"Why do you not seize the owner of this device and wrest the secret word from him?"
"We have yet to trace him. And I have the system, not the owner here. And I am determined to crack it."
"You say the owner of the box is an Arab?"
"Yes."
"A cattle or city Arab?"
"I have no idea. His name is Al Ladeen."
"Ah, a cattle Arab. Bedouin are very colorful in their language."
"There is no telling what password he employed. It could be a name from the Koran or The Arabian Nights or anywhere at all."
"Could the secret word be more than one word?"
"Yes, it could."
"Inscribe 'Iftah ya simsim,'" said Chiun, slowly stroking his wispy beard.
"What?"
"'Iftah ya simsim.' Cattle Arabs have employed it for centuries in their secret intrigues."
"Hah," said Remo. "Fat chance this is going to work."
"Hush. You know nothing of these matters, counter of ribs."
"I am willing to try anything," said Smith. "Please spell the phrase, Master Chiun."
Chiun did. Smith input the English approximation, activated the conversion program and in a moment the Arabic script equivalent to the words Iftah ya simsim appeared in the wake of the blinking amber cursor, which moved right to left, the direction Arabic script was read.
The screen winked out. Instantly music emanated from the system.
"What is this?" asked Chiun.
"It's a song," said Remo. "Sounds like harem music."
"It is of no importance," said Chiun. "For we have succeeded in our task."
Remo shot out of his seat. "What? This I gotta see!"
"Hold," said Chiun. "Emperor Smith has not given you leave to join us behind his royal table."
"Remo may join us," said Smith.
"If you deem it fitting," said Chiun in a thin voice. He eyed Remo unhappily.
Remo stared into the desk. "Don't you get neck strain from looking into this thing all day?" he asked Smith.
Smith didn't reply. He was eyeing the black screen expectantly as the hauntingly familiar music tinkled. Abruptly a new screen appeared. It showed Arabic script for several seconds, then changed.
"What did it say?" Smith asked Chiun.
"It said, 'Here dwell the secrets of Al Ladeen. Infidels and idolators turn back before it is too late for you.'"
"That name sounds familiar," Remo said.
"Yes, it does," Smith agreed.
"I have heard Western tongues mangle the worthy name 'Al Ladeen' into the corrupted 'Aladdin,'" Chiun offered.
"Al Ladeen-Aladdin?" Smith blurted.
"Yes."
"Obviously a false name," Smith said.
"No," Chiun said. "'Aladdin' is the false name. 'Al Ladeen' is correct."
A new screen appeared.
"What is this?" asked Smith.
Chiun read the screen. "Verses from the Koran. The prayer Muslims call the Fatiha-or the Opening."
"Is it 'Muslims' or 'Moslems'?" Remo asked. "'Muslim' means 'believer,'" said Chiun. "'Moslem' means 'cruel.' Muslims are very sensitive about being called Moslems."
"I'm going to have to remember that next time someone tries to blow up the Holland Tunnel," Remo said dryly.
That screen lasted nearly a minute, then a third screen came on. It was a thick forest of Arabic. "What is this?" asked Smith.
Chiun frowned like a mummy drying. "It is not words,"
"What do you mean?"
"The script has no meaning. It is only gibberish."
"It must mean something,"
Remo looked at it, then pulled back. "You know, from this angle it looks like someone's made a pattern."
"I see no pattern," said Smith.
"Nor do I," said Chiun.
"Well, I do," said Remo.
"What is it?"
"A bird's head."
"I see no bird," sniffed Chiun. "You are imagining things."
"Sure, see the beak? Looks like an eagle."
Smith said, "I see nothing like a beak."
"That's because you have the imagination of a toothpick. See-this is the beak. This is the eye. And this dark area here is a kind of frame for the eagle's head."
"I see no eagle," said Smith, adjusting his rimless glasses.
"Take it from me," said Remo. "That's an eagle."
"It is a hawk," said Chiun. "I see a hawk."
"Eagle. It's the national bird."
"And it is composed of Arabic symbols. Therefore, it is a hawk."
