A moment later, Amina stepped out of the shadows.
“All set?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Maxim replied.
He exited the driver’s-side door and grabbed some blankets out of the boot while Amina stripped the two corpses of their wallets and press passes. When she was done, Maxim covered the two bodies with the blankets and removed the two cases of equipment Gibney had brought with him. Then they climbed into a nearby van that had been painted to look exactly like those used by the BBC News division.
50
It was on to Whitehall.
Along the way, Amina removed Thomas Gibney’s driver’s license from his wallet and replaced it with a falsified license bearing Gibney’s name but Maxim’s photograph. She made the same swap in Meryl Sullivan’s wallet, replacing the British woman’s real license with a fake one bearing her own photograph. Next, she removed family photos from both wallets and put them in an envelope with their legitimate press passes. The envelope she sealed and slipped into the glove compartment, hidden under a stack of other papers. Then she slipped over her neck a falsified BBC press pass dangling from a thin chain. It bore her picture and Sullivan’s name and details. She handed her brother a similar pass bearing Maxim’s photograph and Gibney’s details.
They arrived early to the Foreign Ministry. Parking the van in a special lot for the media, they unloaded their equipment and headed inside. Once there, they handed over their documents to the security division for verification. The process seemed to take forever. With every minute that passed, the risk was rising that either or both of them would break out in perspiration or in some other way look guilty. They had been assured by their handler that both of their press passes were masterful, flawless forgeries, as were their driver’s licenses.
They had better be, thought Maxim. He had great confidence in his handler. The man was a stickler for details and always seemed flush with cash. He wasn’t going to cut corners. Kairos would pay for the best money could buy. What still worried him, however, was that they might be asked questions they were not adequately prepared for.
One of the security guards asked Amina for her national ID number. She flawlessly rattled off Meryl’s from memory. A moment later, Maxim was asked his home address. He gave the guard Gibney’s without hesitation. A grueling two additional minutes passed, but in the end, they were each given a curt nod and waved forward.
Next they had to pass through the magnetometers, Maxim first, followed by Amina. Dr. Haqqani had insisted that the amount of metal used both for the detonator and the internal phone-call receiver was so minuscule as to eliminate all concern. They had even run several tests, putting Amina through both a metal detector and a bomb sniffer that al-Qassab had purchased and stored at a safe house in Haggerston.
To their relief, they both passed through the metal-detection equipment without triggering an alarm. But they weren’t done yet. Each was now wanded. Once again, they cleared without drawing any attention.
Finally the two submitted their camera equipment, all of which was run through an X-ray machine and then thoroughly checked by hand. To Maxim’s astonishment, this, too, went without a hitch. Less than fifteen minutes after entering the press center, they were fully cleared through security.
Amina excused herself and headed toward a nearby ladies’ room. Once inside, she stepped into a stall and locked the door behind her. Opening her purse, she took off the press pass stating that she was Meryl Sullivan and replaced it with yet another falsified pass. This one used her real name and personal details. Maxim was in the men’s room going through the same process.
The theory was this: the security guards working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs couldn’t possibly know every British and foreign journalist who covered Whitehall. There were hundreds of them and new ones coming and going every month. The press pool, however—the mere two dozen reporters and producers who would actually be standing out in the freezing cold on Downing Street to cover a simple “coming and going”—was a more intimate group. They would definitely know Sullivan. They might even know Gibney. That, al-Qassab had informed them, was a risk they could not take. They needed to act as if they were a crew newly assigned to Whitehall by the BBC and just helping out for the day.
As they were among the first of the TV crews to arrive on Downing Street, Maxim found a prime location on the risers across from Number 10 and the famed black door. He set up the tripod, mounted the video camera upon it, then put on his headphones and tested all of his equipment. Next he pulled out the mobile phone the surgeon had given him, powered it up, and slipped it into his raincoat pocket.
Over the course of the next hour, more crews arrived, and by ten o’clock sharp, everyone was in position.
