‘Unfortunately, unless we find him, we can’t locate the three commando units. The Armageddon program doesn’t include specific locations.’
‘Even if he knows that he’s been made the intermediary in a blackmail scheme – holding the US government hostage with this terrorist threat – he may well believe that it will come to an end when Islam is victorious over Israel, with the fall of Jerusalem. We can’t assume he knows the bombs are programmed to go off no matter what. I am certain that Husseini is unable to read that program and properly understand it.’
‘Well, then, how do you suggest we proceed?’
‘Where are we going now?’
‘To our operational headquarters here in Chicago. I had myself transferred here because this is where Husseini is and he’s obviously the key to everything.’
They flew along in silence for a while, giving Blake an opportunity to observe the thousands of lights twinkling throughout his city, its streets and highways, as it took a dreadful pounding from the torrential rainstorm. He could see the nightmarish snarl of traffic caused by an insane evacuation. Nevertheless, he realized that he had missed the city terribly and had to do whatever he could to stop anything terrible from happening to it.
He suddenly thought of something. Turning towards the general, he said, ‘There’s one thing he’ll be doing for sure: listening to the radio. I want you to get me a wooden Bedouin pestle and mortar right away.’
Hooker’s eyes opened wide in stunned disbelief. ‘Get you what?’
‘You understood me: a wooden pestle and mortar like the ones the Bedouins on the Arabian peninsula use.’
‘But you’re talking about Stone Age implements. Where am I going to find anything like that in Chicago?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest idea. Have your men scour the museums, the anthropological and ethnographic institutes. Just find me these things, please . . . And one more thing: find me a drummer.’
‘A drummer?’
‘My wrists are broken, General. Surely you don’t expect me to pound the pestle in the mortar!’
Hooker shook his head in bewilderment, but he called the Chicago operations room and gave the appropriate orders. ‘And I’m warning you: don’t waste your time making wise cracks. We’ll be landing in about ten minutes. Don’t let me down on this, boys.’
The bizarre objects arrived by Pony Express from the Field Museum within half an hour and a drummer was brought in by taxi, a young black jazz musician named Kevin, who was performing downtown at the Cotton Club.
‘Listen carefully, Kevin,’ said Blake. ‘I’m going to drum out a rhythm with my fingers on the table and I want you to imitate it by pounding the pestle inside the mortar, while these gentlemen record it on a cassette. So let’s try to do a good job. Think you can handle that?’
‘No problem. Piece of cake,’ replied Kevin. ‘I’m ready whenever you are.’
Blake began drumming with his fingers on the table as an incredulous General Hooker and the other officers looked on in utter disbelief. Kevin followed him with instinctive mastery, making his unlikely, improvised instrument come to life with a brusque yet resonant rhythm, a more than convincing rendition of the simple, evocative beat Blake had heard for the first time at Omar al Husseini’s home one Christmas Eve and then again two days ago in the sheikh’s tent at El Mura.
When they had finished, Blake turned to Hooker. ‘Have this tape played by all the radio stations every ten minutes until I tell you to stop. We’ll just have to put our faith in God.
‘Right now, gentlemen, I need to go to the bathroom,’ he announced, picking up his briefcase. ‘I have to adjust my bandages.’
He went out into the hall and towards the door they had pointed out to him, but instead of going in, he went straight for the elevator and down to the garage level. The place was full of cars, both civilian and olive-drab military versions. He got into the first one he found with the keys in the ignition and took off, squealing his tyres, to the consternation of the approaching guard who wanted to ask to see his pass.
He drove through the torrential rain, gritting his teeth, dealing as best he could with the pain in his wrists, which was increasing now that the effect of the painkiller the doctor had given him was starting to wear off.
The main arteries were gridlocked, reduced to a tangle of collisions, accompanied by the wild cacophony of angry horns and shouting, brawling drivers. As soon as he could, Blake slipped off the main road and found himself driving through a series of more peaceful, out-of-the-way neighbourhoods, where the people were so badly off they didn’t appear to be overly concerned about the prospect of an atomic explosion.
