Jerusalem.
The Dome of the Rock mosque rose like the moon behind the
towering wall that surrounded the Temple Mount. Sam Deker
cleared the top of the wall and dropped into the gardens
below, a wraith in the night. He glanced at the illuminated
hands of his Krav Maga watch. Seven minutes to three. He had
told Stern fourteen minutes back at the van. He had used up
six. Time was running out.
Deker reached into his combat pack and pulled out a brick of
C-4. He had enough bricks to take out half of the 35-acre
complex. If he had any doubts about this mission, now was
the moment to turn back. He slipped the C-4 back into his
pack and moved through the maze of trees and shrubs.
The Temple Mount was the most contested religious site in
the world. For Muslims the eight-sided, golden-capped Dome
of the Rock mosque protected the “noble rock” that they
believed to be the foundation stone of the earth and the
place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
But religious Jews believed the rock was the place from
which God gathered the dust to create the first man, Adam,
as well as the site of King Solomon’s Temple. According to
Jewish prophecy it was also where a new temple would be
built—once the Dome of the Rock was gone. Many of these
Jews, like Deker’s fanatical superior officer Uri Elezar,
refused to set foot on such holy ground.
None of this was a problem for Deker. He could care less.
Deker had been recruited by Israel’s internal security
service, the Shin Bet, precisely because he was a secular
American Jew who had served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq
and Afghanistan as a demolitions officer. Who better to
protect the Temple Mount, he was told, than a 26-year-old
who specialized in the destruction of major structures and
equally offended both sides of the religious divide?
Deker followed the route he had planned well in advance,
timing his steps with the movements of the Palestinian
security guards of the Islamic Waqf, or religious trust.
For almost a thousand years the Waqf had served as the
protectors of the Temple Mount, even after Israeli captured
Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Such was their
status as the true guardians of Islam—and allegedly above
the petty political interests of the modern Palestinian
Authority, which claimed it had sovereignty over the site.
Deker, however, knew the Waqf to be as political as any
Muslim organization; it simply saw the Arab-Israeli struggle
in terms of centuries, not decades. So far as the Waqf was
concerned, Israel’s resurrection as a modern state in 1948
after 3,000 years of exile was but a foul blot on the long
scroll of history. Israel, meanwhile, decided it best to
prevent unnecessary provocations by its own more zealous
citizens. So not only did it allow the Waqf to continue to
manage the Temple Mount, it even enforced a controversial
ban on Jewish prayers there.
When Deker finally reached the east wall of the Dome of the
Rock mosque, he pressed his back against the blue ceramic
tiles of the outer wall. He peered around the corner. A Waqf
guard was making his way across the vast plaza toward the
other mosque on the Mount, the silver-capped Al Aqsa. Deker
waited until the guard passed under the “ma’avzin” arches
and disappeared down the steps to the lower plaza. Then
without hesitation he darted across the colonnaded entrance
of the mosque and ducked inside.
The Waqf officer in charge that night was rounding one of
the titanic marble columns that supported the dome 20 meters
overhead when Deker entered the mosque. The Palestinian
managed to grab his radio, but before he could engage the
device to transmit even a sound Deker gave him a chop to the
throat. He crumpled to the floor.
Deker made sure the guard still had a pulse before he turned
to his right and followed the plush ruby carpet to the steps
that led down to a cave dedicated to King Solomon. A relic
of the Crusades, the cave had been carved out by the Order
of the Knights Templar after they had converted the Dome of
the Rock into their Templum Domini, or “Temple of our Lord.”
Medieval maps marked the cave as the “center of the world,”
and the “well of souls” beneath it was said to have one time
served as the resting place of the legendary lost Ark of
Covenant. According to the ancient biblical account, the
sacred Ark—an ornate box made of shittah wood and coated
with gold—contained the original Ten Commandments, the
tablets that God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai as the ancient
Israelites wandered the desert in search of the Promised
Land. Deker thought God—Yahweh to the Israelites—should have
simply given Moses a map. It would have saved the Israelites
40 years and countless lives.
