Pharaoh (46 page)

‘It was just a piece of rotten luck,’ said Sarah with a tired smile. ‘Next time don’t forget your fucking briefcase.’

‘Sarah! You were great!’ Blake yelled as they carried her away.

Hooker reached out to shake Blake’s hand, but withdrew it as soon as he noticed the very conspicuous splints and bandages on both his left and right wrists. ‘Welcome home,’ he said. ‘I see that our medics have done their best. Do you feel up to another helicopter ride?’

‘You won’t believe this, General, but for a minute, when I first saw that fighter, I was sure it was going to shoot us down,’ said Blake, following the general.

‘Shoot you down? You must be joking. What would we do that for?’ asked Hooker, eyes wide.

They got on board and the helicopter, which had never stopped its engines, slowly lifted off into the leaden sky.

‘I don’t know,’ answered Blake, ‘it’s just that we haven’t been receiving very cordial greetings lately . . . How are things progressing at this point?’

‘We’re fighting against the clock,’ said Hooker. ‘There are only twelve hours left until the final launch signal. Our technicians are deactivating the system, but we’re not sure it’s the only one around. There could be a back-up system we’re not aware of. Plus Husseini is still at large. He must have noticed something fishy because he hasn’t been to his flat in days.

‘Four hours ago the President was forced to make an announcement to the nation, but he hasn’t revealed the whole story. The population living in the central areas of the three cities at risk are being moved into underground shelters and subway tunnels and out of the city where possible.

‘It’s all we’ve been able to do. The metropolitan areas of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone contain almost forty million people. If panic were to break out, the situation would spiral completely out of control. A full evacuation would require at least a week and we have only a few hours. At this point, finding Husseini is a top priority. Obviously, he knows that we know, otherwise he would have touched base. Maybe he has noticed our surveillance activities, or else someone could have tipped him off.’

‘I think you’re right. But it’s also true that he hasn’t transmitted any orders to activate the bombs, assuming that it’s in his power to do so.’

‘All our efforts to locate him have been in vain. He hasn’t used his credit cards, hasn’t purchased any gas and hasn’t even withdrawn any money from an ATM. There hasn’t been a sign of him. It’s as though he’s disappeared into thin air.’

‘Husseini used to be Abu Ghaj, General. I’m sure he still knows how to survive for days without eating, drinking or washing, hiding wherever necessary, even in the sewers. Our rules of the game simply don’t apply to him.’

‘Unfortunately, unless we find him, we can’t locate the three commando units. The Armageddon program doesn’t include specific locations.’

‘Even if he knows that he’s been made the intermediary in a blackmail scheme – holding the US government hostage with this terrorist threat – he may well believe that it will come to an end when Islam is victorious over Israel, with the fall of Jerusalem. We can’t assume he knows the bombs are programmed to go off no matter what. I am certain that Husseini is unable to read that program and properly understand it.’

‘Well, then, how do you suggest we proceed?’

‘Where are we going now?’

‘To our operational headquarters here in Chicago. I had myself transferred here because this is where Husseini is and he’s obviously the key to everything.’

They flew along in silence for a while, giving Blake an opportunity to observe the thousands of lights twinkling throughout his city, its streets and highways, as it took a dreadful pounding from the torrential rainstorm. He could see the nightmarish snarl of traffic caused by an insane evacuation. Nevertheless, he realized that he had missed the city terribly and had to do whatever he could to stop anything terrible from happening to it.

He suddenly thought of something. Turning towards the general, he said, ‘There’s one thing he’ll be doing for sure: listening to the radio. I want you to get me a wooden Bedouin pestle and mortar right away.’

Hooker’s eyes opened wide in stunned disbelief. ‘Get you what?’

‘You understood me: a wooden pestle and mortar like the ones the Bedouins on the Arabian peninsula use.’

‘But you’re talking about Stone Age implements. Where am I going to find anything like that in Chicago?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest idea. Have your men scour the museums, the anthropological and ethnographic institutes. Just find me these things, please . . . And one more thing: find me a drummer.’

