The Trials of Zion

by Alan M. Dershowitz

  “Did she find the laboratory?” Dennis asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Lamentations replied begrudgingly. “But she took some dirt samples. They could contain some traces of chemicals in addition to fertilizer.”

  “Has anyone been near the new lab?” Now Dennis was agitated. He rose to his feet and walked back and forth between Lamentations and Revelation. He’d never been comfortable with the idea of operating their lab at Lamentations’ home—were anyone ever to suspect them, it would be too easy to locate.

  When the elder Ruggles had called him to say that a woman had been asking questions, he knew that it was Rendi before Ruggles even described her. They’d known each other too long. Then, when Revelation mentioned that the woman’s husband had spoken with Elizabeth, it was only a matter of time before Dennis discovered Abe’s connection to Arthur Eidelman. Dennis hadn’t been surprised. He didn’t like Dr. Eidelman.

  “No,” Lamentations answered Dennis’s question about their lab. “We have it booby-trapped and wired. And only the initiated know about it.”

  “Is there any way Elizabeth could have found out?”

  “She knows nothing,” Revelation said calmly. “Only the ten initiated know, and only we know who among the believers are initiated. I trust them all. The six of us here in Israel, the two in America, the one in Iran, and the one in Russia. But now this woman suspects something.”

  “What should we do?” Lamentations beseeched his father.

  “She must be silenced before she tells what she knows,” the old man ordered, his eyes meeting Denny’s. “Is she still here?”

  “Yes,” Denny sighed. Ceasing his pacing, he turned to his spiritual leader. “Since you told me about her visiting Lamentations’ house, I’ve monitored her calls and bugged her room and car. She hasn’t said anything to anybody, only left her husband uninformative messages. She doesn’t trust the Mossad not to be listening to her calls. But I know she’s planning to drive back first thing tomorrow and meet Abe.”

  Revelation raised his hand. “You must stop her and silence her.”

  It was an instruction that Dennis both expected and dreaded. He had carefully rehearsed his answer so as not to arouse suspicions from his leader that he would have any reservations about doing what he knew he had to. “I know,” he said resolutely. “You can count on me.”

  “I hope so. You failed me once. Your first plan was too complicated. The new plan we are about to implement is elegant in its simplicity.” Revelation extended his hand to Dennis, and Dennis knelt next to him.

  “This one is going to work,” Dennis assured the old man. “And I will stop those who are trying to thwart us,” he said, turning his face away so as to hide his sadness.

  “Go, my son, do God’s work, with my blessing.” Ruggles touched Dennis’s head, then stood and left the room.

  Denny left Lamentations’ home with a heavy heart. He knew what he had to do, and it pained him. Rendi had been a friend to him, though she was a nonbeliever. But Dennis recalled his conversation with Revelation after he’d approved Dennis’s plan for the bombing of the American Colony, and later when he ordered the poisoning of Faisal Husseini. The master refused to kill a fly or a worm, but he was willing to kill hundreds and, if necessary, thousands of human beings. Denny had respectfully asked him why. The old man looked at Denny and explained.

  “These soulless creatures have no life after death. There is no heaven or hell for them. Only the end of all life. They have no fault, no blame. To end their only life is a sin.

  “Human beings have souls and free will. Their life here on earth is a mere prelude to eternity. To believing Christians, death, other than suicide, is of no matter. If they have lived a good life and accepted the Lord, they will live in heaven eternally. If they end up in hell, it is because they exercised free will. A human death is no tragedy. Nor is it a sin to cause it in the name of God.”

  Denny, who was skeptical about nearly everything and everyone in his professional life, believed in the old man who had miraculously saved his life, and he believed that by following his orders he was killing for the sake of their God and for a higher purpose. He had killed before, to protect his country. Now he was being told to kill someone he loved in order to save the world by destroying it. Rendi had been one of the best friends he’d ever had. She was loyal, discreet, and trustworthy. He knew what his duty was to his master and to his God. He knew he had promised his master that he would fulfill his painful duty. What he did not know—what he could not know until the moment of truth—was whether he could go through with it, whether he could actually end the life of his dear friend Rendi.

