The Last Days Read online

  “Good night, Point Man,” she whispered. “Sleep well.”

  No one in the White House had ever heard of Akiva Ben David.

  Born in Brooklyn in 1958, he’d been a straight A student, graduated with honors from Yeshiva University, and spent summers studying the Torah in Jerusalem from the time he was fifteen. He’d never served in the U.S. military. He’d only briefly held an American driver’s license.

  The CIA had no file on him. Neither did the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. He had never popped up on any American or international terrorist watch list. He had no outstanding warrants in the United States or on the Interpol system. To the analysts at Langley who prepared the daily “threat matrix” for the director of Central Intelligence and the president of the United States, he would hardly be classified as a low-level risk. He simply didn’t exist.

  Nor did he seem to exist in his adopted country of Israel. He’d emigrated there in June of 1980 and obtained dual citizenship at the tender young age of twenty-two. But for most of his adult life, he’d largely kept to himself, politically speaking. The Mossad had no file on him. His name popped up in a Shin Bet report or two for joining the mailing lists of several far right, ultra-Orthodox organizations of some concern. But he’d never done anything more than subscribe to their literature.

  He hadn’t shown up at, much less organized or led, any political demonstrations, so far as the authorities could tell. He wasn’t particularly vocal. He hadn’t signed any provocative petitions or staged sit-ins at the Knesset or sent angry or threatening letters to the prime minister or any of his Cabinet officials. Thus, he simply wasn’t perceived as a threat of any kind, which is exactly the way he wanted it. He was a nonentity, free to fly under the radar,

  as it were, where it was quiet and comfortable and safe. And up until now, that had suited him just fine. But soon, all that would change.

  Akiva Ben David was no longer a young man. But he was in excellent physical condition, especially for a graying, middle-aged rabbi from Bed-Stuy. For the past six years he’d been working with a physical trainer, burning fat and bulking up. He was a disciplined man, of that there could be no doubt, Not to his wife, at least. He was up every morning at four, and headed straight to the gym on the settlement where he and his family now lived, nestled along the Jordan River. By six-thirty every morning, he was home, showered, dressed, and hidden away in his private study, reading the Torah and saying his morning prayers. By eight, he was having breakfast with his wife and four children, one son and three daughters, all under the ages of thirteen. By nine he was in his home office where he served as the founder and executive director of an obscure little nonprofit group known as the Temple Mount Battalion. Except that it wasn’t so little anymore.

  Officially, the Temple Mount Battalion existed to promote a better un derstanding of the importance of building the Third Temple on the ancient, holy site of the first two, in the heart of Jerusalem. Ben David and his group of volunteers (no employees, just his wife, Dalia, who did the bookkeeping) had no land, no schools, no factories or fancy offices. They had no logo, no letterhead, no whifF of creativity or originality at all. They simply ran a nondescript little Web site explaining the importance of the Temple in Jewish history and religious teachings, its history and origins, its dimensions and specifications as laid out in the Hebrew Scriptures, and its role in the end

  times

  It wasn’t a flashy Web site—no music, no pictures, no graphics of any kind. The site didn’t take much time or effort to maintain, which was good because Ben David had absolutely no training, formal or otherwise, in Web site design, construction, or maintenance. Nor did the site require much money to run, which was also good because when he’d launched the site it averaged only a few dozen hits a week.

  By contrast, the Web site run by the Temple Institute in the Jewish Quar ter of Jerusalem’s Old City was far better funded and more impressive. In large measure, this was because the Temple Institute was not simply an ed ucational organization. It was more like an architectural firm, general con tractor, and interior decorating shop all rolled into one. Its leaders weren’t just talking about a future Temple. They were already in the process of building it.

  Since 1987, they’d been actually recreating authentic sacred vessels and musical instruments and priestly garments for use in the coming Temple,

  using the precise materials and following the precise specifications laid out in the Bible. When Exodus Chapter Twenty-seven said that one type of Temple altar should be made of “acacia wood, five cubits long, and five cubits wide,” that it should be “square, and its height should be three cubits,” and that “you shall overlay it with bronze,” that’s exactly how these modern-day artisans were building it. When Exodus Chapter Thirty said another type of Temple altar—the Altar of Incense—should be made of acacia wood but “you shall overlay it with pure gold,” and “you shall make a gold molding all around it,” that is precisely how it was being done.

  These Temple implements weren’t models. They were the real thing, and they were being handcrafted by the hundreds. When the time was right, the Jews would be ready to erect and furnish a rudimenary version of the Third Temple with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. And that, a Yiddish Martha Stewart might say, was a good thing.

  But to Akiva Ben David, it wasn’t good enough. Something had been stirring inside him for nearly a decade. He wanted to go beyond just educating Jews about the Temple, or merely preparing the vessels and implements for a future Temple, as noble and useful as those roles were. The Temple Institute was doing an excellent job at that, as was another well-funded Jerusalem-based organization known as The Temple Mount Faithful. This group had already crafted a four-ton cornerstone for the Third Temple that was ready to be laid in place on a moment’s notice. In the quarries in the Negev Desert and elsewhere, kindred spirits like these were patiently, steadfastly carving and stockpiling tens of thousands of stones to be used to reconstruct the Temple. Plans were already completed to build massive parking lots in Jerusalem for all the pilgrims and tourists who would come to see the Holy Temple.

