The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies)

by Terry Brennan

  “We’re not safe in our own beds at home. What difference does it make?”

  “Kallie’s place is on the other side of town.”

  “Just a little over a mile as the crow flies. Look, I need the air. I need to think. And I can cut the distance by going through the market.”

  “Well, I’m no crow,” said Rizzo. “I’m taking the cab.”

  “If you’re walking, I’m walking.” Annie came up to Bohannon’s side. “We can talk on the way—try to make some sense of all this.”

  Deirdre didn’t have the right shoes for walking. Joe pulled her into an embrace, kissed her gently, then separated himself from her, standing sentinel by Fineman’s gate. “Don’t think I’m going to allow the two of you to wander off by yourselves. People out there still want to do us harm.”

  Dr. Brandon McDonough was laboring with jet lag, and elected to wait with Sammy and Deirdre for dispatch to send the rare taxi driver who worked on the Sabbath.

  Tom, Annie, and Joe crossed Tavon Street to begin their circuitous route through the random streets of Jerusalem to the Bar Lev Road and Kallie’s apartment near Ammunition Hill.

  From Fineman’s house, they had two choices. To make a long loop east, on Bezalel Road, across King George V Street, through the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, and down the Jaffa Road to skirt the Old City on the Hatzanhanim to the Bar Lev Road; or to cut through the vast, but closed, Machane Yehuda open market to the Hanevi’im, which would reduce their walking distance by half.

  Bohannon moved at a brisk pace, his feet keeping tempo with the thoughts rampaging through his mind. While the theory about the staff was fascinating, the dominant images were snapshots of Kallie Nolan’s lifeless body in Sammy Rizzo’s arms and of the plain wooden casket, covered with an American flag and mounds of flowers, in the tranquil pathways of the Garden Tomb.

  When they reached the Agrippas Road, Annie and Joe came alongside as they waited for a solitary delivery truck to pass, then crossed together, entering the quiet and empty open market, headed northeast.

  When two men dressed in black stepped out from the side of a darkened vegetable stall, the veil of grief and guilt was swept from Tom Bohannon’s mind.

  Bohannon nudged Joe with his elbow, grabbed his wife’s hand, and plunged deeper into the shadows and echoes of the empty Machane Yehuda.

  “C’mon, this way. Quick.”

  Running, his damaged shoulder in a sling and his battered body objecting to each stride, Bohannon led them down a narrow alley between the stalls.

  “Tom … what are …” Annie’s halting words were trumped by Rodriguez.

  “I saw one of them.”

  Bohannon skidded to a stop as the alley opened to one of the main thoroughfares of the massive, covered market. “There are two more.” Breathing deep to slow the flood of adrenaline surging through his veins, Bohannon peeked around the corner of the empty stall in one direction. Rodriguez cast a glance the other way.

  “Maybe I’m being paran—”

  A man in black appeared at the far end of the aisle. Behind them, from the alley, they heard a whistle.

  “Go!”

  Rodriguez now in the lead, Bohannon pushed Annie in front of him as they raced across the aisle and dove into the darkness of the alley on the far side. Their pounding feet echoed off the shuttered stalls, but they heard other footsteps, as well.

  Bohannon’s brother-in-law was pushing on every door he passed, the former basketball player barely breaking stride. When one door on the right yielded, Rodriguez nearly fell through it.

  “Here, quick.”

  With his good arm, Bohannon pulled his wife into the darkness that smelled of fish and salt as Rodriguez pushed the door closed behind them and fumbled for the latch.

  “We can’t stay—”

  Running feet passed the door, Rodriguez’s shoulder keeping it firmly closed.

  During the day, and well into most evenings, Jerusalem’s sprawling Machane Yehuda market and its covered aisles overflowed with bodies jockeying to avoid collisions with each other and bulging bags of produce and fish, bread and cheese that hung from the end of almost every arm. Far removed from sunset, it was now Sabbath in Israel and the shops were long closed, the aisles empty, the shadows silent. The running feet had stopped.

