The Hammer of God (11 page)

There were 14 messages on Bill's personal cell phone as he glanced at it sitting in the back seat of his government supplied Town Car. His government cell would have rung, or Bill's driver, Secret Service Agent Brent Moskowitz, would have been beeped to retrieve him from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial if anything of national consequence had occurred. He scanned the messages quickly and decided to ring back Janice.

“Hey, Bill. How's your day going?”

“I got to tell ya, a really weird thing happened. I met up with an old friend… acquaintance…from the neighborhood and the guy goes on and on and tells me a story that sounds like a science fiction author wrote it. Then, for no reason, he suddenly runs away!”

“Schizophrenia?”

“Maybe, but it was more like he suddenly didn't trust me.”

“What triggered this?”

“I dunno, one minute we're talking… he's talking, I'm listening, then he asks me a question. Then he freaks.”

“What was the question?”

“He asked me if I ever heard of the Jesus Factor.”

“You mean ‘W W J D?'”

“What's that?”

“What would Jesus do?”

“Oh right. No, I don't think they call that the Jesus Factor. Besides, I asked him if it was a religious thing. That's when he freaked.

“Maybe he's in a fundamentalist cult. And you were suddenly an outsider.”

“Maybe, but he's a real science nut. Religion has to have faith. I don't see him as a holy roller.”

“Then back to my initial instinct: schizophrenia.”

“You're probably right. What a waste of time. Anyway, how's your day going?”

“I got the board to approve my program.”

“Aw, honey that's great! Congratulations.”

“You have no idea what I'm talking about do you?”

Bill cringed. “Sure, the program thing. It's great news.”

“Nice try, buster. I'll fill you in tonight. Gotta run; love ya.”

“Love you too babe. Later.”

As the car found it's way back to the White House, Bill's head was reeling with all that he had absorbed from his three-hour “
lunch in 1968
” with Peter.

Cheryl intercepted him as he approached his office. “You have staff at four and I need you to review the agenda for next week's nanotechnology summit. You also need to…”

Bill was not intending to say the next thing he said, but something inside him compelled him to utter, “Cheryl, get Susan Clark, the Ambassador to the U.N., on the phone. Then get me a research person. Maybe that new kid, Harry.”

“Horace. I'll take him off of filing. When do you want to see him?”

“From before I asked you.” He handed her his cell phone. “Go through my messages and cull and delegate them out, unless one of them needs me.”

“Got it.”

Once behind his desk, Bill went through his red-lined folder. Cheryl put all the documents that needed immediate attention or signatures in a recycled manila folder with the words, “Operation Quarterback” on the front, a memento from a previous adventure through which Cheryl had started working for Bill. The load was light and in three minutes, the folder was wedged between the tape dispenser and the stapler; the parking spot that told Cheryl that Bill had reviewed the contents. In that time, Horace came in. Bill gave him the name of Peter's flying saucer book and many of the other details of the whacked out story Remo told him.

His next call was to Joey Palumbo.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure; what's up, Bill?” the former FBI agent said.

“Can you look into the death of a scientist by the name of Ensiling? I'll have Cheryl get all the info I have over to you.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Probably nothing. Hey, you remember Pete Remo?”

“Yeah, the only guy who was more of a square than you! Geez, I haven't heard that name in years.”

“Me neither, till this morning when I met with him. He started out asking me to look into this professor's demise.”

“How did it end up?”

“Weird… unsettling.”

“Bill, the guy Peter was always a weirdo.”

“Yeah, I know, Joe, but he was socially weird. His science and his brain were working on all eight cylinders.”

“Maybe he's self-medicating.”

“Yeah… I thought of that. But even though his story was out there, it was very cogent.”

“You tell a lie enough…”

“…and you eventually start believing it. Maybe that's it, but check into this just to make sure, will ya?”

“Once again, what are we looking for?”

“Just see if his death was kosher or not.”

“Where did he die?”

“Vienna, last week.”

“I'll reach out through Interpol and a few other sources.”

“Thanks, Joey. Get back to me as soon as you know anything.”

Bill hung up the phone and wondered if he had just done the right thing. Peter was probably nuts. Who knew what he did since the days in the Bronx? Drugs, religion, alcohol, indoctrination into a cult, a million things could have scrambled his eggs in the past 20 years. Still, Ensiling was red flagged by the government, and that was bothering him. On the other hand, the UFO nonsense was finished business. Bill was at the top of the government technology Christmas tree and nothing ever went close to extraterrestrial anything. It was purely the stuff of conspiracy nuts and Trekkies. Yet, if the U.N. was… Well, he only had Peter's say-so on the U.N., the U.N. Ambassador would tell him.
Enough! I got work to do.

