Ottoman Dominion

by Terry Brennan

  Esenboga International Airport, Ankara

  July 23, 2:27 p.m.

  Her body and her mind felt like a sack of wet sand, but adrenaline was pumping through Agent Pat McKeon as passengers began emerging from the Jetway.

  She didn’t like the feel of this. Cleveland wasn’t trying to hide his tracks very well. So if not, what was he trying to accomplish? A wild goose chase?

  Without knowing what was going on, Mullaney was wise to keep Cleveland’s escapade to himself rather than kick it upstairs. Not yet, anyway. If they could intercept the ambassador, get him back to Israel … hey, no harm no foul. But without the resources normally at their disposal, they weren’t able to verify if passenger Joseph Cleveland was actually on this flight.

  Cleveland was no fool. McKeon didn’t like any of this. She thought the likelihood of Cleveland being on this plane was somewhere between slim and none. But what choice did she have? They had to be sure … Mullaney had ordered her here … and they had to find Cleveland. Soon.

  First the flight officers—the captain and the copilot—came up the Jetway, rolling their doubled-up little suitcases behind them, followed by the flight attendants, one male and two female, who all looked bored to death. McKeon stuck a hand out in front of one of the female attendants.

  “Nobody else on board?”

  The woman looked at McKeon and must have seen the alarm in her eyes.

  “No, sorry. The plane is empty,” she said, then rolled away down the concourse.

  McKeon’s stomach sank to her knees. Her career was toast—that was for sure. But more importantly … where was Cleveland?

  34

  Fairfax, Virginia

  July 23, 7:29 a.m.

  The huge, brown truck from Litchfield Waste Removal strained against low gear as it lumbered past the house. Abby paused in backing out of the driveway. As the truck passed beyond her field of vision, she noticed the dark blue sedan parked farther up the street. Two men sat in the front seat.

  I don’t like that.

  When she backed into the street and drove east, into the rising sun, the blue sedan stayed put. Turning the corner at Lester Street, Abby glanced over her shoulder. The blue car had not moved.

  Easy, girl. Don’t let yourself get spooked.

  Calvary Hill Baptist Church—the church with the garden center on its front lawn—was a low-slung brick building at the corner of the Little River Turn-pike and Olley Lane in Fairfax, Virginia. After making a right turn onto Olley Lane, Abby was preoccupied with talking to the girls about pickup time as she closed on Calvary Hill’s driveway. But she drove past the driveway, up and over the hill, following Olley Lane south.

  “Mom, you missed the church,” said Kylie, sitting to her right.

  Abby glanced quickly into her rearview mirror. She didn’t see it following her … the blue sedan that was parked right next to the large, metal clothes collection boxes at the entrance to Calvary Hill. There were two men sitting in the front seat, both wearing sunglasses and both staring in her direction.

  “Change of plans.” Abby flicked her eyes back-and-forth from the road in front of her to the rearview mirror. “We’re going on an adventure.”

  “But we’re going to be late!”

  Abby tapped the hands-free phone button on her steering wheel. “Call Doak,” she spoke into the embedded mic.

  “We’re going to see Uncle Doak?”

  “Probably …”

  “Abby?”

  “Hi, Doak. Are you on duty?”

  “No, I …”

  “Can the girls and I come visit?”

  “Uh … sure. Why …”

  “Doak, it’s not safe out here,” said Abby, using the same code phrase that Brian, his dad, and his brother used as Virginia state troopers.

  There was a heartbeat pause on the other end of the connection.

  “How close are you?”

  “Ten minutes. I just went past the church.”

  “Okay. Stay on this call and stay on the main roads. I’ll be on the lawn, looking for you.”

  “Thanks, Doak.” Abby took a deep breath and looked once more into the rearview mirror. No blue sedan.

  “Mom?” It was Samantha, Abby’s younger daughter, from the back seat. Her voice carried the hint of anxiety.

  “It’s okay,” said Abby, trying to sound nonchalant and in control. “We’re just going to stop at Uncle Doak’s for a while.”

