The Brotherhood Conspiracy (62 page)

5:58 a.m., Jerusalem

Rodriguez watched as the pillar of fire grew in intensity, pouring out of the sky like a flaming waterfall. But he was driven back by the heat.

He retreated through the opening between the cab of the truck and the hauler, grabbed onto a handle at the corner of the cab’s roof, and swung himself to the right, landing on the running board, just under the passenger side door. Blocked from the heat by the truck’s cab, he continued his vigil, in wonder at this miracle on the Mount.

“Something is happening.” He leaned closer to the satellite phone transmitter in his wristwatch. “Are you still there? . . . The fire has stopped. . . . No, I don’t mean it’s gone out. It’s stopped. It’s not coming down and it’s not going up. . . . No, I am not kidding. It’s standing still. The fire is standing still. . . . Yes, it’s still burning. But it’s just hanging there in the air. It’s not moving at all. . . . Yes, there are flames. And they are big. And hot. But they are not moving. They are just—”

A spine-shaking, crashing and yawning, as if the earth were ripping itself open in some primordial birth process, attacked his eardrums and drove splitting shards of pain behind his eyes. Joe may have screamed; he couldn’t tell. The thunder of rending earth grew, not only in volume, but also in mass, overwhelming his senses.

Right in front of him, the fire lifted up the concrete platform of the Temple Mount—lifted it straight up, about twenty meters. The fire then fully engulfed the top, bottom, and sides. The whole thing was blazing, a cauldron of rampaging flames.

And then it exploded.

Chunks of flaming concrete pounded into the far side of the truck, one crashing through the driver’s side window. Rodriguez hung on desperately as the truck rocked wildly back and forth on its haunches.

He momentarily lost sight of the Temple Mount, but as he pulled himself back to a standing position on the running board, Rodriguez saw a sight even he had trouble believing. The pillar of fire was still pouring out of the sky, but the Tent had vanished. A horrible, groaning rumble came up out of the earth, and the pillar of fire was sucked down into a gaping, flaming hole where the Temple Mount once stood.

Caught in the vortex, the truck slid sideways toward the burning abyss.

10:58 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Alexandria, VA

Both men were on secure cell phones, Whitestone talking to the secretary of state and Cartwright talking to his deputy director of Middle East affairs. But Cartwright was getting a more detailed picture of what was happening on the ground.

“The whole thing is gone,
again
? What are the Israelis doing? . . . Okay. Call if anything changes.”

The CIA director flipped shut his phone and turned to his boss. Whitestone looked older. His face was ashen; his hair disheveled from where his hand held his head. His eyes were blinking and darting from place to place in Senator Green’s private office.

“Mr. President . . . are you all right, sir?”

The telephone nearly fell from his hand as Whitestone leaned against the desk at his side. “Shin Bet has men rushing to Baruk’s residence. They haven’t been able to contact the prime minister or his security detail for the past ten minutes. The last communication they had was twenty minutes ago and Baruk said he was on his way to the helipad. He was leaving Tel Aviv for Jerusalem.”

5:59 a.m., Jerusalem

Rodriguez squeezed out every ounce of strength he could muster to hold on to the truck. He struggled to turn his body around, his back to the Mount, and was debating what the more foolhardy decision was—stay with the sliding truck or jump and run.

And then everything stopped.

The noise of the fire, the heat, the groaning death of the Temple Mount, everything stopped in half a heartbeat.

Rodriguez hung from the door’s handle and tried to control his breathing so he wouldn’t hyperventilate. He pulled himself upright and turned around to look once more.

Through the shattered windows of the truck, Joe realized that night had passed. The sun was rising in the east, the sky over Jerusalem pinking in the distance.

And a pillar of smoke hung over the yawning grave that once was the Temple Mount.

31

F
RIDAY
, A
UGUST
28

Jerusalem

It was Rizzo who convinced them.

Now he sat alone, in a shaded corner of the Garden Tomb, surrounded by fragrant flowers, but numb in his grief. Tom Bohannon, his right arm snug in a sling, walked over to the bench, sat down next to Rizzo, and put his good arm around Sammy’s shoulders.

“It’s time,” said Bohannon.

Rizzo turned his head, the lenses of his thick glasses fogged by his tears, and looked toward Bohannon’s voice.

“Okay . . . it’s okay.” Rizzo slid from the bench and managed slow, heavy-footed steps down one of the many paths in the lovingly tended grounds called the Garden Tomb, just off the Nablus Road, near Jeremiah’s Grotto and the Damascus Gate leading to Old City Jerusalem.

Ronald Fineman had talked to his friends who ran the Garden Tomb to gain access to the gardens, but the memorial service was Rizzo’s idea—one he pursued doggedly, overcoming every other barrier and impediment. “Kallie would want it this way. She loved this city. She would want to be remembered here.”

So they gathered, before Kallie’s body was flown back to her family in Iowa, to pay their respects in Jerusalem, the place where Kallie Nolan lost her life, but had lived her life to the fullest. Rabbi Fineman was there to lead the service. Kallie’s friends from the Garden Guides, from the university—her former roommates—were joined by Tom and Annie Bohannon; Joe Rodriguez and his wife, Deirdre, who flew in the day before, accompanied by Sam Reynolds from
the State Department. At Tom’s request, even Brandon McDonough joined them from Ireland, to honor Doc’s life as well.

Tom followed Sammy down the path toward the center of the Garden Tomb, what many believe is the place where the body of Jesus Christ was buried following his crucifixion on Golgotha. The tomb first came to the attention of a famous British general, Charles Gordon, in the late nineteenth century. The site, and the tomb it encompassed, fit so much of the description about Christ’s burial place—and place of resurrection—that the land was purchased in the late eighteen hundreds by the Garden Tomb Association of Great Britain and, over many years, turned into a verdant garden of reverent reflection for thousands of visitors.

