The Illumination (28 page)

“What kind of visitor?”

“Someone from your government. They contacted us in the event we found you first.”

Natalie's gaze swung to D'Amato. Their eyes met, and she
felt her stomach twist. The CIA. It had to be. Was he in trouble? Because he'd helped her?

“He needs to come with me,” she said instantly. “He's a part of this. It's only right he see it through.”

“Not going to happen, I'm afraid.” Doron's mouth was set.

At that moment, Lior spun from the window.

“They're back.”

 

 

 

Nuri was talking intently into his cell phone as he bustled through the kitchen door, both eyes blackened now, and his nose even more swollen than it had been yesterday. He was joined a beat later by a sober-faced Yuvi.

Natalie caught only a few words of Nuri's rapid-fire Hebrew.
Nitsatsot shelo nitpotsa
—he was saying something about . . .

“Ready to go?” Yuvi asked her. He jingled the keys to the Ford in his hand.

“What was that I just heard . . . about bombs?”

Yuvi's olive eyes were fixed on her face, still with that solemn, neutral expression. “We're always talking about bomb threats.” He shrugged dismissively. “Are you ready to leave?”

Nuri snapped his phone shut. “Okay, we're going to escort you now to the IAA. Out of respect for what you've gone through, Natalie—your sister's death, the various attacks you've suffered, and your dedication in keeping the
tzohar
safe—you have the honor of personally handing it over to the authorities. It's time we get going.”

She nodded, still troubled by what she'd overheard. “You wouldn't tell us even if there was a bomb threat, would you?” She glanced from Nuri's face to Yuvi's.

“They wouldn't, Natalie.” It was D'Amato who answered when no one else did. “In their line of work, everything is on a
need-to-know basis. And they don't think we need to know anything.”

Doron lifted a hand, palm out. “Enough. You Americans think too much. You don't need to worry about anything but getting the
tzohar
to the authorities.”

Impatiently, Yuvi hoisted her shoulder bag from the back of the chair and handed it to her. “The pendant is still inside?”

She nodded, and pushed away every other concern.

“You'll be here when I get back?” she asked D'Amato, hooking the strap of her bag securely over her shoulder.

If he was worried about the upcoming grilling by the CIA, or whoever it was who wanted to talk to him, he didn't show it. He swung from his chair and gave her his slight, lopsided smile.

“Count on it.”

 

The Reverend Ken Mundy paced his suite at the David Citadel Hotel, his cell phone pressed to his ear. Gwen was still in the marble bathroom, completing her lengthy beautification process. He'd been trying to reach the Sentinel all morning, to no avail.

He was about to toss the phone on the bed in disgust, to give up on speaking to him before the ceremony, when suddenly he heard the familiar voice on the encrypted line.

“Where in God's name have you been? There's been no word from Barnabas, and I'm growing very concerned.”

“With good reason. Barnabas is dead.”

The words hit Mundy like a jolt from a taser. “How . . . ? When . . . ?”

“This isn't the time for details. I only have a minute. The Light is here with us, Ken. In Israel.”

Mundy sank to the bed, trying to absorb this hopeful news along with the shock that his most promising protégé was dead. The boy who'd worked so hard for the chance to build the Third Temple with his own hands would never touch a single stone, a single trowel of mortar.

“How are we going to get the Light without Barnabas?” he asked, his tone as heavy as his heart. “Are you sending someone else—Derrek?”

“It's too late for Derrek. You'll have to depend on me—and our friends.”

Yes. The Shomrei Kotel,
Mundy thought dazedly. But he couldn't stop thinking about Barnabas.

“I don't understand,” Mundy mumbled. “How could this have happened?”

“Ken.” The Sentinel's voice was uncharacteristically sharp. “Enough. You have to pull yourself together for the ceremony.” The line went dead.

He's right. It's almost time for the ceremony.
Mundy drew a breath and forced himself to focus. He walked to the mirror and began adjusting his tie, concentrating on perfecting the knot.
In a very short time, I'll be standing where the Temples stood. Where Jacob slept and dreamed of the ladder. Where Jesus threw out the money changers.
His hands trembled with excitement as he tugged at the two ends of his tie until they were even.
And where soon the Sons of Babylon will dig the foundation for the Third Temple.
He held fast to the most promising news the Sentinel had told him.

