Lunatics (23 page)

CHAPTER 46

The NBC Nightly News

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
Tonight, a stunning development in the Middle East, where there is suddenly real hope for an end to the conflict that has spawned decades of hatred, violence and death. And as unbelievable as it seems, the architects of this historic breakthrough are the same two men who seem to have turned the entire planet upside down in recent weeks: Philip Horkman and Jeffrey Peckerman, the now-legendary international masterminds with an uncanny ability to show up in critical world hotspots at exactly the right moment, perform some seemingly impossible feat, then vanish—which is how they have become known to millions as the
Fantasmas de la Noche
, or “Ghosts of the Night.” Today the duo appeared in Yemen, where, executing the kind of exquisitely planned, split-second operation that has become their trademark, they essentially dismantled the world's largest terrorist organization, and in doing so created a pathway that many observers believe could lead to lasting peace. For more on this astonishing story, we go to NBC Middle East correspondent Elizabeth Burger in Yemen. Elizabeth, how did Horkman and Peckerman pull this off?

BURGER:
Brian, as you recall, the two men were last seen in Mogadishu, where they staged a lightning-strike operation that not only fed thousands of refugees, but also struck a critical blow against government corruption and international piracy. Horkman and Peckerman were last seen leaving the scene of that operation in a mysterious black helicopter. That helicopter, we now know, brought them here, to Yemen, where they made contact with this man, Ismail Haniyeh, the Prime Minister of Hamas, who took them to a secret cave equipped with a TV studio. Horkman and Peckerman, who now have a huge international following, had apparently led Hamas to believe that they would make a propaganda broadcast. In it, they were to deliver a coded order that, according to intelligence sources, would activate a network of terror cells throughout the United States and Europe, and trigger “the final jihad”—an all-out terror attack on the West, combined with a full-scale military assault on Israel. Instead, after a comical monologue, they—or specifically, Jeffrey Peckerman—delivered a coded order that had a radically different effect.

WILLIAMS:
We're going to play the video of Peckerman delivering that phrase now. We warn you that the content is offensive. But because of the historic significance of this event,
NBC Nightly News
has decided to play it exactly as it was broadcast on Al Jazeera.

PECKERMAN:
Someone left the kike out in the rain!

(Shouting.)

WILLIAMS:
The phrase, of course, is a variation of a line from the song “MacArthur Park.” Any idea why the terrorists picked that particular song, Elizabeth?

BURGER:
Brian, one theory is that it was chosen specifically to demoralize the United States, because it gets stuck in your head and everybody hates it. But whatever the reason, the key fact is that when Peckerman, who is Jewish, changed “cake” to the anti-Semitic slur we just heard, he completely changed the coded meaning of the phrase. Instead of triggering the final jihad, Peckerman was sending out the opposite order, commanding the sleeper cells in the terrorist network to abort the jihad altogether. Not only that, but many of the cells interpreted the code to mean that they were actually supposed to surrender.

WILLIAMS:
What happened next was a sequence of events the likes of which has never before been seen in the history of counterterrorism. In dozens of locations throughout the United States and Europe, terrorist agents, believing they were following orders from the highest levels of their organization, turned themselves in to local police and federal authorities. With the information obtained from these terrorist groups, the authorities were able to quickly locate and apprehend many other terrorists. The extent of the sleeper-cell network came as a shock to the authorities. It turns out that terrorists had penetrated deep into some of our most trusted institutions. For more on that, we go to NBC News national security correspondent David Golia. David?

GOLIA:
Brian, the list of compromised organizations is almost unbelievable. According to FBI sources, terrorists had infiltrated—among many other entities—the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Home Shopping Network, the Audubon Society, the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles, the League of Women Voters, at least fifty Waffle Houses, the University of Alabama cheerleading squad, Up with People, a national chain of Pilates studios, the Kansas state legislature, and an entire touring company of
Rent
. Perhaps most shocking of all, it is now estimated that terrorists made up at least 15 percent of the Transportation Security Administration workforce.