  Abby’s eyes went to the rearview mirror, but she caught Kylie’s look out of her peripheral vision—mouth open, eyes wide, a dusting of fear on her face.

  “It’s okay,” she said to herself. And even she didn’t believe it.

  Georgetown, DC

  July 23, 7:33 a.m.

  He was pushing down the plunger on his French Press machine when his iPhone came to life on the kitchen counter. Noah Webster recognized the number.

  “Yes?”

  “It worked. She was taking her kids to the church where they volunteer, but she didn’t make it. She spotted our guys and kept on going. She’s spooked. If Rutherford isn’t the first call she makes, he’ll be the second.”

  Noah Webster knew the risks he was taking … full-scale surveillance on Richard Rutherford could backfire badly; a perceived threat to his daughter and grandchildren could trigger an aggressive response. Rutherford was as ruthless as Webster. And he was mega-rich. But Webster held the trump cards—well documented and secure records of every illegal contribution and shady deal ever consummated by Rutherford and former Senator Seneca Markham.

  What he didn’t hold was an infallible insight into the future. And there were so many variables in play.

  Tankhum Street, Old Tel Aviv

  July 23, 2:35 p.m.

  The white panel van of Joshua’s Bakery idled in the dark shade of a building on Tankhum Street, a narrow sliver of alley not more than a stone’s throw from St. Archangel Michael Monastery, on the fringe of the random, winding byways of the old city section of Tel Aviv. There was no bread in the truck.

  Colonel Meyer Levinson stood in the middle of the van, hunched over a pulsing green screen with several red dots moving across its surface. “How many?”

  “Seven on the main floor, four on the upper floor,” said the uniformed Shin Bet soldier sitting at the controls. “There’s a small basement, but I can’t pierce it.”

  The men in Levinson’s Operations unit were battle-tested veterans in Israel’s vigilant war against terrorism. They were frighteningly effective in their tracking and pursuit of Israel’s enemies. Still, it had taken two days of constant surveillance before they finally got a solid lead on where these so-called Disciples had fled after the gun battle on Malan Street drove them from their original hideout. But find them they did. Now more than thirty Shin Bet soldiers were getting into position for an assault. All were carrying the relatively new Tavor X95 assault rifles which were gradually replacing the formerly ubiquitous Uzi. The Tavors were converted to 9-millimeter submachine guns, and two had been fitted with grenade launchers

  Their target was a narrow building sandwiched in the midst of a block of warehouses on Rabi Khanina Street, around a corner and two blocks down from where Joshua’s Bakery van was pulled up on the thin sidewalk, no baguettes to peddle.

  “Weapons?”

  “Yes.” The soldier shrugged. “More than I can count. Some large caliber it appears. Explosives also. Unless I’m mistaken.”

  Levinson gave the soldier a tap on the shoulder. “You are never mistaken, Yoshi. Where shall we hit them?”

  The soldier tapped the screen. “There are two doors, front and back, on the main floor. They are secondary. Here”—he pointed to the right rear corner of the building’s image—“is a small window into the basement. And here, this window on the main floor leads to a bathroom. Neither appear to be guarded. Those are your first targets.”

  Levinson squeezed the soldier’s shoulder. “Good work, Yoshi.” He turned to the officer on his right but was stopped by a ha
nd on his arm. Levinson looked down and saw a depth of longing on Yoshi’s face.

  “Let me go, Colonel?”

  Pulling a stool close, Levinson sat down next to Yoshi. “I have three-dozen fighters staged outside this truck—all of them expert marksmen with a depth of courage that breaks my heart. But”—Levinson pointed his right forefinger—“I have only one Yoshi. You can shoot as well as any of these men. And your courage is well documented. But none of these men can operate this equipment or interpret its data nearly as effectively as you. You’re as close to indispensable as there comes, Yoshi.”

  Older than most of his comrades, Levinson saw the veteran’s face harden. He expected an argument. He got a plea.

  “My brother was on Malan Street with you. He left his life there, at the hands of these men.”

