“Then what?”
“Then the world will see that Islamic terrorists have nuclear weapons and be forced to take the threat seriously.”
“What if the President tells the American people not to worry? Says that ain’t no bomb, folks, just some kinda fake. What then?”
“I don’t envision that happening. The evidence would be too strong. But anyway, I plan to take steps to make sure the bomb is discovered. Before it detonates, of course.”
McCabe looked skeptical.
“Same problem. Special Forces or the CIA find this thing, then they say it’s a fake. General, if you want people to know what it is, you’ve got to make it go off.”
“And hit a major city? Tens of thousands of people could die. We’d be no better than terrorists ourselves.”
“Sure, if it went off in a city. But why do it there? These radicals’d have some kinda hideout, somewhere they can’t easily be found. Maybe they’d be in the desert, or the mountains. Detonate your bomb out there in the boondocks, no one gets hurt, but you get yourself noticed, that’s for damn sure… Shit!”
He’d started coughing again.
“You should see a doctor about that,” said Vermulen.
McCabe spat phlegm onto the ground.
“I got a chest infection. It’ll pass. You just answer one last question: How much is all this gonna cost me?”
“I haven’t budgeted it yet. But you’d have to allow several million bucks.”
McCabe laughed.
“Several million? That all? Hell, I thought you were gonna ask me for serious money.”
McCabe was impressed. He’d set Vermulen a challenge and the general had met it. That list of nukes would bring the war against the Antichrist a whole heap closer. So now he just had to find a place where a bomb could be the fuse that would make the whole world go up in smoke. Once Vermulen had been sent on his way back to Washington, McCabe went back to the estate house, where he’d installed a library of religious books. Then he poured himself a couple of fingers of bourbon and started his research.
His first thought was the hill of Megiddo itself, but it was just an outcrop in the countryside northeast of Tel Aviv, nothing much else around it. For sure it was the site where the final battle concluded. But it wasn’t the best place to start a war. For that, he needed a place that was already a flashpoint, somewhere sacred to both Christ and Antichrist alike.
He was sitting at his desk, wondering where to look next, when something caught his eye, a letter he’d recently received, asking for donations to assist the preservation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Recently, the evangelical movement had found common cause with the Jews because both of them hated the Arabs. Now the Arabs were being accused of disrespecting the Jewish relics on the Mount. A lot of folks had been upset by that.
McCabe’s mind started turning over. He had little knowledge of Jewish theology and none at all of Islam. But he had as good an eye for an opportunity as anyone. He could see that different religions were already arguing over Temple Mount. That sounded worth his while to check out.
The significance of the Mount soon became very obvious. The Jews believed that the exposed bedrock on Temple Mount was the very Foundation Stone from which the world had been created, the center of everything. When Abraham had offered up his son Isaac in sacrifice, that happened on Temple Mount, too. Solomon had built his temple there, and he’d placed the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies right over the Foundation Stone. So that made the Mount the most sacred site in Judaism.
It was the Muslim angle, though, that really made McCabe’s head spin. He looked on Muslims as godless heathens, but the thing that blew his mind was not how different the teachings of Islam were from those of Judaism, but how similar they were.
They believed in the Foundation Stone, too. The Dome of the Rock, the oldest Islamic building in the world, had been built right on top of it. Muslims also agreed that Abraham had come to the Mount, which they called the Noble Sanctuary. Difference was, they held that he offered up his other son Ishmael for sacrifice, and that Ishmael was an ancestor of the Prophet Mohammed.
Muslim scripture stated that the Prophet had been visited in Mecca by the archangel Gabriel, who brought an animal called al-Buraq, on which he rode through the night to the stone on the Mount. Then the Prophet ascended to heaven, and met Adam, Jesus and John, Joseph, Enoch, Aaron, Moses, and Abraham, before coming face-to-face with Allah himself.
McCabe couldn’t understand how the Muslims could claim prophets and angels from the Holy Bible. And what was Jesus doing in their heaven? Bottom line, though, there were now two ancient Muslim shrines on the Mount-the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque-which put it right up there with Mecca and Medina on the list of their holiest places.
Looking on a map of Jerusalem, McCabe also saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site of Christ’s burial place. That was as important a shrine as existed in the whole Christian world, and it was just a few hundred yards away, in the heart of the Old City, well within range of any nuclear blast.
Suddenly the pain and fear of his disease was replaced by a glow of true contentment. Temple Mount was the flashpoint he’d been looking for. Nuke that, and all hell would break loose. Oh, yeah, that would do the trick, all right.
24
He was standing in the middle of the road and a black car was driving straight toward him. Its headlights were blazing right into his eyes, blinding him. He tried to close his eyes but his eyelids wouldn’t move. He struggled to turn away, but no matter how hard he wrenched his neck, his head was held fast. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t move. Now the roar of the engine was filling his head and he couldn’t lift his hands to cover his ears and his brain was about to explode with noise and light and he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t because his mouth was gagged and his teeth seemed loose against the leather strap. And he was cold, so terribly, terribly cold…
Carver came to, his pulse racing and his throat constricted by a pervasive, unfocused panic. For a while, he could not focus his eyes, so he reached out blindly for her hand… and felt nothing.
He frowned and shook his head quickly from side to side, banishing the last bad fragments of his nightmare from his brain. Then he opened his eyes… and Alix wasn’t there.
Now he really had something to panic about. Carver told himself to calm down. There were very few things he knew for sure anymore, but one of them was that Alix came to see him every day. She had been there earlier, he was sure, and she’d be back again. It was just a matter of waiting. Maybe she was getting a meal or something to read. She did that sometimes, when she thought he was asleep. Yes, that was it. She would be back soon.
“Hello, Samuel.” There was a woman at the door of the room. She was smiling at him and her voice was friendly. But she wasn’t Alix. She was Nurse Juneau, bringing him food and medication.
She looked around as she came into the room, frowned to herself, then gave Carver another smile.
“Alix not here?” she asked perkily, then her voice took on a huskier tone: “At last, Samuel, we’re all alone.”
She looked at him over one shoulder teasingly. “After all this time-now what shall we do?”
She picked up one of his hands and stroked it.
Carver flinched at her touch. He found people confusing. He didn’t always understand what they meant by the things they said. He couldn’t work out what they were feeling when they spoke. Their intentions were unclear. He could see that Nurse Juneau was flirting with him, but he had the sense she was mocking him, too. He didn’t like that.