Hister of Nostradamus’ earlier quatrains was reinterpreted to mean Hitler and Napaulon Roy became Napoleon Bonaparte, they turned Sudam into Saddam. It was a small step, then, to declaring the execution of Hussein the beginning of the end that Nostradamus had foreseen.
He came across another quatrain, Century 8, Quatrain 77:
The anti-christ very soon annihilates the three,
twenty seven years his war will last,
The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled;
with blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.
Reading through the stuff it was fairly obvious that all of the so-called prophecies were vague enough that absolutely any and every meaning could be shoe-horned into them neatly enough if you were determined to impress a certain interpretation. A twenty-seven-year war of vengeance for the death of Saddam Hussein? Hussein transformed into the martyr for the Arabic world? Instead of ensuring peace, could cutting the head off that particular snake usher in the End of Days? There were enough people out there that seemed to think so. They pointed at the escalating nature of the terror attacks that had plagued the West following his execution in the last days of 2006, but that didn’t mean they were right. Hell, it didn’t mean they were anything other than kids in their back bedrooms with a few books and a crush on Armageddon. That was the joy of the Internet- it gave everyone a voice even if they had nothing to say.
Still, the very notion sent a chill running down the ladder of Jude Lethe’s spine.
For the next hour he immersed himself in Grace Weller’s world. From what he could gather from her reports, this particular Mabus was-at the time of writing pheeast-very much alive and well, a fact which jarred with the Hussein theory.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this went back to Masada and whatever Grey Metzger and the others had found there. But what tied the archeological dig at the home of the Sicarii assassins, the herald of the Antichrist and thirteen suicides together? One thing was for sure, whatever it was, Grace Weller believed Metzger was up to his neck in it. She’d been putting the case against him together for three years. That meant this thing had been going on even longer. All the way back to ’04 and the dig at Masada, perhaps? He needed to know more about the woman and what she was working on, and that meant using the ghost network to dig through Six’s files. But first he needed a smoke to clear his head. It was going to be a long night.
Lethe printed out everything onto a hardcopy for the old man. He’d want to see it. Lethe couldn’t shake the feeling that he was staring at three of four pieces of the mosaic instead of seeing the picture in all of its glory. Maybe the old man would be better placed.
He put the Bluetooth earpiece back in place and called up to Sir Charles. Max answered the phone on the second ring. “This is not a good time, Mister Lethe,” the butler said without missing a beat. “Sir Charles is taking his early evening constitutional.”
“Tell the old man I need to see him. We’re talking a shit-and-fan moment.”
“You do have such a colorful way with words, young sir.”
“Just tell the old man that MI6 has had one of our suicides under surveillance for three years.”
“And where there is one, there are likely to be others. I assume that is the gist of this message?” Max said, filling in the blanks.
“Add the fact that Koni had some trouble in Berlin, that that trouble was collected in a diplomatic car, and I’d say things are just starting to get interesting.”
“I shall inform Sir Charles immediately.”
“I thought you might.”
12
Orla Nyren deplaned at terminal three of Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.
She emerged from the air-conditioned hull into the mid-70s heat of the Tel Aviv afternoon and lifted her face to the sky. The sun felt good. Honest. It had been a long time since she’d set foot on Israeli soil, but for a while it had been her second home.
The ground crew swarmed over the asphalt, dragging the hose from the refueling vehicle toward the underside of the G5. They were all dressed identically in white coveralls and looked disturbingly like a hazmat team going to work. They moved with the efficiency of drones, each doing their part. The nearest gates were occupied by commercial airliners, tail fins showing their allegiance to each and every flag imaginable. Farther along the hardstand a huge Airbus 380 was taxiing toward the gate. The Airbus dwarfed every other plane on the ground.
Orla adjusted the lie of her skirt. Her heels tunked hollowly down the steel stairs onto the hardstand.
Her escort waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. He was a good-looking man, typically dark, with an olive cast to his skin, and carefully cultivated two-day stubble that was neatly trimmed. He wore a light linen suit and a white shirt that was rumpled around the collar. He held out a hand to her as she reached the bottom step. It might have been misplaced chivalry, or an offer to shake hands, she couldn’t tell. Orla took his hand and turned the gesture into a brisk handshake. His grip was uncomfortably firm. “Orla Nyren,” she said, stepping down on to the blacktop.
“Uzzi Sokol,” her host said, smiling tightly. “Walk with me.” He turned on his heel without another word and led her toward the terminal building. Sokol moved with the arrogance of a military man. Orla had to walk half a step faster than was comfortable to keep up with him as he steered her toward the special customs gate. She had met his type before a dozen times a day when she’d been operating in the Middle East. It was that arrogance that marked her as a second-class citizen. It was rooted deep in the male psyche. It was the usual kind of pseudo- sexual, dynamic bullshit that really infuriated her. Orla had known the guy less than sixty seconds and he was already trying to imprint his dominance over her.
Well, screw that, she thought to herself, and stopped trying to match his pace. She turned to look back at Sir Charles’ Gulfstream. It might have looked like the runt of the litter alongside the Airbus, but it really was a majestic piece of aeronautical design. She saw Ryan, Sir Charles’ man, on the stairs. His white shirt immaculately starched despite the long-haul flight, looking every inch the dashing pilot. He flashed Orla a smile and tipped her a two- fingered salute. She smiled back, knowing the few seconds she had taken out of chasing Uzzi Sokol should have been just enough to exasperate the Israeli. That was her intention, after all.
Sokol waited for her beside the security door. He could barely mask his impatience. Orla smiled, which just seemed to annoy him all the more. She followed him through the door into the terminal. They walked through a narrow glass corridor. She could see the hubbub of passengers through the glass walls as they milled around, waiting for their flights to be called. Before she was halfway through the corridor announcements had been made in five languages.
Sokol didn’t say another word until she was on the other side of the customs gate. The diplomatic tags on her briefcase prevented them from interfering with her luggage and meant she could bring her service piece into the country. He whisked her away into a waiting black Mercedes sedan bearing the insignia of the IDF intelligence Corps, Heil HaModi'in. He closed the door and came around to the other side of the car.
“We’ll be with Lieutenant General Caspi in a short while. I trust your flight was comfortable?” If this was his attempt at small talk, Orla thought, it was rather woeful.
“It was fine,” she said, looking out the window. Airports across the world were all a much of a muchness, she decided, as the car swept around a line of waiting taxis. A snake of cars crawled up the on-ramp into a multistory parking garage. The barrier was down and the sign read full, so for every car that went in, one had to leave. Out of the airport the streets were depressingly familiar with their low buildings and spray-painted facades. Five minutes out of the airport compound they passed a man selling stacks of eggs from a rickety roadside table. Two minutes beyond that a grandmother-every damned day of her hard life engraved deep into the creases of her face-sat selling fruit from a handbasket. A little girl on a bright red bicycle pedaled hard, the frame swinging from side to side as she raced toward the row of buildings. She had her head down and wasn’t watching the traffic. Twice other drivers
