“What’re you working on, Deutsch?”
“Our backyard.”
“Do you not want me here?”
“No.”
The president felt anger flush his face, but Deutsch was too valuable to fire, or even snarl at. Fitz told himself that this wasn’t like being slighted by some senator or prime minister. The man was just some professional killer, after all, a guy from the depths one preferred would remain hidden. After this was over, he’d slip back into the shadows. Fitz knew the type.
“If I don’t communicate with the Syrians, we risk the loss of Jerusalem, Mr. Deutsch.”
Deutsch didn’t even look up from his work. “Think,” he said absently. “Sir.”
“You don’t like me, do you?”
Now Deutsch did stop. “That’s a typically American question, you know that? We’re obsessed with being liked. Most people in most cultures don’t give a rat’s ass. So forget that and consider this: if the new Mahdi discovers he’s being drawn into a bluff, the world blows up.”
“If he finds out. And I might save Jerusalem, for God’s sake.”
“You take that risk, you’re a fool.”
“You don’t care if you’re liked by me? That could matter.”
“Look, what’s happening in here is war fighting, okay, so I don’t have time to stroke you. Thank you. Sir.”
“Do you have anything for me?”
Deutsch seemed to freeze. “Sir, when we do, you will be called. Obviously. Thank you!”
“In other words, get out.”
“Go upstairs and do your crazy-man routine. Lay it on. The weaker you look, the more lives get saved.”
“I’ll do Lear. I’ve always wanted to do Lear.”
“Fine. Good-bye.”
Fitz nodded to Deutsch. Stepped back. “Thank you. Everybody.” He might as well have been in an empty room, for all the reaction he got.
He left, off to do his duty and range the halls of the White House, smiling and muttering for the listening devices that might be there, and hoping to God that the plan that had been evolved mattered.
31
THE OCCULTATION
OF THE MAHDI
No man might know how Allah, in the infinity of his wisdom and the limitlessness of his power, hid his guided one, only those who received the ancient spirit of the Mahdi into their unworthy bodies. The great secret of Inshalla was that for hundreds of years the Mahdi had moved in spiritual form from one human receptacle to another, each chosen by heaven for Allah’s own reasons. Aziz had been Mahdi, but now Aziz was dead, killed by women who had been invaded by demons, and who had themselves been killed by corrupt policemen greedy for Crusader gold.
So Eshan had come to this old madrassa, to this old man, Syed Ahmad, following a prearranged instruction.
There were vines here, which Eshan thought were more ancient than this city but not more ancient than its founders, who had come down from the Kush carrying the vines of the blue flowers. They had called this the City of Flowers, and he could imagine them, in their silks and their furs, the fragile, cloudlike clothing of the ancients, tending their blossoms.
Syed Ahmad was not a sophisticate, as Aziz had been. He was not a lover of luxury. He knew the Book, though, far better than Aziz had. When Syed Ahmad spoke, there was music in it, the secret music that only the greatest scholars could ever express, and here he was in this little school, the master of a few boys, who would sit about only half-listening to his genius, their eyes flickering like all eyes to the glitter of life and the lure of the West.
Eshan watched him chew his food and wag his head, his dirty clothes reeking of tobacco and unwashed years. Eshan did not want to serve him, but he could see that the Mahdi was indeed in Syed Ahmad. So he was, literally, the embodiment of the Mahdi now. None knew how the choice was made. Somehow, Inshalla did it . . . and perhaps, Eshan thought, the Russians had a hand in it. He was not blind to political reality. He understood that Allah worked through men, and therefore also through their politics.
The Russians were more clever than the Americans, certainly, but they could not begin to understand the workings of Allah in the world, could they? This was why the assassins they had sent after Aziz had been, themselves, assassinated. It was because God had needed Aziz to come here to the City of Flowers—thick today, though, with smog, and clattering and roaring with vehicles leaving, with demonstrators and police speeding around in trucks. Shots echoed up and down the streets, disturbing the quiet of this ancient place, too.
“Now,” Syed Ahmad said, standing up from his table in his dining room with its dangling bulb and dirty carpet, and its blue mosaic ceiling a memory—faint—of the dome of the sky. “Here we are when the great event comes to pass.” He went across to a sideboard made of black, fragrant wood, and pulled a small banana from a bunch that lay there in a brass bowl. “And banana trees, with fruit—do you know it? Ah, Eshan, you shake your head. The Book must be in your blood, in your body. People of the Book, my son, that’s what it means. Your discourse must be filled with the Book; thus you only speak from your true heart, which is Allah’s house in you.”
“I have not memorized the Quran.”
The new Mahdi wagged his head from side to side, reminding Eshan of a great ship swaying on the sea, his white beard its sail. But sails were not stained with tobacco, were they? “Then you’re illiterate,” he said.