He had turned on the radio and before he had reached his shabby old apartment, he was able to confirm that the regular programming was being interrupted to broadcast a strange, rhythmic pounding, a monotonous beat that periodically built to a crescendo of dramatically intense, hammering percussive effects. No doubt about it: that Kevin was quite the artist.
He left the car in a parking lot and ran through the driving rain all the way to his door. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and with a hefty nudge was in.
The tiny apartment was dark and cold; it looked just like he had left it two months ago. Thieves knew better than to look for valuables in a place like this.
He turned on the lights and the heat. In a cupboard crammed with canned goods, he found a package of coffee that was still sealed. He opened it, found a filter, put water into the pot and set it on the stove. He tried to tidy the place up a bit and, as he was busy putting away shoes and dusty clothes, he turned on the radio. At that particular moment it was broadcasting classical music: Haydn.
He sat down and lit a cigarette.
An hour slipped by and he could no longer hear even the slightest noise from the surrounding neighbourhood. Maybe they had all left, or perhaps they had decided to await God’s judgement in reverent silence.
Once again, to no avail, the radio broadcast the haunting rhythm of the Bedouin mortar and Blake began thinking the whole scheme was totally nuts, that certain things only happened in fairy tales. He turned it off with an annoyed flick of his sore wrist and turned on the gas under the coffee. He seemed to sense the souls of Gordon and Sullivan hovering about in the tight space of his little studio, may their souls rest in peace. He wondered whose turn it would be next. His? Sarah’s? How many countless other people would have to pay? Somebody was knocking at his door.
16
‘I’VE BEEN WAITING for you,’ said Blake. ‘Come in. Please, sit down.’
Omar al Husseini was soaking wet from the rain and could barely stand up. His hair was unkempt and his beard scraggly.
The deep circles around his bloodshot eyes revealed his sleep-deprived state.
‘How did you get back here?’ he asked, collapsing onto a chair. ‘And what have you done to your hands?’
He was deathly pale and shivering from the cold. Blake had him take off his wet coat and he put it on a radiator. He then placed an old blanket over his shoulders and handed him a cup of steaming black coffee.
‘It’s fresh,’ he said. ‘I just made it.’
‘I heard the sound of the mortar,’ said Husseini with a weak smile, ‘and I thought, someone around here is making coffee, and I . . .’
He didn’t finish his sentence. He brought the cup to his lips and took a few sips. ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘Both of us are the repositories of devastating secrets . . . and just a couple of months ago we were a couple of untroubled college professors. Isn’t life strange? Tell, what is the tomb of the great leader like? Did you see his face?’
Blake drew close. ‘Omar, listen to me. It’s your secret that can do the most damage now. We’ve discovered an automatic system in your computer which in six hours will trigger off three nuclear bombs in three different cities in the United States.’
Husseini did not bat an eye. ‘No . . . no, you’re wrong. None of that will happen,’ he said. ‘Jerusalem is about
to surrender and it will all be over. They’ll stipulate some sort of a treaty and this will all just be history soon. You know as well as I do that there’s no place in the world where an individual could override the safeguards that stop a nuclear weapon from actually being set off. There won’t be any bombs exploding.’
‘And you think we can afford to run this risk just on the basis that you hope it won’t happen? You know that’s crazy, Omar. Or shall I call you . . . Abu Ghaj?’ This time Husseini raised his head suddenly and met Blake’s eyes as he continued relentlessly, ‘My God, how could you have agreed to help plan the deaths of millions of innocent people?’
‘That’s not true! I fought when it was time, and I thought I’d done my part. I thought it was all over . . . but sometimes your past catches up with you. Even when you think you’ve buried it forever. They came asking me to hold this threat over the heads of the Americans until the rights of our people were restored . . . That’s all. And that’s what I’ve done. What I had to do. But I’m no executioner. There won’t be any slaughter of the innocents.’
