The Lost Codex (37 page)

PART 3

“Blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it, and cursed be he who pawns it. It may not be sold and it may not be defiled forever.”

—Aleppo Codex
preamble, 930 CE

“It is the Holy Land. It’s called that for a reason. It’s holy to the three great monotheistic religions. That’s two billion Christians, one billion and a half Muslims, and 14 million Jews. That’s almost half the world. So what happens there matters.”

—E
THAN
B
RONNER
,
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
DEPUTY NATIONAL EDITOR,
WNYC O
N THE
M
EDIA PODCAST,
O
CTOBER
9, 2014

61

Approach to Ben Gurion International Airport

Tel Aviv, Israel

T
hree hours passed too quickly. When Vail’s phone alarm went off, she did not want to open her eyes, let alone get out of bed. It took her a moment to orient herself—but a short bump of turbulence was enough to shake her mind back to the present. They had given her the master bedroom, which, with a pillow-topped mattress, provided the most comfortable experience she had ever had on an airplane.

This is the way to travel.

They convened in the main cabin in leather chairs that surrounded the table. Large mugs of coffee were at each seat, black and steaming.

“Caffeine,” DeSantos said, setting a carafe of milk next to Uzi. “Drink up, get your heads in order.”

Uzi rubbed his eyes and did a couple neck rotations. “Let’s get started.”

“Some information’s come in while we were sleeping,” DeSantos said. “First, Prati said they took down that van without a fight. They found the same radiological material that was packed into the truck in New York City. The tangos were arrested and are being questioned. All the defense contractors in LA are in lockdown. All incoming and outgoing communications for the past year are being checked. Hard drives and servers are being examined. It’s a friggin’ mess, but they’ll find him. Or her.”

“And the Cortez tunnels?” Fahad asked.

“They’re working on it.”

Vail suddenly did not need the java to wake up.

“Second,” DeSantos said, “Knox is en route. And we’ve got new orders.”

They waited for him to elaborate. Instead, he took a drink from his cup.

“The president does not want us to apprehend Sahmoud,” he said after another swallow. He’s concerned it’d send the wrong message while he’s trying to negotiate peace.”

Vail slammed her hand on the table. “Arresting a notorious terrorist, number three most wanted, who’s launched attacks on the US and killed scores of people—that’s sending the wrong message?” She turned to Uzi. “You have a relationship with the president. Why don’t you talk some sense into him?”

Uzi broke a smile. “We don’t have a relationship. I was at his inauguration.”

DeSantos took another drink. “Doesn’t matter. We’re not going to obey those orders.”

“We’re not?” Fahad said, eyebrows arched. He tilted his head. “Shouldn’t we put this to a vote?”

DeSantos stared him down. “No, Knox and Secretary McNamara are on board.”

Fahad squirmed in his seat. “You’re sure. The director told you this.”

“In so many words. He used a passphrase.”

“A passphrase.” Fahad glanced at Uzi, then back at DeSantos. “I think we need to be absolutely clear on this.”

“Let
me
be clear,” DeSantos said. “You can accept what I’m telling you, or you can stay on this plane when we land. Or you’re welcome to parachute out at any time during the next ninety minutes.”

“Okay, let’s all just take a breath,” Vail said slowly. “Hector. Knox gave you new orders but then told you not to follow them. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Right. Maybe someone was there with him, so he had to be appearing to tell me one thing when in fact he was telling me the opposite. Bottom line, nothing’s changed. But I wanted you to be aware of what was going on.”

That’d be great if I really knew what’s going on.

“Boychick, you got us set up with wheels?”

“A friend’s going to pick us up at Ben Gurion. Raphael Zemro. Former Shin Bet—Israel’s security agency—which is where I met him. He’s now a contractor. He may still do stuff for Shin Bet or Mossad, I’m not sure. But he understands what we’re doing. He speaks our language. We’ll be able to rely on him.”

They talked strategy for the next thirty minutes then DeSantos left them to their own thoughts during the approach to Israel.

Vail watched as the landscape took shape, darkness enveloping the region for as far as the eye could see, except for brilliant pinpricks of light in one particular area, which she was fairly certain was Israel.

They were on the ground ten minutes later. It was a quiet arrival—the airport was, for all intents and purposes, still closed. Jumbo jets, mostly 747s emblazoned with the El Al Israeli flag logo, sat on the tarmac awaiting the morning’s travelers.