“Oh yes, in the Book. But I can read. I speak and write in English, too.”
The Mahdi shook a blunt finger. “Useful, useful. Were you, then, schooled by the English?”
Eshan smiled. “They were before my time, Master. Actually, I’m an American. I went to school in New York. Brooklyn, New York.”
“Your faith has been well tested. Have you done hajj?”
“I have. Master, may I now ask you a question?”
Syed took off his glasses and rubbed them with a small blue cloth. For such a dirty man, this new Mahdi was surprisingly fastidious. An orderly nature, as befitted a scholar. He smiled, then, his beard bobbing beneath his long nose. “What is your question?”
“Did you feel it, when you became Mahdi?”
He laughed. He laughed loud. So loud, it began to make Eshan angry, causing him to feel as if he was being mocked. “You do not become Mahdi. The guided one simply opens his eyes. Within me, within you. It doesn’t matter. Look at Aziz. He had business suits and hair pomade, I hear.”
“Until we went to Pamir, he had a Mercedes convertible. He was the toast of Tehran.” Eshan paused for a moment. “He drank. He smoked hashish.”
“Allah is merciful.”
“But . . . how are you chosen? Why did I have your address? Why did you expect me?”
“What do you think? That this would all happen by virtue of the breeze? But speak no more of it.”
When they came down to Peshawar, a boy had brought Eshan this name and address, so he had done as he had been instructed, and come to this place as soon as he saw that Aziz was being killed. But . . . had the women been ordered to kill Aziz? Perhaps that Persian catamite was involved, that wretched child, sent as a spy from who knew who? He was no student, apprenticed to Aziz by a loving father, that shadow-slipping boy with his seductive hands.
The women and the catamite had, in their turns, been killed. Somebody cleaning up after themselves, Eshan assumed, in this world where nothing was as it seemed.
On the way to Syed, Eshan had passed through the street of the shoemakers, as the note had instructed. He’d felt nothing but had afterward discovered something in his pocket. An Olympus recorder with a full tape in it.
“I have the recording, Master.”
“Oh, that’s good. And is the trap lying open? Have they stepped in?”
Eshan had no idea how to answer this, so he turned on the recorder to let the Mahdi listen. There was the usual creaking and popping. Syed Ahmad raised his eyebrows.
“He puts on the suit jacket. The transmitters are located in the jackets. Wov
en into the cloth by—”
The master held up his hand. “I do not need to know this.”
President Fitzgerald’s voice came through. “Better,” it said. “Now I look like a corpse that’s pretending to be alive.”
“What is this?” the master asked.
“How is your English, Mahdi?”
“My English is from school, but I still don’t understand this sentence. How is he pretending? He is alive.”
“It’s not important. He talks only to his wife.”
Then, more faintly, Linda Fitzgerald’s voice: “Where’s that paladin of yours?” Then the daughter’s voice came, speaking of the “guy with the Muslim wife.”
“And all of this means?”
“ ‘Paladin’ means a hero or champion. He must have an operative that he trusts who has a Muslim wife.”
“But not himself Muslim? How strange, to be so close to the faith and not desire it.”
“Americans are strange.”
“This faithless husband needs stoning.”
Then the president’s voice came again: “Are the spiders in the web?”
“What does he say?”
“He refers to his viziers. He does not trust them.”
There was a clunk, then the sound of shuffling. “He enters the Cabinet Room. They come to their feet. Now, listen.”
The president spoke for a moment, saying that he would do the “Allah two-step.”
“The Allah two-step? That is a term of respect?”
“It is not a term of respect.”
“Then his acceptance of the faith was not sincere?”
The entire world had seen his acceptance of Islam. “That I cannot say. Certainly he is angry. But that’s to be expected. Islam becomes very quickly a habit of soul. This is why, once converted, so few fall away from the faith. But it’s hard for them at first. You know.”
“Yes, Eshan, very well. What is next?”
“The acceptance, which you saw.”
“Yes, and then what did he say in his privacy?”
“For twenty minutes, nothing. The signal was lost for a time.”
“Ah. Why is that?”
“You hear him walking, then a whirring sound, then static. Ten minutes later, the whirring again, then he walks, speaking . . . some sort of declamation.”
“May I listen?”
Eshan sped the tape forward until he heard the peeping of speech again. When he slowed the machine, the president’s voice returned: “ ‘Come, let’s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news . . . ’ ” Then he laughed, muttered, and went on declaiming.
“This means what?”
“Master, this is unknown to me. It’s in a old form of English. Perhaps a poem.”
The master looked at him, then stood and went across the broad room, his stockinged feet whispering on the weathered blue mosaic. “It is said that the devil is a mule, Eshan. Do you know of that saying?”
