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C
AIRO
The Steward of the Council, a quiet man approaching forty, knocked on the door, poked his head in and said simply, “It is time.”
Ahmet picked up his briefcase and followed the slender figure down the hall to where the video conference would take place. He noticed that the handle of the briefcase was wet from the sweat on his palms and his heart was racing. He began to analyze his fear.
What am I worried about? The fact that he can read people like the morning newspaper?
Was he afraid that the man would see his fear? His insecurities? His doubt?
Fear is counterproductive,
he told himself and recited the proverb his grandfather had ingrained in him as a child.
Fear of death will not delay it
.
The Steward punched in a code. When the steel door opened before him, Ahmet was still trying to get a grip on his nerves. They walked into the council chamber together. The carpet was a dark green. The walls were paneled with cherry and hung with the green and gold flag of the brotherhood. The chamber was used only for high level meetings by regional directors and lately, it had been in use almost constantly. The brotherhood’s most ambitious project in years if not centuries was only weeks from its official launch. He sat his briefcase down on the elegant mahogany inlaid with mother-of-pearl forming a large
Rub el Hizb
star in the middle of the table.
He saw his place had already been chosen. There was a glass sitting on a leather coaster two chairs from the end of the table. He walked towards his seat and the Steward pulled back the chair for him to sit down. Then the Steward picked up the glass and filled it with water from an ornate silver pitcher sitting on a small stand beside the door and set it in front of him. The Steward pulled a remote control from underneath the folds of his flowing robe, pointed it at the giant plasma screen that hung on the wall and turned it on. For now, it was only a blue screen.
Turning to Ahmet and placing his right hand over his heart, he said, “Is there anything else, sir?”
Ahmet merely raised his eyebrows in the traditional Turkish sign of dismissal, and the man quietly closed the door behind him as he left the room. Ahmet could hear the numerous deadbolts slide into place and he visualized the Steward activating the electronic signal jammer with the keypad beside the door. In effect, it created a complete dead zone so that wireless signals of all kinds were scrambled and rendered useless. Nothing said in the council room, especially in a conversation with the spokesman for the Rightly Guided One, could leave the room.
Ahmet settled down into his chair and for some reason felt the need to look busy. He turned his mind back to the project. Internally, it was known as
Fethullah
and it had been almost a decade in the making, but it was already being discussed at the UN and other halls of power around the world as “Tolerance and Unity in a Multicultural World.”
The name was innocuous. The objective was simple. Over the last thirty years, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East had amassed massive amounts of capital. Most of it had been invested in industry and finance, but the many debacles over the last few years, of which CitiBank was the latest example, had not only cost them billions of dollars, it had also taught the Arabs an important lesson. The world of finance was a complex game and the infidel was more crooked than a camel’s neck. The doubters in the council had realized that the infidel must be won over or brought to heel. The infidel could never be an equal partner. Now, oil revenues would be funneled into more worthy projects and this was the most important of all. It was to be the final offensive, the last battle in the epic struggle to bring the world into submission to Islam.
Ahmet looked down at his watch. He had ninety seconds. This would be his first, and maybe only, chance to actually converse with the leader of the brotherhood. First impressions were everything. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to imagine the secret abode of the Rightly Guided One. No one knew where he lived, but if rumors were to be believed, it could be in the Moroccan city of Tangier, or Saan’a in Yemen, or Islamabad in Pakistan. There was no end to the speculation, and no hard fact to base it on. He might live anywhere in the Muslim world. Some even postulated that he lived in Istanbul, but Ahmet found this hard to believe. His homeland was only recently starting to loosen the chokehold held for almost a century by a secular army enamored with the reforms of Atatürk and plagued with narrow-minded nationalism. The plasma screen on the wall flickered and Ahmet bowed his head to the screen in reverence.
“
As-salamu alaykum
.” The voice was rich and deep. What it conveyed to Ahmet was peace, wisdom and, most of all, power.
“
Wa alaykum as-salam
,” replied Ahmet. He looked up at the screen and his heart melted upon seeing the balding leader of the brotherhood, sitting cross-legged on richly embroidered pillows, dressed in brilliant white. The man’s dark eyes were an ocean of peace, and he felt himself sinking into their warm embrace almost immediately.
“Allah smiles on those whose faith in His ultimate victory does not waiver. You know this, do you not?”
“Even if I were to forget, your sermons sow the seeds of truth in our hearts every Friday. May Allah be pleased with you.”
“May Allah be pleased with all of us, Ahmet. We have not spoken before, but I have been following you for some time. I read your reports. My lieutenants are quite impressed with your performance. But, allow me to get right to the point. I am aware of the impatience that you are facing with our people in Egypt. I can sense in my spirit the grumblings and the earnest desire for jihad. It is on this point that I need your steady hand at the helm. A storm is brewing, Ahmet, a fierce storm, but our fleet is far from ready.
“Jihad is a state of mind, but not every day is the day of battle. When your enemy is stronger than you, it is essential to feign peace and cooperation. Fools like Bin Laden underestimate the resolve of the infidel to continue in error. Their impetuousness has cost us many years and thousands of lives. We must not fall into his error. Instead, we must prepare for war while pretending peace. Right now, the most crucial part of our mission is to win hearts and minds. We must create a fifth column and extend to the unbeliever an invitation to submit. We must have the patience of Job in affliction, and faith that our end will be as prosperous as his.”
