The Jerusalem Assassin

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “We don’t have time,” Marcus replied. “We’ve got a terrorist faction out there we know nothing about. We’ve got an American president and a Saudi monarch preparing to come to Jerusalem. I’ve got a partner who’s in London rather than at my side. And now you’re telling me you’ve got nothing?”

  “I’m sorry—truly I am,” said Oleg. “Believe me, I will call you when I have something useful—anything—but I have nothing right now.”

  Frustrated, Marcus nevertheless held his tongue. Hanging up with Oleg, he returned emails for the next forty-five minutes until he finally received a call from Secret Service deputy director Carl Roseboro. The team had their bags and were coming out of the terminal, Roseboro reported. Moments later, Marcus spotted them through the crowds and pulled forward to welcome them. Soon the team was headed back to Jerusalem. On the way, Marcus briefed the others on the events of the last few days, paying particular attention to his concerns about the Grand Mufti. Roseboro asked if Marcus had yet secured a list of everyone currently working for the Waqf and everyone who had in the previous ten years. Marcus directed him to a folder in his briefcase. In it, Roseboro found a printout of the names, titles, home addresses, home and mobile phones, and work and home email addresses, all courtesy of Dr. Mashrawi.

  “When did you get these?” Roseboro asked.

  “Just before I came to get you,” Marcus said.

  Roseboro studied the list carefully, then handed it to Noah Daniels, the team’s high-tech whiz kid. “Send these to the Secret Service, CIA, and NSA,” he instructed. “Have them run background checks on every person and start listening in on every phone call. I want intercepts of every email and text message and analysis of all their social media accounts, too.”

  “The Israelis are already doing this,” Daniels said. “They started the moment we arrived last time.”

  “Nevertheless,” Roseboro said. “We’re not leaving the safety of our president in the hands of a foreign power. I don’t care how close an ally they are.”

  “Got it, sir—consider it done,” said Daniels, who began immediately scanning the documents into his secure phone and transmitting them in encrypted files marked “high priority.”

  72

  MALLORCA, SPAIN—6 DECEMBER

  Dr. Ali Haqqani woke before dawn, dressed, and took a pill to calm his nerves.

  Then he packed and headed to the airport. He had never been to Israel, and the Pakistani was terrified. He had been given a new name, an elaborate cover story, new credit cards, and a fake passport, all designed to transform him into a wealthy, retired physician from New Delhi—a Christian and a widower—traveling to places he had always read about but never imagined actually seeing with his own eyes.

  Hamdi Yaşar had thought of everything, or so he said. Yet Haqqani feared his nerves would betray him. He was not a Christian, of course. Indeed, he was a devout Muslim who considered Christianity a polytheistic religion of pagan dogs. He certainly did not live in the capital of his Indian enemies. He was, unfortunately, a widower, and this, perversely, gave him a shred of hope that he could pull this thing off. He’d studied Christianity and India. He could spout off all kinds of facts and statistics to any border guard who asked him. But his trump card was that he could well up with tears at a moment’s notice at the thought of his dearly departed wife. It was no act. It was the cloud that hung over him every day. Were it not for having been recruited by Kairos to wage jihad against the Jews and the Christians, he could not imagine having the wherewithal to get out of bed each day.

  Haqqani boarded Iberia Airlines flight 3917 without incident and sat in first class. The plane lifted off from Palma de Mallorca at 6:30 a.m. On the flight, the pill began to have its effect. Haqqani dozed off easily and was surprised how quickly the ninety minutes to Madrid passed. With a layover of nearly an hour and a half, he bought a newspaper and tried to read it over a leisurely breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and black coffee. Now he thought the pill had been too effective. He was having trouble concentrating. He drank three more cups of coffee. Then, checking his phone and finding no new instructions, he nervously walked to his new gate, cleared through a second security check, and boarded El Al Airlines flight 396.