  Yoshi’s brother had been Levinson’s second-in-command. They had served together for sixteen years. Yoshi’s brother named his second son Meyer. His death in the Malan Street raid had shattered Levinson’s calm veneer and driven him to consider the unthinkable—retirement. Now, Levinson saw the same anguish on Yoshi’s face. How could he say no? If Levinson was going to face the life-threatening moments to come …

  Once again, he pointed a finger at Yoshi. “Okay, you can come. But … don’t get yourself killed! Got it?”

  No smile reached Yoshi’s lips. His voice was hard, determined. “I promise. I’ll be bulletproof. But … I will offer no mercy.”

  35

  Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 23, 2:37 p.m.

  Becoming more agitated with each minute that slipped by, Mullaney paced back and forth across the width of his damaged office in the north wing of the residence. “Look … we don’t have much time. For the sake of argument, let’s say the Gaon started this and he’s still at the controls. So what do the last two lines of symbols on the second prophecy say? What were the symbols that the Gaon used—the ones that reminded you of Unicode?”

  “Actually, they were pictographs,” said Poppy. “Images to represent symbols, or phonetic sounds … like hieroglyphics. I got a clue from that math book of the Gaon’s at Columbia University. He made little drawings of boxes with sections filled in … a triangle in one corner of a rectangle, a half circle inside a square. The first trick was breaking down those pictographs and converting them into the correct symbols and phonetics. Plus the Gaon took the symbols and then translated them into a code. He was very thorough.

  “But it’s pretty simple once you break the code,” said Poppodopolous.

  “What code did the Gaon use this time?” asked Herzog.

  “You know Gamaritia … where the numeral one is used for the first letter in the Jewish alphabet, the numeral two for the second letter. He used that Gamaritia sequencing then applied to it an algorithm based on the Aaronic blessing. It was a mass of letters but, essentially, each pictograph devolved into a word. Pretty clever.”

  “The Aaronic blessing is the anointing prayer for the guardian,” said Herzog.

  “Doubly clever then.”

  The monk reached into a slit in the folds of his cassock and pulled a piece of paper from an unseen pocket. “Here, Mordechai, you read it.”

  Herzog took the sheet of paper and adjusted the spectacles on the end of his nose. His eyes ran back and forth over the paper, as if his mind could not accept what his eyes were seeing. The rabbi looked over at Mullaney. Was there pity on his face?

  “It says, ‘The last guardian must deliver the box of power into the hands of the Man of Violence.’”

  Mullaney felt his mind stop and his stomach turn. He shot a vengeful glance at Father Poppodopolous. No, he wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t joke at a time like this.

  “But that can’t be right,” stammered Mullaney. How could he do that … just hand the box of power to his mortal enemy, the most specific personification of evil that he’d ever experienced? “After all this, we’re just going to hand it over? Are you sure?”

  “There’s certainly a possibility that I can be wrong,” said the monk. “But I don’t think so. After the computer program decoded that first line of symbols, the Gamaritia changed sequencing for the second line. It went from a string of letters, what you have in your hand, and became a string of numbers. At first, they appeared random. Then I figured it out.”

  Father Poppodopolous held up a second piece of paper in his hand. He reached across the table and handed the paper to Mullaney. “I think you’ll find this string of numbers more interesting than …”

  Mullaney didn’t hear the rest of what Poppodopolous was saying. His ability to comprehend was obliterated by what he saw on the paper in his hand.

  “This can’t … this isn’t possible,” mumbled Mullaney, more to himself than to the others in the room. An inflection of absolute impossibility resonated in his voice, overwhelmed by a reverent awe that bordered on a prayer.

  Mullaney lifted the paper in his hand, held it out before him, and looked around the room.

  “This is my Social Security number.”

  “Gotcha,” said the monk.

  Mullaney still had the slip of paper in his hand and a look on his face as if he were told he owed two million dollars to the IRS.

  “You are asking me if it’s possible?” said Father Poppodopolous. “Is it possible for a man who lived 220 years ago to send a message to you, personally, hundreds of years later, with your Social Security number as the signature?”

