Threatcon Delta (29 page)

O
ne of Jonathan Harper’s favorite resources, the Double-H, was a high-flying drone aircraft. The initials stood for Harold Hill, the hero in
The Music Man,
and it was designed to read the spectrographic signature of gunfire and isolate potential “trouble in River City” within a three-hundred-mile radius. The technology was developed by the FBI to watch for domestic homicides in troubled neighborhoods and to allow for rapid response. The program was discontinued due to potential invasion-of-privacy issues and inadmissibility of recorded data in courts. The military had no such qualms about deploying the Double-H device on drone aircraft in the Middle East as a way of helping military patrols steer clear of armed encampments, or for identifying which windows in hostile villages held snipers.

In this instance, the Double-H had recorded at least 432 instances of gunfire in a five-square-mile section of the desert north of Mt. Sinai. According to computer analysis, the bursts came from 214 distinct weapons within that area and were fired within a period of seven seconds.

Harper was still on the phone with Kealey as he reviewed the data.

“Either it was a monastery takeover, a mass suicide, or they were celebrating something,” Harper said.

“A mass suicide with a lot of people who couldn’t shoot straight,” Kealey pointed out.

“True,” Harper said when he realized how many shots were fired from how many guns. It was funny how data, crossing a certain threshold, immediately pushed buttons suggesting an explanation.

A second alert followed. This one was a red flag e-mail from Lieutenant General Samra of Task Force 777. Harper read it to Kealey as he read it himself.

“Agent reports massive explosion in Jebel Musa region,” he said. “No further details.”

Harper was already accessing the satellite database. Since this matter had begun, the National Reconnaissance Office had been watching the region with the Measat-3, located 36,001 kilometers above the earth in a geosynchronous orbit 0 degrees, 34º N, 46 degrees, 1° E. Harper accessed the photographic data.

“I’m showing a massive fireball over the mountain twenty-eight minutes ago,” Harper said. “It’s consistent with the napalm that was reportedly stored there.” He clicked back fifteen seconds, the minimum interval between the images. “The blast erupted from a point about two-thirds of the way up the mountain.” He magnified a section of the screen. “I take that back. It looks like it vented from several points.” Harper advanced the images. “It burned along a ridge after that. It’s still smoldering.”

“A natural fire wouldn’t have burned down, but up,” Kealey said.

“Exactly, and it’s down about seventy-five percent from when it started,” Harper replied.

“Conditions are dry up there—a lot of underbrush that would go up quick and leave nothing else combustible.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Harper agreed.

“Jonathan, if 777 found napalm, why didn’t they move in?”

“Caution,” Harper replied. “They had no evidence it was about to be used. And they couldn’t be sure it wasn’t wired to blow in the event they did move in.”

“Are they going to move in now?”

“Not yet,” Harper answered. “They don’t want to agitate a bunch of armed radicals.”

“Armed radicals don’t need provocation,” Kealey pointed out. “Look, if the bad guys have got the Staff of Moses, adherents with guns, and events that are going to be touted as miracles, we’ve got serious trouble.”

“Do you think your German would recognize the real Staff if he saw it?”

“That would probably depend on how close he got.”

“He wouldn’t lie about it?”

“He’s pretty blunt.”

“Then we need to get him close to the prophet,” Harper said. “We need to find out if they have the actual relic—and if not, who does and why.”

“We can be back in Marrakech by midnight,” Kealey said.

“I’ll have a plane waiting that will put you in Cairo by dawn.”

“I need something else, too,” Kealey said. “I found some fibers on rock that had been removed from the well. We should have them analyzed.”

“A courier will meet you to take them to the embassy in Rabat,” Harper assured him.

Every American embassy had a sophisticated laboratory and a technician capable of performing fairly complex forensics. It was necessary in the event that explosives were somehow placed on the grounds, bullets fired into the compound, incendiary devices hurled over the wall, or even in the event of murder. In unstable regions, where workers couldn’t leave the smallish compounds, homicide was not unknown. It was not always possible—and seldom advisable—to trust local police for investigations of any kind.

