The Brotherhood Conspiracy (60 page)

“Where am I going to go?” he asked. He saw flames rise from the Tent, the fire growing more intense. But his emotions had no life.

Two black gunships flashed overhead, from west to east, and immediately another pair came roaring out of the north. Hassan risked a look over the sandbag wall. Too many of his men were still in the open and they were shredded by the heavy cannon fire from the helicopters. Those who found refuge in the sandbag bunkers wrested from the Israeli machine gunners were blown out of their safety by one salvo of rocket fire after another.

We won’t survive long.

The hair on the back of Hassan’s head began to wilt, and he felt a sudden rush of heat against his back. He twisted his neck, expecting to see a crumbling mass of embers. Instead, the blaze that engulfed the Tent of Meeting appeared to be growing—broader, higher, and hotter.

What did we put in there?

A rippling stream of cannon fire flowed across the concrete toward Hassan, reaching for him with its promise of death. He looked once more at the burning Tent then dropped into the hole he had blown in the concrete slab less than an hour before.

5:39 a.m., Tel Aviv

“The Temple Mount is overrun . . . we have over one hundred dead, probably more.” General Orhlon’s voice wore the heavy mantle of grief and responsibility. “Major Levin, Major Katz are dead. Fighting is still heavy in the streets. The Arabs slaughtered a huge pig on the altar before they set the fire. The Tent is engulfed in flames, and the fire keeps growing. I don’t know what the Arabs threw on it.”

“What are we doing, General?”

Prime Minister Baruk tried to hold his fury in check.

“Our gunships are pounding the Arabs now . . . they’re Hezbollah and Martyrs’ Brigade. I have no idea how so many Hezbollah fighters got so deep into Jerusalem.”

Orhlon sounded as if he was talking to himself. “We’re massing our force for a counterattack on the Mount. Our military is on full alert. Half the air force is already in the air, more pilots are awaiting orders. Armor and artillery are moving to the borders. Our missile batteries are red. Tell me when . . . tell me who . . . and we will crush them.”

“So where is Shomsky?” said Baruk. “Tell him to get something ready for the press.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Shomsky,” said General Orhlon, “but this is not the time. And I don’t know where he is.”

“Find Shomsky,” Baruk exploded. “We can’t leave the situation like this. We must regain control of the Temple Mount. Make it happen.”

5:41 a.m., Dayr al Qiddis Oasis, Egypt

Two camels got into a loud disagreement, splitting the brittle quiet of the desert night on the plain of Wadi Gerifat along the flank of the Al-Qalzam Mountains of the eastern Sahara. A dog barked in the distance, and another replied from the opposite side of the tent encampment. The men of the Prophet’s Guard were home, safe, and slept with the soundness of the secure, including the two who were on guard—now huddled around a moldering fire. Had they been awake, they would not have seen the three black-clad men with the hoods over their heads. They moved like moon shadows on the sand as they closed on the tent in the center of the compound.

The old man stirred in his tent—so little undisturbed rest, so few nights of real sleep for old men. He felt the pressure and knew he had to get up. His bones ached as he pushed off the heavy rug, and he swung his spindly legs off the sleeping platform. A shadow moved to his left.

One of ours—?
The question stalled in his mind, supplanted by the surprise of a gloved hand over his mouth, the pinch of a blade to his neck. Another shadow moved—floated to stand right in front of the old man, looking into his mismatched eyes—one brown, one yellow. This shadow pulled the hood from his head and pushed his face to within inches of the old man. The old man shivered in the night. He wasn’t cold.

“I’m here to share with you a gift from my father.” The man cut the leather strip around the old man’s throat and lifted the amulet to his sight—a Coptic cross with the lightning bolt slashing through on the diagonal. “My father wishes you a long life,” said the young prince to the leader of the Prophet’s Guard, “a long life in hell.”

The old man’s spine stiffened as the knife at his neck opened his throat from ear to ear.

5:43 a.m., Jerusalem

“Joe . . . are you still there?”

Rodriguez didn’t know how much time had passed. He looked at his watch, talking to him from half the world away, and shook his head. Then he realized he was perspiring, heavily. He looked up at the fire on the Temple Mount. He lifted the watch to his mouth.

“Yeah, I’m here . . . I’m still here. Listen . . . the fire is getting awfully hot. And it’s spreading.”

“What do you mean?” asked Reynolds.

“Well . . . the Tent is still burning—incredibly hot. I can’t believe there’s enough stuff in there to be burning this hot for this long. But the really odd thing is that the fire is spreading. It looks like liquid fire, like it’s flowing out of the Tent and washing over the platform as it continues to burn.”

“But the platform is concrete.”

“I know,” said Joe, wiping the sleeve of his shirt over his sopping face. “But it’s burning. The concrete is burning. And it’s burning really hot. I feel like I’m getting scorched.”

“Look, Joe . . . if the gunships are . . .”

“Yeah, they are.” Rodriguez swallowed, trying to get some moisture in his mouth. “They are ripping up the Arab fighters still on the Mount. But there’s not many of them. The fire is spreading to the far end of the platform, too. Anybody who’s down there is going to get . . . wait . . . wait.”

Were it not for the incredible things he had experienced since the day Tom Bohannon first showed him the huge safe in the Bowery Mission, Joe would have questioned his own eyes. But not now. “Sam . . . it’s burning down.”

“What?”

“It’s burning
down
,” Rodriguez repeated. “The flames were burning up—from the Tent, from the platform, up into the sky. But now the flames are burning down. The fire is coming from the sky, down onto the Tent, and spreading across the platform.”

