Doha 12

by Lance Charnes

  Gur sighed. Superficially, she had a point. But everything he knew contradicted that superficial notion. “Mr. Eldar,” he began carefully, “can you remember Hezbollah ever choosing a target because of how it looks?”

  “Never. They choose targets by what they mean.”

  “They also assassinate people with bombs.” Schaffer held her hand out to Eldar. “Remember three weeks ago? We had this same talk, except I was the one who kept saying ‘they don’t work that way.’ Well, I was wrong, they do, so maybe they also do this.”

  Gur probed the seed of a headache between his eyebrows. He’d hoped for something serious. They didn’t have time for this. “Kelila, do you believe…this?”

  Kelila flipped through the photos on the computer, her lips flat. Finally she said, “I can see why Eldar picked the Diamond District. If I was Hezbollah, I’d have a go at it, too.” She raised her hands palms-up. “But it isn’t there or Wall Street. Miriam’s idea explains the European targets better than anything I can work up. Sometimes we can know our enemy too well, we can’t see when he changes.”

  “Like Alayan and his people,” Schaffer said.

  “Exactly.” Kelila stared into the screen for a few more moments, then shook her head. “I don’t have any better ideas. Do you?”

  He didn’t, but that didn’t convince him. “Then why the package bomb at the Stock Exchange? Why the threat in the Diamond District? How does that fit?”

  Eldar said, “Well…it fits with al-Shami’s shtick. He’s into deception. He pulled a job in Yüksekova last year for PKK. He planted five different decoy bombs to keep the Turks busy, then killed a Turkish general with a sixth. Maybe he’s laying smoke.”

  That at least sounded sensible. “What else do we know about this al-Shami?”

  Kelila took over the computer and stabbed at a list of files. She turned the screen back toward Gur. “Adad al-Shami, Syrian, around forty. He learned his business in the Syrian special forces in the early ‘90s, mostly in Lebanon. Since then he’s been for hire, and he doesn’t play favorites. He’s done jobs for Iran and Iraq, both sides in Syria and three factions in Yemen.”

  Gur studied the photo on the screen. A long, weathered face, stubble hair in full retreat up his forehead, dark eyes, large ears. He looked like a killer as much as Orgad did—that is, not at all. But killers looked the part in films, not always in real life. “Mr. Eldar, is this possible?”

  Again Eldar exchanged silent words with Schaffer, who’d drifted back to the table. He drained his beer, set the bottle on the minibar, then scrubbed his face with his hands. “They’ve got their own TV channel. They make video press releases now. Hell, they’ve got a theme park. I guess it’s not nuts to think they’ve discovered how to use images.” He shrugged. “They haven’t moved on the two most obvious targets here, so I’m tapped out. Miriam’s idea is the best thing we’ve got going.” He looked to Schaffer. “Mind if I guess where you think they’re going?”

  She turned up the corners of her mouth. “Go ahead.”

  “Emanu-El?”

  Schaffer nodded. “Kelila, bring up the picture.”

  Gur’s first reaction was, that’s a cathedral, not a temple. But he had to admit there was a power to the place that most temples lacked, a solidity and grandness that he imagined Hezbollah’s mad dogs would love to defile. “Why here?”

  “It’s the most obviously Jewish place in the city that actually looks like something,” Schaffer said.

  “It’s the largest Reform temple in the world,” Eldar said. “If they were just after body count, I’d say they’d hit that big one out in Williamsburg, but that looks like a damn warehouse. Also, that one’s Orthodox. Hezbollah’s gotta know by now Americans don’t care about foreigners. Hasids look foreign even if they’re fourth-generation New York. Hell, most people here can’t tell the difference between a shmata and hijab.”

  Gur watched over Kelila’s shoulder as she flipped through the pages of Emanu-El’s website. He had to admit, the place was impressive. “What’s the congregation like?”

  “Big,” Eldar said. “Two grand or so.”

  “Twenty-five hundred,” Kelila said without looking up.

  “Whatever. Rich. The whole neighborhood’s expensive. A lot of Upper East Side Jews, some of the city’s Jewish power elite. The Mayor goes there, we saw him once.”