Harper told Kealey that he would forward any additional information, though he suspected things would be quiet for a few hours. It would take time for the pilgrims to be given instructions or inspiration, whatever the game plan was, generating some kind of response. More pilgrims, perhaps media coverage once the crowds had swelled impressively—there was no way of knowing.

As word of the activities at the Mountain of Moses spread through the intelligence community, Harper was summoned to a meeting of department heads to discuss the implications.

No one who attended that meeting—or others like it that were hastily called in capitals from Israel to Great Britain—could have predicted what was going to happen.

Not even the prophet.

B
y the time Kealey and his team landed in Egypt, the embassy in Morocco had completed its initial test of the fibers from the well.

“They were from a rope,” Harper told him as the jet taxied. “Very old, very dry hemp.”

“How old?”

“Says here the natural dyes were intact, meaning it hadn’t been exposed to daylight, yet the desiccation factor was ninety-eight percent. They say it had been stored in someplace dry and hot for decades.”

“That could be the tank,” Kealey said.

“Or else it was part of the rope that was originally used to put the box in the well,” Harper told him.

“That’s possible,” Kealey agreed. “Though it’s also possible that someone knew the rope was in the tank and used it to recover the Staff in the last few days.”

“Durst? Did he have time? More than that, did he have the stamina?”

“Not likely.” Kealey huddled closer to the phone. “He was alone the night before we left, but I can’t see how he would have gotten out there. He would have had to organize things en route.”

“Not impossible.”

“No,” Kealey agreed. “But he seemed genuinely surprised to find the artifact missing.”

“His granddaughter?”

“Again, I don’t see how she would have organized something like this.”

“The same way you did,” Harper said. “Especially if her parents have resources at any of the regional embassies. Or maybe she called in Ramirez.”

The other possibility was Phair, of course. The chaplain had seemed uncharacteristically disheveled when Kealey met him the morning they left. Durst hadn’t said anything about what was in the tank, but that didn’t mean Phair couldn’t have asked him. Again, the question of “why?” was something Kealey could not answer.

As Kealey hung up, that left the other troubling possibility: that the so-called prophet actually had the real Staff. In which case, undermining him to his adoring throng was going to be much more difficult. Especially if they had the provenance to show how the Staff came into his possession.
“A vision from God told me where in the desert to find it. . . .”

It was shortly before dawn when the jet reached the gate in Cairo. Everyone managed to get a few hours’ rest and they grabbed breakfast to go from Starbucks, of all places, as they headed for the curb. An embassy car was waiting for them. They had not brought any bags, since those might have raised questions if they were scanned or searched, such as “Why is everyone wearing the same clothes?” Kealey did not want that delay. It was just as easy for the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to provide them with new gear.

Kealey watched the other members of his team as they boarded the nondescript van that would take them to Mt. Sinai. There was no conversation, no suspicious glances at one another. Maybe Phair, possibly even Durst, had gotten past their shock and were pondering the same question as Kealey: what to do if the people on Mt. Sinai had the real deal. Even if it had no supernatural powers whatsoever, the psychological impact would be extraordinary.

After the van had been underway for several minutes, Phair turned to Kealey, who was sitting beside him.

“The location is going to give the Staff added symbolic weight,” he said ominously.

“How so?”

“Moses met his future wife, Zipporah, at a well,” Phair replied. “Its rediscovery will suggest a new marriage, a new unity.”

Kealey craned toward Durst, who was behind him. “Was that a consideration when you hid it?”

“Of course not,” the man replied. “We had the damaged tank and knew that the well was a place where we could protect the chest from discovery.”

“That isn’t how it’s going to play, not to these people,” Phair said. “They’ll say the tank wasn’t able to destroy it.”

“If ‘they’ were the ones who took it,” Kealey said.

“It won’t matter,” Phair said. “Those are the facts. I’m betting there are photos to go with it.”

“Who else could have taken it?” Carla asked.

Kealey thought for a moment, weighing expedience against need. “One of us,” he replied.

The woman laughed. “I was waiting for that. Does that include you?”