  He spent most of the four-and-a-half-hour flight trying to sleep or holed up in the restroom. Finally, at 3:05 p.m. local time, the Boeing 737-900 touched down in Tel Aviv. Haqqani, a ball of nerves, entered the terminal terrified of being singled out for interrogation. But as it happened, his flight arrived just after two jumbo jets from the U.S. filled with American tourists. Passport control was a beehive of activity, the day after the Jewish Sabbath. He showed his passport but was asked no questions. To his astonishment, he soon had an entry visa, had collected his luggage, and was hailing a taxi.

  “The American Colony Hotel,” he told the driver, and before he knew it, they were roaring up Highway 1 for the Holy City.

  Haqqani sat in stunned amazement as he looked out the windows on the drive. He could not believe how green and fertile the land was and how many thousands upon thousands of trees he could see. He had always pictured Palestine as a vast desert. Where was the sand? Where were all the camels? None of what he saw could be reconciled to the images he had been raised with. Hadn’t Allah cursed the Jews? Where, then, were the barren wastelands, the piles of refuse, the orphans plagued by flies, the beggars covered in sores?

  Up, up, up the taxi climbed into the hills surrounding Jerusalem. Not only were Haqqani’s ears popping with the pressure change, but he found himself more disoriented with every mile. The Jewish towns and villages and the homes they contained were so many and so beautiful. Everywhere he looked he saw construction cranes. New apartments and office buildings were being erected. Even the Muslim villages looked prosperous and bustling with commerce. Every minaret he saw—and he saw so many—confused him all the more. He’d heard there were many Muslims living as citizens in the so-called Jewish state, but he’d imagined them all oppressed and in hiding. He’d never considered the possibility that the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him, could build their own mosques and worship freely.

  Soon, Haqqani reached the American Colony and paid the driver. The moment the cab drove away, however, rather than check into the hotel, he walked down to the main street and hailed another cab, just as he’d been instructed. This one he took to the David Citadel Hotel, a ride of about fifteen minutes. Yet when he arrived and paid this driver, he again failed to enter the hotel and check in. Instead, he hailed a third cab to the Seven Arches Hotel, atop the Mount of Olives.

  Twenty minutes later, Haqqani was dropped off for the third time. He nearly wept as he exited the cab and found himself staring down across a valley at the Haram al-Sharif, the gleaming gold Dome of the Rock and the glorious Al-Aqsa Mosque—the Mosque in the Corner to which Muhammad, peace be upon him, had ridden on his Night Journey to heaven. Never in his wildest dreams had the Pakistani physician ever expected to be there in person, and the scene was more beautiful than he could possibly have anticipated.

  Fortunately, he’d remembered to text his handler that he was en route, and moments later, a rusty gray Mazda sedan pulled up. The driver engaged him in a series of prearranged code words, and only when the two men were convinced of the other’s identity did Haqqani get into the car.

  They did not drive far. To the Pakistani’s surprise, the car slowed down about a thousand feet from the hotel and pulled through a steel gate and into a garage underneath a three-level compound overlooking the Kidron Valley and the city of al-Quds.

  “Welcome, habibi, I am so grateful you made it safely,” said an impeccably dressed man in a finely tailored British suit as Haqqani climbed out of the sedan. “What a joy it is—truly, an honor—to finally meet such a hero of the revolution. You have been in my prayers, day and night, for months. Come inside and settle in. We have prepared everything for your comfort and gathered all the supplies you requested.”

  The two men embraced, yet Haqqani couldn’t hid
e his confusion. “You are most kind,” he replied. “But I’m sorry—what was your name again?”

  “Ah, forgive me. I know you so well. I have followed your work so closely. But I forget that you and I have only communicated by email and that my face you have never seen. Allow me to introduce myself properly. My name is Mohammad al-Qassab.”

