The Lost Codex (43 page)

73

V
ail came around the edge of the desk and studied Sahmoud. He was leaking blood from an abdominal wound and was in a great deal of pain. Given their covert status, there was no way to get him the kind of medical attention he needed to save his life. How long he had she did not know. Because of their training, Uzi or DeSantos could make a more accurate assessment.

“Get me to a hospital and I will make sure you are well compensated,” Sahmoud said through clenched teeth.

“Call Mo,” Uzi said. “Tell him we’ve got Sahmoud but not Rudenko.”

“Copy that,” DeSantos said as he removed his phone.

“The dumbwaiter,” Sahmoud said. “He’s … gone.”

Vail moved across the room and examined the small elevator. She craned her neck and looked up the shaft and saw that the car was on a level maybe twenty feet above her.
Is Sahmoud telling the truth or is Rudenko hiding somewhere?
As Vail turned to face the room, a group text arrived from Fahad:

infrared shows man moving away from
back of house on foot. cant pursue


Rudenko! Son of a bitch.

She glanced at DeSantos and shook her head. She replied and told Fahad to make sure there were no surveillance cameras—and if there were, to erase any recordings.

While DeSantos patted down the dead guards, Vail turned her attention to the primary objective and began a systematic search of the room. She did not have far to look: a walk-in safe behind the desk, a few feet from Uzi, was ajar. She pulled the six-foot-tall metal door open enough for her to enter and turned on her phone’s flashlight.

On the left side were a number of flat cases and assorted cardboard rolls, stacks of money of various denominations—shekels, dollars, pounds, euros. A large velvet pouch of uncut diamonds. Several canvases of what looked like Renaissance era paintings.

As she sifted through the contents of the shelves, she heard Uzi and DeSantos begin to interrogate Sahmoud.

Off to the right she saw a portfolio that was strikingly similar to the leather cases she had seen in the Louvre restoration vault. She set it on a small table in the center of the vault and carefully unzipped it.

Whoa. So this is the Aleppo Codex.

It was as the rabbis in Brooklyn had described: once bound, now mostly loose pages of about 10x13, dark brown ink on tan parchment, roughly thirty lines to a column, three columns to a page. The handwriting was so perfect it could have been typeset on a computer.

Her palms were sweaty, her heart still racing—but it was not just the residual adrenaline. She was holding one of the most important documents produced by mankind. It brought back memories of her first trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a young art history major and seeing Diego Velazquez’s oil on canvas,
Juan Pareja
.

The scroll?

Vail closed the portfolio and pulled off the metal endcap of a spiral wound cardboard shipping tube. She peered inside: another parchment, this one looking a good deal more fragile. She did not want to risk pulling it out for fear of damaging it. Vail opened three others—and while each contained what appeared to be valuable documents, none matched the description of a Dead Sea Scroll.

“How’s he doing?” Vail asked, poking her head out of the vault.

“Not very cooperative,” Uzi said. “He confirmed that Rudenko sold him the scroll. Rudenko bought it twenty-some-odd years ago from someone who smuggled it out of the Vatican.”

“So the Vatican got its hands on it?” Vail asked.

“They offered nineteen million dollars to get it back. Sahmoud made a better offer. No one knew who had it. He felt now was the time to sell because of what he’d been told about the peace negotiations.”

“He was right,” DeSantos said. He was standing beside the kneeling Uzi, the pilfered AK-47 in his grasp, legs spread. A position of readiness.

Vail whispered in DeSantos’s ear, “With the gunshots, even down here, there’s gotta be others on their way. And someone may discover the dead guard at the gate. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want any part of that.”

“Especially with Fahad watching the shop. What about the codex and the scr—”

“Got both.”

DeSantos nudged Uzi in the shoulder. “Boychick, we gotta go.”

“Take me with you,” Sahmoud said through a tight jaw. “I’ll pay you … Two million each.”

Uzi laughed.

Sahmoud winced. “Diamonds in the vault … worth twenty-five million. Take them … they’re yours.”

“They’re ours anyway,” DeSantos said. He lifted his phone and took a snapshot of their prisoner’s face. “We should leave him here.”

Sahmoud began to laugh—a rough chuckle that had a raspy edge to it.

“What’s so funny?” Uzi asked.

“The man who made all this possible. One of your own.” Laugh. Wince.

“What are you talking about? Who made what possible?”

Sahmoud’s head fell back against the wood desk. “He … helped us locate the bank. He … made it possible … to buy the scroll.” His eyes closed.

C’mon asshole, don’t die on us now.

Uzi and Vail shared a concerned look—but he started talking again.