  LI

  The Explosion

  WHEN RENDI WOKE the next morning, she reached for her cell phone so that she could tell Abe she was returning home. Sitting up in bed, she saw what she’d seen the night before. No service. She tapped on the monitor of her phone, but it did no good. She was a bit surprised, because in a country as small as Israel there was generally pretty good service. But this was a fairly out-of-the-way place, so she chalked it up to a dysfunctional cell tower. Hopefully, the house phone would be working; last evening it’d been out of order. She got out of bed and ran the shower.

  Fertilizer. This didn’t connect the Church of the Apocalypse with the American Colony bombing—no trace of fertilizer had been found at that crime scene. But the amount of fertilizer bought from Sali indicated that the church might be planning something new. Rendi hoped that Dennis was aware of this and was working to stop it. But a contrary voice in her head cautioned that if Dennis were a member of the church and wanted to plant a bomb somewhere, it’d be easy. He had connections, money, fame—he could walk into any embassy, state building, or media outlet and do pretty much what he wanted.

  She couldn’t decide whether her best next step was to get back to Abe so they could plan their next move or to track down Dennis and confront him with what she knew. Either way she was headed back to Jerusalem. After her shower she packed her things, checked out, and walked toward her car. Her cell phone still had no signal. A few feet from her, she saw a man jabbering away on his cell phone. Suddenly she began to wonder. She reached into her purse for her car keys. She had rented the SUV from the rental company that serviced the Mossad. They always provided remote ignition keys that started the engine from a distance of fifty feet. Something led her to press the button. As she did, the car exploded in a ball of flame.

  She fell to the ground. The man on his cell phone was also thrown to his knees. Rendi dragged herself up, stumbled over to the man, and saw that he wasn’t seriously injured. Neither was she—her knees were scraped, and there was a small cut on her cheek, but she was fine. Somebody had planted a bomb in her car. She ran to the guesthouse parking lot, broke the driver’s-side window of the first car she saw, threw her luggage in the back, and used the tools she always carried to start the car. She drove away as the guesthouse operator chased after her screaming, “That’s my car! Bring it back!”

  She drove at breakneck speed, hoping to be stopped by the police so that she could talk them into escorting her to Jerusalem. Someone was trying to kill her! It might be the members of the Church of the Apocalypse, but she couldn’t rule out other suspects. Ignition bombs were used by intelligence agencies as well as terrorists and the Mafia. Besides, from what she’d seen of Revelation Ruggles, he wasn’t familiar with sophisticated explosives. Again the nagging voice in her head: But Dennis Savage sure was.

  No one stopped Rendi. She hit the steering wheel, cursing her bad luck: Israeli drivers were notorious speeders. In fact, several drivers passed her. She looked nervously at each of them, wondering whether they were trying to harm her. After what seemed like a lifetime but was only a bit more than an hour, she arrived in Jerusalem and drove straight to the King David Hotel, where she found Abe sipping coffee with Emma and Habash on the veranda overlooking the old city.

  At the sight of her—battered, slightly bloody, and definitely frenzied�
��Abe and Emma leaped to their feet.

  Rendi held up a hand. “Not here. Quick, upstairs to our room.”

  As the four walked silently through the busy lobby of the hotel to the elevators, Rendi’s condition drew gaping looks. Abe couldn’t hide his concern, yet she wouldn’t let him touch her. She was all business.

  When they got to their suite, Rendi stood in the middle of the room and announced, “Someone tried to kill me.”

  “Oh, my God,” Abe replied, putting his arms around her.

  She shook off his hug. She didn’t want to be tempted by her own emotions, and if she thought about what had happened, she feared she’d be too upset to think rationally.

  Abe instinctively understood this. He stepped away from her and asked calmly, “What happened?”

  “Abe, I was in Megiddo—”

  “Megiddo!” Abe cried.

  “Yes, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you, but I was trying to get to the bottom of this Dennis business, and I wanted to do it alone.”

