Threatcon Delta (15 page)

A
cting scared, Lieutenant Adjo jogged through the Minaret Gate toward the gardens that spread from the compound. Tourists were still descending from the mountain. He didn’t want to call attention to himself by being the last tourist out. He ran past the buses toward the village, jotting down license numbers on his palm as he passed, then paused by a clump of olive trees that shielded him from the lower slopes. Not far below were the first tile rooftops of St. Catherine’s Village. Crouching behind a boulder at the foot of one tree, the young officer reached into his backpack and withdrew the STU III—Secure Telephone Unit, Third Generation—surplus acquired from the United States military. The lieutenant selected the “secure voice mode only” since he wasn’t sending data. That burned up less battery and he had no idea how long he’d be out here.

Lieutenant General Samra answered at once. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “We’re getting reports of gunfire.”

“One shot from a high-powered rifle about two hundred meters up the mountain,” Adjo said. “It was meant to intimidate, I think. I was asking questions and may have been ID’ed.”

As he spoke, Adjo looked around to make sure no one was listening. The old streets behind him were filled with tourists hurrying toward buses.

“Do you have any idea who the spotter might have been?” Samra asked.

“No. He could have been a tour guide who heard me talking with one of the monks or someone watching from the slope. It might even have been one of the monks. Do you have any additional information?”

“Nothing yet,” Samra replied.

“I’m watching the tourists as they get on the buses,” Adjo said. “It looks like a broad mix. Everyone is scared. The guides are looking up, down, and around—no one seems to be relaxed.”

“It has to be one of them, and he would have to leave with the other tourists to avoid drawing suspicion,” Samra said. “I don’t see the Greek Orthodox monks supporting snipers.”

“I can’t see why they would,” Adjo agreed. “But I don’t see what anyone would be protecting in this place—unless the entire
Gharib Qawee
matter is a cover for something else.”

“Or it might be as simple as supporters fearing for the safety of the prophet.”

“Why would the chosen of God need a bodyguard?” Adjo asked.

“The chosen of God have a way of meeting unhappy ends,” Samra said. “What are the license numbers of the buses? I will have someone check the passenger manifests.”

Adjo read them off his left hand. Then he reached into his camera case. His digital camera had a strong telephoto lens. Adjo moved cautiously from behind the rock, snuggled the phone between his shoulder and his ear, and looked through the lens.

“I’m checking the slopes now,” he told Samra. “There are strings of tourists coming down from the summit. They look confused.” He took photos; computer analysis might turn up a case large enough to hold a rifle. Then he scanned the peaks, searching for movement or a glint among the rocks. He saw nothing.

“Sir, I’d like to go up there and reconnoiter.”

“That’s not a very good idea,” Samra said. “You’re unarmed, and if you were the target—”

“They could have killed me before.”

“Shooting you in the midst of a crowd would have forced an investigation,” Samra said. “But if they draw you in and cut your throat in the mountains, you will never be found.”

“They must earn that privilege,” Adjo said.

“I just checked several of the tour sites,” Samra said. “They all say they’re sold out for today.”

“Shooting tourists raises their insurance rates,” Adjo said.

“My point is, you’ll be up there alone—no crowds to get lost in. And if the U.N. Multinational Force blockades the road, you’ll get caught up in their bureaucracy if you try to get out.”

That was true. The MFO stationed in the Sinai desert was responsible for helping to patrol and secure the region, and they took their duty very seriously. Whenever U.N. peacekeepers closed off a region, their charter mandated that everyone inside be considered a threat until proven otherwise. The paperwork could take days.

Samra didn’t have to waste battery time spelling the rest of it out. He couldn’t send the helicopter to Adjo. If the sniper was a vanguard of a larger force, they might have rocket-propelled grenades. The appearance of a partisan military force might trigger a deadly incident, not just a warning shot fired into a crowd. That could start a larger conflict, not to mention exposing the usually secretive activities of 777 to public scrutiny.

“I want to stay,” Adjo decided. “I’ll find a safe haven if need be and wait it out. You will hear from me when I’m able to call.”

Adjo clicked off to conserve power, then found a spot where he could hunker down until dark. He had water, he had a sandwich and a candy bar, he had shade. For now, he would simply watch to see what happened next before deciding how to proceed. If past field experiences were any kind of guideline, “next” would be like nothing he could presently envision.

K
ealey sat down opposite Jonathan Harper in Harper’s office. Half an hour had elapsed since he had sent the deputy director the summary of Phair’s opinion about the events at Mt. Sinai. He’d heard nothing since then, which he’d expected, until Harper called him to his office, which surprised him.

