Critical Mass (38 page)

Linda and Dan and Logan tried to enter the elevator with him. He held up his hand. They stood, staring out of red, devastated eyes, as he closed them out of his world. They could not follow him, not now.

He did not return to the residence. Instead, he went down to the old Cold War–era White House shelter.

The moment the doors slid open, he heard voices and the clatter of keyboards. An enormous job had been done here in just a matter of hours.

The two Marines on guard duty confronted him. “Sir, the sequence.”

If he got it wrong, they would shoot him immediately, and by his own order. But he would not get it wrong. He had created the sequence himself. “Dulcinea,” he said.

“Sancho Panza,” the master sergeant replied.

“Mahdi.”

They stood aside, and Fitz stepped out into the transformed space. Gone were the elaborate electronic maps that had made this secret chamber one of
the wonders of the Cold War world. What was left was raw concrete walls and people working at plastic tables brought in just hours ago. Power lines and fiber-optic cables ran out and down the long tunnel to the Potomac, where four more Marines manned a guard station that bristled with makeshift antennae.

What he had here was a highly sophisticated signals acquisition and communications center that completely bypassed the whole intelligence-gathering infrastructure. It had limitations, of course, but surprisingly few. Jim Deutsch and Nabila al-Rahbi, and Nabila’s group leader, Margaret Pearson, had handpicked the minimum number of people essential for the work. They were from the National Reconnaissance Office, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Even so, there were just eleven people present and two Marines.

Fitz went straight to Deutsch, who huddled with a group of technicians, staring at a laptop.

“Where are we?”

Nobody answered. Nobody stopped working. Fitz could smell the sweat of desperation, the stink of it mingling with the sour damp of the concrete.

Jim Deutsch glanced up. “They have the disk contents uploaded from Pakistan pretty well decoded,” he said.

Fitz’s heart literally bounded in his chest. A rush of blood made the world sway. “That’s wonderful!”

“It doesn’t look good.”

Elation, then the cliff. “Oh?”

Marge Pearson said, “We’re looking at sixteen target cities.”

“It’s not fifty, at least.”

“We have no idea where the bombs are or how big they are, or even if there’s really a bomb present in all the cities.”

“Which cities?”

“Think world tour. Us, of course. Then New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Riyadh, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and, of course, Jerusalem.”

“They got a bomb into Israeli territory?”

“This one is going to be delivered from outside. From Syria, we think. A small plane or missile. In general, delivery is by small planes that are capable of using city streets as runways. In Rome, it was a racecourse.”

“Okay, so my next step is to warn the Syrians.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Deutsch snapped.

A paladin, for sure. Nobody talked to the president of the United States like that. Still, he forged on. “Why not, Mr. Deutsch?”

Deutsch just shook his head, went back to whatever he was doing on that laptop. But Fitz didn’t care, because this tiny operation down here represented, however faint, the only chance of winning this war. It was Deutsch who had suggested that he bring in people who had been close to the known traitor, on the theory that they would be most angry and thus the most highly motivated. It was as counterintuitive as all hell, but Fitz had to hope that Deutsch was right and traitors didn’t run in packs.

Nabila al-Rahbi, also, was almost certainly loyal. She had the credibility of her religion to save, and Fitz had seen that she was a faithful Muslim of the deepest, truest kind. In fact, her Islam reminded him of his mother’s Christianity. Her faith, also, had not been simple, and her intelligence had also tested it constantly, and driven it deep. “Trust grace,” Mother had said. “Just trust grace. Faith is nothing but that.”

Deutsch had suggested that he bring in Mark Chambers, Rashid’s supervisor, and Carol Wilkie, his closest coworker. They had been working hour after hour, without sleep, running drones, pulling data from satellites, all the time cloaking their activities so that other elements in the intelligence community would not be able to detect their mission.

The more information the disk from Pakistan gave up, the more they could zero in on specific target cities, and perhaps isolate the location of the damned bombs.

“What about the specialist teams?”

“Operating in every known target city,” Nabila said.

“What’re you working on, Deutsch?”

“Our backyard.”

“Do you not want me here?”

“No.”

