“
As-salamu alaykum
.”
“
Wa Alaykum As-salam
.”
“Are you looking at the digital copy I sent?”
“I am,” answered Ahmet. “I cannot read it, but it bears the Seal, which would suggest it was prepared by the Ottoman Bureau. Are you sure of its authenticity?”
“As the infidel says, ‘Seeing is believing’ and I have seen and touched it.”
“What is the significance?”
“Let me just say that our connection with one of our largest disinformation and cultural subterfuge projects of all time is on the verge of discovery, and they have one of the original termination orders.”
“Original?”
“Yes. From a man that has been under low-level surveillance for years.”
“Which project is it?”
“Son of prophet.”
“
Amanin!
You’re sure?!”
“Sir, as you will see from a perusal of my file, this is my area of expertise.”
“But, how can this be?! That was centuries ago?”
“That I do not know.”
“Have you secured it?”
“It was impossible without arousing suspicion.”
“Does the owner know what he is holding?”
“At present, he does not know enough to pose a threat, but he is an intelligent researcher. What’s more, he has connections that could make this headline news. He is by nature slow and cautious, but it is essential that we move quickly. What are my instructions?”
“You will be contacted through one of the usual channels. We must recover the document and destroy any copies. Do you know if any have been made?”
“He only found it last week and his secretary took a digital photograph today. He is quite unaware of the document’s importance, so I doubt he has made any other copies.”
“Nevertheless, all of his storage devices, including his secretary’s, must be wiped. No trace of this may remain. I will be back in touch with you in six hours. Begin your preparations.”
“It will be done,
inshallah
.”
“Inshallah.”
Ahmet turned off the phone and set it on his desk. He sat in quiet, but intense meditation for several minutes. The success of the son of prophet project was undeniable even if it had happened almost entirely by accident. Then again, he didn’t believe in accidents. He knew that Allah had turned failure on its head and achieved a spectacular success with the fumbling efforts of his servants. They could not let it be exposed now.
He had been part of the brotherhood for nineteen years, much of it here, as a security analyst working under the auspices of the Islamic Bank of Egypt among the Arabs, but never had such an opportunity presented itself. If he could supervise a flawless execution, he felt certain this would win him the promotion that would return him to his beloved Istanbul.
The self-imposed exile, the difficulties of living and working in a foreign land were beginning to wear on him. He longed for the familiar, though the brotherhood strongly discouraged such bonds. Still, he missed the Bosphorus, the refreshing taste of
ayran
, and the redbuds in the spring.
The brotherhood rewarded cunning and shrewdness. Ahmet’s rapid advance to Chief of Operations for Africa was proof of that. However, he had stagnated here in Cairo for almost ten years. Initially, his assignments had been thrilling as he took the brotherhood’s fight to a corporate level. They were not above knocking off rivals in the middle of the night, but training and inserting key talent into positions of responsibility with financial institutions and government offices was where the battle would be won. Before long, his talent was recognized as too valuable to be wasted in the field, and he was elevated to more senior positions.
In two months, he would celebrate his nineteenth anniversary with the brotherhood, but he had only learned its secret last year. It all began right after his graduation from Istanbul Technical University where he had majored in finance. He landed a good job with one of Turkey’s top investment banks where his talent attracted attention.
On that day almost nineteen years ago, the leader of his
tarikat
had invited him to his home alone. The
imam
explained to him that the total victory foreseen by the Prophet required the brightest and best Islam had to offer. He could still remember the old man’s words:
“Yes, Ahmet, the sword won many victories in the early days of Islam, but even then, the pen that inscribed the Qur’an was what inspired the warriors. The pen is greater than the sword and the final victory of Islam will be won not with suicide bombers or the armies of sultans, but with the pen. It is not violence, but social pressure, the
dhimmi
status of the infidel under our rule, which has always provided the greatest enticement for conversion. Few are willing to pay extra taxes from their hard labor and suffer the indignity of being a second-class citizen just to continue in error, so they convert and gain wealth and prosperity in this world as well as heaven in the next. This is the power of the pen. Threaten them with swords and they may take some vain glory in dying for their cause. Yet the written word of the Qur’an has bled their idolatrous faith out of them in a way that even the sword could not.
“We are the Divine Light, Ahmet. Our esteemed leader, the Rightly Guided One, has received the divine strategy. We must circulate within the system without being noticed until we have infiltrated every position of influence. We believe that the
Nur
of Allah will enlighten the minds of the unbelievers. It is our duty to be its emissary. To excel at science and commerce so that our way becomes attractive to the outsiders. Still, the process needs prodding at times and we need devoted men like you to serve the cause.”
It had only been after this speech that the guest in the side room was brought in. The imam had switched from Turkish to Arabic to introduce Ahmet to the dark-skinned newcomer. Like all Turks, Ahmet was deeply suspicious of all things Arab. He viewed the entire race as treacherous back-stabbers who had allied themselves with the British infidels in the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The imam sensed his hesitation and immediately switched back to Turkish saying, “Allah has given them oil and riches for the prophet’s sake, but it is the destiny of the Turk to rule. Let us utilize their resources as a man milks a cow for his children.”