“His idea to use it … to leverage … the Israelis. Knew they’d give in … Not many weaknesses … but their holy books … their holy land … can’t help themselves.” He laughed again, brought his knees up to his chest. “He found out … FBI director coming … to make sure … I was sent to … America … for trial. Warned me.”

Uzi got in his face. “Who? Who warned you?”

He opened one eye. “Take me …”

Uzi hesitated, then said, “Fine. We’ll take you with us.” He turned to DeSantos and said, as convincingly as possible, “Get something to use as a stretcher.” Back to Sahmoud: “
Who
warned you?”

He swallowed, licked his lips. “Ward … Connerly.”

74

T
he president’s chief of staff?” Uzi glanced at DeSantos, the look saying, “So it wasn’t Mo.”

“That’s why you planted the burned body,” Vail said.

Sahmoud managed a crooked grin, his eyes closed, his voice weak. “You weren’t … smart enough … to get the … clue.”

“Clue?” DeSantos asked.

The note pinned to the Times Square vic. The first ward. Ward Connerly. “First” applies to the president, like the First Lady, the first dog. The president’s chief of staff.

She explained it to Uzi and DeSantos.

“Nothing … you can do …” Sahmoud said. “Never … find … evidence …” His voice tailed off, his arms went limp, and his head dropped to his chest.

DeSantos pressed two fingers against Sahmoud’s neck, then straightened up. “Looks like he’s reached his end of days.”

“WHAT ARE WE GOING TO do about this?” Vail asked.

“Nothing,” DeSantos said, feeling for hidden compartments in the desk. “Our job’s done. We’ll give it to Knox, let him run with it. Right now we grab what we can, get the hell out of here.”

“Sahmoud could’ve been telling the truth,” Vail said. “Guys like Ward Connerly know how to cover their tracks, they use straw men to do the dirty work. If there’s nothing out there linking him to this—”

Uzi walked into the vault and started rummaging around. “There’s more than one way to build a case. It may take a while, but we’ll get him.” He pulled out his phone, put it on speaker, and set it on the table.

“Rodman.”

“Hot Rod, it’s Uzi. Sorry to wake you.”

“Wake me? Been at the ops center pulling double shifts. What do you need?”

“Ward Connerly. Get what you can on him.”

“The president’s chief of staff?”

Uzi explained what Sahmoud had told them. “Any connections to Middle Eastern types that look suspicious, dig deep. Speed matters.”

“We’ll get a team on it right now. Hodges,” he shouted away from the phone, “get your ass over here.” Back into the handset, he said, “If there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”

“We’ll be on the move. Anything comes up, tell Knox and Hoshi Koh at my office.”

“Got something,” DeSantos said. He handed it to Vail, who brought it to Uzi.

“Hang on a sec,” he said to Rodman. Uzi studied the two-page printout for a moment, then said, “Looks like a list of al Humat cells in the US, with contact numbers for what could be the leader of each one. Hot Rod, I’ll send it over to you. You’ll need an Arabic translator.”

“We’re on it. Check six.”

Uzi hung up, then took a photo of the spreadsheet and emailed it to Rodman.

“If that’s what you think it is,” DeSantos said, “that’s a huge win.”

Uzi opened a cabinet in the vault and rifled through its contents. “We’ll see. No idea how up-to-date it is—assuming I’m right.” His back to DeSantos, he said, “But I don’t share your optimism about bringing Connerly to justice.”

“I think we should be happy with our score and call it a damn fine job.”

Vail checked her watch, then pulled open another desk drawer.
“
Assholes getting away with a crime doesn’t sit well with me. Especially when those assholes are in positions of power.” She found a booklet made of clear plastic sleeves containing maps. Although she could not read the Arabic, it had GPS coordinates and was marked up meticulously with bold blue and red lines crisscrossing the pages.

Vail walked back into the vault and showed it to Uzi. “What is this?”

He flipped through the pages and paused to read the Arabic. “A diagram of their tunnels. Red for the ones that go into Israel. Blue for the ones coming from Egypt into Gaza. That’s gold. Take it with us, we’ll turn it over to the IDF.”

As Vail shoved the booklet into the back of her waistband, she noticed that Uzi was slowly unrolling a parchment.

He stooped over the document as he read the Hebrew. “This is it.”

“The Jesus Scroll?”

Uzi brought his gaze up to hers. She saw wonderment in his eyes, nothing short of amazement.

“I’m actually holding one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The same one that my zayde—my grandfather—held.” He gestured to the thick stack of pages at his right elbow. “And the Aleppo Codex. We found it. We
really
found the codex.” He shivered. “Sorry. I just … I feel like I’m touching my history. My cultural
essence
.” He shook his head. “I’m babbling.”

