The Last Judgment (41 page)

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 been 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

“A
ND SO
, M
R
. M
AGNIT, 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 Druze, 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…”

“What other things did you believe you had discovered that the Druze had not? Anything about the time of the appearing of the messiah—the reincarnation of the Caliph al-Hakim?”