by Rachel Lee
The Americans, with their naive ideals of spreading democracy while ignoring ethnic and sectarian differences in local populations, had ripped the scabs off age-old wounds.
In such conditions, the seething cauldron of Muslim violence was all but inevitable. And every time a Muslim triggered a roadside bomb, strapped plastique to his chest before boarding a bus in Tel Aviv or dispersed deadly gas in a subway tunnel in Prague, the world shook its head and concluded that Muslims were genetically incapable of living in peace.
“We need a Pan-Islamic council,” Ahmed said. “One that can speak for all Muslims. One that can mediate between Shi’a and Sunni, Saudi and Egyptian, Sudanese and Indonesian. And one that can speak to the West with a firm and united voice, to secure for our people a safe and prosperous place in the world.”
“That is what Saif Alsharaawi was born to create,” Massawi said, smiling. “That is your dream. But it is an impossible dream, Ahmed. The Shi’a have not accepted a caliph since the eighth century. Why would they do so now?”
“Not a caliph,” Ahmed said simply. “A council that includes both Shi’a and Sunni voices, from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. A council with religious and political legitimacy throughout the Muslim world.”
“In sh’Allah.”
“I wish,” Ahmed said, “that Allah’s will were clearer.”
Massawi smiled ironically. “When has it ever been so? Too many mullahs and imams think they know and tell us to do things I wonder about, but the only will we know for certain is in the Qur’an.”
“I feel quite certain that these ‘removals’ of which the president of the EU speaks are not Allah’s will.”
“Of course not. We are Muslim.”
It was Ahmed’s turn to smile, though he felt no humor or joy. “You know the story of the Jewish Holocaust.”
Massawi tapped his head. “How could I not know? It has torn Palestine to shreds. Had it not happened, matters would have taken a different turn there, no?”
“I don’t know, Massawi. What I do know is that Soult’s proposals sound very much like Hitler’s final solution to the Jewish problem in Europe.”
Massawi fell silent, a deep frown creasing his handsome face. He was Persian, not Arab, which made his life difficult here in Saudi country, as it had in Iraq. Ahmed often thought that Massawi knew far more about persecution than he himself could imagine.
“They say Muslims in the zones would be protected. Do you believe that, Massawi?”
Slowly Massawi shook his head. “Perhaps at first.”
“Exactly. My sources say the Germans will protest.”
“Even though their chancellor has died?”
Ahmed’s lips twisted bitterly. “You remember the English saying about the cat and the hot stove? Germans are like that now at any suggestion of religious persecution. I will not absolve them of it completely, of course. All of Europe is suffering a tension because of the conflict of our culture with theirs. Many Europeans feel they will lose their culture to ours. I do not say whether this is good or bad. But they do feel threatened, Massawi, and a threatened man is a dangerous man. But the Germans…for sixty years they have born the stain of the Holocaust. Any suggestion of such a thing now makes them all jump like cats on a hot stove. That is why Vögel objected, and why I think Germany will continue to object.”
Massawi nodded. “May you be right.”
“Vögel was a voice of reason,” Ahmed said, thinking aloud. “My sources say he had the support of the Americans and was close to President Rice. Germany’s army numbers a quarter-million men, and there are still over one hundred thousand American troops, civilian employees and dependents living in Germany. An attack on Germany would be an attack on the United States. Not even Soult is that crazy. Vögel would have prevented this new purge.”
“But might not Soult simply let Germany withdraw and continue with his plans?” Massawi asked.
“He cannot,” Ahmed said. “The German economy is too integral to the European Union for Soult to merely bid the Germans adieu. An EU without Germany would be an empty shell. Soult would go from the captain at the helm of a ship of state to the figurehead at the prow of a dinghy. His pride could not bear such an insult. No, Chancellor Vögel had stalemated him.”
“And now Vögel is dead,” Massawi said.
“Yes,” Ahmed said. “And you are certain it could not have been from natural causes?”
Vögel had received his annual physical examination only a month earlier. Ahmed’s contacts in Germany had secured the records of that examination, and Massawi had spent the last three hours poring over the chancellor’s MRI films, EKG tapes, blood profiles and examination notes.
“I cannot be certain of that,” Massawi said. “But I can say that, one month ago, Karl Vögel was healthier than most men half his age. He had no circulatory, pulmonary, neurological or skeletal disorders, save for a small measure of arthritis in his fingers and knees, and even that was less than most thirty-year-old adults. He was on no long-term medications. He had no tumor, no lesion, no latent aneurism or infection. There was nothing that would hint of pending collapse and death.”
Ahmed shook his head. “I do not believe this is mere coincidence. Allah would not grace the plans of Monsieur Soult with such serendipity.”
That was why Ahmed had dragged Massawi from his bed in the middle of the night. And that was why he had sent a flash message to his network of contacts in Europe: Find out what happened in Berlin. If Vögel had been murdered, Ahmed had to know why and by whom.
For Ahmed knew his brethren had the most to lose.
Then he sighed and shook his head. “I must go to Europe.”
“But why? You would only be forced to go to a protection zone.”
