82

MOUNT OF OLIVES, EAST JERUSALEM

It was well after 7 p.m. when the Red Crescent ambulance pulled up.

Two paramedics —both on the Kairos payroll —entered the first-floor office and found Hussam Mashrawi slumped in a dentist chair, unconscious. To maintain the cover of the operation, the dentist had actually conducted a completely unnecessary root canal on the man after the BCB surgery was successfully completed. He’d even pulled out a perfectly good wisdom tooth for good measure. As a result, both sides of Mashrawi’s face were swollen, and drool was running down his shirt. The man’s wife, who had dropped him off for what she thought would be a routine root canal that morning, would have questions.

Neither paramedic had any idea what Mashrawi had been through or who was staying in the flat two floors up. All they knew was that they were being paid to transport the executive director of the Waqf back to his home in the Old City.

With the dentist’s help, the two men carefully lifted Mashrawi onto a stretcher. They wheeled him out and loaded him into the back of the ambulance. The dentist then said he’d like to accompany them all back to the Mashrawi residence, just to make sure everything went smoothly.

Al-Qassab peered through the curtain.

He watched as Mashrawi was placed in the ambulance. He watched to make sure the mobile phone he had placed in Mashrawi’s jacket pocket did not fall out and go skittering across the pavement. That was the phone, after all, that Mashrawi was going to use to detonate himself when the moment came. Before the surgery, al-Qassab had taken the Palestinian into a private room, given him the phone, and walked him through every step, answering every question the man had.

Yes, there would be a slight delay, he’d told Mashrawi. There could in fact be as many as three seconds between the moment he pressed the correct speed-dial number and the moment the bomb actually detonated. Yes, the explosion would be massive. It would kill everyone within ten meters, roughly thirty feet. No, he would not feel a thing. He would be obliterated instantaneously. One moment he would be shouting, “Allahu akbar!” The next moment he would be in paradise, remembered forever as a martyr and thus a hero back here on earth.

Al-Qassab was impressed with just how calm Mashrawi was. Indeed, the man seemed eager to do his part for the Caliphate. He did not seem nervous. He did not seem worried about what would happen to his beloved wife and children. He accepted al-Qassab’s assurance that they would be well cared for and provided for.

What al-Qassab did not tell Mashrawi, however, was that he had no intention of entrusting the Palestinian with so important a mission. The speed dial in the mobile phone had been properly programmed. But al-Qassab now looked down at the mobile phone in his own hands. He had programmed the speed-dial function on this one with the exact same number. There was no turning back, no room for hesitation. When the moment came, he would not be trusting Mashrawi to dial his own death. Al-Qassab would do that for him.

Red lights flashing, the ambulance pulled away from the curb.

It threaded its way through East Jerusalem and stopped as close as it could to the Damascus Gate. The two paramedics and the dentist unloaded the stretcher, cleared through an Israeli security checkpoint, and got Mashrawi to his third-floor apartment, where his wife, Yasmine, was waiting.

“What happened?” she gasped at the sight of her husband. “He looks like someone beat him up!”

“There were a few complications, but overall, everything went fine,” the dentist replied, not exactly lying but certainly not telling the truth.

“Why isn’t he awake?” she asked.

“I’m afraid he had an allergic reaction to the first type of anesthesia I used, so I had to use another kind,” the dentist explained, following to the letter the script Dr. Haqqani and al-Qassab had given him. “I expect him to sleep through the night, but he should start feeling better tomorrow.”

The paramedics hoisted Mashrawi off the stretcher and set him on the couch in the living room. The dentist gave Yasmine a bag filled with various kinds of prescription medications to manage the pain and reduce the swelling. He walked her through how much and when to give each pill, then promised to come by in the morning to check on his patient. With two of her young children grasping at the folds of her dress, Yasmine adjusted her veil, wiped her eyes, and thanked the men for their kindness, and with that they took their leave.

The first person Yasmine called was her father. The moment the Grand Mufti answered his mobile phone, she burst into tears. He had no idea what she was saying, but he promised to come to her side right away.