Angels of Wrath ft-2

by Larry Bond

  “Yeah.” Ferguson had spent several years off and on in Egypt when his father was based there with the CIA.

  “That’s not necessarily his handwriting,” said the FBI expert.

  Stein stared at the address. “It’s near the Old City, the Islamic quarter.”

  “Isn’t every quarter in Cairo Islamic?” asked Ferguson.

  The Mossad agent smiled wryly, handing back the paper.

  3

  EVANSTON, ILLINOIS LATER IN THE DAY…

  As Thera Majed got out of the car in front of the suburban Chicago home, she noticed the basketball hoop and backboard over the garage. It reminded her of the hoop on her parents’ home in Houston, and she thought of what her parents would feel if someone were coming to tell them she’d been blown up by a fanatic in Jerusalem.

  The situation here wasn’t precisely parallel. The driveway Thera was walking up belonged to Benjamin Thatch’s sister, Judy Coldwell. And Thatch might justifiably be called a fanatic himself.

  Thera straightened her skirt, letting the State Department official and the Cook County sheriff’s deputy take the lead. The men thought she was with the FBI, a mistake she had encouraged. In actual fact, Thera was a CIA First Team operative working with the FBI on the Seven Angels case. She’d come up from New Mexico primarily because she was the one member of the task force easily spared. The others, all FBI agents, were trailing church members and preparing search warrants to shut down the group. While the Chicago-area FBI agent with her knew she wasn’t with the Bureau, he’d been briefed on the sensitivity of the operation and let the misconception stand as well.

  Judy Coldwell opened the door as they reached the stoop. “I know why you’re here,” she announced. “Come in.”

  Coldwell led them inside to a dining room off the living room. Even if Thera hadn’t known from the backgrounder that Coldwell and her husband didn’t have any children, she could have read it in the house’s pristine order and the ceramic vases that sat on low tables near the side of the room. Coldwell, thirty-six, looked maybe ten years younger. Unlike her older brother, who’d been overweight, she was extremely thin; her five-eight frame might have been suited for modeling had her face been prettier. It had a harshness to it, a bleached asceticism maybe. Thera thought it might come from dieting fanatically, though it could just as easily have been a symptom of suppressed grief.

  “My brother and I really weren’t that close,” said the woman, looking at Thera. “I didn’t even know he was overseas. Not until you called.”

  “That would have been Mary Burns,” said the State Department rep. He took charge, telling Coldwell what she already knew: her brother had been killed by a suicide bomber; the Israelis would release the body in a few days, and he would be flown home at their expense.

  Coldwell nodded once or twice. Her face remained almost entirely blank, cheeks pinched ever so slightly, as if she smelled a faint odor of vinegar. Only when the sheriff’s deputy told her that police protection would be provided if she wanted did she speak.

  “I don’t believe that would be necessary. Do you?”

  “Probably not,” agreed the deputy.

  Thera watched Coldwell. She was an accountant with a small local practice. Thera thought it a cliché that accountants were more comfortable with numbers than people, but Coldwell seemed to be living proof of it.

  Distant rather than uncomfortable, Thera thought. People reacted in different ways to grief; it was difficult to judge them from the exterior.

  “I wonder, Mrs. Coldwell,” said Thera when the last of the mundane but necessary details of the death and its aftermath had been squared away, “if you’d be willing to help us with an aspect of the situation that may seem a little unusual.”

  Coldwell blinked at her. “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Thera Majed. I’m with a task force. The FBI, as you could imagine, is interested in examining the circumstances as they occurred in Jerusalem.” Thera made her answer seem improvised and almost haphazard, though it was anything but.

  “The FBI is investigating?” asked Coldwell.

  “Our interest is routine. It wouldn’t be an official investigation, unless the Israelis made a request.”

  “Did they?”