As Kealey entered Harper had nodded but continued typing, staring at his computer screen with a level of intensity Kealey hadn’t seen since Texas.

“Quite a head on those shoulders,” Kealey said.

“The chaplain?” said Harper. “Yes, I’m impressed. The thought occurred to me that for an emissary of America wandering around Iraq for sixteen years, we may have lucked out. He might have been better representation for us than we’re used to having.”

“Better? That’s quite a judgment call, Jon.”

Harper neither looked up nor looked apologetic, only saying, “Better suited, then. We got another e-mail from Task Force 777, by the way. I’ll forward it to you but it just says there is now video ‘in house’ that shows a staff becoming a serpent.”

“But not the video itself.”

“Preempting a request, Lieutenant General Samra says he will share the clip when it has been cleared by his superiors.”

“They’ve probably had it for days,” Kealey said. “They probably didn’t want to admit that they can’t verify whether or not it’s authentic.”

“You sound a little dismissive of all of this, Ryan.”

“Just keeping my focus,” Ryan replied evenly. “After hearing Phair’s opinion I can certainly understand the possibility that this would blow up into a sizable problem for the Egyptians, and they have my sympathy. They’ve been through enough over the past few years not to need a false prophet appearing on Mt. Sinai. Hell, they probably don’t need a real one showing up, either. And I can’t imagine the Muslim Brotherhood getting behind this kind of tactic, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t take advantage of it.”

“That’s analysis. I was referring to your personal feelings about it.”

“Personally, I can also see how this could be a tempest in a teapot, one kook in a cookie jar, and I have other things on my mind. An Iranian terrorist, whom we can’t bring in because we don’t have the proof, is gaining international political traction as well as local leverage in a city with a major smuggling route running through it. Frankly, I’m waiting for you to tell me to pack my bags for Iraq, and Phair’s, too.”

“The Israelis asked for a presence on Mt. Sinai,” Harper said abruptly.

Kealey’s eyebrows rose. “They’re forbidden from taking part in U.N. activities on Arab soil.”

“Which is why the United Nations turned down the request from the Israeli government. They had asked for an Israeli observer to be temporarily assigned to the Multinational Force.”

“They’re taking this staff seriously, then.”

“Seriously enough.”

Harper didn’t have to point out that the Israelis didn’t always share their suspicions or data, at least not directly. Only through requests like this. Kealey already knew.

“If they’re that concerned, then we should be that concerned,” Kealey said.

“I agree.”

“But you didn’t have to call me up here for that. You could have just forwarded me the e-mails.”

Harper looked back at his screen.

“Jon,” Kealey said gently, “you don’t need my assurance. You don’t need a backup brain. Let Texas go as the unpreventable surprise that it was, forgive yourself, and move on. Your decisions are sound.”

Harper shook his head. Kealey had missed the mark. “Danny Hernandez contacted the DEA,” he said. “He wants to talk.”

Kealey was on his feet before he knew he was standing up. Adrenaline surges he knew, but this was on the level of a solar flare.

“Where is he?”

“The DEA hasn’t provided any details about where he is or how he got in touch with them.”

“Are they taking tutorials with the Egyptians now? Shit!” Kealey nearly pounded the desk. “Are they sure it was him who got in touch with them? Is it proof positive verified?” Harper started to speak. Kealey rolled over him. “And assuming it’s him, how the hell did he do it without being noticed by anyone in his cartel? Never mind evading the other cartels that are all spying on each other. Do we have an informant in his cartel, did he figure out who it was and approach him? And why?!” Kealey leaned over the desk. “That’s an even bigger question than how. He got away with it, Jon. We lost him. Why would he be willing to talk to us, knowing that we are going to find a way to hang his ass out to dry for Isobel Garcia?”

“I don’t know,” Harper said wearily.

Kealey paced. “Did his new friends turn on him? Is he feeling heat from the Iranians, running to the coattails of Uncle Sam? But he wouldn’t choose us for that even if that
is
the case. He has Mexico and half of Central and South America to call on for shelter and protection. This doesn’t make sense, Jon, I don’t like it. I want to know where he is and I want a flight there today.”

Kealey hovered over the desk. Harper half expected to see steam float from his nostrils.

“Because if it’s a trap,” Kealey said, “I trained Yerby and I have a good idea of what I’m walking into and you know the DEA doesn’t have anyone who can hold a candle to me. I want to be in on the first phone call, the first pickup, the first meet and every contact after that. I want to be planning it and I want every team answerable to me. If Danny Hernandez blinks, my fingers are going into his eyes.”

“What about Iraq?” Harper asked quietly.

