The Illumination

by Karen Tintori

  I’ll need to leave the country either way, he thought mournfully, even as he sprang around the car toward Natalie Landau. I’ll never see the Temple rebuilt, but my sacrifice will make it possible.

  Two men spilled from the silver car.

  “What are you doing?” Natalie screamed, backing away from the disabled car, and from the Mossad agent who’d just attacked his partner. “Why did you hit Nuri?”

  She whirled toward the silver car, toward the two men running toward them with guns drawn.

  But it was a mistake to take her eyes off Yuvi. He was on her in a blink, snatching her shoulder bag with such force it wrenched her arm. Before she could grab it back, he flung it to the shorter of the two men, the one wearing sunglasses, the one in the lead.

  “It’s in there, Menny,” Yuvi called. “Inside the center zippered—”

  He never finished. The bullet tore through his stomach and blew out his spine. Menny froze for a heartbeat, shock on his face. “What the—” He wheeled to face Shmuel as Natalie’s screams circled through the dry, dusty air.

  “Shmuel—” Menny began, disbelief in his voice. It was the last word he ever uttered. Shmuel shot him in the chest at point-blank range. His body blew backward, and Natalie’s shoulder bag blew with it.

  “Don’t move.” Shmuel now had the gun trained on her. “And shut up!”

  The screams clogged in her throat, winding down like an air-raid siren. Going silent.

  “Who . . . are you?” she whispered, bracing herself for the next shot.

  He seemed to realize what she was thinking and smiled. He was young and craggily handsome, with smooth dark skin, a short beard, and a heartless smile.

  “No, you are not going to die. Not yet—and not by my hand.”

  He strolled around the car slowly, almost casually, and saw Nuri’s eyelid twitch. Saw his stubby fingers crawling toward the weapon in his shoulder holster.

  “It’s his turn next.”

  The bullet he put in Nuri’s chest thundered in Natalie’s ears.

  She dove for her bag and rolled frantically with it, praying to make it under the car. Her reaction was instinctive, even though she knew he could kneel down and shoot her under the car just as easily.

  Or kick the jack out and let the car fall on her.

  Confusion and terror fought for a foothold in her mind. Yuvi had betrayed them. With a sickening lurch in her stomach, she wondered if he had a partner in betrayal at the safe house. If D’Amato was in danger, too.

  Trembling, clutching her bag, she flashed on how quickly Shmuel had turned on Yuvi. Yet they obviously had orchestrated the ambush together. Yuvi had told them where to find the tzohar.

  But Shmuel—he hadn’t only turned on Yuvi, he’d turned on the guy he came with, too. The man in the sunglasses, Menny. Who did each of them work for? Her brain was numb with confusion.

  One thing she did know—she knew what they all wanted.

  Breathing hard, she watched Shmuel’s feet as he rounded the car. Knelt down. Smiled at her.

  “Come out. Now.”

  D’Amato wasn’t surprised that Bob Hutton, his former CIA handler, had known D’Amato and Natalie were headed toward Israel even before he did. The CIA and Mossad observed certain courtesies. There were certain circumstances in which they shared information and cooperated.

  A long-awaited summit meeting in Israel involving both their governments—with the ever-present possibility of terrorism looming over it—was one of those circumstances.

  “Why the hell didn’t you contact me on day one, when all this started going down?” Hutton pinned him with those bullet-gray eyes D’Amato had first seen in March 2003.

  They were sitting outside the safe house in Hutton’s car with the engine running, AC blasting, seats ratcheted back so the two of them could face each other. He’d been debriefing D’Amato for nearly a half hour now. D’Amato hadn’t held back. Much.

  “Last I heard from the agency was a ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you, asshole,’ message. With no callback number,” D’Amato retorted, stretching out his legs.

  He’d told Hutton as much as he knew about the bastards who’d been trying to kill him and Natalie. He’d gone over details, descriptions, impressions—several times over.

  He couldn’t get a bead on how Hutton was processing it all. Which wasn’t surprising. In the years they’d worked together, he’d never been able to determine whether his handler was angry, satisfied, or impressed.