‘A drummer?’

‘My wrists are broken, General. Surely you don’t expect me to pound the pestle in the mortar!’

Hooker shook his head in bewilderment, but he called the Chicago operations room and gave the appropriate orders. ‘And I’m warning you: don’t waste your time making wise cracks. We’ll be landing in about ten minutes. Don’t let me down on this, boys.’

The bizarre objects arrived by Pony Express from the Field Museum within half an hour and a drummer was brought in by taxi, a young black jazz musician named Kevin, who was performing downtown at the Cotton Club.

‘Listen carefully, Kevin,’ said Blake. ‘I’m going to drum out a rhythm with my fingers on the table and I want you to imitate it by pounding the pestle inside the mortar, while these gentlemen record it on a cassette. So let’s try to do a good job. Think you can handle that?’

‘No problem. Piece of cake,’ replied Kevin. ‘I’m ready whenever you are.’

Blake began drumming with his fingers on the table as an incredulous General Hooker and the other officers looked on in utter disbelief. Kevin followed him with instinctive mastery, making his unlikely, improvised instrument come to life with a brusque yet resonant rhythm, a more than convincing rendition of the simple, evocative beat Blake had heard for the first time at Omar al Husseini’s home one Christmas Eve and then again two days ago in the sheikh’s tent at El Mura.

When they had finished, Blake turned to Hooker. ‘Have this tape played by all the radio stations every ten minutes until I tell you to stop. We’ll just have to put our faith in God.

‘Right now, gentlemen, I need to go to the bathroom,’ he announced, picking up his briefcase. ‘I have to adjust my bandages.’

He went out into the hall and towards the door they had pointed out to him, but instead of going in, he went straight for the elevator and down to the garage level. The place was full of cars, both civilian and olive-drab military versions. He got into the first one he found with the keys in the ignition and took off, squealing his tyres, to the consternation of the approaching guard who wanted to ask to see his pass.

He drove through the torrential rain, gritting his teeth, dealing as best he could with the pain in his wrists, which was increasing now that the effect of the painkiller the doctor had given him was starting to wear off.

The main arteries were gridlocked, reduced to a tangle of collisions, accompanied by the wild cacophony of angry horns and shouting, brawling drivers. As soon as he could, Blake slipped off the main road and found himself driving through a series of more peaceful, out-of-the-way neighbourhoods, where the people were so badly off they didn’t appear to be overly concerned about the prospect of an atomic explosion.

He had turned on the radio and before he had reached his shabby old apartment, he was able to confirm that the regular programming was being interrupted to broadcast a strange, rhythmic pounding, a monotonous beat that periodically built to a crescendo of dramatically intense, hammering percussive effects. No doubt about it: that Kevin was quite the artist.

He left the car in a parking lot and ran through the driving rain all the way to his door. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and with a hefty nudge was in.

The tiny apartment was dark and cold; it looked just like he had left it two months ago. Thieves knew better than to look for valuables in a place like this.

He turned on the lights and the heat. In a cupboard crammed with canned goods, he found a package of coffee that was still sealed. He opened it, found a filter, put water into the pot and set it on the stove. He tried to tidy the place up a bit and, as he was busy putting away shoes and dusty clothes, he turned on the radio. At that particular moment it was broadcasting classical music: Haydn.

He sat down and lit a cigarette.

An hour slipped by and he could no longer hear even the slightest noise from the surrounding neighbourhood. Maybe they had all left, or perhaps they had decided to await God’s judgement in reverent silence.

Once again, to no avail, the radio broadcast the haunting rhythm of the Bedouin mortar and Blake began thinking the whole scheme was totally nuts, that certain things only happened in fairy tales. He turned it off with an annoyed flick of his sore wrist and turned on the gas under the coffee. He seemed to sense the souls of Gordon and Sullivan hovering about in the tight space of his little studio, may their souls rest in peace. He wondered whose turn it would be next. His? Sarah’s? How many countless other people would have to pay? Somebody was knocking at his door.

