The Third Target: A J. B. Collins Novel Read online

  PRAISE FOR JOEL C. ROSENBERG

  “Whenever I see a new Joel Rosenberg book coming out, I know I need to clear time on my calendar. His penetrating knowledge of all things Mideastern, coupled with his intuitive knack for high-stakes intrigue, demand attention.”

  PORTER GOSS

  Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

  “Joel has an incredible ability to write both fiction and nonfiction regarding the realities of current events in the Mideast in a way that the reader senses that they are part of the plot and, often, on the front line.”

  LT. GENERAL (RET.) JERRY BOYKIN

  Former Commander of Delta Force and Former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence

  “Joel Rosenberg is one of the most knowledgeable people writing about the Middle East that I’ve had the honor to meet. He has a particularly clear understanding of what is going on in today’s Iran and Syria and the grave threat these two countries pose to the rest of the world. His is an important voice in a sea of misdirected and erroneous information that distorts the truth about the realities of these countries’ intentions.”

  REZA KAHLILI

  Former CIA Operative in Iran and Bestselling Author of A Time to Betray: A Gripping True Spy Story of Betrayal, Fear, and Courage

  “If there were a Forbes 400 list of great current novelists, Joel Rosenberg would be among the top ten. . . . He is one of the most entertaining and intriguing authors of international political thrillers in the country. No wonder Joel has sold over three million copies—his novels are un-put-downable.”

  STEVE FORBES

  Editor in Chief, Forbes Magazine

  Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

  Visit Joel C. Rosenberg’s website at www.joelrosenberg.com.

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  The Third Target

  Copyright © 2015 by Joel C. Rosenberg. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of bullet holes copyright © Caspar Benson/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of flag copyright © RonTech2000/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Dean H. Renninger

  Scripture quotations in chapter 51 are taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations in the dedication and in chapters 46 and 47 are taken from the New American Standard Bible,® copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  Scripture quotations in chapter 37 are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  The Third Target is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rosenberg, Joel C., date.

  The third target / Joel C. Rosenberg.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4143-3627-5 (hc)

  1. Terrorism—Fiction. 2. Middle East—Fiction. 3. Christian fiction. 4. Suspense fiction. I. Title.

  PS3618.O832T48 2014

  813'.6—dc23 2014040246

  ISBN 978-1-4964-0367-4 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-8495-5 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4964-0368-1 (Apple)

  Build: 2015-01-16 10:26:11

  To our son Jonah, whose very name reminds us each and every day that God not only loves Israel, but also greatly loves her neighbors and her enemies.

  “You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”

  JONAH 4:2

  CONTENTS

  Cast of Characters

  Part One: July 20, 1951 Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two: Present Day Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Three Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Four Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Five Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Part Six Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  About the Author

  A Note from the Author

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  JOURNALISTS

  J. B. Collins—foreign correspondent for the New York Times

  Allen MacDonald—foreign editor for the New York Times

  Omar Fayez—Amman-based reporter for the New York Times

  Abdel Hamid—Beirut-based photographer for the New York Times

  Alex Brunnell—Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times

  A. B. Collins—former Cairo bureau chief for the Associated Press, and J. B.’s grandfather

  AMERICANS

  Harrison Taylor—president of the United States

  Jack Vaughn—director of the Central Intelligence Agency

  Robert Khachigian—former director of the CIA

  Arthur Harris—special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation

  Matthew Collins—J. B.’s older brother

  JORDANIANS

  King Abdullah II—the monarch of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

  Prince Marwan Talal—uncle of the king of Jordan and a senior advisor

  Kamal Jeddeh—director of Jordanian intelligence (Mukhabarat)

  Ali Sa’id—chief of security for the Royal Court

  TERRORISTS

  Abu Khalif—leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)

  Jamal Ramzy—commander of ISIS rebel forces in Syria and cousin of Abu Khalif

  Tariq Baqouba—deputy to Jamal Ramzy

  Faisal Baqouba—ISIS terrorist and brother of Tariq

  IRAQIS

  Hassan Karbouli—Iraqi minister of the interior

  Ismail Tikriti—deputy director of Iraqi intelligence

  ISRAELIS

  Daniel Lavi—Israeli prime minister

  Ari Shalit—deputy director of the Mossad

  Yael Katzir—Mossad agent

  PALESTINIANS
>
  Salim Mansour—president of the Palestinian Authority

  Youssef Kuttab—senior aide to President Mansour

  1

  JERUSALEM

  I had never met a king before.