  Hutton was a tall lethal machine of a man, fierce as an eagle. He had a whipcord build, an IQ in the upper 130s, and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. And he was particular about his single-malt scotch. His grimace of disgust during one of their earliest meetings had clued D’Amato in instantly that Oban was drunk neat, and never over ice. Hutton had cut his milk teeth in the latter days of the cold war and sprouted his molars during the nineties as a top covert field operative in Central Asia and the Middle East.

  D’Amato glanced at the dashboard clock, wondering how Natalie was faring. She must have the pendant safely inside the Rockefeller Museum—and into the hands of the IAA by now. Mission accomplished. Over and out.

  With any luck, they might still get out on the last plane from Tel Aviv tonight, while half the world was waking up to the news of what had transpired on the Temple Mount today.

  Still, part of him, the hard-core journalist junkie part, craved a front-row seat at the hottest news event of the decade.

  Hutton wasn’t finished with him yet, though. “You and the Landau woman have left an impressive trail of dead bodies behind you, D’Amato—Luther Tyrelle, Rusty Sutherland, the NSU agents, the ‘Osamas’ who crashed and burned in Brooklyn.” He paused as a car came around the corner, waited until it had continued down the quiet suburban street of stout, white, stone houses with reddish-orange roofs. It turned left, going out of sight.

  “Then there was the Rome hotel clerk, Ken Mundy’s wacko hitman, Barnabas Lewis—not to mention a few more ‘Osamas’ who weren’t exactly lighting votive candles in that Catholic church yesterday.” Hutton’s lip curled. “Did I leave anyone out?”

  “And your point is?” D’Amato glared at him.

  “Did it never occur to you that your own government might want to get its hands on the object Ms. Landau’s been carrying around with her? Did it never occur to you to come to us?”

  “Look, you guys cut me loose six months ago when I went back into rehab. I’ve been persona non grata—have you forgotten?”

  “Don’t you forget that you’re still alive because of the training we gave you. That object you’ve been shepherding across the globe—we’ve been searching for it for years. Didn’t you think you owed us first dibs?”

  “It wasn’t mine to give you, Hutton. Are we through here?” His hand was already on the door handle. Then he turned back. “Hearing any chatter about the summit?”

  “You think I’d tell you?”

  D’Amato studied him. “How about a truce? I’m here, on the ground. Another pair of eyes and ears. A freelancer, if you will. Give me a hint, and if I pick up on anything, it’s yours.”

  Hutton looked like he wanted to tell him to go to hell. Then he thought better of it.

  “Hell, why not? You’ve managed to keep a dozen steps ahead of the NSU. It was their job to net the pendant. But they’ve been swiping at dead air every step of the way. Yeah, there’s been chatter about the summit.” Hutton snorted. “Those Osamas who’ve been trying to snare the pendant—the Guardians of the Khalifah? They appear to be pretty interested in what’s going down at the Temple Mount.”

  “Interested how?” D’Amato asked.

  “Interested enough to set off alarm bells.”

  50

  Natalie stayed where she was, sandwiched, sweating, between the car and the road.

  “Don’t make me tell you again.” Shmuel’s lips were smiling, but his eyes weren’t.

  “Who are you working for?” Buy time. Time to think, t
o formulate a plan. “You know this belongs with the IAA.”

  He snorted. “You’re going to meet the man it’s going to belong to any moment now. Better for you if you come out before he gets here.”

  Despite the heat radiating from the ground and from the engine of the car, a chill soaked her. She could hear the engine running in the silver car—if only she could get to it, get past the murderer leering at her.

  “Stay there then,” he told her, his cold smile widening. And then he straightened. She heard the driver’s door open, saw the shadow fall across the ground. Felt his weight lower the car as he swung onto the seat.

  He’s going to drive it right over me, she thought in horror, imagining the jack ripping loose as he did.

  “Wait!” she screamed. And still clutching her shoulder bag, she flung its strap out onto the pavement near the driver’s door, where he could see it. “Take it! Just leave me alone!”

  Instantly, his left foot stepped back out of the car, stomping right into the loop of her strap to prevent her from yanking it back in. Taking a deep breath, Natalie dug her toes into the ground and waited. Waited until his weight shifted above her as he exited the car.

