Critical Mass (8 page)

He listened to the number station droning on, moving agents, he supposed, issuing requests for information, whatever else the nursemaids of spies did. His part of it had come today for four minutes between 1306 and 1310. Tomorrow, there would be a general call at 0600, which would tell him when later to listen for his messages.

Now tea was being served by the Persian boy who had been left here to be Aziz’s student. The boy’s father was a powerful Iranian politician, a man of the holiest aspirations. Aziz, in his new role as Mahdi, had said on first seeing the boy’s deep, soft eyes and the glow of his smooth skin, “His name is Wasim, the handsome.” And so it was.

This place was ten meters below the surface, under steel-reinforced concrete. There were no telephones allowed here, no radio transmitters of any kind. Al Qaeda had learned an almost fatal lesson in the months after God’s glorious gift on September 11, 2001, when it was discovered that even the briefest transmission would immediately be detected and tracked by the Americans. Lives had been squandered, because it had been so hard to believe that they could do this. But it was true: after a call or even a burst transmission on the radio, the cruise missiles would come, or the planes, the monstrous planes full of Crusader lackeys and carrying bombs that could dig deep and tear men to pieces.

But Inshalla had endured, and had never been identified. Al Qaeda had been forced into the backs of caves and mountain fastness. Eight out of ten of them had died. That many. But Inshalla had not been so much as scratched. Always, they had been able to continue the great work, assembling, gram by radioactive gram, the triumph of God.

Aziz had read the report of the Crusaders: “It is now believed with confidence that Al Qaeda has been reduced to a small headquarters and a few scattered sympathizers who have no contact with central command. This command unit is in North Africa, and is itself dispersed. The individuals involved, bin Laden and four associates, rarely meet, and move each night from one house to the next.”

Only the Russians knew of the existence of Inshalla, and then only a bit, and not the true name. They were a mercenary people, the Russians, always willing to trade what they did not want for what they did not deserve. So they were willing to sell bits and pieces, no single one of which revealed the truth of what was actually being acquired. The plutonium had gone out from so many different places and in such small quantities that it looked like loss, not theft. The same with the parts.

Finally, the complex sequence that would lead, at last, to the imposition of true happiness across the world was in place. This small, invisible nation, this joyousness, this God’s Will, like the United States, like Britain and India and Russia and Israel and the apostate country Pakistan, was an atomic power. It had the weapons, and it had the means of delivery.

This made Aziz, as Mahdi, a great world leader . . . and yet his existence, let alone his name, was known only to perhaps a hundred people.

Sometimes he had the urge to tell others who he was, that the most pious men on earth, the truest friends of God, had declared him Mahdi. But as he now was hidden by the cleverness of Allah himself, the temptation of the old Aziz to indulge in his braggart ways had always to be overcome.

Mohammed had said, “During the end of days, my beloveds will suffer great calamities and torment from their kings. Persecution will engulf them. The people of God will be tortured and suffer injustice. God will raise from my progeny a man who will establish his peace on earth and justice for the faithful.”

This headquarters had both radio receivers and a reliable means of sending messages, if an old one. Aziz’s messages out went by camel or mule, not by electronic means. Only idiots would use mules, the Crusaders would
think, even in this place, where they had been used since before the time of Iskander. So their animals were laughed at. And as far as his men were concerned, what proud NATO officer would think a rag-head could accomplish anything, one of the stupid rag-heads who carried orders all the way from this place down to Peshawar, orders that were not written but woven into the hems of the
chapans
that the rag-heads wore on their foolish backs?

The Crusaders wore steel helmets and were encased in armor. These arrogant ones treasured life more than they treasured God. Their white faces were burned by the sun, their voices quick in the way of Western languages, chopping out their brute words.

Aziz spoke Arabic and Dari and Persian, all ancient languages full of history and nuance, languages of the deep mind. He and the men and women who were here read only the song of God, the Holy Quran. None of them ever ventured to the surface of the old installation. Nothing crossed there but dust, not by night or day.

