100

Marcus called the war room.

“We found Haqqani,” he said.

“That’s tremendous,” said Roseboro. “Where?”

“In an apartment on the Mount of Olives.”

“Is he talking?”

“No, he’s dead.”

“How long?”

“An hour at most.”

“How?”

As Tomer and Kailea, now both in the flat with him, looked around the room —being careful not to impede the work of the crime scene investigators —Marcus relayed what he knew.

“Did you find Haqqani’s phone?” Roseboro asked.

“No,” Marcus said. “The Israelis are tearing the place apart, but they haven’t turned up the phone. Still, the Raven is working with the NSA to scour his call log. Apparently, Haqqani received one message and sent another. One was this morning before dawn. The other was a few hours later. Both were to the same number in Pakistan. We’re not sure yet to whom, but the Raven is working on it.”

“So al-Qassab and the bomber —or bombers —are still out there,” Roseboro said.

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of how much trouble they were still in.

“Where’s POTUS now?” Marcus asked.

“Boarding the motorcade —the next stop is the Holocaust memorial.”

“Then the Temple Mount?”

“You got it.”

Marcus sighed. “All right. I’ll keep you posted.”

He hung up the phone. Kailea and Tomer had finished looking over the flat. Now they were staring at the lifeless body of Haqqani, surrounded by a pool of crimson.

“Who owns this place?” Tomer asked the commander.

“A dentist,” he said. “Someone named Daoud Husseini.”

“What do we know about him?”

“Lives here with his wife and kids, who are apparently abroad at the moment. Brother lives downstairs. The clinic is on the first floor.”

“Have you contacted him?”

“We’re trying.”

“What do you mean, trying?” Tomer shouted. “Get him on the phone. I want to talk with him —now.”

“We’ve called him repeatedly,” a detective replied. “He’s not responding.”

“Maybe he’s on the run,” said the commander.

“Or dead,” Kailea added.

“Or maybe the dentist has moved al-Qassab to another safe house,” said Marcus. “I mean, whoever this Husseini guy is, he probably knows the city and the country like the back of his hand. Once the surgery —or surgeries —were complete, Husseini would be a lot more helpful to al-Qassab than a Pakistani from London, right?”

“Maybe so,” said Tomer, turning to the commander and asking questions in rapid-fire Hebrew, then relaying the answers to Marcus and Kailea in English. “Husseini has another clinic. Maybe we can find more clues there.”

“Where?” Marcus asked.

“The Old City —the Muslim Quarter,” Tomer said.

“How close to the Temple Mount?” Marcus asked.

“A few hundred meters, if that.”

“Then let’s move.”

The three raced down the stairs. Marcus jumped into the driver’s seat of their sedan while Kailea tossed him the keys. With lights flashing and siren blaring, Tomer took the lead. En route, they heard him issue orders over the radio to forces in the Old City. They were not to move on the clinic or even make their presence known. They were, however, to block every street and alleyway leading to the clinic and put a drone —not a helicopter —over the building to provide live images. Simultaneously, two tactical units were to take up positions one block north and one block south of the clinic. “And put the bomb squad on standby.”

Yasmine Mashrawi adjusted her veil and kept her mouth shut.

She just wished the shoemaker would keep his shut too.

She had never been to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum. She’d never had any interest, and even if she had, she couldn’t imagine her husband, much less her father, permitting such a thing. Hussam was a kind soul, quiet, and might not have really minded, she thought. But her father was a proud and public man. It would never do for his youngest daughter to be studying the suffering of the Jews from so long ago when Jews were making her own people suffer right here and now.

Still, she found it fascinating to watch the coverage of the Saudi monarch walking through the museum with its director, asking questions alternatively about why the Nazis had slaughtered so many Jews and how scholars could be certain the number was really six million. That was the one question the shoemaker had applauded, until the king clarified his question by asking the museum director how he could be certain that even more Jews hadn’t been killed.