  Which meant the dead bodies would wear suits and dresses. The survivors on television would be prosperous and probably good-looking in a Western way. There’d be at least one cute little blond boy or girl with some hideous injury. It would drive the Americans into a frenzy.

  Gur cursed and paced to the window. The sky was twilight-dark under a quilt of bruised clouds. He glanced at his watch: nearly five-thirty. Sasha’s last text said he was on his way north from Wall Street, and where should he go? Good question.

  This was their last chance to stop the bombers. If he forgot everything he knew about Hezbollah operations, Schaffer’s theory made some crazy kind of sense, as did the proposed target. He’d acted on hunches before, but they’d been his hunches, not a civilian’s.

  “Raffi?” Kelila’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Look at the television.”

  Gur saw an African newsreader in front of a “NYC Terror Siege” graphic. Someone turned up the sound with the remote. “…so far: CNN sources have identified nine areas throughout New York City currently locked down due to anonymous bomb threats…”

  A list replaced the newsreader’s face. City Hall. Diamond District. LaGuardia. Lincoln Center. New York Stock Exchange. Penn Station. Rockefeller Center. Times Square. United Nations. Good God, he thought. How many of these are real?

  Eldar said, “Those places are scattered all over the island. The PD’s probably stretched damn thin right now. And, notice anything missing? There’s nothing near the temple.”

  Kelila said, “Whoever’s doing this wants people looking everyplace but there.”

  No more dithering. It was time for Gur to do what he was paid for. “All right, we’ll go to Emanu-El. Mrs. Schaffer, are you with us?”

  “Yes,” Schaffer said without hesitation. “I’ll help.”

  “Mr. Eldar?”

  The two civilians exchanged worried looks. Schaffer’s eyebrows arched. Eldar shut his eyes and leaned his head back.

  I’m sorry to ask so much, Gur thought, after costing you so much.

  Eldar opened his eyes and looked straight at Gur. “I’m in.”

  NINETY-FOUR: Central Park East, 23 December, 6:05 PM

  The five of them stood in a row on the west side of Fifth Avenue at 65th Street, their backs to a dark, winter-dormant Central Park, necks craned upwards.

  “My God, it’s huge,” Kelila whispered, her jaw hanging open. “I had no idea.”

  “We’ve got a Temple Emanu-El in Cherry Hill,” Miriam said, “but it’s nothing like this.”

  Refael shook his head. “What a target.”

  Jake said nothing. When he returned to America with Rinnah, they’d attended their first American Yom Kippur worship here. Rinnah’s face had worn Kelila’s same wonder-struck expression when she first looked up at the buff limestone façade towering more than a hundred feet over them, the huge rose window glowing like a giant jewel under its massive central arch.

  He remembered the excitement in Rinnah’s eyes. He recalled her dress, the first one she’d bought in New York—velvet the green of moss deep in the forest. He felt her hand in his. Tasted the roasted chestnuts they’d bought from a street vendor a block away before the service. It was yesterday, it was years ago, and he ached to pull her close, to feel her warmth again.

  Someone touched his sleeve. “Jake?”

  “Yeah.” He fake-smiled to Miriam beside him. In her charcoal pantsuit and slate-blue blouse, she looked just like the Miriam he first met a thousand years ago. “Just thinking.”

  They stood quietly, watching the parade of cars drop worshippers into the thickening stew of people sloshing around t
he temple’s three pairs of bronze main doors. A flutter came and went in Miriam’s stomach. One of them could be a suicide bomber. Would these people live to see a second candle lit?

  “Because this is a temple,” Refael said, “we have to assume they’ll follow the pattern they’d planned in Berlin and Rome. That means a shahid in the congregation, probably near the front. Sasha?”

  The Russian took a swallow from his coffee cup. “No metal detectors, but security on the doors. They wanded some people who looked maybe too big. They also search big bags.”

  “So no backpacks and probably not a vest,” Jake said. “If he has a bomb, it’ll be small.”

  A small bomb, Miriam thought. How comforting.

