The Jerusalem Assassin

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  They were looking at the most bulletproof, bomb-resistant, RPG-impregnable vehicles on the face of the earth, thought Marcus. It was all very impressive. But none of them actually expected an attack against the motorcade. They were expecting a suicide bomber—more precisely, a homicide bomber—but they had no idea where. Or how to stop it.

  82

  MOUNT OF OLIVES, EAST JERUSALEM

  It was well after 7 p.m. when the Red Crescent ambulance pulled up.

  Two paramedics—both on the Kairos payroll—entered the first-floor office and found Hussam Mashrawi slumped in a dentist chair, unconscious. To maintain the cover of the operation, the dentist had actually conducted a completely unnecessary root canal on the man after the BCB surgery was successfully completed. He’d even pulled out a perfectly good wisdom tooth for good measure. As a result, both sides of Mashrawi’s face were swollen, and drool was running down his shirt. The man’s wife, who had dropped him off for what she thought would be a routine root canal that morning, would have questions.

  Neither paramedic had any idea what Mashrawi had been through or who was staying in the flat two floors up. All they knew was that they were being paid to transport the executive director of the Waqf back to his home in the Old City.

  With the dentist’s help, the two men carefully lifted Mashrawi onto a stretcher. They wheeled him out and loaded him into the back of the ambulance. The dentist then said he’d like to accompany them all back to the Mashrawi residence, just to make sure everything went smoothly.

  Al-Qassab peered through the curtain.

  He watched as Mashrawi was placed in the ambulance. He watched to make sure the mobile phone he had placed in Mashrawi’s jacket pocket did not fall out and go skittering across the pavement. That was the phone, after all, that Mashrawi was going to use to detonate himself when the moment came. Before the surgery, al-Qassab had taken the Palestinian into a private room, given him the phone, and walked him through every step, answering every question the man had.

  Yes, there would be a slight delay, he’d told Mashrawi. There could in fact be as many as three seconds between the moment he pressed the correct speed-dial number and the moment the bomb actually detonated. Yes, the explosion would be massive. It would kill everyone within ten meters, roughly thirty feet. No, he would not feel a thing. He would be obliterated instantaneously. One moment he would be shouting, “Allahu akbar!” The next moment he would be in paradise, remembered forever as a martyr and thus a hero back here on earth.

  Al-Qassab was impressed with just how calm Mashrawi was. Indeed, the man seemed eager to do his part for the Caliphate. He did not seem nervous. He did not seem worried about what would happen to his beloved wife and children. He accepted al-Qassab’s assurance that they would be well cared for and provided for.

  What al-Qassab did not tell Mashrawi, however, was that he had no intention of entrusting the Palestinian with so important a mission. The speed dial in the mobile phone had been properly programmed. But al-Qassab now looked down at the mobile phone in his own hands. He had programmed the speed-dial function on this one with the exact same number. There was no turning back, no room for hesitation. When the moment came, he would not be trusting Mashrawi to dial his own death. Al-Qassab would do that for him.

  Red lights flashing, the ambulance pulled away from the curb.

  It threaded its way through East Jerusalem and stopped as close as it could to the Damascus Gate. The two paramedics and the dentist unloaded the stretcher, cleared through an Israeli security checkpoint, and got Mashrawi to his third-floor apartment, where his wife, Yasmine, was waiting.

  “What happened?” she gasped at the sight of her husband. “He looks like someone beat him up!”

  “There were a few complications, but overall, everything went fine,” the dentist replied, not exactly lying but certainly not telling the truth.

  “Why isn’t he awake?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid he had an allergic reaction to the first type of anesthesia I used, so I had to use another kind,” the dentist explained, following to the letter the script Dr. Haqqani and al-Qassab had given him. “I expect him to sleep through the night, but he should start feeling better tomorrow.”