Ahmed shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but his eyes told Massawi otherwise. “Sheik al-Hazeer has said I must go to observe and report.”
At that, Massawi’s head jerked. “No.”
“It seems we have a divide beginning within the organization, Massawi. Since you are Shi’a, I would suggest that you, like others, take advantage of the first opportunity to slip away into a more private life.”
“But this is what you built Saif to fight against.”
“Sometimes we must live to fight another day, my friend. Take your family, go to some other place. I will do what I can. But right now, Massawi, no Muslim is safe in Europe. And no Shi’a is safe in this country.”
That tore his heart worst of all.
5
Strasbourg, France
J ules Soult, President of the European Commission and leader of the European Union, sat in a cool, windowless conference room adjacent to his office in the Institutiones Européens, the European Parliament complex. To this day he still sported the soldierly bearing and close-cropped hair of a general in the French army. No one who knew him well doubted his determination—or his ruthlessness. When he faced his advisors, they almost invariably looked away. He found this profoundly satisfying. Had it not been said of Napoleon that his gaze was so intense that no mortal could long bear it?
At first glance, except for the flag of the European Union behind him at the head of the table, the conference room might have been in any office building in the world. Only an alert and practiced eye would note the discreet pods on the walls, ceiling and floor, sensors that continuously swept the room for electronic surveillance. Not even the most practiced eye could see the copper mesh that was built into those same walls, ceiling and floor, TEMPEST shielding that masked transmissions from the computer and telephone equipment in the room. No cameras or recording devices were permitted, and beside the door a heavy duty shredder stood ready to receive any notes that might be taken.
Soult had directed the upgrading of security because he had needed a meeting place that was beyond the reach of any but the most trusted eyes and ears. And even those people knew they were watched regularly, their home, office and cellular telephones monitored, even their mail opened and screened at rand
om. They were his inner circle, yet should any hint of what was discussed in this room reach the outside world, he would root out and dispose of the leaks with ruthless finality. And he made sure none of them doubted that fact.
Insofar as Soult had been able to determine, the operations in Paris and Berlin had gone off flawlessly. The news bore no hint that the burning of the mosque had been a carefully calculated act; instead, it was being cast as yet more street violence brought on by the actions of Muslim extremists. They would not know, tonight or ever, that the men at the front of the firebomb-throwing mob in Paris had been mercenaries acting under Soult’s orders.
Moreover, at that moment, he knew, frustrated doctors were sharing looks of confusion, having found only trace levels of cyanide in Vögel’s bloodstream. Already they would be asking each other if Vögel were somehow more sensitive to the minute amounts of the toxin that were present in the body of every adult European, absorbed from tobacco smoke, automobile and factory exhaust, and other common environmental sources. Already they would be arguing that no, cyanide was not the sort of toxin to which one body was more or less vulnerable than another body was. Already they would have confirmed that neither of the other known cellular asphyxiants—hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide—accounted for his death.
Nor would they be able to explain how such a substance could have been administered without affecting the others who’d been with Vögel. The broken dome of the Reichstag would distract them for a while, a long while, as none would realize it had been merely a side effect.
They would know that Herr Bundeskanzler Karl Vögel had indeed died of cellular asphyxia. But they would not know, tonight or ever, how that had happened. And that, Soult knew, was the genius of his plan.
For Vögel’s death would be a chilling warning to anyone who dared to oppose Jules Soult. While there would be no evidence that Soult had committed the assassination, neither would there be any doubt in the shadowy corridors of true power, among those who whispered of ancient secrets that had long since been lost to the sands of time.
Those secrets were not lost, however. And Jules Soult alone possessed the knowledge and the means to apply it. The men who needed to know would understand that, any time, in any place, their lives could be forfeit at the will of one man. There was no security that could protect them. They must obey or pay the consequences.
That Vögel’s death also cleared the way for a more reasonable government in Berlin, one willing to recognize and join in the twenty-first-century clash of civilizations that would be Soult’s passport to power, was the proverbial icing on the cake. Just as many argued that the use of the atomic bomb in 1945 was only peripherally motivated by the need to defeat Japan, with its principal objective to cow the Soviet Union and the rest of the world into abject submission, Soult’s primary objective in Berlin had been, to borrow an American catchphrase, “shock and awe.” The technology he possessed was every bit as shocking and awe-inspiring as any missile or bomb. And it was his alone.
The ruby pyramid that gave him his power sat locked inside a hidden safe in the wall behind him, brought from his country estate so that he would always have it at hand. He thought of it now and smiled in private satisfaction. The power that had brought down Jericho, that had built the pyramids, that had parted the Red Sea, was now his and his alone.
His by birthright. Sometimes he wished he could just use its full power and bring these matters to conclusion immediately, but there were warnings in his family’s history and records, warnings of what could happen to the too-ambitious when they used the pyramid. Willingly or not, he was forced to treat the ruby pyramid with the respect and caution it demanded.
The question before him—and before the man who sat across the conference table—was whether and where to apply it next, and how to use it to marshal a still-too-spineless Europe toward its ultimate destiny.