The other benefactor of this place, the Persian Sayyad, whose son now served Aziz under his new name of Wasim, purchased their stores for them in a hundred villages in Khyber, in Malakand, in Kohat. From here came gourds, from there potatoes, from another place rutabagas. Water came from the wells within the fortress, dug by Russian engineers to provide for a force of a thousand men.

Only after the Crusaders came here in 2006 and mined the place and blew down the entrances with artillery shells had Inshalla ventured to occupy it. The Crusaders would not carry their own mines into the deep tunnels. Too dangerous for these precious sons of Europe and America. But rag-heads were another matter, so rag-heads had done the dangerous work. Rag-heads could lose their limbs or be killed. That was delightful to the Crusaders.

However, these workers, in the pay of the Crusaders but loyal only to Allah, had kept careful records. So each mine they had laid was now marked by a small fence, to keep the beloved of God from being injured.

Aziz preferred his tea sweet, and there was sugar enough for it today, for which he was glad.

He still indulged himself, but only a little—a bit of sugar here, some music there. He had no need to use the gadgets of the West, the GPS devices and iPods, the glittering cell phones, the CD players and televisions. None of them had need of these things. What they did need was the food of Islam,
the food of prayer. They could live forever on prayer, he thought. They were that far from the material world. Although, of course, he did miss his iPod.

Now, though, he only listened to the radio station Burak Mardan, FM 104. And, at the moment, there was a song of Abu Shaar Thayir. Then came Hadiqua, singing of lost love.

“You enjoy Hadiqua,” he said to the young Wasim, who lingered nearby, waiting to take away the tea things.

“I thought I was here as a student. But you are not a teacher.”

“I am the Mahdi. Watch my life. My life is your teacher.”

“You don’t really know the Quran.”

“I love the Quran.”

“You teach me nothing.”

“Do you fear me?”

“I fear only God,
the
God, the one God.”

The Mahdi nodded. “See, you have been taught. That is a lesson important to learn.” He would not ask of the boy whether he was Sunni or Shia? Aziz knew that Wasim was Sunni. This eternal war between the Sunni and the Shia was certain to become history in a few weeks.

Aziz did keep one Western bangle, a watch, and he glanced at it now. Just after eleven, the Duhur Salat. In the Pacific time zone, just after 2100. The time was not far, now. Not far.

He motioned to Wasim, who at once brought him pitcher and towel. He performed
wadu.
“O you who believe, when you rise for prayer, wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows and lightly rub your heads and your feet up to the ankles.”

The boy also.

Then they turned to Mecca and performed the
salat
in the silence demanded of the noon prayer. How Aziz’s heart filled with love now as he began Al-Fatiha:
In the name of God the merciful and compassionate, praise to God the Lord of the Universe, master of the day of judgment. Thee alone we so worship; thee alone we turn to for help.
And then he drew himself deep into his heart, for he was a leader of men, hiding here in the kind earth, and needed God’s help always, could do nothing without it.
Show us the straight path,
he said in his mind, in his soul.
Show us the path of those whom you have guided to Islam, not the path of those who earn your anger or go astray.

Over a thousand years since Charles the Hammer had led the children
of Europe—God’s beloved children also—astray, Aziz was going to bring them at last into Islam. Now they held drunken sway, protected by their tanks and their knights. They were eating the world, gobbling its gold and its oil and its precious water, spitting out bangles and baubles and sweets, and suffering meaningless desires and fornicating, then drowning it all in a soul-rotting slurry of alcohol and drugs. He’d had a blue Mercedes CLS in Peshawar, and the women who had come to him—what a life!

No, to be forgotten. He turned his mind back to the Crusaders. Filthy! Curse that CLS and the temptations it brought!

He felt something on his neck, and knew, then, that it was the boy’s hand. Wasim had laid a kindly hand on Aziz’s neck. He felt the light child’s touch, and the heart of the child also.

Wasim held him, then looked at his face. Solemnly Wasim lifted a corner of his thin coat and wiped Aziz’s cheeks, drying the tears that he had known would be there, that were always there after prayer.

