The Last Judgment

by Craig Parshall

  “That is a possibility,” Sheikh Mudahmid said, “but there is another explanation.”

  “What is that?”

  “That such a conspiracy was larger than Mr. Amahn even knew himself—but he willingly allowed himself to be swept away in it.”

  Mira sat down. Will jumped up to do damage control.

  “What proof do you have—facts, witnesses, documents, names, dates—of any Jewish conspiracy to blow up the Temple Mount, other than what you have already said?”

  The sheikh paused for only an instant.

  “Sixty-seven years living on this earth, in this land, watching the persecution of my people by the nation of Israel.”

  “In your sermons, you have said that ‘America is the beast of unrighteousness…and Israel is its whore.’ Have you not?”

  “I’m sure you have copies of my words…to try to trick me.”

  “Other than your hatred for Israel, do have a single fact that establishes such a Jewish conspiracy?”

  “I would have no hatred for Israel…if they would simply stop occupying our land and cease oppressing our people.”

  “I will take that as a ‘no’ to my question,” Will said, and then launched his final question.

  “And as for your statement that the Temple Mount has no historical claim to be the site of the Jewish Temple, rather than boring this tribunal with hours of proof and thousands of historical records showing the contrary, let me simply end with this. Is it correct that even the Supreme Muslim Council, which controlled the Temple Mount plateau in the 1930s, issued a written description of that area attesting that ‘its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute’ and footnoting that with a reference to Second Samuel twenty-six, verse twenty-five?”

  The sheikh was in no mood for further debate. So he glanced over at the judges, looked back at Will Chambers, and then answered diplomatically in a sudden exercise of restraint.

  “They were mistaken.”

  58

  IN THE ARTIFICIAL ENVIRONMENT of an extended trial, Will had gained, through his years of trial practice, the knack of becoming comfortable in uncomfortable surroundings. He had been in the Middle East for weeks now. And the trial had been grinding on for days. The nights in his hotel room were never very long, and he was always short on sleep. The days were filled by droning hours of testimony, argument, and inevitable delays while waiting for a witness to arrive, some document to be located, or the personal schedules of the three judges to be accommodated.

  At the end of each day in court, he had developed a familiar routine. He would get about an hour alone with his client in a small side room before the guards would whisk Gilead back to the jail. Will had learned the names of the guards, and Gilead was teaching him a few Arabic words, which he would use when he greeted them. They would usually laugh at his bad pronunciation, and that would break the tension a little bit.

  Will’s discussions with Gilead were more for his client’s benefit than for the strategy of the case. Of course Will planned on calling his client during the defense case, and they often touched on that. But Will had decided that proving Gilead’s lack of guilt would have to rest on more than simply the force of his client’s insistence on his own innocence. It would have to rest on other facts, and other witnesses.

  In the final minutes of each of those end-of-the day meetings, Gilead usually asked that his lawyer pray with him. And so they would. The last time they were together, Will had closed in prayer and had found himself choking back emotion as he prayed for justice and protection for his client. It had just seemed to sweep over him suddenly, out of nowhere, and he was displeased that he had almost lost control with Gilead. He saw it as his job to be strong for his client—not to let his emotional attachment for this young man cloud his objectivity.

  But with Will, the thought that this was not just a legal case but a life-and-death struggle would always rise to the top—like a desperate swimmer breaking to the surface, gasping for air.

  One morning he was perusing one of the daily newspapers before dashing down to catch a cab to court, when a headline caught his eye. It said that the Palestinian Authority had finally decided on the form of death for Gilead Amahn in the event of his conviction. Under “great international pressure,” they had reluctantly decided to utilize lethal injection rather than the other proposed methods, which included beheading, shooting by firing squad, and hanging.

  He had not had the heart to raise that issue with his client yet.

  After his daily post-trial testimony conference with Gilead, Will would meet with Nigel, Tiny Heftland, and Mira Ashwan for dinner. The four of them would then dine together at one of the four restaurants they frequented in Jerusalem. Will’s favorite was a steakhouse specializing in Argentinian beef, the others were Indian, Hunan, and Italian.

  The four dinner companions would usually start out with small talk or personal things about friends, family, or pastimes. But the conversation would always drift back to the case. Will mildly scolded Mira for her examination of the sheikh, saying it laid “more potholes in the road than asphalt,” but Mira disarmed him by simply laughing at his illustration—forcing him, to the amusement of the others, to explain the process of asphalting roads.

  Then, she turned the joke around against Will, noting that Westerners—and in particular Americans—automatically assume that Arabs in the Middle East know nothing of paved roads, modern transportation, or contemporary technology.

  After the laughter had died down, Will reiterated his warning—that Mira needed to abandon her “Jewish conspiracy” theory. Mira accepted the admonition with a tolerant smile but said that she was still an independent amicus curiae in the case and was bound to argue those things that she thought best for the defense, whether the rest of the team agreed or not.

  In the end, Will chalked up the Egyptian attorney’s position to the strange and tortuous maze that was the Middle Eastern mind-set. With a thousands-of-years-old history of entrenched beliefs about people and land and conflict, he concluded that she probably believed she was actually being objective in her attack on Israel’s position about the Temple Mount.

