The Jerusalem Assassin Read online

  As he stood alone in the men’s room, he couldn’t help but wonder if all this was a mistake. Maybe everything was moving too fast. Maybe he wasn’t ready to head back into the field. Besides Pete, he didn’t know a single person on the detail—not even Agent Curtis, though he’d been impressed with her skills so far. The truth was, Marcus had been out of the protection business for too long. He wasn’t familiar with DSS culture or protocols. And the stakes could not be higher. Whoever had just taken out the deputy secretary of state wasn’t finished. They were coming back for more, and in this game, there was no margin for error.

  15

  HARAM AL-SHARIF, JERUSALEM

  Dark thunderheads were rolling in.

  The winds were picking up. The temperature was dropping. There were no tourists to be found. Few locals either. It wasn’t a particularly significant day on the Muslim calendar. It was merely a Monday, and a late-afternoon storm was bearing down on the city where the old man and nine generations of his family had been born and raised.

  Amin al-Azzam exited the Al-Aqsa Mosque with the help of his most trusted aide and a hand-carved wooden cane that his father had bequeathed to him on his deathbed. Together, the two men—the eighty-one-year-old Sunni cleric and his forty-one-year-old son-in-law—worked their way across the plaza. With some difficulty, al-Azzam climbed the steps and passed a small grove of olive trees that he had planted in his youth.

  “Come, father, let us sit for a spell,” said the younger man. “You need your rest.”

  “It is not rest that I need, my son,” al-Azzam replied, though winded and experiencing great pain in his knees. “It’s privacy. I have something important to discuss with you. But it is very sensitive, and we must be alone, far from prying eyes or ears.”

  “Then let me get you inside.”

  They soon stepped out of the chilly autumn air into the relative warmth of the octagonal shrine known in Arabic as Qubbat al-Sakhrah and in English as the Dome of the Rock. They were certainly alone now. The guards employed by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf—the foundation tasked with administrating the entire thirty-seven-acre plaza and its various buildings—had not only cleared the ancient facility of all people but had swept every nook and cranny for listening devices, as they did three times a week.

  The younger man helped his elder to his favorite corner, and together they sat on the thick, handwoven carpet, behind an immense marble pillar. It was here that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem—one of the most revered Muslim clerics in the region—liked to come to think and pray and read and meditate. It was here that Amin al-Azzam came to get away from all the noise and the pressures of daily life. And more than any other place, this was where he liked to whisper instructions to the man who had married his beloved youngest daughter, Yasmine.

  Hussam Mashrawi was more than family and far more than a mere aide. He was an impressive scholar in his own right, a faithful scribe and personal secretary. He served as the Grand Mufti’s emissary to the rest of the Muslim world. Though they had graduated four decades apart, they were both alumni of Al-Azhar University in Cairo—the Harvard of Sunni Islam. Both had graduated at the top of their class. Both had gone on to earn doctorates in Sharia law. Indeed, al-Azzam had hired the young man fresh out of Azhar, and the two had worked side by side for nearly two decades.

  In big ways and small, the two men seemed almost supernaturally aligned. Aside from Arabic, their mother tongue, both men were fluent in Farsi, Hebrew, English, French, and Greek, both classical and contemporary. Both had married after finishing their education, and both at the age of twenty-five. Both had purchased modest apartments in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter, within walking distance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, shortly after getting married, and both still lived in the same homes today. Both of their wives had suffered two miscarriages each. Yet for both couples, the sorrow of unfulfilled pregnancy had been followed by the healthy, joyful births of five children—one boy and four girls each.

  Several years earlier, a writer for the New York Times Magazine had shadowed the two men for a profile she was working on. When the eight-thousand-word cover story was published, al-Azzam had chuckled at one particular line, that he and his son-in-law “must have undergone a Vulcan mind meld at some point, so unified are their views on theology and politics and even where in the Old City to buy the best baklava.

  “Study the wedding pictures of al-Azzam and those of Mashrawi, and—setting aside the fact that one set is in black and white and the others are in color—one would swear that the two men even looked alike on the day they took their vows,” the profile continued. “Even today, both men sport narrow goatees and pencil-thin mustaches that look so similar, one might be forgiven for thinking they go to the same barber (though, for the record, they don’t).”

  The Grand Mufti had had the article framed and mounted on the wall in his office. No foreign visitor left without being shown the story. Indeed, the older man often mused that the similarities between himself and Mashrawi must be why his beloved Yasmine had fallen so madly in love with the boy.

  In reality, however, there were far more differences between the two than al-Azzam cared to notice. Among the most superficial: Hussam Mashrawi actually knew two more languages than his father-in-law—Spanish and Russian. Yet he very purposefully never used either language in the older man’s presence, not wanting to risk upstaging one of the most esteemed leaders in the Islamic world.

  Far more importantly, the Grand Mufti was secretly a moderate when it came to relations with the Jews. In public, al-Azzam positioned himself as a hard-liner. Privately, however, he strongly supported a two-state solution to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians and even met from time to time with senior Israeli government leaders and intelligence officials, discreetly providing them much-needed insights into the latest trend lines and fissures in Palestinian society and sometimes even privately fuming against Palestinian leaders who had turned down every offer of statehood since the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947.

