The Bug Hunter: A Novel Page 19

  When they arrived at the entrance to the Mazer School, they were met by a pair of guards standing just inside the double glass doors; they were wearing bulletproof vests and were armed with semiautomatic pistols in quick-release holsters. Behind them sat two other uniformed guards operating a standard metal detector and X-ray machine like you’d find in any airport. This was no ordinary college campus.

  When Gabriel and Gaddis made it through the security phalanx, they were met by a young man in a plain white shirt, wearing a yarmulke. He sported a beard, and his hair was styled in the traditional payot, with side curls cascading down the side of his face. “Mr. Gaddis?” he asked in Hebrew-accented English.

  “That’s me,” Gaddis said.

  “Rabbi Rafaeli is in his office. He asked me to get you.”

  “Mazel tov,” Gaddis said. “Let’s go.”

  The young man smiled at the bit of gentile humor and led them into the elevator and up to the fourth floor. On the walls of the elevator hung posters of Talmudic passages and images of Jerusalem. “How many students are part of the Mazer School?” Gabriel asked.

  “There are about two hundred who specialize in the Talmud as a part of their degree program at Yeshiva,” the young man said. “We learn about the original texts and commentaries and about Halakah, which is Jewish law.”

  “And what do you want to do after you graduate?” Gabriel asked.

  “I want to become a teacher,” the young man said as they exited the elevator. They walked down a narrow carpeted hallway to a partially open office door. Next to the door there was a small sign in block letters: “Rabbi Yossi Rafaeli, Eli Bloom Chair in Talmud and Jewish Philosophy.”

  Gaddis pushed open the door and said, “You still owe me a glass of wine, Rabbi. And not that Manischewitz crap.”

  Rafaeli grinned and stood from his desk. “You do have the memory of an elephant, Samuel. That was fifteen years ago!”

  “More, actually,” Gaddis said, enveloping Rafaeli in a bear hug. “Damn, it’s good to see you.”

  “And you as well,” Rafaeli said, grabbing Gaddis’s hand. Gabriel could see that this was a real bond, like the kind that developed between men when they risked their lives together.

  “Yossi, this is Gabriel Marx. I’ve known Gabriel almost as long as I’ve known you. He was with the marines in Fallujah and Ramadi. We did some good work together.”

  Rafaeli grasped Gabriel’s hand. “Any friend of Samuel’s is a friend of mine.” Rafaeli had a firm grip and rough hands. They were not academic hands but rather those of a man who knew work.

  “Pleasure to meet you, and thank you for your time today,” Gabriel said.

  Rafaeli waved the thank-you away. In a lowered voice, he said, “Samuel and I did a lot of drinking together in Iraq, and he bailed me out more than once when I found myself in a bit of trouble.”

  “Shit, a bit of trouble?” Gaddis said. “That’s putting it mildly. Yossi here once got himself trapped inside some ruins in the Sunni Triangle, caught between Sunni and Shi‘a death squads. I had to get the SEALs to bail him out.”

  Rafaeli laughed. “Yes, well, it all worked out OK.”

  Gaddis smiled. “We drank an awful lot that night.”

  Gabriel smiled too at the reminiscences. “Sounds like fun,” he said.

  “Strangely enough it was,” Rafaeli said. Looking around at his office, he said, “I never felt more alive.”

  “What kind of work were you doing in Iraq?” Gabriel asked.

  “My research then had to do with finding the source of some of the Talmud’s tractates or books. Some of them hail directly from the areas in Iraq that were in what Samuel likes to call Indian country.”

  “More like the Little Bighorn,” Gaddis said.

  After a moment, Rafaeli said, “So I understand you have a Talmudic question for me.”

  “More like a puzzle, actually,” Gabriel replied. He reached into his bag and took out the passage, handing it to Rafaeli.