  The paramedics hoisted Mashrawi off the stretcher and set him on the couch in the living room. The dentist gave Yasmine a bag filled with various kinds of prescription medications to manage the pain and reduce the swelling. He walked her through how much and when to give each pill, then promised to come by in the morning to check on his patient. With two of her young children grasping at the folds of her dress, Yasmine adjusted her veil, wiped her eyes, and thanked the men for their kindness, and with that they took their leave.

  The first person Yasmine called was her father. The moment the Grand Mufti answered his mobile phone, she burst into tears. He had no idea what she was saying, but he promised to come to her side right away.

  83

  U.S. EMBASSY, JERUSALEM

  “Agent Ryker, do you have a moment? I’ve got something you should see.”

  Marcus had just walked into the “war room,” but he was in no mood to talk to anyone. He was hungry. He was thirsty. It was almost eight thirty at night. He hadn’t had any dinner and still had hours of work ahead of him.

  Roseboro had converted the conference room down the hall from the ambassador’s office into a makeshift operations center for the senior members of his advance team, even as another forty lower-level Secret Service, DSS, White House, State Department, and Pentagon officials and staffers had arrived in recent days and had taken over the embassy’s cafeteria to further prepare for the summit. Now, as Marcus poured himself a cup of coffee and tried to catch his breath from another brutally long day, Noah Daniels was asking for time he did not want to give.

  It was all Marcus could do not to brush the guy off and tell him whatever it was would have to wait. But he knew that the thirty-four-year-old communications whiz kid didn’t actually work for the White House Communications Agency. In reality, Daniels secretly worked for the CIA. Stephens had confided to Marcus before leaving Washington that Daniels was one of the Agency’s most valuable assets. So Marcus played along.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Well, on Friday you asked me to make sure we were intercepting the calls and emails of every current and former employee of the Waqf, right?”

  Marcus sighed, then took a sip of coffee so rancid he had to spit it back into his mug.

  “Right—so?” he asked, wiping his mouth and dumping the sludge into the sink.

  “We’ve picked up two calls I thought you would want to know about.”

  Noah handed Marcus two stapled sets of transcripts—one in Arabic, the other in English. The first was a conversation between Palestinian Authority chairman Ziad and the Grand Mufti, from the day after Clarke’s speech. Noah pointed to the key sentence in the transcript, in which Ziad insisted that the Grand Mufti do everything in his power to keep the peace summit, which he called “blasphemous,” from taking place.

  Marcus winced. It was exactly what he’d feared. The Grand Mufti was a serious liability. The question was, how were they going to handle him and make sure he didn’t act on Ziad’s explicit instruction?

  “Who else has seen this?” Marcus asked.

  “So far, just the translator and me.”

  Then Noah explained that the second transcript, several pages longer than the first, involved a series of intercepts from the mobile phone of Dr. Mashrawi’s wife, Yasmine.

  “Was she even on the tracking list?” Marcus asked.

  “No, but I figured if we were having the NSA intercept and record all of the calls, texts, and emails sent or received by Waqf employees, I might as well have them check spouses and children, too.”

  “Good idea. So what’s this?”

  “These are from the last twenty-four hours,” Noah said. “Thirteen calls and text messages. They all relate to Dr. Mashrawi needing an emergency root canal. There are i
nteractions with the dentist, conversations with friends, and finally a tearful call from Mrs. Mashrawi to her father, the Grand Mufti.”

  Marcus quickly scanned the pages. “Fine, but I already knew about the root canal. So what?”

  “Well, sir, you radioed in this morning that Mashrawi wasn’t at your meeting with the Grand Mufti and that the Grand Mufti said his son-in-law had to go get an emergency root canal. You wanted us to make sure that was really true.”

  “Apparently it is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Noah said. “It would seem Dr. Mashrawi was telling the truth.”

  “Good to know,” Marcus replied. “Write up a cover memo explaining exactly what you told me, and get both sets of transcripts to Roseboro, the director of DSS, and Director Stephens at Langley. Then get me every single thing you possibly can on the Grand Mufti. My worries about him are growing by the minute.”

  “Yes, sir,” Noah said. “I’m on it.”

