Glenn Kleier - The Last Day

“You have my word,” Feldman pledged.

“I'm at Hadassah Hospital. I'll send a helicopter for you. And I'd also like to invite your associate, Mr. Hunter, if he'll be kind enough to bring his camera.”

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” Feldman asked, amazed to learn that this call was originating from behind the walls where the Messiah's body now rested.

“I'm sorry, I can't say anything more over the phone. All I can do is assure you that you'll find the trip here worthwhile.”

Putting aside his mood and discomfort, Feldman didn't hesitate further. “We can leave whenever you wish. We're located on the-”

“Yes. I know where you are.”

“Of course,” Feldman smiled drolly. “We'll be ready.”

Hunter looked over with questions in his bloodshot eyes.

“It's confidential till we're in the air,” Feldman explained, “but you and I are going for a little helicopter ride. And you'll need your equipment.”

Hunter grimaced and rolled out of his chair with a grunt.

The helicopter was hardly on the ground thirty seconds. From under a gray and blue flight helmet, one of the air crew looked familiar. It was Corporal Lyman, the female security guard from the Dung Gate. She nodded soberly to the two newsmen, and they nodded back.

Both men and their equipment were quickly hauled aboard and swept airborne. The hospital, located on the northern, more open side of the city, was but a short distance away. Feldman could see a thick crowd of millenarians already congregating outside the tall, stone perimeter walls. The rain and mud hadn't discouraged them for long. A thin row of Israeli guards kept them at bay.

“Look.” Hunter pointed inside the grounds to where patients and medical staff were being loaded aboard military transports. “It looks like they're evacuating the hospital.” Hunter duly recorded the scene on videotape.

The two newsmen were met on the roof heliport by four armed military, who carried Hunter's equipment for him as the cameraman assisted the ailing Feldman. Awaiting them inside was a trim, middle-aged man in the military uniform of an Israeli Defense Force commander. The officer was of medium height, with a tired, strained face, and troubled blue eyes.

He extended a right hand to Feldman, which Feldman had to grasp with his left. “Commander David Lazzlo,” he introduced himself. “A pleasure to meet you.” But there was no pleasure in his voice.

“Likewise,” Feldman returned. “This is my associate, Breck Hunter.”

“Certainly,” Lazzlo took the big man's hand. “Please come with me, gentlemen.”

Patiently allowing for Feldman's restrictive injuries, Lazzlo escorted them down a long hall to an office area where he invited them inside behind closed doors, offering them a seat.

“Can you tell me, Commander,” Feldman asked, “is Cardinal Litti here, and is he okay?”

“Yes to both questions, Mr. Feldman. And if you like, you'll be able to see him shortly. However, I'm afraid we don't have much time, and I really must press forward with several issues.”

“By all means,” Feldman assured him, settling stiffly into his chair. “It's your show.”

Lazzlo looked grim. “Very good. Gentlemen, let me just inform you from the outset that, for what I'm about to disclose, I could be shot. And if either of you are caught with the information I'm giving you, it could cost you your lives, as well.”

“Caught by who?” Hunter wanted to know.

“Let me explain this from the beginning and it will make much more sense to you,” Lazzlo responded. “First, let me tell you that I'm a twelve-year veteran of the IDF, the last four of which I was in charge of intelligence operations, until just recently.

“Let me also say that what I'm about to tell you will no doubt upset you greatly. It upsets me greatly, as there are many things in which I've been personally involved that I now know were terribly wrong. I only ask that you withhold judgment and hear me out completely.”

Hunter and Feldman looked at each other and agreed.

“I will confess to you up front that I was well aware of Defense Minister Tamin's secret Negev laboratory experiments. However, beyond the IDF high command and the scientists who worked at the institute, no one else knew the true nature of what went On there. Tamin had to make damned certain that neither the Ben-Miriam administration nor the Knesset were ever apprised of the facts. Experimental procedures, such as the neurochip implantations and intelligence infusions, are forbidden by the Israeli Constitution unless sanctioned first by the Israeli Medical Board. Which, of course, these weren't.”

“Do you mind if I take notes, Commander?” Feldman requested, fumbling with a pen and notepad.

Noticing his bandaged right hand, the officer smiled dryly. “It doesn't look like that's a viable option for you. You can record this if you wish. I'm no longer concerned with the consequences.”

“And why is that, Commander?” Feldman asked, as. Hunter fired up his camera.

“You will learn soon enough.” Lazzlo kept control of the agenda.

“There's been much speculation regarding the actual cause of the Negev Institute's destruction. Let me tell you, as the chief investigating officer, I was unable to come up with a definitive answer.

“I can at least tell you what it wasn't. It was not sabotage, as some of the media have claimed. The destruction was caused by a projectile originating from beyond Israel's borders, due east. It wasn't a missile. At least not of any conventional design we've ever seen. There was no detectable propulsion system or warhead, We know that the projectile was a solid, superheated mass, approximately two feet in diameter at its widest composed of forty percent iron, six percent nickel and fifty-four percent silicates, weighing approximately one quarter ton.

“The most logical explanation we could arrive at is that the projectile was delivered by a super cannon, such as Iraq had been developing at one time before your country kindly destroyed it.”

“What about the meteorite theory?” Hunter wanted to know.

“We could not rule that out,” Lazzlo admitted. “The consensus at the Defense Ministry, however, was that the projectile was intentionally created to resemble a meteorite in its composition as a means of disguising its true, design. Nevertheless, we've been unable to discover any traces of a cannon or other delivery system that would explain the phenomenon better than the meteorite theory. When we determined that the Negev explosion was, at worst, a random attack and not an invasion, we changed the focus of our concern.

“In light of the subject matter of the experiments, Shaul Tamin was desperate to prevent a leak. His priority became damage control. At the time, we believed all physical evidence and any compromising records had been destroyed in the explosion. All the scientists involved were dead-with the exception of Mrs. Leveque and a few lower-level lab assistants who knew little and were easily intimidated into silence.

“Everything appeared so neatly contained, and then suddenly you broke with that survivor story. At first, Tamin resisted the idea that one of the test subjects might have escaped the blast. But later, when your Japanese witnesses positively identified Jeza as the survivor, he had no choice but to take action.

“Tamin viewed Jeza's survival as both a liability and an opportunity. While she posed a threat as living proof of his experiments, she also presented Tamin with the prospects of recovering the priceless Leveque microchips she carried inside her. The last chips of their kind in existence. Their value for medical applications, alone, was astronomical-military uses notwithstanding. Tamin intended to recover them, whatever it took.