  In the split second that he was balanced on only one leg, she yanked the strap upward and toward her with all her strength, toppling him with a crash.

  Clutching her shoulder bag, she scrabbled toward the opposite side of the car, rolled out from under it, and sprang to her feet, running hell-bent for the silver car. As she tore across the road, she heard him cursing in Arabic behind her.

  Arabic. Shock mingled with terror. His heavy footsteps pounded after her. Closing in. She pushed harder—the car was less than five feet away. Please God . . .

  Then he tackled her, sending her crashing headlong into the hood, falling with her onto the blazing metal. The breath whooshed out of her and her head cracked against the hood. Dazed, she struggled, but felt him rip the shoulder bag from her arm.

  Then a new sound. Another car motor. She screamed, praying it was someone who would help, but the prayers died in her throat as the car screeched to a stop and a flood of Arabic flowed between the man pinning her and whoever had just arrived.

  Someone was here to help—but not to help her.

  She bit back sobs as the man called Shmuel pushed himself off her and yanked her backward. Dizziness made her sway on her feet. The sun beat down as she blinked and tried to orient herself. Shmuel had her shoulder bag and was holding her arm in an unbreakable grip.

  “Well done, Sayyed. For once.”

  That voice. She knew it like she knew the sound of dirt on a newly lowered coffin. Her sister’s coffin.

  “You.” Her eyes cleared at last and she focused on the man whose taunting voice had followed her from Brooklyn to Rome to Jerusalem.

  He was younger than his voice. He couldn’t have been thirty. He was sinewy, handsome, with slanting brows, thick eyelashes. And the most piercing, unnerving blue eyes she’d ever seen.

  An Arabic man with blue eyes. A man traditionally feared in his own culture as one who could inflict the evil eye.

  Those blue eyes locked on her as he strode forward. She refused to look away, refused to blink. He might believe he could curse her, but she didn’t. Wouldn’t.

  Then, his gaze still on her face, he extended his hand and the man who held her—not Shmuel, Sayyed—tossed him her shoulder bag.

  “The Eye of Dawn—inside, Hasan.”

  “No!” Anguish tore through her. And rage. After everything they’d done to prevent this, the tzohar had still fallen into his hands. She glared from Sayyed to Hasan, fighting to make sense of what had gone so terribly wrong in this past hour. To comprehend betrayal upon betrayal.

  But there was no time to connect the dots. Hasan’s fingers were digging through her bag, groping for the pouch, his gaze still nailed to her face. Those strangely electric blue eyes seemed to burn into her irises, hotter than the sun.

  She flinched as he found what he sought, lifted it out. Carelessly, he discarded her bag, tossing it aside like garbage.

  Nauseated, Natalie watched a slow smile spread across his face as he lowered his gaze at last to study the painted eyes adorning the aged leather.

  Suddenly, from the ground, came the faint ring of a cell phone. Hers.

  Natalie’s heart lurched. D’Amato, she thought, staring at her bag as if she could somehow will the phone to fly into her hand.

  But her captor and the man he called Hasan ignored the soft insistent ringing. Hasan turned without a glance at the shoulder bag in the road and began walking toward his black car.

  “Bring her, Sayyed,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “I’m not ready to kill her just yet.”

  51

  D’Amato redialed Natalie’s cell number. He frowned—still no answer.

  Circling the kitchen with a restlessness that grew more intense with each unanswered ring, he fought the dread gnarling in his gut. He should have heard something from Natalie by now.

  Hutton had left at least a half hour ago. Natalie, Yuvi, and Nuri should be on their way back.

  He sought out Doron in the living room, but Doron was on his cell. From upstairs came the hiss of water running—Lior in the shower.

  “I can’t reach Natalie. Try your guys,” D’Amato demanded as soon as Doron disconnected.

  The Israeli dialed calmly but then started to pace, his expression darkening with concern. “Nuri’s not answering. Let me try Yuvi.”

  But Yuvi didn’t pick up either.

  “Could be they’re still at the IAA and can’t get a clear signal inside?” D’Amato gripped the back of the couch. He didn’t like the doubt he saw in Doron’s eyes.

  “There’s one way to find out.” Doron punched in another set of numbers.

