“Undesirable? We’re risking WWIII because involving them is undesirable?” Harry asked, incredulous.
“You have your orders,” Lay replied sternly. “I can’t make clear enough how important it is that none, I repeat none of the toxin escapes into the atmosphere. Due to the covert nature of your mission, providing you with bio-suits is out of the question. I want to make the risks perfectly clear to you gentlemen.”
“The risks were perfectly clear to me when I signed up, sir,” Hamid retorted, his voice calm and even. “Let’s do it.”
“Dr. Schuyler’s team at Bethesda is testing current antibiotics against the bacteria, but the odds are slim. If you are exposed, you will likely die. So, don’t let them release it. Good luck, and God bless.”
The screen went black, leaving the team members looking at each other in silence. Finally, Thomas cleared his throat.
“That,” he intoned dryly, “is what passes at Langley for work incentive.”
The knock on the door seemed to come only moments after his head had touched the pillow. General Shoham grabbed the alarm clock off the night stand in the sparsely appointed room and glanced at the time.
“Come in!” was his gruff demand as he swung his legs out of bed. “What’s going on?”
“You wanted to know the moment we found anything,” a woman’s voice replied and he turned to see an embarrassed female adjutant standing in the doorway. Shoham sighed, reaching for his pants and pulling them on over his boxers. “Yes, I did. What is it?”
“Our systems just red-flagged a security fence report from near Ramallah earlier tonight. This man crossed from the West Bank, along with two others, shortly after twenty hundred hours.”
A glance at the photograph was enough to confirm Shoham’s suspicions. Lt. Laner’s report had placed Nichols in Ramallah as well. “What identity was he using?”
She placed a xeroxed copy of a driver’s license on the bed. “Hans de Vries, a Belgian journalist for National Geographic. He was accompanied by this man, Piter Muller, identified as his photographer. And this man, his translator, a Palestinian named Muhammad Rahman.”
“Do we have anything on Rahman?”
“His identification was out-of-date, but after placing a call to National Geographic to confirm de Vries’ identity, the guards waved them through.”
Shoham cursed under his breath. The man in the third photograph looked familiar, strangely so. And Nichols’ last “translator” had ended up with a .45 slug in each lung. “Have Gabriel run this one through our facial-recognition software. See if we can come up with any matches.”
The lights of Tel Aviv shone in the distance, casting their shimmering gleam across miles of open sea.
They were drifting now, engines completely cut, lights out. Drifting inexorably in on the tide. Harry and Thomas stood in the cabin of the cruiser, poring over surveillance photos on the screen of Tex’s laptop. “This one was taken in Marseilles a year ago — al-Farouk was treated like a hero by the Muslim community after his activities in Lebanon. GIGN tried to move in, but they got nowhere with the complete lack of local cooperation,” Harry added, referencing France’s elite counter-terrorism unit.
Thomas acknowledged the information with a nod, waiting for Harry to continue. A click of the mouse and the image on-screen changed. “This is the only other ‘face’ we have on this mission. Harun Larijani, the nephew of President Shirazi and a colonel in the IRGC. He’s never shown up on our radar before, so these are the only two photos we have of him.”
“Do we expect either one of them to be on-site?” Thomas asked, committing both faces to memory.
“Langley’s dossier on al-Farouk would lead me to believe he’ll be there. Appearing in Europe like that, like some sort of extremist fundraiser — the man’s let his ego overrule his judgment in the past.” Irony crept in Harry’s voice, along with a cold certainty. “And what could be more satisfying to the ego than to start a world war? He’ll be there, all right.”
“Where do you want me?”
“Up high. Eyes in the sky.” The screen changed to an overlay map of Jerusalem, showing both roads and topography. Harry tapped the screen with his index finger. “Right here.”
A grin spread across Thomas’s face. “Looks good. What’s security like?”
“At the church itself? Virtually non-existent.”
There was little moon, the skies over Jerusalem shrouded by clouds, but the white limestone of the German Lutheran church glistened in the ambient light of the city. Built in the late 19th century and dedicated in 1898 in a ceremony attended by none other than Kaiser Wilhelm II, of Great War fame, the church had seen much in the hundred-plus years since its founding.
At the western entrance, near the Muristan market, an icon of the Lamb of God surmounted the door, flanked by the engraving of a Prussian eagle on one side and a Maltese cross on the other, the third symbol dating back to the Crusading order of St. John.
The only Protestant church in the Old City, it was still in use as both a tourist destination and a functioning house of worship. And as Harry had said, security was virtually non-existent.
Above the church, high above the neo-Romanesque architecture of the Berliner Friedrich Adler, rose the bell tower. From its lofty height, one could gaze down on well-nigh the entire city.
And have a clear shot at almost anyone in the Haram al-Sharif…
“We just heard from WHIPPOORWILL,” Carol Chambers announced, standing in the door of David Lay’s office. “Nichols and the team have made it safely to land. Phase 2 is beginning.”
There was no response and for a long moment she thought her father hadn’t heard the message. Then a long, heavy sigh escaped his lips. “You realize what we just did, don’t you? We put a team on the ground inside an ally’s borders. It’s like playing Russian roulette — God knows the Clandestine Service won’t survive if this goes south. It’ll be the ammunition used to shut down all our capacity for black-ops, everything we’ve built since the Bush administration.”
Carol gazed keenly at him across the room. “Is that the game Hancock is playing?”
“God knows,” David Lay repeated, shaking his head. “He’s given us Hobson’s choice — which is no choice at all, really. How are you holding up?”
A faint smile crossed her face. “The coffee consumed by the op-center staff in the last twenty-four hours would float the Titanic. We’re wide awake.”
“People understand why we can’t bring on another shift?”
“Operational need-to-know,” Carol nodded. “Restrict the number of people that realize we could be triggering a world war.”
A grim smile. “That’s right. Housekeeping moved a sofa into Conference Room #3. I’ll be in there if you need me. It’s going to be a long night…”
They left separately, their departures staggered in time. First, Thomas — then Tex and Farshid Hossein together. A body of men traveling together tended to attract undue attention in Palestine, something Harry wanted to avoid at all costs.
“You understand I’ll need you to take point on this,” Harry said when he and Hamid were alone at last. Davood was behind the wheel of an idling SUV ten yards away, waiting. “With Husayni insisting on only Muslims entering the masjid, you’re going to be the one most likely to be exposed.”