by Rachel Lee
Yet what was it that Stalin had said? A single death is a tragedy; a million dead, only a statistic. What of the single death? What of Michel Sedan?
“It’s done,” Renate said. She reached across and turned off the radio. “Come on, Lawton. Let’s go.”
He looked at her face. His thoughts died stillborn as he saw her eyes.
“Renate…” he began.
“No,” she said. “Just drive.”
Rome, Italy
“Lo od!” the Pontiff repeated. “Lo od!”
Ahmed watched as the crowd picked up the chant. Soon, impossibly, he heard himself speaking the language of the Jews. “Lo od. Lo od.”
Hassan, too, mouthed the words. He rose with his wife and son and left the compartment, holding their hands, repeating the words. They stepped onto the platform, man and wife and son united with thousands around them in a moment that said Allah had indeed not abandoned them. Ahmed followed.
“Lo od! Lo od!”
The chant was flowing freely through the crowd now, and Ahmed watched as the Pope lowered the bullhorn to the pavement and climbed down onto the railroad tracks. The priest beside him followed, and they lay on the tracks in front of the train, a tangible expression of defiance that hurried television crews captured and broadcast immediately across the world.
“Lo od! Lo od!”
Hassan looked at his wife and son. He did not need to ask the question. They nodded and walked to the front of the train, preparing to climb down onto the tracks.
A man in a gray jacket stepped forward, as if to join them, then stopped at the edge of the platform. Ahmed watched in disbelief as the man drew a pistol from his jacket and aimed it at the holiness beneath him.
Ali had seen the man, too, and he tried to pull his hand from Hassan’s, already moving forward. But Hassan clearly saw that his son would be too late and held firm.
The bodies of the Pope and the priest twitched as the bullets struck.
Veltroni could not bring himself to feel disbelief. He had known this might happen. Instead, he felt only an awful pain in his chest as he tried to draw breath, and a deeper pain in his soul for the dying man beside him. A holy man. A holy father.
As his strength ebbed, his eyes fell upon another father on the platform, clutching his wife and son in his arms, staring down in disbelief. Muslim, Veltroni saw.
The man’s eyes met Veltroni’s. “Lo od.”
Veltroni nodded. This, too, was a holy father. He drew a final breath and whispered, “Lo od.”
Ahmed saw the life slip from the priest’s eyes.
Security men, a step too late, tried to tackle the man in the gray jacket. Before they could subdue him, he turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger.
Hassan and his wife sobbed, but Ahmed did not hear it. Their sobs were lost in his own.
“What now, Father?” Ali asked.
Hassan turned to Ahmed for an answer. It was a plea Ahmed felt in his own heart, a plea for which he had no answer that could give justice.
“Now we go home,” he said.
Epilogue
W ith camera flashes going off from every direction, Hans Neufel studied what had become of the world’s most recognized faces. Bundeskanzler Harald Müller, as the story was told, had shown the new face of Germany: strong and willing to defend herself, yet also willing to pursue diplomacy even in the face of an armed attack on his country’s soil. Now the chancellor was reading a citation acclaiming Hans Neufel.
But Neufel’s thoughts wandered, as they seemed to do often these days, over the recent events that had brought him so close to war, then had yanked him back from the precipice.
Television had covered the events Neufel had missed while in the field, constantly replaying the Pope’s final speech, the near breakdown of peace at the Rhine and Soult’s part in it all.
In his mind’s eye, Neufel remembered the German Chancellor’s speech decrying the horrible events that had swept over Europe, and his determination to maintain peace at any cost. Even when the now-dead Pope had stood at a train station in Rome to deliver the stunning indictment against Jules Soult and his policies, including evidence that proved Soult had ordered the assassination of Bundeskanzler Vögel, Müller had not loosed the dogs of war.
Indeed, Müller had canceled the attack that would have sent Neufel and his platoon sweeping into Neumühl, and ordered the Bundeswehr and Luftwaffe to stand down. Neufel felt a surge of pride in his country and his chancellor as he recalled Müller’s repetition of the Pope’s cry: Lo od.
Then Müller had fallen silent, to allow time for the inevitable fallout from the Papal indictment to make its way across the European political landscape.
Soon the news had become full of the European Council. Like dreamers awakening from a nightmare, the national leaders of the EU member states had dismissed Soult’s Commission, calling for new elections, the withdrawal of EU troops from German soil and an end to Muslim pacification policies. A new tide had risen in Europe, a tide of revulsion at what they had almost done.
The resignation of Colonel Vasquez sealed the fate of Soult’s legacy. Vasquez produced the documents that showed the world how Jules Soult had circumvented him and manipulated the EU Department of Collective Security to instigate the very violence Soult had promised to end.
The war had been stillborn, the press had written, dead before it began. And, perhaps, through the long lens of history, that was how it would appear.
Hans Neufel knew otherwise. The stand-down order had come in time for his crew to take a two-day leave to attend Schulingen’s funeral. Then he had returned to his post, to attend memorial services for the civilian dead in Kehl. An historian might count those deaths moot in the larger scene of an aborted war in Europe, but Neufel had watched many of those men die. They had died in war, whatever the pundits now and the historians later might say.