  “Ah, Sukkah 53a,” he said, and read aloud:

  There were once two Cushites who attended on Solomon, and these were Elihoreph and Ahyah, the sons of Shisha, scribes, of Solomon. One day Solomon observed that the Angel of Death was sad. ‘Why,’ he said to him, ‘art thou sad?’—‘Because,’ he answered him, ‘they have demanded from me the two Cushites who sit here.’ [Solomon thereupon] gave them in charge of the spirits and sent them to the district of Luz. When, however, they reached the district of Luz they died. On the following day, he observed that the Angel of Death was in cheerful spirits. ‘Why,’ he said to him, ‘art thou cheerful?’—‘To the place,’ the other replied, ‘where they expected them from me, thither didst thou send them!’ Solomon thereupon uttered the saying, ‘A man’s feet are responsible for him; they lead him to the place where he is wanted.’

  “What does it mean?” Gabriel asked.

  Rafaeli took off his reading glasses and smiled. “That’s not a simple question. The Talmud is full of symbolism that is open to interpretation. It’s why I have a job,” he laughed. “Can I ask how you came across this?”

  “It’s related to a clue we received in an investigation we are working on. ‘The Appointment in Samarra.’ Do you know it?”

  “Yes, of course. And you are right that this is where Maugham’s version came from. He modernized it and made it more dramatic. But its roots are here,” Rafaeli said, pointing to the paper Gabriel had given him. “Solomon sends his servants to their death even as he attempts to save them by sending them to Luz.”

  “Why Luz? And what is it?”

  “In the Talmud it says that by tradition the Angel of Death had no power in Luz, which is the name of an ancient Canaanite city. So Solomon sent his servants there so they’d live. The verb form of Luz means to turn aside. The noun form means almond tree.”

  “Almond tree?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I’ll be goddamned!” Gabriel said, looking right at Gaddis. And then Gabriel realized what he’d done and immediately said to Rafaeli, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’ve heard far worse, especially from him,” Rafaeli said, nodding at Gaddis.

  “So is this about Solomon being powerless to stop fate?”

  “In one respect, yes. But it’s also Solomon rejecting responsibility for their deaths when he says, ‘A man’s feet are responsible for him; they lead him to the place where he is wanted.’”

  “So he’s sort of holding up his hands saying, ‘Not my fault’?”

  “Yes. But there’s a passage just before this one that I think provides important context to the verse you have,” Rafaeli said, getting up to look at the bookshelves that lined the back office wall. He reached up and brought down a leather-bound book with gold lettering on the spine. He opened it up and quickly found what he was looking for. “Here’s the verse before the one you’ve brought,” Rafaeli said.

  It was taught, Of Hillel the Elder, It was said that when he used to rejoice at the Rejoicing at the place of the Water-Drawing, he used to recite thus, ‘If I am here, everyone is here; but if I am not here, who is here?’ He also used to recite thus, ‘To the place that I love, there my feet lead me: if thou wilt come into My House, I will come into thy house; if thou wilt not come to My House, I will not come to thy house, as it is laid, In every place where I caused my name to be mentioned, I will come unto thee and bless thee.’

  He moreover once saw a skull floating upon the face of the water. ‘Because,’ he said to it, ‘thou didst drown others, they have drowned thee, and they that drowned thee shall be drowned too.’

  “A skull floating upon the face of the water. That’s a pretty stark reference,” Gabriel said. “Is there significance to it being in water? And what’s the water-drawing?”

  Rafaeli paused, trying to find the right words. “In the Talmud, water is a central part
of the Sukkot, a celebration that marks the end of harvest. During Sukkot there is what is known as the Simchat Beit Hashoeva, the celebration of the water-drawing. In this celebration water is poured over the altar of the Holy Temple signifying the sustaining of life.”

  “Who is Hillel the Elder?” asked Gaddis.

  “He was one of the great early religious teachers in Judaism and one of the fathers of the Talmud itself,” Rafaeli said.

  Gaddis nodded. “So what’s he saying here?”

  “He’s saying that if you come into my house, I will come into your house; if you stay out of my house, I will stay out of yours. Same thing with the skull floating in the water. If you drown others, you will be drowned, and those who drown you will also, in turn, be drowned.”

  “So it’s an eye for an eye?”