WILLIAMS:
David, are you saying that the TSA—the federal agency responsible for screening airline passengers for potential weapons of terrorism—has
itself
been infiltrated by terrorists?

GOLIA:
That's what I'm told, Brian. Every year they confiscate millions of containers of seemingly harmless shampoo, perfume, hair spray, cosmetics and other personal hygiene products from airline passengers. Have you ever wondered what they
do
with all those products?

WILLIAMS:
I have, David.

GOLIA:
Well, according to my sources, these undercover TSA terrorists have been funding their operations by selling these confiscated items to the Amway Corporation, which in turn repackages them for sale to the very same public from which they were confiscated in the first place.

WILLIAMS:
Amway
is involved in this?

GOLIA:
Brian, I'm told that Mary Kay is also heavily implicated.

WILLIAMS:
Truly shocking. For more on the international implications of this story, we go to NBC United Nations correspondent Ronald Ungerman. Ron?

UNGERMAN:
Brian, the Horkman-Peckerman takedown of the international terrorist network had an immediate impact on the stagnant Middle East peace process—but not the impact you would expect. It seems that Hamas, unwilling to admit that two men—two
Jewish
men—were able to foil the jihad, is now claiming that the whole thing was planned.

WILLIAMS:
Hamas is claiming it
deliberately sabotaged
its own terrorism network?

UNGERMAN:
That's right, Brian. Here's a statement made earlier today by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

HANIYEH:
Of
course
it was planned. Do you think we are idiots? We had decided that the time had come to end this cycle of senseless violence. But to accomplish that objective, we needed a dramatic gesture, and it had to be made by men of such international stature that both sides—Palestinian and Israeli—would listen to them. That is why we chose Horkman and Peckerman for this mission. They carried it out flawlessly. I love those two crazy guys.

WILLIAMS:
Ron, is anybody buying this?

UNGERMAN:
Not really, Brian, but at this point it doesn't seem to matter. The logjam has been broken, and I'm told that even as we speak, rapid progress is being made in secret, high-level Mideast peace talks brokered by the United States. A deal is being hammered out involving a complex series of land transfers under which Israel will give up a substantial portion of the disputed West Bank, in return for which it will be granted a parcel of land from Lebanon, which will be compensated by a comparable parcel from Syria, which in turn will be ceded land by Iraq, which will receive land from Iran, which will in turn be granted land by Azerbaijan, which will for its part be granted full access rights, in perpetuity, to what I am told is a very nice time-share property in the Hamptons. The Gordian knot has been cut, Brian, and within a matter of days we may finally see, for the first time, lasting peace in the Middle East.

WILLIAMS:
Incredible. Thank you, Ron. Meanwhile, the big question, once again, is: Where are Philip Horkman and Jeffrey Peckerman? For more on that, we go to NBC correspondent Richard Hanft, who has been following the two men since they liberated Cuba. Richard?

HANFT:
Brian, once again Horkman and Peckerman have disappeared like, well, like ghosts in the night. They are still officially wanted by the United States government for, among other charges, committing acts of terrorism in New York City, endangering zoo animals, hijacking a cruise ship, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars, and seriously damaging a valuable flamenco guitar belonging to the singer Charo. It is safe to say, however, that because of their spectacular string of daring humanitarian acts, they would be treated very leniently by the Justice Department, and almost certainly would be granted presidential pardons. Right now they are, without question, the two most popular human beings on the planet. Street vendors are selling
Fantasmas de la Noche
T-shirts as fast as they can get their hands on them. Already at least four movies about their lives are being rushed into production, including one featuring George Clooney as Horkman, Brad Pitt as Peckerman, and Charo as herself. Virtually every head of state, religious leader and news organization on the planet is trying to get in touch with Horkman and Peckerman; it's also safe to say that the opportunities available to the two men would make them fabulously wealthy. The world is at their feet, Brian. The question is, where in the world are they?

WILLIAMS:
Where, indeed?