"I see an eagle, and nothing you can say will make me change my mind."
"Let me see if I can convert this to English," Smith said thoughtfully.
"Don't waste your time, Smitty. It's a graphic." Smith ran the program. The script soon converted into a meaningless nest of English letters with no meaning.
"Do either of you see a pattern now?" asked Smith.
"Well, it's fuzzier than it was, but I still see an eagle's head inside of a rectangle," said Remo.
"It is possibly a falcon," said Chiun. "Falcons were employed by sheikhs of old for sport and hunting."
"If that's a falcon, I'm a toad," Remo said firmly.
"You are a toad who peeps nonsense," scoffed Chiun.
Smith squinted at the screen thoughtfully. "A hitherto-unknown terrorist group called the Eagles of Allah claimed responsibility for today's bombings."
"According to the news, they're discounting the Arab-terrorist theory," Remo argued.
"They have good reason to," said Smith. "The bombs appear to have been planted by an employee of the US. Postal Service."
"Yeah? Now, that makes sense to me. Muslim terrorists can't bomb their way out of a soiled diaper, but I wouldn't put anything past a disgruntled postman."
"The man who owned this system was a postal worker," said Smith.
"Well, he's gotta be one thing or the other but not both, right?"
Harold Smith ignored Remo's question. "This system appears to be hung up on this screen," he muttered.
"Try the secret word again," suggested Chiun. Nodding, Smith began inputting the command.
"What is this secret word anyway?" Remo asked Chiun as Smith worked.
Chiun fluttered a casual sleeve. "That is for me to know and you to find out. When you are Reigning Master, I may share this important information with you, which makes the Master of Sinanju more intelligent than the mightiest oracle."
"It sounds like simsim salabim, but that can't be it."
"I do not know that phrase," said Chiun, face puckering.
"You grew up before cartoons," said Remo. "Hey, Smith, don't look now, but I think something's happening."
The eagle graphic suddenly exploded, clearing the screen. In its place were columns of filenames. They were in English.
"What's this stuff?" Remo asked.
Smith scanned the columns. "Standard-data processing and Net-access programs. I do not recognize these columns."
"These are the names of the books of the Koran," said Chiun.
Smith pulled up a file at random.
"Yes, the Koran," Chiun said. "These are verses. And this portion is a list of the ninety-nine names of God."
"'God the Avenger'?" said Remo, reading one aloud.
Smith closed down the file. He tried others. They were books of the Koran, as well.
Frowning, Smith leaned back in his chair. "It appears to be empty of useful information."
"What I want to know is what's the secret word?" asked Remo.
Smith appeared to be intrigued by the same question. Inputting the word in a fresh file, he accessed his conversion program.
"'Open sesame,'" said Smith. "Very clever, Master Chiun."
Chiun beamed at Remo as if to say I am smarter than you.
"You wish," Remo whispered back.
Abruptly Smith said, "Perhaps there are files stored on Ladeen's e-mail server."
Smith brought up the Net-connection program an
d waited for the system to dial in. It took only forty-five seconds, and the speedy right-to-left cursor traced a skyline out of The Arabian Nights, complete with lofty minarets.
A flowing legend read Welcome To The Gates Of Paradise.
Once again Smith was confronted by a password prompt.
"'Iftah ya simsim' has worked so far," suggested Remo.
Smith input the phrase, hitting Enter. He got a "login incorrect" message.
"We are stymied," he said.
"That's your cue, Chiun," Remo suggested. The Master of Sinanju made a face.
"Try 'Aladdin,'" said Remo suddenly.
"That will never work."
"It can't hurt," said Smith, who typed the name "Aladdin" and hit Enter.
The system hesitated, the screen went blank and they held their breaths in unison.
Then an e-mail menu appeared.
"It worked," Smith said in surprise.
Behind his back, Remo stuck his tongue out at the Master of Sinanju, who looked away from the rude display in disgust.
Smith keyed his way through the corridors of the e-mail files, finally reaching a list of folders that included Saved Mail, Sent Mail and Messages. He placed the cursor on Messages and opened the electronic file folder.
