The Brotherhood Conspiracy (23 page)

Bohannon shook his head. “What’s your point?”

“Don’t you get it? I’m your brother. And I love you,” said Rodriguez, squeezing Bohannon’s arm. “And I’m not going to let you try to walk through this alone . . . try to carry this burden alone.”

Forty-four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight fans jumped to their feet and cheered wildly, sending chills down Rodriguez’s spine—until he realized all the hubbub was only for an A-Rod homer. Joe caught his brother-in-law’s eyes and poured his heart into Bohannon. “Tom . . . we’re not leaving you. And God hasn’t left you. I don’t understand it and I know you don’t understand it, not after all that’s happened. I don’t know about my faith, but I believe in your faith. And I’m going to hold you up as long as it takes for you to see that faith, and God’s presence, show up again in your life and in your heart.”

Bohannon pulled his arm free and turned back to the game. “No, Joe. This is not your fight. It’s not your struggle. This is something I’ve got to figure out. This is not a burden that you need to carry.”

“Tom . . . that’s what brothers are for!”

Another cheer rocked the House That Ruth Built. Cheap seats or fancy suites, they were all Yankee fans, they were all of one heart and mind.

Joe reached out with his right hand and placed it behind Bohannon’s head, rustling his hair. “Come on . . . let’s see what’s going on and get our five bucks out of these seats.”

17

S
ATURDAY
, A
UGUST
15

Washington, DC

“I’m sorry, Eliazar. Lucas Painter was a good man. A loyal warrior. I know you and your country will miss his wisdom and courage.”

President Whitestone wished he was in the same room with the Israeli prime minister. It would be so much easier to read him—his body language. What the president could see across the secure video transmission, he didn’t like. The man on the screen was drawn and distracted, gray shadows surrounding eyes that were devoid of energy or spark. Whitestone began to fear their plans may begin to unravel.

“One of my own, ambushed, butchered,” Baruk said. “He was like a son.”

Whitestone gripped the table. “Last week you challenged me because of my doubts. The threat from Iran is closer to reality every day that goes by. We must act. If we don’t, millions more will die, as you know well. Innocent people. People just trying to go about their lives in peace, in your country and in my country. The Iranians are determined. The leaders of their government are madmen, particularly that fool of a president. If we don’t cripple them now, if we don’t destroy their capacity to strike, they will be standing at our doorstep with death in their hands.”

Baruk lowered his face and shook his head.

“If we stop them,” Whitestone continued, “then it will be worth even the life of Lukas Painter. If not, your nation will be their first target.”

Whitestone waited while Baruk ran a hand through his hair. Then the prime minister seemed to be suffused with resolve, like a dry sponge soaking up water. He squared his shoulders and sat upright in his chair.

“Are we ready, Eliazar?” Whitestone pressed. “Even with Painter’s death . . . are we ready?”

Vengeance visited the Israeli’s eyes. “Eleven days . . . midnight of the twenty-seventh. The teams are already in place and surveillance of the targets is constant. It’s the nineteenth day of Ramadan, the day they mourn the martyrdom of Imam Ali. Nobody works. The country comes to a stop. The targets will be hit, and eliminated in less than an hour.”

“And you can trust the men . . . trust their silence?”

“Don’t worry, Jon. These men are handpicked, each with a powerful, personal reason to hate the Iranians. To a man, they consider this action an honor. They will never reveal the truth. My concern is, are you ready on your end? We will cripple them, but you will destroy them.”

We’re doing the right thing
. Whitestone whispered that to himself over and over. “We’re ready. Within an hour, their economy will cease to exist.”

Jerusalem

It was one sheet of copy paper, but in Levi Sharp’s hand it felt like he was trying to lift Israel’s highest peak.

“Those are all the names my staff and I can think of who had knowledge of the incursion into Jordan,” said Colonel David Posner. “Twenty-four people . . . at least, twenty-four who are still alive.”

The director of Shin Bet read the names on the sheet.

“Twenty-
five
,” he said, not moving his eyes from the paper. “You haven’t included the prime minister.”

“I—I . . .” Posner stammered.

“It’s okay,” said Sharp, lifting his gaze to the younger man. In bearing, dress, personality, and presence, David Posner, acting director of Mossad for less than twenty-four hours, had a regal bearing. His sandy hair was swept up off his forehead in a mass of contained waves, his skin was smooth, his nose long—Caesarean—holding court between angular cheekbones and full lips. Posner looked like the scion of a patrician family, the young, pampered son of ridiculous wealth, his flawless face erased twenty years from his actual age. Sharp, though, knew what the façade masked.

The newly promoted colonel was pushing fifty. He rose through the ranks of Mossad with the well-earned reputation of tackling the toughest assignments
his government could conceive. Posner survived two years in the terror-laced chaos of Mogadishu. While there, he thwarted three terror plots aimed specifically at Israel, personally assassinating two senior Al Qaeda operatives who mistakenly thought they were safely hidden beneath the Somalian anarchy. Two tours in Chechnya, tracking Muslim terrorists . . . eighteen months embedded in the Syrian president’s residence as a French sous chef . . . commander of a lightning-strike commando unit that extracted threatened agents from Iran to Yemen.

Under the effete exterior lay a hardened partisan, a deadly foe to the enemies of Zion. And, Sharp knew, a fervent loyalist to authority, a relentless stalker of their traitor.

“We need to include everyone who had knowledge,” said Sharp. “But you and I both know where we will find the traitor.”