“If you like.”

“What is there to like about any of this?” she asked.

“I had no reason to lead everyone to the desert and back so they could see an empty hiding place,” Durst said. “That is moronic.”

“What about your people in Washington?” Carla asked.

“I can’t rule it out,” Kealey admitted. “But they would have come with helicopters, if they were going to get in and out before us from the nearest staging area. And I saw no sign of the dunes created by prop wash.”

“Assuming any of us could have made it into and then out of the desert with no one else knowing, what could we do with the object?” Carla asked. “Neither myself nor my grandfather need the artifact or the money. Do either of you?”

Kealey responded by not responding. Phair also said nothing, though there was something restless about his mouth.

“What is it, Major?” Kealey asked.

“Nothing.”

“Let’s have it. We need everything on the table.”

Phair thought for a moment, then said, “This isn’t an accusation, simply an observation. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ I just wonder who Herr Durst dislikes more—a nation of Semites whom he regards as beneath him, or the nation that defeated him in war?”

Carla tensed visibly but her grandfather calmed her with a squeeze of his hand.

“That is a good question,” Durst said. “I do not have an answer for you. But I also do not have your Staff.”

Phair did not press the matter. But as he faced front his twisting mouth settled into a half smile that Carla and her grandfather could not see. Kealey didn’t like it. Phair’s expression had an I’ve-got-a-secret smugness that left Kealey wondering again about Phair’s loyalties. Did the cleric sympathize with anti-Americanism—and, if so, was it enough to abet the people operating in Egypt? He would have to watch the man more closely as they went forward.

They rode in silence for some time before Durst asked suddenly, “Mr. Phair, what is the worst thing that you have ever done?”

Phair angled round so he could see the German. It was not a challenging question. The man seemed to want to know.

“I don’t think I should answer that,” Phair said. “You might be insulted.”

“To be disliked is not an insult,” Durst shrugged. “It suggests that your point of view is effectively communicated to someone who disagrees. But then, I think I know the answer. Apart from collaborating with me, what else have you done that was wrong or sinful?”

“I deserted my post during combat to minister to the enemy,” he replied.

“An Arab?” Durst said. He laughed. “To you they are not so bad as I am. Yet they have done more destruction to your homeland than I.”

“You never got the chance.”

“We never wished to destroy an infrastructure,” Durst replied. “We did not do so to Paris.”

“London?”

“The city itself would never have been attacked had Churchill not bombed Berlin first,” Durst pointed out. “But that is not the issue. From your voice, I suspect you do not think desertion was a bad thing under the circumstances.”

“No. But some in the military did.”

“Then let me be more precise,” Durst said. “What have you done that
you
consider bad?”

“There is nothing I’m ashamed of,” Phair told him. “Nothing I have ever been humbled to tell in confession.”

“You are missing something then,” Durst said. “Regret builds character. What about you, Mr. Kealey?”

“I don’t think I like this game,” Kealey replied. “We have other—”

“Are you afraid to answer?” Carla asked.

“No. It’s just no one’s business, actually.”

“We are a team on a mission,” she said. “My grandfather has told me that nothing bonds people more than that, joins them for life. Unless, of course, some member or other feels above the unit.”

“That would be the commander,” Kealey said.

“
Mein Gott,
we lost commanders daily!” Durst said. “The next leader would be one of us, a boy like me, who was a commander in name. Those were our most successful groups. Everyone had a stake in it.”

“I thought you were fighting the Communists,” Phair said.

Kealey didn’t want this to turn into another spat between Phair and Durst. “The worst thing I ever did was when I went into Indonesia with a humanitarian group after the 2004 tsunami devastated the region. My job was to find out how badly damaged the radical Islamic infrastructure was by the disaster.”

“Did you help at all?” Durst asked.

“Very little,” Kealey said frankly, “and only then when my conscience wouldn’t let me pass by someone with two broken legs who was stranded like an upside-down turtle. I was there to gather intelligence and I felt lousy when I left two weeks later. If I had applied myself to searching for survivors or moving food to outlying regions, who knows whether more people would have survived?”

