Pharaoh

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘General, sir, if you don’t mind, I would like you to follow me into the operations room, where I have already sent the program to have it projected onto the giant screen. Just remember, if they’re right, there are only sixteen hours left before the final procedure begins.’

  Hooker closed the dossier, got up from his chair and followed Captain McBain through the labyrinth of halls leading to the operations room.

  ‘Who does this computer belong to?’

  ‘Some guy named Omar al Husseini—’

  ‘An Arab?’ Hooker asked with a start.

  An American of Lebanese origin, a professor of Coptic studies at the Oriental Institute in Chicago.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s nowhere to be found. Very discreetly, I had his house checked.’

  ‘Did you say discreetly, McBain? If what you are telling me is true, you should have broken down the bloody door with a battleaxe and seized that goddamned computer if it’s the one that’s been fucking with us all this time.’

  ‘Our experts say that it could be a very tricky business. Tampering with that computer could be like messing around with a bomb, or in this case three.’

  Well, then, let’s get inside the damn thing, like those guys in the aeroplane did!’

  ‘It’s not that easy, General, sir. There are words in Coptic, files in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Arabic. It’s like playing blind-man’s bluff in a minefield. We’re working on it together with the people who provided the original lead.’

  ‘Have you at least managed to find out who they are?’

  ‘No.’

  And why the hell not, might I enquire?’

  ‘Because they don’t trust us.’

  McBain opened the door and ushered his superior officer into the operations room. The technicians were projecting the program onto the big screen, guided by the instructions of a man’s voice broadcast over a loudspeaker, with the sound of a jet engine in the background.

  Hooker glanced at the radar screen. ‘Can you tell where they are?’

  ‘We redirected them to the military airport at Fort Riggs,’ said another officer. ‘In any case, I’ve sent them a helicopter with a couple of military doctors.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Hooker. ‘What guarantee do we have that this program itself doesn’t constitute a danger to us? Or even the aeroplane, for that matter?’

  ‘I’ve had some checks run, General,’ said McBain, ‘and I can categorically and absolutely exclude that possibility, sir. Just step over this way, if you don’t mind. ‘

  He brought him in front of a monitor connected to a VCR and a computer. ‘I had the FBI send me the cassettes they confiscated from the security camera installed at the lobby of the Chicago Tribune. This footage relates to the day the video with the nuclear threat was delivered. Watch.’

  He had them start the video and then stop it at the point where the front of a FedEx delivery van appeared just outside the lobby of the Tribune. You could see a delivery man getting out with a package.

  ‘That package contains the video cassette,’ McBain explained. ‘Now, watch carefully.’ He typed in a stop-image command on the computer and then went on to enlarge a detail in the background, focusing on a car parked at the kerb and a man fussing around with a jack and spare tyre. The zoom lens further enlarged the man and then his face, obtaining a very blurry but still quite recognizable image. McBain typed in a few more commands and right next to the blurry face there appeared another, clear picture of a face. ‘This, gentlemen, is a photo of Professor Omar al Husseini which we had sent to us by the faculty office of the Oriental Institute. As you can see, there’s no doubt about it. It’s one and the same person. The only question is, could Husseini have just happened to be passing by the Tribune at that precise moment? I doubt it seriously.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ one of the computer technicians interrupted, ‘we have just decoded the program.’

  Hooker followed him to the central screen, at the top of which, in giant letters, was written:

  The

  ARMAGEDDON

  program

  ‘It is designed to make three objects called “donkeys” rotate in six successive twenty-four-hour cycles,’ explained the technician, ‘trained on three objectives that are always different. After the sixth cycle, the final procedure is activated. If there is any interference, the final procedure is instantly activated, or perhaps a reserve circuit is activated. We have decoded the symbols for the objectives: they represent major American cities. The sixth cycle settles on New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. I don’t think it’s necessary to mention that the objects in motion are the mobile nuclear bombs we are looking for. Constantly moving them around makes it very difficult for us to get a fix on them.’