∞§∞

“What the devil?” was all the Sheik could say as the music startled him awake. Then the lights went on.

She was there again, in her red warm-up clothes. Swinging the sock.

“Hello, Sheiky. I am going to show you how much I don't like little weasels who run to the teacher and cry about every little thing.”

She's insane,
he thought as a plan emerged in his mind.

“Come over here, dog.”

He remained in his bed.

“Come here now or it will be worse if I have to come to you.” She took two steps towards the bed.

He did not move.

“Hey, dipshit!” The sock knocked over a chair.

She stepped closer. “I am talking to you!”

He didn't respond.
Good a little closer.

“You are only making this harder on yourself, asshole.” She came to within two feet of the bed.

He sprang up, intent on grabbing her and falling on her and calling for the guards. He was stopped halfway by the chain.

“Jerk. I shortened it while you were sleeping. Now you are going to wish you had come to me when I asked you…”

She now administered the blows to his body with the sock in the leg of a pair of panty hose. This gave her more striking distance to stay out of reach of his flailing arms. At one point, he grabbed the sock and cradled it to stop the beatings. Wham! A second one beat him in the back, causing him to uncoil and release the first while gasping for breath.

Then he heard her leave. He lay there shuddering.

The next day was Friday. The Imam came to his cell with a guard and a translator who had a tape recorder.

He ran towards the holy man, causing the guard to intercede. He minded his distance and pleaded in Arabic, “Imam, they are torturing me.”

“Imam, they are torturing me!” was the translator's immediate echo.

The blue-eyed devil appeared at the door in her business suit and walked in. “Gooooood morning, Sheik. Good morning, Imam. Frank.”

The Sheik became instantly self-conscious and averted eye contact with Brooke.

“My son, are you saying these men…”

“No not the men…” He felt her eyes on him. “The food! It is lousy and as good as torture.”

“I will speak to the director of this prison and see if they can arrange for a proper meal. Are you ready to start?” the man of religion said as he opened the Koran.

State Department Diplomatic Security, or “DS,” was a consolation prize for Jamal El Azam. He tried for the ATF, FBI, and Secret Service, but his college GPA index being 3.2 and his one little brush with the law closed those doors. It was patently unfair for his record to still carry the police report stemming from when, as a 17-year old, he and two friends were jumped by some lunkheads who blamed anyone with a middle-eastern look or name for the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He was released and ultimately found innocent of all charges. But the red flag remained. If his Grade Point Average was 3.7 or above, it would have been overlooked, but things being as they were gave any federal administrator an excuse to say no.

The State Department, however, under Madeline Albright and the Clinton Administration, wanted to put the best face on America's image to the world, so they sought out ethnic types for the Foreign Service. Jamal's fluency in both Eastern and Western Arabic languages also helped in his chances of being assigned to Ambassador's Protection Service in Egypt. Since his posting with diplomatic security, however, he had not advanced as he should have, being passed over three times for promotion within the DS. True, he had some attendance and lateness issues, but no more than would have been overlooked had he been promoted on schedule.

Deep down inside, however, Jamal knew it was because of her. She distracted and delayed him all the time. But he was in love and decided that she came first.

His mother would curse him if she knew of Salinda. She was a descendant of a nomadic tribe that was also the tribe of Libya's former dictator, Mohamar Kadaffi. She was beautiful, her body was perfection itself, and, with it, she made him feel like no other woman had ever made him feel. They took up together, but kept a low profile among the embassy's circle of influence. Jamal had two residences. One near the embassy for appearances and the other across town in a very Egyptian neighborhood where no Americans or Brits would dare go.

It was there that he brushed up against the Brotherhood. Salinda had brought him to a meeting. They spoke of the true call of Islam. They led him to the Prophet's own words. At first, because of the fraternizing aspect of his relationship, he made no contact report, as any FSO at his grade was duty-bound to make. Later, the reason was not as benign as covering up a sexual affair. Jamal had acclimated to and then wholly embraced the notion that the only hope for mankind was through the words of the Koran. That America, his America, was imposing its Judeo-Christian ethic of freedom on the children of Allah. Forcing freedom on Muslims was, in a sense, blasphemy, equal to forcing an Arab to take communion from a priest. This enlightenment came to Jamal from many parts of the Koran but the one that still resonated within him was Qur'an 33:36
“It is not fitting for a Muslim man or woman to have any choice in their affairs when a matter has been decided for them by Allah and His Messenger. They have no option. If anyone disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a wrong Path.”

What he was about to do, what needed to be done, he did for the Brotherhood and on a deeper level, to honor his love for Salinda.