The incoming messages were logged in numerical order by date, sender, user name and subject heading.
"Jihad Jones?" said Remo, reading a name at random.
"Obviously a pseudonym."
"No kidding," Remo commented. "Are you sure?" Other names were equally unlikely. There was an Ibrahim Lincoln, a Yassir Nossair, a Mohamet Ali, a Sid el-Cid, a Patrick O'Shaughnessy O'Mecca and others just as odd. Only one name seemed plausible at first glance. Remo pointed to it. "Try that guy. Yusef Gamal. He looks like he might be real."
"Pah!" said Chiun. "It is obviously false."
"What's phony about the name 'Yusef Gamal'?" asked Remo.
"That is for me to know and you to ponder, wild guesser."
"'Yusef' is the Arabic equivalent to the Christian 'Joseph,'" Smith explained. "The last name I confess strikes me as familiar, as if I have heard it before."
"The only thing it reminds me of is 'camel,'" said Remo.
Chiun became very still.
Remo and Smith hit it at the same time. Their eyes met and they said, "Joseph Camel?"
"Argh," said Chiun.
"Well, we know one thing," said Remo. "No terrorist with all his marbles is walking around the U.S. of A. calling himself Joe Camel."
"That would seem to be inescapable," Smith said unhappily.
"Yes, for once Remo is correct," Chiun chimed in. "There is no such person as Yusef Gamal."
Chapter 10
Al Ladeen cruised the streets of the capital of idolatry, New York, blending with the flow of traffic. Here, mixing with the other vehicles emblazoned with the fierce eagle of the United States Postal Service as they jockeyed to outperform their hated foes-the Federal Express, the UPS, Roadway, DHL, and others-he was all but invisible to searching police eyes.
The coils of black smoke that he had authored with his well-placed bombs were graying now. Soon they would be but sweet, acrid memories. The tumult that was to go down in the history of the world as the last works of the brave martyr, Allah Ladeen, was subsiding.
It was sad. But at least the dead were still dead. They would never stop being dead.
And now it was time to make more dead.
As he turned onto Fifth Avenue, and the tall gray teeth of the General Post Office came into view, Al Ladeen drew in his last breath of victory and wrapped about his lower face a green checkered kaffiyeh.
It was the appointed hour. Time for the last great blow Allah Ladeen was destined to strike in his life. Pressing the accelerator to the floor, he urged the white mail truck to hurry. It raced past the traffic-choked side streets, oblivious to the red lights, unheeding of the blaring cars and cursing pedestrians who scrambled from its careening path.
When he came abreast of the great granite temple from which he had left on his appointed rounds that morning, he flung the wheel to the left and with a glad cry of "Allah Akbari!" Allah Ladeen sent his blessed steed crashing into the immovable granite face.
And, Allah be blessed, the immovable granite moved!
But Allah Ladeen was ignorant of the miracle. He had already been catapulted into Paradise. Although, the truth be known, his body parts were scattered all over Fifth Avenue.
Chapter 11
The postal manager of Oklahoma City was in his office when the first sketchy word came in.
"There's trouble in the new federal building," the assistant manager gasped out.
"Jesus Christ!" Postal Manager Ivan Heydorn said, at first thinking the worst. "It's not a bomb. Tell me it isn't a bomb."
"It's a shooting," said the assistant manager. Manager Heydorn relaxed in his executive chair. "Of course. It can't be a bomb. We'd have heard a bomb, now, wouldn't we?"
"Someone walked into open court and opened fire with a machine gun."
"Terrible, just terrible," the manager said, visibly relieved. He had been sitting in this very seat when the old Murrah building had been blown to kingdom come. What a god-awful day that had been. His chair had tipped over on its casters, throwing him backward. He had come off the floor thinking an earthquake was shaking the building.
An earthquake would have been a blessing. An earthquake would have been an act of God. In the early hours after the terrible truth had come out-that the Murrah Federal Building had been demolished by a truck bomb-the talk had naturally turned to Muslim fundamentalists.
