“So, why is he on our list?”
“There is an access level on the file. You’ll need to run it by Counter-terrorism.”
“Thank you, Nabila.”
Nabila hung up. For a moment, she rested her head against the edge of the desk. This man was a known terrorist; she was certain of it. That would be what was behind the “no access” part of the file.
She had gone deep, and found gold . . . perhaps.
7
INSHALLA
On the day that the Americans found the message, the wind boomed in the long tunnels of the old base in Pamir, but down here in the long-abandoned command center the air was always still and cool, smelling of tobacco and people and the cook fires of the women.
Aziz had been designated the receptacle of the hidden Imam, the Mahdi, two years ago. Although Sunni, he had accepted the ancient title, and with it the belief that the Imam had actually entered his body and become him. The brotherhood of Inshalla intended that both Sunni and Shia would accept the Mahdi as savior. They were relying on the Arab love of legend to overcome the antipathy between the sects, and the idea that he had at last come out of his long ages of hiding by entering the body of a believer would inspire them.
Before this, Aziz had been a very Westernized Arab, had shaved himself and kept a closet full of fine English suits in his villa in Peshawar. All this he had given up to follow the law to the letter. The villa was behind him now, to be used only in case of emergency. He’d lived too many places to have a home anymore. The world was his home.
“Oko is up,” his assistant said softly.
“Ah.” He glanced up from the writing he was doing, a poem to commemorate the coming day, which would be first day of the new world.
October 10 had been chosen because it was the anniversary of the Battle of Tours, which had driven the Children of God from Europe and condemned the poor Europeans to live now for more than a thousand years in misery, separated from God.
Tomorrow, there would be a little moment of suffering among the worst sinners, but then Islam and happiness would come at last.
Emir Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi, chosen of God, blessed of name, had seen defeat on October 10, in the year 117 Hirja, the Christian year of 732. Charles Martel—the Hammer—had shattered the emir’s faithful soldiers on that day, God have mercy on their souls.
So tomorrow, all these years later, came another October 10, and this time the victory would go to God.
Inshalla, God’s Will, was the name of the organization that was doing this work, of which he was now, as Mahdi, the head. Before Al Qaeda, there had been Inshalla. Al Qaeda had been born out of rage, after the Saudi king brutally murdered people of faith who had entered the Grand Mosque. Their holy mission had been to correct the apostasy of the king’s stooge of an imam.
Inshalla had been created in an apartment in Brooklyn in 1981, long before the present troubles had begun. It had been created not in reaction to a crime but out of the simple joy that comes from being close to God and the desire that this joy creates in the heart to bring it to others.
Even though Inshalla was a small group, for further security it was divided into cells of no more than four. Although it was unknown to most intelligence services, it was one of the most powerful entities on earth, behind only the Western nuclear powers, in terms of its weaponry. It also had two gigantic advantages over them, which Aziz believed would enable it to rule the world. First, it was invisible. Second, its nuclear weapons were already sited in their target countries and could be detonated quickly.
Even as the fires of Islam resurgent rose all over the world, Inshalla had remained hidden, doing its patient work. They moved small things—a bolt here, a casing there, a bit of radioactive material to another place. It was all in the good cause of freeing mankind to taste the joy of Šar’ah and indulge in the sweetness of Islam.
Now all preparations were done. When it had been founded, Aziz had been twenty years old. Now, at forty, he had been named Mahdi, not because he was of the Ahul al-Bayt, the House of Mohammed, in blood, but because, he had been assured, he was of the house in piety. However, everyone knew perfectly well that this was not true. God forgive him, he was a worldly man. He wanted to believe that he had been chosen by Allah’s mysterious hand, but Aziz thought there were other reasons. First, he was rich and could afford to keep everybody in this place supplied. Also, he was not important to the brotherhood. He was not a member of the council. In all truth, his death would be no loss. The title of Mahdi would then be passed to some other equally expendable man.
Eshan reminded him, “Oko is up.” Eshan, faithful clerk, Inshalla’s eyes and ears.
Aziz sighed. He was watched, always. He turned on the shortwave radio, tuned to the correct frequency, and listened to the numbers. Oko was a Russian number station broadcasting to the Kremlin’s spies in China, Afghanistan, and Japan.
From Inshalla’s contacts in Russia they had acquired the one-time letter pads necessary to decode the Oko ciphers. Because each cipher was used only once, breaking the code was essentially impossible. But the use of the system was difficult, especially because the same set of numbers meant different things on different pads, and the Russians were not aware that anybody was piggybacking messages onto their system.
The result of this was that decoded messages were often ambiguous and subject to interpretation. As he was the only person outside of the council who knew the whole structure of the plan, he was generally also the only one who could resolve these ambiguities.
As he worked, Eshan copied the numbers coming from the station, handing another tissue to him whenever he was ready for a new page.
A fly came and went, buzzing into his luncheon dish. He let it feast on his palaw.