Aziz smiled. “May Allah be with you, Wasim,” he said.

The boy muttered something.

“What is it you say, Wasim?”

“That’s not my name!”

The boy went away then, to the far side of the room. He worked a moment, then returned with a pomegranate sliced on a little tray.

Aziz took the food, and ate. “I have a message,” he said. He had thought long on this message. It must be one of two randomly chosen words, “purple” or “green.”

He would try now to find God in his mind. Would he see a horseman, a wandering beggar, an eagle rising in dawn light? There were many images of God in his mind, secret, impious things that had been there since he was a small boy and first praying and then wondering how this God who so dominated their lives must appear.

When he had said, “God is an eagle in dawn light,” his father had given him a shaking. When he had asked his father, “Is God like a horseman on a fine mare?” his father had slapped him and said, “God would not ride a mare.” He had asked his father later if God was like a beggar on the road, and his father had gone to the kitchen and returned to their schoolroom with a broom, and beaten his back with its long wooden handle.

He had not asked again what God looked like, but the images still danced in his mind when he prayed.

Then he saw God the eagle with his dark wings, God crying rage into the dawn.

“The word is ‘purple,’ boy. The English word ‘purple.’ Tell Eshan now.”

Wasim hurried from the room.

Aziz felt the Mahdi within him, and the Mahdi’s heart seemed to swell with joy. All would be well, now. Happiness was at hand.

ESCALATION

Jim Deutsch’s world had ended. He’d been in plenty of trouble in his life, but not
like this. No matter how bad it had gotten—running from one bunch of semi-official thugs into the arms of another, you name it—somebody had always had his back.

No more, not after the fantastic escalation that had taken place at the motel in Carrizo Springs. In that dingy room, his world had collapsed around him. The Brewster Jennings problem was one issue that he was aware of but was obviously not the end of the compromise of American counterproliferation. The system was deeply penetrated, and at high levels. It had to be.

What had happened had placed him in the worst position an agent could find himself. He dared not expose what he had discovered to the very system that was designed to support him in his work, because he would be revealing it to the enemy.

So he had continued on his own, and now an exhausted, scared man moved through the Colorado Springs Greyhound station listening to his Geiger counter tick over and trying desperately to guess where they would have taken the plutonium from here.

He needed the WMD interdiction infrastructure; he needed satellite lookdowns and the support of CIA analysts; he needed the FBI’s investigatory
skills and powers; he needed the local and state police and the entire national enforcement and detection apparatus.

He’d assumed that the assassination attempt had been a local thing—Kenneally and his buddies trying to protect themselves.

This was why when an FBI arrest team had appeared at the door of Jim’s room at the little motel he had known instantly that he was facing a far larger problem than he had imagined—than he could have imagined. Local guys on the take couldn’t cut orders that would send the FBI after somebody. That would have to be done from above.

It had been eleven thirty at night when he’d entered the lobby of the little motel and called out, “Excuse me,” in the gentled voice of a tired salesman. The clerk had appeared. Jim had shown his driver’s license—
a
driver’s license, not his own—paid his forty dollars in cash, and left the lobby. The whole transaction had taken under five minutes.

Always careful, always overdoing it, he’d parked the old truck some distance from his room and gone through the interior of the motel to reach it. He hadn’t used the radio or the television, or even turned on the lights.

He had been in the process of making his emergency call when he had noticed a change in the pattern of light under his door. He’d looked at it. Only one possibility—somebody was out there. He’d thought it might be the clerk, suspicious of so late an arrival. Then Jim had seen the knob move. He’d gone into the bathroom but found it to be windowless. There was a double door that communicated with the next room down the line, and he’d used that. He had no bag with him, no luggage. But he did have some skill with locks.

The mechanism had clicked, but it had not disturbed the snoring, scrofulous drunk in the cigar-choked room Jim had entered. He’d stepped quickly to the exit door, cracked it, and seen a sight that had, quite simply, stunned him almost to paralysis.