The Jerusalem Assassin

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  120

  Yasmine’s anger boiled.

  The sight of her husband being humiliated by this American agent was more than she could bear. It was all she could do to restrain herself and not throw the phone in her hands across the room, shattering it in a thousand pieces. And why not? There was no point calling now, she knew. Her husband was not going to the VIP reception, and neither was she.

  For the first time, Marcus genuinely doubted himself.

  What if the Grand Mufti was lying? What if al-Qassab was setting him up? What if the plan had never been to kill President Clarke and the others but to embarrass and discredit them?

  The chilly December winds were picking up. Yet as cold and alone as he was, his hands were perspiring. His heart was racing. For one of the few times in his life, Marcus was scared—scared of being wrong, scared of all that would mean for his country. Still holding the Sig Sauer in his right hand, he removed his left hand and wiped it on his trousers. As he did, he suddenly felt the phone in his pocket—the phone they’d taken off of al-Qassab.

  “Take off your T-shirt, and put your hands in the air,” Marcus ordered.

  “Why should I?” Mashrawi angrily shouted back.

  “Look, Hussam, this can all end peacefully,” Marcus said. “Now, as a show of goodwill, I’m going to put my gun away, to show you I mean you no harm.”

  Mashrawi glared back at him with hatred and defiance in his eyes. Marcus could see the man was plotting his next move. Slowly he put his gun back in his holster. Tomer, standing directly beside Marcus, glanced at him like he was crazy. Marcus didn’t care. He was convinced the man was going to charge them, and soon. Yet it also occurred to Marcus that al-Qassab could not have the only phone to trigger the detonation. Someone else had one too. Not on this site. It had to be someone watching on television. Why else was Mashrawi so confident? Marcus had just told him he had al-Qassab in custody. He’d just told Mashrawi that they knew he was the bomber. Why else, then, would he be preparing to charge?

  If Marcus was wrong, of course, then he didn’t want to imagine the fate that awaited him. Not only would he be fired. He’d be humiliated in front of all his colleagues. He’d never work in law enforcement again. Worse, the president of the United States would be discredited in front of the entire world.

  If Hussam Mashrawi was the bomber, he would want the bomb to go off as close to POTUS, the PM, and the king as possible. Which meant that at that moment Mashrawi would be praying that whoever was going to dial that phone was preparing to dial it now.

  Marcus slowly slipped his left hand into his left pant pocket and took hold of al-Qassab’s phone. With his eyes still locked on Mashrawi, he just as slowly pulled it out, then let his hands drop to his sides in such a manner as to hide the phone from Mashrawi’s view. As he did, he once again ordered Mashrawi to remove his T-shirt and then raise his hands over his head.

  Mashrawi didn’t move.

  “Look, Hussam, I put my gun away. I don’t want to hurt you. I certainly don’t want to kill you. None of us do. Now, just take off your shirt—slowly—and prove to everyone that you don’t mean us any harm either.”

  Mashrawi glared at Marcus. For a moment he remained motionless, but how long was that going to last?

  Marcus gripped the mobile phone, knowing he held the man’s life in his hands. If Mashrawi did not surrender, Marcus could not hesitate. He had taken life before to protect the innocent. He was ready to do so again. But he desperately did not want to. Each time he did cost him something precious, something he could never replace, and silently he prayed he wouldn’t have to do it today.

  One thing was certain. If he had to kill Mashrawi, Marcus knew he would be sending the man straight to hell. Forever. No way out. No second chances. Not now. Not ever. In most life-and-death situations, he had no time to think about such things. Events just happened so quickly, and all he could do was react according to his training. Kill or be killed.

  But now he was staring into the man’s eyes, looking into his soul, wondering if it was damned or might somehow yet be redeemable. Now Marcus had the rare luxury of contemplating the terrible implications of what might be coming.

  Yet he resolved not to hesitate. If he had to act, he would. What happened next was between Mashrawi and God. The man had to make his own choices.

  If it came down to a decision between ending the life of a man willing to commit murder or allowing that man to murder those whom Marcus was sworn to protect, Marcus knew he would make the same decision every time, without pause.

