Pharaoh (9 page)

‘If you are discovered, set off the charge you will have on you and try to take as many victims with you as you can. Have no pity on the elderly, or on women and children, as our enemies have shown no pity for our fathers, our sons, our wives. Once you have terminated the mission, you will return to base, because we need brave, well-trained combatants like you to fight in the final battle.’ He articulated his last words as if pronouncing a sacred formula: ‘The siege and the conquest of Jerusalem.’

The three men opened the envelopes, removed the money and credit cards, and read the instructions carefully. One after another, ending with the one who seemed youngest, they handed back the sheets, which were immediately burned in a copper plate placed on the mat.

‘
Allah Akbar!
’ said the man.

‘
Allah Akbar!
’ responded the other three.

Shortly after, the man was walking through the sun on a lovely winter’s day in the crowded bazaar. He passed under a banner that said, in three languages:
Peace on earth to men of goodwill
.

The three combatants of Allah left the house one at a time, at intervals of about an hour. They departed, each towards his own destination, like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. The first had instructions to reach Beirut and from there go by plane to Limassol, from where he would leave on a Cypriot cargo boat bound for New York. The second was to drive to Alexandria, where he would board an oil tanker heading towards New Haven, Connecticut. The third would travel by ship from Jaffa to Barcelona, where he would take an Iberia flight for San Jose´ in Costa Rica, and from there board a United Fruits banana boat from Puerto Limon going to Miami, Florida.

Two days later Abu Ahmid contacted three more young men in Nablus, in a mosque in the old city, and then, two days after, three others in Gaza, in a hovel in the refugee camp. All six, like the three in Bethlehem, were suicidal combatants sworn to death and trained to face any kind of situation. They also received instructions and itineraries.

They were, and always had been, pawns on Abu Ahmid’s chessboard, replaceable as necessary. Each group, having completed its mission, could detach a member to remedy any losses in the other groups, until all three of their objectives were attained.

All nine of them spoke English without the hint of an accent and were experts in the use of firearms and knives of any sort; they were proficient in the martial arts, could pilot an aeroplane or helicopter, parachute from any height, climb a rock or concrete wall and swim underwater with an aqualung.

They had no names, but were known by their numbers. They had no mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers, and the documents they carried were false but perfectly forged. They did not prize their lives because they had been taught for years to be ready to sacrifice life at any moment for their cause, upon a signal from their leader. They could survive for days on a hard biscuit and a few sips of water. Inured to hunger and thirst, heat and cold, they could endure any suffering and withstand any torture.

Each of the three groups had a leader who had absolute power over his companions, and could decide whether they lived or died. The whole of Operation Nebuchadnezzar, from start to finish, would depend on their abilities and their endurance.

When they had all reached their destinations with their packages, they would contact ‘Nebuzaradan’, who would in turn advise him, Abu Ahmid. That moment would mark the beginning of phase two of the operation, the military attack they had been planning day and night for two years in minute detail.

Now all he had to do was find a good vantage point from which to wait and review the operation from beginning to end. He reached Damascus and went from there to his tent in the desert not far from Deir ez Zor.

It was there that he’d been born about sixty years before, and his small Bedouin tribe was still faithful to the memory of his father and to him, whom they knew as Zahed al Walid. He would awake every day at the break of dawn to contemplate the waters of the Euphrates enflamed by the splendour of the rising sun and to watch the herds as they set out for pasture behind their shepherds, while the women washed their clothes in the river and lit fires in the mud ovens to bake the bread that they served him hot and fragrant, smelling of fire and ash. The sun glittered on the coins that they wore on their foreheads and made them seem ancient queens of burnished beauty: Sheba who had seduced Solomon, or Zenobia who had so fascinated Aurelian.

He would take long rides through the desert, towards Qamishli, and would ride so far out that he could see nothing around him, in any direction. Feeling alone between earth and sky on his horse’s back gave him an intense and terrible sensation of power. Then he would dismount and walk barefoot on the desert which once had nourished the lush soil of the Garden of Eden. Or sit on his heels and meditate in silence for hours, his eyes closed, attaining nearly absolute concentration, touching a transcendental dimension, as if in his bent knees were distilled the forces of the sky and of the earth.

He would usually return at dusk and have dinner in his tent with the tribal chiefs, eating bread and salt and roasted lamb, and sit there until late, drinking ayran and talking about completely futile and irrelevant things like pregnant camels and the price of wool at the Deir ez Zor market. This was how he would fortify his spirit and sharpen his mind in preparation for the biggest game that had ever been played on earth, since the day on which Esau had lost his birthright over a bowl of lentils.

He did not want to admit it, but he knew very well, in his heart, that on the other side of the chessboard there was a player just as cunning and as dangerous as himself. A man whose appearance was humble and unassuming like his own, capable of keeping a thousand different situations under control at the same time, wary and tireless, probably lacking any human sentiment save an arrogant pride in himself and his capabilities: the head of Mossad, Gad Avner. In the end, it would be the two of them playing the game to its finish and the stakes would be the City of God: Jerusalem.

The world would not be any better, or any worse, than it already was, whoever the winner turned out to be, but you play to win, you fight to prevail; offences must be avenged and wrongs must be righted.

After many millennia, Ishmael had returned from the desert to which he had been banished, to lay claim to his role as Abraham’s firstborn son.

A
BU
A
HMID
remained in his tent in the desert for ten days and then returned, first to Damascus and then to Amman, to resume contact with the men who would fight his battle on the field: the bishops, the rooks and the knights of his gigantic chessboard.

