The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (9 page)

A secret member of the Green Wave party, the rabidly defiant opposition to the mullah’s iron-fisted rule of Iran, Tavana came up alongside Famid Hussein’s desk in the engraving department, ready to receive the last piece.

Hussein held out a small, padded envelope. “For the finishing department,” he said, and turned abruptly back to his work.

Only the most observant would notice how Hussein’s gaze locked momentarily with Tavana’s before the messenger moved on without a word of response. Marwan Alami was that kind of observer. She leaned back from her desk to watch Tavana as he made his way through the engraving department, buried deep in the underground levels of the Central Bank building. Tavana’s eyes locked with no others. She picked up her telephone while keeping both Hussein and Tavana in view. “The messenger, Tavana. And the engraver, Famid Hussein. Something is not right there. They look suspicious.”

Alami listened for a moment. “Yes, my instincts are usually correct. Watch them.”

Tavana sorted the messages and parcels and left them on the counter in the mailroom for their regular inspection. Nothing moved through the Central Bank building, even a piece of paper, without members of the Revolutionary Guard conducting a thorough inspection. He picked up his lunch bucket and turned to the door. The way was blocked by two members of the guard.

“Leaving before the inspection, Tavana?” asked the captain.

“I have medicine.” Tavana tried to remain calm. “It’s time, and I must eat food before taking the medicine. Everything is waiting for you.” Tavana turned to the side and gestured to the table.

“Give me your bucket,” said the captain.

Tavana forced himself to look at the captain as he handed over the round, metal bucket with the tight-fitting lid.

The captain twisted open the lid and rummaged through the contents of the bucket. He pulled out a round piece of flat bread. “Tear it.”

Tavana took the flat piece of bread and tore it in two.

“Again.”

The captain held out his hand for the four pieces of bread. He looked at the edges, pulled the bread apart. Then threw the pieces back into the bucket and pushed on the lid.

“Your lunch,” said the captain, holding out the bucket toward Tavana. “I should make you stay with us, but go. Get your food. Take your medicine.”

Tavana took his lunch bucket, edged past the other guardsman at the door, and turned down the hall toward the lunchroom. The packages, including his, were now taped to his thighs, under his blousy, linen trousers. His knees shook, but only he was aware.

Halfway down the hall, Tavana turned and entered the men’s restroom. He went into the very last stall—the one just under the security camera in the corner, the one with the dead spot below—lowered his trousers, and sat on the toilet lid. With the precise gentleness of a surgeon, Tavana removed each of the objects from his thighs. Blocked from the eye of the camera, he assembled two devices from the six pieces. He took his lunch from the bucket, replaced the lunch with the two devices, and then flushed his lunch down the toilet.

Tavana washed his hands, left the men’s room, and continued down the hallway to the lunch room. Entering the room, he went to the coffee maker, poured himself a small cup of thick, sweet, strong coffee and retreated to a table in the corner. He sat there, sipping his coffee, until his lunch break concluded, then gathered up his bucket and walked back to the mailroom. The captain and his aide were just leaving.

“Feeling better, Tavana?” The captain’s question felt more like an accusation.

“Not yet, sir. But I will.”

“Then get on with your work.”

He watched the two guardsmen saunter down the hall, and then turned into his mailroom. Loading his cart with the inspected deliveries, Tavana took the two devices out of his lunch bucket and stuffed them into the canvas bag below the shelf. He pushed the cart out of the mailroom, his calm exterior belying the riot of fear and dread that raced through his veins.

Marwan Alami waited patiently for the messenger’s return. Famid Hussein worked diligently at his engraving table. He hadn’t moved from his space all night. But Tavana was scheduled for his final pickup, and it wouldn’t be too long. Alami walked to the water cooler and filled a cup. She turned, with a full view of Hussein’s face, as Tavana entered the engraving department. Alami glanced over her shoulder. The two guardsmen stood outside the enclosure to the engraving department. All that was needed was a wave of her hand.

