110
Marcus speed-dialed the war room.
The director of the White House advance team answered.
“Joe, I need Carl.”
“He stepped out.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. He said he’d be right back. Want me to reach him on his cell?”
“No, no, I’ll do it,” Marcus replied. “But listen —we’ve got a situation developing.”
“Yeah, we just heard you nabbed al-Qassab. That’s fantastic.”
“Maybe not —where’s POTUS at this exact moment?”
“Heading to the Temple Mount. They’re almost there now. Why?”
“We have reason to believe there may be a suicide bomber up there. I’m still trying to get more details, but we can’t take any chances. You need to get your people off the site as quickly and quietly as you can.”
“That’s Carl’s call, not mine.”
“And I’m sure Carl will make it, but we don’t have time to wait. And while you’re at it, cut the live video feed —make it seem like a technical problem and tell the media your guys are working on it and should have it fixed in no time. You got that?”
“I do, but you don’t really have the authority to —”
Marcus hung up and speed-dialed Roseboro’s mobile phone. Again he got no answer, so he called Geoff Stone, who answered immediately.
“Geoff, are you with the secretary?”
“Yeah.”
“And POTUS?”
“And the PM and the king —why?”
“Where are you?”
“We’re just entering the Temple Mount now.”
“Okay, look, Geoff, you need to get the principals into the secure holding room as quickly as possible, and you need to keep them there and harden up the detail. No one comes in or out until you hear from me or Carl. And I mean no one. You got it?”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Dr. Hussam Mashrawi may be the bomber.”
“The executive director of the Waqf? That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I would have said, but his own father-in-law is accusing him.”
“The Grand Mufti?”
“Crazy, I know.”
“How do you know it’s not a ruse?” Geoff asked.
“I don’t —not yet —and that’s why I don’t want POTUS or the other principals anywhere near the Grand Mufti or Mashrawi until we can figure this thing out. In the meantime, brief the detail leaders but not the principals. Get them in the holding area, lock them down, and put your best guys in front of the door. I’m going to send you a photo of Mashrawi right now. Forward it to all the agents. If he’s spotted, he must be ordered to stop, strip to the waist, and lie down on his back, faceup. If he fails to comply in any way, shoot to kill. But under no circumstances get anywhere near him.”
“Understood,” said Geoff.
“All right, get to it.” Marcus ended the call and speed-dialed Roseboro again. But there was still no answer.
Yasmine was watching live coverage of the arrival on the Haram al-Sharif.
Suddenly the screen went black.
A moment later, all she and her hosts could see was a test pattern. The shoemaker cursed and grabbed the remote. He began flipping through one news channel after another —first the Arabic ones, then those in Hebrew, and finally the European and American news networks. When he realized that all of them were showing the same test pattern, he switched back to the Al-Sawt channel. The anchors in Doha were apologizing for a glitch in the feed and promising to get it fixed as quickly as possible. In the meantime, they turned for comment to two Qatari political analysts on the set with them, both of whom began blasting the Saudi monarch for “betraying the Palestinian cause” and “defiling Islam” by trying to “normalize relations with the criminal colonialists occupying Palestine.”
Peter Hwang picked up the receiver and hit line four.
“Ops center, Hwang.”
“Pete, it’s me,” said Marcus from half a world away.
“Marcus, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s Kailea I’m worried about.”
“The chopper just landed at Hadassah,” Pete said, referring to Israel’s premier hospital on the west side of the capital. “They’re wheeling her into surgery as we speak. She was shot in the leg, and the bullet tore the femoral artery. Lost a lot of blood. They think they got her there in time, but we’ll know more in a few hours.”
“Good —now, look, Pete, I need you to do me a favor.”
“Of course, whatever you need.”
“I’m going to hang up the phone now. But in two minutes, I need you to call me back. Okay?”
“Sure, but why?”
“You’ll understand then, but right now I’ve got to go.”