‘Six hours, Omar, and millions of people will die unless we can manage to stop this implacable mechanism. Only you can help. I’ve given Pentagon technicians the password to the file you’ve called Armageddon. Do you believe me now?’
Husseini widened his fatigue-reddened eyes. ‘But how—’
‘There’s no time to explain it now. There’s one thing I have to know. If the computer is cut out while the program is being executed, what happens?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where are the “donkeys” bought at the Samarkand market?’
Husseini reacted with even greater surprise at the realization that Blake was familiar with the language in the most protected files of his computer.
‘I can’t talk about that.’
‘You have to.’
‘If I do . . . I have a son, Blake. A son I thought was dead, a son to whose memory I dedicated every action, every assault, every gunfight, over all those years that the fame of the exterminator Abu Ghaj spread across the globe. I thought I had buried him in a squalid cemetery in the Bekaa Valley, but they’ve given me proof that he’s alive and he’s in their hands. If I talk there’s no limit to the suffering they could inflict on him. You wouldn’t understand . . . You can’t begin to imagine . . . There’s a world in which poverty, hunger and endless war kill off any form of compassion, make any horror possible . . .’
‘But even Abraham was ready to sacrifice his only son because God asked him to. You’re being asked by thousands of innocent men, women and children who would be burned alive, or contaminated by radiation and condemned to living their lives in agony. Omar, I can prove that they’ve lied to you. The bombs will explode even if Jerusalem surrenders and falls to its knees, begging for mercy. Hold on, let me prove it to you.’
He picked up the phone and dialled a number. ‘This is William Blake,’ he said. ‘Pass me over to General Hooker.’
‘Blake!’ cried Hooker as he picked up the line. ‘What have you done? Where the hell are you? We need you here to—’
Blake cut him off. ‘General, please tell me what’s happening with the Armageddon program.’ He gestured for Husseini to get closer so he could listen in on the conversation.
‘We’re working on Husseini’s computer, but it’s just as we feared. Our technicians have figured out how to block the detonation procedure but, if they do so, an auxiliary command will be given for a second system. If they turn that one off the same thing will happen again. The bombs are timed to explode at half-hourly intervals. The first one will explode in four hours and forty minutes, and the others will follow. We’ve asked the Russians to help us to defuse them, but there’s nothing they can do unless we can tell them what type of bombs they are.’
‘General,’ he said, looking straight into Husseini’s eyes, ‘I hope to have some important information to give you soon. Don’t move from there for any reason and . . . tell Miss Forrestall that I’m thinking of her, if you should see her.’
‘Blake! Damn it, tell me where—’
Blake hung up and said to Husseini with an expressionless voice: ‘More coffee, Omar?’
Husseini fell back in his chair and lowered his eyes, closing himself into a silence that seemed endless in the little bare room. When he raised his eyes they were full of tears.
He put his hand into his inside jacket pocket and took out a little black box. ‘This device contains a copy of the program that’s in the computer. They told me to carry it with me whenever I had to leave the main computer. That’s all I know.’
‘Can it be connected to the phone?’
Husseini nodded. ‘The hook-up’s inside. There’s also a little plastic card that contains the password.’
Blake opened the box and found the card. It contained a word in cuneiform characters that spelled out Nebuchadnezzar.
He said, ‘Thank you, Omar, you’ve done the right thing. And now let’s hope that luck is on our side.’
He called the switchboard again and had them pass him to General Hooker.
‘General, I have the back-up system. Press the voice button on your phone. I want your computer technician to hear this. OK, the unit I’m holding in my hand looks like a very powerful, sophisticated portable computer. I’m hooking it up to my phone now. You can connect this line to your main computer and download it. As soon as you’re asked for a password, type in “Home” and a sequence of cuneiform letters will appear. Click on that word and the program will open. General, you can have them stop with the radio broadcast. We don’t need it any more. Good luck.’