  By the time Lior joined them, his gray hair still damp, Doron had confirmed that Natalie and their partners had never arrived at the IAA.

  Full-blown panic lit in D’Amato as Lior called headquarters while they piled into the Hyundai.

  “With all the detours and roadblocks because of the summit, they probably avoided the freeway and took back roads.” Doron’s voice was tense as he screeched out of the drive.

  D’Amato didn’t answer. His gut told him what they’d find long before they spotted Yuvi’s green Ford.

  Still, he clamped his eyes shut for a moment to block the carnage splayed on the road beneath the broiling sun. The ambulances from the Red Magen David Adom were already there, flashers streaking.

  He sprang from the Hyundai even as Doron braked, praying he wouldn’t find Natalie’s body among the dead.

  52

  The all too familiar odors of earth, stone, and minerals stung Natalie’s nostrils. Her sense of smell was sharpened by the blindfold Sayyed had bound around her eyes.

  Even if Hasan hadn’t been dragging her down rough-hewn steps and along a downward-sloping tunnel, she’d have known she was underground.

  She recognized the distinctive scents just as she recognized the way the voices bounced around the space. She’d spent enough time on excavations in tunnels and underground tombs to know that they were in a narrow, low-ceilinged space below-ground.

  Dazed and aching, she tried to guess how far below the surface they’d come. But it was difficult. She was disoriented and hadn’t begun counting her steps until they’d been trudging downward for some time. Her face throbbed, her shoulders burned where Shmuel—no, Sayyed—had wrenched them. Her raw flesh stung where the road had scraped away her skin.

  She was weak—and so thirsty. At least it was a few degrees cooler down here than it had been in the rear seat of the black car, when she’d been driven, bound and blindfolded, to somewhere, she guessed, in East Jerusalem.

  She’d heard the sounds of a neighborhood when he’d pulled her from the car, a neighborhood devoid of Hebrew. Heard children calling in Arabic, men shouting, horns blaring, women jabbering, music.

  And then Sayyed had led her, still blindfolded,
down alleyways that smelled of roasted lamb and cigarette smoke, across cobbled streets and uneven pavement—before they began this endless descent underground.

  How would anyone ever find her now?

  When they finally stopped walking, her heart jerked violently in her chest as she wondered what Hasan was going to do to her. Then she was flung to the ground. She fell hard, sprawling, her scraped arms once again seared by hard-packed earth and loose stones.

  She heard an ominous ripping sound and the blindfold was torn from her eyes. Light flooded into her dilated pupils, and she winced at the brightness of a naked lightbulb overhead, bathing them like a spotlight.

  Hasan’s gun was trained at her head. Sayyed towered over her, tearing off a long strip of duct tape.

  “Bind her hands and feet,” Hasan ordered. “Tightly.”

  She fought down panic and looked away as Sayyed began strapping the tough, wide, sticky fabric around her ankles. It was then that she spotted two water bottles beneath a small table in the shadows. She licked a dry tongue over her cracked lips, knowing it would be fruitless to ask for a sip.

  Then fear lodged in her chest. On top of the table sat a battery-operated headlamp, a flashlight, and an array of tools—a vice, several hammers, pliers, an ice pick.

  What are they planning to do to me?

  She attempted to wriggle her ankles. But the duct tape was wrapped perfectly tight, just as Hasan had commanded. Despair and hopelessness closed in on her like a dark fog.

  She pushed them away and tried to relegate her pain to the recesses of her brain, so she could focus on her surroundings. She needed to be ready, she told herself, ready to use any opportunity that presented itself to change the outcome.

  “What’s wrong, Sayyed?” Hasan sounded amused. “You look uneasy.”

  “How long until the C-4 goes off?” Sayyed was glancing warily at the ceiling, even as he snapped Natalie’s arms behind her back and began winding tape around her wrists.

  “There’s plenty of time. Why are you so nervous? There’s no chance of a premature detonation. You’ll be long gone by the time I give the signal and our guest here has her eardrums blown out.” He circled Natalie with the gun, surveying Sayyed’s handiwork. “Of course, that will be mere seconds before the whole of the Al-Haram al-Sharif comes crashing down on her. The crater charge from three hundred pounds of C-4 will see to that.”