“At least you had a conscience,” Phair said, now the pastor.

“And you were doing a job,” Durst said. “To me, that does not seem like the wrong thing.”

“It was and it wasn’t,” Kealey said.

“Things aren’t always clear-cut,” Phair said.

“No.”

“Would you have done things differently?” Carla asked.

Kealey replied, “No.”

There was no further discussion.

Kealey opened a pouch that contained information from Harper that had been forwarded to the embassy. There were maps and contact information for the region. He read the dossier of Lieutenant Adjo, whom they were to meet. He sounded underqualified for the kind of recon that had been thrust upon him. Men like that either died from a lack of caution or performed in an exemplary manner. It was like the old story about the chess novice who was either destroyed by a grandmaster or managed to beat him because his moves were so unexpected, unpredictable, and unprecedented. Since Adjo was still alive at last accounting, and had gathered valuable intelligence, he was obviously born to the Fifth Column. Kealey had encountered men like that. What interested the agent in particular was that Adjo had not sabotaged the napalm he’d discovered. That would have taken no time and little more than a rock-struck spark. The result would have been equally short-lived. He had been smart enough to let things play out in the hopes of uncovering the larger plan.

Or maybe Lieutenant Adjo learned from living on a river, you catch rats when they’re farthest from the hole and a little bit less cautious,
Kealey thought as he closed the file and put all the documents back in the leather briefcase.

The rising sun lit a chessboard of a world, with ornate minarets, shorter buildings with rook-like crenellations, and small, smooth columns supporting animal-head designs in front of official buildings or mosques. All of it was endlessly drenched in off-white, a surface that protected the people inside by reflecting sunlight and heat. Kealey had been here before. Once, ten years earlier, he had “attended” a pan-Arab seminar on the danger of theocracies here. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan were the only nations in attendance, which underscored the theme rather forcefully. Iraq sent no one because the feuding religious sects couldn’t agree on a national position. There were times—and now was one of them—that Kealey felt the regional situation was hopeless and the world should just wall it off.

We use a third of the goddamn oil we get from here just to police the region,
he thought ironically, then bitterly. Of course, military assets had to be used so their performance could be studied and evaluated. Soldiers and munitions had to be deployed to better understand how they function in real-world combat. Ordnance had to be used because it had a limited shelf life.

Still,
he thought,
holding actions like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, make future wars inevitable. The way to deal with international problems is to surgically remove the problem-makers.

The densely packed city gave way to Western-style suburbs and then to sparsely occupied hills and plains. Here and there he saw ruined temples and tombs, not the familiar pyramids but no less imposing in their history if not in their size. The cars that sped by them on the highway seemed to be time itself moving, while the ancient world stood stately and still.

It took most of the day to reach the foothills of Mt. Sinai, crossing the Suez Canal and skirting the Red Sea. The driver was a local man, employed and vetted by the embassy. He didn’t say anything unless spoken to. They were careful not to say anything they didn’t want him to hear.

Kealey didn’t feel anything special when he reached the mountain. There was no sense of holiness or history, except in a geologic sense. That did not surprise him. He was not a spiritual man. He responded to the fingerprints of men upon the labors of nature. What people carved, built, left behind—that was what inspired and occasionally moved him, and his job was to see that monsters like the jihadists didn’t tear those things down. That someone could put over a theological charade on hungry masses, then or now, did not impress him.

The sun was just going down as the group neared the mountain. The wind that had pushed away any lingering smell of gasoline had failed to stir up the fine line of fire that was still visible on the profile of Mt. Sinai. That was because there was nothing much to burn, which was probably why aerial retardants had not been brought in by the so-called peacekeepers. There was also the fear, Kealey suspected, that interfering with the “work of God” would have consequences.

“Look at that,” Carla said.

Kealey looked to where she was pointing. It was the first time he had seen the mass of humanity gathered there, clustered around the edge of the mountain like algae at a dock. Kealey heard a hum. He cranked down the window and ducked his head through the opening, angling his ear so he could hear past the rush of air.