They were met at the gate by an Israel Defense Forces colonel, which had been arranged by Knox with cooperation from his counterpart at the Shin Bet.

Vail, Uzi, DeSantos, and Fahad were ushered through Ben Gurion airport. They strode along the strongly sloped arrivals hall beside a divider made of tall, thick panes of glass. On the other side was another walkway sloped in the opposite direction, bounded by large bricks constructed to look like the Kotel, or Western Wall, one of the last vestiges of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and Judaism’s holiest site.

They hit the main terminal, a spherical room that featured a two-story, circular waterfall that cascaded down from the ceiling to a shallow trough in the center of the floor.

The area was ringed by shops that were dark. The quiet of the airport was a bit unnerving.

The colonel led them through customs, stopping briefly to speak Hebrew to another soldier who had an MTAR-21 “Micro Tavor” assault rifle strapped across his shoulder. Minutes later, they were at the arrivals curb outside baggage. A dark-skinned man in his forties was leaning his buttocks against his black Chevrolet SUV, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Uzi, he tossed the butt to the ground and advanced rapidly, a smile on his face and his arms spread wide.

“Raph. Great to see you.”

The two men embraced, then Zemro leaned back to appraise his friend. “You look like shit. See, you never should have left Israel.”

“I had to, you know that. And you—a little less hair, but you’re looking good. Still smoking, though.”

“Old habits, you know?”

Vail snorted.
Yeah. I know.

Uzi introduced everyone and they shook hands.

“Call me Raph.” Zemro’s accent was thick but his speech clear and easy to understand.

Zemro was an Ethiopian Israeli, Uzi explained, having been one of the many who were rescued in Operation Solomon, a covert military operation in 1991 that airlifted over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to safety in a space of thirty-six hours when the Ethiopian government was on the verge of falling.

As they piled into Zemro’s vehicle he looked around and said, “No bags?”

“Packed light,” Vail said. In fact, they had left their belongings behind at the Relais Bosquet. Claude and his team had already picked them up and, by now, had disposed of them.

Zemro made a quick assessment and nodded his understanding. “Anything you need, I’ll do my best to get it for you. Shower, clothes, food—”

“We could use some information,” DeSantos said. “We’re looking for Kadir Abu Sahmoud and Doka Michel. Sahmoud’s office and a safe house Michel’s using.”

Zemro laughed, then reached forward and turned over the engine. “My friends, you realize these are—what do you say, a tall order?”

Vail chuckled as well.
I’d like to change my order, if you don’t mind. Something on the safer side.

“You know what’s gone down in the US,” Uzi said. “And England.”

“I understand what’s at stake. I’m just reminding you of what things are like here. I think you should be realistic.”

“Being realistic isn’t part of this op,” DeSantos said.

Zemro shrugged. “I can take you to see a guy, one of my informants. I don’t know if he’ll be able to help you. This is more than anything we’ve ever asked of him.”

“Something’s better than nothing,” Vail said. “Maybe he can point us in the right direction. Informants sometimes know more than they think. If they’re given the right enticements.”

Zemro grinned and he winked at Vail. “I like the way you think. This is true. But Hamas, al Humat, Islamic Jihad, these are bad people, you know? The worst of the worst. Very dangerous. They profit from the terrorism. Very much.”

“Profit?” Vail asked. “What do you mean?”

Zemro accelerated and merged onto Highway 1 headed for Jerusalem. “Things are not like you know in America. The PLO—you know what PLO is, right? Palestinian Liberation Organization, they run the PA, the Palestinian Authority.”

“Yeah,” Vail said. “Got that. I read the news.”

Zemro laughed again. “Then you know nothing. The news, the journalists, they are tools of the PLO and Hamas propaganda. Most of them, the media doesn’t know they’re being manipulated. Some don’t care. But back to your question. The Palestinian Authority’s taken money, billions of dollars from international donors—including your country—to build out its government, to make jobs, a police force and other institutions for the people. But most of that money never got spent on any of that. It went to corrupt politicians, their personal bank accounts.”

“And no one knows about this?”

“
Everyone
knows.”

Vail turned around to Fahad, who was seated behind Zemro. “Mo, you know about this?”

“Like Raph said, it’s not a secret. Arafat was the worst. His personal estate is worth billions, holed away in foreign countries. He skimmed, he stole, he diverted. I wish I could tell you things are different now. But—”

“Why don’t we do something to stop it?” Vail asked.