“It’s a hospital. They’ve only cleared the ground, they haven’t even broken it yet, much less started construction. We’ll have a good idea of where the doctor will be for months, or at least where he’s going to visit regularly and frequently. Our people there can keep an eye on him and someone else can run Phair until I’m done with Hernandez. Get Dina Westbrook from DHS, she can run him, she’s already met him.”

Kealey finally stopped and observed the look on Harper’s face. What he saw there made him sit down. He was going to
hate
what came next, he knew it.

“I need you to go to Egypt,” Harper said. “With Phair. Whatever the Israelis know and aren’t telling us, it’s clear that this matter has become urgent.”

“One of the top drug lords in the western hemisphere,” Kealey said, “that is urgent, too.”

“Hernandez is smart. He’ll drag out the waltz before we get him face-to-face.”

“No. Hernandez
is
smart and that’s why he’ll come in as fast as he can figure out a safe, secret way to do it, to mitigate the possibility that someone finds out what he’s done.”

“It can’t be you, Ryan.”

“You think my feelings will compromise me? You think I’m blinded with revenge.”

“I don’t think that at all. Your international experience makes you essential—”

“I’m getting sick of hearing that.”

“And it appears that you have Phair on your side. You can’t walk away from that attachment without jeopardizing someone else’s attempt to replace that attachment, should you break faith and cause that to be necessary. He is obviously the right person to send to a place where religious fervor might be starting a global firestorm and beyond that, a situation where people are possibly being emotionally and spiritually manipulated. He goes, you go. I’m sorry, Ryan.”

“But . . .”

Kealey did not finish his thought,
but what about the doctor?
He had said it himself, they would have a good idea of where the doctor would be for months to come. He had said it himself because Harper had asked the right question at the right time, setting him up.

It was only Kealey’s memories of the Baltimore Convention Center, of Julie Harper struggling to regain her confident stride, of Jonathan staring miserably at the footage of candles and flowers being placed around San Antonio City Hall for Isobel Garcia the night of her death, that kept Kealey from calling him an SOB.

He walked out of the office.

K
ealey had been gone for forty-five minutes, walking himself into a sweat outside, when he finally rejoined Phair in his office. Phair’s first reaction at seeing his face was to put down the iPad. He recognized the facial expression. He’d seen it on teenagers when they were angry at God. Not the teenagers with relatively ordinary lives who, through broken hearts or parents’ divorces, were learning for the first time that the world would not always conform to their plans for it. No, this was the expression on the face of an abused kid, one whose emotions had been shut down for years and then, after patient work with a trustworthy adult, was starting to feel again—and what was felt was all-consuming rage at the Almighty, because the teenager didn’t feel safe enough yet to be angry at the abuser.

But Phair checked himself before offering any assistance. He barely knew Ryan Kealey. He might not know him well enough to read him accurately. The man was an agent, which Phair presumed meant that he had to sort and manage his emotions in a somewhat different way than most people, a way that Phair was unfamiliar with. And Kealey had not been doing patient work on himself with Phair’s guidance. Their trust of each other was new and thin. Nor did Kealey seem to be a man who would discuss his feelings under any circumstances. By no interpretation did Phair have an invitation to extend help.

He knew what was coming next and indeed, Kealey’s expression began to resolve into a hard, intelligent surface, absolutely practical for accomplishing tasks, strategizing, even socializing, up to a point. Revelations of feelings happened in waves and it took many cycles before someone could start to reclaim their life from their past, whatever that past was. Right now Ryan Kealey needed to work, and the best thing Phair could do for him was to help him work.

“The Staff of Moses,” Kealey said, now faultlessly professional. “What should we expect from it? Or to put it another way, what should we expect the faithful will expect from it?”

“Well, so far the behavior of the staff is certainly predictable,” Phair said, picking up his iPad again. “The apparent behavior, that is.” The cleric recognized that he was toning himself down so as to match Kealey’s impervious mood, but the truth was, he felt energized in a way he hadn’t been since returning from Iraq. He hadn’t realized how cocooned he’d become until the pieces started to chip off. “According to the Bible, the first miracle with Moses’s staff was God transforming it into a snake. Later, in the presence of Pharaoh, Moses used the power of his staff, channeling God, to turn the staff of his brother Aaron into a serpent. When the sorcerers of the pharaoh duplicated the feat, the serpent of Aaron devoured the Egyptian snakes.”

“I remember that from Sunday school,” Kealey remarked. “But the trick could be faked or this video the Egyptians say they have could be doctored.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Phair said. “If word of the miracle spreads now, it doesn’t matter how many people saw it, or didn’t see it. Rumor becomes fact in the telling. That dates back to the oral tradition at the dawn of these civilizations.”

