The policeman thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No need to do that,” he said. “I’m glad to work with the FBI. Go ahead.”
“Thanks,” Art replied.
Art crossed the street and joined the crowd. Just inside the doors were several ushers greeting the arrivals, handing out pew sheets and directing them to specific aisles.
“Damn,” Art said under his breath. “How am I going to find them?”
Art’s confusion stemmed from the fact that there were many Muslims in the arriving crowd of worshipers. They were wearing traditional Islamic dress, blending in with the Jews, some of whom were in traditional dress, and the Christians. In front of the church, and in the foyer, all were greeting each other.
“Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!” Bixby was calling to the arrivals. “All men and women of faith are welcome here, in this, our celebration of the universal worship of God.”
Standing with the Reverend Jay Bixby were a Roman Catholic priest, a rabbi, and an iman, and they joined Bixby in extending greetings to all who came by them on their way into the church.
Art started toward the balcony.
“Here, no need to go up there,” one of the ushers called. “There are still plenty of seats downstairs.”
“I prefer the balcony,” Art said.
The usher shrugged his shoulders. “Have it your way,” he said. He held out a church bulletin. “First time here?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have a reception after the service for our first-time visitors. It’ll be in the Esther Room,” he said, pointing. “I do hope you can come.”
“Thanks,” Art said, taking the bulletin and starting up the stairs to the balcony.
Art took a seat in the very front row of the balcony. From here he had a panoramic view of the entire congregation. The congregation was huge, at least four thousand or more.
Art watched as the churchgoers found seats and greeted each other. He saw children moving up and down the aisles to visit with other children, but always under the watchful eye of their parents.
For a moment Art detached himself from who and what he was. He wished, with all his being, that he could trade places with one of the people down there. How different his life would be if he could be a doctor, real estate agent, broker, automobile dealer, bank clerk, anything that approached normalcy. What a wonderful thing it would be to come to church on a Sunday, visit with your friends, go out for lunch afterward, then go home to watch a football game on television.
But that notion only lasted for a moment or two. After all, part of his job was to see to it that people like that could be people like that.
Then Art saw the two men acting suspiciously. Although they had clearly come into the church together, they spoke animatedly for a moment, pointing to various parts of the church, and then they separated, one walking up the aisle on the extreme left-hand side of the church, and the other on the right. And though there were scores, perhaps as many as one hundred, Muslims present for this ecumenical service, Art was certain, by their behavior, that this was Hohsen bin Hassan and Soofah Aziz Labib.
He watched them as the two men took their seats, each of them sitting in an aisle seat. He was even more certain he was right, when he saw the two men exchange one long glance before they sat down.
Art continued to watch them closely. When the huge choir, accompanied by an orchestra, began singing the opening hymn, the music had the effect of settling the congregation down. As the choir began singing, everyone returned to their seats, and the church grew quiet, except for the music.
The song ended, and J. Peerless Bixby stepped up to the pulpit.
“Good morning, my friends, and welcome, on this beautiful day of worship, to the Christ Holiness Church.
“My friends, if you will look around you, you will see that this auditorium is filled with people of all faiths. I urge you now, if you are a Christian, reach out to a Jew, if you are a Jew, reach out to a Muslim, if you are a Muslim, reach out to a Christian. Do this, in the sure and certain knowledge that we are all God’s children.
“All around the world today there is hate and distrust. Men and women, who are God’s children, are killing each other in God’s name. This must stop, and, friends, let us take the first step, here, today, in Nashville, Tennessee. One hundred years, nay, one thousand years from now, let it be said that God’s children united on this day in Nashville, Tennessee.”
Suddenly the two men Art had been watching moved to put their plan into operation. Hassan on the left, and Labib on the right, leaped up from their seats and stood out in the aisles. Both threw off their jackets, showing that both were wearing bombs. Art recognized the bombs as the kind that he had seen in Iraq, explosives packed behind rows of nails and ball bearings. They were designed to send out hundreds of lethal pellets in order to kill as many as possible.
“Allah Akbar!” Hassan shouted.
“Allah Akbar! ” Labib echoed. Labib held up a radio-controlled triggering device. Hassan had no such device, and Art realized that was by design, for the same radio wave would set off both bombs simultaneously.
Labib pushed the button on his trigger, and closed his eyes in anticipation.
“Labib! The bomb! Do it! Do it!” Hassan shouted.
By now the congregation was in a panic. Women were screaming, men were shouting, and children were crying.
Labib pushed the button on his trigger one more time, but the bombs still didn’t go off. When it didn’t go off this time Labib, and then Hassan, dashed up the aisle to the back of the church.
“Praise be to God!” the preacher shouted. “The bombs didn’t go off!”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Art put a small electronic device back into his pocket. The bombs had not gone off because he had jammed Labib’s radio, thus preventing the signal from reaching the bomb’s trigger.
By now the people of the church were in a frenzied babble of shock, relief, and prayerful thankfulness. Leaving the church, Art crossed the street and got into his car, just as he saw a car peel out of one of the four large parking lots that surrounded the church. As the car pulled out into the street, he saw the driver look back toward the traffic.
The driver was Hassan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As Art followed the car through the streets of Nashville, he turned on the special scanner that was tuned to cell phone frequency. After picking up a few routine telephone calls—“Pick up a gallon of milk on your way home,” and “I’ve got an eleven o’clock tee time”—he heard what he was listening for.
“The bombs did not go off!” Labib was saying, his voice on the edge of panic.
“Are you sure you were using the right frequency?” Art recognized this as the voice he had heard on the taped recording. This was the voice of Mustafa.
“Yes, I am sure. We tested the trigger last night, many times.”
“What about batteries?” Mustafa asked. “Perhaps you need new batteries.”
