Now he was a few steps away from the Wailing Wall,

  alongside the courtyard where he had parked his car. The neighbourhood was very quiet and almost no one was out on the streets.

  He started up the car and drove past the square that was guarded by soldiers in combat fatigues, towards the King David Hotel, where one of his men was waiting for him with urgent news.

  He was a recent acquisition but a good one: a young secret service agent, a second lieutenant of Italian origin, the son of a Venetian rabbi. Fabrizio Ferrario was working for him undercover as a social worker in an international charity organization with headquarters at the Jerusalem Plaza. Good-looking, he dressed with effortless but unmistakable elegance, nothing but perfect Armani shirts, whether under a blazer or a bush jacket.

  They met at the bar in the lobby. Avner lit up a cigarette and ordered an ice-cold Maccabi.

  ‘What was so important that it couldn’t wait until the end of the meeting?’ he asked.

  ‘Two things,’ said the young man. ‘The first is that Operation Nebuchadnezzar does exist and is, in all probability, ready to go.’

  ‘And the second?’ asked Avner without looking up from his drink.

  ‘We have to take a walk. You have to see this for yourself, and right away.’

  ‘A walk? Where to?’

  ‘Follow me, as soon as you’ve finished your beer. It isn’t far.’

  ‘What else have you found out about Operation Nebuchadnezzar?’

  ‘Not much. What I have learned is from some wire-tapping we’ve done, mainly in the prisons. There are transfers in progress from several of the Middle Eastern banks, like the Banque du Liban and the Saudi Arabian, and we’re talking about considerable sums.’

  ‘Payments? In which direction?’

  ‘Swiss accounts. Nassau. We’re investigating likely recipients,

  especially in the Sicilian and Russian mafias. It shouldn’t take us long.’

  Avner had finished his beer and followed his companion out as the bartender turned to a couple of American tourists who weren’t ready to call it a day. Tourists in Jerusalem had become a rare commodity lately.

  They walked down the deserted street to the great Antonian Fortress archway.

  ‘What do you think they’re buying with that money?’

  ‘Arms, electronic surveillance devices, missile systems, bacteriological and chemical weapons . . . who knows?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Avner. ‘Those kinds of goods are bought and sold by state ministers in this part of the world. The Palestinian Authority doesn’t have a cent and Hamas is already being financed by the Iranians and Libyans. They’re giving away plastic explosives on practically every street corner. Have I left something out?’

  ‘The ex-Soviet arsenal. You can get anything from them, at a good deal.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Avner, pulling his coat collar up around his neck.

  They had reached the centre of a large underpass and could see a weak halo of light filtering through a section of the wall between two soldiers armed with Uzi machine guns.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ said the lieutenant. ‘It’s this way.’

  Avner followed him into a sort of tunnel dug into the wall of the fortress, cut through the solid rock. They could hear voices coming from inside and the passage was lit by a couple of neon lights hanging on the walls.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Avner.

  They’d already reached the end of the open part of the passage, where a group of people with miner’s hats and digging tools were at work. Avner recognized the archaeologist Ygael Allon among them; he had been a cabinet member during the Shimon Peres government.

  Lieutenant Ferrario introduced Avner as ‘Engineer Nathaniel Cohen of the civil engineers’.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Avner, grasping the archaeologist’s dust-covered hand. Then he turned towards the tunnel which appeared to be partially caved in. ‘But what is this?’ he repeated.

  Allon showed him a few ceramic fragments and shone a torch on a short inscription in the wall. ‘It’s a tunnel from the age of the kings of Judah. And it seems to lead to the Temple.’

  4

  WILLIAM BLAKE had dozed off for a couple of hours, trying to get a little sleep before they landed. He was woken by a voice over the intercom that wished them all a merry Christmas and asked them to fasten their seat belts. When he opened his eyes he saw that the plane’s window shades had been lowered. Gordon was nowhere to be seen; he must have gone into the cockpit.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked Sullivan.

  ‘Nearly at our destination, Professor Blake,’ was the reply.

  Not much of an answer. B
ut Blake thought they must be somewhere west of Luxor if the descriptions of the terrain that his companions had provided him with at the beginning of the flight were accurate.

  Sullivan and Gordon had shown him a few snapshots that they had taken inside the tomb, but it was still rather difficult to get an overall idea, because of the constricted angles of the shots. What was clear was that the tomb was definitely untouched. It was in the same condition, at the time of its discovery, as when the person lying inside had been buried.

  A few more minutes went by until the wheels touched down and the engines were reversed. When the plane had nearly come to a complete stop, the pilot opened the side hatch to allow the passengers to exit. Blake stepped into the doorway and inhaled the dry, scented air of the desert. Then he looked around to try to get a bearing on where he was.

  The aeroplane had come down on a dirt runway that was smooth and even enough to permit landing without any problems. It was situated at the centre of a valley which stretched between two mountain ridges. The hillsides were furrowed by a series of gullies joining in the bed of a wadi which meandered across the valley, more or less parallel to the runway. The river bed was completely dry but flanked and shaded here and there by low thorny vegetation, broom and tamarisk bushes.

  A station wagon pulled up alongside the plane and loaded on the passengers and their luggage. They set off as the Falcon rolled down the runway towards the hill where a hangar hatch was opening.

  They travelled up the river bed for about half an hour, until they reached a group of trailers: the camp of the Warren Mining Corporation. Off to one side was a power generator run by a petrol engine and to the other a large black Bedouin-style tent, probably used for meals and meetings.