  Forty-eight hours earlier, I received a summons from the palace to meet with His Majesty at a certain time in a certain place for an exceedingly rare interview with a foreign journalist. But now I was late, and I was petrified.

  Sweat dripped down my face and inside the back of my shirt. As the sun blazed in the eastern sky, the cool of the morning was a distant memory. My freshly starched white collar was rapidly wilting. My crisply knotted azure tie was starting to feel like a noose around my perspiring neck.

  I glanced at my gold pocket watch, a graduation present from my father, and the knots in my stomach tightened further. I pulled an already-damp handkerchief from the pocket of my navy-blue pin-striped suit jacket, yet no matter how much I swiped at my brow, I knew it was a losing battle. It wasn’t simply the sultry morning air that weighed heavy upon me. It was the nausea-inducing knowledge—indeed, the rapidly increasing certainty—that I was going to be late for this appointment and blow the most important moment of my career.

  I had been requesting this interview for the better part of a year and had been repeatedly rebuffed. Then, without warning, I received a telegram from the palace inviting me, A. B. Collins of the Associated Press, to come to Jerusalem and granting me an exclusive interview without limits or preconditions. I cabled my editors back in New York. They were ecstatic. I was ecstatic. For months I had been reading everything I could about this intriguing, if elusive, monarch. I watched every bit of newsreel footage I could scrounge up. I called or met with every expert I could find who knew him or had met him or could give me any tidbit of insight into who he really was, what he wanted, and where he was headed next.

  Now the moment had come. I had been instructed to meet His Majesty King Abdullah bin al-Hussein, ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, at the entrance to the Dome of the Rock precisely at noon. That was in less than ten minutes, and at this rate I was never going to make it.

  “Faster, man—can’t you go any faster?” I yelled at my driver.

  Leaning forward from the backseat, I pointed through the dust-smudged front window of the cramped little taxi that stank of stale cigarettes. It was an exercise in futility; the answer was pitifully obvious. No, he could not go any faster. It was a Friday. It was the holiest day of the week for the Moslems, and it was fast approaching high noon. Everyone and his cousin were heading to the Al-Aksa Mosque for prayer. It had been this way for twelve centuries, and it would always be thus. No one was going to make an exception—not for a foreigner, not for a Westerner, and certainly not for a reporter.

  We were less than a hundred yards from the Damascus Gate, the nearest entrance into the Old City, but traffic was barely moving at all. I surveyed the scene before me and quickly considered my options. Ahead was a classic snapshot of the Orient I had come to know as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press—a dizzying mélange of vibrant colors and pungent odors and exotic architecture and intriguing faces straight out of central casting. I had seen it in Cairo and Casablanca, in Baghdad and Beirut. Shopkeepers and street vendors who moments before had been brewing coffee and roasting peanuts and hawking everything from spices and kitchen supplies to bottles of Coca-Cola and religious trinkets for the pilgrims were now hurriedly shutting down for the day. Every taxi and truck and private car on the planet seemed to have converged on one traffic circle, their drivers honking their horns and yelling at one another, desperate to get home and then to the mosque. A siren wailed from the south—a police car perhaps, or maybe an ambulance—but it would never get through. A hapless constable sporting a dusty olive-green Royal Jordanian uniform was blowing on a whistle he held in one hand while pointing a wooden club with the other. He shouted commands, but no one paid him much mind.

  Bearded, sun-drenched older men, their heads wrapped in white- and black-checkered kaffiyehs, pushed carts of fresh fruits and vegetables as quickly as they could through the filthy, unswept streets while others led goats and camels through tiny gaps in the traffic, back to whatever barns or stables they were usually kept in. Boys in their late teens and young twenties with no jobs and nothing better to do and without fathers or grandfathers in sight seemed in no hurry to get to prayer, taking their last drags on their cigarettes. They stared at giggling packs of young schoolgirls scurrying past with eyes down while older women in long robes and headscarves scowled disapprovingly as they rushed home with boxes of food or pots of water on their heads.

  Suddenly the muezzin’s haunting call to prayer began to blare from the loudspeakers mounted high up on the minarets. My heart nearly stopped. I was out of time and out of options.