“A foolproof plan,” Kealey reflected. “It doesn’t even matter whether the staff is real.”

“Actually, it might,” Phair said, typing into the iPad. “These people may have screwed up.”

Kealey prodded him with an inquisitive look.

“This probably isn’t the work of a Muslim holy man,” Phair went on. “According to the Koran, the staff is simply said to have swallowed ‘falsehoods,’ which the serpents represented.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“It’s a metaphor,” Phair said. “The staff wasn’t supernatural. But the people behind this appearance of the staff have presented a case that it is.”

“Can’t it be both?”

“Not to Muslims,” Phair said. “They may rally at Mt. Sinai to judge for themselves, they may come carrying hope, but they will be less impressed by tricks than by a feeling. They will want to know that the man and the relic are holy.”

“How will he prove that?”

“By what he says, not so much by what he can transform. Our problem is that most of these people are so disenfranchised by tyranny, poverty, war, and tribal conflict that it won’t take much to convince them that the
Gharib Qawee
is a leader worth following, even if they have doubts about his pedigree.”

“But you’re saying there’s a good chance this staff is a fake,” Kealey said, “and that by presenting it as a miracle worker this prophet has, perhaps inadvertently, announced that fact and left it vulnerable.”

“Right. He did what was expedient. He got the attention of local Muslims, and that was perhaps more important.”

“Do we know what is supposed to have happened to the real Staff?” Kealey asked.

“According to the Bible and historical texts, Moses gave it to his successor, Joshua, who gave it to Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, who buried it in Jerusalem. That much is probable, or at least plausible. What’s less likely is that the Staff was later unearthed by Joseph, who took it to Egypt, where it made its way into the hands of James, the brother of Jesus. There, it was supposedly stolen by Judas and used as the transverse beam of the Cross.”

“It makes a good story,” Kealey observed.

“It makes the events seem predestined, part of God’s great plan,” Phair said. “The more so if you accept that Moses’s Staff, originally his shepherd’s staff, was hewn from the Tree of Knowledge in Eden.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No, but I want to,” Phair admitted.

The cleric closed the Web address of an academic archaeology site. It did not have what he wanted. He had actually gone to this site before, in Iraq, while trying to identify bricks beneath a building that had been bombed in an airstrike. He discovered that the kind of straw used had been discontinued at least five centuries before. It saddened him that it took a war to unearth a treasure. And that might prove ironic before their work here was done.

Hunting and pecking, Phair continued the search he had started before Kealey was called away to his superior’s office. After another false start—he was directed to the personnel managing an art collection endowed by a philanthropist named Moses—he found what he was looking for.

“Heiliges Geheimnisvoll Produktprogramm,” he read in adequate German.

“I recognize
product
and
program,
” Kealey said.

“It’s the Occult Relics Program of the Nazis,” Phair read. “It was organized by Heinrich Himmler in 1937. Agents were sent in search of artifacts to give them a supernatural edge in world conquest.”

“You mean that wasn’t just in the movies?”

“It was very real,” Phair said. “Part of that undertaking was to find ancient religious items that could produce similar effects.”

“You mean like the Ark of the Covenant or the True Cross, which was supposed to do—something.”

“Protect the army wielding it from all harm,” Phair said. “It says here that Himmler’s SS itself was modeled after the Knights Templar, the religious warriors who were thought to possess the Holy Grail. The identification is more than just symbolism,” Phair read thoughtfully. “The Grail was said to have once held the blood of Christ. Blood—as in
bloodline,
the cornerstone of the notion of the Aryan master race.”

“What about the Staff of Moses?”

“It was one of the objects they reportedly sought.”

“With no indication whether it was found.”

“It says here that Himmler established a meetinghouse-slash-museum for the Occult Relics Program in the castle at Wewelsburg in Westphalia,” he went on. “After the war, the Allies examined every stone and floorboard for evidence of tampering. The grounds were searched and X-rays taken. No significant religious or occult artifacts were found. However, the fact that we knew to go there suggests something else.”

“What?”

“That the Allies found at least one of the people who was involved in this highly secret program and debriefed him.”

“Sixty-plus years ago,” Kealey said.

“There may be files, records, maps,” Phair said.

Kealey considered this for a moment, then went to the landline. He punched a single number.

“Sir,” Kealey said. “We’re going to need some information.”

Phair noticed the
sir
Kealey used, and the faint twist he put on the word. But for the rest of the phone call he was a paragon of a busy agent, recapping what Phair had told him. He said he wanted any data pertaining to the Allies’ debriefing of anyone involved in the Occult Relics Program and one thing more.

“I want to know if there are any survivors,” he said.