  As the young man stepped away, Marcus’s satphone rang. It was Kailea in London.

  “Please tell me you’ve got good news,” Marcus said, ducking out of the war room into the hallway, where it was quieter.

  “I do,” she replied. “You’re gonna like this.”

  “What?”

  “After going through all of the computer files and phone logs for the medical clinic we raided, we found several odd emails and three phone calls from Dr. Haqqani to a banker by the name of Michel al-Jalil,” Kailea explained. “According to everyone we’ve talked to so far, al-Jalil is a Palestinian Catholic. His family lived in the Galilee region of Palestine during the British Mandate. When war came in ’48, they fled to Lebanon and settled in one of the refugee camps. That, supposedly, is where this guy, Michel, was born. But he was a sharp kid. He got out of the camps and earned an undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut, then headed to the U.K. and got his MBA from the London School of Economics.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s simply no record of a Michel al-Jalil ever being born in Lebanon or going to AU in Beirut,” Kailea explained.

  “So?”

  “So the guy’s real name is Mohammed al-Qassab. As best we can tell, he’s never set foot in Palestine or Israel. He was born and raised in Damascus. His father was a Syrian general under the Assad regime. Al-Qassab served in Syrian intelligence and was last stationed in Beirut.”

  “Cut to the chase.”

  “Early this morning, we raided an investment bank in the Canary Wharf section of London, where this guy worked, and the flat where he lived, a penthouse overlooking the Thames. We now believe al-Qassab is working for Kairos and has been acting as Haqqani’s handler. The case is circumstantial at the moment but compelling. The laptop in his penthouse flat was wiped clean. But FBI technicians were able to recover his Internet search history off the cloud. You’ll never guess what he’s been into.”

  Marcus sighed. “I have no idea. Just spit it out.”

  “He’s been studying the four assassinations of American presidents and dozens of failed attempts as well.”

  That got Marcus’s attention.

  “He’s also been to Greece twelve times in the past two years,” Kailea continued. “And two hours ago, MI5 picked up his fiancée. They’re interrogating her now. I’ll get you everything I can the moment they’re done. But Geoff just sent you a photo and a quick dossier on this guy, everything we know so far.”

  “Any idea where he is now?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, and that’s the main reason I’m calling.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s in Israel.”

  “He got there Friday.”

  84

  WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The secure video conference began at 5 p.m. local time, midnight in Israel.

  As acting national security advisor, Bill McDermott had pulled the meeting together. The president didn’t participate, as he was heading across town to speak to the National Governors Association. Nor did the VP or other cabinet members.

  This was not a formal meeting of the National Security Council but of senior intelligence and security officials responsible for threat assessment and containment for the upcoming peace summit. As such, CIA director Stephens was joining from Langley; the directors of the Secret Service, the Diplomatic Security Service, and the FBI were joining from their respective operations centers; and Roseboro and Ryker were linked in from the embassy in Jerusalem.

  “I appreciate everyone gathering on such short notice,” McDermott began. “Let’s get right to it. Agent Ryker, I understand you have new information for us.”

  “I’m afraid I do,” Marcus began. “As I briefed you all yesterday, Dr. Ali Haqqani—the Pakistani surgeon who implanted the body cavity bomb in the woman who blew herself up on Downing Street two weeks ago—arrived here in Israel on Saturday. I’ve just learned that another Kairos operative is in Israel. Our team in London has identified a man named Mohammed al-Qassab as Haqqani’s handler in London. According to the Mossad, al-Qassab landed in Tel Aviv on Friday at 3:00 p.m. Israel time on British Airways flight 165, direct from Heathrow.”

  “Using the name al-Qassab?” asked McDermott.

  “No—using the alias he goes by in the investment-banking world in London, Michel al-Jalil. I’m sending you all a copy of the flight manifest. I’m also sending you a photo of the man clearing Israeli passport control, and I can confirm that al-Qassab and al-Jalil are one and the same person.”

  “Do the Israelis have any idea where he is right now?” asked the FBI director.

