The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3)

by Alan Jacobson

“Just a few minutes, then we can go.” DeSantos knelt in front of the body and examined it. He moved around the side of the table and then behind the corpse.

  Vail turned and began along the adjacent wall, looking for hidden rooms or compartments. She had not gotten very far when DeSantos called out.

  “Got something. Right here, the body.”

  Uzi stepped closer and shined his phone’s flashlight where DeSantos had indicated. Three fine wires were visible protruding from the seat of the chair.

  DeSantos took the phone and angled it closer to the area. “Looks like a pressure sensor. If we move the body, we’ll be in a million pieces.”

  “If that was rigged,” Uzi said, “other things might be too. Don’t touch anything. We need to get out. Raph!”

  “Yeah. Coming.” They heard him walking down the hall—and then felt the walls shake as a loud blast filled the room. Dust clouds swarmed the air.

  “Raph! Raph—you okay?”

  But Vail already knew the answer without waiting for a response. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “You go. I need to find Raph.”

  “We’re not leaving without you.” DeSantos swatted away the fine debris that hung in the air and rode along the shaft of light that streamed in through the lone open window.

  “Raph!”

  Vail moved alongside them. Like car headlights in thick fog, the phone's illumination was both diffused and reflected back at them by the dense, relentless wall of dust.

  Uzi suddenly stopped. DeSantos and Vail likewise froze in midstep. Ahead of them was a partial body. The skin was black—save for the chalky dust that covered his arms and close-cropped Afro.

  Vail grabbed Uzi and hugged him, turned him away from Zemro’s destroyed corpse. He squeezed her back and it was clear that he did not want to let go. “I’m sorry,” she said by his ear.

  He sniffled loudly, then pushed away. “No time. We need to get out.”

  “Which way?” Vail asked.

  “We’re closer to the back,” DeSantos said. “But we don’t know if the door’s rigged. We’ve gotta go out the way we came in.”

  They moved an inch at a time, single file, DeSantos leading the way, clearing the space in front of him as they advanced.

  When they reached the front, DeSantos brought the barrel of the AK-47 up and nodded at Vail, who pulled open the door.

  DeSantos swung out into the alley. He indicated with a nod of his chin that it was clear and they retraced their steps back to Zemro’s SUV.

  When they got there, Uzi jammed the butt of his Puma knife into the corner of the small driver’s side vent window and smashed the glass. He struggled to get his forearm through the narrow opening but was able to reach in and unlock the doors.

  They got in and Uzi pulled out his satphone. He swiped and tapped, then handed it to Vail, who was riding shotgun. “Send Gideon a text. Tell him what happened and that they have to retrieve Raph’s body. And to be careful because there are likely other bombs.”

  “We got lucky,” DeSantos said. “That could’ve been us back there.”

  Uzi reached beneath the dashboard and fished around. A moment later he found the wires he was looking for and hotwired the car. He quickly pulled away from the curb and down the street, back into downtown Nablus.

  Vail sent the message then felt the satphone vibrate. “It’s Hoshi.”

  “Put her on speaker. And hand me that grease rag on the floor by your foot.”

  “Hoshi, you’ve got me, Uzi, and Hector.”

  Vail handed over the dirty towel and Uzi stuffed it into the hole created by the broken window.

  “Where’s Mr. Fahad?”

  “That’s a good question,” DeSantos said.

  I wonder if he knew the place was rigged and that’s why he begged off going with us to Sahmoud’s.

  “So he’s not with you?”

  “No.”

  “I wish I had better news for you,” Hoshi said.

  Uzi leaned closer to the handset. “You couldn’t break the encryption?”

  “No, I did. But what I found isn’t good.”

  “Just give it to us straight,” Uzi said. “We’re in no mood for riddles.”