Colonel Hector Vasquez, Soult’s security deputy and the only man Soult had kept beside him through this long night, broke the silence. “And what about Schlossman?”
Albert Schlossman had been Vögel’s vice chancellor until he had been awakened in the dark of night. Just two hours ago he had taken the oath of office as chancellor.
“Do we make another example of him?” Vasquez asked.
Like most European democracies, Germany was a multi-party state with a parliamentary government. For decades, power had shifted between two coalitions, the liberal Red/Green bloc of the Social Democrat and Green Parties, and the conservative coalition built around the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian cousin, the Christian Social Union.
However, when Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s government had collapsed, neither the left nor the right had secured a parliamentary majority. After weeks of political wrangling, the Grand Coalition had been forged, a unification of the Social and Christian Democrats. No one had expected this arrangement to last, for there had long been far too much friction between left and right. It had come as no shock when the Grand Coalition ruptured in the next round of elections, and once again the familiar left-right blocs defined the German political landscape.
Karl Vögel was a Social Democrat, but his party had not won enough seats to form a majority government. As had his predecessors, Vögel had turned to the Green Party for the necessary support. This time, however, the price had been to name Green Party leader Albert Schlossman as his vice chancellor.
“He will not yield on Vögel’s policy toward us,” Vasquez continued. “If anything, he is worse, for there are Green Parties across Europe. They have seats in our own EU Parliament.”
“And they are a minority everywhere,” Soult said, growing impatient. “Even in Germany, their sole power lies in their capacity to build a coalition with another near-majority party. Germany will not retain a Green Party chancellor.”
“You leave too much to the machinations of the German Bundestag,” Vasquez said. “We should eliminate Schlossman, as well, and guarantee a new government.”
Colonel Hector de Vasquez y San Claro, like Soult, was a member of the Order of the Rose. Like Soult, Vasquez had a royal bloodline tracing back to the child of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. And like Soult, he longed for a return of the rightful European government under a new Merovingian dynasty and had worked to make that happen. Vasquez had invisibly orchestrated the al-Qaeda attacks on the Prague subway, and it was his operatives who had carried out the burning of the Grande Mosquée.
After the attempted bombing of the EU Parliament building—another operation overseen by Soult and Vasquez and funded by their Frankfurt allies—Soult had emerged as a European hero and ridden that tide of public support into the new EU elections. His Europa Prima Party—proclaiming European cultural solidarity while it was in reality the political arm of the Order of the Rose—had easily won a majority in the European Parliament, and it in turn had elected him president.
None of this would have been possible without Vasquez and the mercenaries he had secretly paid with money Soult was given by the EU Department of Collective Security. But now, Soult saw, Vasquez had developed an impatience that, if not tightly reined, might well undermine all they had built thus far.
“And if we kill Schlossman?” Soult asked. “Do you think the Germans will passively accept our candidate for chancellor?”
“They will know they have no choice,” Vasquez argued.
“Oh yes, my friend. They will have a choice. They will choose war before humiliation, and this is not a war I mean to fight at this time.”
Vasquez shook his head. “With the power of the codex, we would prevail. Europe has beaten down Germany twice in the last century. Do you doubt she could do it again?”
“You forget the Americans!” Soult said, slamming his fist on the table. “They will not stand by while Germany is crushed. They have troops there, with their families. Not even the codex can stop a rain of cruise missiles!
“No,” Soult continued, taking a breath to calm himself, “we mus
t do this by legal means. We have allies in the Bundestag. They will put up roadblocks at every turn and make Schlossman appear unable to lead. Then, and only then, will Germany be ready to accept our leadership. Once we have Herr Müller in the chancellery, the Hamburg operation will convince the Germans to join in our plans.”
“I hope it will be enough,” Vasquez said. “I do not like to place my faith in politicians.”
“But I am a politician now,” Soult said, his voice and face devoid of emotion. “Do you still have faith in me?”
Vasquez paused. “I have faith in the Order.”
It was a correct answer. It was also the worst answer Vasquez could have chosen. For with that sentence he signed his own death warrant. But not yet. The man was still useful.
“We have argued enough,” Soult said, offering what he hoped would appear a conciliatory tone. “Now, Hector, tell me about our preparations in Hamburg.”
Rome, Italy
Renate’s face was pale as she hung up the telephone. Like a distant observer watching a speeding train approach a stalled auto, she could see the impending mayhem. And she could do nothing to stop it.
“What is it?” Lawton asked, as if reading her thoughts on her face.
“That was my contact at the Charité,” she said. After his collapse, the chancellor had been treated at the most renowned hospital in Berlin, one of the finest in all of Germany. It had not saved his life, and now not even the most skilled pathologists had any clue how Vögel had died. “Miriam’s source was half-right. Vögel died of cyanide-like poisoning, but there were only trace levels of cyanide in his system. They’re doing more tests now, but they have no idea what poison was used, or how it was administered. Some are saying it must be related to the collapse of part of the dome, as if he were shot with some kind of poisoned dart or bullet and the wound hidden in those caused by the falling glass. But you know how strong that glass is. Few bullets would penetrate it.”