Alex Lukeman - The Cup

"Echoes of Iraq," Elizabeth said.

"Yes."

Elizabeth looked at her watch. "I hate to end this, Clarence, but it's a long day tomorrow."

"Would you like to get together this weekend? I have a cottage on Chesapeake Bay and there aren't many people around at this time of year. The view is wonderful and we'll have privacy. What do you say?"

Elizabeth smiled at him. "I'll think about it."

Elizabeth had just settled down at her desk with her first cup of coffee when Nick called. She hadn't slept well and she had a headache.

Probably that cognac I had. Or maybe it's thinking about ISIS getting a bomb.

"Good morning, Nick."

"We ran into a problem."

"Please don't tell me you had to shoot up the church," Elizabeth said.

She listened while Nick briefed her on what they'd discovered in the church. Then he told her about the three men who'd confronted them.

"You killed them?"

"They didn't give us any choice. We found French passports but they had to be ISIS."

"Tell me about the tile you found."

"It was in the church safe. Ronnie's got quite a career ahead of him once he stops working for the government."

"The tile, Nick." Elizabeth's voice was strained.

"It's the same size as the other one, only more beat up. It has to be a mate, but it's different. The figure on the tile looks like a monk, not a priest. Selena is sending you a picture right now."

In Virginia, Elizabeth waited as the picture of the tile appeared on her phone and on the wall monitor. Stephanie sat next to her.

"He's right," Steph said. "It has to be a mate to the other one."

Nick's voice came over the speaker. "Selena says that the Latin means 'as below, so above.'"

"That's just the opposite of how it's usually written," Stephanie said. "It's a metaphysical saying: 'As above, so below.'"

"Where are you now?" Elizabeth asked.

"On the road, headed for Bulgaria. It's not far to the border. From there we'll drive north to Sophia and get a flight. It will take the Greek cops a little while to ask themselves why we left town in the middle of the night. By the time they do, we'll be in the air."

"All right. Go to Milan and pay a visit to Count Mercurio. Steph will send you directions to his villa outside the city and the intel we've got about him and his religious group."

"Did the Swedes follow up on this? If they know Mercurio was trying to buy the tile, they've got him on a criminal charge."

"It's a little more complicated than that, Nick. Mercurio is one of the richest men in Italy and he has a lot of friends. The chances of him getting busted because he was trying to buy an illegal artifact are so slim, they're nonexistent."

"Then why should he tell us anything? We can't interrogate him."

"I want you to show him that second tile. You did take it with you when you left the church, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Use it to get his attention and gain his cooperation. He's after the same thing we are, if for a different reason. Everything Steph has found out about him indicates that he's one of the good guys."

"It won't take long for the Greeks to suspect we were involved in what happened to those three terrorists. They may not know that we were in the church. We left everything as it was, except for taking the tile. If we're lucky, no one will miss it for a while."

"Don't worry about the Greeks, I'll handle it."

"We'll be in Bulgaria soon," Nick said. "Anything else, Director?"

"No. Go talk to Mercurio."

Nick disconnected and put the phone back in his pocket.

"What's the word?" Ronnie asked.

"We're going to Milan."

"Pizza," Lamont said.

Abdul Haddad sat in the backseat of a tan colored, armored Land Rover that had once belonged to the Iraqi army. He watched the Syrian desert speeding past. The sun was a golden ball of fire, the sky a gray-blue dome that stretched to the horizon. Air blowing through the open windows smelled of dry sand and heated rock.

Sitting next to Haddad was a pinched little man wearing thick glasses with heavy black frames, reading a technical abstract dealing with the finer points of nuclear fission. The paper was written in French. The principles of creating a nuclear explosion were the same in any language.

Rashid Jaffari had been educated in the West, taking an advanced degree at MIT. He'd been working on building a bomb for Saddam Hussein before the invasion but had run out of time before it could be completed. He'd gone to ground in the lawless mountains of Pakistan before the Americans could capture him. Now he'd been given a second chance to finish his work. This time, he would not be interrupted before he was done.

It was of little consequence to Rashid if success meant the deaths of many thousands of people. Rashid didn't think of nonbelievers as people. He thought of them as less than human, doomed by their refusal to see the truth of the Messenger's teachings. When the Day of Retribution came and they died and found themselves in hell, they would have only themselves to blame. If true believers also died, Allah would welcome them with open arms.

There were few of those in the city where ISIS planned to detonate the bomb.

The Land Rover turned off the desert road onto a rough track leading toward a row of rugged hills a few miles away. The driver stopped, got out of the car and attached a drag behind the vehicle to obscure the tire marks. He got back in and they proceeded at a crawl, driving slowly to avoid raising a dust trail that might capture the attention of a passing drone or satellite. After twenty minutes the track descended into a broad wadi running between the hills. During the rainy season, a shallow river ran through the ravine, bringing life to the desert. The rains were late this year. The valley was dry and brown, marked by outcroppings of rock as black as the hearts of the men sitting in the car.

"We're almost there," Haddad said.

Rashid looked up from his paper.

"Good." He tapped the paper in his lap. "This has given me the final piece of information I was seeking. Have the rest of the materials arrived?"

"Yes. Everything we recovered from Iraq. It will all be familiar to you. Everything will be brought down to you tomorrow."

"You found the sealed containers?"

"Yes. Your directions were very good. The Americans passed the site without ever noticing what was there. The camouflage was perfect."

"We'd been warned," Rashid said. "We knew they were coming. It gave us enough time. The Russian warhead you provided was in poor shape but useful for my design. By incorporating the material that was stored in the containers, the effect of the warhead will be amplified considerably. The yield should be in the neighborhood of five kilotons, about half the size of the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"Excellent, excellent. It is a great thing we do, my brother. God will be pleased."

Rashid placed his hand over his heart. "We are but His servants."

The car slowed as it came to several large boulders strewn across the riverbed. It looked natural to a casual observer, but the boulders forced anyone coming down the riverbed to drive between them. Camouflage netting stretched overhead. As they passed the first boulder three men appeared as if from nowhere, armed with AKs. One of them held up his hand. The driver stopped the car. The guard looked inside, saw Haddad and Rashid, and waved them through.

They passed a second boulder and found themselves in front of a cave in the side of the ravine. The entrance was invisible from above, broad and high enough to let a good-sized truck pass through. Once inside, the cave widened to forty or fifty yards across. The car came to a halt. Rashid and Haddad climbed out.