This had been the beginning of his journey into the deep secrets of the brotherhood, a journey of discovery that would have shocked even the recruiting imam. One of the first things he had learned was that the book written to encourage Turkish contempt for Arabs was in fact a forgery.
Confessions of a British Spy
had been written by Turkish nationalists trying to forge a new identity for the republic and strengthen patriotic sentiment.
Like all politically astute Turks, he and his friends had taken at face value the book’s claim to have been written in the 1700s by a former British spy named Hempher. The book detailed a British plan to overthrow Islam by encouraging immorality, addictions to wine and drugs and especially by fomenting dissension which would fragment the community of Islam with radical sectarianism. According to the book, the most remarkable success of the British was their creation of the radical cult of Wahhabi Islam born in Saudi Arabia.
A smile flitted across his face as he remembered how this story had fired the imaginations of young Turkish Muslims and, more importantly, how they had all accepted such an incredible fabrication without hesitation. He could still remember the raging anger, the intense hatred he and his friends had felt in university when they learned of the British designs on the holy faith of Allah as transmitted to the prophet. After he joined the brotherhood everything changed.
There had been a three-month orientation for beginners. One of the classes had been called ‘Deceit as a Military Tactic’. He had sat dazed as the instructor explained that
Confessions of a British Spy
was a complete fabrication. The claim that the British had created Wahhabisim was every bit as fictitious as the claim that Neil Armstrong had heard the call to prayer on the moon or that Jacques Cousteau’s scientific research had led to his conversion to Islam. His whole world had been turned upside down. All of these legends were part of the propaganda war. An ancient Ottoman proverb summed up the strategy, ‘Sling the mud. Even if it doesn’t stick, it will leave a stain.’ Even now, he could vividly remember the shock and astonishment, the sick feeling in his stomach, and the anger at realizing they had been lied to. He had spent hours in counseling with the
imam
at the madrassa, trying to understand why it was all necessary.
The forgery had actually been aimed at keeping the Turks committed to nationalist Islam and explaining why the Arabs had sided with the British against them in WWI. The purpose was to cast a shadow of foreign intervention upon the Wahhabi sect because of the Arabs’ opposition to Ottoman Turkish rule. It didn’t matter that the book was taken seriously by no one outside of the country. The point had been to reinforce the Middle Eastern perception of Westerners as dangerous and irreverent meddlers.
Naturally, every Turk hated the Arabs for joining the infidel to fight against their own Muslim brothers. This act of betrayal was so unthinkable that any conspiracy, no matter how tenuous, would be preferable to the truth, so the book had legitimized Turkish contempt for the Arabs by claiming that they had sold out true Islam. The book even went so far as to claim that the house of Saud was of Jewish descent, provoking deep-seated religious anger against everything Western as the British were perceived to be the quintessential Christian nation of the time.
It was clearly an unmitigated success for the nationalists and a clear demonstration of how the conscience of an entire nation could be molded with a good story as long as it played on prejudices and values that were already present, and especially if it invoked religious sentiment. It was a shadowy world of lies and half-lies; success lay in subtlety and deceit. The stories about Armstrong and Cousteau had also been carefully crafted to give the impression that Islam was growing and attractive. Deception was a tactic of war specifically enjoined by the Prophet. It had to be something they excelled at.
After learning the truth, Ahmet had gradually overcome his Turkish aversion to the Arabs, and though he still considered the majority of them fickle and arrogant, there were cunning and devoted men among them who could still inspire the respect and fear that Hasan Sabbah’s drug-induced assassins had centuries ago.
He snapped back from this nostalgic indulgence. There was much work to be done. He picked up the satellite phone, talked to the switchboard and seconds later a phone was ringing at the bank’s London branch.
“
As-salamu alaykum
.”
“
Wa Alaykum As-salam
.”
“You have no doubt been put on alert”
“Yes, I just received word. The operation will be ready in the next forty-eight hours.”
“Salih, I need you to give this job your personal oversight. Discovery of the brotherhood’s involvement in this plot would be catastrophic.”
“So, you are personally authorizing this?”
“I am. Use everything at your disposal. No cracks. No slips. No problems. Activate your mobile IT intercept group just to be sure things aren’t moving faster than our man suspects. Schedule a grab for tomorrow night.”
“Of course.”
Ahmet hung up the phone with a smile. Salih was a good man. The interests of the Organization would be protected, and his promotion would deliver him from Cairo.
CHAPTER
11
L
ONDON
Salih opened the browser on his computer and typed in the URL for one of the countless trash blogs used by companies as link multipliers to increase their Google rating and drive traffic to their websites. He posted a comment under a prearranged pseudonym. For all intents and purposes, the comment looked like spam for a porn site with the appropriate link and nonsensical computer-generated text. The IT intercept team would be notified through an RSS feed of the new assignment and immediately put a trace on every possible avenue of communication Dr. O’Brien might use. He hit the “Submit” button and sighed with boredom. There was no challenge or sense of excitement in a hunt when the prey was so unsuspecting.