The Brotherhood Conspiracy (20 page)

In a desperate attempt to regain power over the mountains controlled by the Kurdish rebellion, Saddam Hussein unleashed the ferocity of the Revolutionary Guard. Sweeping through one rebel camp after another, often using poison gas, the Guard murdered indiscriminately. Except in one instance.

An Iraqi general—Ali Hassan al-Majid, Hussein’s cousin—recognized the rebel girl in the purple dress from the cover photo. He would give these Kurds something to remember. The general stood the girl in front of a whitewashed wall, facing a firing squad. There were two photos the Revolutionary Guard nailed to huts in every Kurdish village they captured—one of the girl, and her son, staring into the camera; another of them crumpled on the ground, the whitewashed wall stained red. It was over a year before Annie learned of the young woman’s fate.

“You blamed yourself for her death for years. Why, Annie? Why now?” Bohannon searched his wife’s face. But Annie turned away and stood looking out the window.

“I wasn’t sure if I would do it . . . until a few moments ago.” She turned, the light to her back, and faced her husband. “Now you can experience what I’ve lived with for the last two months. The overriding sense of dread that filters into every moment of time when you’re out of the house. The panic that rises in my chest when the phone rings and I’m the only one home.”

Annie took a step toward him. “You don’t have to do this, Tom. If you really are so sick of this, just let the government handle it.”

Tom crossed the room and took Annie’s hands in his.

“Annie,” he whispered, “do you remember how we talked about this at the beginning? That we thought God was at work in our lives . . . that following the clues on the scroll seemed like something God was calling us to.” Annie stiffened even more. “Well . . . they think if God worked through us once, he may want to work through us again. Just like Brandon McDonough, they are wondering if there are any other messages, any other clues, either on the scroll or on the mezuzah. Maybe something that only we can decipher.”

Annie pulled her hands free and stepped back.

“Reynolds has no right asking you to risk your life again.”

Bohannon stepped closer to his wife. He lifted her chin and looked into her blue eyes. “It wasn’t Reynolds who asked. It was President Whitestone.”

Annie had stormed off to bed. Bohannon was back in the Morris chair, trying to remember every word of his earlier conversation.

“Mr. Bohannon . . . please hold for the president.”

Bohannon had nearly dropped the cell phone.
“Tom? This is President Whitestone.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. President.”

“Look . . . Tom, I know the last time we spoke it was not a very pleasant conversation. Can you—”

“No, sir, it wasn’t very pleasant. Please allow me to apologize for my rudeness.”

“No offense taken, Tom. It was a tough situation. You did what you thought was right. That’s pragmatic. It’s what we do everyday—take a look at all the possibilities and then do what we think is the right thing to do. That’s why I’m speaking with you today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tom, Sam can fill you in on all the details . . . what’s going on and how we think you can help us. But this is the important point, for me at least. You know I’m a man of faith, Tom.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’m convinced that God used you, and your compatriots, to find and reveal the hidden Temple under the Temple Mount. I don’t know why. But I believe God’s hand was in this . . . was with you. You and your friends deciphered a message
that our computers are still trying to duplicate. The full force of the Israeli security apparatus, and a group of deadly serious radical Muslims, failed to stop you from finding the Temple. And you escaped to share your findings with the world. I don’t know what the odds were against your success and survival, but they must have been astronomical.

“Well, as Sam will tell you, this situation is far from over. And I believe that God’s purpose for you in this situation is also far from over. We need your help, your connection. We need you to go look again at the scroll, the mezuzah, for anything that might help us avoid the spark to World War Three. And we need you to listen . . . listen to God’s direction, follow his lead, see if you can find what has been lost for so long—find it before it’s too late.”

Silence. Bohannon had heard the question, but his mind could find no answer.

“Can you do that? Can you do that for us, Tom? Are you willing to allow God to use you again?”

15

T
HURSDAY
, A
UGUST
13

Jerusalem

“You should be dead.”

The voice on the other end of the cell phone was hollow, lifeless.
A good sign
, thought al-Sadr.

“Yes . . . many times,” he said. “Yet, I am still here.”

Al-Sadr allowed the silence to linger. It was the other man’s move.

“You are who you claim. And I received the funds.”

“Ah . . . good,” said al-Sadr. “Avarice. What a fine foundation for a business relationship. I would like you to—”

“You don’t have much time.”

Startled, al-Sadr waited for the man named Leonidas to continue.

“The Israelis are looking for the Tent of Meeting,” said Leonidas. “If it can be found, they intend to erect it once the platform on the Temple Mount is completed.”