51
Several of the reporters asked about Meryl.
The utter implosion of the American peace plan even before it had been publicly unveiled was a huge story. It wasn’t like Meryl to be late. Where could she be?
Maxim kept his mouth shut. He was just supposed to be a cameraman, after all. Amina took the lead. In her nearly flawless English, she explained that she had no idea where Meryl was but that she fully expected the veteran correspondent and her crew to be there any moment. She even pretended to text the woman several times to figure out where she was.
Meanwhile, Maxim was growing more anxious by the minute. One of the heavily armed bobbies was eyeing him suspiciously. How long would it be until someone came over and interrogated him and Amina and blew their covers? Amina could see that he was growing anxious. She patted him gently on the arm and whispered that everything would be fine.
“Stand by!” a protocol officer suddenly shouted.
A moment later, a black BMW sedan with red-and-blue flashing lights mounted in the front grille pulled up Downing Street from their right, followed by two black, armor-plated Suburbans. The motorcade stopped about twenty yards from Number 10. Out of the front passenger door of the BMW emerged a tall man wearing a dark suit, sunglasses, and a small earpiece. Maxim knew him immediately to be Agent Geoffrey Stone, head of General Evans’s security detail. Kairos had sent him dossiers on everything that was known about the detail and their procedures, and Maxim had memorized the entire file. Beside Stone now stood a rather striking woman of Indian extraction. This had to be Agent Kailea Curtis, Maxim told himself. Both agents swept the faces in the crowd. Then Stone opened the back door of the BMW, and out stepped the U.S. national security advisor, a broad smile plastered on his face.
“General Evans,” shouted one of the reporters from Sky News. “What’s your response to the Palestinians’ rejection of the president’s plan?”
“What do you have to say to Chairman Ziad?” shouted another.
“Has President Clarke betrayed the Palestinian people?” yelled a third.
The general smiled and waved to the press corps as he helped Susan Davis out of the backseat of the BMW.
Maxim was riveted as he stared through the viewfinder of the video camera at the two walking the twenty yards up to the famous black door marked Number 10 and stopping. So far everything was going as planned. The Chechen was not surprised that Evans and Davis were standing there without their security detail, nor that Agents Stone and Curtis were standing behind the BMW, nearly out of view of the reporters. It was, after all, the first of two photo ops. DSS agents were never supposed to be in the picture. Maxim had watched at least a hundred videos on YouTube of various world leaders visiting this famous house, and rarely if ever had he seen bodyguards in close proximity to their protectees.
Maxim had been explicitly instructed by al-Qassab not to detonate the bomb until Evans and Davis reemerged from the building with the British prime minister at their side. The PM was the primary target, the Syrian had said, and chances were good that he would accompany Evans and Davis outside after the meeting and smile at the cameras. But Maxim simply could not wait. He was now sweating profusely, even in the November cold, and increasingly terrified that he an
d Amina would be found out and that all their painstaking preparations would come to naught.
This was it, Maxim decided. It had to be now. Besides, Amina was not expecting it. She was calm, relaxed, sure she had at least another hour or more to wait. How much more merciful and efficient, he thought, not to have her even the slightest bit worried?
Slipping his right hand into his coat pocket, Maxim gripped the mobile phone, felt for the number five, which he had covered with a bit of masking tape. The Americans weren’t answering any of the media’s questions. They were just standing there, smiling like imbeciles.
Maxim sniffed. What a perfect moment.
Just as the Americans were about to turn and step inside, the Chechen hit the speed dial and shouted at the top of his voice. “Allahu akbar!”
The massive explosion came a split second later.
52
GHAT, LIBYA—26 NOVEMBER
As Abu Nakba lay prostrate on the floor, there was a knock at the door.
He had been praying all night in his private study and reading the Qur’an by candlelight, and he had not stopped when morning came. No food had touched his lips in ninety-six hours. Nor had water or any other form of drink. His physician had warned him that at his age there could be grave consequences for fasting for so long, but the founder of Kairos refused to listen.