  There was nothing more to say. Marcus stood his ground, silently pleading for Mashrawi to obey his order and save his life and perhaps his soul. But suddenly Marcus saw something shift in the man’s eyes. They narrowed, ever so slightly. Two fingers on Mashrawi’s left hand twitched.

  This was it, Marcus knew. He’d spent a lifetime studying killers. Mashrawi was about to make his move. So Marcus made his.

  With his eyes still locked on the Grand Mufti’s son-in-law, Marcus pushed number five. If he was wrong, nothing would happen. Only the snipers would be able to save them. But he was not wrong.

  As if in slow motion, Marcus saw Mashrawi’s head lean forward. He saw the man’s right foot come up. Marcus shouted into his wrist-mounted microphone, “Cover!” Then he turned and pulled Tomer to the ground just as Mashrawi started charging toward them. With a crazed look in his eye, he was shouting, “Allahu akbar!” at the top of his lungs.

  The snipers never fired a shot. No one did. They never got the chance. For in a flash of blinding light and a deafening boom, Hussam Mashrawi detonated before their very eyes.

  121

  For several seconds, Marcus could see nothing.

  The air was thick with smoke. He could hear nothing but a high-pitched ringing in his ears. The wicked stench of burned flesh permeated the mountain. But eventually Marcus raised his head and scanned the ghastly scene.

  Bits of limestone and body parts were raining down from the sky. Where Mashrawi had been standing, there was nothing but a smoking crater. To his right, Marcus could see the TV cameras had been completely blown off the risers. Behind him, Marcus saw bodyguards lying on their protectees. No one was moving, and for a moment, Marcus feared they were all dead.

  Crawling off of Tomer, he asked the Israeli if he was okay but wasn’t sure the man could hear him, since he could barely hear himself. He asked again. Tomer didn’t immediately respond, not verbally, anyway. But slowly he began to move his arms and hands and was soon brushing off the debris that had fallen on him and waving away the smoke and ash still heavy in the air.

  Marcus climbed to his feet and pulled Tomer to his. The Israeli began coughing violently. Marcus did a quick check to see if Tomer had sustained any serious injuries. He certainly had numerous cuts on his face and hands. They both did, but beyond that they weren’t bleeding, and best of all, they were alive.

  When Tomer stopped coughing and said he was fine, Marcus slapped him on the back and staggered through the haze toward the entrance to the Dome of the Rock. As he did, he saw others finally beginning to move. The chief of the Royal Guards was helping the king to his feet. Several Secret Service agents were doing the same for President Clarke, as were the Shin Bet with Prime Minister Eitan. A moment later, Marcus spotted Geoff Stone helping Secretary Whitney to her feet. They, too, were alive, as were the Grand Mufti and Senator Dayton, both of whom were already back on their feet.

  But Annie was not. Marcus rushed to her side. She was breathing, but her hands and arms and face were covered with contusions. She was lying on her back, faceup, her eyes closed, and Marcus wondered if she had been knocked out by the blast.

  “Annie, can you hear me? It’s me. It’s Marcus. Do you know where you are?”

  She did not reply, did not even move, and he felt a rising panic. She couldn’t be dead. Not Annie. Not after all she had already come through. Marcus had already lost too many people he was supposed to protect. He could not bear to lose ano
ther.

  Taking one of her hands with one of his, he gently wiped ash and bits of rock from her eyes and mouth with his other.

  “Hey, you all right? Can you hear me? Come on, Annie, wake up.”

  Marcus’s hearing was beginning to return, and soon he could hear the urgent radio chatter coming through his earpiece. He heard Roseboro dispatching more agents to create a protective cordon around POTUS and to seal off the gates to the Temple Mount immediately. A moment later, he was informing the team to clear the courtyard on the north side of the plaza because Marine One was inbound.

  Dayton spotted them and ran to their side. He took Annie’s other hand, pushed several strands of blonde hair out of her eyes, and pleaded with her to wake up, promising her that everything would be okay, that everyone was safe, that everyone had lived, and that she would too.