Here in the Pamir Panhandle, the Russians had dug deep enough to defeat the American missiles of the day, and they had built to last. They had never expected that they would lose this base. How could they lose? They were the Soviet Union. The mujahideen were the mujahideen, ragged, reeking, and armed with little more than Chinese-made Kalashnikovs that would melt after a few rounds. Nobody with weapons you could bend across your knee was going to beat the Red Army. Unless, of course, they were also armed by the United States, which provided weapons that did not break, most certainly not. Terrible weapons, the Americans made. They were a clever people.
The Russian intention in Pamir had been to construct missile installations that could threaten China and, potentially, other Asian states and deepen Russia’s relations with India by giving the Indians some tangible support . . . and also something to think about, should they become too interested in turning toward America.
There was space for fifty large missiles in the tunnels, as well as control facilities and personnel housing. Immediately after 9/11, Osama bin Laden had used them—to hide not from the Americans but from the far more dangerous Afghans, both the Taliban, who wanted more money to leave him alone than he could raise, and the Northern Alliance, who wanted to collect the American reward that was on his head.
Aziz said to his clerk, “It is done,” and Eshan withdrew. Aziz put the thin tissue of the one-time pad into his rice and ate it, then burned his thicker worksheet in the little brazier that kept his food warm.
He listened to the number station droning on, moving agents, he supposed, issuing requests for information, whatever else the nursemaids of spies did. His part of it had come today for four minutes between 1306 and 1310. Tomorrow, there would be a general call at 0600, which would tell him when later to listen for his messages.
Now tea was being served by the Persian boy who had been left here to be Aziz’s student. The boy’s father was a powerful Iranian politician, a man of the holiest aspirations. Aziz, in his new role as Mahdi, had said on first seeing the boy’s deep, soft eyes and the glow of his smooth skin, “His name is Wasim, the handsome.” And so it was.
This place was ten meters below the surface, under steel-reinforced concrete. There were no telephones
allowed here, no radio transmitters of any kind. Al Qaeda had learned an almost fatal lesson in the months after God’s glorious gift on September 11, 2001, when it was discovered that even the briefest transmission would immediately be detected and tracked by the Americans. Lives had been squandered, because it had been so hard to believe that they could do this. But it was true: after a call or even a burst transmission on the radio, the cruise missiles would come, or the planes, the monstrous planes full of Crusader lackeys and carrying bombs that could dig deep and tear men to pieces.
But Inshalla had endured, and had never been identified. Al Qaeda had been forced into the backs of caves and mountain fastness. Eight out of ten of them had died. That many. But Inshalla had not been so much as scratched. Always, they had been able to continue the great work, assembling, gram by radioactive gram, the triumph of God.
Aziz had read the report of the Crusaders: “It is now believed with confidence that Al Qaeda has been reduced to a small headquarters and a few scattered sympathizers who have no contact with central command. This command unit is in North Africa, and is itself dispersed. The individuals involved, bin Laden and four associates, rarely meet, and move each night from one house to the next.”
Only the Russians knew of the existence of Inshalla, and then only a bit, and not the true name. They were a mercenary people, the Russians, always willing to trade what they did not want for what they did not deserve. So they were willing to sell bits and pieces, no single one of which revealed the truth of what was actually being acquired. The plutonium had gone out from so many different places and in such small quantities that it looked like loss, not theft. The same with the parts.
Finally, the complex sequence that would lead, at last, to the imposition of true happiness across the world was in place. This small, invisible nation, this joyousness, this God’s Will, like the United States, like Britain and India and Russia and Israel and the apostate country Pakistan, was an atomic power. It had the weapons, and it had the means of delivery.
This made Aziz, as Mahdi, a great world leader . . . and yet his existence, let alone his name, was known only to perhaps a hundred people.
Sometimes he had the urge to tell others who he was, that the most pious men on earth, the truest friends of God, had declared him Mahdi. But as he now was hidden by the cleverness of Allah himself, the temptation of the old Aziz to indulge in his braggart ways had always to be overcome.
Mohammed had said, “During the end of days, my beloveds will suffer great calamities and torment from their kings. Persecution will engulf them. The people of God will be tortured and suffer injustice. God will raise from my progeny a man who will establish his peace on earth and justice for the faithful.”
This headquarters had both radio receivers and a reliable means of sending messages, if an old one. Aziz’s messages out went by camel or mule, not by electronic means. Only idiots would use mules, the Crusaders would think, even in this place, where they had been used since before the time of Iskander. So their animals were laughed at. And as far as his men were concerned, what proud NATO officer would think a rag-head could accomplish anything, one of the stupid rag-heads who carried orders all the way from this place down to Peshawar, orders that were not written but woven into the hems of the chapans that the rag-heads wore on their foolish backs?
The Crusaders wore steel helmets and were encased in armor. These arrogant ones treasured life more than they treasured God. Their white faces were burned by the sun, their voices quick in the way of Western languages, chopping out their brute words.
