The Brotherhood Conspiracy (48 page)

“Or?”

“Ah,” purred al-Sadr. “Allah be praised. If you do not withdraw, the world will watch—on television, on the Internet—as we open the throats of the American women. Their blood will spill and your shame shall spread, Jew. Then we will slice off their heads, for all the world to see, and leave their bodies twitching before the cameras. Will you allow the death of these women? Are you willing to incur the wrath of the world? Forty-eight hours. I rejoice in your suffering.”

28

M
ONDAY
, A
UGUST
24

The Negev, Israel

Rising on his elbows, Rodriguez looked past the mouth of the cave. It was as dark outside as it was inside. He couldn’t see his watch. It didn’t matter.

I only needed to get out of the heat.

Joe found refuge from the blistering sun sometime in the late afternoon. He remembered that. The cliffs along the old Roman road were honeycombed with openings and he spent the afternoon checking dozens of caves with his carbon finder and trying to remain in the shade of the overhangs as he moved from one to the next. But the heat had finally overwhelmed him. He felt disoriented. A bad sign. So he took refuge, just for a few minutes. He remembered putting the magic box on the floor of the cave, propping his backpack against the wall, taking a long drink of water. The sun was throwing long shadows in the desert then. Now, it was completely gone.

Too many days without sleep. Too much stress. The body can’t go forever. The mind can’t function without rest. But none of that mattered now. Joe didn’t know how much time he had. Others must be looking for him. The Israelis were pretty sharp. And they were certainly looking for the Tent. No, not much time.

Rodriguez ran his fingers through his nappy, gray-flecked hair and scratched his head. He may have slept, but he didn’t feel energized. In fact, he sat on the floor of the cave and began to despair. He couldn’t find anything in the daylight, how could he ever hope to find anything at night? He’d probably fall off
some cliff edge and kill himself. Or get lost in this God-forsaken wasteland and die of thirst. God-forsaken. That’s how Rodriguez felt.

This must be what Tom’s been feeling. All alone, forsaken, hopeless.
Man, this stinks.

Groping to his right, he found the magnetized halogen flashlight, stood it on its base, and turned on the light. Checked his watch. Just after midnight.

Rodriguez reached into his backpack and pulled out a bottle of water, drank half, and poured the rest over his head, rubbing the sweet moisture into his face.

What would Tom do . . . where would he put his faith?

Rodriguez had grown up in a Roman Catholic family, first generation immigrants from Puerto Rico. His mother was in church more than the priests. His father worked three jobs—daytime in the Hunts Point market, nights in a corner bodega not far from their apartment, and, often, driving his cousin’s taxicab on weekends. So he didn’t get to church much. But Joe was an altar boy, serving at Mass at least three times a week.

Once out of school, though, Joe quit going to church until he married Deirdre, and then only sporadically—either to keep peace in their home, or for the baptism of their eldest son. He was fine without God-stuff. Until Jerusalem. Until he was crawling around in the bowels of the Temple Mount, rubbing up against some of the most sacred dirt in the world. Something was . . . well . . . something was there. Something lived there. And it wasn’t flesh and blood. It was spirit. Even Doc felt it.

Joe couldn’t deny that his thoughts about God had changed during that time. He just hadn’t been able to sort out what those feelings were. But those same feelings were now sending off alarms in his heart. He was on holy ground.

Underground again, this time in the middle of the Negev, scrambling through a honeycomb of subterranean passageways, searching once more for an ancient artifact that could change the course of modern history. It all felt the same—except this time he was alone. And he didn’t have a clue where to look. But at least no one was chasing him.

He picked up the flashlight and turned its beam toward the back of the cavern. Thirty feet ahead, the halogen lamp’s beam bathed the yellow walls in a wash of blue light. It was time to move. He wasn’t going to find anything sitting here. Rodriguez pulled himself to his feet, gathered up his backpack, the GPR detector, and headed in the direction of the light.

