The Brotherhood Conspiracy (3 page)

Eliazar Baruk was on his feet, stunned at the swiftness of the destruction, his eyes still glued to the now blank television screen. His right hand grasping the corner of his desk for support, the Israeli prime minister felt the eruption of random shifts ripping at the foundations of his office on Kaplan Street in Qiryat Ben-Gurion, between the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of the Interior.

Screams . . . shouts . . . running feet . . . crashing metal.

A massive chunk of concrete fell from the ceiling, crushing a corner of Baruk’s desk. The door to his office splintered and snapped clear from its hinges. Andrew, his most trusted protector, clawed at the splintered wood trying to reach the prime minister. But Andrew was bulled to the side as the massive bulk of General Moishe Orhlon, Israel’s defense minister, pressed through the shattered door.

“Moishe, call up the reserves . . . all of them,” Baruk said. “Good God, what have we done?”

Damascus, Syria

Imam Moussa al-Sadr tore his kaftan from neckline to hem, fell to his knees, and pounded his fists into his chest. “May Allah forgive us,” he whispered to the carpet.

Rocking on his haunches, his gaze went back to the carnage on the television screen filling the far wall. Disgusted with the so-called peace to which the Palestinians and Egyptians had capitulated, al-Sadr’s rage overflowed during the Jews’ sacrilegious blood sacrifice. Now, as he watched the Dome of the Rock swallowed by the abyss on Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque crumble into dust, his fury erupted with the killing heat of molten lava.

“Fools!” al-Sadr screamed. “Traitors!” He pointed a long finger at the screen. “May Allah’s curses be on you and your children.” Falling to his knees again, he beat his fists into the carpet. “Fools . . . such fools . . .”

Minutes passed as the heaving in al-Sadr’s body subsided. Then he rose—rod straight, face like flint, his eyes blazing with the fervor of a fanatic. He turned to the two men who were sitting with him on the floor rug. When he spoke, his voice was dead . . . cold. “Such fools. What did they expect they would receive from embracing peace with the infidels and the Jews? Look.”

Al-Sadr shook his fist at the television screen. “Is this worth peace? Never. Never, at any price. But, now, these fools and their friends must pay the price of their treachery. Come, this is our time.”

Washington, DC

“Walk with me,” President Jonathan Whitestone said, grabbing the arm of the CIA director as he stepped through the French doors of the Oval Office and turned left into the colonnade on the west side of the White House.

“Well, Bill, we just watched the end of a very short-lived peace in the Middle East,” said the president, pulling Director Cartwright closer to his side. “This Temple Mount disaster can ignite into World War Three at the whiff of a match. I don’t trust the Israelis or the Arabs to keep their hands off the Mount. The Bavarian peace treaty is as shattered as the Mount itself.”

President Jonathan Whitestone stopped abruptly and spun Bill Cartwright so they were face-to-face. “Bill, what is happening here? The Arab world is blowing up around us and now this fragile peace just got swallowed in an earthquake. Most of the time, it’s the Jews and the Arabs that scare me, Bill. God knows what they’re going to do about this political mess. But I’m even more frightened about what we just witnessed happening to the Mount. What do you think it means?”

The two men participated in a Tuesday evening Bible study in the White
House residence and had known each other since both served on the deacon board of Trinity Baptist Church in Dallas, fifteen years before.

“Mr. President, we both know that ritual sacrifice in the Temple started the clock ticking. Nobody knows how much time is left in these last days—maybe a year, maybe one hundred years, maybe a thousand. But the clock is ticking. And I believe that changes everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, Mr. President. We can debate the biblical meaning and implications, but our job is to understand the political and military implications of what we’ve just seen. We can’t trust what we trusted before. The world has changed on us. And we need to figure out how it has changed, who it has changed, and what we need to do about it.”

