The Brotherhood Conspiracy (18 page)

Three swarthy men, dressed like construction workers, sat in a booth looking out the front window of Jimmie’s Coffee Shoppe. Their eyes followed Rory O’Neill and his bodyguards to the black, unmarked SUV that waited by the sidewalk. The commissioner shook hands with Tom Bohannon and got in his car. Bohannon walked off down 29th Street toward the faraway subway stop at Penn Station.

“Do you think they know?”

The leader watched Bohannon walk into the distance. “We can’t wait to find out,” he said. He turned to the others at the table. “We come back tonight.”

14

T
UESDAY
, A
UGUST
11

Philadelphia

He walked with the long, loose gait of a hoops star returning to campus, trench coat hanging from his left arm, right arm swaying in balance to an inner rhythm. The color of golden sand in twilight, his hair was cut to the length of a businessman and pampered like that of a movie star—as perfect as the crease in his tan slacks and the cut of his sport jacket. His face was punctuated with a smooth, genuine smile that rarely left his lips. Sam Reynolds radiated warmth that put everyone at ease.

Except Tom Bohannon, who felt a sense of dread as Reynolds approached his table in the upscale sports bar tucked into a corner of Philadelphia’s main Amtrak station flanked by Market Street and the Schuylkill River.

Bohannon was introduced to Sam Reynolds by NYPD commissioner Rory O’Neill, not long before Bohannon and his team embarked on their mission to Jerusalem.

It was Reynolds who arranged for their eclectic assortment of unique gear to be airlifted, through Turkey, to a secure area at Tel Aviv Airport, where it was separated into FedEx and UPS trucks for innocent-looking delivery. And it was Reynolds who was their lifeline under the Temple Mount, who risked his career to keep their mission alive, who served as their witness, over a secure satellite phone, as Bohannon and his team transmitted live video feed of their astounding discovery . . . the Third Temple of God, secretly constructed under the Temple Mount by a Jewish priest and his followers, over one thousand years ago.

And it was Reynolds who called yesterday and asked Bohannon to meet him halfway between Washington and New York, in Philly’s 30th Street Station. No explanation. Just a time of arrival.

Bohannon stood and offered his hand.

“Hi, Tom . . . I’m glad to see you’re still in one piece.”

“So am I, although it looks like we’re still in the crosshairs of the Prophet’s Guard.”

Reynolds motioned toward their chairs. “I know. That’s one of the reasons I’m here today.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Bohannon. “But I was really glad to hear you survived. I know there were some pretty angry people down there in Washington and the first scuttlebutt was that you were treated pretty roughly—about to be tossed out on your ear with no pension. But then Rory told me you held on to your position. How did you pull it off?”

“Trade secret, my friend . . . trade secret.” The easy smile spread across Reynolds’s face, warming the air around their table. “Let’s just say a day dawned when emotions calmed, friends had a chance to whisper in some ears, and ten years of exceptional service finally carried some weight. I got slapped on the wrists, hard, for being off the reservation with you guys, but it didn’t take long before the office realized we were in a lot more trouble now and that State needed all hands on deck.”

The conversation was put on hold while the waitress came and took their orders.

“Thanks, Sam. I don’t know if I’d be sitting here if you hadn’t covered our backs. I owe you a debt.”

Reynolds stopped the spoon he was spinning on the top of the table.

“Good . . . that’s just what I need,” said Reynolds, who smiled like the guy who had snatched the last cookie. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

Jerusalem

Leonidas was startled when the cell phone rang. A blocked number. He was expecting no calls. But . . .

“I’m told I am to call you Leonidas,” said the shapeless voice. “I’m told you have been of great service to the imam of the Northern Islamic Front. I’m told that, for a price, you have been a distinguished provider of information. I’m told—”

“Enough of what you’ve been told,” Leonidas snapped. “Who are you? Who gave you this number?”

“Ah,” said the voice, “unfortunately, our beloved imam has chosen to embark on a prolonged pilgrimage. We are not aware if he is expected to return any time soon. So, my dear Leonidas, the responsibility of maintaining this relationship has fallen to my unworthy self.”

Leonidas calculated the prudence of severing the connection and destroying the cell phone. He tortured his brain for any crack in his façade, any hint he had been careless.

“You wonder if you have been compromised, yes, my friend? Rightly, you wonder who I am. Most likely you are preparing to end this communication and destroy the only thing that connects us. So, my fine friend, allow me to offer you an overture of security.

“First, if we remain connected until we complete this conversation, you will find one hundred thousand dollars deposited into your account tonight. Second,” said the voice, not waiting for a response, “I will introduce myself and I will inform you how to contact me . . . most definitely a risk on my part. Once you have assured yourself of my identity and that the money has, indeed, been deposited, perhaps then we can do business.”

The addition to his account would be welcome. Still, Leonidas was more than wary.

“Money does not buy trust,” said Leonidas. “You will never have contact with me again unless I can verify who you claim to be—and if, at that time, I am interested in continuing this conversation. So, my friend, to whom am I speaking?”

For a moment, Leonidas wondered if he had called the man’s bluff. Then the silence was broken.

“Find my dossier,” said the voice. “My name is Imam Moussa al-Sadr. I am the founder of the Amal in Lebanon.”

“Do you think I’m a fool?” growled Leonidas. “Whoever you are, our conversation is over.”

