The Messenger

was now gone. A news bulletin came suddenly on the air. The prime minister had promised to do everything in his power to track down and punish those responsible for the attempt on Shamron’s life. He made no mention of the fact that he already knew who was responsible, or that he had granted Gabriel the authority to kill him.
    Gabriel plunged down the Bab al-Wad toward the sea, weaving impatiently through the slower traffic, then raced the setting sun northward along the Coastal Plain. There was a security alert near Hadera—according to the radio, a suspected suicide bomber had managed to slip through a crossing in the Separation Fence near Tulkarm—and Gabriel was forced to wait by the side of the road for twenty minutes before heading into the Valley of Jezreel. Five miles from Afula a rounded hillock appeared on his left. In Hebrew it was known as Tel Megiddo, or the Mound of Megiddo. The rest of the world knew it as Armageddon, forecast in the Book of Revelation to be the site of the final earthly confrontation between the forces of good and evil. The battle had not yet begun, and the parking lot was empty except for a trio of dusty pickup trucks, a sign that the archaeological team was still at work.
    Gabriel climbed out of his car and headed up the steep footpath to the summit. Tel Megiddo had been under periodic archaeological excavation for more than a century, and the top of the hill was cut by a maze of long, narrow trenches. Evidence of more than twenty cities had been discovered beneath the soil atop the tel , including one believed to have been built by King Solomon.
    He stopped at the edge of a trench and peered down. Crouched on all fours was a small figure in a tan bush jacket, picking at the soil with a hand trowel. Gabriel thought of the last time he had stood over a man in an excavation pit and felt as though a lump of ice had been placed suddenly at the back of his neck. The archaeologist looked up and regarded him with a pair of clever brown eyes, then looked down again and resumed his work. “I’ve been waiting for you,” said Eli Lavon. “What took you so long?”
    Gabriel sat in the dirt at the edge of the pit and watched Lavon work. They had known each other since the Black September operation. Eli Lavon had been an ayin , a tracker. His job was to follow the terrorists and learn their habits. In many respects his assignment had been more dangerous even than Gabriel’s, for Lavon had sometimes been exposed to the terrorists for days and weeks on end with no backup. After the unit disbanded, he’d settled in Vienna and opened a small investigative bureau called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Operating on a shoestring budget, he had managed to track down millions of dollars’ worth of looted Jewish assets and had played a significant role in prying a multibillion-dollar settlement from the banks of Switzerland. These days Lavon was working the dig at Megiddo and teaching archaeology part-time at Hebrew University.
    “What have you got there, Eli?”
    “A piece of pottery, I suspect.” A gust of wind took his wispy, unkempt hair and blew it across his forehead. “What about you?”
    “A Saudi billionaire who’s trying to destroy the civilized world.”
    “Haven’t they already done that?”
    Gabriel smiled. “I need you, Eli. You know how to read balance sheets. You know how to follow the trail of money without anyone else knowing it.”
    “Who’s the Saudi?”
    “The chairman and CEO of Jihad Incorporated.”
    “Does the chairman have a name?”
    “Abdul Aziz al-Bakari.”
    “ Zizi al-Bakari?”
    “One and the same.”
    “I suppose this has something to do with Shamron?”
    “And the Vatican.”
    “What’s Zizi’s connection?”
    Gabriel told him.
    “I guess I don’t need to ask what you intend to do with bin Shafiq,” Lavon said. “Zizi’s business empire is enormous. Bin Shafiq could be operating from anywhere in the world. How are we going to find him?”
    “We’re going to put an agent into Zizi’s inner circle and wait for bin Shafiq to walk into it.”
    “An agent in Zizi’s camp?” Lavon shook his head. “Can’t be done.”
    “Yes, it can.”
    “How?”
    “I’m going to find something Zizi wants,” Gabriel said. “And then I’m going to give it to him.”
    “I’m listening.”
    Gabriel sat down at the edge of the excavation trench with his legs dangling over the side and explained how he planned to penetrate Jihad Incorporated. From