  Hussam Mashrawi, by contrast, positioned himself in public as a voice of reason, yet the truth was far darker. Hussam Mashrawi was secretly far more radical than either his wife or father-in-law could possibly have imagined.

  16

  Hussam Mashrawi was not poor.

  He was not uneducated. Neither was he an orphan or someone who had been physically, emotionally, or sexually abused as a child or in his teenage years.

  To the contrary, he had been born to a large and well-to-do Palestinian family in Nablus, the third-largest city in the West Bank. The baby of the family—the youngest of nine siblings—Mashrawi felt close to every one of his three brothers and five sisters and closer still to the taciturn yet well-meaning parents who worked hard to instill in him and all their children the religious and cultural values they held so dear.

  Mashrawi’s mother, veiled and pious, was the eldest daughter of a prominent sheikh from the city of Jenin, whose population of some thirty-four thousand was a mere fraction of that of Nablus. Though she had little formal education, she had memorized the Qur’an by the age of twelve. As a teenager she was highly regarded as one who took her Muslim faith seriously, and as an adult she served as model and mentor to the young women in their community.

  Mashrawi’s father was the dominant force in the house. He, too, was devout in his faith and religious duties, having been raised by one of the most respected sheikhs in Nablus. He, too, had memorized the entire Qur’an and for a season in his youth had seriously considered following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and becoming a cleric. He had even applied and been accepted to study at Al-Azhar. However, his dreams had been crushed when he was denied an exit permit by the Israeli government. He had been forced to take a job working for the small construction company started by one of his uncles.

  As it turned out, he had a knack for the business, and soon he began helping his uncle chart a path to extraordinary growth. At first they had merely built small homes and shops and gas
stations. Before long, however, they were winning contracts to build apartment complexes and hotels and hospitals. More recently, they had been selected to build the new palace for the president of the Palestinian Authority, a contract that brought the company a tremendous financial windfall and widespread respect throughout the P.A.

  Hussam Mashrawi was far too young to have experienced the trauma of the 1948 war with the Jews, widely known among the Palestinians as Al Nakba—“the catastrophe.” Nor had he experienced the humiliations of the ’67 war or the one in ’73. He didn’t remember the election of Ronald Reagan in the States or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in ’82. The First Intifada, the violent popular uprising against the Israeli occupation that had erupted in the West Bank in December of 1987 and spread like wildfire to Gaza, had barely made an impact on him. Such events were mere legends for Mashrawi. He’d studied them in school and absorbed the stories from countless dinnertime conversations with his father and his older brothers. But at the time they’d meant little to him.

  It was the Second Intifada, which erupted in the fall of 2000, just as he was preparing to complete his undergrad degree, that changed everything. All these years later, he could still remember the acrid stench of the tear gas the Israeli soldiers had fired into his neighborhood. He could still feel his eyes sting and his nose run. He could still hear the rumble of Israeli Merkava battle tanks roaring down the streets of his city and the chain saw–like buzz of machine-gun fire and the chilling snap, snap of Israeli sniper rifles as night fell and the curfews began. Even now he could see the bloody, shredded body of his oldest brother, Ibrahim, after he was shot to death running from an IDF patrol. He had never learned why his brother had been running that night. But for as long as he lived, he would never be able to silence his mother’s bloodcurdling shriek from echoing in his ears.

  Mashrawi’s father had moved quickly to send him out of the country—to Cairo, then Al-Azhar. He had no idea how much his father had paid to secure him an exit permit in such tumultuous times. But in his heart, Mashrawi knew his father didn’t simply want his youngest son to get the elite religious education he never got. The man could see his son’s pain turning so rapidly into rage and was desperate to prevent him from joining Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade or any one of a number of other extremist groups in order to avenge Ibrahim’s death.

  Looking back, Hussam Mashrawi knew that single decision had saved his life. Rather than throw himself into the fight against the Jews, Mashrawi had thrown himself into his studies. The Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of Hamas, had been banned in Egypt during the reign of Hosni Mubarak. University campuses were closely monitored by the secret police. It was difficult, if not impossible, therefore, for Mashrawi to find like-minded conspirators in Cairo who shared his seething anger. The only place he could find solace, it seemed, was in the library. His only source of peace was the writings of the Qur’an and the hadiths, and so it was to these that he turned his full attention.

  By the time he returned to Palestine, Mashrawi was no longer the grieving teenager with the volcanic temper. He had instead become a disciplined and highly focused young man. He had learned in the suffocating political environment of Cairo what was acceptable to say and what not to say, whether around the family dinner table or in the mosque or café or with his closest friends hanging out on a street corner. Upon reentering Nablus, he had no desire to draw the attention, much less the wrath, of the IDF or the Shin Bet—Israel’s equivalent of the FBI—or even the Palestinian Authority, whose intelligence services were on high alert for Hamas sympathizers and were determined to prevent Hamas from attracting new recruits.