  ‘Strange,’ muttered Hooker, staring at the screen, ‘why haven’t they targeted Washington?’

  ‘It’s a question of the Middle-Eastern mentality,’ said McBain. ‘For them it’s much more painful for a man to have his honour wounded, the things he holds dear, than simply to be destroyed physically. Their plan calls for the President to survive unharmed so he can witness the destruction of the nation.’

  ‘Sir,’ chimed in one of the communications sergeants, ‘we have an answer from Jerusalem.’

  ‘We sent the photos of Husseini to Mossad,’ explained McBain, moving up to the monitor of the computer that was just starting to display a series of mug shots showing a young man with a thick moustache wearing a keffiyeh on his head.

  Putting on his glasses, Hooker approached the screen, observing the images intently as a technician ran them through a morphing program. He removed the moustache and keffiyeh, thinned the hair, coloured it grey and deepened the wrinkles.

  ‘My God,’ he exclaimed. ‘Husseini is . . . Abu Ghaj!’

  ‘At this point, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,’ said McBain. ‘Husseini is the key to it all. We need to get our hands on him and we don’t have much more than sixteen hours to do it in.’

  Hooker called in the entire staff. ‘Listen up, gentlemen, this is what we’ve got to do. First of all, find a damned computer genius who can stop that program without blowing us all to smithereens. And second, run a thorough check on this Husseini guy, find out everything there is to know about him, anything that can identify him and trace his movements: his automobile licence plates, credit cards, social security number, ATM cards, everything. Then all he has to do is buy gas, get a prescription for sleeping pills or buy a pair of damn boxer shorts in a department store and we’ll nail him. Third, find the three commandos who have the bombs and eliminate them on the spot, before proceeding to defuse the bombs if you can. Now get hopping, men!’

  The non-commissioned officer in charge of communications came up to the general with an anxious expression. ‘Bad news, sir. General Yehudai’s offensive in Israel is failing. They are getting ready to start the launch procedure for the nuclear warheads at Beersheba.’

  Hooker fell into a chair, covering his face with his hands. McBain walked over to him.

  ‘I’ve got the aeroplane back on the line, sir. Do you want to say something?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Hooker, ‘let me speak to them.’

  He moved up to the microphone. ‘This is General Hooker at the Pentagon calling the unidentified aircraft, do you read me?’

  ‘I read you, General, loud and clear.’

  ‘You were right. Everything turned out just like you said. The three “donkeys” that appear in the file are actually three mobile nuclear warheads that could explode in exactly fifteen hours and . . . fourteen minutes in three major American cities.

  ‘Professor Husseini was a notorious terrorist active around the middle of the 1980s, operating under the name of Abu Ghaj. So now, if you wish, you can identify yourselves. We are no longer concerned that you might pose a security threat.’

  There was silence for an interminable minute in the operations room, then the voice of the man in the aeroplane said,
‘My name is William Blake and I’m a colleague of Professor Husseini’s at the Oriental Institute of Chicago. I’m on board a Falcon 900EX. It is being flown by Sarah Forrestall of the Warren Mining Corporation, but she has been seriously injured. We are the only survivors of the incident at the Ras Udash camp in the Negev desert.’

  Hooker leaned his back up against the wall, as if struck by a bolt of lightning.

  ‘Hello, come in? Do you read me, General?’

  ‘I’m reading you, Mr Blake. Loud and clear.’

  ‘Listen, General. I don’t believe that Professor Husseini wants those bombs to explode. He may very well have been a terrorist in the past, but you have to look at the time and place he was operating in. I’m sure he’s no longer one and he’d never willingly massacre innocent civilians. That program was probably operating without him even being aware of it. Didn’t you notice how it resembles a computer virus? Perhaps he’s just a victim as well. Perhaps he’s being blackmailed himself. Do you understand what I’m driving at?’

  ‘I do, Mr Blake.’

  ‘Don’t kill him, General.’

