Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  His name was Michael Joy.

  One of Joy’s top assistants ran over suddenly and whispered in his right ear. “The U.S. President is speaking. He’s declaring war on Pakistan!”

  To the worried man, Joy nodded calmly, said only, “I understand.”

  In just moments, the world’s very first Judeo-Christian-Muslim sermon would begin. The singing, chanting music built, climbing — voices growing. Cameras panned the all-male choir, their white desert robes blowing in the breeze, images projected onto the mammoth video screens either side of the vast stage.

  The service call to prayer was being simulcast into nineteen countries. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan. And the host country, Pakistan.

  Nineteen. Sacred number of the Holy Qur’an.

  Some part of him wondered about the thousands waiting to welcome him. Or else, of course, to see him killed.

  Michael Joy’s very veins swelled in anticipation.

  It had all begun with his own modest Episcopalian-Mormon congregation in Tennessee. Does not the Qur’an accept the Torah as God’s word too? he’d asked. Isn’t the Jewish volume simply the first five books of the Old Testament? Aren’t the Qur’an and the Book of Mormon simply the Bible’s most recent updates — God’s most recently revealed Holy Word?

  He’d experimented for months, searching out the perfect words. Adding Torah to Qur’an. Joining the Bible’s Abrahamic family tribes. Flowing the Holy Scriptures through rediscovered histories of the Book of Mormon.

  On the flight over he had completed preparations for something revolutionary. Ground-breaking. Sermons that drew deep parallels between the Qur’an, Jewish Kabbalah, the Christian Bible, connecting these ancient books as one.

  He called it Unity of Joy.

  The music reached a tremendous emotional crescendo, its magnificent peak. Thousands held silent a single collective breath. The Gold Tablet has opened this door, he thought. Michael Joy steps through.

  Revealed in flowing white robes of the Muslim Imam, humbly, Joy walked to center stage, image filling the giant screens, dark hair shimmering, tan facial skin aglow, body illuminated by spotlights three stories tall.

  On his left hand he wore the six-sided star of David — Solomon’s golden ring the ancient king once used to control demons. In his right, he held the crooked shepherd’s staff Moses used to clear his people’s path across the waters of the Red Sea, escaping Egyptian persecution.

  Across the stadium, thousands whispered a single question: Could he be the Mahdi?

  “Welcome brothers — welcome sisters!” he included the burqa, hijàb-covered women far in back. Out of sight, he thought, where they cannot tempt or distract the men.

  “In the name of Most Merciful Allah, Praise be to Allah . . .” his voice boomed in clear, fluid, unaccented Arabic, amplified through a tiny microphone inside his headpiece. In a stadium designed to hold twenty-five thousand, forty thousand people jammed themselves into every conceivable space to kneel as Joy began the Muslim Lord’s Prayer.

  “Lord of all creatures; king of the Day of Judgment: Thee do we worship, and thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way, in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious; not of those against whom thou art incensed, nor of those who go astray . . . ”

  Joy rose and moved across the stage. “ . . . It is written: Dispute not against those who have received the scriptures, the PEOPLE OF THE BOOK . . .” his voice rose and fell.

  The crowd was waiting. For something. They knew not what . . .

  “ . . . If it be true we all are Abraham’s children, our God is ONE! People of the Book, Allah hath blessed us all in allowing me to come to you.” He paused. Silence hung heavy as he stared out across forty thousand faces.

  “Bring forth now . . . your crippled and your sick!” That thing for which they had been waiting — stressed in Joy’s numerous advertisements and posters — the healing part of the service. Now they would see. Holy man or charlatan, they would know.

  On crutches they came, up the side ramps, carried on stretchers, pushed in wheelchairs — too weak to make their own way. A parade of the coughing, the deformed and the damned.

  Just left of center stage, Joy leaned low, to a very old man, pushed by his middle-aged servant, he asked, “What do you seek?”

  He held the microphone to the old man’s lips. The old man shook his head.

  “WHAT DO YOU SEEK?” Joy boomed.

  Again the old man’s head moved back and forth. His servant leaned in cautiously. “He has been unable to speak or walk. For three years.”

  “Rise!” Joy commanded. “RISE AND SPEAK!”

