“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” said Erin, pulling herself up to a sitting position. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?”
“Maybe,” Bennett conceded. “But Dmitri has a point. Farouk has money, and influence, and a vision of a new Arab empire. But he couldn’t build it on his own, even with the Ark in hand. He’d need a partner, someone with land, oil, and an army and an air force.”
“But, Jon, really, Mustafa Al-Hassani?” Erin countered. “Do you hear what you’re saying? Al-Hassani was a philosophy professor, for crying out loud. Saddam threw him into the gulag for being a reformer. If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, he’d still be rotting in prison. You really think the morning after he won 63 percent of the vote he woke up and thought, Forget Thomas Jefferson. I think I’ll pattern myself after Joseph Stalin?”
“I don’t know,” said Bennett. “But be honest — neither do you.”
“Maybe not,” said Erin. “But I know a few things. I know Al-Hassani invited Eli Mordechai, the former head of the Israeli Mossad, to visit him in Iraq. I know he gave Mordechai classified Iraqi documents that exposed a conspiracy to overthrow the Russian government — a conspiracy that proved to be real, mind you. I know that Al-Hassani has quietly confided to you and me that he might be open to a peace treaty with Israel. And I just don’t see this guy hiring Abdullah Farouk to play Indiana Jones for him, then ordering his thugs to gun down Mordechai in broad daylight. The whole notion is ridiculous, Jon. Al-Hassani isn’t crazy. Farouk is. It’s him we should be looking for. Period.”
“You don’t think Al-Hassani could be trying to capitalize on the firestorm to rebuild the Babylonian Empire?” asked Jon.
“Rebuild the region? Yes. But rebuild an empire? I doubt it. Even if he is, I highly doubt he’s sending out hit teams to get it done.”
“What if he is?” asked Bennett.
“Jon, how stupid do you think Al-Hassani is? You think he would really gamble everything he’s got, after all we’ve done for him and his people, to turn Iraq back into a base camp for a whole new wave of global terrorism?”
“Actually, I think that is precisely what Eli believed,” said Dmitri.
Jon and Erin both looked at him.
“As you know, Eli was quite skeptical of your country’s efforts to rebuild Iraq — not a critic, mind you, but a skeptic, to be sure. Remember what he said at your reception? He said the War of Gog and Magog wasn’t the end; it was just the beginning. He said evil was regathering, that something worse is coming. And that last posting on his weblog — how did he put it again?”
Bennett reluctantly finished Galishnikov’s thought, for those very words had been ringing in his ears ever since he had first read them.
I supported the war in Iraq, Mordechai had written. I believed Saddam Hussein was a serious threat to the region and the world, and I believed in the cause of regime change. Removing Saddam was not as easy as we had hoped, nor as quick. But the question isn’t whether we should have gone to war in Iraq. The real question is, what exactly are we building there? Are we making Iraq safe for democracy, or safe for the Antichrist?
61
It was time to change the subject.
“It won’t be long until they track us here,” said Erin.
“What do you mean?” asked Dmitri.
“The tail numbers,” Erin explained. “Once they trace those, they’ll know it was your helicopter.”
“That’s not public information,” said Dmitri.
“Maybe not. But like Jon said, we think they’re working with someone inside the prime minister’s office.”
Dmitri shook his head. “I can’t believe that. A traitor in David Doron’s inner circle? It’s impossible, I tell you.”
“Yet people keep dying, don’t they?” said Erin. “With all due respect, sir, the question isn’t whether there is a mole. It’s how easily Farouk and his men can contact him and how quickly Farouk can figure out where we are. That gives us only a few hours, at best.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Dmitri. “But I have three homes, ninety-two drill sites, and the refineries. What are the chances they’ll look here first?”
“These guys are pros. They won’t think for one minute we’re all hanging out at some oil well. They’re coming here — believe me — and I’d suggest we not be here when they arrive.”
Al-Hassani exploded.
“What do you mean you lost them?”
Viggo Mariano swallowed hard. He knew what was coming. He was just glad he and the Iraqi leader were separated by several hundred miles.
“We’re doing everything we can, Your Excellency,” Mariano insisted. “My team from Jordan just landed in Tel Aviv.”
“How many?”
“There are three of them, plus the four of us.”
“How’d they get in?”
“Does it matter? I told you, I’m taking care of it.”
“Why doesn’t that reassure me?” sniffed Al-Hassani.
“Fine,” said Mariano. “They’re journalists. They’re posing as an Italian television crew. They just rented a car. They’re meeting me in Jerusalem in an hour.”
“Weapons?”
“We’ll give them what we can.”
“And then what?”
Mariano stalled. The truth was, he had no idea.
Technically, what Bennett had found wasn’t a scroll.
Not in the classic sense of the word, anyway. It was copper, like the others. But it was not rolled up as scrolls typically are. Thus it had no need to be sliced into pieces with a laser or a special circular saw. It actually looked more like a copper tablet. It was rectangular in shape — about a foot long and a foot and a half wide — and engraved with an ancient form of Hebrew lettering.
Exhausted and still in pain from her wounds, Natasha took longer on the translation than might otherwise have been usual, but she was determined to get it right. Finally, after more than two hours, she finished typing her notes into the laptop she had borrowed from the Galishnikovs and called the group into the dining room, where she had been working without a break.
“What have you got?” asked Bennett. “Are we on the right track?
“I think so,” said Natasha. “This may be the most intriguing one of all. Let me take it section by section.”
She pulled up a split-screen image with a digital photograph of the first paragraph in the scroll on the left side and the English translation on the right. Then she read the English aloud.
“I ran a search,” said Natasha. “That’s Deuteronomy 8:1–3. Now, watch this.”