  “They’ve asked for some help on our part.” Even if they were necessary, Thera disliked having to use weasel words. She wasn’t lying exactly, but she was leaving a lot out. “Primarily, in a case like this, the agencies have to make sure that what seems to have happened, did happen.”

  “Can there be any doubt?”

  “It’s not really my job to say that.” She smiled, as if agreeing with Coldwell that, of course, there could be no doubt at all. “In cooperating with the Israeli government, we would like a few more days before this became public.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “The government of Israel is withholding public confirmation of your brother’s identity for forty-eight hours,” said Thera. “Just so that everything can be checked out. Our government is prepared to acquiesce.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, a few days to look into this quietly would be most useful.”

  “Are you saying my brother wasn’t a random victim?”

  “I’m not saying that, no. It looks as if he was, but there are questions. The Israelis would like to be sure, and so would we.” The Israelis were withholding Thatch’s name, though at the FBI and CIA’s request.

  “Was my brother doing something illegal?”

  “Do you think he was?” asked Thera.

  “I don’t. But it sounds to me as if you do.”

  Thera had reached the point in her script where she had to make a judgment call: what exactly to tell the sister. She could just shrug and pass this off as routine. Or she could gamble that Coldwell might know something that might be useful to the FBI.

  Which way to go?

  “Have you ever heard of the Church of Seven Angels?” asked Thera.

  “What is it? A church? A born-again church?”

  “It is a church, but it’s not Christian,” said Thera, studying the emotionless face across from her. “They’re not Christian at all. They consider themselves… apart.”

  Thera struggled for the right word. The church members believed that they were part of a “post-Christian vanguard” in the same position to Christians as Christians were to Jews.

  “Your brother flew several times a year to New Mexico to attend services,” said Thera. “It seems that he may have gone to Jerusalem on their behalf.”

  “On some sort of tour?”

  “No. Business.”

  “For a church? Were they his clients?”

  Thera sidestepped the question. “You wouldn’t happen to know why he decided to go to Jerusalem, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he talk about going?”

  “We really haven’t been that close.”

  “Did Benjamin know anyone in Jerusalem? Or Cairo?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. Maybe from the Rotary Club. He’s an accountant.”

  “Like yourself?” said Thera.

  Coldwell smiled ever so slightly. “Maybe it’s in the genes.”

  * * *

  Outside, Thera walked past the local FBI agent’s Crown Victoria and pulled out her satellite phone to talk to Corrigan.

  “I think we’re good,” she told him. “She’s not going to talk to the media.”

  “You sure?”

  “I didn’t ask her to sign a contract, Jack. It’s a gut call. The FBI tapped her phone; they’ll let us know if something is up.”

  “Tapped the phone? Is that necessary?”

  “Not my call, Jack. This is the FBI’s case. They want to make the arrests as soon as they can.”

  “What are you doing now?” Corrigan asked.

  “I’ll go back to New Mexico. I might as well be there for the arrests.”

  “I thought they didn’t have much of a case.”<
br />
  “They don’t. But that’s never stopped the FBI before.”

  * * *

  When the intruders were gone, Judy Coldwell went back to the dining room and cleaned off the table. She took the cups and saucers inside to the kitchen, placing them carefully in the dishwasher. She did the same with the silverware. She measured the detergent carefully as she always did, using a spoon. As the prewash cycle began, she went to the dining room and removed the cloth from the table, taking them down the hall to the laundry room. Life required a certain meticulous order; tasks great and small were best performed immediately.

  Only when that was done did she open the drawer to retrieve the tiny medal lion, the lone token of her brother she possessed in the world. It looked like a twelve-sided dime nestled amid the silver corn cob holders. Coldwell took it out and pressed it into the palm of her hand, hard enough to make an impression, hard enough to sear her soul.

  Benjamin’s death hadn’t seemed real until the intruders arrived. But now it was very real.