The president felt anger flush his face, but Deutsch was too valuable to fire, or even snarl at. Fitz told himself that this wasn’t like being slighted by some senator or prime minister. The man was just some professional killer, after all, a guy from the depths one preferred would remain hidden. After this was over, he’d slip back into the shadows. Fitz knew the type.

“If I don’t communicate with the Syrians, we risk the loss of Jerusalem, Mr. Deutsch.”

Deutsch didn’t even look up from his work. “Think,” he said absently. “Sir.”

“You don’t like me, do you?”

Now Deutsch did stop. “That’s a typically American question, you know that? We’re obsessed with being liked. Most people in most cultures don’t give a rat’s ass. So forget that and consider this: if the new Mahdi discovers he’s being drawn into a bluff, the world blows up.”

“If he finds out. And I might save Jerusalem, for God’s sake.”

“You take that risk, you’re a fool.”

“You don’t care if you’re liked by me? That could matter.”

“Look, what’s happening in here is war fighting, okay, so I don’t have time to stroke you. Thank you. Sir.”

“Do you have anything for me?”

Deutsch seemed to freeze. “Sir, when we do, you will be called. Obviously. Thank you!”

“In other words, get out.”

“Go upstairs and do your crazy-man routine. Lay it on. The weaker you look, the more lives get saved.”

“I’ll do Lear. I’ve always wanted to do Lear.”

“Fine. Good-bye.”

Fitz nodded to Deutsch. Stepped back. “Thank you. Everybody.” He might as well have been in an empty room, for all the reaction he got.

He left, off to do his duty and range the halls of the White House, smiling and muttering for the listening devices that might be there, and hoping to God that the plan that had been evolved mattered.

THE OCCULTATION

OF THE MAHDI

No man might know how Allah, in the infinity of his wisdom and the limitlessness
of his power, hid his guided one, only those who received the ancient spirit of the Mahdi into their unworthy bodies. The great secret of Inshalla was that for hundreds of years the Mahdi had moved in spiritual form from one human receptacle to another, each chosen by heaven for Allah’s own reasons. Aziz had been Mahdi, but now Aziz was dead, killed by women who had been invaded by demons, and who had themselves been killed by corrupt policemen greedy for Crusader gold.

So Eshan had come to this old madrassa, to this old man, Syed Ahmad, following a prearranged instruction.

There were vines here, which Eshan thought were more ancient than this city but not more ancient than its founders, who had come down from the Kush carrying the vines of the blue flowers. They had called this the City of Flowers, and he could imagine them, in their silks and their furs, the fragile, cloudlike clothing of the ancients, tending their blossoms.

Syed Ahmad was not a sophisticate, as Aziz had been. He was not a lover of luxury. He knew the Book, though, far better than Aziz had. When Syed Ahmad spoke, there was music in it, the secret music that only the greatest scholars could ever express, and here he was in this little school, the master
of a few boys, who would sit about only half-listening to his genius, their eyes flickering like all eyes to the glitter of life and the lure of the West.

Eshan watched him chew his food and wag his head, his dirty clothes reeking of tobacco and unwashed years. Eshan did not want to serve him, but he could see that the Mahdi was indeed in Syed Ahmad. So he was, literally, the embodiment of the Mahdi now. None knew how the choice was made. Somehow, Inshalla did it . . . and perhaps, Eshan thought, the Russians had a hand in it. He was not blind to political reality. He understood that Allah worked through men, and therefore also through their politics.

The Russians were more clever than the Americans, certainly, but they could not begin to understand the workings of Allah in the world, could they? This was why the assassins they had sent after Aziz had been, themselves, assassinated. It was because God had needed Aziz to come here to the City of Flowers—thick today, though, with smog, and clattering and roaring with vehicles leaving, with demonstrators and police speeding around in trucks. Shots echoed up and down the streets, disturbing the quiet of this ancient place, too.