“What would you have me do?” said Ahmet quietly.
“It is the common man we must reach, Ahmet, the man on the street. We must preach patience and fortitude. Open conflict is foolhardy. Let this message be disseminated in all of our mosques. Send our people to speak with local clerics from every sect. We must squelch the warrior rhetoric and put on the face of peace even in the House of War. We must preach against the foolish Mahdi teachings of the Shiites. It is heresy found neither in the Qur’an nor in the reliable hadith. It causes the people to look for a heavenly savior, which does not instill diligence and preparation. We must not believe that Allah will fight our battles. It may sound like heresy, and yet I maintain, as I do in all of my sermons, that Allah cannot help those who will not help themselves. The deism of Benjamin Franklin did as much for America as anything. It made them self-reliant.”
The man paused and took a sip of water from an ornate silver cup before continuing his prepared speech.
“The
ummah
is not yet prepared for holy war. We are not living in the days of the prophet, when the Byzantine and the Persian had essentially destroyed each other in a century-long war. Nor are we living in the days of Osman, when Europe was ravaged with plague and civil war. No, Ahmet. We contend with a civilization that surpassed us in innovation, discovery, and trade because our leaders were fools and ignored the wisdom of Allah. Our enemy is more formidable than any we have yet faced, and we are only now overcoming the age of colonialism and the fall of the house of Osman. We must be patient.
“Direct confrontation has brought only disaster. The rotten core of their social fabric will soon cause implosion. They forsake what little corrupted light is left to them in the words of the prophet Jesus. They have sold their soul to materialism and hired the entire Orient to make their goods. They consume, but they do not produce, so their accounts are drained while the Dragon grows ever more powerful. The days of the West are numbered, the end draws nigh; our message is patience. We must remain committed to this course.
“Unfortunately, there are still brothers who blindly preach nothing but jihad against the infidel and stubbornly refuse wise counsel. I have sent you a list of the names of clerics who have remained steadfastly opposed to our message. They must be persuaded. If their sermon on Friday does not indicate a change of heart, prepare the bowstrings. I will not have a single drop of their holy blood touch the earth. They are our brothers. But, if the Ottoman sultans could strangle dozens of their brothers upon ascension to the throne for the purpose of preventing civil war and dissension, we must be equally committed.”
“Rest assured, my Master, it shall be done.”
“
Inshallah
.”
“
Inshallah
.”
“One more thing, Ahmet. I was told just hours ago that there is a situation in London. Our ability to achieve our goals might be compromised if this is not contained. I would hate to see this become a news story when we have worked so hard to build trust. It is amazing that this document should come to light centuries later and at this particular time. The world is a testing place. This is but another trial, a chance to prove ourselves worthy and faithful. Allah is surely just in recompense. Use whatever means you have at your disposal to neutralize the threat.”
“Servant of my Lord and His People, we are all keenly aware of how important this document is. Our team in London is moving as we speak.”
“Excellent!”
“I commend you and your men to Allah.”
“May He be pleased with you!”
“With all of us, Ahmet, with all of us . . .”
The connection was severed and Ahmet was left staring at the blue screen with the words of Fatih Gülben ringing in his ears . . .
CHAPTER
12
L
ONDON
A man wearing a plastic surgeon’s cap and latex gloves squatted beside the steel safe in Ian’s closet. No one would have noticed, but he could tell his hands were starting to tremble ever so slightly. Sweat began to pop out of the skin on his forehead like worry beads. He had been working at the combination for fifteen minutes, which was ten minutes longer than it usually took. He turned the handle again, and to his relief this time it opened.
First, he made a mental snapshot of how the assorted documents were arranged inside and then he quickly sorted through the contents of the safe. His orders had been simple—general reconnaissance and a sweep for digital copies. He found a DVD with yesterday’s date written on the front and stuck it into his bag. He closed the safe, walked over to the desk and turned on the computer. He took out a cell phone and sent a short text.
He adjusted the ID card that hung around the strap on his neck so that it could be easily seen as he left the building. Next, he drew a small bottle of penetrating oil from his bag. He looked through the peephole into the hall where he could see a cleaning lady sweeping the floor. He knocked from the inside of the door and she gave the All Clear sign, so he quickly opened the door and oiled the hinges before relocking it. They had squeaked terribly.
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On the other side of the Thames, Salih’s cell phone buzzed. The message was simple: Nothing here. A cryptic message was immediately prepared and posted as a comment on three different blogs.
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Ian arrived back at his house a little after eight-thirty that evening, plopped down in his comfortable leather chair and allowed himself a moment to just lean back and close his eyes. It had been an exhausting day of meetings in which he had had to be especially attentive to professional decorum, which always exhausted him. He loved his job as a lecturer and researcher. Political posturing, on the other hand, was a suffocating, but inescapable drudgery of academic life. It was more like jungle predation than civilization. The higher one moved up in the academic food chain, the more dangerous and cut-throat the predators became. The constant pretentiousness and self-aggrandizement occasionally bordered on buffoonery, and though he found it nauseating, it required careful navigation. His intuitive research genius and hard work gave him some degree of immunity from the political wrangling, but anyone who did not play had to pay. There was little doubt in his mind that he would have been selected to head the department long ago if he had viewed it more like the jungle it was. He was weary of it all.