“Never! We will rise against—”

“You have no time,” Leonidas interrupted, life and anger coming back into his voice. “There is a passage in the book of Maccabees that claims the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant were taken by the prophet Jeremiah and hidden in a cave on the top of Mount Nebo in Jordan. Mossad is planning an incursion . . . tonight . . . to search the caves on and around the mountain, seeking for any clue that might determine whether this fable is true.”

Blood rage pumped through al-Sadr’s temples, his hand slowly crushing the cell phone.

“If the Tent of Meeting exists,” Leonidas whispered, “and if the Israelis manage to erect it on a rebuilt Mount, the Haram al-Sharif will be nothing but a memory. You pay me for information. What you do with it is your own concern.”

Jordan

Five men. It was all Lucas Painter would allow himself to risk. Including himself, a team of six. Baruk protested Painter’s involvement as too risky, but General Orhlon, Israel’s defense minister, understood. This mission was critical. And Painter was fearless . . . and lucky.

The morning before, two of his men crossed the Allenby Bridge, southeast of Jericho, driving from Israel to Jordan. They were dressed as businessmen on their way to Amman, with all the proper papers for doing business in Jordan. Three others mixed with the pilgrims streaming down the road to the double horseshoe switchbacks of the Jordan River—the place where tradition says Jesus was baptized. They lost themselves in the throng. The Jordan, little more than a stream at Bethabara, was easily breached in the falling dusk.

Painter could take no such risk. He was too well known, on both sides of the border. So he climbed into the false bottom of a bakery truck just before dawn and rode in that cramped, hot space for hours while the driver made his deliveries.

Shrouded in darkness blacker than a swindler’s heart, Painter now lay in a deeply cut defile on the flank of a dry wadi in the desert of Jordan. About one kilometer to the east, along the dry riverbed of the steeply walled wadi, was an olive grove with storage sheds and maintenance buildings. Even at two o’clock in the morning, it was an area to be avoided. Fifteen hundred kilometers above him was the monastery at Syagha atop Mount Nebo, thought to have been erected above the burial place of Moses. Somewhere in that collection of ancient buildings, crumbling ruins, and deep caves could also be the hiding place of Jeremiah’s Tent of Meeting.

Painter nudged the sergeant at his side. Only a shadow moved. Painter nodded his head upward and the shadow moved again, slithering up through the deep cut in the canyon walls. Four other shadows followed his lead. Painter, with night-vision glasses, watched his team, covered in black from head to foot, melt into the darkness of the barren landscape. There was no moon. His men were nearly invisible.

The sergeant stopped just short of where a footpath crossed through the gully. Painter, on the side of a rise, looked for light or movement. No one was on the hill.

“Go,” Painter whispered into the voice filament tucked inside the full-face hood worn by each member of the team. Four men vanished. Painter climbed through the darkness and joined the sergeant at the top of the gully. Silently, they edged up the western ridge of the mountain, the side closest to the road. The other teams skirted a cliff face and moved along a shallower ravine, gaining the crest on the eastern edge of the compound.

With his night-vision binoculars at full illumination, Captain Hamid followed the progress of the shadows as they ascended the flank of Mount Nebo. Hamid and his snipers were spread in a twenty-meter arc about one hundred meters higher than the olive grove compound, hidden by an outcropping of rock. Below them, three teams—one on the eastern side of the compound, two on the western side—moved swiftly across an exposed section of rock face, like the shadows of clouds racing before the moon, circling the walls of the compound.

This is the way I would have come.

Hamid’s plan, with four additional men on the far, eastern flank as backup, allowed for no combat with the Israeli commandos. Engagement was foolhardy. Israeli special forces were like black death—silent and lethal.

He held up one finger, pointed to the watch on his wrist, then turned a thumbs up. The men on his right and left sighted through their night-vision scopes. Each had a designated target. Each had a silencer attached to the muzzle of his sniper rifle.

Moving independently, Painter and his partner made for their target, as he knew his other teams would close on theirs. After studying the fly-over photos and infrareds, Painter decided to ignore the compound of buildings surrounding the sand-colored church with the huge brazen serpent monument on the crest of its roof. Target of too many archaeologists . . . picked over too many times . . . it was an unlikely hiding place. No, Painter instructed his teams to move higher on
the crest of Mount Nebo, away from the monastery, to Khirbet Al-Mukhayyad, where the tombs of a local population dated to at least 2000
BC
.