  Abe’s face was a mask of surprise. Rendi had never withheld anything of this magnitude from him before; she’d been cagey about her past, but never about anything in the present day. He was too concerned about her condition to argue with her now. Calmly, he sat on the edge of the bed. “I understand. Now tell me, what happened to you?”

  Rendi took an uneven breath before recounting her brush with death and the discoveries that had precipitated it. She showed them the dirt sample and said that it had to be analyzed immediately.

  “Who can we give it to, without increasing the danger?” Abe wondered.

  “I have a friend,” Rendi said shakily. “A guy who specializes in analyzing chemicals. He teaches in the biochemistry department at Hebrew University.”

  “Can we trust him?” Habash asked.

  “I think so. We were very close,” Rendi said mysteriously. “Not that way, Abe,” she added quickly. “I saved his life once when we were in the field. He was about to come into contact with anthrax, and I tackled him. I’ll take the sample over to him this afternoon.”

  “No,” Abe said. “Not you. If Denny is involved in this—and even you have to acknowledge now that he’s become a prime suspect—then it stands to reason that he’s got the phones here bugged.”

  “I still don’t think it was Denny!” Rendi shouted.

  Emma and Habash looked at each other nervously.

  Abe stepped to his wife and spoke calmly. “Rendi, you have to accept what’s happening here. You said yourself that you asked Dennis about investigating apocalyptic groups. You’re telling me that in the course of one day Ruggles could have disabled your phone and rigged your car with explosives? He obviously has the help of a highly skilled operative, Rendi.”

  She merely shook her head and said quietly, “I know. I know. But still…”

  Abe hugged his wife.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she sobbed into Abe’s shoulder. “I’ve known Dennis for years! I know him about as well as I know anybody and I just can’t… I don’t believe it. Maybe someone is trying to frame him,” she offered. At her expression of such anguish, Emma and Habash looked away.

  Abe rubbed her back in an attempt to soothe her. “Right now the important thing is to get that fertilizer sample to your friend.”

  “I’ll do it,” Habash said. “I’ll take the sample to him. I’ve got colleagues at Hebrew University, too, so it’ll be easy for me to find him.”

  Rendi left Abe’s embrace and tried to pull herself together. Raising a hand to stop the three of them from jumping into action, she said, “This isn’t only about me. We’re all in danger. All of us. Whoever blew up my car was trying to stop me from telling you what I found. When they realize I didn’t die, they’ll assume I’ve told you my suspicions. We’re all in danger.”

  Emma’s face went white, and Habash put an arm around her.

  “First, let’s get out of this hotel. We’re sitting ducks here. Let’s go to my cousin’s until we sort this out,” Abe insisted. “We go by taxi, not any of our cars. No phones. And we’ll have to keep away from Pal-Watch for the time being.”

  They quickly packed their things and took a cab to Shimshon Regel’s house. At Regel’s, Abe, Rendi, and Emma got out of the cab while Habash sped along to Hebrew University, the dirt sample in his case.

  Shimshon opened his door in a welcoming manner, face broad with a smile and eyes shining. That is, until he saw Rendi’s condition and Abe’s scowl. They hadn’t called ahead because they didn’t trust their phones, so Shimshon didn’t learn what had happened until the Ringels were huddled in his foyer.

  “You’re safe here,” he assured them. “I don’t think anybody knows where I live.”

  Rendi, who knew very well how easy it would be for any intelligence service to track down Shimshon’s location, said nothing. It was nice of him, of course, to try to set their minds at ease, but she knew that the four of them couldn’t linger at his home. Inevitably it would be found and targeted. “Let’s hope not,” she said. “The last thing I want to do is endanger your family.”

  Hanna insisted that Rendi wash her wounds. Rendi initially resisted, but Hanna’s maternal manner won out, and she led Rendi gently to an upstairs guest room, where she showered, changed, and allowed herself two minutes to weep. Meanwhile Shimshon brought Emma and Abe into the kitchen, where he made them eat. Emma placed her cell phone on Shimshon’s table, so that she’d see immediately if Habash called.

  “We told him not to use his phone, remember?” Abe warned.

  “I know, Daddy, but I can’t stand not knowing where he is. What if Dennis got to him?” Emma was working herself up into a state.