CHAPTER 47

Jeffrey

Here're some things
you never hear anybody say:

— “Guess where we're going on vacation? Yemen!”

— “There's no place like Yemen!”

— “Yemen? Count me in!”

The reason nobody says these things is, Yemen sucks. If nations were Kardashian sisters, Yemen would be whatshername, the one who looks like Herman Munster. Compared to Yemen, Haiti is the Magic Kingdom. I'm not saying this just because Yemen is hot. Hot, I understand. It's a fucking desert. But
mosquitoes
? What the fuck are mosquitoes doing in a fucking desert? That's what I wanted to know.

“What the fuck are mosquitoes doing in a fucking desert?” I asked.

“As I have repeatedly informed you,” said Moishe, “the mosquitoes breed in the salt marshes near the coast. And if you ask me that question one more time, I'm going to rip out your larynx with my bare hands.”

“He is capable of doing that,” said Shlomo. “He is
trained
to do that.”

“Don't let me stand in the way,” said Horkman.

Moishe and Shlomo were the Mossad agents. Those aren't their real names; that's just what I called them. They wouldn't tell us their real names. They wouldn't tell us hardly anything, except that we had to do exactly what they said or the Hamas assholes would kill us.

They did get us out of the cave, I'll give them that. They took us down a bunch of dark tunnels, and after a couple of hours of creeping around in there we finally got outside. I figured they'd have a car waiting to take us out of there, but they said no—no car, no roads, we were going to walk. They also gave us some garments and told us to change into them. I held mine up; it was one of those bathrobes the Arabs wear.

“What the fuck is this?” I said.

“It's a thob,” said Shlomo.

“A
what
?”

“A thob. It's traditional Yemeni attire.”

“Well, I'm thorry, thir,” I said, “but you can thtick your thob where the thun don't thine.”

Pretty good, right? Those assholes didn't even crack a smile.

“Just put it on,” said Moishe.

“Why?” I said.

“Because we cannot be conspicuous,” said Moishe.

“And because you shat your pants,” said Shlomo.

Like they never shat their pants.

“Okay,” I said. “But I'm not wearing one of those douchebag camel-jockey head things.”

“You mean like this?” said Moishe, handing me one of those douchebag camel-jockey head things.

So that's how we ended up walking—
walking
—across the fucking desert, four Jews dressed like Lawrence of fucking Arabia, getting eaten by mosquitoes, which is why I periodically felt the need to raise the question of what the fuck were mosquitoes doing in the fucking desert, which is why Moishe threatened to rip out my larynx.

My point, as I mentioned earlier, is that Yemen sucks, and it
really
sucks if you're walking in sixty-seven-million-degree heat swatting little vampire Arab bugs.

Guess what Planet Horkman thought about it.

He thought it was moving.

“This is moving” were his exact words.

I said, “It's
what
?”

“Peckerman,” he said, “this is our Exodus.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Haven't you ever been to a seder?”

The true answer was yes and no. When I was a kid, our family had seders, but they almost always ended early because of my dad. Like for example, one year he accused my Uncle Harvey of deliberately hiding the afikomen where he knew his kids would find it and get the five dollars. Uncle Harvey told my dad he was being ridiculous, so my dad threw the shank bone at him. My dad later claimed he meant it as a joke, but the truth is he threw the bone overhand from fairly close range and it hit Uncle Harvey in the eye and detached his retina, so between Aunt Janet screaming and the paramedics coming, that seder was pretty much down the toilet.

I didn't tell Horkman any of this. What I said was, “Of course I've been to seders. You eat a hard-boiled egg, talk about Moses and the Pharaoh and the ten plagues of Egypt. Boils, hail, snakes, blood, yadda yadda.”

Moishe said, “No snakes.”

“What do you mean, no snakes?” I said.

“There was no plague of snakes,” said Moishe.

“You're probably thinking of frogs,” said Shlomo.

“Seriously?” I said. “
Frogs
were a plague of Egypt?”

Moishe, Shlomo and Horkman all nodded.