“I understand.” Vail inched closer for a better look. “It
is
extraordinary.”

A moment later, Uzi straightened up suddenly. “We’ve gotta get going. Go help Santa finish our search. I’m gonna pack this stuff up. All we have to do now is get it to the Antiquities Authority.”

UZI EMERGED with four containers. “I’ve divided up the documents into these cases. Safer that way. Something happens, one or two of us is more likely to make it through. Avoids the all eggs in one basket thing.” He kept a mailing tube for himself, handed another one to Vail, and gave the portfolio to DeSantos, who also took Fahad’s satchel.

“We’ve been here too long,” DeSantos said as he consulted his satphone. “We need to go. Call Fahad, get a status.”

Vail did so and headed for the stairs. Fahad answered immediately. “Mo, we’re coming upst—”

“We got a problem.”

Vail stopped at the bottom of the steps, phone pressed against her ear. “What kind of problem?”

“Vehicles approaching. Army vehicles. Shit, Karen. It’s al Humat. And they’re armed. We’ve gotta get out of here, now!”

They ran up to the main level, where Fahad was waiting. DeSantos handed him the satchel as they all moved to the back of the house. “We’ve divided up the docs, each of us has a part.”

“Good idea,” Fahad said as he slung the bag over his shoulder.

Uzi pulled the back door open. “Split up, meet at the Shrine of the Book. Go!”

75

V
ail ran through the yard in a northerly direction, scaled a masonry wall, and ended up in a lightly landscaped greenbelt. She fastened her scarf as she continued on past palm trees and meticulously pruned hedges, then made her way back to the street.

Fifteen minutes later, after finding a dark, well shielded area, she stopped to try to get a bearing on where she was. She knew that Google Earth and Bing Maps did not provide clear satellite imagery of Israel and the Palestinian territories, so she had to rely on regular street maps and general topography. Unless—

Is
the drone still overhead?
She pulled out her satphone and tried to call up the real-time imagery. It was no longer online—but then she remembered she had the booklet tucked in her waistband.

That it was written in a foreign language was challenging, but she was able to get a sense of the area using the coastline and beach as a reference point. There were a couple of tunnels into Israel that appeared to be nearby.

She plugged in the GPS coordinates of the closest one and followed the screen to set off in the right direction. By her estimate, she was about three miles away. What would the entrance look like? She had seen CNN videos during the war, but those were mostly the openings on the Israeli side, holes that emerged from rock outcroppings in rural areas.

For now, her main concerns were finding a way to traverse the distance and arriving safely. Not knowing who she could trust and not speaking Arabic, she could not pass for anything other than what she was: an American, or at best, a westerner. Who was working with al Humat or Hamas or Islamic Jihad? It would be impossible for her to tell.

She had to think like a Special Forces operator, not an FBI agent.
When I get back, if Knox insists on keeping me in OPSIG, I want more training. I need to know what the hell I’m doing. Enough of this on-the-job bullshit.

The air had grown chilled, the sky overcast. A light drizzle had begun falling.

Vail came to a suburban neighborhood, not nearly as well kept or affluent as the area of Gaza City and resort community she had seen. Plain-faced concrete apartment buildings rose all around her. Graffiti marked the sides of most structures in all directions. The streets were illuminated, but not well lit, which both played to her advantage and placed her in greater danger.

She perused the parked cars and tried the driver’s doors as she passed. All were locked. Even if she got into one, it might take her a while to remember how to hotwire it. The last thing she wanted to do was get caught trying to steal someone’s vehicle in Gaza—especially since her clothing was soaked in blood.

She placed a hand on her Glock and walked down the street. A moment later, a dark sedan turned the corner, headed toward her. Engage or not? She stepped in front of it and held up a hand.
A woman standing in the rain. In distress, with blood on her clothes. How could he ignore that?

As anticipated, the driver stopped. Vail smiled broadly and moved around to the window, which cranked open, revealing a male who looked to be in his mid-twenties. He said something in Arabic, then flashed a grin of his own. It did not last long, however, as Vail brought the Glock up and shoved it into his temple.

“Get out,” she said firmly by his ear. Vail did not know if he spoke English, but he seemed to understand the language of aggression because he put the car in park and opened the door. Vail kept her handgun trained on him as he got out.

“Sorry,” she said. “Very sorry. I’ll take good care of it.” She pulled the beat-up Honda into gear and accelerated away from him. After making a few quick turns, she pulled out the satphone and checked the display to see if she was pointed in the right direction. The receiver was having a difficult time getting a signal.

Shit, the clouds. The weather, it can’t get a lock on the satellite
.