Tavana pushed his cart down the main aisle of the department, scanning outboxes left and right for any waiting delivery. He passed Hussein’s desk without a pause. Hussein never took his eyes off the engraving tool and the design he was cutting into the metal. Alami waited a heartbeat. Nothing changed. She shook her head. Disappointed, but undeterred, she went back to her desk.

Tavana did not have access to the vaults, to the stacked bars of gold stamped with the seal of Iran and piled in pyramids a meter and a half high. But he didn’t need to get to the vaults. The anteroom of the guards would suit well enough.

From the neat stacks on top of his cart, Tavana handed the sealed message to the guard at the desk and backed his cart into the anteroom so he could return up the hallway from which he came … the same maneuver he made every day. But this time he stopped. He knelt on the floor and bent down to tie the laces on his boots. While on the floor, Tavana took the two assembled devices from the canvas sack. There were two large, heavy, reinforced carts lined up in the anteroom, sitting to Tavana’s right. With a minimum of movement, using the powerful magnets on the side of the device, Tavana attached one device under the bottom shelf, into the corner of the heavy frame of one cart. With the guard intently studying his work schedule for the next two weeks, Tavana swiftly deposited the other device in the same location on the second cart—under the shelf, a heavy rim surrounding it, invisible to anyone who didn’t look from underneath.

It took less than two breaths, and Tavana was back on his feet. He pushed his delivery cart out into the hallway, past the guard at the desk. “Salaam.” Without a reply from the guard, Tavana retraced his steps down the hallway. Before him, the captain of the guard and his aide rounded a corner and walked in his direction.

“Ah, Tavana, we’ve been looking for you,” said the captain. The two guardsmen flanked Tavana, standing on either side of his cart. “Come with us.” The aide took possession of the cart. “There is someone who wants to speak with you … and with a friend of yours, I believe.”

Tavana bowed his head as he followed the captain down the hall. But his spirit danced with his ancestors.
You are too late. I have repaid my debt. You took my family from me. Now I take something valuable from you.

Like most clandestine Israeli actions against its enemies, this one unfolded meticulously. While the two main Iranian refineries were melting into puddles from the searing heat of the phosphorous bombs, the explosions began echoing through Fordow. Up and down the corridors on three levels, light fixtures were exploding and spewing a radioactive cloud that would condemn the facility to a toxic future for the next thousand years. A radioactive poison that sentenced more than half of Iran’s nuclear scientists and technicians—along with a large number of North Koreans—to a lingering, excruciating death.

Meanwhile, 130 kilometers to the north, in the capital of Tehran, a squad of six heavily armed Revolutionary Guards—the vault’s doors closed and locked—escorted four white-gloved soldiers as they loaded gold bars onto two reinforced carts. The pyramids of gold were dwindling, tangible evidence of the efficacy of the Western world’s economic stranglehold against Iran. The crew took the last few bars from a now nonexistent pyramid and had to move on to another to fulfill their quota.

“Let’s move, Achmed,” said the squad leader. “Hurry, or my dinner will be cold, my wife will be angry, and my mistress will be bored.”

“These are the last ones,” said Achmed. “And we’re ten minutes ahead of schedule.”

Ten minutes was enough to change everything—to ruin Mossad’s meticulous planning. The explosive devices that Tavana had secured to the underbellies of the reinforced carts were timed to go off in the middle of the regular pickup, while they were still loading the gold and the vault was sealed shut. But these men were early. And now they were leaving the vault.

The two Revolutionary Guard soldiers in front of Achmed had just opened the outer vault door and the second cart was being pushed through the open inner vault door when the twin explosions ripped through the vault’s entrance. The explosive force, though powerful, was not designed to damage the massive, hardened steel doors. Rather, the devices were shaped, the explosives arranged to forcibly disseminate their contaminating payloads.

Achmed, five of the soldiers, and the other cart pusher lay in mounds of shredded flesh, bleeding and stone dead. The sixth soldier, blown back behind one of the vault doors, watched as silvery clouds of glittering dust jetted across the expanse of the gold depository, colliding with the far-opposite wall and spreading in all directions. Like lethal snow, the glittering dust slowly turned yellow as it settled to the floor, coating the pyramids of gold bars and everything else inside the vault. Including the soldier.