  As if his lips were being pried apart, the old man’s mouth opened. “I — I cannot!” But before the shock had faded from his face, as though he could not stop himself, slowly, astonished, amazed, he rose — to his feet!

  Michael Joy took one step backward. The ancient man stumbled — Joy reached forth and firmly gripped his arm, and said unto him, “Peace be upon you brother!”

  Supported by his elbows, he was led by Joy and the man’s servant scuffling hesitantly to the stage’s side.

  A soft murmur broke free. Echoing across the stadium. Stronger, more vibrant. “Praise Allah!”

  “GIVE PRAISE TO ALLAH, THE ONE GOD IN HEAVEN!” Joy thundered back.

  It grew. “PRAISE ALLAH!” they thundered.

  A boy on crutches hobbled over from stage left.

  Joy’s neck bent, head drooping close. “What do you seek?” he asked.

  The boy’s four-story on-screen face replied doubtfully, “To walk.”

  From Islamic Hadith, Joy quoted softly, “The first that God ever created was the intellect. Is not the ink of the scholar more precious than the blood of the martyr? One learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand worshipers. Let us find this truth together! Separated and divided we have been for far too long. Now is the time for healing!

  “Does not Surah Forty-Seven tell us,” Joy continued, “Allah commandeth you to fight his battles, that he may prove one of you by the other? Allah hath commanded me! We PEOPLE OF THE BOOK must determine how much authority Allah to have given!”

  The implication was more than clear. Like drops of rain against a roof, a storm of voices rose to angry roar.

  Against Joy!

  Too far! His claims on posters had already been the cause of violent confrontation. Throughout Baghdad, Islamabad, Karachi, in the other cities, those places where Sunnis and Shi’as had been at each other’s throats for fourteen hundred years, these were words to incite war!

  Joy was a new demon, a jinni come to tear Islam into ever more pieces. The anger, the rage! Thousands of true believers cast their cries against him. Joy was claiming himself the spirit of the Prophet!

  And then a whizzing sound chewed fragments from the wood stage floor.

  The Mahdi

  Bullets!

  A wave of terror rolled through the crowd as the thousands sought to flatten themselves against the earth.

  Completely missing Joy, rounds slammed into the boy’s body. The crutches flew from his arms. He spun around, was thrown backward. Slid head-down on the stage stairs. A blotchy red stain spread across his chest.

  Joy leaped into the bullets’ path, guarding the fallen boy.

  “IF YOU WOULD SHOOT,” his voice boomed out, “SHOOT ME!”

  Wood chips flew on both sides. Not a single one struck the Prophet.

  The crowd froze. They saw! Joy moved not!

  As bullets slammed into the floor around him, he knelt by the lad. Fingers wide, Michael Joy calmly stretched out his palms. “Peace!” he commanded.

  “PEACE!”

  And the bullets ceased to come.

  Over the boy, Joy bowed forward his keffiyeh-covered head. Softly, quietly, his voice whispered, amplified for all to hear.r />
  “Oh Beneficent Allah. Oh Merciful Allah. On behalf of the Earth’s oppressed I come to you. Let us build this bridge! In the name of your servants before me — THESE, your PEOPLE OF THE BOOK! I beg you be with me!

  “Oh Adam, Idris, Noah, Heber. Salah and Abraham . . .” Joy’s voice blossomed, names of great Prophets of Islam and Christianity and Judaism pouring from his lips, “ . . . Lot and Ishmael and Ishaq. Jacob, Joseph, Job, Shoaib and Aaron . . .”

  Joy touched the dead youth’s shoulders. “ . . . Dhul-Kifl-Ezekiel, David, Solomon-Sulayman, Ilyas-Elijah. Al-Yasa-Elisha . . .”

  On the boy’s white shirt, the oval red blotch ceased to grow.

  Joy boomed: “Yunus-Jonah, Zakariya, Yahya-John, In the names of Isa-Jesus, Muhammad and Moses, PEACE BE UPON THEM ALL! If it be thy will, Al-Jalil — ALLAH THE HEALER — bestow your blessings upon this boy!”

  A sharp gasp echoed through the crowd. Across the huge video screens, the red began to shrink away.

