The Omega Theory (24 page)

Olam frowned. “You’re forgetting something. Excalibur was developed in the last years of the cold war, when the Americans and Soviets were busy spying on each other. The national laboratories were prime targets of intelligence operations in those days. If one side developed a new technology, the other side could usually copy it within a few years.”

“What are you saying? The Soviets had their own X-ray laser?”

“According to my sources, they built it at the Semipalatinsk test site. But they ran into the same technical problems that stopped the Americans. So in 1990 they gave up and put the device in storage at a military depot in Turkmenistan. When the Soviet Union broke up in ’91, the army didn’t bother to take the laser back to Russia. They considered the thing useless, so they left it at the depot with all their other surplus equipment.” He placed his hands flat on the desk and rose to his feet. “That’s where we’re going. Some of my old friends have agreed to lend us a transport plane. It leaves from Ramat David Air Base in two hours.”

“You’re planning an operation with the IDF?”

He shook his head. “I told you, we can’t trust anyone in the Israeli or American governments. The
Qliphoth
have collaborators everywhere. How do you think they smuggled Excalibur out of the Livermore lab? No, I’m organizing this mission outside the official channels. Look around and you’ll see the members of our strike team.” He pointed at the pair of guards behind David’s chair. When David turned around, he saw that the
kippot srugot
weren’t aiming their Uzis at his head anymore. “Twenty men are going with us. Most are old comrades I served with in the
Sayeret Matkal
. The transport plane will take us to Baku, in Azerbaijan, and then we’ll take a chartered boat across the Caspian Sea. The depot in Turkmenistan is fairly close to the seashore.”

Monique looked askance. “You think the X-ray laser’s still there? After all these years?”

“It’s there. I confirmed it with my contacts at Mossad, which has a very good network of agents in Central Asia. And now we’re going to find the device and destroy it.”

David leaned across Olam’s desk. “What about Michael? We have to find him, too.”

Olam walked around the desk and came toward him. He towered over David. His biceps were level with David’s nose, and his body odor was overpowering. “Michael is with the
Qliphoth,
I’m sure of it. And the
Qliphoth
will also be looking for the laser, so I suspect we’ll find him in Turkmenistan.”

“Then we’re coming with you,” David said. He raised his chin and looked Olam in the eye. “We have to make sure that Michael is safe.”

For a moment Olam just stared at him. Then he threw one of his massive arms around David’s shoulders. “Of course you’re coming with us! Why do you think we brought you here?” He gave David a look that was half admiring and half amused. “Jacob told me what happened two years ago, how you and Dr. Reynolds rescued the
Einheitliche Feldtheorie
. Haven’t you realized by now that you’re an instrument of
Keter
?”

“
Keter?
What’s that?”

“It’s the highest of the
Sephirot,
the first step in the enumeration of the universe. The instrument of
Keter
has a special place in the divine plan. That’s why you’re here, why all these crazy things keep happening to you.
Keter
is God’s most powerful tool, and now you will bring us victory!”

While Olam squeezed his shoulder, another guard came into the room and spoke a few words in Hebrew. Olam nodded, then turned back to David. “My men have finished interrogating Agent Parker and Mr. Goldberg. Neither is a spy, which is lucky. Now they can join the fight. Once I show them how deeply the
Qliphoth
have infiltrated their agencies, they’ll see why we have to go off the radar.” Keeping his arm around David, Olam led him across the room, stepping toward the large steel-gray cabinet. It had a pair of sliding metal doors, each five feet high and four feet wide. “I want Agent Parker to come to Turkmenistan with us. I could use another good soldier. But I have a different job for Mr. Goldberg.”

“You should probably talk to them before you—”

“No, Mr. Goldberg will like this job. He’s going to decode some messages for me. With a little help from this machine.” Olam grasped the knob on one of the cabinet’s sliding doors and pulled it open. Inside the cabinet was a crowded mass of wires and electronics. Hundreds of small glass tubes were arranged in neat rows. “The Caduceus Array isn’t the only project I’ve been working on. I thought of a way to build something else from Jacob’s trapped-ion technology.”