“Now,” Syed Ahmad said, standing up from his table in his dining room with its dangling bulb and dirty carpet, and its blue mosaic ceiling a memory—faint—of the dome of the sky. “Here we are when the great event comes to pass.” He went across to a sideboard made of black, fragrant wood, and pulled a small banana from a bunch that lay there in a brass bowl. “And banana trees, with fruit—do you know it? Ah, Eshan, you shake your head. The Book must be in your blood, in your body. People of the Book, my son, that’s what it means. Your discourse must be filled with the Book; thus you only speak from your true heart, which is Allah’s house in you.”

“I have not memorized the Quran.”

The new Mahdi wagged his head from side to side, reminding Eshan of a great ship swaying on the sea, his white beard its sail. But sails were not stained with tobacco, were they? “Then you’re illiterate,” he said.

“Oh yes, in the Book. But I can read. I speak and write in English, too.”

The Mahdi shook a blunt finger. “Useful, useful. Were you, then, schooled by the English?”

Eshan smiled. “They were before my time, Master. Actually, I’m an American. I went to school in New York. Brooklyn, New York.”

“Your faith has been well tested. Have you done hajj?”

“I have. Master, may I now ask you a question?”

Syed took off his glasses and rubbed them with a small blue cloth. For such a dirty man, this new Mahdi was surprisingly fastidious. An orderly nature, as befitted a scholar. He smiled, then, his beard bobbing beneath his long nose. “What is your question?”

“Did you feel it, when you became Mahdi?”

He laughed. He laughed loud. So loud, it began to make Eshan angry, causing him to feel as if he was being mocked. “You do not become Mahdi. The guided one simply opens his eyes. Within me, within you. It doesn’t matter. Look at Aziz. He had business suits and hair pomade, I hear.”

“Until we went to Pamir, he had a Mercedes convertible. He was the toast of Tehran.” Eshan paused for a moment. “He drank. He smoked hashish.”

“Allah is merciful.”

“But . . . how are you chosen? Why did I have your address? Why did you expect me?”

“What do you think? That this would all happen by virtue of the breeze? But speak no more of it.”

When they came down to Peshawar, a boy had brought Eshan this name and address, so he had done as he had been instructed, and come to this place as soon as he saw that Aziz was being killed. But . . . had the women been ordered to kill Aziz? Perhaps that Persian catamite was involved, that wretched child, sent as a spy from who knew who? He was no student, apprenticed to Aziz by a loving father, that shadow-slipping boy with his seductive hands.

The women and the catamite had, in their turns, been killed. Somebody cleaning up after themselves, Eshan assumed, in this world where nothing was as it seemed.

On the way to Syed, Eshan had passed through the street of the shoemakers, as the note had instructed. He’d felt nothing but had afterward discovered something in his pocket. An Olympus recorder with a full tape in it.

“I have the recording, Master.”

“Oh, that’s good. And is the trap lying open? Have they stepped in?”

Eshan had no idea how to answer this, so he turned on the recorder to let the Mahdi listen. There was the usual creaking and popping. Syed Ahmad raised his eyebrows.

“He puts on the suit jacket. The transmitters are located in the jackets. Woven into the cloth by—”

The master held up his hand. “I do not need to know this.”

President Fitzgerald’s voice came through. “Better,” it said. “Now I look like a corpse that’s pretending to be alive.”

“What is this?” the master asked.

“How is your English, Mahdi?”

“My English is from school, but I still don’t understand this sentence. How is he pretending? He is alive.”

“It’s not important. He talks only to his wife.”

Then, more faintly, Linda Fitzgerald’s voice: “Where’s that paladin of yours?” Then the daughter’s voice came, speaking of the “guy with the Muslim wife.”

“And all of this means?”

“ ‘Paladin’ means a hero or champion. He must have an operative that he trusts who has a Muslim wife.”

“But not himself Muslim? How strange, to be so close to the faith and not desire it.”

“Americans are strange.”

“This faithless husband needs stoning.”

Then the president’s voice came again: “Are the spiders in the web?”

“What does he say?”

“He refers to his viziers. He does not trust them.”

There was a clunk, then the sound of shuffling. “He enters the Cabinet Room. They come to their feet. Now, listen.”

The president spoke for a moment, saying that he would do the “Allah two-step.”

“The Allah two-step? That is a term of respect?”

“It is not a term of respect.”

“Then his acceptance of the faith was not sincere?”