He waited a few days in a hotel in the centre of town until he received the message he had been waiting for: the date and time of an appointment in the middle of the desert, thirty miles north-east of the F7 oil pipeline pumping station.

Towards evening he hired a taxi and travelled on the road to Baghdad until he’d crossed the border, then he left the taxi at a service station and joined a small caravan of Bedouins headed south-east, towards the pipeline.

They left him at the agreed spot and he waited, alone, until the roar of a helicopter engine could be heard coming from the east, a large M1–24 Russian-made combat helicopter armed with missiles, cannons and rocket launchers.

It was flying just a few metres from the ground, raising a dense cloud of dust as it passed. It flew over the oil pipeline, came to a standstill in the air and then landed about 100 metres away from where he was standing. The rotor blades continued to spin for a few minutes, then slowed down and came to a complete stop. The door opened and an officer wearing a tanker’s beret and a leather pilot’s jacket came towards him on foot. The helicopter turned off the lights on board, plunging the area into darkness and silence.

The two men were now standing opposite each other.

‘
Salaam alekum
, General Taksoun,’ said Abu Ahmid.

‘
Alekum salaam
,’ replied the officer with a slight nod of his head.

‘I’m glad that you agreed to meet me.’

A cold wind was blowing and the sky threatened rain. The general was a thick-set man of about fifty. He had the dark complexion and large hands of the peasants from the south, but an uncommon pride in his bearing and gaze.

‘This meeting is very dangerous, Abu Ahmid,’ he said, ‘and it will have to be as quick as possible.’

‘I agree, General. I asked for this face-to-face encounter because what I have to tell you is so important that no message from any intermediary could communicate its full impact. Furthermore, the response can pass through no middleman; I must hear it directly from your lips. I will lay out my plan and my proposal. You have to abandon your . . . collaboration with the Americans and come over to our side.’

The man started. ‘I will not remain here one more minute if you attempt to insinuate—’

‘Don’t bother protesting, General. We have indisputable evidence of what I’ve just said, and we are ready to hand it over to your chief if you don’t calm down and listen very attentively.’

Taksoun looked at him in astonishment, without attempting a reply. He could see only the man’s eyes, because the rest of his face was covered, and it was difficult to catch the expression in them, the fleeting light of an unstable, restless spirit.

‘You need not modify a single detail of your agreement with them. You can even count on our collaboration. We are much more reliable than those friends of yours, who know nothing about the men or the territory.

‘Trust me,’ he said, seeing the other’s bewildered expression, ‘no one, besides myself and another person whom I can trust completely, is aware of this situation, so you have nothing to fear. You are actually quite highly considered in this part of the world. The Iranians, in particular, are pleased to have a Shiite like yourself on their side. As am I. To demonstrate my own esteem I have brought you a little gift.’ He took a photograph out of his pocket and handed it to the general.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘A jihad combatant sworn to suicide, a soldier in the President’s guard. He will be the one to blow up your Reis the day of the parade, much more reliably than the commando unit you have chosen for the same task. It’s quite likely that you would be exposed before you managed to succeed in your goal, which would mean your immediate execution. So allow us, if you don’t mind, to take care of this one.

‘After the explosion, you will preside over the solemn funeral rites for any bits and pieces of al Bashar they may find scattered over the parade ground, and then you will take supreme command of the armed forces and have yourself named temporary head of state that very day, pending elections to be held at a future date.

‘Your first step will be to confirm official diplomatic relations with the Americans. Then you will immediately establish, secretly of course, a plan for a close alliance with the new Syrian president, who supports our project. You will contact the Iranians as well, who are already behind us, and several fundamentalist groups in Egypt and Jordan, according to our instructions.

‘I will take care of arranging the appointments and meetings, in absolute secrecy.’

General Taksoun raised his eyes to the clouds gathering in the sky and tried to make out Ahmid’s expression in the darkness beneath the keffiyeh that hid most of his face.

Abu Ahmid nodded, looking up as well at the thickening black clouds driven by the khamsin. ‘A storm is coming up,’ he said, and seemed to be listening to the sound of the wind growing stronger, ‘a storm the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the last world war. And this will be Armageddon.’

Taksoun shook his head. ‘You think you can set off another war, Abu Ahmid? It won’t work. There’s only one superpower left in this world and their military supremacy is overwhelming. Alliances or no alliances, the times of Salah ad Din and Harun al Rashid will never come back. My choice was not a betrayal of the Arab cause; rather, it is the only way out, the only way to set this country free from poverty and from civil and political degradation.’

‘I believe you, General. But listen carefully. This time there won’t be any superpowers in the arena. The battle will be between the powers in play in our little corner of the world. I can’t tell you yet how this will happen. When the first part of my plan attains its goal, you’ll understand. What I can absolutely guarantee is that the United States will be in chains on the other side of the ocean, without being able to move a single ship, plane or man. America will have a gun pointed at its head and I, in person, will have my finger on the trigger.’

Taksoun looked hard for a hint of what might be going through the man’s mind, and listened closely as he continued.

‘At that point, our forces will move, lightning swift, in two directions.’ He used the tip of a stick to sketch out his plans in the sandy soil. ‘One part will go south, with the backing of the Iranians, advancing day and night until they reach the Kuwaiti and Saudi oil wells, which they will proceed to mine. Ensuring one third of the planet’s energy resources in our hands. The bulk of our forces will move west, where they will join with the other Arab nations at the walls of Jerusalem.

‘You will lead the largest part of this army and I can guarantee that you will be the supreme commander.’

The first drops of rain fell on the sand with small dull thuds, releasing the pleasant odour of doused dust.