David peered into the cabinet. He looked closer at one of the glass tubes and saw a pair of needlelike electrodes inside. It was a single-ion trap, just like the ones in the Caduceus Array, but David got the feeling that this device wasn’t a clock. The tubes were connected to optical fibers that tangled together in an unruly skein. It looked a bit like the inside of a FiOS junction box, with dozens of fiber-optic lines delivering streams of data every which way.

As David studied the machine, trying to make sense of it, Monique let out a delighted gasp. “Oh my God. You’ve got hundreds of ions here!”

Olam nodded. “Four thousand and ninety-six, to be exact.”

“And they’re all linked together by fiber-optic lines!” Monique pointed at the tangle of glass fibers. “Each ion emits optical signals that travel through the lines, right? And those signals enable the ions to interact and perform calculations?”

“It was a good idea, yes? This quantum computer is the first in the world that can actually do something useful.”

“But how did you do it? I thought the technology wasn’t ready yet. Isn’t that why Jacob gave up on quantum computing?”

Olam’s face turned serious. “I succeeded because I needed to succeed. We will use this computer in our battle against the
Qliphoth
.”

AFTER SUNSET NICO SWITCHED TO HIS INFRARED BINOCULARS, WHICH
showed the trailers of Shalhevet as glowing white rectangles against the black hilltop. The Israelis and Americans had tried to evade his surveillance by sneaking off to this settlement on the West Bank, but Nico had followed them. Now he hid behind a boulder on a neighboring hillside, about two hundred meters away. Shalhevet was full of armed Jews, some patrolling the outpost’s perimeter and others guarding the large trailer where Olam ben Z’man was conferring with his men. Nico had caught a glimpse of Olam earlier. He matched the description that Cyrus’s informants had provided: a big, bald
kelb
wearing a black eye patch.

Just as Nico was about to move to a closer observation point, several figures emerged from the trailers. The infrared display in his binoculars didn’t show much detail, but he saw enough to recognize two of the figures as Swift and Reynolds. A half-dozen bearded Zionists escorted them back to their van and stepped into the vehicle with them. Then Olam came out of his trailer with the silver-haired FBI agent and walked toward an identical van. Nico clenched his right hand, suppressing an impulse to grab his rifle. His orders had been clear: don’t attack until you’re certain you can kill all of them. So he did nothing but observe the pair of vans as they left the settlement, trundling down a dirt trail that led to the highway. Although neither driver turned on his headlights, the warm engines and exhaust pipes glowed brightly in Nico’s binoculars.

After a few minutes the vans turned left on Highway 60, heading north. By that point Nico was already in his own vehicle, half a kilometer behind. As he drove past Nablus he reached for his radio. Brother Cyrus would be pleased.

20

AS DARKNESS CAME, THE PAIN IN MICHAEL’S FACE SUBSIDED. SOON HE COULD
open his left eye and walk across the yurt without getting dizzy. Then he heard the sound of an engine starting and rushed to his peephole just in time to see Angel and two other soldiers get into a Toyota pickup. Michael watched the truck leave the camp and disappear down the trail, heading toward the stretch of horizon where the sun had set fifteen minutes ago.

This was a lucky thing, he thought. Now there were only four soldiers left in the camp, and Michael knew he could easily slip past them in the darkness. But he also knew he couldn’t avoid leaving a trail as he fled across the desert. When Angel and his men returned to find him missing, they would quickly catch up to him by following the trail in their pickup truck. So escaping by foot was a bad idea. But there were still two Land Cruisers in the camp, and Michael realized that he could get a much longer head start on his pursuers if he commandeered one of the vehicles. He didn’t know how to drive, but Tamara did. And Angel had said she was locked in one of the other yurts.

The four soldiers were still patrolling in pairs. One pair was moving in a figure-eight pattern that threaded around the yurts on the western side of the camp, while the other pair did the same thing on the eastern side. It was a good pattern because it allowed the soldiers to keep most of the camp in sight at all times. But Michael noticed that one pair was moving slightly faster than the other, and every six minutes there was a brief period when none of the soldiers could see the entrance to his yurt. He checked his watch and decided to leave at the next opportunity, which would occur at approximately 8:57. The sky was getting darker but the soldiers had not yet turned on their flashlights.