  The intruders had tripped over themselves trying to describe the church. They were so wedded to the old age, the ways that had dominated for the past two thousand years that the coming age was beyond their vocabulary. Calling the Seven Angels Christian was like calling Christians Jews. Yes, there were intersections, but the Seven Angels were no closer to Christians — or Jews or Muslims — than they were to Buddhists. They recognized the old age had ended and were dedicated to the new.

  The words of the Christian Bible did predict the changes to come, for in the old there are always the seeds of the new. But the Christians in their blindness did not know how to interpret the words they themselves held dear.

  The Book of the Apocalypse mentioned seven vials: seven wars. These would begin in the Holy Land, where the other ages had begun. Before the wars had run their course, all of the old holy places — Jerusalem, Nazareth, Mecca, Medina — would be destroyed just as Jerusalem had been torn asunder to signal the birth of Christianity. All that was required was a spark.

  Benjamin was to have provided that spark. But the old resisted the new, dinging selfishly to its ways.

  Coldwell knew that the intruders were lying about her brother’s death being an accident. They might blame a suicide bomber, but surely that was part of a plot to obscure what had happened. The Jews controlled Jerusalem, and it was only natural for them to blame the Muslims. One did not like to jump to conclusions without evidence, but surely some sort of deliberate act had taken her brother’s life.

  Coldwell despised mendacity, but it strengthened her in a way and even provided some comfort. These people were her enemy. They were powerful, but they were not so strong as they pretended. Nor as knowledgeable. They seemed to have no idea that she, too, was a member of the church. But then that was by design. Judy Coldwell had done much for the church soon after the angels visited the Reverend Tallis and instructed him to start the movement. Her job as an overseas accountant with an energy firm and then an exporter had been based in the Middle East, and her contacts helped lay the groundwork for Seven Angels’ early missions. These were primitive and paltry, greatly limited by the group’s lack of funds.

  That changed when Kevin Durkest became interested in the group. A real estate developer in the Washington, D.C., area, he had been convinced to sell off some of his minimalls and leave the money in various accounts for the group’s use. Coldwell did not know all of the details. There were rumors that some of these transactions had occurred after the reclusive Durkest had died, and scandalous talk that Durkest’s demise had not been the accident the coroner claimed. But death was of little significance to those who believed, as they would be reborn as high priests in the new age, and so these details were not important to Judy Coldwell. And, in any event, by the time he died, she was no longer close to Tallis and the others, nor did she play a visible role in the church.

  Which was not to say that she was no longer a member. Soon after Durkest became involved, the Reverend Tallis had asked her to break her active association with the group and become, in his words, “a sleeper.” Such an agent, he predicted, might become necessary in the future as the new age dawned. The old religions might fight back, just as the Jews and Romans had persecuted the followers of Christ.

  At first, Coldwell was skeptical. Tallis had never been comfortable with strong women, and she wondered if this was just a ploy to strip her of influence. But her brother convinced her that what Tallis said was true, and after contemplation she agreed that the old religions would surely try to stop the new. And so she stopped associating with the group. She quit her job and took what amounted to an entirely new identity, working for herself in middle America until she was needed. All record of her involvement in the church had been wiped out. She even went as far as to stop communicating directly with her brother, a great sacrifice, as they had been extremely close as children and adults, certainly much closer in her case than her spouse, a boob who fortunately spent much of his time away from home on business. But the sacrifice was of temporal time only; the Reverend Tallis promised that they would be reunited in the new age, and Coldwell knew this to be true.

  It would arrive soon, perhaps within the year. The stage was already set for the first war; it would take only a small spark.

  Coldwell took the medal with her to the bedroom, where she retrieved a thin silver chain from the bottom of her jewelry box. Slipping the chain through the small hole at the top of the medallion, she placed the medal around her neck, under her shirt. Tears began to slip down her cheek, grief for her brother.