  “Yes, meant to force everyone outside,” Refael said. “Just to make things more complicated, our U.S. and U.N. ambassadors will be at worship tonight.” He turned toward Jake. “Watch for anyone suspicious. If you see someone, don’t approach him, tell the security detail.”

  “How will we know them?” Miriam asked.

  “They’ll look like these guys in suits,” Jake said. “With wires in their ears.”

  Refael nodded. “Near enough. The rest of us will be outside looking for the vehicle, if there still is one. Mr. Eldar, did you contact the police?”

  “Yeah,” he said. His shoulders drooped. “My captain told me they have too many ‘real threats’ to go chasing another theory. Thanks and get lost, basically.”

  “It’s down to us, then,” Refael said. He signaled to Sasha, who circled around Refael and Kelila and stopped before Miriam. He dipped into the gym bag dangling from his shoulder and brought out two bundles the size and shape of cigarette packs, handing one each to Jake and Miriam along with wedge-shaped earpieces. “Your radios. We share one channel, don’t fuck with it. Tell us what you see.”

  Miriam pulled the pins on her bun and shook down her hair to camouflage the little black pod now growing from her ear, then checked her work in her compact mirror. Jake, sharp once again in his gray suit, nudged her and tried to smile. Her return smile felt as shaky as his.

  Sasha tapped Miriam’s arm. When she looked up, he offered her a pistol. “No, thanks. I have one already.” He shrugged, gave it to Jake and returned to the other end of the line. Miriam rearranged her purse to fit the radio and Kaminsky’s Beretta. Did spies carry bigger purses?

  “Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to,” Refael warned. “Gunshots will panic the crowd. They’ll try to leave the building, and the last place we want them is outside. Also, the ambassador’s security detail will kill anyone with a weapon.”

  All this should have been exciting but wasn’t, just strange and a little unreal, as if Miriam was living a movie. She understood straight-out combat but not this secret-agent charade. She felt unprepared, off her edge, which worried her. She knew what she could do when she was at her best. She wasn’t now, not even close. She hoped it wouldn’t kill her, or Jake.

  Refael stepped before Miriam and Jake, looking gravely at each in turn. “If they have an inside man, he’ll have a weapon. Do what you can. I’ll let you know if we stop the bomber before worship is over. Otherwise, don’t be the first ones out the door, understand?”

  Another flutter, this one longer. Let the others take the blast. Logical, practical, and utterly cynical. This had become all too real, all too quickly.

  Refael shook her hand, then after some silent eye contact, shook Jake’s. He gestured toward the temple. “Good luck. Go with God.”

  NINETY-FIVE: Central Park East, 23 December, 6:10 PM

  Al-Shami helped Mahir out of the sedan’s back seat on 65th just past the corner with Fifth Avenue. The entry to the synagogue was already packed with well-dressed Jews jostling to get inside to talk to their god. Mahir would be just one more.

  Mahir leaned back against the sedan’s fender, straightened his somber black suit, waited for al-Shami to wrestle the false oxygen cylinder from the back. Al-Shami connected the clear plastic cannula’s trailing end to the oxygen valve, then placed the cart’s handle in Mahir’s hand. The wispy, graying wig and false eyebrows transformed Mahir into the older man he’d never become. He looked utterly convincing; no one would suspect. “Try to be near the front,” he told Mahir one last time. “Remember, you have to close the valve all the way to trigger the charge.”

  “Yes, yes.” Mahir held out his hand. “Ma’a salaama, sidi.”

  The gravity, the peace in Mahir’s eyes briefly touched something inside al-Shami. He usually didn’t think of his shuhada as anything but vehicles. Their zeal and bombast tired him. But this man, with his calm confidence and quiet acceptance of his destiny, was more human, more of a man than anyone al-Shami had met in a long time.

  He gripped Mahir’s hand for the last time with both of his own. “Ma’a salaama, sadiqi.”

  Jake watched Miriam’s face as they passed from the temple’s sumptuous Art Deco marble foyer into the sanctuary. Wide eyes, check; dropped jaw, check; sucked-in breath, check.