  Nigel Newhouse had proved to be an invaluable asset. He had ably handled the cross-examination of a number of lesser supporting characters in the prosecution’s legal drama.

  For instance, on one day the Cairo police captain who had interrogated Gilead after his arrest in that city for illegal preaching was called by Samir Zayed. He described the melee caused by Gilead’s appearance and his “religious disruption” near the entrance of the revered Muslim Citadel. That played into the prosecution’s theory that Gilead was on a self-designed path to Armageddon—starting with his “spiritual preparation” in the “wilderness” of West Virginia, then causing a riot at the Islamic Conference in Virginia, following that with a minor religious war in Cairo, then heading off to Jerusalem for the “great battle” for the Temple Mount.

  But on cross-examination, Newhouse adroitly undermined the police captain’s explanation that he released Gilead from police custody only on the “insistence of the United States State Department who called me…and demanded his release.”

  “Captain,” Newhouse asked, “you are in charge of the police barracks, are you not?”

  “Of course.”

  “And being so close to the great Citadel,” the barrister continued, “I assume that your police jurisdiction is considered a rather important one.”

  “I would think so,” he answered with a smile.

  “You make the decisions about who to arrest, who to charge with criminal offenses, and who to release?”

  “That is my position—to make those decisions.”

  “You are to protect the property and the welfare of the citizens of Cairo, and to enforce the laws of Egypt?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “You would never release a suspect who you know to be a threat to the safety of the people of Egypt?”

  “I’ve never be
en known to have done that.”

  “And so, I would put to you,” Newhouse concluded, “that the request from the American State Department notwithstanding, you ultimately released Gilead Amahn because you had no reason to conclude that he was a terrorist, or had terrorist connections, or posed a threat of terror to anyone—except to the sensibilities of Muslims and a few Europeans on vacation in Cairo who didn’t wish to hear his message?”

  After a short round of the captain’s trying to challenge Newhouse’s use of the term “terrorist,” he finally capitulated. He had to admit he had had no reason at the time to believe that Gilead was a terrorist, and so he had released him.

  But the prosecution’s presentation of the testimony of several Israeli police at the scene of the bombings was a bumpier ride. They confirmed that Gilead Amahn had been preaching to a large crowd in the Old City of Jerusalem, under the shadow of the Temple Mount itself, and had then shouted out, “The Muslim buildings you now see atop the Mount—what will become of them? Can there be any question that God Himself must remove them first?”

  And at that very instant, death and destruction had rained down from the bone-jarring fireball on the top of the plateau.

  They also described how Louis Lorraine and Yossin Ali Khalid had both tried to flee in their vehicles and had been shot dead.

  The prosecution made much of the fact that the two leaders of the Knights of the Temple Mount had not been firing back…merely fleeing. “Isn’t it regrettable,” Zayed noted in one of his questions, “that the world never received the benefit of an interrogation of these two men? Who knows what they might have told us? Perhaps much about other conspirators who helped plan this barbaric attack…”

  To Will’s disappointment, Mira followed up along the same lines also in questioning the Israeli police, still doggedly pursuing her “Jewish conspiracy” theory.

  At Will’s suggestion, Nigel Newhouse, nailed down one small, discrete line of testimony from the police at the scene. They confirmed what Will knew—that Israeli intelligence officials had impounded the two escape vehicles and the computer detonation systems inside them and had evaluated them quickly before being ordered to turn the evidence over to the Palestinian Authority.

  Samir Zayed did not seem to understand the significance of this. Will hoped that, eventually, the full weight of that evidence would collapse down on the prosecution. But it was a gamble, and Will knew it. Only time would tell whether he would be able to pull it off.

  The remaining witnesses called by the public prosecutor were part of what Will called the “emotional piling-on.” Several emergency personnel testified to the carnage at the scene—the dead, the dying, and the disfigured. The horror of combing through rubble and rock and dust and body remnants.

  Relatives of the victims were called to show pictures of their loved ones and to cry for justice for the dead and the maimed. After several days of such testimony the effect was emotionally and morally fatiguing.

  For Will, and certainly for the rest of the defense team, one thing was brutally clear. A horrendous crime against humanity had been committed. And the inner circle of the Knights of the Temple Mount was clearly responsible. The only remaining issue was a chillingly simple one: Was Gilead Amahn a knowing and willing part of that inner circle?

  That evening after dinner, Will and Nigel and Tiny worked for several hours at the makeshift offices next to the Holy Land Institute for the Word, preparing for the next day of trial. After Nigel had headed to bed, Will and Tiny continued to work together. Tiny’s subpoenas had been accomplished, and now the two were discussing the other project the big investigator was working on.

  It had to do with his contacts inside the Mossad and a lead that Mike Michalany had turned up. It was still too early to determine whether that was going to bear fruit. Will tried not to ponder what would happen if his outrageously audacious plan did not work.

  After returning to his hotel room that night, around one in the morning he called home. Fiona’s concert was coming up, but all the details had finally been ironed out. Then Will talked to Andy.