“Danke, Herr Bundeskanzler,” Neufel said, after Müller had finished draping the Bundesverdienstkreuz—the Federal Service Cross—around Neufel’s neck.
“It is my great honor,” Müller replied.
The citation said much, and yet it said nothing. It said that Herr Neufel had shown exceptional courage, discipline and leadership during the “difficult events” at the Kinzig River bridges. Leutnant Bräuburger had received a similar decoration moments before, though it was a grade higher, due to his officer status. Bräuburger’s eyes met Neufel’s for an instant, the same question running through each of their minds: How should I feel?
In truth, Neufel thought, he had not done anything that ought to be deemed extraordinary. He had followed his orders as best he was able, relying on his training and the competence of his men. His battalion commander had written in glowing terms of how Neufel had sacrificed for his men—ensuring that they ate and slept first—and how his firm hand had forged his crew into a perfectly integrated team, one that could strike with decision and still exercise restraint in a situation where lesser men might have lost their heads and precipitated a wider conflict. Herr Neufel had acted in the highest traditions of the Bundeswehr and the German people.
The flowery words made no mention of the doubts and fears, the moments of cold, dark hate or the physical revulsion at the scent of chocolate, that would haunt him for years to come. Neufel hardly recognized the man his commander had described. That man’s deeds bore only the slightest resemblance to Neufel’s own memories.
Insofar as he had been able to form conclusions, and there were many that he thought would forever elude him, the war had taught Neufel two things. First, that the fortunes of war turn on the smallest of things—an unseen drainage ditch on a bridge embankment or which man goes to a given door first. And second, that he could not return to a civilian world that took no account of such things.
He had applied to the Universität der Bundeswehr at Hamburg, and on the basis of his high school grades and the medal he was now receiving, he had been accepted into the German military academy. Leutnant Bräuburger ha
d written a personal recommendation, including—to Neufel’s surprise—testimonials from the men of Neufel’s crew.
The most touching of those testimonials had come from the most unlikely of sources, Otto Schiffer: “Herr Neufel was our father.”
Neufel looked out at his own father, sitting in the front row, eyes misting with tears.
“Danke,” Neufel mouthed silently.
His father nodded. And that nod said more than any medal ever would.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Saif Alsharaawi had scheduled a meeting for Sheik al-Hazeer’s house. Ahmed Ahsami had not been invited.
But Ahmed heard about it and extracted a promise from Karim—his friend since the cradle—to tell him all that happened. Karim was a small, wiry man, a distant cousin. The two had been raised together, and together they had gone abroad for education. They had shared much, in the way of friends, including the now shameful night when both had lost their virginity with London prostitutes. They had come a long way together. But now, far enough.
“It is as you feared,” Karim said, then accepted the tea offered to him by Ahmed’s sister and spent a moment in idle chat about her two children. Then the woman properly withdrew, leaving the men to their work.
“How so?” Ahmed asked.
“Al-Hazeer would turn Saif into the sword it was named for. His first act will be to rid us of the Shi’a. This he has vowed. He intends to do it.”
Ahmed looked down, thoughts flying around in his head like angry locusts. “This is impossible, Karim. The Shi’a are nearly one-half of the population in the Middle East.”
Karim nodded. “He says we will purge the heretics from our midst, especially in the oil fields. ‘They will never again stain Islam with their spittle,’ he said.”
“Genocide.”
“He did not say that.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Ahmed said. Despair stood before him like a seductive mistress. It would be so easy to step into that void, to tell himself there was nothing he could do. He looked out the window, filled with night, and prayed for strength. Then, straightening, he looked at his cousin. “We must stop him.”
Karim nodded. “But how? He has a new weapon.”
“What weapon is so powerful?” Ahmed’s words were biting.
Karim shrugged. “The weapon that killed the German Chancellor from several hundred miles away. The weapon that brought down Jericho.”
“Is that what he says?”
Karim nodded and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “He says it was once in the Ark of the Covenant.”
“And you believe him?”
“He used it while I was there. I believe him.”
Ahmed closed his eyes. Now two dark maws gaped open before him. The first was despair, and the second the near impossibility of defeating al-Hazeer. The first was easy, the second likely fatal.
“We will need help,” Ahmed said.
“Who will help us now?” Karim asked. “Sheik al-Hazeer watches us too closely for us to make contacts here and your friends in Europe believe you betrayed them.”
“I did not!” Ahmed said, slamming his palm on the table, then catching himself. He had not sanctioned the betrayal in Strasbourg. But he could not deny that it had been Saif operatives who had carried out that betrayal. To his former allies, the truth would seem obvious. “I am sorry, my friend.”
Karim shook his head. “There is no apology needed.”
“You are right in one thing,” Ahmed said. “My friends in Rome cannot trust Saif Alsharaawi. But perhaps they can still trust me.”
Karim thought for a moment; then his face sagged as realization dawned. “You cannot. What of your family?”
“You must keep them safe, Karim.”
“This is a dangerous gambit you propose,” Karim said.
Ahmed nodded. “It is. But it is the only gambit left open to us. Can you make the arrangements?”
