Palumbo reached Glattbrugg in eighteen minutes. The address was located in a quiet residential district with plenty of trees and homes spaced twenty meters apart. He parked behind a line of modest automobiles. He’d hardly turned off the engine when he saw the black Mercedes with diplomatic plates approach in his rearview. As expected, it was alone. Austen had abandoned his cover. He was acting in his capacity as director of Division.
As the Mercedes passed, Palumbo got a glimpse of the man in the front seat. A wisp of graying hair, a noble profile, the skin of his face too tight, oddly shiny and furrowed.
The burn. Austen’s badge of honor.
Palumbo started the car and pulled in behind the Mercedes. It turned into a driveway a hundred meters up the street. Palumbo brought his car to a halt behind it, blocking Austen’s retreat. He was out in a flash, storming the driver’s door, pressing his badge against the window. The badge was a fake, but it bought him a few seconds.
The driver opened the door, raising his hands to show that he meant no harm. Palumbo pulled him to his feet and jabbed the Taser into his neck. Ten thousand volts turned the driver’s knees to Jell-O. He fell to the ground, unconscious. Palumbo slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. “Hello, General,” he said.
“Who the hell are you?” asked John Austen.
Palumbo had no time for explanations. “It’s over,” he said. “We’re shutting down this op right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Palumbo dropped the Taser and pulled the Walther pistol from his jacket. “What plane are you targeting?” he demanded.
“Whoever the hell you are, you’d better have a damned good excuse for assaulting my aide.”
“What flight are you going after?”
“Get out of my car!”
Palumbo jabbed his thumb into the crease between Austen’s jaw and his ear and held the pressure point. The general’s mouth froze in a silent, paralyzed scream, the sensation of the grip akin to having a sword rammed through the top of his skull. “What aircraft are you planning to shoot down?” Palumbo repeated. He released the pressure point and the general bent double.
“Who sent you?” Austen gasped. “Lafever? Are you the one who killed Lammers and Blitz?”
Palumbo pressed the pistol to Austen’s cheek. Up close, his face had the sheen of day-old floor wax and was pulled as tight as a drum. “Where’s the drone? I’m going to put a bullet in your skull if you don’t tell me.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Go ahead. It won’t change a thing.”
“Yes, it will. You’ll be dead, and that drone won’t be up there blowing a plane full of innocent people out of the sky.”
“No one is innocent. We’re all born in sin.”
“Speak for yourself. Where’s the main house? I heard you say that you were moving to the main house.”
Austen closed his eyes. “‘Oh, the joy of having nothing and being nothing,’” he recited. “‘Seeing nothing but a Living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.’”
Palumbo glanced out the window. The driver was still out cold. There was some motion behind the curtains of a picture window above the garage. He found the pressure point again and held it, longer this time. “Where’s the drone? Is it here? Is this the main house?”
He released his grip.
Austen gazed at him. There were tears in his eyes, but whether they were from pain or some perverted sense of sacrifice, Palumbo couldn’t tell.
“Thank you,” said Austen.
“For what?”
“Christ had his test. He persevered and was delivered. Now, it’s my turn.”
“Christ was no murderer.”
“Don’t you see? All the conditions are as prophesied in Revelation. The Israelites hold Jerusalem. The Lord is ready to return. You can’t do a thing to stop it. None of us can. We can only help it on its way.”
He’s raving, thought Palumbo. “What flight are you going after? I know it’s tonight.”
But Austen wasn’t listening anymore, except to his own voice. “The Lord spoke to me. He told me that I am the vessel of His will. You can’t stop me. He won’t allow it.”
“It’s nobody’s will but your own.”
Outside, a door slammed. Two men appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the house. Palumbo put his hand to the ignition, but the keys weren’t there. He looked at Austen, and Austen stared back, as defiant as ever. Palumbo knew then that Austen was the one. He was the man who was going to pilot the drone.
Palumbo raised the gun to Austen’s temple. “I can’t allow you to kill all those people.”
A shadow to his left blotted out the sun. The window shattered, spraying glass across the cabin. A hand reached in and grabbed him. Palumbo knocked it away. Austen was flailing at the gun. Palumbo elbowed him in the face, knocking him back into his seat. Then he raised his gun. As he did, someone took hold of his collar and yanked him backward. He fired the weapon. The bullet blew out the passenger window. A fist pounded his temple and he dropped the weapon. The door was flung open and he felt himself being dragged out of the car and onto the driveway. It couldn’t end this way, he thought, kicking and struggling.
