“You don’t have it yet, though?”
“No, but I expect to take possession of that information, along with the codes needed to arm the devices, within a matter of weeks. At that point, it’s just a matter of acquiring one functioning weapon.”
“Then what do you plan on doing with it?”
“Put it in the hands of Islamic terrorists.”
McCabe’s eyes widened. “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t worry… I’ll be giving it to terrorists we’ve invented. A video will be sent to news agencies around the world by a radical offshoot of the Islamic jihadist movement-an offshoot that does not exist, one that has been created for this operation. The video will threaten the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major city. The bomb will be filmed in such a way that defense analysts will immediately recognize that it is genuine.”
“Then what?”
“Then the world will see that Islamic terrorists have nuclear weapons and be forced to take the threat seriously.”
“What if the President tells the American people not to worry? Says that ain’t no bomb, folks, just some kinda fake. What then?”
“I don’t envision that happening. The evidence would be too strong. But anyway, I plan to take steps to make sure the bomb is discovered. Before it detonates, of course.”
McCabe looked skeptical.
“Same problem. Special Forces or the CIA find this thing, then they say it’s a fake. General, if you want people to know what it is, you’ve got to make it go off.”
“And hit a major city? Tens of thousands of people could die. We’d be no better than terrorists ourselves.”
“Sure, if it went off in a city. But why do it there? These radicals’d have some kinda hideout, somewhere they can’t easily be found. Maybe they’d be in the desert, or the mountains. Detonate your bomb out there in the boondocks, no one gets hurt, but you get yourself noticed, that’s for damn sure… Shit!”
He’d started coughing again.
“You should see a doctor about that,” said Vermulen.
McCabe spat phlegm onto the ground.
“I got a chest infection. It’ll pass. You just answer one last question: How much is all this gonna cost me?”
“I haven’t budgeted it yet. But you’d have to allow several million bucks.”
McCabe laughed.
“Several million? That all? Hell, I thought you were gonna ask me for serious money.”
McCabe was impressed. He’d set Vermulen a challenge and the general had met it. That list of nukes would bring the war against the Antichrist a whole heap closer. So now he just had to find a place where a bomb could be the fuse that would make the whole world go up in smoke. Once Vermulen had been sent on his way back to Washington, McCabe went back to the estate house, where he’d installed a library of religious books. Then he poured himself a couple of fingers of bourbon and started his research.
His first thought was the hill of Megiddo itself, but it was just an outcrop in the countryside northeast of Tel Aviv, nothing much else around it. For sure it was the site where the final battle concluded. But it wasn’t the best place to start a war. For that, he needed a place that was already a flashpoint, somewhere sacred to both Christ and Antichrist alike.
He was sitting at his desk, wondering where to look next, when something caught his eye, a letter he’d recently received, asking for donations to assist the preservation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Recently, the evangelical movement had found common cause with the Jews because both of them hated the Arabs. Now the Arabs were being accused of disrespecting the Jewish relics on the Mount. A lot of folks had been upset by that.
McCabe’s mind started turning over. He had little knowledge of Jewish theology and none at all of Islam. But he had as good an eye for an opportunity as anyone. He could see that different religions were already arguing over Temple Mount. That sounded worth his while to check out.
The significance of the Mount soon became very obvious. The Jews believed that the exposed bedrock on Temple Mount was the very Foundation Stone from which the world had been created, the center of everything. When Abraham had offered up his son Isaac in sacrifice, that happened on Temple Mount, too. Solomon had built his temple there, and he’d placed the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies right over the Foundation Stone. So that made the Mount the most sacred site in Judaism.
It was the Muslim angle, though, that really made McCabe’s head spin. He looked on Muslims as godless heathens, but the thing that blew his mind was not how different the teachings of Islam were from those of Judaism, but how similar they were.
They believed in the Foundation Stone, too. The Dome of the Rock, the oldest Islamic building in the world, had been built right on top of it. Muslims also agreed that Abraham had come to the Mount, which they called the Noble Sanctuary. Difference was, they held that he offered up his other son Ishmael for sacrifice, and that Ishmael was an ancestor of the Prophet Mohammed.
Muslim scripture stated that the Prophet had been visited in Mecca by the archangel Gabriel, who brought an animal called al-Buraq, on which he rode through the night to the stone on the Mount. Then the Prophet ascended to heaven, and met Adam, Jesus and John, Joseph, Enoch, Aaron, Moses, and Abraham, before coming face-to-face with Allah himself.
McCabe couldn’t understand how the Muslims could claim prophets and angels from the Holy Bible. And what was Jesus doing in their heaven? Bottom line, though, there were now two ancient Muslim shrines on the Mount-the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque-which put it right up there with Mecca and Medina on the list of their holiest places.