‘I’
VE BEEN WAITING
for you,’ said Blake. ‘Come in. Please, sit down.’

Omar al Husseini was soaking wet from the rain and could barely stand up. His hair was unkempt and his beard scraggly.

The deep circles around his bloodshot eyes revealed his sleep-deprived state.

‘How did you get back here?’ he asked, collapsing onto a chair. ‘And what have you done to your hands?’

He was deathly pale and shivering from the cold. Blake had him take off his wet coat and he put it on a radiator. He then placed an old blanket over his shoulders and handed him a cup of steaming black coffee.

‘It’s fresh,’ he said. ‘I just made it.’

‘I heard the sound of the mortar,’ said Husseini with a weak smile, ‘and I thought, someone around here is making coffee, and I . . .’

He didn’t finish his sentence. He brought the cup to his lips and took a few sips. ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘Both of us are the repositories of devastating secrets . . . and just a couple of months ago we were a couple of untroubled college professors. Isn’t life strange? Tell, what is the tomb of the great leader like? Did you see his face?’

Blake drew close. ‘Omar, listen to me. It’s your secret that can do the most damage now. We’ve discovered an automatic system in your computer which in six hours will trigger off three nuclear bombs in three different cities in the United States.’

Husseini did not bat an eye. ‘No . . . no, you’re wrong. None of that will happen,’ he said. ‘Jerusalem is about to surrender and it will all be over. They’ll stipulate some sort of a treaty and this will all just be history soon. You know as well as I do that there’s no place in the world where an individual could override the safeguards that stop a nuclear weapon from actually being set off. There won’t be any bombs exploding.’

‘And you think we can afford to run this risk just on the basis that you hope it won’t happen? You know that’s crazy, Omar. Or shall I call you . . . Abu Ghaj?’ This time Husseini raised his head suddenly and met Blake’s eyes as he continued relentlessly, ‘My God, how could you have agreed to help plan the deaths of millions of innocent people?’

‘That’s not true! I fought when it was time, and I thought I’d done my part. I thought it was all over . . . but sometimes your past catches up with you. Even when you think you’ve buried it forever. They came asking me to hold this threat over the heads of the Americans until the rights of our people were restored . . . That’s all. And that’s what I’ve done. What I had to do. But I’m no executioner. There won’t be any slaughter of the innocents.’

‘Six hours, Omar, and millions of people will die unless we can manage to stop this implacable mechanism. Only you can help. I’ve given Pentagon technicians the password to the file you’ve called Armageddon. Do you believe me now?’

Husseini widened his fatigue-reddened eyes. ‘But how—’

‘There’s no time to explain it now. There’s one thing I have to know. If the computer is cut out while the program is being executed, what happens?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where are the “donkeys” bought at the Samarkand market?’

Husseini reacted with even greater surprise at the realization that Blake was familiar with the language in the most protected files of his computer.

‘I can’t talk about that.’

‘You have to.’

‘If I do . . . I have a son, Blake. A son I thought was dead, a son to whose memory I dedicated every action, every assault, every gunfight, over all those years that the fame of the exterminator Abu Ghaj spread across the globe. I thought I had buried him in a squalid cemetery in the Bekaa Valley, but they’ve given me proof that he’s alive and he’s in their hands. If I talk there’s no limit to the suffering they could inflict on him. You wouldn’t understand . . . You can’t begin to imagine . . . There’s a world in which poverty, hunger and endless war kill off any form of compassion, make any horror possible . . .’

‘But even Abraham was ready to sacrifice his only son because God asked him to. You’re being asked by thousands of innocent men, women and children who would be burned alive, or contaminated by radiation and condemned to living their lives in agony. Omar, I can prove that they’ve lied to you. The bombs will explode even if Jerusalem surrenders and falls to its knees, begging for mercy. Hold on, let me prove it to you.’