“Allah bids me to fast,” he would say. “If he also bids me to leave this world and enter paradise, so be it.”
Having left standing orders with his staff that he not be disturbed, he had no desire to see mere mortals. He longed only to enter the presence of Allah himself. The knock, therefore, startled him as he lay facedown on the prayer rug that had been shipped as a gift to him by Iran’s Supreme Leader. The door opened a crack, and Hamdi Yaşar stuck his head in.
“It is I, my father, and it is finished,” his closest aide said quietly. “Come and see.”
The old man lifted his head. Could it be over already? Had that much time truly passed? With much difficulty, he grabbed his cane and used it to pull himself back to his feet. Then he padded into the adjoining conference room. Yaşar was waiting for him and helped the old man into his favorite chair. As Abu Nakba fumbled to put on his glasses, both men looked up at the large screen on the far wall.
The TV was tuned to Al-Sawt and showed footage from a rooftop camera pointed at Number 10 Downing Street. The image showed billowing smoke and flames leaping into the air. The anchor, a veiled woman back in the studio in Doha, was explaining what had happened, but Abu Nakba wasn’t listening. He already knew, and tears of joy began to streak down his face.
“You have done well, my son,” the old man said after several minutes, when he had composed himself and wiped his eyes dry. “With three strikes against the Great Satan in less than two weeks, Allah will be well pleased. And for what it’s worth, so am I.”
“That means a great deal to me, my father,” Hamdi Yaşar said as he turned off the television and sat down beside the man. “Thank you.”
They sat quietly together for a while, eyes closed, savoring the moment.
“As you know, I grew up in the desert,” the old man said after some time. “An orphan. Poor. Very little education. No prospects for a better life. But Allah saw me. He saw my heart and knew my soul and took pity on this little orphan boy. He had a plan for me. He raised me far above my station, enabled me to become a warrior for his name. And everything in me is shaking, telling me that the time of the Mahdi’s arrival and the rebuilding of the once-and-future Caliphate is fast approaching. This is what drives me. This is what gives me joy and such strength in the season of my sunset—the hope of striking a fatal blow to the Crusaders and the Zionists and ushering in the End of Days.”
“Your vision has always inspired me, my father,” Yaşar said. “But never more than today.”
“Come, join me on the veranda,” said Abu Nakba.
The younger man helped his elder rise to his feet, and the two walked out of the private study to a spacious balcony. They settled down in cushioned chairs beside a small glass table. The sun was high and bright over the vast expanse of desert. The sky was a brilliant blue, and there was not a cloud to be seen to the very edge of the horizon. The air was cool. The thermometer read twenty-three degrees Celsius, about seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit. A slight breeze was coming from the north. Abu Nakba felt there would soon be rain, and he said as much to his protégé.
“Rain, my father?” Yaşar looked doubtful.
Winter was approaching, to be sure. There were typically only six or seven days of any rain in a year in Libya, usually in November and December. Today it did not look as if rain were imminent. Yet Abu Nakba had always been able to feel precipitation coming, rare though it was. In childhood he’d astounded the adults in the madrassa by his uncanny ability to predict the first day of rain every year without fail. It would not be today, though, he said; of this he was certain.
After a time, the old man asked, “What progress have you made on our Iranian friend’s request?”
“I have good news there, too,” Yaşar replied.
“You have my undivided attention.”
“Very well, here is the short version. At your command, I have been setting up a Kairos cell in Palestine. We began last year, recruiting a few low-level people, building a bit of infrastructure, but it has been slow going. Until now.”
“Go on.”
“Last week, I received a message from a man you may have heard of, a Dr. Hussam Mashrawi—he lives in Jerusalem.”
“The son-in-law of Amin al-Azzam? The director of the Waqf?”
“The very same,” Yaşar said. “So you know him?”
