She was right. How could they not have thought of it sooner? Bennett turned off his Blackberry and pulled out his SIM card. On it were the addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail accounts of everybody he knew on Wall Street, in Washington, and in all of the capitals he and Erin had been to around the world over the last few years. It was not something he dared lose.
“I checked the guys upstairs,” Erin said, rifling through the pockets of the man she’d just shot. “Nothing — no ID, no passport.”
But this time was different. On him, she found a set of car keys and a cell phone — a cell phone with a built-in camera. She snapped a few shots of all three men before Bennett insisted they get out while they still could. Then they raced outside, found the men’s black Mercedes, and “borrowed” it, at least for a while.
34
To their relief, everyone in the Shochat house was still asleep.
They snuck down to the basement, and while Bennett took a quick shower, Erin booted up the desktop computer. She quickly logged back on to the CIA satellite account, reentered the coordinates for Mordechai’s house, and soon had a live, wide shot of his entire neighborhood. For the moment, all appeared calm — no police cars, no ambulances, no media. By daybreak, that would change. But at least they had a few hours’ head start.
Next she hacked into the Israeli police department’s database, using a back door she had learned in her years with the CIA. She immediately uploaded the photos of the men who had tried to kill them and ran a trace. It came back negative. The men weren’t locals. She entered the license plate of the Mercedes they had used. Not surprisingly, it was stolen.
Then she logged on to the Interpol database and tried again. This time she got hits on all three attackers. They were Italians — two from Rome, one from Milan. They were members of an underground radical faction known as the Legion, wanted for bombings, bank robberies, and assassinations in France, Spain, Holland, and Germany. The Interpol files had vital stats on all of the men — when and where they’d been born, names of their parents, criminal records, etc. — but little on the Legion itself. It was believed to be a splinter group of the Red Brigades, but that was about all Erin could glean without a higher clearance code.
She e-mailed images of each man to Indira Rajiv at Langley, along with a brief note explaining what had just happened at Mordechai’s house.
can you trace this and get back to me, raj? i need info on the legion asap… thanks — erin.
She hit Send and closed her eyes for a few minutes. She was exhausted, but the attack must mean they were doing something right. The very fact that someone was gunning for them meant Mordechai and Barak and their little band of treasure hunters had been on to something. Someone was systematically hunting down anyone trying to solve the mystery of the Copper Scroll. It didn’t prove the Cracker Jack box contained a prize. But it did prove that someone somewhere was rattled by the thought.
Suddenly, Erin opened her eyes, sat up straight in her chair, and began typing on the computer again. She brought up the Yahoo! home page, clicked on Mail, and typed in Mordechai’s ID. She guessed at his password. She was wrong.
Invalid ID or password, came the response in bright red letters. Please try again.
So she did. She tried every password she could think of — his name, his wife’s name, the numbers of his birthday, the numbers of his birthday backward, his wife’s name backward, and so forth. But she struck out every time.
The door opened behind her.
“Mordechai’s password,” Erin called over her shoulder. “Do you know it?”
“To what?” Bennett asked as he dried and combed his hair.
“His Yahoo! account.”
“I don’t know. Why?”
Erin swiveled around in her chair. “Come on. You know the passcodes to get into his house, onto his elevators. You’re telling me you don’t know how to break into his e-mail account?”
Bennett shook his head. “He never asked me to read his mail.”
“Well, think, Jon, think.”
“Why? What are you after?”
“It’s just a hunch,” Erin demurred. “I could be wrong, but… ”
“A hunch about what?” Bennett pressed.
“Just help me break in.”
Bennett was still at it as the sun came up.
Erin stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around herself, and came to check on his progress. He had three pages of possible passwords that he had written down, entered into the Yahoo! system, and then crossed off as rejected.
“How’s it going?” she asked, oddly refreshed though she hadn’t slept a wink. She leaned over his shoulder and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“It’s no use,” he said, his eyes at half-mast, desperate to crawl back into bed and take her with him. “Spymaster Rule #1—you can’t break into a Mossad chief’s e-mail account. It simply can’t be done. Period. End of sentence. It’s impossible. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Wait a minute — that’s it,” she said.
“What’s it?”
“Can I sit there a moment?” said Erin.
“Sure, if you tell me what’s going on.” Nevertheless, he got up and let her have the chair, looking on over her shoulder.
She did a quick search for English translations of the Bible. From there she narrowed the search to New Testament translations online. Then she picked one and typed in the word impossible. Thirteen results popped up. She scanned the list.
There it was. Luke 1:37—“For nothing is impossible with God.” It was Mordechai’s life creed. She found the log-in page again and tried Luke1:37 as the password. It didn’t work. She tried Luke137. Nothing.
“Come on, we need some sleep,” Bennett insisted. “We’ll try again later.”
Erin sighed. “I know, you’re right,” she whispered and began shutting off the lights. “I just can’t believe I can’t crack this thing.”
“You will,” he promised her as he headed over to the couch to lie down. “Just for a few minutes,” he insisted. “You just need some rest. We both do, and then I promise we’ll get up and pray about it and I’m sure God will show us something. Jeremiah 33:3—isn’t that what Mordechai was always quoting to us?”
That was it, Erin realized. “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”
She turned the lights back on, logged back on, entered Jeremiah33:3 and waited. Again she got an error message. She tried Jeremiah333, but that didn’t work either. Finally, in desperation, she tried J333 and gasped.
“We’re in!” she declared, only to find her husband already fast asleep.
Hundreds of e-mails were sitting there unopened.
They were waiting for replies that would never come. Erin had no idea where to begin. She wasn’t even entirely sure what she was looking for. All she had was a hunch — perhaps the “clue” that had stirred up this hornet’s nest had come in by e-mail. Perhaps Mordechai had written to Doron or Barak or the rest of the team about the clue. This was a man, after all, who had communicated with most people most of the time by e-mail. It was inconceivable to her that there wouldn’t be something useful here. And the huge number of unopened e-mails was an encouraging sign. Maybe she’d gotten there first.