At 8:55 he opened the large bag of potato chips and poured about six ounces of Jägermeister inside, soaking the chips thoroughly. The steel-wool pad and the nine-volt battery were already in his pockets. At 8:56 he retrieved the M67 grenade from his pile of dirty clothes and went to the yurt’s door. During the last minute he rehearsed the arming sequence he’d learned from America’s Army. First hold the grenade’s lever down, he remembered, then pull out the safety clip and pin. When the grenade is thrown, the lever will release. The fuse will burn for four seconds before detonation.

Michael held the grenade and the bag of potato chips in his right hand and the bottle of Jägermeister in his left. He waited another fifteen seconds. Then he pushed the door open and slipped outside.

It was darker than he’d expected. The yurts were black mounds against the dark gray sand. After closing the door as quietly as he could, Michael ran to the closest yurt. He tiptoed around the structure, staying close to the curving wall and on the opposite side from where he estimated the soldiers should be. As he stepped barefoot on the sand he heard a high-pitched yelp coming from inside the yurt. He recognized the voice as Tamara’s, but he couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying. Michael wanted to stop and listen, but he knew the soldiers would be coming around the perimeter any second, so he kept moving. He dashed across a clearing to the next yurt and finally to the one at the southeastern corner of the camp. He headed straight for the yurt’s door, pulled it open, and dove inside.

The room was pitch-dark, but Michael felt mattresses and piles of clothes under his feet. This must be the place where the soldiers slept, he thought. He scrabbled toward the section of wall opposite the door and set the grenade, the potato-chip bag, and the bottle on the Turkish carpet. Then he removed the steel-wool pad and the nine-volt battery from his pockets.

Michael had learned the fundamentals of electricity from
The Concise Scientific Encyclopedia
. A nine-volt battery, he knew, was more powerful than a D battery or a double-A because it pushed electrons more forcefully between the battery’s terminals. And if the conductor connecting the terminals is a material with high resistance—like steel wool—the electrical current will generate heat. So Michael wasn’t surprised by what happened when he rubbed the steel-wool pad against the terminals on top of the battery: the mesh of wires glowed orange and burst into flames. He’d seen this done on YouTube and had always wanted to try it himself.

Once the pad was aflame, Michael placed it on the carpet next to the yurt’s wall. Then he overturned the potato-chip bag and poured the Jägermeister-soaked chips on the fire. Thanks to their combination of alcohol and fat, they were very good tinder. He splattered the rest of the Jägermeister on the surrounding area, but this really wasn’t necessary—the wool carpet and wooden slats were so dry, they didn’t need an accelerant. By the time Michael raced out the door, the flames were spreading across the floor and climbing the wall.

He ran about thirty feet beyond the yurt and hid behind a dune, lying on his stomach in the sand. Then he waited for the soldiers to arrive, holding the fragmentation grenade in his right hand. This part of the plan had almost stumped him because he was generally unable to predict the actions of other people. How could he lure all four of the soldiers within the grenade’s killing radius? He found it impossible to put himself in someone else’s shoes—even the metaphor confused him—so he couldn’t imagine what would cause the soldiers to draw together in such a tight grouping. But then he thought of the burning crater of Darvaza, the vast pit of flames. It was simply logical that the soldiers would respond to a fire, especially if it was big enough. They would come to the burning yurt and try to put out the fire before it destroyed their possessions.

And that was exactly what happened. First one pair of soldiers arrived, then the other. They shouted and stamped their boots on the flames. Their actions were as logical and predictable and inevitable as the trajectory of the grenade after it left Michael’s hand.

21

ANGEL WAS ANNOYED. ONE OF THE TRUCKS IN THE CONVOY HEADING FOR
Kuruzhdey had veered off the trail and gotten stuck in a ditch about ten kilometers west of the Darvaza camp. Because Angel’s pickup was the only vehicle with enough horsepower to tow the truck out of the sand, he’d had to leave the camp with two of his soldiers and drive to the accident site. He found this assignment a little demeaning—he was a Soldier of God, not a tow jockey!—but there was no getting around it. The convoy was carrying important materials for Brother Cyrus.