The Light is here in Jerusalem.

 

 

 

Hasan read the text message as the car sped north on Route 60 and smiled to himself.

It was about time Sayyed finally delivered on his promises. He'd failed more times than he'd succeeded in the past, but Farshid had insisted he be given chance after chance because their parents had been neighbors in Tehran. Hasan had not been as patient. He'd beaten Sayyed once when he'd bungled the simplest of deliveries. Since then Sayyed had applied himself. He'd performed well in his latest endeavor. And now his efforts were finally coming to fruition.

But Hasan refused to give Sayyed all the credit. The Bahraini legend was right. It was the fortuitous pearl now gracing Fatima's neck that was going to help deliver the Eye of Dawn into his hands.

 

Yuvi watched the odometer as he drove down the winding two-lane road, both hands on the steering wheel. The nail he'd shoved into the left rear tire while Nuri preceded him into the house should cause it to blow any time within the next two kilometers. In the backseat, Nuri was on the phone again. Distracted.
Good
.

He glanced over at Natalie Landau in the passenger seat alongside him. She'd been holding onto the
tzohar
long enough.

There was a sudden deafening pop as the tire blew. The Ford
began to tremble out of its lane, and an oncoming Mercedes swerved to the shoulder, splaying dust across the road as Natalie Landau gasped and Nuri swore. Yuvi wrestled the car under control. It took all of his strength to steer it onto the narrow shoulder of the hilly road.

“A damned flat,” he yelled disgustedly and threw open his door. His hands were shielded from their view as he headed toward the trunk. It only took him one second to key in their location and send Menny the text message.

 

“Right on time.” Menny Goldstein pushed his sunglasses higher up on his nose and scanned the incoming text message. The next instant he jerked the car away from the curb, his foot stomping a little too heavily on the gas pedal, lurching them awkwardly onto the lonely back road.

Excitement thrummed through his fingers as he tapped the steering wheel. He was elated. “Yuvi had it figured almost exactly. They're less than five minutes from here.”

“
Baruch ha Shem,
praise God's name,” Shmuel said beside him.

The
tzohar
is home,
Menny thought. And he'd be a man privileged beyond his merit when he held it in his hands.
Very soon now.

Then, God willing, the Shomrei Kotel would keep it hidden and safe until Moshiach—the Messiah—came at last, and the
tzohar
could shine once more in the Third Temple.

He tried not to think about the gun beneath his seat, which would be in his hands very soon also. Not that he was hesitant in the least to use a gun—he had shot one in the army. But never as a civilian. And never at a fellow Israeli.

He deliberately refocused his thoughts, switching instead to how fortuitous it was to have such good Christian friends as Reverend Mundy and the Sons of Babylon—men as equally committed as he and the Shomrei Kotel to rebuilding the Temple. The Sons of Babylon were trustworthy and zealous partners in this sacred mission. More than the politicians and the diplomats, they understood the truth of the Torah's prophecies. They'd help defend Jerusalem against any takers.

The signing today of the absurd, meaningless peace documents was designed solely to mollify an ignorant and misguided world. Many in Israel and around the globe understood that the peace would never hold. The decades-long indoctrination of Palestinian schoolchildren against Jews and Israel would see to that.

Palestinian children's television programs, video games, and textbooks had for years glorified martyrdom and
jihad
, while denouncing the establishment of Israel as an “evil crime.”
It was impossible for a piece of paper to create peace,
Menny thought,
when Israel didn't even appear on maps in Palestinian textbooks, and when so many young Arabs had grown up learning hate along with math and science.

Still, the return of the
tzohar
to Jerusalem on
this very day
gave Menny hope. He took it as a sign from God that Israel would endure.

“Think of it—the Temple will be rebuilt in our lifetimes, Shmuel,” he said joyously, turning to regard his friend. “Our children will worship there—and Moshiach will soon return.”