“Stop!” Even through the phone, the command of the voice was powerful, arresting. “Look in the dossier. When I disappeared from Libya in 1978, the world assumed I was dead. But there are two things that were never revealed. First, Lukas Painter dispatched a Mossad assassination team into Tripoli that was ordered to eliminate me and lay the blame at the feet of Qaddafi. Second,
the Mossad team was intercepted by Qaddafi’s security and one of the team was mortally wounded—sadly, by what is often called friendly fire. The name of that operative was Lieutenant Hillel Shomsky, the son of—”

Leonidas snapped the cell phone shut and held it in his tightly balled fist. The rules of the game, he now knew, had irrevocably changed.

Lukas Painter looked at the map of western Jordan displayed on the LCD screen in Mossad’s operations center. Touching the screen, he rotated the image, exposing the southwestern flank of Mount Nebo.

“What do you think?” he asked over his shoulder.

“I think I’m glad this is Mossad’s mission,” said Levi Sharp. “But I’m also thinking that you certainly don’t have to lead it. I wouldn’t want to go that way . . . not having to cross that road. Whoever is given this assignment should go up the other flank, through the little valley to the northeast.”

“It’s a fool’s journey, if you ask me,” said Painter.

“Then don’t do it.”

“But nobody’s asking
me
,” Painter responded. “And if it is a fool’s journey, I’m not sending my men somewhere I’m not willing to go myself. We have our orders . . . get to the top of Mount Nebo and see what we can find.
Find
. If there was ever anything hidden on Mount Nebo it was probably stolen long ago.” Painter turned away from the LCD display and sat down at a nearby desk. Sharp pulled up a chair next to the desk.

“It’s the only clue we have, Lukas.”

“Some clue . . . a verse from Scripture that says Jeremiah hid the Tent of Meeting and the Ark in a cave on Mount Nebo. First of all, assuming this clue isn’t just a fable, tell me how Jeremiah got all that stuff up there. The Tent was huge. And where has it been hidden for three thousand years that it’s not been found yet? People have been digging all over Mount Nebo for generations looking for the grave of Moses. Why hasn’t some good-intentioned archaeologist stumbled over the Ark of the Covenant?”

The gentle hum of air purifying equipment laid a hush of white noise over the room.

“We don’t have any of those answers, Lukas. What we know is that we have to start here. So, how do you plan to get thirty kilometers into Jordan, climb to
the top of Mount Nebo, search through the tombs, caves, and monastery, and get home without being seen or discovered? That’s the answer I’d like to have.”

Painter rubbed the gray stubble covering his head and looked back over to the LCD screen. “I don’t know. Even with satellite pictures, infrared scan, and low-level drones, we need to get an asset on the ground over there. But, sooner rather than later, somebody is going to take that long walk. And it will not be easy.”

Philadelphia

“There’s one key thing that most people don’t understand,” Reynolds said to Bohannon. “These guys don’t need a reason to hate us. The Muslim Brotherhood has been around for eighty years and for eighty years their purpose has been the same . . . to establish an Islamic world order. They get it. We don’t. It’s a battle for survival—our survival or theirs. There is no middle ground. There is no
moderate
position in a war for survival.

“We’ve got to wise up in the West. Islam has, at its core, an unshakable conviction that Allah will only be served when all of mankind worships him and follows the way of Muhammad. That conviction is served by a foundational belief that if violence is the only way to bring about world domination by Islam then violence is not just acceptable, it is required.

“The only possible way Islam will be able to coexist with the West is if Islam changes from the inside out. Islam needs a reformer, somebody like Martin Luther, who will bring about a fundamental change in the Islamic faith that will expunge every precept that encourages violence, whether that precept is cutting off the hand of a man who steals, or stoning an adulteress, or encouraging terrorist attacks that kill thousands of people in the West.

“But a change like that . . . a change like that will take a lifetime. It took a lifetime after Luther for Protestants and Catholics to stop killing each other in the name of religion . . . many lifetimes in Northern Ireland. First, a Luther needs to emerge from within Islam—a true, genuine, sincere reformer. A reformer who can stay alive long enough to promulgate his message.”

As Bohannon nodded his head, Reynolds continued. “The odds are pretty heavy against that kind of reform ever taking hold in the majority of Islam. Not that every Muslim is our enemy—that is far from true. The majority of Muslims want to live in peace and would be content to live in reasonable coexistence with
the West. But the radical Islamic movement worships what is one of the core beliefs of the Islamic religion—one core belief that requires the destruction of Western culture.”

Reynolds prodded the remnants of the turkey club sandwich lying in tatters on his plate. “How much do you know about the Muslim Brotherhood?”

“They were an outcast political party until Kamali’s overthrow,” Bohannon said. “Now they won the election and the president of Egypt is one of their guys. Isn’t that right?”

Reynolds sluiced a pair of limp steak fries through a mound of ketchup and tossed them in his mouth without a drip of red spoiling his crisp, white shirt.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s oldest, largest, and most influential Islamic group,” said Reynolds. “The Brotherhood’s credo is ‘Allah is our objective; the Qur’an is our law, the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.’ On the Brotherhood’s English language website, they describe their principles as including the imposition of Islamic Shari’ah law as ‘the basis for controlling the affairs of state and society’ and liberating all Islamic countries from foreign imperialism.”

Bohannon waved down a waitress and ordered a cup of tea. “That doesn’t sound like any political party I’m familiar with. I thought these guys were pretty moderate.”

“You judge,” said Reynolds, leaning into the table. “The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928 by a teacher who believed the purity of true Islam was being polluted by the corruption of Western culture and morals. His desire was to bring about a more pure form of Islam. The Brotherhood now operates in nearly every country throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, and many in Western Europe. It’s been active in the U.S. for nearly fifty years. By the end of World War Two, the Brotherhood had over two million members. Now, that number is hard to calculate because it operates under so many different names.