The Mahdi, page 28
“That is quite a bold claim, Mr. Kufdani. I don’t—”
“Attacking me on US soil, however, requires me to act here as well. So I have decided to disable communications in the Israeli embassy tonight.”
“The … embassy? Did I—?”
“Yes, you did hear me say that,” Kufdani said. “Israel’s embassy in Washington, DC, and its other consulates in the United States are dark even now, unless they have generator backup. Either way, they certainly don’t have internet.”
“And Israel’s consulates around the United States? Is that truly necessary?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, “the consulates too, or at least the ones in the eastern US. I do apologize to the American government and people, but technically this operation—which is happening right about now—is occurring on property that is considered Israeli foreign soil. And from my perspective, the operation is indeed necessary, because it will make me harder for Israel to shoot down. I’m sure you understand, Ms. Sachs.”
She stared at him. “How would you net things out thus far, Mr. Kufdani, in your fight to reclaim the West Bank?”
“That is no longer the scope of our fight.” Kufdani leaned back in his seat and smiled. “We consider the West Bank perfidy by Israel to be rejected already by truly thoughtful Jews and by the rest of the world. The issue now is a much larger one: Israel in a fight against Islam.”
Elsa’s jaw dropped.
“Tomorrow’s damage will be relatively minor. More will come to Israel, however, if we don’t see its government paying attention to our demands.”
“And those demands are?”
“As a Muslim imam speaking for all of Islam, I will share those terms when Israel comes to the negotiating table,” Kufdani said. “I still lead the Bedouins, but that fight for the West Bank is over. Israel has lost.”
Elsa Sachs fell back against her seat. At the producer’s signal, the show stopped for a one-minute commercial break. The camera lights stopped blinking.
Elsa picked up her notepad and scribbled furiously. “I assume the embassy blackout is practically old news by now. And we’ll see about Israel in the morning. What else?”
“Ask whether I’ll negotiate with the current prime minister,” Kufdani advised.
A thirty-second warning sounded: the show was about to resume. Elsa checked her makeup, and Kufdani took a drink of water.
“Action!” the director cried out, and the cameras winked on.
“Your relations with the Israeli prime minister have not been smooth, Sheik Kufdani,” Elsa said. “How do you think he will deal with an offer of negotiations?”
“Let me be blunt, Ms. Sachs. I will never negotiate with a coward like him. He lies to the world, to his own people, to his country. He is not to be trusted.”
“Harsh words from a man without a country.”
“I speak for Islam,” Kufdani insisted, “and we will not tolerate a theocracy that hoists up its religious faithful by standing on the backs of Muslims.”
“With whom would you be willing to negotiate?”
He paused, allowing a wide grin to spread across his face. “That’s up to the Israeli people, isn’t it?”
Elsa looked stunned. “It sounds as though you’re encouraging the call for a vote to elect a new prime minister. Does that mean you’re ready to give up on violence as a negotiating tool?”
Kufdani looked at her intently. “I am a violent man, Elsa, as was Muhammad (peace be upon him). I do not abhor violence. I have survived every one of Israel’s attacks. Now it is time to test Israel’s appetite for violence and ability to survive privation.”
“That sounds … frightening. And you’re saying that it starts tomorrow morning?”
“Yes. We will engage Israel until its people realize that a Jewish theocracy that cheats its Muslim citizens cannot stand. Israel has lost its technological edge. The world is catching up,” Kufdani concluded. “Your emperor has no clothes.”
UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN
FRIDAY
WHEN THE INTERVIEW ENDED, ALEX DUCKED OUT A SIDE ENTRANCE OF the studio and into a black Cadillac Escalade, which then drove quickly up the west side of Central Park with a matching Escalade trailing behind. At a side entrance of his apartment building, two armed men opened the door. They escorted him in and led him to his apartment.
After locking the door and resetting the alarms, Alex fixed a drink for himself. Then he collapsed into a chair and called Caitlin in Tangier.