“The Ambassador is moving,” his radio crackled, breaking this stream of thought.

He keyed his mic. “Front gate, all clear.” Jamal's post this morning was at the front gate. He barely took notice of the two white vans parked on each side of the street adjacent to the embassy's gate. As the Cadillac limo pulled through the gate, on time as Jamal had indicated, twelve men each emerged from both vans with weapons and one with a video camera. They immediately opened fire. There was a lead car and a chase car, each with three security officers inside. The lead car was pummeled by Kalashnikov fire and two of the three men inside managed to get out and return fire. Jamal watched and did nothing as two assailants came around and fired on the men from behind, eliminating them. The limo and chase car were under a hail of bullets. An RPG hit the chase car and it exploded, flipping over on its side. A former Mujahedeen ran up to it and sprayed the car and its inhabitants with three full clips of ammunition. The limo's bulletproof windshield eventually caved in from the unrelenting torrent of lead coming from ten automatic weapons. The instant it was breeched, the driver and the bodyguard disappeared in a blood red plume. The Ambassador was inside the “cage,” a reinforced armored compartment behind the driver's seat. This survival space could take a dead hit from a mortar round and keep its occupant alive.

Jamal walked over to the smoking limo as five of the assailants approached it. One tried the door on the far side. Frustrated he then fired his weapon into the lock. The door would not give. Five guards from the embassy were running down the driveway firing as they approached. Jamal hitched his head in their direction and six other men started laying down a curtain of lead that decimated the reinforcements coming to the Ambassador's aid. Jamal reached into his pocket and simply removed a duplicate set of keys. He pressed the remote and, with a click, the door of the Ambassador's compartment was unlocked. The diplomat was unceremoniously shoved into the back of one of the vans. Jamal rode with him and was the last person the Ambassador, the embodiment of American foreign policy, saw as one of the men jabbed him with a needle that would knock him out for an hour or so. The two vans then sped off in opposite directions leaving 13 security officers, all co-workers and associates of Jamal, dead or seriously wounded.

The men in the truck shouted, “Allah Akbar.” God is great.

∞§∞

At 7:30, Bill entered his office. The big news of the day was a videotape of a captured U.S. Ambassador kneeling before an Islamo-fascist flag as a hooded man held a gun to his head. In a halting, clouded voice, the armed man spouted a string of invectives against the country his captive represented. Obvious to anyone, except the anti-American crowd watching on Al Jazeera, was the fact that he was drugged, beaten, and under some duress. The Americans were threatened with the usual time limit to stop doing something that this group thought violated the sanctity of their beliefs, or the Ambassador would be beheaded. Unfortunately, everyone in the world except the “true believers” and the family and loved ones of the captive, were already bored with this brutal, theatrical bloodletting.

Like millions of Americans, Bill placed the horror of the man's plight in a corner of his mind and made way for the challenges of the day. Today that meant three staff-level meetings and a presentation to the Department of Transportation on the impact magneto-electric hover technology for high-speed trains would have on the environment and U.S. energy supplies.
Real exciting stuff… but at least someone wasn't holding an AK-47 to his soon-to-be-severed head.

Bill remembered that, in his or her country of assignment, an ambassador outranks any other American official, resident, or visiting government types, even outranking the Secretary of State or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, everyone, except the President himself.
Move on,
Bill commanded the little committee meeting of all the voices in his head.

Joey Palumbo knocked on the doorjamb. “Cheryl wasn't at her desk, so I invited myself in.”

“No problem. How are you today?”

“Good,” Joey said as he flopped into the chair opposite Bill's desk.

“Any idea how they got the Ambassador?”

“I hear there's a security tape that shows it was an inside job.”

“Some local worker?”

“No, one of ours.”

“No shit!”

“That's the only way to grab an ambassador without a full company of marines.”

“A double agent?”

“Fucking traitor. Must have masterminded the whole thing.”

“Et tu brute.”

“Et tu-xactly. Listen, I ran the Ensiling thing. All my sources are coming up natural causes – and these guys are good! You've got the Viennese Prefect of Police, Interpol, and a guy I know who's working private security for an oil company over there. They all agree – no funny business.”

“Thanks Joey. It sounded weird when he told me, but I guess Peter's got an overactive imagination.”

“Anything else I can do for you, buddy?”

“Yes, I have a meeting at three. Can you tell me how you would go about derailing a mag lev train?”

“Very cautiously, since I don't have the sligthest friggin' idea what a ‘mag lev' is!”