“No, Master.”
He chuckled. “This American devil is indeed such a creature—stubborn without cause, mean out of his deepest nature, habitually cruel.” He pointed a finger at Eshan, a long finger, the nail pale sculpted ivory. “Mind me, he knows very well that we are listening, and I tell you this—what we want to hear is what he said when the static was on. This is when he spoke the truth.” He waved the hand, opening it as if freeing a bird to the air. “All we have heard is a lie.”
“He has not embraced the faith?”
“He has not.”
Eshan tried to understand. “Then, Master . . . is he mad?”
“But of course, mad not to take the hand of Allah when it is extended to him. In his madness, I am afraid he leads the world further down the Crusader path, and all else is lies.”
“What is to be done?”
“All things come to him who waits.”
“That is a saying of the Jews.”
“Who respects the Jews has their measure. We will now punish Washington.”
“We cannot accomplish this at present.”
“Ah, no? You think not? I think that Allah has fixed that which was broken, my son, because Allah knew that the time to punish the Crusader capital was not two nights ago. It is now.”
His dark eyes twinkled, and Eshan knew that the Mahdi truly had entered Syed, for how otherwise could he possibly have such insight?
Syed laughed. “You wear your puzzlement so clearly, Eshan, you of the hopping eyebrows!” The laughter extended, then faded to a gentle sadness. “A carpet, Eshan, is woven of many threads. You are but one thread.”
“Then we are proceeding against Washington, Master?”
“It saddens my heart, that so many must suffer for the obstinacy of so few.”
Eshan tried to contain the explosion of joy that came up within him, but the sheer intensity of it caused a ripple of delighted laughter—whereupon the master gave him a slap with a hand as soft as a woman’s. There was no real pain, but he turned his head aside, bowing to the shame. “Forgive me, Master.”
“Tell me, do you miss Aziz?”
This question frightened Eshan, because there could be no right answer.
The Mahdi gave him that charming smile, then touched his cheek. “Sometimes he worked for Mr. Deutsch, you know. Sometimes for the Russians. Did you know?”
Eshan struggled to quell his hammering heart. If there was the slightest suspicion of him, his life was over. “I killed the Russian contact with my own hands,” he said. “I slit his throat.”
Syed Ahmad smiled brightly. “Now come and help me pack and move, for it is certain that the Americans will unleash Dream Angel the moment that our beloved bomb detonates. We must hide among their running dogs, or we will be burned with the faithful.”
“Do we not desire martyrdom?”
“Of course we do, but we have work to do for Allah; we cannot yet allow ourselves to inhale the sweet scent of heaven.”
Eshan remembered the death of Aziz, and for the first time the thought touched his mind that this man might have been behind it, somehow. When the eyes twinkled again, Eshan saw something behind the merry glitter, a stillness of a sort he had seen just once before, but unforgettably. It had been in India. He had been walking along a path by a stream. It was twilight. In a field nearby, children were playing soccer, their voices echoing. He’d seen, beyond the path, something so still that he thought at first that it was a statue. Another instant, though, and he realized that the gold he was seeing belonged to the eyes of a tiger. It was watching the children. They were only Hindus, so he had hurried on.
Syed Ahmad of the tiger’s eyes stood. “Nowadays there is never enough time for tea!” He swept off into the deeper parts of the house, Eshan going quickly behind.
32
A LEG UP
As Rashid entered Alexandria, he became careful, and then very careful. There were few people about, most of them either gone or respecting the curfew. He did not doubt that there was a bulletin out for him by now. Once they lost him, they would be beside themselves, putting all of their resources to work. Would his own supporters keep him safe? They were salted here and there, two in the FBI that he was aware of, certainly a few more in the CIA, in Homeland Security, in the National Intelligence Office, cutting false orders, diverting real ones.
He’d spent the day sitting in his car listening to the radio news and watching to see how the local police patrols were organized. When he’d heard Fitzgerald sniveling about his conversion, Rashid had instantly known that Allah had granted Washington these additional hours precisely so that the cowardice of the Crusader king could be revealed to the whole world. Allah, beloved father, was always a step ahead of the devil.
Rashid drove until he found an indoor parking garage, then went in deep. He parked the car and cli
mbed the stairs to street level, where he watched the sparse traffic for a time without stepping out. When he did so, he kept his head down. It was a long chance, but a skilled analyst could come close to identifying a specific individual, if the target was looking up at just the right moment. He had personally made Osama bin Laden four times. Nothing had happened, though.
Rashid had never met Bilal and Hani Aboud, the Moroccans who were responsible for this most important of all the bombs. How it was that Inshalla had chosen them, Rashid did not know. Obviously, though, something was not right.
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