But the Knights Templar couldn’t hold the Temple Mount for
long. A few years later it was back in the hands of the
Muslim Waqf, where it had remained that past millennium.
Recently, the Waqf had quietly begun a massive subterranean
tunneling operation. The IDF feared that the Waqf was on the
verge of discovering an ancient network of chambers and
corridors deep beneath the mount that predated even the
First and Second Jewish Temples. The front door to that
network was none other than the well of souls beneath the
Dome of the Rock.
Adjan Husseini, the Palestinian head of the Waqf in
Jerusalem, was kneeling face down in prayer when Deker
entered the cave. At the sound of Deker’s footsteps, he
lifted his head and started at the sight of the C-4 brick
Deker removed from his pack.
Looking Husseini in the eye, Deker held the brick up and
said, “Boom.”
“Commander Deker.” Husseini rose to his feet. “Go ahead.
Take the shot.”
Deker put the C-4 brick back into his pack and took out his
BlackBerry. Draping one arm around Husseini’s neck, he
extended the other and snapped a photo with his phone’s
camera. He then emailed it to Colonel Elezar.
“It’s time-stamped,” Deker said, putting the phone away. “I
copied you, too.”
But Husseini, eyes wide, was staring at the explosives and
blinking LED displays inside Deker’s open pack, catching on
that the C-4 charges were real. “You could have blown us all
to bits!”
Deker said, “I promised you that I would expose loopholes in
your security in the hopes you’d finally relent and let us
put up the electronic surveillance net.”
“So you can spy on us.”
“So we can better defend the Dome of the Rock from the
ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to destroy it so that they can
erect a Third Temple. Or from radical Palestinians who would
pin the blame on Orthodox Jews. You’ve seen the intel. The
threat’s real and it’s imminent.”
Husseini said nothing for a moment. A hole in the six-foot
rock ceiling allowed a shaft of light from the mosque above
to illuminate several small altars and prayer niches around
the chamber. Deker could see Husseini’s eyes study him with
bitter resentment through the haze of incense and flickering
candlelight.
“You knew from the start that we’d never agree to Israeli
surveillance,” Husseini said. “Yet you proceeded to pull
this dangerous stunt only to humiliate us.”
Husseini was baiting him now, stalling. Deker sensed a trap
and realized he had no idea where the Waqf guards outside
were at the moment. He thought of Stern back at the van. It
was time to leave.
“This security test isn’t nearly as dangerous as the weapons
cache you’ve been stockpiling in the southeast corner under
Solomon’s Stables,” Deker said.
Surprise registered on Husseini’s face, although Deker
wasn’t sure if it was real or manufactured by the man.
“Oh, yes, we know about that,” Deker told him. “And that
tunnel you’ve been digging right under this cave. If anyone
is going to start the fire, it’s going to be you.”
Husseini picked up a bronze candelabra and brought it down
heavily onto the floor’s marble slab. It gave out a hollow
thud, revealing the existence of a lower chamber known as
the Well of Souls. His face was an unreadable mask again.
“Is that really your concern here tonight, Commander Deker?
Or are you afraid we might find something that Israel has
been hiding from the world? Wise men have long believed that
a cosmic portal exists here, a tunnel through space and time
that leads to Paradise.”
Deker paused. “Or maybe it’s the gate to hell.”
Husseini was angry now. The expression of his face didn’t
show it, and his voice was steady and subdued. But his words
were bitter and sharp.
“You think you’re so special, Deker, better than the rest of
us. That you’re the human pin in a live grenade, standing
alone between old Arabs like me and Jews like your Colonel
Elezar. But know this: the Jews won’t stop until they have
destroyed the dome above us. Armageddon is inevitable. It’s
a time bomb that will go off. You can’t stop it. Just like
you couldn’t prevent your girlfriend from blowing herself up
with an explosive made by your own hands.”