  ‘We have no intentions of killing anyone. We are trying to save lives, those of millions of innocent human beings. Now I’m going to hand you over to the control tower.’

  ‘We’re just about out of fuel. Tell them to let us land as soon as possible. And good luck to you guys too.’

  Hooker turned to McBain. ‘I want to talk to Jerusalem. Get me Code Absalom.’

  ‘Code Absalom is on the line, sir,’ reported McBain, just a moment later. ‘Go ahead and speak.’

  Hooker moved up to the microphone. ‘This is Hooker.’

  ‘This is Avner. What’s on your mind, General?’

  ‘Is it true that you have started the nuclear launch procedure?’

  ‘We have no choice.’

  ‘Just give me six hours, Avner. There’ve been some new developments.’

  ‘That was what you said last time. Where did waiting get us then?’

  ‘Avner, we’ve cracked the control code for the explosives and our technicians are working on arresting it.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘We received a message.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘I’d rather tell you all about it when this whole thing is over.’

  ‘That’s a risk you’ve already taken and, let me remind you, the results were hardly inspiring.’

  Hooker managed to hold back his anger, mulling things over for a few moments.

  ‘William Blake and Sarah Forrestall are still alive and about to arrive here aboard a Warren Mining Corporation Falcon. They were the ones who sent us the message.’

  ‘It’s just a pretext for getting onto American territory. Shoot them down. It’s a trick and you’re falling for it.’

  Hooker thought about how Blake had said ‘He may very well have been a terrorist in the past, but you have to look at the time and place he was operating in . . .’ Was Blake justifying the actions of a terrorist?

  Avner continued to plead his case. ‘What do you have to lose, Hooker? If the system they gave you works, then you’ll have sacrificed two lives to save a million. If it’s a trick, and it obviously is, you’re risking an even larger-scale disaster. Those two renegades had everyone at the Ras Udash camp murdered by Taksoun’s helicopters, including ten of your Marines. Don’t forget that. And how do you know what’s onboard that aircraft? Believe me, Hooker, when this is all over, you’ll realize just how right I am. Shoot them down, before it’s too late! It’s clear to me that the program you think is going to solve all your problems was given to them by Taksoun’s agents to throw you off track and waste time, if not worse. Just think for a minute, Hooker. How could they have got out of Egypt in the middle of a war, and in an aeroplane of all things?’

  Hooker wiped his forehead, which was drenched in sweat.

  ‘Just do it,’ urged Avner, ‘and I promise that I’ll stop the nuclear launch procedure at Beersheba. I’ll convince General Yehudai, I promise, but for only five hours, not a minute longer. After that, regardless of what happens, we’re going to let all hell break loose. Do you remember that passage in the Book of Judges, Hooker? Where Samson says, “Let me die, together with all the Philistines!”’

  Hooker closed his eyes in an effort to calm his inner turmoil, trying desperately to evaluate all the evidence he had been presented with in a cool, logical manner. Finally, he announced, All right, Avner. You’ve convinced me.’

  He then turned to McBain. ‘I want my jet on the runway in five minutes. I’m going to Chicago.’

  BLAKE WENT into the cockpit with some gauze and alcohol, changed the dressing on Sarah’s arm and tried to medicate the wound, as she stiffened with pain.

  ‘I’m a lousy medic and I’d make an even worse pilot,’ he joked, ‘but you’re in no shape to be flying. Let me take over the controls and you can give me instructions. We can still do this.’

  Sarah interrupted him. ‘Shit. Look, we’ve got company.’

  What’s going on?’

  ‘A fighter at ten o’clock, twelve miles away. They’re going to shoot us down, Will. It looks like they didn’t buy our story.’

  Blake watched the outline of the aircraft that was approaching them. ‘Damn it!’ he swore. ‘He talked me into identifying myself. He seemed so sincere . . .’