  “So Nazir al Dosari’s father, Uday, was a Shin Bet informant—Shin Bet’s kind of like our FBI. Anyway, the Palestinians call these informants collaborators and Hamas and al Humat don’t take kindly to it. In short, the collaborators are killed. When he was twenty years old, Dosari found out what his father was doing and turned him over to Hamas. That was in 1990. Uday was tortured and then killed by being dragged through the streets tied to the back of a motorcycle.”

  “Ratting out your own dad,” Vail said. “Heartless. But given what these extremists are like, that’s not surprising.”

  “This is depressing,” Uzi said, “but it’s not bad news regarding our case.”

  “Dosari has a half brother who’s five years younger. And his name is Mahmoud El-Fahad.”

  Uzi stepped on the brakes and yanked the SUV over to the curb. “What did you just say?”

  “Uzi,” Vail said, “your window’s broken. That rag definitely helps, but because of where we are, let’s not shout this from the mountaintops, okay?”

  He rubbed his forehead then let his head fall back against the headrest.

  “You still there?” Hoshi asked.

  Vail took the call off speaker and brought the satphone to her ear. “Still here. We need time to absorb this.”

  “I get it.”

  “Call us if you find out anything else.” Vail hung up and leaned her back against the window, facing Uzi and DeSantos. Both were silent.

  “Go ahead, Santa,” Uzi said to the windshield. “Tell me you told me so.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Knox has to know this, right?” Vail said. “And Tasset?”

  DeSantos rubbed his thighs. “You would think. That’s a hard thing to keep secret, and if the Agency did their due diligence, which I’m sure they did, even if they missed it during their background checks, they would’ve seen that encrypted file. For all we know, that’s why it’s encrypted.”

  Uzi ran a hand through his hair. “Just like they knew about my work with Shin Bet and Mossad, I’m sure they know about Fahad. And yet they put him on our team. What does that say?”

  “Text from Mo,” Vail said, holding up Uzi’s phone. “He’s got a twenty for us.” She turned around to DeSantos. “For what? Sahmoud? The codex? The scroll?” The phone buzzed again and she read the message. “He wants us to meet him where we parked outside the Old City on King David. He’s getting a lift over there.”

  Uzi looked at Vail but did not say anything. He turned back to the windshield. She knew what he was thinking: could they trust him?

  Uzi yanked the gearshift into drive and pulled back onto the road.

  “Uzi,” DeSantos said, “we need to discuss this.”

  “What’s there to discuss? Mo’s half brother is al Humat’s second in command. His nephew blew himself to bits. And you’re saying he’s guilty by association.”

  DeSantos loosened his seatbelt and grabbed hold of Uzi’s headrest, pulling himself forward, close to the back of his head. “Boychick, I’m saying we need to be careful. We don’t have enough information. We don’t understand the connections, the motivation. We have no clue what’s going on in his head.” He turned to Vail. “Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything that’s happened,” DeSantos continued, “everything bad that’s happened, Mo’s been away—meeting with an informant. Or trying to get intel. Or just plain AWOL. Coincidence? Yeah, maybe. Shit happens. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s the one who’s been tipping people off.”

  “Was he there when you were attacked at Arc De Triomphe?” Vail asked.


  “No.”

  “What about that flat in Paris, when they sent you the email to go to the arch?”

  “No.”

  DeSantos placed a hand on Uzi’s shoulder. “He might be the one who gave the sniper your location at Times Square.”

  “He didn’t know we were going to be there.”

  “He did,” Vail said. “I texted him, hoping he’d meet us there.”

  Uzi sat tall in his seat. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what he’s been up to or what he’s thinking. He’s CIA, he’s taught to deceive, to have a cover story.”

  “He’s taught to con you, to make you believe his cover story,” DeSantos said. “So which is the real story? What’s the truth?”

  Uzi cut around a slow moving taxi. “What do you want to do?”

  “I certainly don’t want to walk into an ambush.”

  “Neither do I,” Vail said.

  Uzi thought a moment. “We’ll go, hear him out, try to verify his intel.”

  “Okay.” Vail nodded. “And if we can’t?”

  “Then we have an important decision to make.”