“Oh . . . my God.”

“Yeah, that’s right. And it’s getting even hotter. I can feel my skin blistering.”

“Get out of there, Joe.”

“Not on your life,” said Rodriguez. “This isn’t over. I want to see what happens next.”

10:44 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Washington, DC

“Maybe we’ll get out of this—now that the Tent’s been destroyed.” The secretary of state sat in a corner of the sofa in the Oval Office, looking at President Whitestone like a man who had lost his last friend. All his work on the Bavarian Peace Treaty lay obliterated on the crest of the Temple Mount.

“Are you kidding, Ollie?” The secretary of defense snapped to the edge of his chair. “There is no way on this green earth that the Israelis will leave the Muslims in control of the Temple Mount. They’re going to hit ’em, and they’re going to hit ’em hard. They’re embarrassed. And by thunder they’re gonna make somebody pay. I wouldn’t want to be in their crosshairs right now.”

A knock on the door, and the president’s secretary stepped into the room. “Mr. President, the Israeli prime minister is on the line.”

Whitestone and Cartwright were seated across from each other. They passed a cautionary glance—the fate of the Middle East hung on these next few minutes. Perhaps all their fates. “Put him on the speaker.”

Silent thoughts and whispered prayers hovered along the curves of the Oval Office as the secretary returned to her desk. Soon the speakerphone in the center of the coffee table crackled to life.

“Mr. President?”

“Mr. Prime Minister,” said Whitestone, “I’m here with the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the CIA director.”

“And I’m here with myself,” said Baruk. “Orhlon doesn’t want me in the air and my security doesn’t want me to move from the house. I feel like a eunuch.”

“Mr. Prime Minister . . . Elie . . . I’m sorry for the men you’ve lost. And, forgive me if I’m being insensitive, but we’ve got to know what you’re planning now.”

“Planning? What would you think?” said Baruk, the sound of defiance accenting his words. “We’re going to retake the Temple Mount . . . at any cost. This is a terrorist act by those psychopaths in Lebanon. Do you think we will sit back and ponder?”

Cartwright moved closer to the phone. “Mr. Prime Minister, we have solid intel that there is more than Hezbollah behind this action. We think the Brotherhood is behind everything that is happening—including tonight. Are you going to take on every Muslim government in the entire region?”

He looked across the table to the president. No one in that room wanted to break the silence.

“Mr. Cartwright,” said the prime minister, “the blood of Israeli soldiers now stains the very place where Solomon’s Temple once stood. In thousands of years, nothing has changed. The Arab wants to annihilate the Jew.”

The grandfather clock was ticking along the north wall of the Oval Office, its beats measuring the future of peace.

“We will fight,” said Baruk, “with everything we have, to stay alive.”

“But, Elie, you know what that will mean,” said the president. “You need to show restraint, or—”

“Or the deserts will melt. I know,” said Baruk. “That is not my concern. My concern is to fight for life . . . even if that means death.”

The door pushed open as the president’s secretary rushed into the room and came to Whitestone’s side. “Mr. President,” she whispered, “please, excuse me, sir . . . but King Abbudin is on the phone. He wants to speak to you and the prime minister at the same time.”

Whitestone quickly weighed his options.

“Elie, King Abbudin is on the line . . . he wants to get on a conference call with both of us.”

The leaders of the most powerful nation on earth looked at each other with shock at the Saudi king’s call, and resignation that none of them knew which button to push.

“Carol . . . can you make that happen?”

The president’s secretary stepped around the sofas and approached the table. She pushed two buttons. “Mr. Prime Minister?”

“Yes.”

“Your Highness?”

“Yes.”

She turned to her boss. “You’re on,” and left the room.

10:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Washington, DC

“It has been a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood, orchestrated by this once-dead imam, Moussa al-Sadr—founding father of Hezbollah—for his own dreams of jihad, that has thrown the Arab world into chaotic revolution,” said King Abbudin, his voice from the speakerphone gritty through the combined connection. “We must not allow the radical Islamists and the Iranians to turn the Middle East into a radiation-poisoned wasteland.”

“And what can you do about that now?” snapped Baruk. “My men are already slaughtered on the Temple Mount.”

Whitestone knew the future of the world depended on the next answer.

“I will cut the head from the conspiracy,” Abbudin promised. “With the support of my brother in peace, President Baqir al-Musawi, I dispatched avengers to remove the threat to Islam—a black plague to wipe out our enemies.

“Yes, much blood has been shed tonight,” said the king, “and more will soon be shed to save us all. But, Mr. President . . . Mr. Prime Minister . . . we must not allow the maniacal plans of this man to succeed. It is up to us to keep the peace, to maintain order in the Middle East, throughout the world. I have ordered the soldiers of Hezbollah and the Martyrs’ Brigade to withdraw, to abandon their arms and leave Jerusalem. We can rescue peace. We can avoid the conflagration that would destroy us all. It is up to us.”

Whitestone and the men in the Oval Office held their breath. “Mr. Prime Minister?”

“Israel will retain sovereignty over the Temple Mount.”

“Agreed,” said King Abbudin.

Silence sharpened the edge of desperation in the room.

“All right. Perhaps we can step back from the abyss,” said Baruk. “But our military will remain mobilized until we are certain that we are no longer under attack.”

“Very wise, Mr. Prime Minister,” said Abbudin. “Now I must go and ensure that my orders are carried out . . . immediately.”