Whitestone shoved his hands deep into his pockets, his head bowed. “God help us, Bill. We’ve just left the era of history and entered an era that will be orchestrated by biblical prophecy. It’s hard to believe, but we’ve got to understand where this will take us.” The president lifted his head and put his right hand on Cartwright’s shoulder. “Find out for us, Bill. Get together whomever you need. But keep a tight lid on it. Find out where we’re headed . . . before we get there.”

2

T
HURSDAY
, J
ULY
23

New York City

Tom Bohannon wandered helplessly in the darkness beneath the Temple Mount. He was alone, shivering, lost. Every few steps, he called out for Doc or Joe. Where had they gone? Just then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a dark figure emerge from the inky blackness. The barest glint of metal registered in his consciousness as a razor-sharp blade pierced his neck, inches from his carotid artery.

Like a drowning man being pulled from the bottom of a swimming pool, Tom Bohannon’s eyes were wide open, his heart pounding, his lungs devouring oxygen, his body half out of bed as his mind flailed for a grasp of reality.

He was at home, in bed. Safe.

But his body and mind were raging with alarms. What ripped him from his sleep at three in the morning?

He sat up, tried to calm his breathing and avoid waking Annie, and listened to the dark. Something was wrong. Every cell in his body flooded with adrenaline. He felt the firm grasp of fight-or-flight fear. Someone was in his house.

Bohannon wrestled to still the pounding of his heart that reverberated through his ears. He probed the dark for memory of the sound that yanked him awake. And he listened.

Something . . . someone . . . is here.

Bohannon swung his legs from the bed and gently rested his bare feet on the polished walnut floor. Rehearsing every creaking floorboard, he padded to the doorway of their bedroom as if snakes were sleeping in the dark. He willed his
hearing into the hallway, down the steps. There was a dead calm to the air. No breeze through the open windows. But Bohannon felt a stirring in the house, a shiver of presence that froze the pores of his skin.

Fear of what he might see strangled his throat, grasped his shoulders, and clamped his feet to the floor. He forced himself to the open doorway and held his breath as he peeked around the doorjamb and into the hallway. Nothing stirred the shadows. Still, the warrior in him begged for a weapon.

Stepping quietly over the boards at the door’s threshold, Bohannon eased across the hallway to a closet on the far wall, caressed open the door, and reached into the left front corner for what he knew rested there. A polished, black oak climbing stick purchased in Switzerland years before. Its head was carved into the sweep of an eagle’s wing, curved in the middle to fit a man’s hand, with a thin edge milled at its end. The bottom of the stick was cut to a point and covered with an overlapping, hardened steel cap that extended into a sharp point for piercing the earth. It could be lethal.

Bohannon hefted the stick, held it in the middle, ready to use either end to defend his home, and began searching for the cause of his fear.

Had they come back, the killers with the amulet—the Coptic cross with the lightning bolt slashing through it on an angle? Those relentless stalkers, the Prophet’s Guard, who murdered Winthrop Larsen, tried to kidnap his daughter Caitlin, twice attempted to murder him and Doc Johnson?

In his late fifties, Bohannon was still fit and strong. At six feet tall, possessing the imperfect face and physique that was uniquely masculine, he had proved his courage and tested his strength in the bowels of the Temple Mount—and more recently lost some of his extra weight during long, high-impact bike rides he took with his son, Connor. There was fear—the Prophet’s Guard had proven they were to be feared—but there was no hesitation. He would stand between his family and any threat, no matter the cost.

The moon was down. Only the wash from the street lamps, shaded by the trees on their front lawn, weakened the blackness of the night, but failed to pierce the myriad shadows. Bohannon drilled his vision into the dark and took a step forward.

My cell phone!
It was back on the top of the dresser in his bedroom. Backward was not a direction he wanted to go.

Pressing close to the wall where the floorboards were less worn, Bohannon edged down the hall. Terror gripped him as he stopped and looked over his
shoulder, expecting a shadow specter to move behind him, a threat to his sleeping wife. Nothing moved.