“So,” I said, “you're telling me that the Pharaoh, who's the king of Egypt and has this big-ass army, he's supposed to be scared of
frogs
? He's supposed to go, ‘Ohmigod! Frogs! They might flick their tongues at my ankles! I better let these Jews go!'”

“It was a lot of frogs,” said Moishe. But he definitely sounded defensive.

“Anyway,”
said Horkman, “until now, the story of Exodus was just words to me. But now, being here”—he gestured toward Yemen in general—“I find it very moving. It's
real
, Peckerman. We're crossing the desert, just as our people did more than three thousand years ago. We're fleeing the forces of the Pharaoh. And these men”—he pointed at Shlomo and Moishe—“are our Moses.”

Shlomo and Moishe gave each other a look that said
douchebag
.

“Okay,” I said. “If they're Moses, where are they leading us?”

“To the Promised Land, of course,” said Horkman. He looked at Shlomo and Moishe and said, “Right? I assume we're going to Israel?”

They shot each other another look.

“Not exactly,” said Shlomo.

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly'?” said Horkman.

Shlomo took a few seconds, then said, “At the moment, Israel is involved in some very sensitive negotiations. If you two were to be seen in our country, or are in any way seen as acting as our agents, it could jeopardize our position.”

“So where
are
you Moseses leading us?” I said.

“Our immediate destination,” said Shlomo, “is Sana'a.”

“Where?”

“The capital of Yemen.”

“And we're going there because . . .”

Another look between them.

“You don't need to know that right now.”

We walked for a couple of hours, until finally we came to a little dirtball town, where we got on a prehistoric bus full of Yemen people. The bus went maybe four miles an hour and smelled like a Porta-Potty at a Metallica concert, but at least there were no mosquitoes. Moishe and Shlomo told us to keep our mouths shut and let them do all the talking, because they spoke Yemish, or whatever you call it.

After about four million hours on this bus, we finally got to a city. We got off at an airport, which I was pretty happy about, because I figured it meant we were getting the fuck out of Yemen. Outside the terminal, Moishe and Shlomo handed me and Horkman Yemeni passports, which looked real. I opened mine and—I don't know how they did this; Photoshop, I guess—inside there was a picture of me wearing the douchebag camel-jockey head thing. Next to my picture it said “Yasser al-Fakoob.”

“Yasser?” I said.

“It's a common name in Yemen,” said Moishe.

“What's his name?” I asked, pointing at Horkman.

Horkman looked at his passport and said, “Murad Fazir.”

“You want to trade passports?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't want to be Yasser.”

“Well, why the fuck do
I
have to be Yasser?”

Moishe stepped close, and I could feel something pressing into my stomach, which I figured was a gun.

“Listen,” he said. “If you don't stop talking right now, I will shoot you. It will be the end of my career, but I will do it anyway, purely for the enjoyment.”

Asshole.

We went into the terminal. Moishe and Shlomo also had Yemeni passports, so we acted like a traveling party of four, with them doing all the talking. We went through security, which was a joke, especially when you consider that at least one of us had a gun.

We got to our gate. The flight was boarding. Shlomo and Moishe handed each of us a ticket.

“Stick out your left hand,” Moishe told Horkman.

Horkman did, and Moishe snapped a handcuff around it.

“What's that for?” said Horkman.

“So you will not lose this,” said Moishe, handing Horkman a briefcase, which was attached to the handcuff with a chain.

“What's in this?” said Horkman.

“You don't need to know that now,” said Moishe.

“You will board the plane now,” said Shlomo. “We will wait here to make sure you leave with the flight. You'd be fools to get off the plane, anyway; if you stay in Yemen, you would be dead men.”

“What do we do when we get there?” said Horkman.

Moishe and Shlomo looked at each other, not quite smiling, but close.

“Just do what you do best,” said Moishe.

Whatever the fuck
that
meant.

I said, “Why don't
I
get a fucking briefcase?”

“Go,” said Moishe, pointing toward the jetway.

And so we got on the daily Air China flight from Sana'a to Beijing.