  Detailed, painstaking preparations were being made day after day, year after year. Nothing was being left to chance. Nothing was being overlooked. This, too, was a group entirely committed to rebuilding the Temple, and were preparing for that moment. They, too, believed that the Hebrew prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel foretold of an even more dazzling Holy Temple to be built in the last days. And this, too, was good.

  But in his heart, Akiva Ben David refused to accept that simply educating and preparing were good enough. They weren’t good enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted to force the hand of God.

  It was time to rebuild the Temple now, not a hundred or a thousand years from now. So under the radar—unseen by the Israeli authorities—he’d begun secretly recruiting a political movement who agreed. As time passed, his patience grew thinner and his convictions grew stronger. Somewhere,

  somehow, the dream of seeing ancient prophecies fulfilled became an obses sion. He would take matters into his own hands, and he began scanning the horrizon for anyone that might be willing to help. Through his own modest Web site, Ben David gathered names of people

  whosigned up to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter. It was an e-mail he

  personally researched, wrote, and edited. They were short, punchy. They were

  provocative and chock-full of the latest news and information from the Prom

  ised Land regarding war, peace, religion and the preparations for building

  the Third Temple.

  But what made these e-mails different from his religious competitors was their nuance, their sense of urgency and edge of militancy. They didn’t quite

  callon Jews to storm the Temple Mount and seize it by force, not overtly,

  But over time, people who read them got the message. Muslims were dese

  crating Judaism’s holiest site, he argued. They were destroying t
he religious

  and archeological artifacts on the site. They were weakening its physical base,

  threatening to cause the Temple Mount to collapse under the weight of a

  quarter million Muslims praying each week at the Al Aqsa mosque. They

  were also preventing Jews from even entering the site. But their time was

  running out.

  Originally, Ben David hoped he could sign up a few hundred interested souls. He hoped to find some kindred spirits who might, in time, be willing

  to help him with the funding necessary to go on an international speaking tour to spread the word about the Temple’s importance in human history, and the need to reclaim the Temple’s rightful place on earth. And then something happened.

  A fellow rabbi back in Akiva Ben David’s native Brooklyn became one of the first subscribers. He loved the weekly reports, and began a little e-mail corrrrespondence. He affectionately dubbed Ben David’s electronic missives “the kosher equivalent of Chinese water torture,” slowly persuading the world—“week by week, drip by drip”—of the need to rebuild the Temple.

  Soon, the rabbi began forwarding Ben David’s e-mails to members of his congregation. They hit a nerve. They tapped into a deeply held but seldom articulated sense that modern Orthodox Judaism was so focused on other issues they were indeed neglecting the centrality of the Temple in Jewish life.

  Without the Temple, there was no Holy of Holies. There was no place for the Almighty to reside on earth. Nor was there a gathering point for Jews to worship and pray the way they had in the days of King Solomon or even the Roman occupation.

  Sure, there was the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, for all the tears that had been shed there after the destruction of Herod’s Temple

  by the Romans. But whatever you called it, wasn’t it still just a wall? Wasn’t it just a remnant of something greater and far more profound? How could modern Judaism have gotten so distracted that it sent millions of people to pray at a mere wall, as though this was the pinnacle of the Jewish experience? Didn’t the Prophets speak of something more important than a wall? Hadn’t Jewish heroes fought and died for something more eternal than a wall? Didn’t the Jewish people deserve something better? Of course they did.

  But even more important, the readers of Ben David’s e-mails began to consider another fundamental premise. Without the Temple, there was no place for animal sacrifices. The Torah—the Hebrew Scriptures—was emphatic on that point. No sacrifices could be done anywhere but in the Holy Temple, and without such sacrifices, there could be no ritual shedding of blood. Without the shedding of blood, there could be no forgiveness of sin. Without the forgiveness of sin, how could one truly become holy? How could one truly be spiritually pure enough to enter the presence of a pure and perfect and holy God? How could one enter heaven at all without the Temple? How could one truly be saved from the fires of hell? These were no trifling little theological questions. They were matters of eternal security or damnation. Why were so few people wrestling with them? So much was at stake.

  Ben David had never thought of himself as a particularly persuasive speaker or writer. Nevertheless, the passion of his heart came through loud and clear. People began forwarding his e-mails to family and friends and business associates throughout the United States, and then in the U.K., across the European continent, to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Soon people were getting the e-mails forwarded back to themselves from people they’d never heard of. And in just a few months, the little Temple Mount Battalion list grew to more than fifteen thousand names.