Posner nodded his head. “In the shadows. Someone with a secret.” He reached into the breast pocket of his tan, starched, uniform shirt. “That’s why I compiled this list myself.” He handed the paper to Sharp. “Four names.”

A current shimmered through Sharp. He didn’t know if it was admiration for Posner’s trained instinct, or apprehension for the fate of one of these four with whom they had all worked so closely.

“A week—more or less,” said Posner, “and I will come back to you with one name.”

Sharp nodded his head.

“Or one body.”

New York City

“I don’t care what you think, Sammy, what I know is that this adventure is over for us. And don’t give me those big bug eyes and deep sighs. You already know Annie and Deirdre are going to stomp to death any idea of us getting involved in the scroll again.”

Rizzo was frustrated. Not so much with the fact that his short legs were marching double-time to keep up with Joe Rodriguez’s long strides. He was accustomed to that. No, this frustration was spawned by a gnawing fear that his great adventure was over. A ragged, livid scar on his right bicep still throbbed where he had been wounded, their lives were constantly at risk, and people died. Yet, Sammy had to admit to himself that he had never felt so alive, so vital, as
when he had been swept up with Tom and Joe and Doc in the Temple adventure. On this quest, he was an equal. It was a position he was loathe to surrender.

Rizzo pushed his thick glasses back up to the bridge of his hooked nose. “Yeah, but why did Sam Reynolds want to talk to Tom? And why has Tom asked us all to get together again? And why does he want to meet in the library?”

“And why meet in the Reading Room?” Rodriguez asked. “What’s wrong with my office?”

“What’s wrong with your office is that it’s your office and not my office. I’m getting tired of being stuck in that subterranean hole-in-the-wall. I think a man of my stature should command a more stately abode.”

“A man of your stature should be in a Hobbit house . . . little round door, with fur on your feet.”

“There you go again, belittling me. You got something against little people, dragon breath?”

“No, I just have something against you: your mouth.”

“Watch it, slim jim, or I’ll hit you with a hate crimes suit.”

The cadence of their footfalls echoing up from the marble floor, Rodriguez and Rizzo strode through the ornately decorated McGraw Rotunda on the second floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. On their right was the Edna Barnes Salomon Room—a large, open gallery that held only one book, the Gutenberg Bible, safely in the womb of a climate-controlled, bulletproof, clear Lexan case. But they turned left into the large antechamber of the fabulous Rose Reading Room.

This first room, the Blass Catalog Room, was nearly one hundred feet long and nearly as wide, stocked along the entire left side with flat computer screens, portals to the treasures of the Rose Reading Room, sitting on well-worn wooden tables, a phalanx of curved-back chairs stretching down one side of each table.

To the right of the central aisle were the gatekeepers, the librarians in their large, half-walled wooden booth of a guardhouse who would review every request slip, making sure the catalog code was copied precisely, before the seeker could advance to the next desk where the slip would be stamped with the time, a numbered code scrawled on the top, and the two parts of the form separated—one page to the requester and the other dispatched down a vacuum tube to a retrieval team in the underground stacks.

Rodriguez gave a brief wave to the heavyset librarian behind the wall, a man who sneered back in return.

“I don’t think Jack likes your uniform,” said Rodriguez

Sammy looked down at his clothes. He was wearing cut-offs that were partially hidden by a Ryan Howard official XXL Phillies game-day shirt. “He must be a Mets fan.”

Sammy stopped in the middle of the floor and turned to the bespectacled, frowning librarian. “Hey, Jack, you’re a Mets fan, right?” he said loudly, batting his eyelashes as he turned to his audience. “Say, the Mets, do they still play baseball?”

Jack the gatekeeper fumbled out a protest, but Sammy, a wicked smile emerging from his heart, was already moving off toward the Reading Room.

Tom sat off in the far corner of the Rose Reading Room at one of the long, oak refectory tables that filled the cavernous space. The Reading Room was nearly two city blocks in length and nearly thirty yards wide, but what gave the space its unique open feel were the huge, arched windows stretching down each side of the room and the fifty-two-foot-high ceilings adorned with expansive murals of blue sky and vibrant clouds. Doc and Brandon McDonough were already sitting across from Tom. Rodriguez moved to Bohannon’s side and pulled up a chair as Sammy stood on the far side. A thin, flat, black book, about twelve inches on each side, rested on the table in front of Bohannon.

“Sorry I had to ask you all to come here, but I wanted to show you something and this is the only place I could do it. Even Sammy wouldn’t be able to get this book out of this room.”

The book’s cover was blank—no title, no author. Bohannon slipped his fingers under the stiff, thick cover and brought up his left hand to steady the cover as he gingerly opened the book. “This book is called
The Tabernacle in the Wilderness
. It was published over two hundred years ago. Obviously, this copy wasn’t treated very carefully.”

Inside the covers were a few, large pages, heavily darkened at the edges, that were as brittle as thin ice and ragged from years of misuse. None of the pages were attached to the cover, the book’s binding a victim of time.

“This is what Sam Reynolds wanted to talk about,” said Bohannon, opening the book to a color drawing of a large, rectangular structure surrounded by what appeared to be four walls of thick curtains.

The silence that greeted Bohannon’s introduction had nothing to do with library rules.

“The Tent of Meeting?” asked Doc. “Forgive me, Tom, but I just don’t understand this at all.”

Bohannon turned another page, uncovering another drawing of the Tent of Meeting from a different perspective as he looked up at his four companions. “The Israelis are preparing to rebuild the platform on the Temple Mount. Alex Krupp has offered his men, equipment, and expertise to help.”