He turned his face and peered down the second-floor hallway of their hundred-twenty-year-old Victorian home. Every corner harbored a threat. Connor’s and Caitlin’s rooms were down that end. So was the bathroom. Bohannon crept along the hallway. As he approached the bathroom door, he crouched low and readied the hiking stick to strike. His breathing stopped. He heard a noise downstairs, a muffled scrape of something against the wooden floor.

Perspiration soaked the curly hair at the back of his neck. His family was in danger. He was their protector. He would give his life to save theirs.

Bohannon turned on the balls of his feet, picked his path, and moved toward the top of the stairs. He held his breath as he peeked through the banister and down the steps, only half of which he could see. There was no other sound.

This was the most threatening part. The stairs. Every one groaned and cracked with the wear of years. His breathing was rapid and shallow. Could he reach the telephone? Should he use it? He stepped down, keeping his feet to the very side of each stair tread. One-by-one. He reached the landing. No light penetrated the large, stained-glass window. He searched the darkness below.

Halfway down the bottom flight he stopped and peered around the edge of the wall to his left. The parlor was still, quiet. The front door was closed, secure. Through the open pocket doors the dining room was a blackened shroud. Someone could be in there, watching, and Bohannon would never know.

He nearly stumbled, fumbling with the walking stick weapon in his hand, as the scraping sound sliced through the silence once again, from his right.

The kitchen. The back door.

He shifted the walking stick to his left hand, stepped over the middle of the stair tread to the other side and rested his hand on the banister for balance. He was breathing in short, rapid strokes and desperately tried to remain silent.

Bohannon edged down the final stairs. The telephone stand was on the other side of the stairs, tucked into a corner. Out of the question. He stood immovable, as he threw all his senses at the doorway to the kitchen, probing around the corner. He hefted the stick in his hands, slipped his grip down the shaft, and raised the heavy, sharp-edged head.

Silently he slipped off the final step and sidled to his right . . . the laundry room, to the butler’s pantry, and into the kitchen from behind. Each step took
an eternity. Each step pumped more adrenaline into his system as he frantically looked both forward and over his shoulder to his unprotected back.

Entering the butler’s pantry, Bohannon saw a dim light shimmering from the kitchen. Only moments had passed, but he felt he was stalking this prey for hours. His calf muscles ached, every muscle taut. Were his reflexes fast enough? Would he have an advantage . . . surprise, weight, desperation? Would he survive?

Bohannon set his jaw, tensed his arms, and eased his body to the threshold of the kitchen.

Connor looked up from the screen of his laptop, a half-eaten sandwich and a glass of milk on the wooden table, and pulled out his earbuds.

“Hey, Dad,” he said, his face puzzled. “I dropped the milk. Did I wa—What’s wrong?”

Dayr al Qiddis Oasis, Egypt

Racing over the hard sand and gravel flats like so many Arabian stallions at full charge, with red-on-green flags of a scimitar moon snapping, the six midnight black Land Rovers—windows as dark as their intent—barreled forward in a chevron formation kicking up clouds of sand behind them. The spearhead of black hurtled forward through the Wadi Abu Gerifat to the southwest, closing quickly on the large tent compound gathered along the edge of the Red Sea Mountains, far from the sight of the road to the oasis Dayr al Qiddis Antun.

Charging out from the compound, a troop of mounted riders spurred their real stallions into a collision course with the phalanx of Land Rovers.

The horse-and-rider troop, dazzling in their white kaftans and carrying huge war banners of dark green, split in half and swarmed down both sides of the Land Rover formation. Their war cries of welcome echoed off the mountain flanks to the east, drowning out the whine of the engines. The welcoming party escorted the vehicles into the midst of the tent compound to the portal of a huge, green tent.

Men came running from all directions, joining the riders in a rising tide of throaty warbles, shouts of triumph, and beating drums.

Imam Moussa al-Sadr stepped from the foremost vehicle and was immediately surrounded by the black-robbed entourage that poured out of the other Rovers.