  Five massive arches on each side marched down the length of half a football field to the great central arch, which towered over the bimah and the pale-marble ark. Soft lights transformed the buff wall tiles into flowing amber. A geometric riot of color and gold leaf glinted from the twilight of the rafters and pitched ceiling a hundred feet above them. Organ music wafted from behind pastel marble columns above the ark, hymns Jake half-remembered, the Muzak of God’s house.

  Jake and Rinnah had come here five or six times, and each time Rinnah glowed like the candelabra. Jake gulped down the swell of longing and loss in his throat. Not now, yakiri, not now. “Ever seen anything like this?”

  “In Europe, in cathedrals.” Miriam’s head swiveled this way and that, trying to take in everything. “Never in a temple before. I hope I’m wrong about this being the target.”

  He started noticing the crowd, which until then had been a shifting blur. Prosperous, well-kept, dark suits and nice dresses. Lots of handshakes, embraces, air-kisses. The children were turned out in their Hanukkah-at-Bubbe’s outfits—pint-sized slacks and suit shirts for the boys, skirts and bows for the girls. While not everyone here was rich, Jake still felt out of his league, even in his good medium-gray suit and burgundy tie.

  He pointed toward the sprawling group of people at the far end of the sanctuary, near the north pulpit. “That’ll be the ambassadors up there, with their security goons and the rabbi.”

  “Should we introduce ourselves?”

  A gaunt, thin-haired man in a black suit two sizes too large labored by, towing beside him a green-topped stainless-steel oxygen tank on wheels. Miriam grimaced. “Poor man. Bill’s father ended up like that, from emphysema.”

  As he watched the man shuffle up the aisle, Jake couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen the guy before. Where, he couldn’t place.

  Jake steered Miriam up the aisle. They both scanned the crowd, touching each other’s sleeves and nodding toward people who stood out: a darkish young man with pale skin where a beard used to be, a barrel-shaped young woman wrapped in a heavy jacket, a South Asian man with nervous eyes. None of al-Shami’s people crossed their paths, but there were so many faces to check and so little time.

  Miriam said, “I don’t like it, but I think we’ll need to split up if we’re going to keep a good watch.”

  “I think you’re right. I’ll sit up there, you back here. Let me know if someone’s coming, I’ll tell you if something’s going down in front. Okay?”

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Still protecting me?”

  “You bet.”

  Miriam sighed and shook her head, but the little upturn at the corners of her mouth didn’t go away, so Jake figured she couldn’t be too annoyed. Then her eyes went all business, checking sightlines, searching for exits and hiding places. “Okay. But if you have to be a hero, at least give me time to come help.”

  “If there’s a vehicle, it’s nearby, and the driver will be in it or by it,” Gur told the
others as the long-threatened snow’s first drizzle started. Traffic noise easily drowned out their conversation should anyone try to eavesdrop. “They’re going to need to respond in a minute or two, no more. Kelila, search the six blocks north of here. Sasha, the six blocks south. Don’t bother going much more than two or three blocks east. The service will be 45 or 50 minutes. If you see anything suspicious, let me know, then run it down.”

  Kelila nodded. Sasha said, “Can we engage?”

  “As long as you know what you’re engaging. Our rally point will be in front of that building.” He tipped his head toward the Arsenal’s brooding shadow behind them. “I’ll keep watch here and along these two blocks. Stay warm.”

  Sasha snorted. “You think this is cold?” He ambled off, shaking his head.

  Kelila turned to go, but Gur snagged her hand and reeled her in. After a check to ensure Sasha was gone, Gur kissed her, their first time in public. They let it linger, drawing out every second. She settled easily into his arms, a warm, wonderful feeling Gur had missed so much.

  When they finally drew back, Kelila unleashed a big, dreamy smile. “That was nice.”

  “Yes, it was.” He held her close, brushed the snowflakes from her hair. “When we’re done, we should go somewhere, just the two of us. Have you been to the Seychelles?”

  “No,” she murmured. “They’re beautiful, I hear.”

  “They are. Let’s go.”

  “Love to.” She pulled away just enough to look up into his face. “Are you okay?”

  He gave her the best smile he could. “I suppose I want to know we have a future. Going into an action like this—”