The Last Judgment (52 page)

Judge Mustafa would answer that question immediately.

“It is my authority as president of this tribunal and chief judge of the trial chamber, to enter the final judgment in this case. Which is—that the prosecution shall be
dismissed…
but
without prejudice.
This leaves the Palestinian public prosecutor free to refile charges against the accused in the light of the new evidence that was presented during this trial by the defense—but only if the prosecutor so chooses.”

Bill and Esther Collingwood, who were holding onto one another, were now starting to summon up some hope—guarded—but hope nonetheless.

“Release of the accused—” Will announced. “The tribunal must address that issue as well.”

Samir Zayed, who seemed strangely unsurprised by the dismissal, smiled and then completely surprised the defense team.

“We do not oppose the immediate release of the accused into the custody of his attorney,” Zayed declared.

“So ordered,” Mustafa answered.

Two Palestinian guards swept over to Gilead's side as the three judges rose and quickly exited the courtroom.

Zayed ushered Will and Gilead to a different side door than the one he'd entered through, instructing them to go immediately to the processing office to file the paperwork for Gilead's release.

Will and Gilead stepped through the door and into a dim hallway. Nigel was about to follow, but Zayed stopped him abruptly, closing the door behind Will and Gilead.

“Only one lawyer,” he told the barrister firmly.

Will and his client made their way down a flight of stairs toward a heavy metal door. When Will pushed it open, their eyes were momentarily blinded by the bright Jerusalem afternoon sun. They stepped out and found themselves in the narrow side alley outside of the Orient House.

That is when they both knew something was terribly wrong.

A black European-model van was parked by the door.

Then the doors of the van burst open. Three gunmen jumped out, bearing automatic weapons and wearing black hoods with ragged eye-holes.

Screaming in Arabic, they pointed their weapons at Will and Gilead, grabbed them and wildly shoved them into the back of the van. The doors slammed shut and the vehicle raced off.

Will could not understand what they were screaming.

But Gilead could.

They were shouting, “Allah is great! Allah is good! Allah is great! Allah is good!”

The van sped out of the city and onto the Dead Sea Road. They were now rapidly moving away from Jerusalem and toward the desert regions of the south.

71

I
T WAS SHORTLY AFTER DAWN
when Fiona awoke. Something had startled her, though she could not remember what. Perhaps a dream. Or a sound. Or a vague sense that on this day in particular, she needed to rise, and rise quickly. And so she got out of bed.

Intuitively, she checked on Andrew. He was slumbering deeply, his young body wrapped in a confusing tangle of sheets, his arm dangling over the side of the bed. On the floor, directly below his hand, was a Heroes of the Bible comic book. She quietly picked it up and read the page where Andrew had placed a Baltimore Oriole's baseball card as a bookmark.

It was entitled “Abram the Warrior.” The chapter started out,

Abram (later named “Abraham” by the Lord) used a small band of trusted friends, in a daring nighttime raid, in an effort to try to save his nephew, Lot. The Kings of the East had captured Lot. Now Abram is in pursuit. Read what happens!

The text was accompanied by a cartoon drawing of Abram on horseback, sword raised, leading his men as they galloped to the north of Damascus for battle.

Fiona put the comic book on his dresser and slipped downstairs. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee, grabbed her Bible, and went out onto the porch. She usually started her day that way. But this morning she couldn't focus. Her mind was racing. She
knew that Will's trial should be ending soon. And now she needed to have him with her.

Soon you'll be home, darling—we'll be together. Oh, Will, I feel so useless without you,
she was thinking. Then something Will had said once—a small, insignificant, and silly joke—suddenly came into her mind, and she found herself laughing out loud. She put her Bible down and spent some time praying.

When she opened her eyes, she took in the view of the mountaintops off at the horizon. It was a mild day. In the distance, a few clouds were sailing across the Blue Ridge.

Andrew had the day off school because of a teacher's convention, so Fiona decided to take him with her to Baltimore, where she was going to do an early run-through at the pavilion where her concert was to be held that night.

It was mid-morning in the United States when the news hit. Fiona was already at the concert hall near Baltimore's Inner Harbor when she found out.

It was the auditorium where Will had first heard Fiona sing. They had barely known each other back then. But, off in the wings, he had watched her in concert. And he had seen this beautiful woman who sang like something from heaven. And had felt himself drawn to her in an irresistible way.

Fiona was up on the stage now, and the concert manager was asking her to go through one more sound check.

“Sing anything for me,” he shouted out, his voice echoing.

Andrew was sitting in the front row reading his comic book, a little bored. In the middle of the empty hall, a burly bodyguard hired by Will and Tiny was sitting quietly, studying all the corners of the space.

Then Fiona started to sing in a slow, lilting, ethereal soprano, almost as slow as a dirge,

Jesus loves me! This I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong;

They are weak, but He is strong.

Just then Fiona's agent came running full speed down the center aisle. The bodyguard, sensing something wrong, jumped up and followed him up the stairway to the stage.

Andrew somehow knew that his mother needed him, and he followed up the side stairs to the stage platform as well.

Fiona's agent was saying something to her in an urgent voice. She cried out, then put her hands over her mouth. As she faltered for just a step, the agent reached out and steadied her.

“Mom, what's wrong?” Andrew asked, pushing his way through the grown-ups.

“It's your dad…he's in trouble.”