It took three days for the truth to begin trickling out. That Americans had done it. It was unbelievable. Staggering in its enormity. The real enemy dwelled within the heartland of America.
"How many are hurt?" the manager asked his assistant, shaking off the dark, claustrophobic memories.
"No one knows. But they're calling it a massacre." Hearing this, the manager buried his face in his hands. It was unreal.
"How much pain can this poor town absorb?" he said shakily.
For an hour, the bulletins crackled over the office radio.
An unknown assailant. No one had seen him. Or if they had, they hadn't noticed anything unusual about him. He had mingled with the returning lunch crowd and shot up the courtroom and everyone in it. It was senseless. Brutal, senseless carnage.
By three in the afternoon, they were reporting a survivor. Someone had seen something. The FBI was being tight-lipped about it and had imposed a media blackout. The FBI had come in because a federal building had been targeted. Everyone assumed it was a deranged claimant shooting up a court that had done him wrong.
No one in his right mind would attack the new federal building in Oklahoma City.
At exactly 3:15, the desk intercom buzzed, and his assistant manager's voice said, "FBI Agent Odom to see you, sir."
"Send him right in," the manager said, snapping off his office radio.
The man was as big as a refrigerator and to-the-point. "Special Agent Odom."
"Have a seat."
"I'll just need a moment. This is about one of your carriers."
"My God. He wasn't caught in the shooting over there?"
"No, he wasn't."
"Is he the witness they're talking about?"
"No. We think he might be the perpetrator."
"Perp- You can't mean the killer!"
"A security guard lived long enough to say the man who walked into the courtroom and massacred all those poor people was wearing a postal-service uniform."
"That can't be. It just can't."
The agent flipped open a pocket notebook. "Description as follows. Five feet seven, dark eyes, curly brown hair, prominent nose."
"How prominent?"
"Very."
"Sounds like Camel."
The agent began writing. "'Camel' as in 'dromedary'?"
"Yes, yes. But this makes no sense to me." The FBI agent was unmoved.<
br />
"First name?"
"Joe."
"Joe Camel?"
"Yes."
"You have a letter carrier named Joe Camel working for you?"
"Well, I didn't name him. Oh, good Lord, it sounds phony, doesn't it?"
"How long has he been with you?"
"Less than a year."
"No sign of psychotic behavior before today?"
"He was perfectly normal."
"Except that his name was Joe Camel," The FBI agent said, grimacing.
"Look, I know how it sounds, but that was his name."
"Do you have a photograph of the subject, Camel?"
"No. But he shouldn't be hard to locate. Not with that nose of his."
"I'll need to see his personnel file."
"You have it, Agent Odom," said the postmaster of Oklahoma City, buzzing his assistant manager. "Sherry, pull Joseph Camel's file. And get the PG on the line."
Special Agent Odom cocked an eyebrow. "The PG?"
"The postmaster general. I have to report this"
"You might want to wait," Agent Odom said, flipping his notebook closed. "I think he has his hands full today."
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you hear about the bombings in New York City this afternoon?"
"Bombings?"
"A string of relay boxes exploded all at once. They're looking for a postal relay driver. Guy named Ladeen. I think his first name was Al."
"Al Ladeen ... That sounds familiar somehow."
"I thought the same thing myself. Can't place it, though."
The assistant manager walked in at that point with a manila file folder and said, "The line to the PG is busy. Shall I keep trying?"
"Leave a message that I called. I understand the PG is having a very bad day."
THE POSTMASTER GENERAL of the United States was having fits. He kicked over the office wastepaper basket. He rammed his chair against a wall so hard it bounced back and took a bite out of his heavy desk, knocking over a desktop sign that said "Protect the Revenue."
It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and the urgent calls and faxes had been coming in since 1:00 p.m. First it was the postmaster of New York.
"We have a serious problem up here, sir."
"I'm listening, New York."
"Er, it appears that one of our relay boxes-"
"Out with it."
"-has exploded."
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