TWENTY-NINE

Amman, Jordan

The palms of his hands were cold and sweaty. He felt that empty, roller-coaster feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Inside his tiny nondescript apartment in Jordan’s capital city, Rafi could hear the last chanting echoes of the dwindling mob in the streets below. Thousands of Arab members of the Muslim Brotherhood had filled the streets, chanting and shouting, “Mawt Israel! Mawt America!” He’d heard it before. These displays were a regular occurrence in the streets of Amman. Calling for the death of those two nations was nothing new, but it seemed to Rafi that they came more frequently now.

As a member of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Rafi was also accustomed to blending in, looking relaxed and natural in hostile surroundings. But today he wasn’t calm. He had to make a call on the customized sat-fone in his apartment. He didn’t have any doubts about it being a secure line or that the encryption was less than perfect. The yahalomin, the Mossad communications technician who had installed it, was one of the best. No, it was the message he had to transmit that made him uneasy.

He tapped in the code, then waited. Three beeps. He gave the voice command to the recognition software on the other end. After a few seconds, he heard a tone. Then an automated voice asked him for today’s password phrase.

He spoke it. “He caused the storm to be still.”

“You have been authorized. Please hold.”

Rafi waited. He glanced at the mini-cam monitor, which showed a view of the hallway outside of his apartment. It was clear.

He generally didn’t give much thought to the pass-phrase, but he wondered who had picked the one for today. Rafi had gone to Yeshiva, and in his studies he had come across that verse from Psalm 107:

A voice came over the line. Rafi recognized it. It was General Shapiro, head of the IDF special operations.

“Number 8, good day.”

“And to you, sir.”

“News?”

“Yes.”

Rafi had to give it in code. Prince meant Iran, and king meant Jordan. Nuclear weapons were referred to as arrows, and nonnuclear conventional missiles were sticks. A ground invasion was called surfing, and a terror attack a game of badminton.

“Sir, the Olympics are approaching.”

“Sounds competitive.”

“It will be.”

“Tell me, what’s the game exactly?”

“Archery, sir.”

There was a pause. When he spoke next, General Shapiro’s voice was punctuated, each word painfully clear and crisp. “How many arrows?”

Rafi replied, but as he did, he caught something on the monitor next to him. “Three arrows …”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s playing?”

“The prince.”

“Your source?”

“Friends close to the king. The king has been warned, assured by the prince of no harm to his land. Also so that they can prepare. Because the king and his people live next to the Olympic stadium.”

“You are sure of this?”

“I am sure. One second, sir …”

In the fish-eyed lens of the monitor, Rafi could see two men, one in a short-sleeve shirt and the other in a suit with no tie. Both had beards. They were walking toward his door.

“One second, sir — ”

“Timeline? We must have the timeline — ”

“Soon — ”

“How soon?”

The men were at his door.

“Have to sign off.”

The two men in the hallway pulled out their ZOAF 9mm handguns.

Rafi disconnected. He grouped the monitor and the sat-fone together on the table and then reached into a briefcase on the floor. He pulled out a block of plastic explosives, the size of a small brick, with a detonator already in place. He clicked on the Allfone wired to it. Then he sprinted to the window.

The door to his apartment burst open, the men rushed in, quickly scanned the room, and then started shooting. They emptied their magazines at the open window where they had just glimpsed Rafi’s form jumping out.

Rafi landed twenty feet below on a metal awning. He hit his right shoulder and hand in the leap. The shoulder felt dislocated, and his hand was probably broken. With his left hand, he painfully opened his other Allfone and tried to hit the speed dial. His right arm wasn’t moving well.

He looked up. The Iranian gunmen were bending out the window. They spotted him. As they tried to draw a bead on him with their weapons, Rafi clumsily hit the speed dial button again. The upstairs apartment roared with the blast of fire and smoke that shot out the window. The two gunmen were blown out of the apartment in a hail of debris and sent sailing across the narrow street where they slammed into a building opposite and dropped onto the sidewalk in a heap.

Rafi rolled off the awning and dumped himself in a pained heap on the street. People streamed out of the nearby shops and apartment buildings to see what had happened. Rafi ran and ducked into a nearby alley. He’d have to make it to the next safe house in Amman before the mob — or the police or more Iranian agents — caught up with him.

At Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, General Shapiro, who had just finished his call with Rafi, looked at the six men around the table.

“When is the meeting scheduled with the American colonel?”

“Soon, but it hasn’t been finalized.”

“We need him here immediately. How about the NATO protocols? Any problems there?”

One of the men said, “All set.”

“How about the U.S. Department of Defense?”

“We’ve got the sign-off from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. We’re ready to go.”

General Shapiro knew the answer to his next question but asked it anyway. “We’re looking at the question of notifying the Department of Defense before we actually hit the On button for our RTS systems. But there’s a bigger problem: do we tell the Corland administration directly what we now know about an impending attack against our nation?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. “Probably not. There are those close to the president who will jam a wrench into this thing. We’ll end up waiting for support that will never come, and Israel will be bombed into a patch of scorched sand.” Then he added. “Get Joshua Jordan over here. Now. We need the best eyes there are on this RTS antimissile system. It’s his design. Let’s get his eyes.”

But the director of Mossad had another question. It would have seemed absurd if it were not so ominous: “What exactly do we tell him? Do we warn him? Do we say, by the way, Colonel Jordan, we thought you ought to know … we’re having a nuclear war over here, and you’re invited.”