  Soon, the distinctive green-and-white Sikorsky helicopter came into view, and what hearing Marcus had recovered was deafened by the roar of its rotors. Finally, just as Marine One touched down behind them, Annie’s eyes fluttered open. The senator kept talking to her, though it was impossible to hear him.

  Marcus tried to call over the radio for medical assistance but couldn’t be heard. Yet as the principals and their bodyguards were being helped into the president’s helicopter—and two more identical Sikorskys approached from the south—a team of IDF medics came running over to Marcus’s side. They, too, did a quick check to see if Annie was bleeding anywhere but her face, arms, and hands and confirmed that she was not. They checked her pulse, gave her several shots, and hooked up an IV. As a precaution, they also put her in a neck brace, slid a wooden board under her, and strapped her down just in case she had a neck or back injury.

  The moment POTUS and the other principals were aboard, Marine One lifted off, flying away in a rotating formation with the other two Sikorskys, creating an airborne shell game designed to confuse any more would-be assassins as to which chopper the president and the others were actually in. When they were gone, an IDF Black Hawk helicopter roared into view. As it landed, the medics carried Annie directly to it and carefully loaded her on board. The senator climbed in next, never leaving her side.

  Marcus did not climb in. He wanted to, but it was not his place. His friends were in good hands now, but he still had a job to do. He was moved as he saw Annie’s eyes fill with tears. She was not only conscious now but slowly taking in the enormity of what had just happened.

  “Thank you,” she silently mouthed to him over the cacophony, as the side door of the chopper slammed shut.

  Marcus stepped back several yards. He watched as the Black Hawk lifted off the plaza, hovered about forty feet off the ground, rotated slightly toward the southwest, and then streaked off across the skyline of the Old City, toward Hadassah hospital.

  “You’re welcome,” he said under his breath as the chopper vanished into the December clouds.

  Just then, Tomer came up behind him and put his hand on Marcus’s back. “Hey,” the Israeli said.

  Marcus turned. “Hey yourself,” he replied.

  “You all right?”

  Marcus thought about the question but had no idea how to answer it. He thought about losing Elena and Lars. He thought about losing Nick and Carter Emerson and almost losing Pete and Jenny Morris. He pictured Kailea Curtis taking a bullet and Annie Stewart being flown off the Temple Mount. He thought, too, about the look in Maya Emerson’s eyes the last time he’d seen her.

  “No,” he confessed. “But I will be.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE KNESSET, JERUSALEM—18 DECEMBER

  Thunder boomed over the Holy City.

  Lightning flashed across a dark and ugly sky. Israeli, Saudi, and American flags whipped fiercely in the winter winds outside the parliament building, and a great downpour commenced and didn’t let up.

  Inside the central chamber, the aging Saudi monarch climbed to the rostrum with the help of an aide.

  As he was introduced by the Speaker of the Knesset, every elected member not only stood but roared in thunderous cheers and applause—all, that was, but the twelve Arab parliamentarians. Immediately they began shouting curses and epithets at the king at the top of their lungs, unfurling banners written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English that accused the king of “betraying the cause of Palestine” and bringing “disgrace on the House of Saud and the whole of the Arab people and the Muslim world.”

  Seeing such rage in their eyes, Marcus, Geoff Stone, and two other DSS colleagues—all of whom were standing post behind where Secretary Whitney was seated—immediately hardened up their defenses around the secretary, even as their Secret Service colleagues tightened up around Clarke, who was sitting directly beside Prime Minister Eitan. In the end, it was a raucous but short-lived protest. Israeli security removed the twelve from the chamber, and things began to settle down.

  When Agent Stone finally took two steps back from Whitney, Marcus and his colleagues followed suit. It took a few moments for his adrenaline to settle, but even as the Speaker apologized to His Majesty for the “brazen show of disrespect,” Marcus was having trouble making sense of what he’d just witnessed.

  The protestors were not part of Ismail Ziad’s government. They were not members of the Palestinian Authority’s legislature. Everyone who had just been removed from the chamber was both an Arab and a full Israeli citizen, with all the rights of every Jewish citizen of the state. Each was a Sunni Muslim, a member of one of several Muslim-majority political parties in Israel. Each had been duly elected to the parliament by fellow Israeli Arab citizens in the only true democracy in the Middle East. Certainly none of them were fans of Reuven Eitan’s right-wing government; that much Marcus got. But why, as Sunni Arab Muslims, were they so vehemently opposed to the king of Saudi Arabia coming to Jerusalem to make peace? Wasn’t this move toward peace a good thing, he wondered, something to which one should aspire, not rebuke?