  Sarah was studying the expanse of partly snow-covered countryside stretching out below, interrupted by the red roofs of a small town. ‘We’ve got only one chance,’ she informed Blake. ‘I’m going to drop this thing down over that town where they won’t dare shoot at me and then I want you to jump out with a parachute. I’ll lead the fighter a merry dance. Will, let me do this. I know I can.’ She pushed the control stick forward and the nose of the plane descended sharply. ‘Quick, put on the parachute. We’ve got less than two minutes.’

  ‘Not on your life,’ Blake began protesting, but he didn’t have time to finish, because a voice coming in over the radio interrupted their altercation.

  ‘This is Captain Campbell of the United States Air Force. Welcome home. I have instructions to escort you to a place where you can land. Please follow me.’

  ‘We’re right behind you, Captain,’ replied Sarah, ‘and quite honoured, to say the least, by the reception.’

  Running on fumes alone, they landed ten minutes later at a military base near Fort Riggs, where a helicopter was waiting for them on the runway. Two stretcher bearers immediately began attending to Sarah’s wound, but when they started getting her ready to be loaded into an ambulance, the still-feisty girl wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘I’m going with you,’ she said to Blake. ‘I want to see this thing through to the end.’

  There was no chance of changing her mind and so the attendants handed her over to the doctors on board the helicopter. One of them put her arm in a sling and the other started giving her a transfusion. She was then given a sedative so she could get some precious sleep.

  Two hours later they landed at Meigs Field in Chicago in the driving rain. An ambulance was waiting for them at the side of the runway with the motor running. General Hooker was standing next to it, wrapped in a raincoat.

  Sarah was loaded right away into the ambulance. Blake kissed her goodbye. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It was all my fault.’

  ‘It was just a piece of rotten luck,’ said Sarah with a tired smile. ‘Next time don’t forget your fucking briefcase.’

  ‘Sarah! You were great!’ Blake yelled as they carried her away.

  Hooker reached out to shake Blake’s hand, but withdrew it as soon as he noticed the very conspicuous splints and bandages on both his left and right wrists. ‘Welcome home,’ he said. ‘I see that our medics have done their best. Do you feel up to another helicopter ride?’

  ‘You won’t believe this, General, but for a minute, when I first saw that fighter, I was sure it was going to shoot us down,’ said Blake, following the general.

  ‘Shoot y
ou down? You must be joking. What would we do that for?’ asked Hooker, eyes wide.

  They got on board and the helicopter, which had never stopped its engines, slowly lifted off into the leaden sky.

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered Blake, ‘it’s just that we haven’t been receiving very cordial greetings lately . . . How are things progressing at this point?’

  ‘We’re fighting against the clock,’ said Hooker. ‘There are only twelve hours left until the final launch signal. Our technicians are deactivating the system, but we’re not sure it’s the only one around. There could be a back-up system we’re not aware of. Plus Husseini is still at large. He must have noticed something fishy because he hasn’t been to his flat in days.

  ‘Four hours ago the President was forced to make an announcement to the nation, but he hasn’t revealed the whole story. The population living in the central areas of the three cities at risk are being moved into underground shelters and subway tunnels and out of the city where possible.

  ‘It’s all we’ve been able to do. The metropolitan areas of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone contain almost forty million people. If panic were to break out, the situation would spiral completely out of control. A full evacuation would require at least a week and we have only a few hours. At this point, finding Husseini is a top priority. Obviously, he knows that we know, otherwise he would have touched base. Maybe he has noticed our surveillance activities, or else someone could have tipped him off.’

  ‘I think you’re right. But it’s also true that he hasn’t transmitted any orders to activate the bombs, assuming that it’s in his power to do so.’

  ‘All our efforts to locate him have been in vain. He hasn’t used his credit cards, hasn’t purchased any gas and hasn’t even withdrawn any money from an ATM. There hasn’t been a sign of him. It’s as though he’s disappeared into thin air.’

  ‘Husseini used to be Abu Ghaj, General. I’m sure he still knows how to survive for days without eating, drinking or washing, hiding wherever necessary, even in the sewers. Our rules of the game simply don’t apply to him.’