In the center of the garden, near the large first-century cistern, the rest of the group waited for Sammy and Tom. In their midst was a plain, wooden casket, draped with an American flag and covered with flowers.

Bohannon stood close behind Rizzo. Tom’s eyes were red. His knees buckled. But he would be there if Sammy needed him.

Rabbi Fineman stepped up to the casket.

An hour later, Rabbi Ronald Fineman welcomed them all to his home.

He called it the
Seudat Hawra’ah
, the meal of condolence—one of the oldest, most important, and most meaningful traditions of the Jewish people. As determined as Rizzo was to have the service, Rabbi Fineman was determined that all who attended the service come to his home for the Seudat Hawra’ah.

Bohannon was grateful for the food. And it gave them all time to talk.

Kallie’s Jerusalem friends congregated in the kitchen and dining area but, one by one, members of the team found themselves in the shade of a trellis in the small garden alongside Ronald Fineman’s home. The rabbi and Brandon McDonough were already in the garden, huddled together under the blooming wisteria as the others escaped the house and the sun. Only the buzzing of flies, and the whispers coming from Fineman and McDonough, disturbed the silence. Until Tom asked one of the many questions that nagged his mind.

“It appears there were several teams of these black-hooded assassins,” said Sam Reynolds. He was sitting in a cushioned chair, his feet propped up on the edge of a large planter. “I don’t know how Baruk survived—they breached the security of his home and came darn close to killing him. And Baruk’s chief of
staff, Chaim Shomsky, is missing and hasn’t been seen since that night. But they didn’t get close to the president. The Secret Service shot all three of them before they came near the senator’s house.”

“But who would try to assassinate the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel, both on the same night?” asked Bohannon, who sat across a small table from Annie, in the opposite corner. “Who has that kind of power . . . that kind of reach?”

“Remember I told you about the new leader in the Muslim world?” said Reynolds. “It all doesn’t add up yet, but we believe radical Islam is behind these and other attacks.”

Joe and Deirdre sat on a bench, side by side. “Al Qaeda?” asked Joe.

Reynolds turned to his right, shaking his head. “No . . . Al Qaeda appears to be fading. There’s a lot I can’t talk about, but . . . well . . . we see the Muslim Brotherhood’s hand at work throughout the Middle East. And your guys with the amulets seem to be involved, too.”

Annie’s chair screeched along the flagstone as she shoved it back and stood to her feet. “God help us. Aren’t we ever going to be rid of these people? Why can’t you guys wipe out the Prophet’s Guard and give us our lives back?”

“But—” Reynolds only got out the one word.

“But nothing,” Annie snapped, crossing half the distance to Reynolds. “You and the president and all his power have been nothing but bystanders, watching from the sidelines as we . . . as Tom and Joe and Sammy . . . risked our lives, our families, chasing after the messages on the scroll. We need—”

“They were never after the scroll.” Another voice entered the conversation.

Rizzo stepped into the shade under the trellis. Again, Bohannon was struck by the devastating change. Rizzo carried his grief in every contour of his face. There was little life left in his eyes. He looked like an old man.

Dressed in black, head-to-toe, Rizzo walked up beside Annie, took her left hand in his, and looked up into her face. It nearly broke Tom’s heart.

“We were wrong,” Rizzo said. “They wanted what the scroll, the mezuzah, pointed to. And it wasn’t the Temple or the Tent. The guys who got me out of the monastery—the Temple Guard guys—they told me what this is all about. They showed me.” He held Annie’s eyes. “I think it’s why so many have died. Why so many more may die.”

Rizzo rubbed Annie Bohannon’s hand in both of his. She looked directly into his face.

“It isn’t over,” said Rizzo. “What they’re after . . . they’ll never stop.”

Annie reached out her right hand and caressed Rizzo’s cheek. “Then you and I will stop them, Sam. You and me, Tom and Joe. We can’t live the rest of our lives like this, running in fear from these killers. If God’s hand is in this—and I believe that with all my heart—then he’s called us to be in this to the end. No matter what it is that they want.”

Rizzo took a deep breath. He held Annie’s hand, and her eyes, locked in an embrace. “They want to control the world,” he said. “And they think they can use God’s power to do that. That’s what they’re after.”

For a moment, silence came back into the shade under the trellis.

“I don’t understand,” said Deirdre. “What do you mean, use God’s power?”

Rizzo turned his head to the left. “They’re looking for a weapon.”

“I know.” Rabbi Fineman stood up, followed by McDonough.

McDonough picked up a large sheet of paper that had been laid out between him and the rabbi as they talked. He held it up in front of him. “I traced these images off the cover of a sarcophagus in Jeremiah’s tomb.” On the sheet of paper were two large, angelic beings, their wings upraised, flaming swords held aloft in their hands. Between the angels was a huge tree. Below the angels and the tree was a shepherd’s staff.

“I know what they’re looking for,” said Fineman. “The most powerful weapon in the history of man.”

“And I think I know where we need to look,” said McDonough.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

While
The Brotherhood Conspiracy
is a work of fiction, there are several plot elements that are based on fact.

Details about the Tent of Meeting are biblically accurate up to the point when the Tent disappears from the pages of recorded history. The last reference to the Tent of Meeting, or Tabernacle, that traveled with the Hebrew exiles through the Sinai Desert is written in 1 Kings (8:4) when Solomon went to Gibeon and gathered up the Tent and its furnishings prior to dedicating the Temple on Mount Zion. There is no mention of the Tabernacle in the Jewish Tanakh after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587
BC
.