  “We need to find a way out,” whispered Rodriguez. Pressing the rusted bolt in place, he pulled over a large wooden box that was next to the door and wedged it under the doorknob.

  “Over here.”

  Bohannon turned in the direction of his wife’s hushed words. Annie stood leaning against another door in the middle of the back wall of the stall. “It’s quiet.”

  They huddled together around the metal door. “Probably not a main corridor,” she whispered.

  “We’ve got to chance it,” said Bohannon. “They’ll figure out we ducked in somewhere along that alley.”

  Annie nodded, turned to the metal door, caressed the bolt to slip it out of its latch, and cracked the door open so Bohannon could peek outside. It was a narrow little passage, barely four feet wide, nearly impenetrable because of stacked crates alternating on either side. “Storage space,” he whispered. “Looks like it runs behind this entire row of shops.”

  “A way out?” Annie’s lips brushed his ear.

  Someone rattled the other door.

  Annie was out first, squeezing her body through the tight space as she moved to the left, uphill, away from the alley. Bohannon followed closely behind and, his hand on her arm, edged around Annie in the dark. He was hoping for an escape route and hoping not to knock over any of the assorted boxes standing in precarious rows.

  Ahead of him, the darkness lightened, and Bohannon could see the mouth of the passageway. Twenty feet from the end, he stopped behind four barrels that smelled of pickles and pressed his back against the wall as first Annie and then Joe came to his side.

  “That should be Jaffa Road,” Bohannon whispered, tilting his head to the opening. “If there are pedestrians out, they’ll be on Jaffa Road. And there’s the tram.”

  “Not this late,” said Joe. “Not on Sabbath.”

  “Well, it’s our best chance to get where there are other people. Look, once we break out of this alley—no matter who’s out there—turn right and run downhill. If we can get to Zion Square, to the bottom of Ben Yehuda, there should be pedestrians down there. Maybe we can find a cop.”

  Bohannon turned to his left and caught a glimpse of Annie’s eyes through the gloom. “Be careful … and run fast.”

  “You run fast.” Annie put her hand on the sling cradling Bohannon’s damaged right arm. “And don’t worry about me. I’ll probably be there first.”

  “Well, then tie this thing tighter,” he whispered, turning so she could tighten the sling. His right arm secured against his chest, Bohannon cast one more glance toward the end of the passage, then stepped toward the opening. Like a runner during warm-up, Bohannon stretched his long legs with each step, picking up speed. As he reached the end of the passage, he burst into the street, turned hard to the right and started his downhill sprint, hoping all the hours on his bike would now pay off.

  And confusion erupted around him.

  Shouts ripped the silence—one from up the hill, another from down the hill, a third behind them. Tom glanced back over his shoulder—Annie was a stride behind, closing fast. A black shape emerged from a darkened alcove on the right, intent on intercepting Bohannon. But Joe flashed by on his right, slammed into the man’s unprotected side, drove him back into the alcove, and kept running.

  Annie and Tom now ran side by side. He prayed something would be open on the King George Road.

  There was no stopping now, no holding back against the headlong, downhill momentum. If these guys had guns, they were dead. But guns weren’t the Prophet’s Guard’s MO. They were looking for hostages, bargaining chips—not bodies.

  As they approached the darkened intersection of the King George V Road, a black van pulled across J
affa Road, a door slid back, and two more black-clad men jumped into the street.

  “Right!”

  Joe yanked on Bohannon’s damaged right arm and dragged him under an arch where they bounced off a stone wall. Tom’s vision blurred, he felt sick to his stomach, and his knees started to buckle. “Don’t you dare fall down,” Joe hissed as he propelled Bohannon down the narrow alley into an open courtyard filled with dozens of cats and an acidic assault of feline urine. They ran headlong down the left side of the courtyard, dodging stray bowls of indecipherable matter, and into another alley and across a gravel parking lot before they burst into a small square, thick with hedges and darkened by a copse of huge trees. Joe and Tom collided with a hedge, and were thrown to the ground. Even in his pain-wracked mind, Tom rolled over on his back to get out of Annie’s way.