  “Unfortunately, no—they do have CCTV footage of al-Qassab getting into a taxicab outside the airport, and they’ve determined the cab was heading for Tel Aviv,” Marcus explained. “They’ve found the driver and are interviewing him as we speak. But so far it looks like the driver just dropped him off near the beach, not far from the American consulate, and that’s where the trail goes cold.”

  “What’s their working theory?” asked the director of the Secret Service.

  “I just got off the phone with Asher Gilad,” said Marcus. “He believes it’s a better than fifty-fifty proposition that al-Qassab got into another cab and headed for Jerusalem. He thinks Haqqani may also have taken a series of cabs to keep changing his location once he was in Jerusalem. Gilad believes the two were planning to rendezvous, most likely in East Jerusalem, where they could blend in most easily.”

  “Didn’t I see a report that MI5 was questioning al-Qassab’s fiancée?” McDermott asked.

  “You did, sir, and Agents Geoff Stone and Kailea Curtis—both with DSS—helped interview her,” Marcus replied. “Agent Curtis told me they believe the fiancée has no idea who al-Qassab really is and knows nothing about his involvement in Kairos or his current whereabouts.”

  “Is that MI5’s assessment?” Stephens asked.

  “It is, sir. And I should note that the investigation in London has effectively run its course, so I’d like to request that Agents Stone and Curtis be transferred to Jerusalem to assist in the hunt for both Kairos suspects.”

  This was approved without dissent.

  “Gentlemen,” Marcus continued somberly, “we are now facing an environment in which not one but two Kairos operatives are in Israel, likely in Jerusalem and likely within a mile of the Temple Mount, and all just days before the arrival of POTUS and the Saudi king. We still don’t know a great deal about Kairos, but based on how we’ve seen them operate in Washington and London, we know they are highly sophisticated and effective at planning and executing attacks on senior American officials. When you add that to the threat reporting we’ve had over the last month—and sheer logic concerning the intentions of the Iranians and Russians—I believe I can say with high confidence that we’re looking at an assassination plot against those involved in the peace summit.”

  Though the use of a body cavity bomb was a strong likelihood, Marcus went on to caution that Kairos might be planning other methods of attack as well.
Then he shared the story he’d learned from the Saudi intelligence chief about the human bomb used against a member of the Saudi royal family several years earlier.

  “Recommendations?” McDermott asked.

  “Well, sir, Deputy Director Roseboro and I are divided on that topic,” Marcus replied. “I’ll let Carl speak for himself in a moment, but the short version is he feels the summit should proceed. I don’t.”

  “But this was your idea, Ryker,” said McDermott.

  “Actually, it was the Saudis’ idea, but yes, I was certainly supportive.”

  “And now you’ve changed your mind?”

  “I have. Look, I’ve been doing threat assessments for a long time, and I’m telling you this is the most dangerous, most volatile environment I’ve ever seen. Setting the geopolitical implications aside for a moment, I would strongly advise that the president invite the king and prime minister to the White House or Camp David and delay a Jerusalem visit several weeks, at least until we can hunt down these Kairos guys and be far more confident the environment is secure.”

  “POTUS has taken trips to Baghdad and Kabul,” said the FBI director. “Surely this situation isn’t any more dangerous than that.”

  “Respectfully, I disagree,” Marcus countered. “Those are always secret visits, announced only after Air Force One is wheels up and out of Iraqi or Afghani airspace. Here, we’ve announced not only who’s coming and when, but the exact itinerary, including what time POTUS and the others will be at Yad Vashem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and so forth. Add to all this the chatter the NSA is picking up from terror groups around the region. Add the fact that the Raven has intercepted messages that two foreign governments—Russia and Iran—are pouring millions of dollars into Kairos. Then add in what Ziad told the Grand Mufti and the fact that the Grand Mufti has a long record of anti-American statements, and my assessment is that it’s way too dangerous to bring POTUS into Jerusalem at this time, especially given that we don’t have a proven way to guard against the use of a body cavity bomb.”