  “Yes, but it’s also a message that your fate is preordained. That’s what Solomon is saying when his servants end up dead in Luz. It was meant to be.”

  “Look, we are working on a case that I can’t tell you much about,” Gabriel said to Rafaeli. “But we believe that the ‘Appointment in Samarra’ reference is a coded message left by Islamic fundamentalists. Given the Talmudic roots of the parable, does that make sense to you?”

  Rafaeli thought for a moment. “It seems hard for people to believe now, but Islam is one of Judaism’s daughters. The Talmud itself is an oral history based on discussions in rabbinic colleges alongside the Tigris and Euphrates in what today is Iraq. The discussions took place between the third and fifth centuries, but the Talmud was still being compiled and collated two hundred years later. By then the area was under the control of the Islamic Ummayyad caliphate.”

  “So elements of the Talmud are influenced by Islam?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes. And so it’s no surprise that Islam and Judaism share similar characteristics. They are both based on a divinely revealed text—the Torah for the Jews and the Koran for Muslims. Both texts are interpreted by means of an oral tradition, the Talmud and the Hadith, respectively. Each tradition contains legal and ethical material. The Jewish legal material is called Halakah and the Islamic Shari‘a; both terms mean a pathway, or way to go.”

  “Fascinating stuff. Does that mean the anti-Zionism in the Arab world is more about politics than it is about religion?” Gaddis said.

  “Well, for many Arabs it’s more about politics,” Rafaeli said. “But not for the Salafists, ISIS, al-Shabab, or the other Islamic fundamentalists. For them it’s very much about religion.”

  Gabriel nodded. It was starting to make sense. The association of Luz and almonds had hit him like a shot of adrenaline. He was starting to believe that Sukkah 53a—the source for “The Appointment in Samarra”—was the roadmap for the attacks, the instructions for the cell to carry out its plans. The almond attack had already happened. What was next? And how did the orange juice attack fit into it?

  “Rabbi, anything about oranges in the Sukkah?” he asked. “Or Sukkot? Or in the story of Solomon?”

  Rafaeli considered the question. “Oranges were widely grown in ancient Mesopotamia, so they are certainly part of the Babylonian Talmud. But not specifically in Sukkah 53a. There are etrogs in the water-drawing ritual, however. Those are as close as it gets.”

  “Etrogs? What’s that?” Gabriel asked.

  “It’s a citrus fruit that is held in the hand during the Sukkot ritual.”

  “Citrus? Like an orange?”

  “More like a lemon than an orange.”

  Not a perfect match, Gabriel thought. But it still might fit. He then stood and offered his hand to Rafaeli. “Thank you very much, Rabbi. This was most helpful.”

  Rafaeli shook Gabriel’s hand and gave Gaddis a hug. “Anytime, my friend. And don’t be a stranger,” Rafaeli said to Gaddis. “It’s been too long. Next time you are in New York, you come to dinner at my home. We can get drunk and tell stories about Iraq.”

  “You got it, Yossi. And thanks,” Gaddis said with real emotion in his voice.

  A few minutes later standing in the elevator, Gabriel said, “The pieces are starting to fit for me.”

  “How so?”

  “That passage in Sukkah isn’t just about fate. It’s also about cause and effect. Isn’t the entire Islamic fundamentalist movement about getting the US out of the Middle East? Wasn’t that bin Laden’s major gripe? That we are in their house? And that as result, they are going come into our house to try and destroy us?”

  “Yes,” Gaddis replied. “Bin Laden hated that we were in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War propping up what he saw as a corrupt regime. From there it just grew into a larger movement against our presence in the Mideast. But to really hurt us—to really punish us—they ultimately had to come to America.”

  “Well, they’re here.”

  After a moment Gaddis asked, “Ever heard of the three warnings in Islam?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a saying in the Hadith about snakes,” Gaddis said. “Muhammad says when you see a snake in your house, you should warn it three times. If it returns a fourth time, you should kill it.”

  “And?”