  Hussam Mashrawi, in short, had learned to be circumspect. Yet no one could tell him what to think. Nor could they prevent him from striking when the moment was right. And Mashrawi had come to believe that moment was very near.

  17

  Hussam Mashrawi was biding his time.

  He was convinced that Hamas was not nearly pious nor extreme enough. His placid, unassuming exterior hid his true sympathies, which lay far closer to ISIS and the teachings of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi than to Osama bin Laden or Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

  Mashrawi was not simply opposed—and vehemently so—to the prospect of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The truth was he believed the Jews’ days in the land of Palestine were numbered. He had no doubt that by the time his children were grown, the State of Israel would be no more. That said, it should never be replaced by a State of Palestine. Why simply transpose one corrupt, temporal state for another? Only fools and heretics set their sights so low.

  What Mashrawi truly longed for, what he prayed for silently, privately, five times a day, was the arrival of the Caliphate. He hungered for the day that the Mahdi, the long-awaited Promised One, would finally be revealed upon the earth, with the prophet Jesus at his side, to usher in the global Islamic kingdom. He hungered for the time when Sharia would be the law of all the lands and the full justice of Allah would prevail. The savior of the Muslim people was coming—the signs of the times were so vivid to Mashrawi—and when that savior came, he would finally judge the Jews, the Christians, the atheists, the agnostics, and the pagans. Indeed, the Mahdi would judge every infidel and do so with fire and fury such as the world had never seen nor imagined.

  There were moments when Mashrawi was tempted to confide such thoughts to his father-in-law, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. If anyone would understand him, surely it was Amin al-Azzam. Yet something in Mashrawi’s spirit warned him to keep his mouth shut and his head down and simply keep quietly praying and diligently preparing for the moment when his part in the divine drama would finally be revealed.

  “What is on your heart, my father?” Mashrawi asked after several minutes of silence. “You seem troubled. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I am not troubled, my son, but yes, I have something we must discuss,” al-Azzam replied. “But first you must promise me you will not utter a word of what I am about to say to anyone—not until I give you permission.”

  “Of course,” Mashrawi replied. “You have always had my discretion.”

  “And I have loved you all the more for your loyalty. But this is very sensitive.”

  “You have my word.”

  “Good—now listen carefully,” al-Azzam said, his voice barely above a whisper now. “The White House is getting ready to release its peace plan.”

  “I have heard the rumors,” Hussam replied, fighting not to grit his teeth. He hated the American president and whatever pathetic scheme he was about to propose with every fiber of his being. The road to peace crossed through Mecca and Medina, not Washington and Ramallah, much less Jerusalem.

  “It’s more than rumors, Hussam. My sources tell me that emissaries of the administration will be dispatched to the region this week to explain the plan and build support for it. But that is not all. The president is coming here.”

  “To al-Quds—to Jerusalem?”

  “Yes, and not just to the holy city,” the Grand Mufti replied. “He is coming here, to Ḥaram al-Sharif, to the Noble Sanctuary.”

  “Here . . . to these . . . these sacred walls?” Hussam stammered, sickened at the prospect yet trying his best not to betray the depth of his emotions.

  “Yes, my son.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Yesterday I received a call from the White House. Then this morning I received a call from the Shin Bet. An advance team will visit us in a few days. For now, this is all hush-hush. No one can know. Indeed, not even President Ziad. Not yet. Do you understand?”

  The younger man did not, but he nodded anyway.

  “Hussam, it will be our job—yours as well as mine—to greet the American leader, give him a tour of the great treasures entrusted to our keeping, and serve as faithful ambassadors of our people and our beloved religion,” the Grand Mufti continued. “You must know how conflicted I feel about this. A
ndrew Clarke shows no evidence that he loves our people. In too many ways, he acts like a puppet of the Zionists. But we must welcome him anyway. We must show him what it truly means to be a follower of Muhammad, peace be upon him, and explain to him the pain and humiliation that we bear as Palestinians, and the justice we and our people not merely seek but demand.”

  “You think he will listen to us?”

  “Perhaps not. But in receiving him in the best traditions of Arab hospitality, we will earn the right to speak truth to him, whether he wants to hear it or not.”

  Mashrawi struggled to focus. A near-blinding rage was rising within him. Beads of perspiration formed on the back of his neck, and his hands grew clammy. He could hear the older man speaking, see his lips moving, but he could not absorb the words; whatever meaning they held was completely lost on him. All Mashrawi could hear at that moment was the refrain “No, never” pounding in his head and rising into a deafening roar.

  Suddenly it was as if everything went silent. Mashrawi’s pulse began to slow. An unnatural calm began to sweep over him, and a new thought entered his mind. This was it. The moment he had been told to wait for. The moment for which he had so long prepared. The president of the United States was coming. Here. To this place. This holy place. Perhaps the Israeli premier would join him. Perhaps even the Palestinian president. Imagine. All three in the same room. At the same time. How it would happen, he did not know. But he had no doubt in his mind that these three men were going to die. And he would be the one to kill them.