Sacred Stone

“Everyone’s waiting for you in the conference room,” he said, following the pair.

Reaching the conference room, Cabrillo opened the door and the three men walked inside. Adams, dressed in his flight suit, took a seat at the table. Hanley positioned himself next to Cabrillo, who walked behind the podium.

“Good to see you all again,” Cabrillo began, “especially Gunderson and his team. It’s nice to see they finally let you go,” he said, smiling to Gunderson. “We’ll need everyone for what is about to happen. I just returned from Tel Aviv and a meeting with the Mossad. They sent a large team into the mosque around the Dome of the Rock early this morning to search for explosives. Nothing of any type was located. Nothing conventional, nuclear or biological. They did locate a video camera that was not supposed to be there, however. It was hidden alongside a building inside a garden in a tree.”

No one spoke.

“The camera was hooked to a wireless uplink that sent the images out to a processing unit outside the mosque, then on through a conventional cable to a nearby building. The Mossad was making plans to enter the building when I left. They should have an update for me soon.”

The group nodded.

“The interesting thing about the camera was that it was positioned to point up at the sky above the Dome of the Rock, just catching the top of the structure. This indicates to me that Hickman, if he has recovered Abraham’s Stone, is pla

The team nodded.

“The situation with Mecca and Medina is this,” Cabrillo continued. “Kasim and a United States Air Force officer will be leading a pair of teams, all comprised of U.S. military men who are Muslims, to check for bombs. I left Pete Jones in Qatar to coordinate things with the emir, who has offered to help us any way he can. I’ll let Mr. Hanley explain those efforts.”

Cabrillo stood away from the podium and Hanley took his place. Walking over to the coffeepot, Cabrillo poured two cups and took one over to Adams, who nodded his thanks.

“As you all know, Mecca and Medina are the two holiest sites to Islam. Because of that, they are off-limits to any non-Muslims. Kasim is the only member of our team who practices the Islamic faith, so he was selected to lead the teams. The emir arranged for a cargo plane and a fleet of multipurpose street and trail motorcycles to be shipped along with the members of Kasim’s group to Yemen. They arrived early this morning and slipped across the border to Saudi Arabia by driving along a wadi, or dry streambed. The latest update shows them already past the Saudi town of Sabya and driving north. Then they will board public buses to take them to the two mosques. Once there, they will spread out and search for explosives.”

“What about the shipping containers?” Halpert asked.

“As you all know,” Hanley continued, “the team that was in Maidenhead discovered traces of a toxin that we believe was sprayed onto the prayer rugs inside the containers. Kasim dispatched eight men on a commercial flight to Riyadh and they have already taken up positions around the cargo area where the shipping containers are stored, awaiting delivery to Mecca. Quite simply, we caught a break there. If those containers had arrived on time, they probably would have been unloaded by now and the toxins would have been released into the air. As it was, Hickman was so late with the delivery that the trucks were rescheduled for other tasks. According to the schedule the NSA intercepted from the pla

Just then the telephone in the conference room buzzed, and Cabrillo walked over and answered. “Got it,” he said, and hung the receiver back in the cradle. Hanley looked at him in expectation.

“That was Overholt,” Cabrillo said. “His agent detected radiation near the curtain around the Kaaba. Hickman somehow managed to switch the meteorites.”

IN LONDON, MICHELLE Hunt had spent the last few days cooped up in a hotel room being grilled by CIA agents. She was tired but still cooperating. Quite frankly, the CIA was begi

A plane had been scheduled to fly her back to the United States, and it was scheduled to leave within the hour. For the most part, all Hunt had been able to do was shed some light on Hickman’s life.

And that she had done in minute detail. They had asked her about everything, and she had complied. The agent in charge just needed to wrap up details on a few more points and he could submit his report.

“Now, back to the begi

“Yes,” Michelle Hunt said, “we met that day at lunch at Casen’s. I had a gift certificate from a girlfriend for a recent birthday. I was not in a position to afford expensive meals—even lunch—at that time.”

“What happened next?”

“He came over to my table, introduced himself, and I asked him to join me,” Hunt said. “We were there all afternoon. He must have known the owners because when the lunch crowd cleared out, they left us alone. They were setting the tables for di

“Did you eat di

“No,” Hunt said, “Hal arranged for us to fly over the oil field at sunset so he could check it out. I would guess he was trying to impress me.”

“So you flew over the field and glanced at it from the window of the plane?”

“No windows,” Hunt said. “It was a biplane. I sat in the seat behind.”

“Hold on,” the agent said, “it was a two-seater?”

“An old Stearman, if I remember correctly,” Hunt said.

“Who was flying?” the agent asked.

“Well, Hal was,” Hunt said, “who the hell else?”

“Mr. Hickman is a pilot?” the agent asked quickly.

“Well, he was back then,” Hunt said. “If Howard Hughes did it, then Hal tried it too.”

The agent raced for the telephone.

“THIS ADDS ANOTHER layer to the picture,” Hanley said. “Now we not only need to recover Abraham’s Stone from Hickman, we have to switch it back without being detected. The president has advised us that he wants to keep the Saudi government out of this operation if at all possible.”

At that moment one of the hundred-inch monitors in the conference room lit up. The screen was split in half vertically, and Stone could be seen on the left side. “Sir, I’m sorry,” he said, “I know you asked not to be interrupted, but this is important. Watch the other half of the screen.”

An image filled the right half.

“This is from a pair of cameras the CIA stationed at the locks on the Suez Canal. The image was recorded within the last fifteen minutes.”

The camera pa

“I overlaid it with the program Ms. Huxley created,” Stone said.

Everyone in the room watched as the 3-D image floated over the man. The edges of the lines matched up perfectly. When the man in the boat moved, the computer-generated re-creation tracked along.