“Hey,” she answered, yawning. “Calling about the embassy?”
“No, just wanted to check on my beloved,” Alex replied. “But yes, I suppose you should tell me all about it.”
“I managed to find a connection and blew out their central server,” Caitlin said. “I just caused it to spin on itself until it overheated and blew up.”
“Very cool.”
“Yeah, it will take weeks to fix properly. I took out the phone lines and disabled a few small servers too.”
“Consulates were easier?”
“I only blew up a few—the ones on the East Coast that are most likely to be hosting the bad guys. I left the others alone, so Emilie can start tracking their response.”
“Good for you,” Alex confirmed. “You ready for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, tomorrow should be interesting. The Israelis’ internal calls are full of talk about your TV interview. They’re trying to figure out what you’re going to do and how they can stop you.” She sniffed and then yawned again. “They’re not even close.”
“Take a nap until it’s time to get started?”
“I will, but I’m really looking forward to messing with Shin Bet and Bernstein,” she said. “I hate those motherfuckers. And I miss the view from my windows.”
Alex laughed. “Good night, my love.” He hung up the phone and checked the time, deciding a nap was a good idea. When he dozed off, he was still smiling.
HE AWOKE AT 1:00 A.M., and sure enough—at 8:00 a.m. local time—Israel’s largest solar facility, near Ramat Hovav on the Mediterranean coast, just north of the Gaza Strip, suffered an extensive EMP attack. From her windowless new perch in Tangier, Caitlin had triggered six 3D-printed “rocks” that had been placed there weeks earlier by an elderly Bedouin employee of the Israeli government. The EMP had a particular affinity for silicon and copper, and solar panels comprise an abundance of both. The facility was irredeemably fried.
Caitlin moved on.
At 8:10, Ben Gurion Airport ceased to operate. A series of EMP explosions destroyed the airport’s electronics and control structure. With no air traffic control system, the controllers sat in their dark tower, trying to communicate and beginning to panic over the thought of thousands of incoming passengers with nowhere to land.
Behind a small hill on the other side of Route 1, a small white truck was parked, idling, as three Bedouins in the truck bed fired 40mm fragmentation rounds at the apron of the airport, where fifty-nine airlines had anticipated their regularly scheduled service. Terrified employees and passengers ran for cover. A repeat of the earlier attack on the kibbutz airfield left planes and trucks leaking fuel from small, ragged fragmentation holes. The fire trucks wouldn’t start, and the pumps didn’t work anyway. Then fifteen thermite rounds plummeted to the ground, and Ben Gurion Airport lit up in flames. The Bedouin men covered their truck bed and drove off to bury their 40mm weapon beside a pallet of 40mm ammunition, stored and ready for another day.
At 8:30, Haifa—the center of rail commerce in Israel—was congested with commuters and shoppers. An explosion at Bat Galim railway station, next to the central bus terminal, was followed by relative silence until, a moment later, screams of fear and anger could be heard. Two trains operating on electric power were destroyed, and the overhead line that powered them was fried for miles. Dozens of buses and hundreds of cars were disabled. Traffic lights went blank. Everything stopped in place—a chaotic stillness.
At 9:00, Caitlin turned her attention to the Ashdod Oil Refinery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea—the terminus of the pipeline from Israel’s key Tamar natural gas field, one of only two major fields inside its claimed borders. An EMP explosion there shut down operations and turned off all the lights. Eleven billion cubic meters of natural gas typically flowed through the pipeline annually to power the electrical infrastructure of industrial Israel. It would flow no more, at least no time soon.
At the same time, thanks to a single EMP explosion that Caitlin implemented almost as an afterthought, the floating liquid natural gas facility just up the coast at Hadera lost its pumping capabilities. Without electricity the facility could not pump LNG from the freighters to the shore.
But Caitlin had saved the best for last.
Shin Bet headquarters in northern Tel Aviv was ravaged when the surrounding area was pulsed, as fifteen custom fragmentation rocks detonated around its perimeter, breaking windows and collapsing walls. The explosion killed fifteen men and women working there, and the vaunted Shin Bet computer facility was destroyed.