  Abe didn’t answer. He himself was shocked at the entire turn of events: that Rendi had felt so strongly about Dennis’s innocence that she’d gone to Megiddo without telling him, that Abe’s suspicions about Dennis were seeming more and more likely to be true, and that his wife had narrowly escaped an attempt on her life.

  Just then Habash walked into the kitchen. His face was grim and his posture full of tension. Abe could tell from his expression that his news wasn’t good.

  “Well?” Rendi asked, entering the kitchen wrapped in a plush purple bathrobe. Other than a few scratches along the side of her face, she looked absolutely fine.

  “The sample of earth contains more than fertilizer,” Habash announced. “It has traces of ammonium nitrate, which when combined with diesel fuel makes a powerful explosive. Worse yet, it has traces of enriched uranium as well as residue from other chemicals that could be used in making a dirty bomb.”

  Hanna stifled a noise, and Emma tried to be brave. But Abe and Rendi didn’t bother hiding their concern.

  “What else did he say?” Rendi referred to her old friend Kobi, the man whose life she had once saved.

  “He said that the sample suggested that there was some leakage in their transportation system. He suggested that experts with the right equipment might be able to track the leaked residue to where they’re assembling the bomb.”

  Everyone in the kitchen was quiet. Finally Hanna asked, “Where did you find this dirt?”

  “In Israel, not far from Megiddo. In the backyard of Revelation Ruggles’s son,” Rendi answered. “Someone is making a dirty bomb to be detonated in Megiddo.”

  “It makes perverse sense,” Shimshon commented. “The final battle, the End of Days.”

  “Or the twelfth imam,” Habash added. Rendi and Abe looked to Habash. He continued, “I know you found this in the backyard of a member of a Christian sect, but that’s not a smoking gun. It could still be a false-flag operation, involving the Iranians. And the Ruggles family is just a convenient cover.”

  “The Ruggles family!” Hanna exclaimed.

  Emma nodded at Shimshon. “You kept saying that history would solve the mystery,” she said sadly.

  Abe spoke up. “Maybe Revelation was coerced or bribed into helping the Iranians, though that seems unlikely. Or maybe this is
their own plot. Whatever the answer, we’ve got to stop it. And we’ve got to answer the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: How is this connected to the attack at the American Colony Hotel?”

  LII

  Arish Sopher

  THE IRANIANS ARE WORKING on dirty-bomb technology. Actually, they’re closer to a dirty suitcase bomb than to a deliverable nuclear warhead.”

  Abe and Rendi sat in the office of Arish Sopher, an Iranian Jew and the Mossad’s main man on the Iranian nuclear program. Arish was a nuclear physicist who had worked for the shah. When Khomeini took over, the Mossad got him out. Then they smuggled him back in with a new Muslim identity. He knew everything there was to know about Iran’s nuclear program.

  When Rendi first proposed asking him if the Iranians could have been behind the dirty-bomb materials found in the soil behind Lamentations Ruggles’s home, Abe balked.

  “Can we trust him?” he asked Rendi. When she nodded, he said, “Why? Did you save his life, too?”

  “No,” she replied. “The other thing. We were an item once. He still cares about me.”

  And so Abe found himself sitting across from his wife’s ex-boyfriend. Normally he’d feel a bit uncomfortable, but the stakes were too high and Rendi insisted that Arish could assist them. Abe was all for asking for help. His only goal was to protect his family, and they were in over their ears in trying to prevent a future crime—nuclear mass murder. He knew they—Team Ringel—weren’t capable of stopping it alone. They needed all the help they could get.

  Arish sat in a large, overstuffed desk chair. His face was lined with wrinkles, and his skin was ashen, but Abe could see that he was a charming person, if a little messy. His office was crammed full of papers; they were falling out of drawers, teetering in tall piles on his desk, and crowding the floors. He wasn’t neat, but he knew his stuff.

  “And they’re not even working on a World War II ‘Fat Man’–type bomb to be dropped from the air, since their air force is incapable of making it past Israel or other air defenses.”