Fahad grinned sardonically. “We’ve got a saying at Langley: the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. We’re in no rush to push anyone out the door.”

“Last year,” Zemro said, “a senior security officer for Fatah sued a top Palestinian Authority official, claiming he stole over a billion dollars from Palestinian coffers.”

“It’s a lot worse than that,” Fahad said. “Hamas and al Humat leadership control the smuggling tunnels they’ve built from Egypt into Gaza. The stuff that’s brought through—food, cement, oil and gas, medical supplies, you name it—it’s all highly taxed with the graft going to their personal bank accounts. In the US we call it organized crime. In
any
civilized country, it’s called a damn shame. The people need that money.”

“You said they profit from the terrorism.”

“Oh yes,” Zemro said. “If there is no uprising, no ‘resistance’ fight with Israel as the bad guy, the money does not flow in from Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia. Big fund-raising is done for the welfare and relief of the Palestinian people. But the people do not get the money. Or welfare or relief. The terrorist leaders and their families,
they
get rich.”

An hour later Zemro was navigating the surface streets outside the walls of the Old City. He found a curb spot on King David Street and they walked through the modern Alrov Mamilla Avenue, an outdoor shopping center with upscale retailers and restaurants on both sides of a central walkway. Constructed of masonry block designed to mimic the Western Wall, it incorporated open air arches above the pedestrian promenade to help the mall blend with the adjacent Old City’s architecture.

“I’m going ahead,” Fahad said. “Best that I’m not seen with you. I run into someone I know, or if your CI knows I’m with the Agency—or if he even associates me with law enforcement because of you guys, I’ll blow my cover.”

“Where you headed?” Uzi asked.

“I’ll see if I can find some people I know, ask around, get some intel. Let me know when you’re done with your meeting.”

The rest of them continued through the mall, but most of the stores were still dark.

“We’re early,” Zemro said as he led them to a contemporary-looking coffee shop. “The place I’m taking you to isn’t open yet. We’ll get something to eat, kill some time.”

Vail was both tired and hungry, so she welcomed the caffeine and muffin. They sat in the sleek café nursing their drinks, Vail examining the chocolate brown cup with Hebrew lettering. “What does this say?”

Uzi, who seemed preoccupied, glanced over. “Aroma. It’s a chain of cafés in Israel. Like Starbucks, much smaller scale.”

A few employees from nearby shops filtered in to get their coffee as stores across the pedestrian walkway began opening for business.

“Probably best if I wander about on my own too,” DeSantos said. “There are people in the biz I could run into. Not worth taking the chance being seen with a former Shin Bet operative. Don’t know who you can trust to keep their traps shut. Let me know how your meet goes.”

As DeSantos headed out the door, Zemro gestured at the wall clock. “We should go. It’ll take us a little while to get there.”

THEY WALKED THROUGH THE PROMENADE and exited the mall, crossing Yafo Street. The sun had risen about ninety minutes earlier and the developing morning light cast an orange-yellow glow on the sand-colored rock of the ancient stone fortifications that bordered the Old City. Its ridged castle-like teeth along the top gave it the appearance of a garrison—which it had to become millennia ago because of invading armies that repeatedly attacked, and sacked, Jerusalem.

As they approached the Jaffa Gate, one of eight entrances to the walled-off city, Vail pointed at something in the stone facing. “Is that?” She stepped closer. “Are those bullet holes?”

“From the War of Independence,” Uzi said. “It’s always been a place under siege, even in modern times.”

They followed Zemro through the Christian Quarter, past the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—which Vail would have liked to see, regardless of the Jesus Scroll’s revelations—and into the Muslim Quarter.

They moved down the myriad streets and alleys of the Arab souk, a long, narrow flea market comprising stalls where vendors sold a variety of items from shawls, hats, trinkets, and Holy Land postcards to cured meats and costume jewelry.

Uzi stopped at one and bought Vail a black scarf, which he told her to wrap over her hair. “You’ll blend in better. It’s a good idea for where we’re going.”

They came to an area that contained traditional storefront businesses, including one that bore a large sign in both English and Arabic that read:

Khaleel’s Antiquities

Wholesale & Retail

Artifacts & Numismatics

A gray-bearded man was sitting on a chair in the front. Zemro shook hands with him—and Vail was fairly certain he had deposited a monetary note of some sort in the elder’s palm as he passed.