The plane…
someone
has to warn them.
And then a boot struck him in the head and the world turned dark.
77
El Al Flight 8851,
nonstop service from Tel Aviv to Zurich, took off from Ben Gurion International Airport on schedule at 4:12 p.m. local time. The pilot, Captain Eli Zuckerman, a twenty-six-year veteran of the airline and former fighter pilot, with a combined seven thousand hours in command, announced that flying time aboard the Airbus A380 was scheduled to be three hours and fifty-five minutes. Weather en route was slated to be calm with little or no turbulence. The airliner would overfly Cyprus, Athens, Macedonia, and Vienna, before touching down in Zurich at 8:07 p.m. Central European Time. Zuckerman, an armchair historian in his spare time, might have added that these great locales were sites of battles waged by men with names like Alexander, Caesar, Tamerlane, and Napoleon. Battles that had determined the course of civilization for centuries to follow.
The flight that evening was full. Six hundred seventy-three names filled the manifest. Among them was Dahlia Borer of Jerusalem, director of the Israeli Red Cross; Abner Parker of Boca Raton, Florida, an American retiree who had lost both legs in Vietnam to friendly fire; Zane Cassidy of Edmond, Oklahoma, pastor of the Messiah Bible Church and leader of a tour group of seventy-seven Evangelical Christians; Meyer Cohen, leader of the National Religious Party, en route to Washington, D.C., to lobby the American Congress to favor expansion of settlements on the West Bank; and Yasser Mohammed, Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, also en route to Washington, D.C., to lobby the American Congress to forbid any further expansion of settlements on the West Bank.
These last two were seated next to each other. After an exploratory conversation and an exchange of political views, one took out a chessboard. The two men spent the rest of the flight in companionable silence, hunched over their knights and pawns.
Three hundred seventy men, three hundred women, including sixty-four children. Plus a crew of eighteen.
After the plane had reached its cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, Zuckerman addressed the passengers a second time, announcing that he was turning off the seat belt sign and that everyone was welcome to stroll about the two-story aircraft, the newest in the El Al fleet. He was pleased to add that they had picked up a considerable tailwind that would trim their flying time. The new arrival time was set at 7:50 p.m. Fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.
He wished all aboard a pleasant flight, and in closing, stated that he would speak with the passengers again shortly before landing.
78
“No,” said von Daniken
into the phone. “We don’t have any details regarding a specific threat. All we know is that there’s a terrorist cell operating in the country which has as its goal the destruction of an airliner on our soil. We don’t know who they are, or where they are at this moment. But, I repeat: we do know that they’re here, most probably in Zurich or Geneva. All our evidence points to an attempt on an aircraft, either airborne or at the terminal, within the next forty-eight hours.”
He was speaking to the director of the Federal Office of Civil Aviation, the organization that had final say on all matters concerning flights originating or terminating at Swiss airports. The man was a friend, a former messmate in the army, but friendship didn’t come into play with matters of such magnitude.
“Let me get this straight, Marcus. You want us to shut down all major airports in the country until further notice?”
“Yes.”
“But that means canceling all outgoing flights and rerouting incoming aircraft to airports in France, Germany, and Italy.”
“I’m aware of that,” said von Daniken.
“You’re talking about over one hundred flights tonight alone. Do you have any idea of the impact that would have on the entire European flight grid?”
“I wouldn’t be making the request if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
There was a pause and von Daniken could sense the man’s anguish. “I’ll need the president’s authority on this,” said the director of civil aviation.
“Madam President is out of the country. She can’t be reached at the moment.”
“What about the vice president?”
“I spoke with him and he’s unwilling to make a decision until he speaks with her.”
“Have you talked to the Federal Security Service? All security aboard aircraft inside our borders is under their purview.”
“I just got off the phone with them. It’s a nonstarter. The most they can do is to pass on a warning to all pilots. Advising them won’t help. We believe the attack is to be conducted with an armed drone. Commercial airliners aren’t built to take evasive maneuvers.”
“No,” agreed the chief of civil aviation. “They’re not. What about the army?”
“The minister of defense has authorized them to position batteries of Stinger air-to-ground missiles around the airports in Zurich, Geneva, and Lugano. Unfortunately, they won’t be in place until tomorrow morning.”
Von Daniken didn’t add what the general in charge of air defense had told him.
The problem is,
he’d said,
that the Stinger might just as easily shoot down the passenger plane as the drone.
“I’m sorry, Marcus, but my hands are tied. The moment you hear something from the president, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll issue a warning to air traffic control. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Von Daniken put down the phone.