  68

  Uzi pulled to the curb on King David Street. Fahad was standing there, talking to a woman wearing a burka. He excused himself and climbed into the backseat.

  “I’ve got a location,” Fahad said.

  Vail shifted in her seat to face the three men. “For what?”

  “Kadir Abu Sahmoud. His home, in Gaza.”

  No one spoke.

  Finally Fahad looked at each of them. “Did I miss something? We’ve got Sahmoud’s address—an actual address—and from what I could determine, he’s there. This is awesome news. Let’s go.”

  “We had a problem,” Uzi said. “Raph’s dead.”

  Fahad jerked back. “Dead? What happened?”

  “The office was rigged with explosives. Raph tripped one.”

  Fahad’s shoulders slumped. “Man, I’m sorry. I—I wish I was there. I—he was a good guy.”

  “He was,” Uzi said.

  Vail saw a liquid sparkle in his eyes, tears pooling in his lower lids.

  An awkward moment of silence passed.

  “Look,” Fahad said. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but we’ve got a line on Sahmoud—our objective from day one. What’s the problem?”

  “How do we know it’s not another setup?” Vail asked. “We could walk into an ambush.”

  DeSantos turned to face Fahad, his expression hard. “Where’d you get this information?”

  “From two of my informants. One in Nablus, a Palestinian Authority cop. He told me Sahmoud lives in Gaza near the resort beach community. He mentioned something that reminded me of another guy I know in East Jerusalem who works construction. I cabbed it over and made a couple of calls and found that they were paving roads near Silwan. He was a little dodgy, but bottom line is that his daughter and son-in-law live in a house down the block from someone who they’re sure is Sahmoud.”

  “How can they be ‘sure’?” DeSantos asked.

  “His son-in-law owns a cell phone startup in Gaza City, but my CI has always thought their money comes from somewhere else—a stipend from the money Hamas gets from taxes on the goods smuggled into the strip through its four hundred tunnels—weapons, fuel, medicine, consumer goods, cars, appliances, drugs, cigarettes. Anyway, point is, his daughter and son-in-law are one of almost two thousand millionaires living in Gaza. And they’ve got a house that my CI described as gaudy.”

  “This is where Sahmoud lives?” Uzi asked.

  “Down the street.”

  “Again,” DeSantos said, “how do they know Sahmoud lives there?”

  “His son-in-law told him one night when they’d had a lot to drink. They were sitting around the fire and he said he’s seen Sahmoud. A few months later my CI and his wife spent the weekend there and saw guards escorting a man around that looked like Sahmoud. They drove him around in a town car that was heavy and fortified—as if it were bulletproof and blastproof.”

  “Anything else?” DeSantos asked.

  Fahad shrugged. “That was enough for me—and it fit with what the cop in Nablus told me.”

  Vail took turns reading Uzi’s and DeSantos’s faces. They were processing the intel, running it through their bullshit meter. If she were plugged into this world, she would be doing the same.

  Finally Uzi said, “I think we should go and take a look, maybe sit on the place for a few hours and watch.”

  DeSantos sucked on his bottom lip, then nodded. “I can live with that.”

  Hopefully we all can.

  69

  Gaza was everything Vail had expected—and none of what she expected when they first boarded the plane to Israel. She figured she would see what had been shown on news reports following the most recent war: total devastation, destroyed buildings, a landscape flattened by mortars and artillery and bombs, a poor and destitute population.

  There were areas like that—shells of structures that once stood, piles of rubble still littering the scenery, residents in simple clothing and looking the worse for wear. But by and large, that was a fraction of what she saw as they drove toward the address that Fahad’s informant had provided.

  They entered Gaza from Israel through the Erez Crossing along the strip’s northeastern border. As Uzi and Fahad explained to Vail, the sixty million dollar pedestrian and cargo portal was built by Israel when it withdrew all its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in what was envisioned by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a land-for-peace deal in 2005. If all went well, it would serve as the template for negotiating a similar pact for the West Bank, with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state.