  “And three warnings. The first warning was the oranges. The second warning was Adnan’s very gruesome murder after you showed up to talk to him. And the third warning was the almonds.”

  “Those weren’t warnings. Those were attacks.”

  “Shit, Gabriel. What was the damage? A couple of hundred sick and a few dozen killed? Some crops ruined? Those weren’t real attacks. I think those were warnings.”

  Gabriel looked at Gaddis. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “Well, think about this: In 1993 al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center. Six Americans killed. That was warning number one. In 1998 they bombed the US embassies in Africa. A couple of hundred killed, mostly Africans. That was warning number two. In 2000, they hit the USS Cole in Yemen. Seventeen sailors killed. That was warning number three. And then on 9/11, they killed the snake. Three thousand dead.”

  Gabriel stared at Gaddis for a moment before replying. “And?”

  “And my bet is that whatever’s next, it’s going to be the snake killer. And I believe the clue is in there,” Gaddis said, pointing to the bag that held the printout of the passage from Sukkah.

  Gabriel shook his head in wonder. “Ironic, isn’t it? The key to a twenty-first-century threat can be found in a book written in the fifth century.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Gaddis said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Washington, DC

  “Her name is Haniya Razavi,” Jensen said, holding up her picture. The SPARK search had finally come through. “She came to the United States from Pakistan on a student visa in 2019. Studied computer science at GMU and then entered their grad program.”

  “That fits,” Gabriel said.

  “I just passed that info off to the FBI,” Jensen said. “She’s now officially on their most wanted list.”

  Gabriel was sitting in Jensen’s spartan office at DHS Headquarters. Gabriel had just briefed Jensen on what he and Gaddis had uncovered in New York. Gabriel had been racking his brain about the Talmudic passage, trying to see the clue to the next attack. So far, he was at a loss.

  Just then an agent popped his head in the doorway. “Lee, the secretary wants to see you.” Then turning to Gabriel, he asked, “Are you Marx?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice!” the agent said. “I was sent to track you down as well. I was about to call your cell. He wants to see you too.”

  “Show time,” Jensen said.

  When they arrived at Witt’s office, they found him on the phone. Though they could hear only one part of the conversation, it was clear that Witt was getting chewed out. After a few grunts and an “OK” or two, he hung up.

  “God, what an asshole,” he said.

 
“Don’t tell me. The director of the FBI?” Jensen asked.

  “The one and only. He’s still pissed about us not bringing them in after the first sign of trouble. And he suspects we broke into Rahman’s computer. How he figured that out I’m not sure. But he knows.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Secretary,” Jensen said with a smile. “Gabriel, do you know what Secretary Witt is talking about?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

  Witt laughed. “Me neither. You guys want something to drink?” Jensen and Gabriel both shook their heads. “So whaddya got for me?”

  Gabriel updated Witt on what he’d learned in New York from Yossi Rafaeli about the Talmudic origins of the “Appointment in Samarra” parable. He also explained to Witt the reference to Luz and the almond trees. “I don’t think they’re using the Somerset Maugham version as their vehicle. I think the message for the group was in the Talmud Sukkah 53a passage.”

  “Whoa, back up,” Witt said. “You think that this was an intentional message? From ISIS?”

  Gabriel realized he’d jumped ahead and needed to lay more groundwork for Witt. “Sorry, let me give you the context. Gaddis at CIA believes the parable itself was a way for ISIS to communicate plans to its operatives—sort of a coded message. Al-Qaeda often used coded portions of well-known writings to hide their plans—sort of a poor man’s Enigma machine.”

  “Exactly,” Jensen said. “After al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq, their communications capability went to shit, largely because Rahman fled to Turkey. So they turned to using open communication with Koranic and other verses that had hidden meanings.”

  “And that’s what you think this Samarra thing is?” Witt asked.

  “Yes, sir. The Angel of Death in Luz and the killing of Solomon’s servants relates to the poisoning of the almond trees. Gaddis also thinks that the almond-tree attack was the third warning,” Gabriel said, explaining to Witt the Hadith story about Muhammad and the snake.