by Jeff Nesbit
Natal went to work immediately. He did not have a moment to lose. There was some risk to him in what he was about to do, but there was no other choice. He was trapped here, inside the shrine, and there were no allies here to help him. He had to act.
Once inside the Kaaba, Natal left Abdul and Nash, ignored the dignitaries sweeping the floor with ceremonial brooms, and approached one of the White Army guards. He, in turn, then found two more additional guards. The three of them approached a hapless member of the cleaning crew.
The man panicked. He tried to sprint for a closet to one side of the interior of the Kaaba. “Stop him!” one of the guards called out. A fourth guard intercepted the man. They collapsed to the ground in a flurry of tangled arms and legs.
One of the approaching guards opened the door of the closet the man had been trying to reach. He recoiled immediately and took two quick steps backward. It was obvious, even to his untrained eye, that it was some sort of an explosive device.
“Everyone needs to leave this place,” the guard said loudly. “Right now. There’s a bomb here.”
It was like yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. All of the dignitaries dropped their brooms and rushed toward the exit as one. It wasn’t pretty. They all tried to shove and push their way through the door by force in order to escape what they feared was a death trap. Natal, Abdul, and Nash were nearly crushed in the sudden, mad dash for the exit. They were fortunate to escape.
But just as they’d reached the stairs, they were greeted with pandemonium on the other side of the doorway. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of soldiers mounted on horses streamed into the square, carrying white and black flags, waving menacing swords above their heads and shouting to the heavens. Members of the White Army moved quickly to cut them off before they could reach the Kaaba. Bursts of gunfire echoed throughout the square.
Some of the remaining pilgrims trapped inside the square— at least those who knew the legends about the return of the Mahdi— immediately recognized the prophesied signs. But there wasn’t time to process these thoughts. Everything was happening too quickly.
An instant later, a small, five-seat, white helicopter with twin propellers hurtled over the top of the onrushing cavalry. It navigated to the center of the square, slowed, and then came to rest—directly atop the Kaaba.
73
Jerusalem, Israel
The events in the holy city of Mecca had shocked the world. While there had been no television cameras to capture the cavalry charge, the bomb scare and its peaceful aftermath, or the surreal site of a white helicopter landing on top of Islam’s holiest site, cell phone videos immediately circulated widely. Within an hour, nearly every person on the planet had seen some version of the events.
With more than a billion practicing Muslims around the world, speculation about the true meaning of the day’s events in Mecca, at the Kaaba, careened wildly in all directions. Some predicted the end of days. Others predicted the return of a pan-Arab caliphate. Still others were convinced that the kingdom of Hejaz had returned, replacing the House of Saud in Arabia.
At the heart of the mystery was the appearance—captured by dozens of cell phone videos and immediately carried around the world on the mVillage network—of what many were calling the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, the successor to the Prophet Muhammad.
The videos all showed the same scene. A small, white helicopter landed on top of the Kaaba. Two men emerged from the craft and addressed the soldiers, the pilgrims, and the dignitaries still trapped on the stairs as they tried to exit the interior of the Kaaba.
News anchors and reports across the planet, commenting on the extraordinary mobile videos, were able to identify the members of the royal family witnessing the event—including the new Saudi king, Natal, who’d only been named crown prince hours before King Faisal’s assassination in Riyadh.
The commentators were also able to identify Nash Lee, the young CEO of the very same mVillage network that was now broadcasting these very same mobile videos to a global audience that numbered in the billions.
None of the reports mentioned the uneventful conclusion to the day of cleaning at the Kaaba, or the peaceful manner in which dozens of cavalry riders had eventually dispersed at the Kaaba square and drifted away, into the desert. The twin-rotor white helicopter—a smaller version of the new Sikorsky X2 under development that looked remarkably like the mythological Pegasus, or al Buraq—had dominated their stories.
They were eventually able to identify one of the two men who’d emerged from the white helicopter that had landed on the Kaaba. He was, quite amazingly, an elderly, retired librarian from London—but also the last heir to the caliphate of the Ottoman Empire. No one quite knew what to make of that news, or what it might signify.
But the second man who’d emerged from the helicopter to address the square at the Kaaba had, so far, eluded either definition or identification. He was truly a man of mystery. No one knew who he was, where he’d come from, or what his nationality might be.
The mobile videos all concluded with an equally eerie scene. Just one of the two—the man people were calling the Mahdi—re-entered the white helicopter. The elderly librarian, the last heir to the Ottoman caliphate, remained behind as the helicopter lifted off and took flight again.
It was at this point that the international news media had managed to find its way into the emerging story. For the white helicopter that really did look like Pegasus in flight did not remain in Saudi Arabia.
It headed north, toward Jerusalem. No one was certain, but the craft’s occupant seemed, by some accounts, to be re-creating the Prophet Muhammad’s night flight from Mecca to the “farthest mosque.” Television crews began to scramble in Jerusalem, all of them eager to get close to the Al Aqsa mosque believed to be the place the Prophet Muhammad landed.
It was four hundred miles or so as the crow flies from Mecca to Jerusalem, the commentators said. It would take the craft about three hours to reach Jerusalem and the Temple Mount—if that, in fact, was its final destination.
Both American and Israeli military helicopters picked him up, in flight, as he crossed over into Israeli airspace. But they didn’t dare fire on the helicopter. Several private aircraft were tracking the helicopter, with television crews feeding live coverage via satellite to networks around the world.
Presidents and prime ministers alike were riveted by the unfolding drama—along with billions of ordinary people who were glad to follow the developments live. Several of the American news networks reported that President Camara had just spoken to a secret, joint session of Congress to brief them on the developments of the past twentyfour hours. But the White House, as yet, had not confirmed it, or what the president might have said.
The white helicopter continued its flight north. It was clearly headed directly to Jerusalem, the commentators said. One of them had computer artists create an interactive graphic that traced the craft’s current trajectory from Mecca, indicating when it would arrive at the Temple Mount.
By the time the white helicopter arrived in Jerusalem, anyone who was awake anywhere in the world was tuned in, live, to see who this brazen mystery man might be—this Mahdi who’d appeared atop the Kaaba in Mecca and was seemingly about to land on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
When the white helicopter did finally land—at the southeast corner inside the grounds of the Temple Mount—several television cameras in helicopters hovering nearby were able to record the scene. A man, the same one who had spoken at the Kaaba, emerged.
With the world watching and wondering, the man took off his shoes and walked purposefully across the land, toward a grove of trees that had grown up over an ancient pile of rubble now filled in with dirt. He stopped at a fountain to purify himself.
And then, for a reason that only he would be able to explain to the world at some point, he chose a precise spot a few feet from the fountain that was equidistant from both the golden Dome of the Rock to the north and the Al Aqsa mosque to the south, knelt to t
he ground, and kissed it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Nesbit has been a national journalist, the communications director to the vice president at the White House, and the director of public affairs for two prominent science agencies in Washington, the National Science Foundation and the Food and Drug Administration. He’s written eighteen novels for adults and teens.
Nesbit authored PEACE and OIL, the first two books in the Principalities and Powers series, after extensive research into the truth about the conflict between Israel and Iran threatening to destabilize the Middle East. He also managed a successful strategic communications business for nearly fifteen years. His clients and projects included dozens of national nonprofit, trade associations, media companies, Fortune 500 companies, major health foundations, public relations agencies, and advocacy organizations.
Nesbit was also a national journalist with media organizations such as Knight-Ridder Newspapers (now McClatchy), ABC News’ Satellite News Channels (acquired by CNN), States News Service (when it was managed by The New York Times), nationally syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, and newspapers in Virginia and South Carolina.