Shortly, Rodriguez came to a fork in the tunnel passage. He pulled the fluorescent yellow dots from his pocket. This is one trick that sure helped. As Doc had done in the caverns under the Temple Mount, Joe stuck three small, fluorescent circles near the floor, just inside the tunnel he was entering. Then he turned, crossed the junction point, and put three circles on the opposite wall and moved to his left and put two yellow circles at floor level just inside the tunnel he was exiting. If he came to another point where he needed to make a choice, Rodriguez would put four circles at the beginning of the tunnel he was entering. That way, he could follow the yellow circles and find his way out, or realize he had doubled back on himself.

From his pocket he fished out a shekel and flipped the coin in the air.
Right or left?
Heads.
Okay, right.
Joe swept the beam of his flashlight down the length of the right-hand tunnel, then up along the right wall, across the ceiling and . . .

The blue beam wavered . . . swinging in arcs back and forth in response to Joe’s shaking hand. Above his head, at the apex of the tunnel’s curved ceiling and just inside the portal, the beam of light reflected back and fell on Joe with a soft, golden glow. Within the light gleamed four sets of familiar symbols—
aleph
and
resh
;
kaf
,
shin
,
mem
; the four arches; and the Triple Tau. They looked as if they were inlaid with gold. And they spoke to him of an old friend.

In spite of the passing of ages, the golden-toned paint nestled inside carved grooves held a richness of color that threw light back into Joe’s face. He stretched to run his fingers over the surface of the carvings, over the pitted, but intact, paint and—not for the first time—felt as if he were being beckoned onward by a force outside his understanding, but not outside his experience. As there had been under the Temple Mount, there was a palpable spirit in this cave, a living presence . . . a feeling that he wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t here by chance.

Joe glanced down at the top of the carbon detector. Alternating with each turn of Joe’s body, the display on the screen bounced back and forth. He turned to face the shaft with the symbols . . . and the radar cursors collided in the middle of the screen and pulsed with the strength of a healthy heart.

Drawing in a deep breath, he surprised himself with a short prayer, something that rose unbidden from his years in Catholic school. He aimed the beam of light down the shaft, and followed the calling in his heart.

12:56 a.m., Jerusalem

“Levin checked out,” Colonel Posner said. “The brother-in-law dropped out of sight ten years ago and no one in the family has seen him since. They had suspicions, but no evidence he was involved with Hezbollah.”

“The phone call?” asked Orhlon. The general filled the space behind his desk, spilling over the sides of his chair.

Colonel Posner poured himself another cup of coffee from the eternal pot that sat on a sideboard in Orhlon’s office in the Defense Ministry’s command center.

“Levin ordered a computer for his son. The phone number is registered to ITech Technology—which could mean anything. It took awhile to track down the owner . . . he’s a one-man show. An American, if you can believe it, named Daniel Cantwell. He has his main office in Jericho, but a shipping facility in Dar’a. We had one of ours pay him a visit. All the paperwork was there. He still had the phone message on his recorder. And Levin has the computer and the receipt.”

“How did he handle it all?”

“The interrogation?” Posner shrugged one shoulder. “He told me he would have taken the same steps if he was in my position. He’s a pro—although he lit up the board when we showed him the photo and the phone records. But who wouldn’t? There is always that initial panic until reason establishes control.” He set his cup on the corner of General Orhlon’s desk.

“Now what?” the general prompted.

Posner placed a photograph on Orhlon’s desk. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s only one left. I’m planning to see him tomorrow.” Posner pushed his bottom lip back against his lips, contorting his porcelain features, and shook his head. “Maybe my list—my hunch—was wrong. I should know by tomorrow night.”

“Hard to believe, that’s for sure,” said Orhlon. “But we can’t move until we are absolutely certain . . . and not until we’ve briefed the prime minister. Understood?”

“Yes sir,” said Posner, standing. “But he won’t go anywhere without a team of eyes on him at all times.”

1:08 a.m.

