Ian didn’t respond. There was a longish silence. He heard her take a sip of champagne.
“Ian?”
“I’ll be hornswoggled! I’m stupider than Jupiter. That has to be it!”
“Has to be what?”
“The letter referred to capturing ‘
the bird which has flown.
’ That has to be a coded reference and the date is right.”
“Right for what?” asked Judith in exasperation.
“I’ll explain it all when I see you.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Come on, Judith. Half the fun is having something to look forward to.”
“You’re so cruel, Ian O’Brien!”
“We’ll make a date of it on Thursday.”
He couldn’t believe he had said it. She was the one who said things like that. She noticed too.
“Okay then, as long as it’s a date.”
><><><
Across campus, in a cool, underground room, the university server which constituted the backbone of the university’s IT infrastructure was mindlessly implementing the commands of hundreds of minds around the world. Some requested documents, other Internet access, email, VoIP or some other form of cyber communication.
It wasn’t as faceless and impersonal as it had been fifteen years ago. A myriad of social networking websites had changed all that, but there was still something about remoteness that stifled the human need to interact emotively. This fact explained why cyber communications became so vitriolic. People aggravated by a blog article that attacked their value paradigm were much more likely to make a response that violated normal rules of decency simply because their opponent was not physically present.
Cyberspace altered one’s perception of reality, transforming the person at the computer on the other end of the optic cable into an ethereal demigod of sorts, who might exist, but whose existence affected reality only insofar as it gave them someone to lust after or curse. The Great Disconnect had started with television, the technological wonder of previous generations. It conditioned the populace with an endless stream of car wrecks, robberies, fights, murders and general mayhem. Today, it had moved to an entirely new level. Human relationships were virtual.
For centuries, philosophers debated the distinction between reality and perception, but this abstract discussion was mostly lost on the rank and file. Still, it was hard to think of any relationship in the Matrix as being quite as real as physical-presence relationships because the person-to-person encounter provided a myriad of reality clues that were missing in cyberspace—the smell of onion on the interlocutor’s breath, facial expressions, posture, intonation, pupil dilation, etc. But the winds of change were blowing, and the prospect of a connection that would allow the human mind to be just another Internet portal, another data server, another CPU, was already being discussed.
The university mainframe was oblivious to the thoughts and commands of the sentient beings it processed with such admirable perfection. But, even if the server had been a sentient being endowed with some currently non-existent form of AI, it is doubtful that it would have raised a virtual eyebrow at the innocuous-looking email that zipped through its processor on its way to some binary address in cyberspace at a speed that made the synapses of human neural networks look like desert caravans of camels plodding across sand dunes. The message slipped past the filters of the intelligence community as well with a subject heading which read simply “Cool Quote”:
Found a really cool quote I think you will like.
“A red sunset is preferable to a red dawn”.
A sentient being could hardly have been faulted for expecting to see the name of the author of this enigmatic saying, but they would have been disappointed. This was the sum of the message.
CHAPTER
10
C
AIRO,
E
GYPT
The horizon was rushing up to meet the sun as Cairo came to the end of another long summer day that had turned this city of seventeen million into a veritable blast furnace. The sunset, however, promised to be spectacular. There was a scattering of cirrostratus clouds in the west above the searing sands of the Sahara, so high above the earth that even in August they were composed mostly of ice crystals, which made them excellent spectral reflectors of the sun’s rays. The result, of course, was brilliant hues of purple and orange that postcard photographers dreamed of.
From his office on the nineteenth story of the high-rise office building, he had an excellent view. Ahmet’s job had plenty of perks consisting of more tangible worldly compensation, but the natural beauty he witnessed from his office was never lost on him. As the imperceptible movement of the earth produced the sensation that the sun was sinking, a thought flickered across the screen of his mind. The residents of the city would be thankful that
Ra
was going to bed for the night, giving them some respite from the heat. No one believed that the sun was a god anymore, but some probably cursed it as a devil, especially if they were not one of the privileged few who could afford air-conditioning. He said a brief prayer of thanks for the refreshing breeze that blew from the Korean Samsung air-conditioner, another privilege that came with the job and separated him from the fifteen million in the city who lived without it. Then the muezzin began to sound the
adhan
, calling the faithful to their prayers and he rose in mechanical obedience to the summons.
Ten minutes later, he rose from his prayer rug, and sat down at his desk, refreshed from the spiritual exercise. He closed his eyes and promised himself it would only be for five minutes. The first day of a crucial week had come to an end. The project was in the homestretch. All he had to do was push himself and everyone else to finish strong. If all went well, in three weeks, the UN would be announcing a new initiative promoting tolerance and understanding between people of different faiths. For almost five years, he had stealthily applied the pressures necessary to get Islamic governments on board. The faith of the prophet was now viewed by outsiders as an ideology of fanaticism, violence and intolerance. It was time to repair the damage, which required an image make-over. A more obvious fact would have been difficult for him to imagine, but not everyone was convinced. Obstacles abounded, especially in the form of short-sighted traditionalists.