  The monk spread his large hands before him. “Remember the arrow of time? Well, could God give the Gaon a vision of the future? Could God bend time so the Gaon could have a vision of you? Sure … it’s possible. Ezekiel saw into the future. So did Isaiah and Daniel. John saw the risen Christ and the final battle of mankind on the plains of Megiddo.

  “But you also want to know whether you can trust this message. Not only whether a rabbi in 1794 Lithuania can know what is going to happen in the future, but also whether the steps he put in motion could exert a tangible impact on what is happening today by turning this prophecy into a personal message to you?

  “Possible? I think so. But buddy, I just don’t know for sure. What I do know for sure is that you are the final guardian … that the message you have in your hands says the final guardian must give the box of power to the Man of Violence … and that this message is signed with your Social Security number. And I don’t believe you have much time to debate or decide what to do.”

  Rabi Khanina Street, Old Tel Aviv

  July 23, 2:48 p.m.

  The plan was simple. As the opening salvo of the attack, a squad of soldiers, guns blazing, would advance on the rear window into the basement. Seconds later, a grenade launcher would blow up the front door. But all of that action was only intended to divert attention from the window into the bathroom. A half-dozen Shin Bet fighters would slip through the window and unleash a deadly rain of fire from behind the building’s defenders.

  Levinson lifted up his right hand, fingers splayed, as he stared at his wristwatch. Five-four-three-two—the fingers of his right hand closed into a fist. At one the sound of gunfire erupted from the rear of the building, and seconds later the building was rocked by an explosion.

  As the fighting escalated inside the building, the rear door of the van was thrown open. Levinson and his men didn’t wait for the dust cloud to settle, running headlong through the front door with their Tavor machine guns rattling out a relentless drumbeat of death.

  The seven enemies on the ground floor were already lifeless, bloody hulks as Levinson raced into the building and turned left and led his men to the head of the stairs into the basement. Levinson could hear the thunder of a fierce firefight above him on the upper floor. If there were only four enemies up there, his force was more than capable of extinguishing that threat. But how many were in the basement?

  The sound of pitched battle roiled up the stairwell. Going down those stairs they would be vulnerable targets. As those thoughts flashed through Levinson’s mi
nd, Yoshi raced past his left shoulder and plunged headlong down the stairs, his Tavor 9-millimeter ready to erupt. Levinson was on his heels.

  Each Shin Bet soldier wore body armor with a Star of David emblazoned front and back. Yoshi’s Star broke right into the dimness of the basement, sparks bolting from the muzzle of his machine gun. Levinson broke left and threw his body behind a trunk on the floor. A wicked fight was raging to the right of the stairs. Levinson could no longer see Yoshi, but he could see muzzle flashes coming from behind a barricade of boxes in the center of the confined space. His hearing assaulted by the throbbing roar of guns, Levinson buried a full clip into the crate from which muzzle flashes reached out toward the Shin Bet soldiers across the basement. The right side of the crate exploded into a thousand shards of pointed splinters. Someone screamed.

  A devastating onslaught of relentless firing inundated the wooden barricade, smoke and splinters filling the air. When Levinson could only hear the unique, crackling thunder of the Tavors, he blew mightily on a steel whistle that was taped to the back of the first two fingers on his left hand.

  In the sudden silence, Levinson’s ears still echoed with the sounds of battle. A thick cloud of gun smoke hung like a fog under the low ceiling of the basement, burning Levinson’s eyes and coating his throat. Ten seconds of silence confirmed there was no longer any enemy threat, and Levinson could finally use the radio mic affixed to his shoulder. “Report!”

  Before a voice could respond, out of the gun-smoke gloom emerged Yoshi, who walked directly up to Levinson. “I’m alive,” he said, some blood flowing from a bullet hole through his left forearm. “But they’re not. No prisoners, sir.”

  Now there was a smile on his face.

  36

  Alitas Street, Ankara

  July 23, 2:51 p.m.

  The burden of occupying Arslan Eroglu’s body was frustrating for the Turk. It left him with so many limitations. But occupying Eroglu had gained him the ambassador. Now it would gain him the box.