  73

  LONDON, ENGLAND—8 DECEMBER

  Kailea Curtis held her MP5 so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

  Geoff Stone adjusted the chin strap of his Kevlar helmet, glanced down at his colleague’s hands, and caught her eye. He took several exaggerated deep breaths, signaling for her to breathe, relax, focus. At first she seemed annoyed by the suggestion, but then she nodded, started breathing properly again, flexed her fingers, and waited for the command to go.

  Stone was determined to keep a close eye on Curtis. She was an impressive agent, but it was clear that she’d been deeply shaken by the blast in Downing Street. She’d never served in the military, much less been deployed to a forward area or experienced combat. She’d been an NYPD beat cop in Brooklyn, and a good one, before joining DSS. She’d certainly seen her share of trauma and high-stress situations. But she’d never seen friends obliterated by a suicide bomber. The shrapnel wounds that had scarred her face and hands would heal in time. Stone wasn’t so sure about the psychological scars. Curtis was tough, but only time would tell if she could work her way through all this.

  The commander of SCO19—the special operations unit of the London police, roughly the equivalent of an urban SWAT team back in the States—gave the signal. Quickly and in complete silence, they moved into the high-rise apartment complex in a sketchy section of the East End. A half-dozen commandos entered the stairwell on the far side of the building. Another six took up positions in the vestibule, guarding the two lifts and each door. Two more operators, their commander, and the two Americans worked their way up the nearest stairwell, weapons up, safeties off.

  On the fifth floor, still not speaking a word, they moved into the hallway as the second team also moved into position around flat 512. On the silent count of three, the commander nodded to the breacher, a hulk of a man who heaved an enormous sledgehammer-like battering ram into the door and ripped it off its hinges.

  “Go, go, go!” the commander yelled.

  Six commandos stormed forward. Stone was right behind them. Curtis remained in the hall upon his orders. As planned, Stone watched two officers pivot right into the kitchen. Two more pivoted left into the living room. The remaining two burst into the bedroom. One by one, Stone heard the men shout, “Clear!” Most of the commandos now climbed out of the bedroom window onto the fire escape and headed up to the roof to surveil the area. That’s when the bomb squad entered the flat. They checked for evidence of explosives and other bomb-making supplies. When they found none, Stone lowered his weapon and called for his colleague to join him.

  Kailea took off her goggles and helmet and carefully inspected each room.

  There were dirty dishes in the sink. Sour milk in the refrigerator, along with some rancid halal meat. The bunk beds in the sole bedroom were not made up. Two unfinished cups of cold tea sat on the end tables by the couch in the living room. The lone bookshelf held two copies of the Qur’an, several travel books about London, and several more about Athens and Santorini. On a lower shelf stood a half-dozen paperback copies of works by Sayyid Qutb along with what looked like a complete thirty-volume set of arguably the man’s definitive work, In the Shade of the Qur’an.

  Qutb, she remembered from an Islamic Studies course she had taken in college, had been born and raised in Egypt and was widely considered the intellectual and spiritual godfather of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and ’60s. If Kailea remembered correctly, Qutb had been arrested in Cairo somewhere around ’65 or ’66, convicted of plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and executed by hanging. One of his most fervent disciples had been Aymin al-Zawahiri, the founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who had later been the coconspirator behind the 9/11 attacks with his friend and fellow mass murderer Osama bin Laden.

  As the forensics team began taking pictures and dusting for fingerprints, Kailea donned a pair of crime scene gloves and picked up one of the copies of the sacred Muslim scriptures. She was surprised to find it was an English edition, not Arabic. So was the other. She picked up one of Qutb’s books, titled Social Justice in Islam, and began flipping through it. Like the Qur’ans, it was in English. Many passages were underlined or highlighted with green marker. She replaced it on the shelf and picked another, The Battle between Islam and Capitalism. It, too, was an English translation and heavily marked up. She wondered if the Chechens knew how to read Arabic. Most jihadists did. It seemed odd that they would not.

  As she glanced through one of the thirty hardcover volumes, a particular passage caught her eye.