  She had a sudden impulse to fly to the Middle East to fulfill Benjamin’s mission. But she couldn’t, or rather she shouldn’t, not without hearing from Tallis. And in any event she didn’t know what Benjamin would have been asked to do. She could guess: money or weapons were to be provided to groups eager to make a catastrophic attack on a holy site, be it Jewish, Christian, or Islamic. There were many such groups, ready fools fired by wrath they did not understand.

  Wrath was the hallmark of the old age; hatred was its sign: hatred toward other religions, subjugation of other races. In the new age, all would be different.

  4

  CAIRO

  A DAY LATER…

  Ferguson walked along the long street that paralleled the Cairo meat market, slipping through the knots of tourists and locals. A variety of sharp odors filled the air: cooking spices mixing with diesel fuel and dung. He took a left, then a quick right, turning suddenly to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

  Ferg’s father was a career CIA man, an officer with a long and varied history. By the time Ferguson had come along, most of his real adventures were over and his service in the Middle East was fairly routine. Still, there had been some harrowing times: the alley where he’d been shot in the head was a few blocks away.

  He’d been shot, hit, wounded, but lived to tell about it. That was the point of his dad’s story, one of the few he told. Anyone could get themselves shot in the head. Living to talk about it was the trick.

  Ferguson crossed the street and kept walking, catching a glimpse of Al-Azhar, the grand mosque and university, before following a zigzag to the address on Radwan.

  The address belonged to a kahwa, or coffee shop, a gathering place that didn’t figure prominently in any of the Mossad dossiers about Cairo activity. Though the CIA regularly cooperated with Egyptian intelligence, Ferguson — with approval from CIA Deputy Director, Daniel Slott — had decided not to contact them in this case. The Egyptians were not necessarily the most tight-lipped group in the world and tended to get especially antsy if they thought the Mossad was involved.

  For its part, the Mossad had agreed to provide only “distant support”: fake IDs and some equipment. Which was fine with Ferguson; it was safer to keep them at arm’s length here. He’d drawn on two CIA officers in Cairo for additional support, one of whom could liaise with the Egyptians if necessary.

  Ferguson walked past the building, glancing d
own the alleyway next to it. The area was popular with tourists; an American such as Ferguson — or Thatch, whose ID Ferg had doctored and was carrying — fit right in. He stopped at a small stand where a man was selling scarves. His Arabic was a little rusty, but the Egyptian inflections he’d heard as a kid came back as he pulled out a long “laa,” or “no,” to an offer, falling into a rhythm as he negotiated. The seller finally broke the back and forth to launch into a long harangue about the quality of the material, unsurpassed in Egypt and certainly worthy of an American who had shown himself educated enough to speak the language like a native. Ferguson bowed his head gratefully, listening to the lecture without interruption so he could surreptitiously glance around and see if he was being watched.

  If so, it wasn’t obvious. Ferguson held up three fingers for a price, got another frown, and started to walk away. This resulted in a quick agreement; the merchant solemnized the deal with a tirade of praise for the tourist’s negotiating skills, to which Ferguson responded by praising the great artistry of the man’s wares. The vendor wished him a thousand lifetimes of pleasure and handed over his purchase.

  Ferguson continued ambling around the bazaar. He spotted Rankin and one of the CIA station people buying some food from a man with a small charcoal burner and decided to walk over. He heard their accents, or so it seemed, and introduced himself as a fellow tourist, new in the city, just a tourist, happy to say hello, his name was Benjamin Thatch, and if they were ever in New Mexico and needed an accountant, they should look him up.

  Now that he had announced his name for the benefit of any nearby lookouts, Ferguson went into the café. Tourists mixed with locals in the main room. Though it was early in the afternoon, the place was crowded, and Ferguson had to wait for a table, which suited his purpose perfectly. He pulled out a hundred-dollar traveler’s check and his passport, asking if it was possible to get the check changed. The cashier obliged, and he managed to say “Thatch” loudly enough that the waiter at the end of the counter waiting for a coffee looked up. Ferguson looked at the money he lost on the exchange rate as an investment.