His phone beeped. He hit the intercom.
“Sir, it’s the Minister of Foreign Affairs from Yemen.”
“Put him through.” Ahmet punched the speaker button and leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Secretary, how nice to hear from you. I hope you have good news for me.”
“Mr. Karaman, the Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs refuses to sign off on the project.”
“Mr. Secretary, this sounds unacceptably like our last conversation. I thought we had made it abundantly clear how crucial Yemen’s support for this initiative is.”
“Mr. Karaman, surely you know how much personal effort I have invested in this cause.”
“Apparently, it has not been sufficient.”
“The Republic of Yemen is a sovereign nation committed to sharia law. Our jurists are not convinced that your tolerance initiative complies with divine law and the will of Allah.”
“Mr. Secretary, allow me to be blunt. The worldview of those who oppose this plan hearkens back to seventh-century Arabia. The world has changed.”
“Allah has not.”
“That is not being debated. However, I see your ministers driving cars instead of riding camels, which tells me they are able to adapt to changing conditions. They need a fresh interpretation of the Qur’an and, above all, a leader who can unite the
ummah
and repair Islam’s tarnished image. Unfortunately, most of the opinion makers in the House of Islam lack the foresight Allah gave an ant. Even with their tiny brains, these insects have the sense to prepare for winter. We, on the other hand, have been engaged in an undeclared war with the West without making the necessary preparations. It is time to put the House of Islam in order. We have been chosen to accomplish this task.”
Ahmet had no patience for the visionless leaders he worked with, but he feigned it well, and when that failed, he ruthlessly pursued other paths of persuasion. He was a doer, not a dallier.
“Mr. Karaman, it may take more than convincing arguments to persuade the minister.”
“Well, you have come to the point at last.”
“What about the other countries?”
“Sudan and Somalia are still giving us trouble, but the same pressure will be applied to them all.”
“And what about support in the West?”
“Mr. Secretary, over the last twelve years I have personally orchestrated the establishment of centers for Islamic studies at nineteen of the best universities in Europe, North America and Australia, all funded by businessmen from Turkey, Jordan and Qatar as well as the governments of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Morocco. We have provided scholarships for thousands of students from the Middle East to study in the West, and placed hundreds of professors, instructors and post-doc students in the most prestigious schools. We have established non-profit organizations, and charter schools at the elementary, junior-high and high-school levels. We have won invaluable support among the Western elite.”
“Mr. Karaman, you know that I agree with your vision. Believe me, I’m doing my best to convince the Minister that this compromise is a tactic of war.”
“I’ll give you ten days before I send in the bowstring. Don’t disappoint us.”
Ahmet reached for the off button. A frantic stream of pleas was cut off in mid-sentence. He heard a ding from his computer and opened his eyes just in time to catch the innocuous-looking subject heading “FW: Cool Quote” as it faded from the lower right corner of the screen. He quickly focused his mind and reached for the mouse. There was one thing that Ahmet never received and that was spam. Another perk that came with his job was that no email ever appeared on his screen unless the sender’s digital signature was on a master list and the email’s source had been contacted by his staff. In his office, this list was called the safe list. He had always thought that particularly ironic since it was anything but safe.
There was a short note from his top security analyst in Arabic that read, “So far it all checks out.” He scanned down to read the one line message his analyst was forwarding to him. It was less cryptic than one might suppose. The quote was one of the organization’s codes. To find out which operative sent the mail and what their mission encompassed, Ahmet entered the sender’s ID— 3466-5725-9226. His database gave him the answer immediately. The sender was support and reconnaissance in academia.
Ahmet reached for the phone and told the switchboard to put him through to their London operative immediately and to route the call through any of several thousand innocuous local numbers. Since the 911 attacks, the eavesdropping capability, and more importantly, determination in the West had grown exponentially. His organization had learned the hard way that there is no such thing as a secure digital transmission.
The price of this knowledge had been high. They had lost some of their best and brightest sources. Everything was potentially traceable or decipherable and all of the crap in Hollywood movies about secure lines was just a smoke screen to keep the world believing that it could actually communicate incognito, making it easier for security forces around the world to learn what they wanted. Now his office routed all communications through a complex system that relied upon genuine local telephone lines or websites. Digital encryption was rarely used. It only drew attention, and attention was one thing they did not want. Transparent communications were tedious, but surprisingly effective.
The phone began to ring, and he clicked on the attached jpg file as he waited for the operative to pick up. What he saw almost took his breath away. A voice answered on the other end with the traditional Muslim greeting of peace.