Path Of The Assassin

The reporter on the scene talked about a little-known toxic poison called Sadim, what dermal exposure was, and how death must have been for the Saudi prince and his two bodyguards. The Ritz was surely horrified by the publicity. The public still talked about how Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, had spent their last evening there and had died when their limousine crashed, a drunken Ritz chauffeur at the wheel.

Somehow, the reporter had obtained a copy of the letter in which the Hand of God organization claimed responsibility for the murders. After she had read it verbatim, the screen changed to a feed from Jerusalem and Fox’s Jerusalem bureau chief. The dark-haired man spoke for several minutes about escalating tensions and violence in Israel, then segued to a video package edited and narrated earlier that day. It showed footage of the carnage at Medina in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There was heavy troop and tank placement throughout villages along the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel had closed all of its border crossings in response to sixteen suicide bombings by Palestinians at crowded restaurants, shopping areas, and resorts popular with Israeli citizens. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were all taking credit for the attacks and stated that they were in retaliation for the Hand of God attacks. And so it went, with each subsequent attack ratcheting up the rhetoric and the violence. It was a vicious circle and it was spiraling out of control.

The video then cut to street scenes in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the attack on the Temple Mount. Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli Defense Forces who returned fire with tear gas and rubber bullets. Jewish shopkeepers pushed and assaulted Palestinian customers and vice versa. It was sheer pandemonium.

Man-on-the-street interviews were volatile, with each side calling for war and the extermination of the other. Not only did the citizens of Palestine and Israel seem to overwhelmingly agree that they should go to war and settle things once and for all, but they were all sure their “God” would lead them to victory.

Just when Harvath could barely stand it any longer and was about to turn the TV off, the piece turned to a man walking through a rubble-strewn Palestinian village. People lined the streets to greet him. When the camera pulled back to reveal the Fox reporter, Scot recognized her right away. It was Jody Burnis, the former CNN reporter who had broken the story of the president’s kidnapping and had implicated him as her inside source. He turned up the sound on the remote as a montage of images filled the screen.

“…Ali Hasan, chief Palestinian negotiator and a rising star on the Palestine political landscape. He grew up on these same mean Ramallah streets, only a stone’s throw away from PLO headquarters. He has been a vigorous proponent for an independent Palestinian homeland and establishing a lasting peace with neighboring Israel-a difficult and, some would say, impossible dream.

“As violence worsens here in the wake of the Hand of God terrorist attacks, Hasan’s voice is one of the few still calling for calm. It has been his steadfast refusal to condemn terrorism that his detractors most often cite. But by the same token, observers far and wide agree that in the tumultuous arena of Palestinian politics, if he hopes to lead his people, he could not come down on what is seen by most Palestinians as the only tool which allows them to be taken seriously on the world stage.

“Hasan has been a frequent guest speaker at the League of Arab Nations and is on very good terms with most of the region’s leaders, both secular and religious alike. He has been compared to a coin flipped high into the desert air. On one side of the coin is the barbed specter of war, the other, the white dove of peace. On which side will the coin fall? Only time will tell, though many here believe that with the European-sponsored peace summit only weeks away, time is quickly running out.

“Reporting from Ramallah in the West Bank, this has been Jody Burnis for Fox News.”

Scot clicked off the television and walked into his bedroom to change into some workout clothes. After he found a clean pair of white socks and his Nikes, he grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge and clipped the CIA beeper to his waist. He locked the apartment door behind him, placed a hair in the upper-right-hand corner of the doorframe, and made his way down to the basement, where the landlady had let him set up his workout gear in an unused corner.