  The war the Jews began to wage against Islam and Muslims in those early days has raged on to the present. The form and appearance may have changed, but the nature and means remain the same.

  Kailea replaced it on the shelf and began flipping through a dog-eared paperback copy of Milestones, the 1964 manifesto that had become required reading for Islamists from Morocco to Indonesia.

  “Is that Qutb?” asked Agent Stone, coming up behind her.

  Kailea nodded. “Real piece of work,” she said. “Ever read any of his stuff?”

  “Some back in college, but it’s been a while.”

  “Same here. You should work your way through Milestones someday. It’s something else. Listen to these first few sentences.

  “Mankind today is on the brink of an abyss, not because of the danger of complete annihilation which is hanging over its head—this being just a symptom and not the real disease—but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress. . . .

  “It is essential for mankind to have new leadership! . . .

  “It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which also will acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable.

  “Islam is the only System which possesses these values and this way of life.”

  “A real bon vivant, eh?” Stone asked.

  Kailea turned to the last few blank pages and found handwritten notes scribbled in Russian. Neither she nor Stone could decipher much of it. But what did catch her eye was a phone number written at the bottom.

  74

  THE KING DAVID HOTEL, JERUSALEM—9 DECEMBER

  It was exactly 4 a.m. in the Holy City.

  Back in Washington, it was 9 p.m. on the dot. The advance team gathered in Marcus’s sixth-floor suite, opening beers, colas, and snacks from the minibar and turning on CNN to await the president’s prime-time address.

  This was it. Clarke was about to lay out his Middle East peace initiative. The White House had released word of the speech over the weekend. It had been front-page news in Israel, throughout the Arab world, and around the globe. Most pundits and Mideast analysts were already savaging the plan they had not yet read as being “irrelevant,” “overtaken by events,” and “dead on arrival,” given that Palestinian leaders had preemptively rejected it.

  Still, Marcus and the team were grateful there had as yet been no leaks concerning the fact that Clarke was coming to Jerusalem to hold a peace summit. That would be the bombshell in his remarks tonight and the top news story for the next few days. It would also be topic number one for jihadists around the globe. The American intelligence community was on standby to monitor millions of phone calls, text messages, emails, and online chats, looking for potential threats to the summit and to POTUS. The good news was that the techies at Langley had broken back into the K
remlin’s computer servers. Marcus had, therefore, ordered Oleg to pay close attention to what was being said by Petrovsky and his top advisors, and the Russian defector had promised he was on it.

  Just as the anchor introduced Clarke and the picture switched from the CNN studios in Atlanta to the Oval Office, Marcus’s phone rang. Annoyed, he apologized to his colleagues, scrambled to his feet, and headed to the bathroom, where his phone was charging on the vanity. He was about to silence it when he realized it was Kailea calling from London.

  “We’ve got it, Marcus,” she said immediately.

  “Got what?”

  “The names of the two people who impersonated the BBC crew.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Chechens—Maxim and Amina Sheripov. Their mother was a Black Widow. She blew herself up in Moscow back in the nineties. We searched their flat yesterday afternoon and found a phone number. It led us to a medical clinic here in London and the name of the surgeon who placed the bomb in the woman, Amina.”

  “Give it to me,” Marcus said, grabbing for a pen and notepad.

  “His name is Ali Haqqani.”

  “One q or two?”

  “Two. He’s a Pakistani national. Born in Islamabad. Emigrated to the U.K. in 2010. That’s all we’ve got at the moment.”

  “Focus on the money,” Marcus instructed her. “Who paid him to do the surgery on the bomber? Where did the money come from? What banks did it route through? Search all of his phone records, too. He’s got to have a handler, and that person might be based in the U.K., even in London.”

  “We’re already on it—I’ll send you everything as soon as I can.”

  “And he had to have nurses, right? Who were they? Where do they live? Where are they from? How long did they work for him? What do they know?”