Critical Mass (15 page)

Had the North Koreans been somehow responsible for what had just happened to Las Vegas? Her mind flashed with an image of Pyongyang in the springtime, the streets empty, flower boxes everywhere blooming with pink Kimjongilias, the begonia variant cultivated to honor Kim Jong Il’s birthday in 1988. She had never been there physically, but she had traveled those streets in real time, when she’d worked on a photomapping program that was designed to map every important place in the world.

“I’m not getting a call yet,” Rashid said.

“Me, neither.”

“Suppose they don’t call us because we’re Muslim.”

“We’re cleared. They have to call us. Especially—”

Her pager beeped—screamed, it seemed to her.

“—especially you.”

It was not a call to go on dispersal. It was her emergency code requiring immediate action. “I have to go on the secure network here, right now,” she said.

His beeper warbled. He looked at it. “I’m on dispersal.”

The reality of what the two messages meant was immediately clear to both of them.

She looked into his eyes. Saw the shock there, in their wideness, their liquid glassiness. His tongue touched suddenly dry lips.

What had just happened was that he had been ordered to go to dispersal and live, she to stay in Washington and probably die.

They embraced. If his unit was on dispersal and she wasn’t even being given time to drive to Langley, it could mean only one thing: her services were needed immediately because Washington itself was under threat and the Internet might help them deal with it in some way right now. His work did not require him to be in harm’s way. He would therefore come under provisions of National Security Presidential Directive 51, which required him to go immediately to a secondary location outside of the metro area.

Without speaking, he turned and went into his bedroom. She heard him pulling out his emergency case and then went back to her own office, closed and locked the door, and drew the curtains. She turned on the green gooseneck lamp on her desk, then pulled the radio-frequency shield out of its hiding place in her bottom drawer. It was designed to absorb any radio frequencies emanating from her laptop—frequencies that could be picked up by ultrasensitive satellites. Her every keystroke could potentially be logged and transmitted to any location in the world.

The shield was green plastic embedded with copper screen. She fitted the laptop into it, then opened it and turned the computer on. This was not a home computer. It was a highly sophisticated instrument in a smallish box. It flashed on at once. She saw the seal of the secure network, and
waited as a link was established. Saw Marge come up. She was in her home office also. They could communicate verbally, but it was less secure. Marge’s message box said: “We’ve got orders to do a selective shutdown of the Internet. Isolate the U.S. west of the Rockies, no I/O. Thoughts?”

“BI.” Meant “bad idea,” which it was.

“?”

“They need information. Take it from them, you spread panic.”

“WTU.” Meant: Will Transmit your opinion Upstairs.

One of Nabila’s ’bots began flashing. She double-clicked it.

And there was the most stunning, the most monstrous thing she had ever seen in her life.

It was a Web site coming out of Japan. In an instant she saw that it had originated at the Toyama Campus of Waseda University in Tokyo. She grabbed the site, just glancing at the first few words.

The site wasn’t intended just for her, not this time. It was in the open.

She saw that it must not be allowed to reach the media, not in this form, not at any cost. Her fingers flew as she plunged into the Japanese Internet backbone, racing after Waseda’s server farm.

She found it, shot Marge an instant message: “Doing a DSA Waseda University. MTC.”

She set a million calls a second on Waseda’s servers. That would freeze them. She could only hope that nobody else had seen this, because it was the most incendiary single document ever written by the hand of man, and it almost made her literally scream aloud, howling her terror into the dawn light that was beginning to stream in the windows.

She ported her copy of the website over to Marge, then watched her ’bots. They weren’t finding anything else like it. No, this had been done the same way as the
hijab
document—a single website, probably put up for just a short time. But she couldn’t risk that. As far as she was concerned, Waseda would remain off-grid forever.

They could have posted the site in a million different places, public as all hell, but they had not done that, and she now realized why. It was the humiliation factor. World leaders—the president first—were going to have to tell their people about this.

COMMUNICATION FROM THE MAHDI OF THE EARTH OF MUSLIM PEOPLE

GLORY TO GOD, THE CALIPHATE OF ETERNAL PEACE IS COME.

THE END OF TIME IS HERE.

Because the Crusader harlots, fallen daughters of God all, did not bow their heads beneath the veil, there was a serious consequence.

Now, bowing before God, all must pray. The Five Pillars of Islam are established for all, and all must now join themselves to the joy of prayer as established in the Law.

All law, and the only law, is now the law of Šar
’ah. Immediately, all must perform
sadaha
in accordance with the Law.

The Crusader King, William Johnson Fitzgerald, must perform
sadaha
before all mankind at once. He must say before all the world, “Ašhadu ’al-l
il
ha ill
-ll
hu wa ’ašhadu ’anna mu
ammadan ras
lu-ll
h,” in a clear voice. He must then say in his uncivilized tongue, that the ignorant may understand, “I testify that there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet,” and must say, then, that he is humble to the Faith. He must open the vaults of his weapons and cause his soldiers to lay down their guns in all the world. The minions and viziers and soldiers of the Crusader King must all perform
sadaha
at once and be seen to face Mecca in prayer, in accordance with the Law. They must remain in the dirty city of Washington. They may not leave.

All lairs of apostasy are closed and may not be entered. Anyone entering a Christian church is apostate and subject to the Law. Anyone entering a Jewish synagogue is apostate and subject to the Law. All worship in the names of false gods and statues now ends, and the Hindu, the Christian, the Jew, and all others proclaim
sadaha
in accordance with Law.