Bill tossed a thin, stapled stack of papers over his desk to Joey. “Take a minute to read that. Magnetic levitation is going to be the next big thing in trains. I want you to tell me if there are any more security risks than there are with conventional trains.”

“First off, ask your dad, he's the choo-choo engineer. And second, why don't you put this up on the rings and see what you get back?”

“I was just about to when you walked in, so you get to have a head start.”

∞§∞

Jamal knew the number. “Station Chief now…”

“There is no station chief here,” the voice on the other end said. “Who is calling?”

“Listen, this is Jamal. Don't waste my time and give me the CIA station chief this instant.” He looked up at his men smiling. “Technically there are no CIA officers in Egypt.”

The other end connected with a beep sequence that meant the call was being recorded. “Rumson. Who is this?”

“Earl, this is Jamal. The Islamic Brotherhood has captured an enemy of Islam and he will be tried and executed in accordance with Muslim law.”

“You are illegally detaining the personal representative of the President of the United States of America and that is an act of war. You must release him immediately.” The “
not the CIA
Station Chief
's” tone was stern and unwavering.

“You are wasting your breath, my time, and his few remaining minutes.”

“What do you want, Jamal?”

“A trade: the Ambassador for Sheik Alzir El Benhan.”

“Who?”

“You're wasting time.” Jamal closed the cell phone, dropped it to the floor, and stamped it into pieces.

∞§∞

“Who?” President Mitchell was having a bad day already. Now his Secretary of State, Charles Pickering, was playing “Name that Terrorist” with him.

“He was the mastermind behind the influenza attack. We have him in a maximum security prison in Indiana.”

“We don't negotiate with terrorists.”

“This is trading.”

“Are you saying there's a difference?”

“Yes. It's one for one. And it's back channel, not trading out in the open.”

“The world already knows Greely has been abducted. When he suddenly pops up, Chuck, they're gonna know!”

“We can generate some heat in Turtle Bay and make it look like the kidnappers unilaterally acceded to the will of the United Nations. Only we'll know it's one for one.”

“Yeah, and about that, it's only one for one if you don't count the dozen or so who were killed to kidnap the ambassador and you don't count the 26,000 estimated flu deaths this ‘Sheik' caused,” the President said sharply, then added, “And how is he a Sheik, all of the sudden?”

“Ambassador Greeley is an outstanding American who fought for this country in uniform, gave of his personal wealth to myriad charities as a civilian, and serves his country in a class one post to this day as
Ambassador A.E. & P
. Your personal representative. We have to consider this opportunity to save his life as a serious matter.”

“Serious matter? Ah hell, Chuck!”

“Sorry, wrong choice of words. Of course, you are serious. I meant that this terrorist offer is serious.”

“Look, if we do this ‘trade' then every Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary who works for you, for me, becomes the coin of the realm to every fanatic with a grudge against the U.S. or General Motors for that matter. You know that.”

“The alternative is to show the world we can't get our ambassador back.”

“How long do we have?”

“Maybe 24 to 36 hours. Then they'll either kill him, contact us, or, worse, send out an Al Jazeera video.”

Mitchell turned to his Chief-of-Staff, Ray Reynolds. “I want to know if I have any military options. Press the Egyptians hard on where they are holding him. Get me any international law – hell, even diplomatic protocol – that we can have Susan wave at the Security Council up in New York. And for God's sake hold this tight.”

“I agree,” Pickering said. “We must consider this ‘close hold.' The press would have a field day.”

“Screw the press. I don't want his wife, Stella, to raise any false hopes of a trade until, and if, it becomes the new policy of the United States.”

With that, the men left the room. Mitchell looked out the window into the Rose Garden. He knew that any effort through the U.N. was futile; international law didn't cover this unless the U.S. was going to accuse Egypt of being complicit. Besides, his own administration's Middle East initiatives would preclude strong-arming a friend in the Security Council. At best, a public display of condemnation was a publicity stunt that could possibly have misdirection value if U.S. forces had to go in. Mitchell also knew committing U.S. forces, to invade a sovereign nation – an ally – was risky business. On the other hand, to let an ambassador die, only to protest it to the world afterwards, seemed like a damn bad use of a good man's life. Yet, to save him by any means of negotiated release meant to hang an open season hunting tag on any official of the U.S. Government. For a moment, Mitchell had a terrible thought:
Why couldn't they have just killed him.
He actually shook his head to erase that insane, cold-hearted notion.

His personal assistant entered quietly and said softly, “Mr. President, the Speaker of the House is here for your 10:15 meeting.” Like so many other Americans that morning, Mitchell had to relegate any further thought of the ambassador's dilemma to a far recess of his mind so that the rest of his brain could work on the matter's of the Nation's business.