And thanks to Emilie, Alex’s Kphone offered a curated selection of video clips showing the step-by-step annihilation of Israel’s infrastructure. Alex stayed awake for several hours, until it was almost dawn in New York, so he could think about next steps while watching it all.
MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS, TEL AVIV
SATURDAY
GUNS WAS EXASPERATED AND INCREDULOUS. KILLING REGINALD EDGEWORTH was a stupid, vengeful act. But attacking the American Joint Chiefs chairman? And almost taking out one of the president’s good friends? Either the prime minister was losing his marbles, or this Yakov Bernstein was even more of a hothead than Guns had anticipated.
All that, just to get the man they call Kufdani? he wondered.
It was no wonder Cooch was hitting back so hard, even though Guns was practically certain his unruly acquaintance had planned his response in Israel long before snipers took out Edgeworth or intruders climbed over the rail of that sailboat.
As if Cooch’s interview and the latest word through the intelligence grapevine weren’t bad enough, the news on another round of EMP attacks had just come in—this one far more extended than in Jerusalem and Beersheba. Without electricity, there would soon be no way to get food, fuel, and other goods (much less people) into or around the country.
“I do believe that we are about to see a demonstration of how to starve a nation,” Guns said. His coffee cup had just been refreshed: he and Pelzer had been up all night seeking information that might mitigate the next attack by the Bedouin leader.
Behind her desk, Pelzer watched her computer screen as the updates kept rolling in. “Dreadful,” she muttered. “Simply dreadful.”
Her coffee was fresh too. Ever since the TV interview had set off alarm bells throughout the Israeli government, they had been trying to forecast specific targets.
“The least we could have done is bring Moishe in,” Pelzer continued. “I don’t remember him losing sleep like this when he was director.”
“Let Moishe sleep,” Guns advised. “We may need him fresh. Has the prime minister realized yet how badly he messed up?”
“Who knows?” Pelzer replied. “His intel was good. He told Dayan to go ahead, but just not get caught. He wasn’t exactly rational about this operation, I’m afraid. He seems to have a thing about killing Kufdani.”
“Well, he failed,” Guns pointed out. “Shin Bet and the Sayeret Matkal are very good, the best we’ve got, and they failed.” He had to admit, even knowing Cooch’s capabilities, that he was surprised.
“They wanted to get him as soon as he landed in the US, before he made it to New York and his next PR move there. His security was always going to be too tight in New York, so they tried things another way. Thought they had a chance.”
“Dayan must be very unhappy.”
Pelzer nodded. “Yes, but the prime minister is downright livid.”
“And here we sit, with rush hour upon us, completely outmaneuvered,” Guns admitted. “What do you think Cooch will do next?”
“I’m afraid to think about it,” Pelzer said. “What do you think?”
“I think whatever he does, he’s been planning to do for a long time. Getting the public on his side was just the opening act.” And it had worked—that was the worst of it all. The whole PR stunt had been vintage Reginald Edgeworth. But what was the point of killing him now? The damage was already done.
“And the negative publicity for us has just begun,” Pelzer said, her voice gloomy. “Especially with our prime minister and his security forces going off-script.”
“And with Cooch, on the other hand, toeing the line on a path to negotiate for what he wants,” Guns said. “He didn’t destroy anything military, didn’t bother Tel Aviv much, and has certainly made his point to the world. Now we just wait and see who’s listening.”
“Perhaps we should attempt to take the lead on—”
“Not yet,” Guns urged. “The diaspora will comment soon. That should influence the prime minister, if anything can.”
“Good advice,” Pelzer said. “We’ll see who’s the last man standing.”
Something in her comment recalled a phrase Kufdani had used with Guns two weeks earlier, about what would be left in the rubble. Perhaps Mossad had a critical role to play here after all.