  But four months after the Erez terminal was completed, Hamas won the popular election for the territory, its reign of terror began, and all hopes of a negotiated peace deal were put on hold.

  Blockades were put in place to stem the flow of weapons from Iran, and Egypt closed the southern border to prevent Hamas and al Humat terrorists from entering the Sinai and collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood. Passage into Israel from Gaza was restricted to curtail suicide attacks and into Gaza from Israel to prevent the smuggling of contraband that could be used to build bombs.

  Gaza became isolated and the people became a society controlled, manipulated, and intimidated by their elected government.

  “I remember when my mom and I would take a bus into Gaza once a week to buy vegetables and fish,” Uzi said. “No checkpoints. No problems.” He glanced around. “That was before the intifada, before the suicide bombings.”

  “A lot of things changed,” Fahad said. “If only we could turn back the clock, start again. Maybe things would be different.”

  Vail glanced at Fahad. Is this an act, or is he sincere?

  With a scarf again covering her face, Vail took in Gaza City’s high-rises and businesses, hotels, museums and bustling avenues. Apartment buildings and homes. Fahad told her there were theaters and several universities as well as beautiful beaches along the Mediterranean coastline with resorts and sophisticated restaurants.

  The sun was starting its descent as the winter afternoon passed. Despite the gathering clouds, there was still considerable light left to the day.

  DeSantos’s phone rang and he dug it out of his pocket. “Hot Rod, talk to me … Yeah … Okay.” He pressed a button and said, “You’re on speaker.”

  “I got a hit on something. Not sure if it means anything, but I haven’t seen any recent sit-reps from you guys, so I’m a bit in the dark. In case it’s significant you should know that Hussein Rudenko’s back on the grid. And he’s in your area.”

  Holy shit. Rudenko!

  “I knew we hadn’t heard the last of him,” DeSantos said.

  “Hussein Rudenko, the arms dealer?” Fahad asked.

  �
��Weapons trafficker wasn’t bad enough,” Uzi said. “He added terrorist to his resume. Karen, Hector, Hot Rod, and I got into it with him in London a couple of years ago.”

  “As soon as we heard there were rare manuscripts and antiquities in play,” Vail said, “I should’ve known Rudenko was involved.”

  “Hang on,” Uzi said. “We don’t know for sure he’s got anything to do with the codex or the scroll. Hot Rod, exactly what do you have?”

  “I asked NSA to point their ears to Gaza and the West Bank in case anything came up that’d be important to you guys,” Rodman said. “They trapped a cell call ten minutes ago and got a voice match to Hussein Rudenko.”

  “We’re in Gaza right now,” DeSantos said. “We need to know if Rudenko just happens to be in the area or if he’s selling weapons or planning an attack with al Humat.”

  “I’ll see if NSA can track the phone’s GPS. Give me a few minutes.”

  DeSantos ended the call and set his phone down on his thigh. “This is no coincidence.”

  “If we look at this logically,” Vail said, “the most obvious reason for Rudenko to be here, now, is that he has possession of the scroll.”

  “We know that al Humat—or one of their representatives—has the codex,” Uzi said. “That phone conversation we intercepted in Paris from Borz Ramadazov after he left the Louvre—he said he had it and was bringing it to the safe house. He had no reason to lie because he had no idea we’d tapped his phone.”

  DeSantos swung around in his seat, taking in the city streets, no doubt doing some surveillance due diligence. “But we just missed Doka Michel, who supposedly was transporting the codex to Sahmoud’s office. Someone tipped Sahmoud, so when we got there, there was no codex and no Sahmoud, and the place was rigged. He knew we were coming.” DeSantos glanced at Fahad. It was subtle, and Fahad was looking out the window, so he probably did not notice.

  “Rudenko could be buying it,” Uzi said. “Or the scroll.”

  “Does this change anything?” Fahad asked.

  “Yeah,” Uzi said. “I doubt Rudenko’s going to be alone. He’s going to have a small, well trained security detail with him.”