Deker felt the world give way under his feet at the thought
of his Rachel. But he stood firm, emotionless in his
expression, and turned to face Husseini, who picked up a
ceremonial washbowl with a candle from the altar.
“I’m told it looked something like this,” Husseini said,
stroking the red and black ceramic pattern. “You and your
IDF masters intended to assassinate a Hamas militant inside
the home of a Palestinian government official. But by some
mystery known only to Allah, your bowl ended up in the hands
of your beloved as she prepared to light her Shabbat candles
to celebrate the first night of the Passover at the Western
Wall. Mercifully, she perished the instant you hit your
remote detonator. News reports said the six injured Jews
around her took several hours to die.”
In that second, Deker wanted to reach out and rip out
Husseini’s throat. And he would have, if he didn’t know
that’s exactly what Husseini wanted him to attempt.
“The grief must torment you every waking hour and haunt you
in your sleep,” Husseini went on, the corners of his mouth
turning into a slight smile at having gotten even the
suppression of a reaction out of him. “Perhaps that’s why
you can’t leave this place. To you it was always a holy pile
of rubbish, but to her it was her faith and life. Now it’s
her tombstone and you are a ghost stumbling in the graveyard
of history. But it’s impossible to bring her back. We can’t
change the past any more than we can change the future.”
“That hasn’t stopped you from trying.” Deker produced a
pottery shard he had found in an open trench at the base of
the eastern wall. He pointed it like a dagger at Husseini’s
chest. “Your bulldozers are destroying ancient First and
Second Temple artifacts. As if you can erase Israel from
history.”
Husseini’s eyes flickered in fear for the first time that
night as he looked at the shard in Deker’s hand, clenched so
tight that Deker didn’t know he had cut himself until he
felt a trickle of blood through his fingers. The Palestinian
seemed to realize he had pushed Deker too far, but he stood
defiant.
“Keeping your dead lover’s memory alive doesn’t change the
fact that Jerusalem has always been an Arab and Islamic
city,” Husseini said, sticking with the party line to the
end. “This is a plant. No Jewish Temple ever stood here.”
“Right,” Deker said, placing the bloodstained shard on the
small altar as a souvenir of this encounter. “Neither did I.”
“Would that were true,” Husseini told him. “But a man at war
with himself can’t keep the peace forever.”
Deker wiped his bloodied hand on his trouser leg, gave him a
slight bow and turned toward the cave entrance. He then
vanished up the steps, leaving Husseini to his prayers.
Three minutes later—and six minutes later than he had
promised Stern—Deker rappelled over the eastern wall and
landed on the roof of a yellow Caterpillar backhoe loader
parked against the base. He jumped off and raced down the
slope of the Muslim graveyard abutting the wall, weaving his
way through the tombstones toward the parked Gihon Water and
Sewage Company service van.
He stopped the second he saw the cracked windshield and
unmistakable bullet hole.
Deker whipped out his Jericho 9mm pistol from his pack and
rushed to the driver’s side of the van, aiming his Jericho
through the window with one hand as he threw open the door
with the other. Stern was slumped over the wheel,
motionless. Deker felt sick with rage. He pushed Stern’s
head with the steel nose of his gun. The head rolled to the
side, without the resistance of life, revealing a hole in
the temple, blood pooling heavily inside the ear.
A flash in the driver’s side mirror caught Deker’s eye and
he glanced back to see a black van barreling up from behind.
In the same motion, Deker jumped into the Gihon van, pushed
Stern’s corpse away and slid behind the wheel. He heard the
squeal of brakes and the crash of boots on the ground. As he
turned the ignition and shifted gears, the glass behind him
shattered.
He felt a prick in the back of his neck and he lurched
forward into the dashboard. His head hanging down,
everything spinning, he saw Stern’s twisted face staring at
him before everything exploded in a burst of light.