  Smaller.

  Smaller still.

  It disappeared!

  The boy lay white and still. His robe clean for all to see.

  His eyes fluttered. They opened. A weak smile upon his lips.

  A hushed rumble grew across the stadium. Unto a roar!

  Joy raised his own arms wide. Head arched back unto the sky! “Oh Ar-Razzaq — Sustainer, Al-Azim — Magnificent Allah, we humbly, most humbly thank you!”

  He helped the boy to rise . . . to stand! Crutches were no longer necessary!

  As if the shadow of the moon reached out and touched them all, a hush overcame forty thousand voices. Stunned whispers . . .

  “Him?”

  “Him too?”

  “What is he doing here?”

  The first, tall and thin, the stern narrow face and heavy lips, his thick dark beard shot through with gray, was Iraq’s highest Shi’a cleric. And right now extremely controversial — ever since his appearance on Al Jazeera, his call for an end to all mut’ah fixed-term marriages; asking Shi’as everywhere for a joining with their Muslim Sunni brothers and sisters.

  To unify Al-Islam.

  The second, stocky with a heavy white beard, was Saudi Arabia’s leading Sunni Imam! He’d been missing a week now. Along with a mysterious golden tablet discovered by three pilgrims outside Mecca while on Hajj.

  Before the bombs detonated in America, in response to Joy’s television ads and posters plastered across the Middle East, the two leaders had been Michael Joy’s most vocal public adversaries. Even more importantly, these two religious men had for years actively hated each other!

  Together they strode, elbows bent to the weight raised above their heads. They carried something large and flat, glinting in the stage lights.

  A tablet, its words cut centuries before.

  In gold!

  The stocky white-bearded Sunni Imam spoke first: “My first thought: This shooter is surely Shi’a!”

  The Shi’a mullah’s voice added in a forceful whisper, “And my first thought: The attackers must be Sunni!”

  As one they pointed to Michael Joy.

  “Sunni am I no more! I stand as Imam for the New PROPHET!”

  “Shi’a no more! Peace be unto the new-day PROPHET MICHAEL JOY!”

  Together they pushed the Golden Plate still higher. “The Golden Surah has been fulfilled!”

  Then suddenly on the stage, shimmering in the light, a young boy of five or six appeared, as if a ghost. The thousands saw right through him.

  He wore a dark robe, a rich green scarf upon his head. His feet did not seem to touch the floor. His forehead was broad with the look of one years senior to himself.

  In his hands he carried a large curved sword. “Hidden away have I been, more than a thousand years!” His voice was young, yet filled with wisdom:

  “It is my time! I, Al-Muntadhar — the Awaited One. Al-Hujjah — the Proof, Al-Ghā’ib — the Unseen One. It is I, born son of the 11th Imam, Hasan al-Askari, descendant of Prophet Muhammad, son of Fatima — I, Muhammad Abu’l Qasim, al-Māhdī — the Guided One. I have returned, to ask you to forbid what is evil!”

  He put the side of the curved blade to his knee. As if nothing, the blade exploded! Its shattered pieces fell, chips of steel to the floor.

  Humbled voices rose. “The Twelfth Imam returns!”

  “He has come!”

  At the young boy’s right, into existence shimmered the spirit of an incredibly handsome full-bearded man. He too wore a dark green scarf upon his head, the dark robe flowed from his shoulders. Not a living soul had ever seen him. Yet every person knew his face.

  Cries went up. Sunni Islam’s fourth Caliph, Shi’a Islam’s first Imam, “ALI!”

  “Ali returns!”

  “ALI!”

  The eyes of the ghost stared out severely. In a dark Arabic accent, ages old, he did say, “Allah brings now many changes to the world.”

  The young Mahdi joining his voice with Ali’s, they implored together: “Let there be an end to killing. Shi’a no more! Sunni no more! Embrace that which is the good! Join the new Prophet: Michael Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Husan Ali — MICHAEL JOY!”

  The spirit of the man, the shimmer of the boy, merged into Joy, winked away. The stage went dark. Thousands of human voices exploded unto one.

  A spotlight cut through. Joy knelt down. To Mecca.