  “You know what I take to court every day with me?”

  “What?” Andy asked.

  “That faith badge you gave me—”

  “No way! Really?”

  “Yep. Keep it in my shirt pocket during trial so I can think of you when I’m in court. Oh, and one other thing…”

  “What?”

  “I think I’m going to talk to a former client of mine. He runs that summer baseball program down in North Carolina, at Baseball Island—remember I told you about that? How about we sign you up for this summer?”

  “All right! That is so cool!”

  “Let’s talk it over with Mom, see what she says. Okay?”

  “Sure thing. Wow, that’s so great…”

  After a little pause, Andy asked, “When are you coming home, Dad? We miss you…”

  “I miss you too. I love you, Andy. Sorry we’ve been separated. This trial still has a ways to go. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  “Mom wants to talk to you again…Love you, Dad—’bye…”

  “So,” Fiona said, “who’s in the dock tomorrow?”

  “Scott Magnit. The prosecution’s star witness.”

  “I’ll be praying for you, darling.”

  “I’ll need it.”

  “How’s Gilead holding up?”

  “Very average…”

  “That poor man…so…This house is awfully empty without you. Help Gilead. Then hurry home to me. Are you keeping safe?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had a nightmare last night,” Fiona said. “Da was in the dream, along with you. You were both talking. I had something I had to warn you both about…but I couldn’t get to you in time. You both just faded away before I reached you…”

  “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. The Lord will get me back to you—and then we can do some talking about the rest of our lives…”

  After their final goodbyes, Will hung up and gazed around his hotel room littered with files and papers from Gilead’s case, coffee pots, and trays of half-eaten room-service food. Then he felt the full weight of the realization. He still had a long way to go in the Gilead Amahn trial before he could once again see the Blue Ridge Mountains from his front porch and hold his wife in his arms.

  59

  “AND SO, MR. MAGNIT, AS YOU TOLD US THEN, you were religiously confused and were searching for, in your own words, a ‘greater spiritual truth,’ and that is when you met Yossin Ali Khalid in Jerusalem?”

  As Scott Magnit considered the prosecutor’s question, he was not the same man he had been at the time he’d met Khalid. Or at least he didn’t look like the same man.

  After his capture and his agreement to cooperate with the Palestinian public prosecutor, the twenty-nine-year-old American had been cleaned up. Gone were the tattered clothes and the Knights of the Temple Mount T-shirt that, despite Khalid’s warnings, Magnit had worn anyway underneath a dirty sweatshirt on the day of the bombings.

  Now, as he sat in the witness chair within the booth in the Orient House courtroom, he was clean shaven, his formerly long, straggly hair was neatly trimmed, and he was wearing a dark green suit with a white shirt and red tie—the colors of the Palestinian flag—conveniently supplied by the public prosecutor. The suit was a little too big. He also was sporting a new pair of glasses.

  Under direct examination by the prosecutor, Magnit had described how he was raised by divorced parents in northern California. His father was a member of a Unitarian church, his mother a follower of a “new age” kind of religious movement. He had graduated from a small local college with barely passing grades. He took peyote, dabbling in Native American religion, and later in Westernized versions of Buddhism and Hinduism.

  He eventually made his way into the Peace Corps and was assigned to Africa. Discussing religion with another Corps volunteer, he had heard about the strange and little-known religious colony of the Dr
uze, who worked and lived in the remote agricultural areas of northern Israel, near the Golan.

  Magnit had been particularly intrigued when he’d heard that the Druze were looking for the imminent appearance of a “Messiah” figure—the reincarnation of the Caliph al-Hakim, who had mysteriously disappeared a thousand years before.

  So after leaving the Peace Corps, he had worked a few odd jobs, saved up some money, and traveled to Israel, landing in Tel Aviv. He had traveled first to Jerusalem in search of a guide who could introduce him to the Druze community—which is where he’d met Khalid.

  “Back then,” Magnit recounted, “Yossin’s father, Caliph Omar Ali Khalid, was still alive, but he was—you know—really sick. But even so, Omar was sort of running things.”

  Zayed had Magnit describe in great detail how he had never reached the Druze community. He had just stayed with Yossin, his wife, and Omar in their dingy little apartment in the eastern section of Jerusalem. They would just “sit around and drink tea, and read the Quran and compare it with the Old Testament and the teachings of the Caliphs and the writings of some Christian mystics who lived out in the desert.”

  The American explained how he learned that the Knights of the Temple Mount started as members of the Druze but had broken away and formed their own secret group as the time for the appearing of the “last and greatest Caliph” approached—the “messiah who would bring with him God’s Golden Age,” as he described him.

  “We—the Knights—felt we had discovered some stuff the Druze missed.” There was an air of superiority in Magnit’s voice.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like the fact that Yossin and Omar said they could trace their lineage directly back to the intermarrying of Druze with some of the Templar Knights, you know…the guys in the Crusades. There was a lot of talk about the hidden secrets and treasures of the Templars, and the search for the Holy Grail, which was, like, the cup supposedly used by Christ in the Last Supper and all of that…”