Threatcon Delta (39 page)

P
hair and Bulani parked the thirty-year-old Volkswagen Beetle down the street from the mosque. It was twilight, the darkness hiding the scars of an explosion that had damaged the face of the ancient structure. There were no streetlights, only the here-and-there glow from windows along the ancient street. Most of those were candles, since electricity was sporadic and temporary.

Phair was nervous. Through family, Bulani’s Shiite wife had made arrangements for him and her Sunni husband to get together with elders of a moderate wing of the local religious community. The meeting had been organized quietly. Radicals would not have hesitated to kill both men out of hand just for being within eyesight of these sacred grounds.

An old Ford Galaxie pulled up behind the Beetle. A man stuck his arm from the driver’s side window, palm down, and the headlights faded off.

“That was the signal,” Bulani said. His tone told Phair more than that. It indicated that Bulani was anxious about getting out of the car and going over.

Phair popped the door and stepped onto the worn-out asphalt of the narrow street. He wore a stubble of beard and a
djellabah.
Under his arm he carried something wrapped in terrycloth. He walked over to the Galaxie and stopped beside the open window.

“Good evening,” Phair said in the local dialect.

“Let me see it,” said the driver.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Into the mosque,” Phair said.

The two men in the car sat upright in alert, unhappy silence.

One of them said, “If you are found out to be a Christian and he a Sunni, you will be killed, and him along with you.”

“Either this is the Staff of the Prophet and God will protect us, or He will not and we may die,” Phair said. “I am willing to take that risk. How better to prove it is what I say?”

“Part the waters,” the passenger said. “Show us a miracle.”

“We of three faiths are here talking—is that not a miracle?” Phair asked.

“It is simply good manners and the urging of my mother,” said the man in the passenger’s seat.

“She wants her son, and her son’s sons, to survive,” Phair said.

“The men in the desert—they lied about possessing such a thing,” the driver said to Phair.

“The men in the desert were liars,” Phair replied. “I am not.”

The men fell silent, their eyes on the Volkswagen.

Phair turned, saw that Bulani had not yet left the car. Phair motioned for him to do so. The Iraqi obliged and stood facing the others.

“We are here to seek common ground at the request of those who are dear to us,” Phair went on. “If the four of us can find that, then there are even greater miracles in store. Let us take the first step.”

The men continued to look ahead. Apparently convinced that neither the priest nor Bulani was a threat, they got out of the car. The three men of Islam looked at each other with suspicion. It was not the fear of arms or violence that concerned them, Phair knew, but a fear of concessions and compromise, a dread of the changes they might bring.

“ ‘None of you has faith unless he loves for his brother what he loves for himself,’ ” Phair said.

The driver regarded him. “You know the holy text.”

“I respect it as I respect my own,” Phair said.

The man acknowledged the honor with a slight bow. In response, Phair displayed the bundle he had held under his arm. He removed a stick, charcoal with age, jagged from wear, physically unimposing. The two Shiite men looked at it. Even in the dark it seemed to become part of the cleric’s hand and arm and made the flesh more than it was just a few breaths before.

It seemed to make them all a little greater.

“Lead the way,” the driver said.

“I will be proud to,” Phair said as he walked across the chipped curb through the darkness toward the mosque.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A
NDREW
B
RITTON
was born in England and moved with his family to the United States when he was seven, settling in Michigan, then North Carolina. After serving in the Army as a combat engineer, Andrew entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he pursued a double major in economics and psychology. Visit his website, andrewbrittonbooks.com.

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