Leonidas listened to the voice-mail message, replaced the telephone handset in the cradle, and looked at the clock on the wall of his office. They were too close.
It was time to move . . . now. Tomorrow would be too late. Tomorrow he could be in military custody.

1:32 a.m.

“Major Levin . . . we’ve picked up something on our radio wave scanner.”

Lieutenant Stern pointed at a split screen on the right edge of a bank of screens that surrounded his desk. Levin closed the space with the speed of a diving hawk. “What is it?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” admitted Stern. “See this reading? It’s being recorded by our drone. There’s some sort of electronic signal being generated, but it’s not radio, it’s not satellite phone . . . it’s not showing the characteristic range of any kind of communication we normally register.”

Levin leaned over Stern’s right shoulder. “It’s not bounce-back. Too steady for bounce-back.”

“No sir, there’s something down there emitting a signal. Faint—it’s very localized. Its travel loop is very short. But it’s there. And . . . sir . . .”

“I know . . . it’s moving,” said Levin. “Can you locate it?”

Stern ran his cursor over the screen and clicked on a crosshairs icon. The signal analysis screen faded and a map replaced it: a high-altitude, infrared view of the Negev. Stern clicked his mouse again and the screen zoomed in at dizzying speed.

The image on Stern’s screen stopped moving . . . hovered a moment over a barren plateau that fell away into a deep defile to the east. The crosshairs shifted, as if smelling for a scent, then pushed the view southward and zeroed in on a series of cliff faces and ravines. The crosshairs on the screen kept descending, slower now, seeking. Then they stopped, settled finally on a cleft of shadow and light so stark in its contrast that everything in the cleft, lying below the surface, was blacker than the far side of the moon.

“Scorpion Pass?” asked Levin.

“No, sir . . . not exactly. One hundred and thirty-seven meters south of Scorpion Pass. Whatever is emitting that signal is several hundred meters below the sightline of our drone.”

“Underground.”

“Yes, sir.”

Major Levin picked up the telephone to his left and hit the top, red button.
“This is Levin,” he said to the Central Command dispatch officer. “We’ve got him. Send everyone to thirty degrees; fifty-five minutes north . . . thirty-five degrees; seven minutes east. He’s underground. There’s got to be a cave down there. All right, a lot of caves. Get our men in there and find him. Now—”

Levin stopped in midsentence as the dispatch officer’s voice was replaced by the commanding baritone of General Orhlon. “Yes, sir—good evening. Yes, sir, I believe we have located the American. He’s down in the caves, south of Scorpion Pass. Yes, sir, we’ll find him.”

Levin listened again, his face contorting into a grimace. “Due respect, sir, but I’d rather stay at it with the men here until Rodriguez is apprehended. He—The Mount? Yes, sir, I know they will . . . but . . . yes, sir. I’m on my way.”

He eased the handset into the cradle, afraid that if he slammed it as hard as he wanted to his men might think he was insubordinate. Levin pried his fingers from the handset.

“General Orhlon has ordered me to the Temple Mount,” Levin said to the wall. “Rumors of Hezbollah infiltrators getting into the city. He wants the Mount secured.” He glanced down at Lieutenant Stern. “Don’t lose him. Stay on that signal.”

2:47 a.m., The Negev

Steadying the carbon detector and the halogen flashlight secured by its magnet to the side of the metal box, Rodriguez picked his way along the uneven, rubble-strewn floor of the cavern like a man walking across spring ice. He didn’t want to fall and damage the sensor. The tunnel carved a sweeping turn to the right, curving back around on itself as it dropped deeper under the surface. At the end of a nearly complete arc, Rodriguez entered a small, circular space where the ceiling of the cavern lifted, and two tunnels branched off. He pulled the flashlight away from the box and swept its beam across the inside ceiling of each tunnel. There were no symbols, no clue to lead him. Joe looked down at the display on the carbon sensor. It was blank. He twisted the dials, tapped the screen, and shook the box in his hands. The display remained blank—black—as if all power was lost. Useless.