“Trouble?” Andy cried out, his face a reflection of boyhood suddenly being overwhelmed by the juggernaut forces of life.

“Yes, darling,” Fiona said, composing herself, “very bad trouble. You must pray for him…pray hard. Very hard. God, protect my precious husband…”

Then she turned to the agent.

“I need phones. As many as you can get.”

The agent and the bodyguard both pulled out their cell phones.

“And I've got one!” the lighting technician up in the catwalk yelled down to the group.

“Bring it down!” Fiona called up. “I've got mine. That's four. I'll call over to…what's his name…oh…the general at the Pentagon. Will and I met him. Worked with Will on the ICC case in The Hague. His daughter likes my music. Tucker—General Tucker. I'll call. Someone has to contact the State Department. Someone has to track down Tiny Heftland in Jerusalem—”

“I'll do that!” the bodyguard said and started calling his office to make the international connection.

“Hurry—we have to hurry!” Fiona cried out as she started madly punching numbers for Washington, DC, information into her phone.

72

D
AKKAR WAS LISTENING TO THE NEWS
on the radio in the horse barn on the Dupree farm. It was announced that a Hamas splinter group had kidnapped Virginia lawyer Will Chambers and his client, Hassan Gilead Amahn, in Jerusalem immediately following their court victory, in which the criminal charges relating to the Temple Mount attack had been dismissed.

Muttering to himself and with a lump in his throat, Dakkar picked up the phone on Bill Collingwood's desk and began calling his cousin Akbar, who lived in Hebron and was a Hamas sympathizer.

“Akbar—the son of my friend here in the States, Bill Collingwood, and the son's lawyer, Mr. Will Chambers…they were kidnapped. I heard it on the news…have you heard about this?”

On the other end Akbar chuckled. “Heard about it?”

“Yes. Heard anything?”

“Heard! I just got a call from Yaheed. He's one of the courageous ones in on the operation!”

“No. No. They can't do that—”

“They've done it. Allah be praised. You're becoming like the soft American infidels. Now get off the phone. I have to keep this line free.”

Then his cousin hung up.

Dakkar was still holding the receiver. His hand was quivering.

He felt the vise grip of tribe and religion, reinforced by the weight of the centuries, crushing down on him…why should he
believe that he could do anything against such imponderable forces as those?

Tears began to trickle down his face. He was still weeping as he slowly stood up—and then put one foot in front of the other, walking out of the barn.

Roland Dupree was climbing into his Land Cruiser when he saw Dakkar coming up the long driveway from the barn. And by now he was at a full run, and he was yelling something.

73

F
IONA WAS TALKING ON THE PHONE
with General Tucker when her call-waiting flashed that an international call was coming in. She apologized to General Tucker—could he wait? Then she took the call.

Jack Hornby was on the other end, talking a mile a minute. He had just talked to Bob Fuller at the State Department, asking him what the U.S. government was going to do about the kidnapping.

“On the record,” Fuller had said, “we're deeply shocked that two American citizens are victims of what appears—at this point—to be a terrorist-orchestrated kidnapping. We are working with Israel's government and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the UN peacekeeping force already in Jerusalem, to locate the captives and return them safely.”

“And off the record?” Hornby had asked forcefully.

“Well, look, Jack—you know the administration's policy on Israel. So…we're mainly relying on the UN forces and the Palestinian police to track them down.”

“Then those two guys are dead meat,” Hornby replied brutally. “Why doesn't President Landow authorize our American guys to go in there and get Chambers and Amahn right now?”

“Not going to happen, Jack,” Fuller said. “The timing is too tricky right now. Too risky. Maybe in a few days…after we see whether the golf ball is lying on the fairway or—”

Hornby had hung up on the State Department secretary in mid-sentence.

“Tell General Tucker,” he told Fiona, “that he's got to use his black-ops authority—I've heard about it—he can put together something very quick. President Landow is simply not going to officially authorize a search and rescue. End of statement. Tucker has to do some kind of end run. He just has to.”

Fiona immediately relayed the information to the general. He paused for less than ten seconds.

“Got to go, Mrs. Chambers,” he said with a confident tone. “I'll see what I can do. We'll try to get your husband safely home by the time of your concert tonight—though that may be pushing it a bit.”

Tucker immediately dialed an international number. A man's voice answeered in a marked West Virginia accent. “CM Pest Control.”

“At least you're creative,” Tucker said. “Look, Caleb, I've got a situation here—”

“Is it about Will Chambers and Gilead Amahn?”

“Yeah. You've heard?”

“I'm already on it. As you know, General, I'm not too far from the region right now.”

Just then an aide rushed in with a message.

“Colonel Marlowe,” Tucker said with an official tone to his voice, “I've got some additional intel on this. Some Middle Eastern fellow in Virginia has a cousin who is apparently in on this deal. It looks like credible information. We've got a landline number in Hebron that is receiving calls from the cell phone of the kidnappers.”

“Can we do a SIGINT on the number of the bad guys?” Marlowe asked immediately.

Tucker looked at his watch.

“Possibly. I'll have to order that the Orion satellite be tasked to intercept—but the request has to come from some other country. The president would not like me very much if we did
this American-style—maybe the Brits will do it for us. Put an official request into us because we jointly share the satellite. I'll work on it.”

“I'll get to Jerusalem ASAP,” Marlowe said. “I'll just figure you'll get me a location by the time I'm there. Let me work on putting together a team.”