Maps of Zurich and Geneva
were spread across two of the desks. Myer stood beside the map of Zurich. With a pen, he was dividing the area around each airport into search grids.
Von Daniken approached and leaned over the maps. “How many officers do we have on this?”
“Fifty two-man teams are working the communities around Zurich Flughafen. In Geneva, just thirty-five. They’re going door to door asking if anyone has seen a black or white van, or any suspicious activity.”
Von Daniken bit back his anger. Combined, the police forces of the country’s two largest cities numbered more than ten thousand. One hundred seventy was a paltry commitment.
“It’s all the chiefs were willing to spare,” explained Myer. “Marti is a federal councilor and justice minister. They know his feelings about all this.”
“Do they? Well, Marti’s feelings have changed. We’ll have to call them up and let them know.”
Von Daniken studied the map. Four communities, or
Gemeindes,
surrounded Zurich Airport: Glattbrugg, Opfikon, Oerlikon, and Kloten. A total of sixty thousand inhabitants in some eight thousand homes and apartment buildings. Myer shaded in the neighborhoods that had already been canvassed with a pink pen. The pie-shaped sliver covered less than ten percent of the total area.
“And so?” von Daniken asked. “What’s the latest?”
“A dozen or so sightings of a black VW van, invariably belonging to a neighbor. Nothing suspicious to report except the usual. Someone peeking in their windows at night, someone siphoning gas from their car, a couple of drunk teenagers singing too loudly. But no terrorists with a state-of-the-art drone.”
“Not one mention of a miniature aircraft with a twenty-five-foot wingspan rolling down the street in front of their house, eh?”
“Not a one,” said Myer.
Von Daniken sat on the edge of the desk.
“What about Marti? Is he going down?” asked Myer.
Von Daniken shook his head. He explained that as it stood, Alphons Marti would never see the inside of a jail. Tobi Tingeli had violated Swiss bank statutes by showing von Daniken a client’s correspondence. Evidence of the monthly transfers from the U.S. Defense Department’s accounts to Marti’s would never be admissible in a court of law. Likewise, von Daniken could not obtain a warrant to search ZIAG’s premises unless Marti gave sworn testimony before an investigating magistrate about the company exporting contraband materials. Marti would be forced out of the government, but it would be done under the guise of a resignation for reasons of ill health, or some other ruse.
“So he gets off,” said Myer.
Von Daniken shrugged. “I’m sure you and I might find some ways to make his life more interesting down the road.”
“It will be a goddamned pleasure.”
Von Daniken poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at his desk. He couldn’t stop thinking about Marti being on the Americans’ payroll. Export licenses. Dual-use goods. It had all the smell of a setup. But to what end? Why equip your enemy with the devil’s handiwork?
He finished the coffee, then called Philip Palumbo. He was anxious to see if his contact at the CIA had dug up any information about the assassin who’d killed Lammers and, as the latest medical reports confirmed, Gottfried Blitz, a.k.a. Mahmoud Quitab. The call rolled over to voice mail. Von Daniken left his name and number, but no word of the reason for his call. Palumbo wouldn’t need any prompting.
The Americans.
Everywhere you looked, there they were. The key was Ransom. He’d met with Blitz and with Jinn. He was the sole figure to straddle both operations.
Just then, he spotted Hardenberg bustling across the floor. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and his belly jostled back and forth like an unrestrained bowling ball.
“Sir,” he called, not able to wait until he drew nearer. “I’ve got something.”
“Get your breath first.”
“It’s about the Excelsior Trust, the one in Curaçao,” Hardenberg continued, huffing. “I had the idea that if it held title to one house, it might hold title to another. I wasn’t in the meeting with General Chabert, but I was told that he was certain that the drone had to have some kind of operations base that would grant the pilot a direct line of sight to the aircraft.”
“That’s correct.”
“Based on that reasoning, I contacted the tax recorder and asked him to check the name of the trust against any recent property sales in all the communities surrounding the Zurich and Geneva airports.”
“And?” Von Daniken locked his hands behind his back, hoping he wouldn’t appear too anxious.
“So far, only two of seven communities have reported back, but it seems that the Excelsior Trust purchased a home in Glattbrugg.”
Von Daniken swallowed, hope sparking like kindling in his belly. Glattbrugg was the community directly contiguous to the Zurich Airport. “Where in Glattbrugg, precisely?”
“The home is located less than a kilometer from the southernmost tip of the runway.”