Aziz spoke Arabic and Dari and Persian, all ancient languages full of history and nuance, languages of the deep mind. He and the men and women who were here read only the song of God, the Holy Quran. None of them ever ventured to the surface of the old installation. Nothing crossed there but dust, not by night or day.
The other benefactor of this place, the Persian Sayyad, whose son now served Aziz under his new name of Wasim, purchased their stores for them in a hundred villages in Khyber, in Malakand, in Kohat. From here came gourds, from there potatoes, from another place rutabagas. Water came from the wells within the fortress, dug by Russian engineers to provide for a force of a thousand men.
Only after the Crusaders came here in 2006 and mined the place and blew down the entrances with artillery shells had Inshalla ventured to occupy it. The Crusaders would not carry their own mines into the deep tunnels. Too dangerous for these precious sons of Europe and America. But rag-heads were another matter, so rag-heads had done the dangerous work. Rag-heads could lose their limbs or be killed. That was delightful to the Crusaders.
However, these workers, in the pay of the Crusaders but loyal only to Allah, had kept careful records. So each mine they had laid was now marked by a small fence, to keep the beloved of God from being injured.
Aziz preferred his tea sweet, and there was sugar enough for it today, for which he was glad.
He still indulged himself, but only a little—a bit of sugar here, some music there. He had no need to use the gadgets of the West, the GPS devices and iPods, the glittering cell phones, the CD players and televisions. None of them had need of these things. What they did need was the food of Islam, the food of prayer. They could live forever on prayer, he thought. They were that far from the material world. Although, of course, he did miss his iPod.
Now, though, he only listened to the radio station Burak Mardan, FM 104. And, at the moment, there was a song of Abu Shaar Thayir. Then came Hadiqua, singing of lost love.
“You enjoy Hadiqua,” he said to the young Wasim, who lingered nearby, waiting to take away the tea things.
“I thought I was here as a student. But you are not a teacher.”
“I am the Mahdi. Watch my life. My life is your teacher.”
“You don’t really know the Quran.”
“I love the Quran.”
“You teach me nothing.”
“Do you fear me?”
“I fear only God, the God, the one God.”
The Mahdi nodded. “See, you have been taught. That is a lesson important to learn.” He would not ask of the boy whether he was Sunni or Shia? Aziz knew that Wasim was Sunni. This eternal war between the Sunni and the Shia was certain to become history in a few weeks.
Aziz did keep one Western bangle, a watch, and he glanced at it now. Just after eleven, the Duhur Salat. In the Pacific time zone, just after 2100. The time was not far, now. Not far.
He motioned to Wasim, who at once brought him pitcher and towel. He performed wadu. “O you who believe, when you rise for prayer, wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows and lightly rub your heads and your feet up to the ankles.”
The boy also.
Then they turned to Mecca and performed the salat in the silence demanded of the noon prayer. How Aziz’s heart filled with love now as he began Al-Fatiha: In the name of God the merciful and compassionate, praise to God the Lord of the Universe, master of the day of judgment. Thee alone we so worship; thee alone we turn to for help. And then he drew himself deep into his heart, for he was a leader of men, hiding here in the kind earth, and needed God’s help always, could do nothing without it. Show us the straight path, he said in his mind, in his soul. Show us the path of those whom you have guided to Islam, not the path of those who earn your anger or go astray.
Over a thousand years since Charles the Hammer had led the children of Europe—God’s beloved children also—astray, Aziz was going to bring them at last into Islam. Now they held drunken sway, protected by their tanks and their knights. They were eating the world, gobbling its gold and its oil and its precious water, spitting out bangles and baubles and sweets, and suffering meaningless desires and fornicating, then drowning it all in a soul-rotting slurry of alcohol and drugs. He’d had a blue Mercedes CLS in Peshawar, and the women who had come to him—what a life!
No, to be forgotten. He turned his mind back to the Crusaders. Filthy! Curse that CLS and the temptations it brought!
He felt something on his neck, and knew, then, that it was the boy’s hand. Wasim had laid a kindly hand on Aziz’s neck. He felt the light child’s touch, and the heart of the child also.
Wasim held him, then looked at his face. Solemnly Wasim lifted a corner of his thin coat and wiped Aziz’s cheeks, drying the tears that he had known would be there, that were always there after prayer.
Aziz smiled. “May Allah be with you, Wasim,” he said.
The boy muttered something.
“What is it you say, Wasim?”
“That’s not my name!”
The boy went away then, to the far side of the room. He worked a moment, then returned with a pomegranate sliced on a little tray.
Aziz took the food, and ate. “I have a message,” he said. He had thought long on this message. It must be one of two randomly chosen words, “purple” or “green.”
He would try now to find God in his mind. Would he see a horseman, a wandering beggar, an eagle rising in dawn light? There were many images of God in his mind, secret, impious things that had been there since he was a small boy and first praying and then wondering how this God who so dominated their lives must appear.
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