  In every space across the stadium they followed prostrate against the ground, praying, giving thanks. They knew. They could see! Joy claimed no divinity for himself.

  They would do the rest.

  Through His Golden Tablet, His Golden Surah’s words cut upon it, Allah had called forth this modern Prophet in the person of Michael Joy.

  A Light In The Sky

  “Confirmed, Mr. President,” a voice replied to the command just given. “Mr. Secretary?”

  The Cheyenne Mountain side of the phone connection was shared over a speaker by three people: U.S. Joint Chiefs’ Chair Admiral Thompson, Secretary of Defense Scanlon and President Christopher Wall. Marc Praeger sat quietly on the sofa in the corner.

  “Secretary of Defense Scanlon speaking . . .” The Secretary rattled off a series of numbers.

  The encrypted satellite connection’s other end terminated halfway around the Earth, three hundred miles southwest of Mumbai, India — down inside U.S. nuclear submarine George Bush (formerly USS Texas), waiting quietly thirty meters beneath the rolling swell of a midnight Arabian Sea. In the Bush’s Con, standing at the launch console, Commander Merlin Dinkowitz shared a speaker with his Executive Officer.

  “ID confirmed,” Dinkowitz’s XO replied, according to protocol. “The code is correct. And the order, Mr. Secretary?”

  Every one of the twelve men in the Bush’s Control Room held his breath. Six feet in diameter, Number Two Door in the boat’s upper hull was already open. Without a confirming order the entire sequence would be shut down, terminated as if never given.

  “This is Scanlon. The order . . .”

  Scanlon’s voice trailed off and everyone in the Bush’s Con could feel the Secretary’s pause as if it were an actual, physical thing; their breath all paused with him.

  A fat tear dripped from the corner of Christopher Wall’s twitching eye. “Those bastards,” he whispered.

  “The order — is confirmed,” Scanlon said sharply. “I repeat, the President’s order is confirmed.”

  “Order confirmed,” the Bush’s XO said back.

  Commander Dinkowitz and his Exec locked eyes, right hands bunched up, ready, against the launch console. The commander counted: “THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE.” Both he and the XO turned their missile keys. To the man seated between the two standing senior officers, the commander nodded.

  Ensign David Child extended his hand, and as his two fingers touched the one-inch-diameter round plastic button labeled 2, he hesitated.

  It was only a moment, perhaps five hundred milliseconds or so, but in that hesitation it seemed as if time expanded.


  David knew what he was about to do, knew the button’s quarter-inch depression would trigger release of a missile waiting, hot, in Tube Number Two, that the missile would launch straight up, burst from the water, follow a trajectory nearly into outer space, coast slowly rotating, and return on a downward arc. David had heard the coordinates called out as their input was confirmed and knew exactly where its warhead was headed, and he knew when it got there what would happen. And in his hesitation David had time to remember hearing the story from his own childhood of pilot Charles Sweeney, who, in the last few minutes before taking his seat to fly Bockscar, the plane that delivered the atomic weapon that would kill thousands of Japanese men, women and children, the last thing Sweeney did was to see a priest.

  David Child had no time for a priest, only milliseconds of hesitation in which to ponder, to picture the millions of lives he was about to end. Only milliseconds to assure himself that in the long chain that led up to him, here in this moment, to this button, that he was only one man.

  Only milliseconds — before the years of training took over. David pushed the button.

  A shudder ran through the long boat.

  Emerging from the waters above with a whoosh and a roar, a bright torch of death tore into the sky.

  Contradiction

  From his desk in the Hoover Building, FBI Director Charles Line watched a recording of Wall’s announcement of impending attack on Pakistan.

  “What the hell is the President doing?” Line whispered. He still hadn’t heard back from Chief of Staff Marc Praeger.

  “I’ve got an intermittent satellite connection with Lance Bolini,” someone called from the hall outside Line’s door.

  Line hit a button on his desk. “Hello? Lance? You there?”

  A voice whispered, “Director Line! We’ve got live video streaming to you as we speak.”

  “Video?” Line looked to his aide.

  “Monitor two, sir.” Line’s aide pointed to a panel on the wall. The image came up grainy but in color. A series of huge blue garbage trucks roared past.