It flashed a blinking red warning across the display: NO SATELLITES. Five intolerable seconds passed—during which Vail held her breath—before a green message appeared: RETRIEVING SATELLITE DATA. The mapping image populated the screen and she sighed relief.

One left turn later and she was on track, headed for the tunnel.

FAHAD MADE IT SAFELY AWAY from Sahmoud’s house, but not without a brush with a trailing al Humat SUV. He felt it was best to make a non-stealth exit, moving through the adjacent yards before emerging on the side of a home and appearing to be coming from the garage. He had examined his clothing for blood earlier, while standing guard, and reversed his jacket to hide the lone blood spatter.

The satchel was in his right hand as he walked along the sidewalk, glancing over his shoulder at the military vehicles bearing the familiar al Humat window sticker.

He had hoped to avoid contact but was almost inviting it by strolling past their convoy. When the militant stopped his car and whistled at Fahad to approach, he pointed at his chest and asked in Arabic, “Me?”

The man extended his hand out the window and wiggled his fingers. “Come here.”

Fahad stepped off the curb and had started toward the SUV when shouting down the street caught the driver’s attention. He swung his head toward the disturbance, then accelerated hard, burning rubber.

Fahad figured they had discovered one or more of the dead guards. He continued on down the street, casually glancing left and right, counting the seconds until he was out of their view.

He passed the security booth where another al Humat officer was examining the guard. His neck was broken, so there were no overt signs of death like a gunshot or knife wound. It would take him a bit to determine why the man was not responsive.

Fahad picked up his pace and covered at least half a mile before turning right down a side street.

CIA Director Tasset had put him on the OPSIG team to deliver the codex and scroll to one of several safe houses the Agency maintained throughout the world—including one on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

But Knox had directed them to turn the artifacts over to the Israelis.

His course of action should be clear. He was a CIA officer and he was given orders—his sole reason for being on this operation was to secure the documents for the Agency. He answered to the director. But he only had a portion of them. Was his role, his covert mission within a black op, still significant?

He pivoted 360 degrees. The apartment building he was looking for was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a vast lot and an enormous pile of concrete rubble—likely one of the many Hamas structures destroyed during the recent Gaza war. An Agency informant claimed that a lot of the money donated to Hamas for rebuilding had been stolen and diverted—which could explain why the debris was still sitting there.

He stopped a woman coming down the street with her young son and asked if she knew where his friends had moved. She turned and pointed. “It’s an apartment building, on the corner, two blocks away. Second floor, I think.”

Fahad slung the satchel over his left shoulder and proceeded down the street. He turned onto the broken cement path that led to the front door and consulted the listing of names posted at the foot of the stairs. He ascended a couple of flights, and a moment later a middle-aged woman came to the door.

“Mahmoud!” Karima stepped forward and gave him a hearty embrace, then leaned back and appraised his face. “What are you doing here?”

“In for a visit, to see my family. Pay my brother a visit.”

Her bright expression sagged. “Your brother?”

“We’ve patched things up.”

Karima stepped back. “Good. That’s good.” She took his hand and turned, leading him toward the kitchen. “When did you get in?”

“This morning.”

Karima let go of his hand, turned around, and smiled. “It’s wonderful to see you. You look good. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“I’ve still got that job in Virginia. Things have been busy. And you?”

Her smile faded. “Things are not so good with Hamid. He—” She stopped, glanced around, found Fahad’s eyes and said, “he’s mixed up with al Humat. I told him it would only bring bad things to our family. But the money is …” She shook her head. “He said he wants to do this.”

Hamid’s involvement with al Humat introduced a variable Fahad had not anticipated. He rubbed at his temple. “Hamid’s always had a rebellious streak.”

“So have you.” She grinned again, tried to lighten the sudden tension in the air. “Sit down, stay awhile. Coffee? Hamid will be home soon. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

“Hamid and I didn’t exactly leave things in a good place.” Fahad’s forehead sprouted perspiration. The last thing he needed was to confront Hamid. Was he merely a sympathizer? Soldier? Official? Knowing his friend, it was all three: he was not someone who followed; he led.

With what Fahad was holding in the satchel, and the fresh news that Kadir Abu Sahmoud had been killed, running into Hamid could be disastrous. He took a step back out of the kitchen. “Besides, I can’t stay. I just wanted to stop by and see how you two were doing.” He had come to ask a favor, but now his sole focus was to get out of the apartment.

Before Karima could reply, a key slipped into the front door and the lock turned. Fahad’s head whipped around as his free hand slid toward his Glock. A second later, a man walked in wearing a black shirt. With an embroidered al Humat patch.