  I was going to have to run for it. It was my only chance.

  I shouted over the din for my driver to let me out, tossed a few dinars his way, grabbed my leather satchel, donned my black fedora, and raced down the stone steps toward the crush of people flooding through the gate, jostling past the faithful without shame, though I knew my prospects were grim.

  I was supposed to meet His Majesty on the Temple Mount, what the Arabs called “al-Haram ash-Sharif”—the place of the Noble Sanctuary. After countless phone calls and telegrams from my office in Beirut to the press office in the palace in Amman, it had all been arranged. The most beleaguered and endangered monarch in the entire Moslem world would allow me to shadow him for the day and then sit down with him for his first interview with a Western journalist since a rash of assassinations had set the region on edge.

  I couldn’t be late. The chief of the Royal Court would never forgive me. He had insisted I get there early. He had promised one of his servants would be waiting. But now they all might be gone by the time I arrived.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, a nearly impossible feat, but after considerable difficulty, I finally cleared through the massive stone archway and was inside the Old City. Still ahead of me, however, was a throng of people pressing forward to the mosque.

  But I had been here numerous times as a war correspondent in ’48 and ’49, and I had actually come to know these streets well. I decided to gamble.

  Rather than head straight into the shuq and up one of the two main streets toward the mosque, already clogged with thousands of worshipers, I moved left, stepped into a pharmacy, and before the owner could even yell at me, I was through the shop and out the back door. Breaking into a full run, I raced through a labyrinthine series of narrow side streets and alleyways, aiming for St. Stephen’s Gate—also known as the Lions’ Gate—and desperately trying to make up for lost time.

  As I neared my destination, however, I found that everything had come to a standstill. I could finally see the large green wooden doors that were the gateway to the epicenter of the epicenter, the entrance to the thirty-seven-acre plot upon which the third-holiest site in Islam was situated. I was so close now, but no one was moving forward. Not a soul. And soon I saw why.

  A contingent of Jordanian soldiers blocked the way. People were yelling, demanding to be let in for prayer. But the grim-faced, heavily armed young men were having none of it. They had their orders, they shouted back. No one could enter until they received the “all clear” sign.

  I was stuck, and like the crowd, I was furious. But I knew something they did not. The king was coming. He was heading to the Al-Aksa Mosque for the noon prayers, surrounded by bodyguards who feared for his life, and for good reason.

  2

  I set my jaw and pressed forward.

  With my press credentials and telegram from the palace in hand, I was certain the soldiers would let me through. But first I had to get to them. The problem was that everyone was pushing forward. Everyone wanted to be at the head of the line. They were shouting at the soldiers to let them get to the mosque on time, and the more resistance they got from the guards, the more infuriated they became.

&nbs
p; “Get back!” someone yelled at me.

  “Who do you think you are?” another shouted.

  Then a burly man with crooked teeth and hatred in his eyes screamed at me, “Kafir!”

  I recoiled in shock. Kafir was an incendiary word. In colloquial Arabic, it technically meant “unbeliever” or “unclean.” But on the street it meant “infidel.” There were few things worse you could call a man in this part of the world—especially a foreigner—and upon hearing it, I instinctively took several steps back. To be branded a kafir was a worst-case scenario. In a crowd already on edge, the term could spark a full-fledged riot, one I would not likely survive. I doubted even the soldiers could guarantee my safety if this crowd turned on me.

  There had to be another way. I glanced at my pocket watch again and cursed myself for not having thought my plan through more carefully.

  Moving away from the thick of the crowd, I backed into a corner and leaned against a stone wall, watching the raw emotions spiking around me. I could see the young soldiers growing edgy. This had all the makings of a mob. It wouldn’t take much for the situation to devolve into violence. The armed military men—the oldest of them no more than nineteen or twenty, I would guess—braced themselves for a fight while I wiped perspiration from my brow. The scorching sun overhead was beating down on us all. The crush of people and the brutal heat began to conspire to make me feel claustrophobic. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I wasn’t just going to be late; I was actually going to miss this meeting altogether. My career was about to go into the tank. I was beside myself. I had to get out. I had to get some air, something to drink. But there was nothing I could do. Not yet. Not here. All I could do was wait and pray for the winds to shift and my luck to change.