  Speaking invitations came in by the hundreds. Then financial donations began pouring in through a secure, on-line credit card program he had installed on the Web site. The average monthly tax-deductible gift per person was a mere $39 U.S. But multiplied by fifteen thousand people over the course of an entire year, Akiva Ben David was raking in serious cash. Something was happening, something he needed to figure out and get ahead of, and fast. So much money was going to attract government attention soon, if it hadn’t already. He needed a plan, something to invest the funds in, or spend it on. And then a plan was conceived. Over the past few months it had quickly grown and taken shape. It was a plan about to be baptized by fire.

  Bennett tossed and turned.

  It was hard to believe that only seventy-two hours earlier he’d been driving his forest green Jaguar XJR through the streets of Georgetown on Christmas Eve, actually feeling relaxed for the first time in a long time. Traffic was light. He pulled under the portico of the Four Seasons Hotel and stopped in front of the main doors. A bellhop agreed to watch his car for a moment, and he went into the lobby, picked up a phone, and dialed, There was no answer. Perhaps she was already on her way down. Normally, he’d be anxious. Typically, he’d be pacing. He hated to be late, almost as much as the president did. But tonight, for some reason, he wasn’t worried at all. He was going to the White House staff Christmas party, and he was going with the prettiest girl in Washington.

  It wasn’t a date. Not exactly. He hadn’t described it that way when he’d asked if they could go together. Each of them was going anyway. It was a command performance, of sorts. And though Bennett wasn’t much for staff parties of any kind, this one might actually be fun, all the more if the two of them were going together. And now they were. He poked around the gift shop, flipped through some newsmagazines, bought some Rolaids and popped two in his mouth. An elevator bell rang. He turned as the doors opened, and saw her coming around the corner.

  Bennett had never seen Erin McCoy look as beautiful as she did that night—a simple yet elegant black dress, black shoulder wrap, and black pumps, accented by pearl earrings and a gorgeous string of pearls around her neck. A few minutes later, they were flashing their new White House badges to the uniformed Secret Service officer manning the bulletproof guard booth at the Northwest Gate and pulling into Bennett’s exclusive new parking spot on West Executive Avenue.

  “Follow me,” she’d insisted, and led them around to the center of the North Lawn.

  For a few minutes, neither of them said a word. They simply stood there, looking up at the White House that somehow seemed to glow in the cold night air. Every window was adorned by a Christmas wreath and white can dles and a huge pine wreath hung over the door. And from somewhere deep inside the White House, Bennett could hear singing.

  In time, the movement would grow. So, too, would Akiva Ben David’s resolve. People were reading his e-mails.

  They were being stirred by the case he was making, however obliquely. They were responding with passion and determination. They were offering their time, talent, and treasure to help force the hand of history. Was this not a sign that he should stop cogitating, stop agitating, and start activating a team that would help him accomplish their movement’s unstated but clearly understood mission?

  Eight months earlier, during their family’s private Passover meal, Ben David concluded the seder with these words, “Next year, in the Temple.”

  Why? He hadn’t meant to say it. It had simply come from his heart, and suddenly he and his wife, Dalia, were electrified.

  Something cosmic had just happened. Something supernatural.

  They put the kids to bed, quickly finished the dishes, then retreated to his study to begin plotting their strategy. Money was something of which they suddenly had more than enough. They still couldn’t believe it. But they were grateful and took it as a confirmation that they were on the right track. What they needed were allies, or, perhaps more precisely, coconspirators. That wasn’t going to be easy.

  They certainly couldn’t send out an e-mail asking for volunteers to risk a holy war with the Muslims for the sake of recapturing the initiative of Jewish history. Nor was it something for which they could simply put a full-page ad in the New York Times or Jerusalem Post: “Help Wanted—Carpe Diem— Come Rebuild the Temple.” Identifying help would be tough. There were no two ways about it. Establishing contact with volunteers woul
d be difficult, too. Where would they meet? Where would they train? How could they keep a low enough profile not to be noticed by Israeli intelligence or by the Palestinians?

  Even now, eight months later, Ben David and his Dalia could remember how they felt. With their hearts racing, they sifted through thousands of e-mails they’d received, looking for people willing and able to help them. Secrecy, they’d decided right there and then, would have to be their highest priority. What they were considering could get them imprisoned for life, if not shot and killed. But they felt compelled to move forward, as if unseen forces were pushing them over the edge. They had no doubt they could find kindred spirits. Nor did they have any doubt they could accomplish the dream taking shape in their hearts. And now, here they were. Somehow, it had all gone so much faster than they’d ever expected. They were ready. The zero hour was almost here. Let history begin.

  Outside it was growing dark and windy.

  Inside the Oval Office it was crackling with Christmas spirit and flowing with a few alcoholic spirits as well. There was a roaring fire in the fireplace. A statuesque, nine-foot and beautifully decorated blue spruce twinkled with lights and White House Christmas ornaments from each of the past fifty years or so. The sounds of old carols and hymns wafted gently through the West Wing. But there was no more time to listen. It was time to depart for their traditional trek to the National Cathedral for a candlelight and com munion Christmas Eve service, and the president didn’t want to be late.