  But Annie wasn’t there. No one was there except Joe. No one followed. They were alone.

  She knew … as soon as the black van entered the intersection, slowing down, all her mother’s intuition, all her protective instincts, kicked in. Before the van stopped, Annie Bohannon glimpsed the tiny street opening on her left. She cut left and was sprinting across the four empty lanes of the Jaffa Road when she heard the shout behind her.

  “Right!”

  Annie’s heart jumped into her throat as she plunged into the narrow, cobblestoned street. She was focused on her feet, determined not to trip on the uneven stones, and frantically trying to remain calm. She was on her own. Tom and Joe were running in the opposite direction. And the men in black were sure to be close behind. No going back now. Escape … she had to find a way to escape … and to get off these cobblestones.

  She turned into a passage barely as wide as her shoulders, ran through somebody’s darkened garden, and emerged onto another small street. She darted a look left—and saw the warning sign.

  “Please Dress Appropriately in the Me’a She’arim.”

  Annie had reached the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me’a She’arim, a walled-in community that shunned not only westerners but also other, more secular Jews. Only the ultra-Orthodox with their ironclad dress codes were welcome in this section of Jerusalem. In her form-fitting pants and short-sleeve shirt, Annie realized no door would open to her. But she would be much harder to find in the district’s maze of crisscrossing streets. And the men in black wouldn’t be welcome here, either.

  Moving through the shadows, Annie came even with an opening in the wall on the far side of the street. She looked in both directions. The street was empty and silent. She burst from her hiding place. At the same instant, a black shape launched from a shadowed doorway up the street. She heard the running feet, restrained the urge to look, and raced under the arched opening. Just inside the wall, a tree-shaded lane curved down to the right. Annie ran down the lane, turned left into the next opening, sprinted across a small courtyard, turned into a dark opening, and stopped.

  Enough.

  Annie quickly looked around. In a darkened corner was a large trash bin. She could hide. But hiding was not in her thoughts.

  Instead, Annie pulled the round metal lid from the bin and hefted it in her hands. It would do.

  She flattened her back against the wall just inside the passageway, waiting. Part of her felt like a fool. But more of her felt determined, felt empowered. She wasn’t going to run anymore.

  Soon she heard running feet, the sound growing louder as they approached the entry to the courtyard. Then they stopped.

  Her heart beating louder than the man’s steps, Annie struggled to control her breathing. But her hands, and her resolve, were steady. She strained her hearing out of the passageway and into the courtyard. No sound … but a shadow fell across the face of the passage entrance.

  She waited, lifted the metal cover, tightening her grip.

  The change from shadow to substance was subtle. Had she not been so keenly concentrated on that dark shape, she could have missed it entirely. But it was substance, not shadow, that leaned into the passageway.

  With a force that surprised even her, Annie swung the lid down onto the man’s head and shoulders. The thud, and the man’s grunt, echoed down the passageway. The kickback from the lid sent shivers of pain through her wrists. But it was the crack of bone that turned her stomach. The man in black lay crumpled at her feet. Annie leaned back against the wall, looked hopefully along the length of the passageway, and was about to drop the lid and run, when she heard the noise. More feet running … voices this time. Getting closer.

  She pressed back into the dark, felt the lid slip in her perspiring hands. Then realized the black-clad man’s body was half in, half out of the passageway entrance.

  Annie hesitated. I should pull him in. But the running feet were in the courtyard.

  She raised the lid once more. Maybe I’ll have one chance. Maybe …

  A shadow fell across the motionless body. Something moved. Annie flexed the muscles in her forearms, braced her legs, and shifted her weight to once again bring the lid down with all the force she could summon.

  A whisper. “Annie?”

  Tom’s voice. The metal lid slipped from her grasp as she tried to stop its momentum. It clanged against the far wall.

  “Annie!”

  He was over the fallen body before she could react, hugged her tight with his one good arm. “Annie.”

  She pulled back to catch her breath. “How did you find me?”