“No,” Labib answered. “I just put new batteries in.”
“You must’ve done something wrong,” Mustafa said.
“We did nothing wrong.”
“If you did nothing wrong, you would both be in paradise now,” Mustafa said angrily.
“What do we do now?” Labib asked.
“It is not too late to return to our original plan,” Mustafa said. “Go to the airport and take the flight as we arranged.”
“I want to come there first,” Labib said.
“No! Why do you wish to come here?”
“We want your blessing.”
“You have my blessing.”
“We want your blessing, in person. I think if we had had your blessing, we would not have failed this morning.”
There was a beat of silence from Mustafa’s end of the conversation.
“Very well,” he said. “But come quickly. I do not want you to fail a second time.”
The conversation ended, and Art continued to follow H
assan and Labib through the city. So agitated were the two men that neither of them noticed the car that was behind them.
Hassan and Labib stopped in front of a domed building. The sign in front of the building identified it as the Shabihul Mosque. Art drove on by, did a U-turn in the middle of the street, then came back and parked across the street, just as Hassan and Labib were met by a third man. Art recognized the third man as Sheikh Muhammad Kamal Mustafa. The three men went inside the mosque.
Art got out of the car, walked across the street, then stuck a playing card onto a light pole that stood at the corner of the street, just in front of the mosque. The playing card was an ace of spades.
Satisfied that the card was there to stay, Art returned to his car, started the engine, then held up the device he had used to jam the triggering signal when Labib had tried to set off the bombs.
Art made a frequency adjustment, then pressed a button.
He heard a low, but loud, thumping sound. Then he saw a flash of light, followed by a huge, billowing cloud of smoke. The front third of the mosque collapsed in on itself.
New York City
Prince Azeer Lal Qambar would be returning to Qambari Arabia a complete failure. Although he had promised to strike a blow against the Americans that would make nine-eleven pale into insignificance, he had not done so.
Azeer had also hoped to demoralize the American people. He knew what everyone in the Middle East knew, that the only hope of defeating America would come from within America itself. And he was counting on a hostile press, and a large body of American citizens who hated the current administration more than they loved their country, to form his cadre.
He had planned on Senator Harriet Clayton to carry his flag for him, and indeed, she had led the battle in the Senate, accusing the administration and the Pentagon of conducting unauthorized operations. Senator Clayton had managed to rally a lot of the press to her side, but that had not stopped the man they were now calling the Ace of Spades.
Not only was Azeer unsuccessful in further demoralizing Americans, he had to face the fact that the Ace of Spades was rallying the spirit of the entire nation. And what Azeer knew, and nobody else knew, was that the Ace of Spades, whoever he was, was dead-on with his targets. Azeer didn’t know where he was getting his information, but so effective had he been that Azeer’s entire cadre had been wiped out. He had not one man remaining in the team he had planned to use in carrying out his operations against America.
Now Azeer had no choice but to return home, and return home in disgrace.
“Will you be going to prayers before you return home?” Hamdi asked.
“What?” Azeer replied, jerked out of his reverie by Hamdi’s question.
“Prayers, Al Sayyid. Will you be going to prayers before you board the plane?”
“Oh, uh, yes,” Azeer said. “Yes, of course.”
Although Azeer justified everything he did by attributing it to the glory of Allah, he actually had no piety in him whatever. Allah was a rallying cry, a means of convincing others to do his will. He marveled at the malleability of someone who was so weak-minded as to allow himself to be talked into committing suicide.
The funny thing was that even the most cursory reading of the Quran would show that the suicide operations being carried on by the volunteers did not actually qualify them for martyrdom. But as long as there were people who were willing to kill themselves under such false hopes, then he, and people like him, would be able to maintain power.
“Lucky for me they don’t understand the Quran,” Azeer said under his breath.
“I beg your pardon, Prince?” Hamdi asked.
“I was quoting the Quran, 14:1,” Azeer said. “The Quran, a book which we have revealed to you so that you may lead the people from out of the darkness into the light by their Lord’s leave to the path of the All-Mighty, the Praiseworthy.”
“Praise be to Allah,” Hamdi said.
Masjid Al-Fatiha Muhammad Mosque, New York City
Prince Azeer Lal Qambar was one of five hundred men who knelt on their prayer rugs to pray to Allah. When the prayers were over, 499 men left the mosque, while one remained behind, prostrate on his rug.
It wasn’t until several minutes later that one of the clerics, noticing him, went over for a closer examination.
“Shanawani, come quickly!” the cleric called to one of the others.
“What is it, Nagib?”
“Come quickly,” Nagib said, as he continued to examine the prostrate form.
Shanawani, also a cleric, joined Nagib.
“He is dead,” Nagib said.
“Who is it?”
Nagib turned the body over and gasped.
“It is Prince Azeer Lal Qambar!” he said.
“What is that in his mouth?” Shanawani asked.
Nagib reached down to remove it. “It is a playing card,” he said. “The ace of spades.”
The home of the secretary of the army, Washington, D.C.
Secretary Giles was drinking a cup of coffee as he watched the news report on TV.
“Prince Azeer Lal Qambar was forty-three years old, the fifth son of King Jmal Naib Qambar. There were no outside marking on the body . . . but it is interesting to note that the ace of spades was sticking out of his mouth.”
Giles picked up the remote and turned the TV off. In another room, he heard his wife answer the phone.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he is here.” His wife came into the den. “It’s for you,” she said.
“Giles.”
“Did you see the news, Jordan?” a familiar voice asked.
“Yes, sir, I saw it.”
“Tell me this, Jordan. Do we have an asset here? Or do we have a tiger by the tail?”
“I don’t know, sir. God help me, I don’t know,” Jordan Giles answered.
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