Ollie and Nasser felt fully refreshed when they left Kafr Kassem after thanking Abdul Aziz for his help and hospitality. Nasser enjoyed driving the new Odyssey on paved highways after having driven the old Isuzu truck on dirt roads at night without lights. They got on the busy Highway 444 that took them south and then headed south-east on Highway 443 flowing with the heavy traffic to Jerusalem. There were a few roadblocks on the way but the shiny Odyssey was waved through them without a second glance. At each roadblock there were several Isuzu trucks that were searched by armed soldiers so they felt reassured that the police and ISA were still barking up the wrong tree. The mid-morning traffic at the outskirts of Jerusalem was moving at a slow stop-go pace so Ollie and Nasser started to relax and set into a fatalistic mood with regard to their chances of success and their personal destiny. Their route took them through an array of Jewish suburbs and Palestinian refugee camps that were intermingled in a complicated jumble that displayed how difficult it would be to divide Jerusalem between Palestine and Israel, if a 'two states solution" were ever seriously negotiated. Ollie thought to himself that if their plan worked that would be the least of the problems of the Middle East…
Ollie had rigged a cable from the instant detonation emergency switch of the device in the back of the minivan to the front seat so that he could blow them both to smithereens together with everything within a radius of a few hundred meters. He jokingly told Nasser that they would need more than 72 virgins in paradise as they would be atomized to a zillion parts each deserving its own share of virgins.
They passed very close to the headquarters of the Israeli police and then took the road circling along the walls of the Old City until they reached the Lions Gate on the east side of the city. They entered through the gate that actually was only a passage through the massive stone wall without an actual gate, and continued down the narrow street past the Church of Condemnation and Via Dolorosa. The streets were barely suitable for motorized traffic but Nasser told whoever enquired why they were driving on this narrow street that he was heading to the market to unload his goods. Ollie realized that their main problem would be to find a place where the car could be parked for a couple of hours without being towed away allowing them time to get as far as possible from the "ground zero" point. Nasser suggested they park in the yard of the Austrian Hostel which anyway was as far they could drive since at this point the streets turned into pedestrian lanes. Ollie was supposed to play the role of a tourist looking for a place to stay and ask permission to park until he settled down in his room. So Nasser drove to the hostel and Ollie went up to the reception desk and had no trouble charming the matronly lady in charge. He booked a room for three nights and obtained permission to leave the vehicle there for a couple of hours. The matron suggested that he go to the roof terrace and observe the view of the Old City from there. Ollie thought that this was a good idea and he and Nasser climbed the three flights of stairs to the roof. Looking towards the south-east they could clearly see the Temple Mount with its mosques — one with the golden dome and one with the silver dome. Looking west they saw a few more mosques and several small churches including the top of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They couldn't quite see the Wailing Wall but knew it was on the west side of Temple Mount. They agreed that the location was ideally suited for their plan, walked down the stairs and out of the building. In the yard Ollie set the timer of the device for two hours and both of them walked out of the Old City using the Damascus Gate and hailed a taxi. The Arab driver asked them where they were headed and they said they had to get to Umm al-Fahm in a hurry. After some haggling they agreed on a price and off they went.
Chapter 15
The sound of the blast was heard 10 kilometers from Jerusalem by anyone who was not totally deaf. Those who happened to be looking towards Jerusalem, even in their peripheral sight, 30 seconds before the blast could be heard saw a strange flash of light from the direction of the town that served as the cradle of the Christian and Jewish religions. Those whose eyesight remained intact could see a huge cloud rising rapidly to a height of several kilometers and it gradually gained the typical mushroom shape of an atomic blast seen so many times in news reels from the middle of the 20th Century and in horror movies that were harbingers of the end of the world.The static air overpressure wave caused by the blast flattened many buildings within a radius of five hundred meters, which more or less meant the entire Old City of Jerusalem. The destruction of civilian buildings could have covered a radius of about one and half kilometers while moderate damage would be observed even five kilometers away but the colossal walls of the Old City built five centuries before absorbed the pressure, reducing the range of the damage. Among the few structures that remained standing were the massive walls surrounding the southern and western parts of the city that were relatively far from the blast, the foundations of the Wailing Wall and the Tower of David that was built be King Herod as a fortress two thousand years previously. Most of the excavations from the period Before Christ that were laboriously uncovered by generations of archeologists were once again covered by debris, only this time these were highly radioactive.