Pain was etched on Karim’s face. But beneath the pain was something else. Hope.
“Yes, my friend. I can. The sheik will believe me.”
“Then it is decided,” Ahmed said. He would miss his sister, and his wife and two sons. But there was no other way. “I must die.”
“Yes,” Karim said. “In sh’Allah.”
“In sh’Allah,” Ahmed repeated.
As Allah wills.
“But for tonight,” Ahmed said, grasping his friend’s hand, “let us remember our days in London.”
Karim blushed and shook his head. “Not London.”
Ahmed needed to remember a better time, even if it had been a time when youth strayed from the path. A time when anything seemed possible.
“Yes, Karim,” he said, smiling. “London.”
Vienna, Austria
Renate had paused in front of the bank of television monitors, watching the news clip of two German soldiers receiving medals for their actions on the Rhine.
Lawton watched her, hurting in ways he hadn’t hurt since he had looked into the betrayed eyes of a drug-dealer’s daughter.
What he saw these days in Renate’s eyes was not betrayal. It was worse…an icy emptiness, a barren emotional tundra, stark, forbidding and terrifying. Even when they had first met and he had first looked into her cold blue eyes, there had been life behind them. Now there was none. Something essential in her had died, and it tore his heart apart.
He cleared his throat. “You must be very proud of your people.”
She turned to stare at him. Her eyes could have been those of a corpse. “I have no people.”
He pressed his lips together for a moment, forcing himself to remember who she had been and who she might someday be again. “You have friends.”
But she gave him no quarter. “I have no friends. We have no friends. We have duty. And that is all we have.”
She had become what she most feared. Aching, he stared back at her, refusing to look away. Like a grainy newsreel, a memory played in his mind, a memory of a hotel room in Berlin and the woman she had almost become in his arms. He didn’t argue with her. Argument wouldn’t work. But he would find a way to bring her back.
Somehow, some way, he would bring her back to life.
Authors’ Notes and Acknowledgements
The Jericho Pact—and the Office 119 series—is a bigger story than any one person can tell. As always, we are indebted to many people who helped in the research for this novel. Of course, any errors are our own.
As always, we are indebted to our agent, Helen Breitwieser, and our editor, Leslie Wanger, for their encouragement and forbearance in the times when it seemed this book might never see completion.
Our research assistant, Rolf Winkenbach, was tireless and resourceful in locating and translating European source material, as well as in answering our seemingly endless questions and requests. His personal visits to several of the settings in this novel—and the dozens of detailed photographs he provided—enabled us to describe those settings with confidence. Rolf also corrected our German diction and spelling, introduced us to the culture of the journeymen, and in general allowed us to look far more expert than we are. Danke, Rolf!
We would like to thank Kathryn Marie Engst, M.S., R.N., for carefully describing the danger of adjacent rib fractures, and for providing the details of emergency room treatment procedures.
We are grateful to Frau Hella Mewis—owner of the Galeriecafé Silberstein in Berlin—for permitting us to use her establishment as a setting in this novel.
The story of the Battle of Jericho can be found in Chapter Five of the Book of Joshua. The interpretation implied in this novel is a complete fiction.
Information about the Reunification of Germany and its aftermath was drawn from several sources, including Der Spiegel, www.germanculture.com and www.wikipedia.com.
Information about cyanide poisoning and its treatment was drawn from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as http://www.aahealth.org/physicianslink/bioterrorism_cyanide_overview.asp and other sources.
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The causes and course of the Cathar Crusade and the destruction of Béziers were derived from many sources—some factual, others speculative—but the specific events described in this novel were fictionalized. Additional information about Béziers was taken from www.beziers.fr and www.beziers-tourisme.fr.
Information about the Port of Hamburg, its security and the effects of nitric acid clouds were drawn entirely from public sources.
Information about the Mannheim Mosque and the Liebfrauenkirche in Mannheim was found at www.goethe.de, www.moschee-mannheim.de and http://www.marktplatzkirche-ma.de/gottesdienste/liebfrauen.html.
The delightful Le Rive Gauche Café can be seen at www.fotosearch.com.
Information about the Sunni-Shi’a conflict in Islam was taken from Vali Nasr’s The Shia Revival, as well as Dr. Nasr’s presentations to the Council on Foreign Relations, which can be found at www.cfr.org. Other perspectives were provided in personal interviews with gracious Muslims—both Shi’a and Sunni—who for their own reasons prefer to remain anonymous.
The Bridge of Europe, spanning the Rhine between Strasbourg and Kehl, is an actual structure. Its history can be found at www.cultureroutes.lu. It is our fervent hope that this beautiful bridge will never see the kind of carnage described in this novel, and that it will forever be a symbol of European unity.
Finally, we would like to thank our children—Aaron, Heather, Andy, Matthew and Holly—who somehow manage to not only remain sane amidst the insanity of having writers for mothers, but also keep giving us hope for a better and brighter future. It is to them—and to all of the world’s children—that this book is dedicated.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0084-9
THE JERICHO PACT
Copyright © 2007 by Susan Civil-Brown and Cristian Brown
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.