  Joe ducked under the arch and stepped over the body. “Good work. But no time for explanations.” Rodriguez put his hands on their shoulders and urged them farther into the passageway. “C’mon. They’re still looking. We’re not out of this yet.”

  Running feet echoed off the walls of the passageway as they pressed north, out of the Me’a She’arim. Three pairs of feet, running for safety.

  6

  11:06 p.m. Fordow nuclear labs, Iran

  Mohsen Kolabi closed the door to the maintenance closet and put his weight behind the overloaded metal cart. On the level below him, the insolent North Korean scientists still worked at a feverish pitch, trying to bring the last centrifuge cascade online. But up here, the level with the testing labs and administrative offices, the lights were dim and the corridors quiet.

  Administrators at Fordow didn’t work the night shift. Just maintenance men, the many guard posts, and rude North Koreans in lab coats.

  The uranium enrichment plant at Fordow, operational in 2011, was a series of chambers on multiple levels, built into the side of a mountain just outside the sacred city of Qom. The facility was comprised of multiple blast-proof doors; hardened, double-concrete ceilings with earth in between; and twenty-centimeter-thick concrete walls. All of it burrowed under the protection of ninety meters of mountain. The Iranians considered it impenetrable.

  Mohsen Kolabi had this level and one more to finish. He strained to move the cart across the uneven, gray-painted concrete floor, down the long, gray-painted corridor between the darkened labs. He came up to where he had left his stepladder propped against a wall, just under the huge photo of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Ghorbani.

  He opened the opposite door and flipped the light switch for the enrichment lab. The white, plastic sensor on his lapel came to life, pulsing with sickly, yellow light. Warning. Kolabi carried his stepladder into the lab, then went back and hauled the heavy cart into the room, closing the door and closing his mind to the meaning of the warning light. It was too late for him, anyway. His cousin, the doctor, told him there was no hope. But his family? His six children? Who would take care of them?

  So Kolabi was here in the enrichment lab, working another man’s shift for the extra money—and for the opportunity. The opportunity to take care of his family for the rest of their lives.

  Scrawny thin, five feet tall, wisps of salt-and-pepper hair on his round head, Kolabi opened his stepladder under one of the old light fixtures, climbed the rungs with his tool pouch hanging from his right hip, and disconnected the old fixture. The new ones were bet
ter. They provided more light with less electricity, yes. But they did not have a very long life span. Not much longer than his.

  He could have worn the lead tunic under his clothes as the Jew had instructed. But his cousin, the doctor, had informed Kolabi that other radiation had already taken its toll. He felt his way down the ladder, turned to the cart and removed one of the new fixtures from its packing. The fixtures were manufactured in Russia. How the Israelis intercepted the shipment, he didn’t know. He did know these fixtures were heavy. The explosives, detonators, and radioactive cores—small but powerfully destructive—added extra pounds.

  Kolabi hefted the fixture onto his right shoulder and struggled back up the ladder. One more level. He must finish. Tonight damnation would erupt throughout the Fordow facility. All four levels with the new, lethal light fixtures—three above and one below the banks of centrifuges on the level under his feet—would be destroyed. The Jew believed the reinforced concrete floors would breach under the power of the massed explosives and the resulting radioactive contamination would make Fordow uninhabitable for the life of a thousand suns.

  He would be here to feel the eruptions, to watch the panic. Perhaps he would die tonight instead of in a few months, weeks. But he must be here. The ayatollahs were no fools. Anyone who did not report for duty or who left early would be suspect. They and their families would be judged without trial. If mercy reigned, those poor souls would spend the rest of their lives wasting away in a labor camp. But mercy seldom reigned. No. Kolabi would be here, protecting his family. Their future was also protected, the funds provided by the Jewish agent safely and secretly invested in a chain of food markets.

  Kolabi completed installation of the light fixture, checked the wiring once more, flipped the switch to activate the timing mechanism, and hobbled back down the ladder.

  One more level. Freedom called him on.

  11:10 p.m., Abadan Oil Refinery, Iran