  As he scanned the room for other possible threats, Marcus looked across the gallery, packed with members of the American and Saudi delegations, foreign ambassadors to Israel, and myriad other VIPs. He scrutinized the faces of the dozens of reporters present and the camera operators and producers as the entire session was being broadcast live around the planet. Even without the drama of the previous day, the world would have been riveted on this city at this unique moment. But in the aftermath of the unprecedented suicide bombing on the Temple Mount, Marcus had no doubt that viewership in the U.S. was going to break every ratings record imaginable, not just on cable networks but on the Big Four broadcast networks as well. What he found truly extraordinary was the fact that viewers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and in most Gulf states—with the exception of Qatar—were able that day to watch live images from the Israeli parliament for the first time in their lives.

  The Israeli president had already delivered his speech. So had Prime Minister Eitan, and—just moments before—President Clarke. Now they were all about to witness something few, if any, had ever dreamt possible: the king of Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, addressing the legislature of the world’s only Jewish state.

  Clearing his throat, then taking a sip of water, King Faisal Mohammed Al Saud held the lectern tightly, steadying himself as he looked into one teleprompter, then the other, and gathered his strength.

  “In the name of God, the Gracious and Merciful,” he began.

  The line was in Arabic, but Marcus had spent enough time in the Arab world over the years to know what the first sentence of every speech by every Arab Muslim leader meant.

  The next line, however, was in Hebrew, and everyone was stunned.

  “Anee ba b’shalom.”

  Marcus had no idea what it meant, but it must have been good, for the Israelis erupted, rising again to their feet and giving the monarch an ovation that lasted at least two full minutes, maybe more. Amid the cacophony, a Knesset staffer whispered in his ear, “The king just said, ‘I come in peace.’”

  Now the monarch
switched to English.

  “Mr. Speaker, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. President, esteemed dignitaries, friends: Yesterday we witnessed a gruesome act of evil, the work of those who would not only oppose peace but also seek to kill all who would dare to make it, and do so in the name of my religion. But that was yesterday. Today, here and now, I tell you I reject such outlaws of Islam. They do not represent my faith. They do not represent me, my family, or my creed. And they do not represent my people.”

  Again the applause was thunderous.

  “I come to you today—as the great Anwar Sadat of Egypt once did; as Jordan’s great King Hussein once did—to forge a peace between our nations, a friendship between our peoples, and a hope for our region and for the world. I come to honor those who came before me—to build on what they accomplished, not threaten or undo it. And I come with the prayer—earnest and heartfelt—that if our two countries can find the courage to make peace, then perhaps my fellow Arabs will be inspired to join us, from Rabat to Ramallah, from Algiers to Abu Dhabi, from Muscat to Manama. . . .”

  Line after line electrified the room. Yet Marcus would not remember all the king said. He was not there, after all, to listen to the Saudi leader’s address but to protect the American secretary of state. He doubted many others, aside from diplomats and historians, would remember the words either. What they would remember—so long as the peace process stayed on track and soon came to resolution—was the gesture and the spirit from which it came.

  Back in the secure holding room, after the king was finished, Marcus stood near Secretary Whitney as the principals thanked one another for their remarks, discussed their next meeting at Camp David in early January, and took photos together. He was struck by the genuine camaraderie he was witnessing. Gone was the initial awkwardness the leaders had experienced in their first hours together. On the Temple Mount, they had been through a terrifying ordeal, and staring down Hussam Mashrawi’s attack and surviving it had bonded them in a way the Kairos leadership could scarcely have imagined. That wasn’t to say the road ahead was clear or straight. These were profoundly different men from profoundly different backgrounds who faced immense obstacles before an actual peace treaty could be forged. Yet more than anything else, what was fusing them together and what might very well enable them to cross the finish line against all odds could be summed up in one word.