But Shmuel was all business, his gun already in his hand, his eyes trained on the road. “There they are.” He pointed ahead to where two men were changing a tire and a woman stood, arms crossed, alongside a green Ford Focus.

 

 

 

Nuri had just fitted the spare tire onto the wheel when Yuvi saw the silver car approaching fast from the south. It was just distant enough ahead of them that it shimmered in the heat, like the dusty pavement that stretched toward the center of Jerusalem, an optical illusion in the broiling Israeli sun. Nothing else moved in the rocky hillside that hugged the empty road where he stood behind Nuri, tire iron in hand.

Yuvi waited, watching the front wheels of the oncoming car as they angled toward the shoulder.
Now.
He turned and lifted the tire iron just as Nuri glanced up, squinting at the silver car that had stopped in front of theirs, its motor still running.

In one brutal stroke Yuvi drove the iron against the back of Nuri's head. He flinched despite himself as the man he'd worked with for the past six months toppled onto his side. Yuvi didn't think he'd hit him hard enough to kill him, though. He hoped not. Glancing down, it was unsettling to see blood seeping from the gash behind Nuri's ear.

I'll need to leave the country either way,
he thought mournfully, even as he sprang around the car toward Natalie Landau.
I'll never see the Temple rebuilt, but my sacrifice will make it possible.

Two men spilled from the silver car.

“What are you doing?” Natalie screamed, backing away from
the disabled car, and from the Mossad agent who'd just attacked his partner. “Why did you hit Nuri?”

She whirled toward the silver car, toward the two men running toward them with guns drawn.

But it was a mistake to take her eyes off Yuvi. He was on her in a blink, snatching her shoulder bag with such force it wrenched her arm. Before she could grab it back, he flung it to the shorter of the two men, the one wearing sunglasses, the one in the lead.

“It's in there, Menny,” Yuvi called. “Inside the center zippered—”

He never finished. The bullet tore through his stomach and blew out his spine. Menny froze for a heartbeat, shock on his face. “What the—” He wheeled to face Shmuel as Natalie's screams circled through the dry, dusty air.

“Shmuel—” Menny began, disbelief in his voice. It was the last word he ever uttered. Shmuel shot him in the chest at point-blank range. His body blew backward, and Natalie's shoulder bag blew with it.

“Don't move.” Shmuel now had the gun trained on her. “And shut up!”

The screams clogged in her throat, winding down like an air-raid siren. Going silent.

“Who . . . are you?” she whispered, bracing herself for the next shot.

He seemed to realize what she was thinking and smiled. He was young and craggily handsome, with smooth dark skin, a short beard, and a heartless smile.

“No, you are not going to die. Not yet—and not by my hand.”

He strolled around the car slowly, almost casually, and saw Nuri's eyelid twitch. Saw his stubby fingers crawling toward the weapon in his shoulder holster.

“It's his turn next.”

The bullet he put in Nuri's chest thundered in Natalie's ears.

She dove for her bag and rolled frantically with it, praying to make it under the car. Her reaction was instinctive, even though she knew he could kneel down and shoot her under the car just as easily.

Or kick the jack out and let the car fall on her.

Confusion and terror fought for a foothold in her mind. Yuvi had betrayed them. With a sickening lurch in her stomach, she wondered if he had a partner in betrayal at the safe house. If D'Amato was in danger, too.

Trembling, clutching her bag, she flashed on how quickly Shmuel had turned on Yuvi. Yet they obviously had orchestrated the ambush together. Yuvi had told them where to find the
tzohar.

But Shmuel—he hadn't only turned on Yuvi, he'd turned on the guy he came with, too. The man in the sunglasses, Menny. Who did each of them work for? Her brain was numb with confusion.

One thing she did know—she knew what they all wanted.

Breathing hard, she watched Shmuel's feet as he rounded the car. Knelt down. Smiled at her.

“Come out.
Now
.”

 

D'Amato wasn't surprised that Bob Hutton, his former CIA handler, had known D'Amato and Natalie were headed toward Israel even before he did. The CIA and Mossad observed certain courtesies. There were certain circumstances in which they shared information and cooperated.