He sat and watched the LEDs lighting up on the little display, signalling the flow of information through the telephone lines.
‘Is there any coffee left?’ asked Husseini.
‘Certainly,’ said Blake. ‘How about a smoke?’
He poured the coffee and lit a cigarette for him.
They sat in silence opposite each other as the room got warmer, listening to the tapping rain on the foggy windowpanes. Blake checked his watch: 200 minutes to the start of the apocalypse.
Husseini sat shivering. Neither the blanket on his shoulders, nor the hot coffee could overcome the chill inside him.
Abruptly the little LEDs blinked off: the data transmission was complete. Blake unplugged the computer and hung up the receiver.
He waited a few minutes before calling them back. ‘It’s Blake. Any news? Yes . . . I understand, the abandoned factory at the intersection of the Stevenson and Dan Ryan expressways. No, it’s not too far from here. We can meet in the parking lot at Wells and 37th in half an hour. Fine, General. See you there.’
He hung up and turned to Husseini.
‘They’ve found the bombs. The one here in Chicago is at the intersection of the Stevenson and the Dan Ryan, in the abandoned Hoover Bearings factory. It’s being guarded by at least three armed terrorists. One of them, the only one who isn’t wearing a face mask, is stationed in the control booth of a crane, thirty metres up from the ground. He’s armed with a machine gun. Thousands of people are on those expressways, trying to get out of the city. The subway tunnel is right there; the train lines are close by as well. If the bomb explodes, the consequences couldn’t be more disastrous. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll come back here to get you.’
Husseini didn’t answer, although he had had a sudden flash of understanding. Abu Ahmid had never stopped considering him a deserter and he realized now, with absolute clarity, what punishment had been prepared for him.
Blake walked down the rain – and wind-racked street to his car and set off towards the site. Police cars were reversing crazily in every direction and sirens on the street corners sounded an alarm every few minutes, like in an old war film.
He had just reached the parking lot when he saw Hooker’s car turn off at 37th Street. He sounded his horn repeatedly.
‘The special assault teams are already in place, Blake. What are you planning to
do?’ shouted Hooker from his car window.
‘I’m coming with you!’ yelled Blake.
He got out of his car and into the general’s and they took off at top speed. Sitting next to the driver in front was Captain McBain.
‘Do you know how to stop the priming sequence?’ asked Blake as soon as he sat down.
‘No, we don’t,’ admitted Hooker. ‘But I’ve sent the best men we have. Let’s hope we can do it. We’re still on line with the Russians. As soon as we see the bombs and can describe them, they’ll try to figure out the model and send us the defusing procedure.’
‘How much time have we got?’
‘The special assault team left fifteen minutes ago in a helicopter and should be at the site already. They have sixty minutes. It could be enough.’
‘They’ve run into problems, sir,’ interrupted McBain.
‘What’s happening?’
‘The resistance is worse than anticipated. The terrorists are holed up inside the old factory. There are at least three men armed with rocket launchers and machine guns. One of our helicopters has been downed.’
‘Damn, that’s all we need,’ grumbled Hooker.
‘They’re trying to buy time,’ added Blake. ‘Weren’t there any specifics in Husseini’s files?’
‘No, nothing at all,’ said Hooker. ‘Except that word – donkeys. But donkeys are donkeys.’
‘Yeah, but . . . wait a minute.’
‘What?’
‘You could ask your friends in Moscow the Russian word for “donkey”. Maybe it means something. Maybe military slang,’ mused Blake, thinking out loud.
‘Wait, hold on a second, Blake. McBain, have them pass you the line with Captain Orloff in Moscow. Ask him how they say “donkey” in Russian and if the word means anything else to him.’
McBain connected to his Russian colleague and put the question to him. Astonishment evident on his face, he was soon repeating, ‘O-s-jo-l.’