“Cooch is probably looking for a way in, someone to lead negotiations from our side,” Guns said. “He doesn’t want to have to do this all over again. Remember his comment? ‘A standing Mossad in the rubble’?”
“It’s not rubble yet, but I think we get the message.”
“And today the Knesset may be a bit concerned about the state of our economy.”
Pelzer smiled and nodded. “And perhaps less concerned with the votes of the Haredi.”
OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, JERUSALEM
SATURDAY
YAKOV BERNSTEIN SAT IN THE PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE WITH A NOTEPAD open before him, but so far he had written nothing on it. What was there to write? He was too busy fielding insults to even think straight.
The prime minister was on the phone with the leader of the largest supportive Jewish community in New York, getting a high-volume scolding of his own. “You fucking tried to kill our chairman of the Joint Chiefs?” came the angry voice over the phone. “Are you a fucking moron?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” the prime minister tried to explain. “General Kim just happened to be with the target, a person who is an immediate threat to our republic.”
“The Bedouin? Horseshit!” the angry voice shouted. “Save that ‘threat to our republic’ bullshit for the press. And kill the Bedouin when he is by himself, you fucking idiot, not holding hands with a representative of the United States government!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the prime minister replied, gritting his teeth. “It won’t happen again.” He shot an irritated look at Bernstein, who started pretending to scribble on his notepad.
“It won’t happen on my fucking watch again—I’ll tell you that. I’m taking truckloads of shit here, from American Jews and Israeli nationals alike. You’d better find some new fucking leadership over there, Mr. Prime Minister, because you ain’t it. Capiche?”
“Let me get back to you, sir,” the prime minister said, his eyes closed. “I’ll speak with our defense minister and figure this whole thing out.”
“Bernstein? Yakov Bernstein is a bigger fucking idiot than you are. I’ve tried speaking with him already. He doesn’t even return my calls. Fuck Bernstein! And fuck the horse he rode in on!”
The phone disconnected.
The prime minister was fuming. He shot another look at Bernstein. “You didn’t return his calls? What the fuck?”
Bernstein fumbled with his phone. “I … I haven’t gotten any calls,” he stammered. “My phone doesn’t … doesn’t seem to be functioning properly—”
“Get out of my sight!” the prime minister yelled. “Go away! Go home!”
“Well, Mr. Prime Minister, I … I will need a ride,” Bernstein said. “My car is not working. My wife’s either.”
“Then call a cab. Or a friend, if you have any.” The prime minister sunk his head in his hands. “Just get out of my sight.”
Yakov Bernstein stumbled to the door, still fiddling with his seemingly dead phone, shaking his head in confusion.
TWO THOUSAND MILES AWAY, IN TANGIER, Caitlin was smiling so hard her new molars started to throb. The conversation had amused her to no end. This Bernstein was the guy who had gotten her face broken, the guy who threw Alex in jail. Bernstein may be unable to hear the conversation, but she could hear it from his phone just fine.
But that would not be the end of it. She planned to make Bernstein’s life unpleasant for a very long time to come.
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, DC
SATURDAY
BROOKS ELLIOT SAT ACROSS FROM THE PRESIDENT IN THE OVAL OFFICE, waiting for his next comment. He glanced at Macmillan, who sat to his right, equally patient. Sitting back in his high-backed chair, the commander-in-chief sighed. The devastation in Israel was all over the national news. The president was hoping it sounded worse than it was.
“So far, the screams from the US Jewish community are less strident than I would have guessed,” the president said. “Perhaps the damage is not as widespread as we fear.”
Brooks shook his head. “I don’t think the press has sorted out that Israel has been blockaded, Mr. President. No rail, no buses, no air support. Their food supply can’t get to them. Heating their homes will soon be a problem too. Their supply of natural gas has been reduced by half, for at least six months, so maintaining electricity is not going to be easy.”
“The Israeli military is unscathed, and we believe that is by design,” Macmillan added. “So, they can still defend themselves against invasion. They are less prepared for domestic problems, however.”
“Why is that?” asked the president.
