The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (64 page)

“The main highway. He has no fear of being discovered,” said Yesid.

“Good.”

Defiant and combative in his television address to the nation, Abuddin had vowed to destroy those who protested and preached, demanding the death of the Saud dynasty. It was good theater, and Abuddin was confident his performance would provide the time needed for him and his family to complete their rape of the Saudi treasury. It appeared to work.

But the soon-no-longer king was anything but defiant as he sat on a hard, wooden bench bolted to the side of the hastily refurbished FedEx delivery truck. He desired to travel to the airport in a phalanx of black, armored limousines—one last act of royal prerogative—but wiser counsel prevailed. He and his family were widely dispersed in various forms of delivery trucks. Only Faisal and his brothers were with Abuddin.

Yesid watched, a smile on his face, joyful anticipation in his heart, as Carver completed placement of the devices. It was only a small bridge spanning a dry wadi, but enough to set and conceal six devices—two at each end, two in the middle of the bridge. Carver joined Yesid and Klein behind the sand dune to the east of the bridge.

A cell phone to his ear, Yesid said, “They are coming.”

“When we arrive in Asunción,” said Abbudin, “contact the bank immediately, perhaps go there personally, and begin the second set of transfers. Three should be enough to cause the necessary confusion until we get the funds secured.”

Faisal was bored. He wanted to get on with his new life away from the constraints, mostly ignored, of restrictive Islamic law. “How much—”

The light was blinding, the noise deafening, the impact catastrophically destructive. The explosive force on the ends of the bridge would likely destroy the FedEx truck. The two in the middle were just to be certain. The truck was crushed from the front and back, and the bridge obliterated at the same time, but the two central charges cleaved the truck in two across its midsection, allowing the fire ball created by the explosives to not only roll over the length and breadth of the truck, but also to rush into its interior.

“The world may not know who,” said Klein, “but those who call for jihad will know why.” He turned to Carver. “What did your colonials have on their flag?”

Carver was stuffing the transmitter and his gear into a small bag. He stopped and looked at Klein. “‘Don’t Tread on Me.’ Is that what you mean?”

“‘Don’t Tread on Me.’ My people should borrow that flag. It’s a good one. Do not try to assassinate our prime minister. Or your president.”

“Or try to take over the world,” said Carver, closing the bag and standing up. “That’s not a very wise prescription for your future health.”

Carver looked to the west.

His work had been deadly efficient. The king of the Saud and his future kings had returned, in a flash, to the desert sand from which they sprang.

S
ATURDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
26

4:44 p.m., New York City

Prior to the turn of the twenty-first century, the last significant renovation of the Bowery Mission took place just after World War II. When Tom Bohannon began his tenure, the Mission was well worn.

There hadn’t been much disposable income in New York City in the seventies and eighties. That was the era when most folks used the words
New York City
and
bankrupt
in the same sentence. During those decades, it was tough enough for the Mission to find donors willing to provide thirty thousand nights of shelter and a quarter-million meals each year for homeless men addicted to drugs, alcohol, and the myth that freedom slept on the streets. There wasn’t much left over for sprucing up the buildings.

But at the turn of the century, that changed. Bohannon and one of his directors had taken a walk around the three buildings that comprised the Bowery Mission, the third-oldest rescue mission in the United States, and it didn’t take much to convince Bohannon they needed to act.

So the Mission leadership joined together with the board and some key donors and embarked on what became a five-year rebuilding project. First the men’s dorms—where eighty men enrolled in the Mission’s recovery program lived for nine months while they took their first steps of sobriety—were gut renovated, one floor a year. Then the overnight dorm, with forty beds for men still on the street, allocated by lottery each afternoon, was moved from the basement of one building to a newly renovated space, with windows, on the second floor of an adjacent building.

Then the real work began.

Coming close to its hundredth anniversary, the Mission embarked on a historic renovation of its 1909 landmark building and a major overhaul, modernization, and renovation of nearly every other square inch of its space.

It took years. It took millions. It took determination and vision. And it turned out magnificently.

Back in the old days, the Bowery Mission chapel was a long, narrow, hulking kind of place, darkness surrounding its rafters, century-old wooden pews filling its space, deep burgundy terra-cotta tile floor and stone walls offering little in the way of warmth.

Bohannon stood on the platform that late Saturday afternoon of Labor Day weekend and soaked in the view. The lighting changed everything.

In the old chapel, the lights hung down from the rafters and lit the chapel space below. The rafters, and the space above them, were painted black, emulating the empty void of a dark cave, giving the chapel a claustrophobic feel. With the renovation, new lights were installed to shine up into the vault, which was painted a deep crimson, and to illuminate the beautifully carved ornamental rafters that were painted a rich, bright gray. The chapel looked bigger, glowed brighter, and felt warmer than it had in five decades.

Facing Bowery, the massive fifteen-by-thirty-foot Tiffany window of the Prodigal Son story was removed, taken apart, cleaned, repaired, and reassembled. And the famous organ pipes were renovated back to their original luster and design.

On the structure’s façade, an architecturally beautiful building had emerged from decades of paint and neglect.

The transformation of the Bowery Mission was nothing less than awesome. And Bohannon’s heart was moved every time he looked at it.

Today his heart was moved for another reason. It was time to say goodbye.

Bohannon was in the aisle in the rear of the Bowery Mission chapel, leaning against the last large, wooden pew on the left side. The chapel was empty. It was thirty minutes before the doors would open for the evening service, followed by dinner for the poor and homeless people—probably more than one hundred—who crossed the Mission’s threshold three times a day.

His eyes on the organ pipes above the platform, at the far end of the long chapel, Bohannon shook his head. How much his life had changed. How grateful he was to still be alive. They had grieved and released Winthrop, then Doc, now Kallie. He ran his hand over the worn but polished wood along the top of the pew. His heart ached for the loss.

Bohannon took a deep sigh of a breath and looked over the work of a decade. Like many of the men who would kneel at its altar rail, the Bowery Mission had been reborn. And a verse came to mind.
Well done, good and faithful servant.

It was time.

5:26 p.m., Little Italy, New York City

It was a tight fit getting all five of them—Tom and Annie, Joe and Deirdre, and Sammy—seated at the round table in the front window of Paesano’s Restaurant along Mulberry Street in New York City’s Little Italy. It was the Bohannons’ favorite table in their favorite restaurant, and it was the first time the team had been fully reunited in three weeks. Even though the price had steadily risen from the “$7.95 Pasta Special” the Bohannons first found twelve years earlier, Paesano’s still served some of the best dishes in Little Italy.

Looking like it had been rescued from a 1940s movie, Paesano’s was what an old Italian restaurant should look like. Straw-bound Chianti bottles hung from old, dark oak beams, lined with fake grapevines. Antique opera posters dotted the white plaster walls, green-checked cloths covered the tables, and Sinatra, Martin, and Como dominated the background music.