“Not personally,” said the old man. “I certainly know of them. Al-Azzam is a good man from a good family. Devout. Brilliant. The son-in-law, I’m not so certain.”
“Actually, Mashrawi portrays himself as a moderate, but that’s a facade. In truth, he is one of us.”
“How do you know?”
“I met with him a while back in Cairo. We spent several hours together. I went back to Doha convinced, and we have stayed in touch ever since. He’s ready to help us in any way we ask. In fact, he’s already been recruiting people, acquiring assets. As a result, I now have a dozen Palestinians and Israeli Arabs on the Kairos payroll. On my orders, they are lying low for now. But they are itching for battle.”
“And?”
“And last week he contacted me with incredible news—he said President Clarke was planning to come to Jerusalem in mid-December to deliver a major speech outlining his so-called peace plan on the Haram al-Sharif.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am,” Yaşar said. “The intel is good. An advance team came last weekend from Washington to make all the preparations for the trip. Mashrawi even sent me pictures of him meeting with them. Here, take a look.”
As per their standard security protocols, Yaşar had turned off his mobile phone and removed its SIM card before coming to the compound. But he had brought a half-dozen printed images of the photos Mashrawi had texted him. They were in a sealed envelope, which he now handed over to the old man.
“Miraculous,” said the Kairos founder, chuckling to himself. “The president of the United States. Very likely the prime minister of the Zionists as well. Standing together in al-Quds. Together on the Haram al-Sharif. A man on the inside of the Waqf. A team in place. And all within the window the Supreme Leader asked of us. How great and merciful is Allah?”
With this, the old man rang a silver bell. A servant appeared immediately. Abu Nakba instructed him to bring tea and some freshly baked bread.
It was time to break his fast. There was much work to be done, and he needed his strength.
53
MONUMENT, COLORADO
Marcus awoke in a panic, his body covered in sweat.
He’d been having one nightmare after another about the president being shot and killed in the Holy City while Marcus just watched, frozen,
unable to react. In one, Clarke’s head was blown off by a sniper. In another, the assassin was a veiled woman hiding a handgun under her robe. In yet another, the president had just entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque when the entire building erupted in a tremendous explosion.
It had been months since he’d experienced such night terrors. In the past, his nightmares centered on the deaths of his wife and son and him just standing there paralyzed and unable to help them. In time, those visions had faded. Now they were being replaced by new anxieties that left him exhausted and disoriented.
Marcus rubbed his eyes and sat up. It took him several moments to realize that he wasn’t in Jerusalem. He was seven thousand miles and nine time zones away. But he wasn’t on the outskirts of Aspen anymore, either. He was finally back in Monument, back in the town of his youth, waking up in the very room—the very bed—he’d slept in growing up. He hadn’t set the alarm on his phone. He’d even turned off the ringer. He was, after all, supposed to be on vacation.
The storm had broken. The Rocky Mountain roads had been plowed. After spending more than eighteen hours holed up in Oleg’s A-frame, drinking tea and eating borscht because that’s all the Russian had in the house, Marcus had finally been able to drive back down to civilization. His mother had welcomed him with open arms, grateful to finally see and hold her only son again. And the truth was, he was grateful to be back in his childhood home, eating her amazing cooking again, even if the conversation he dreaded having with her still hung over him like a cloud.
The sun was just coming up across the Front Range. Dawn’s early light streamed through the curtains his mother had hand-sewn for him when he was a boy. He looked around at the faded family photos and movie posters and his high school and college diplomas on the walls. His eyes, bleary and red, swept across the dusty football and basketball trophies on the shelves, across the various knickknacks from summer camps and junior prom and senior ball and spring break trips and his four years at UNC Greeley. It was surreal to think that just a few days before, he’d been standing in the epicenter of the epicenter of the epicenter, and now he was so far removed from those exotic sights and sounds and smells.
The Jerusalem Assassin Page 16