How his heart had pounded, how proud he had been of his brothers, of the plan a hooded brother had laid out on the video. It was sheer genius.
Forty men, walking dirty bombs.
All those years of study and work would finally pay off. The Brotherhood needed Muhammed’s help in knowing where to aim these human daggers. They needed names and places. Names and places only someone on the inside of the finance industry could know.
Muhammed knew them, oh yes. Knew exactly where the dagger’s point should thrust. Which businesses to destroy—a surgical strike at the very beating heart of the economy.
The entire financial district, gone, destroyed, rendered a wasteland. Manhattan emptied, its inhabitants rendered radioactive lepers, condemned to die a slow and painful death.
Perfect. A plan that would bring the West to its knees, in submission to the Prophet’s will.
It was all in place, all perfect. And now this. Muhammed frowned at the printout of the decrypted email he’d just received.
Trouble.
A crew member of theMarie Claire, the ship carrying the martyrs, reported that a member of the Marseille Port Authority saw the secret hold, had seen the men, theshaheedbelts and the canister with its universally understood biohazard symbol and had grasped the significance. Luckily, the man had been terminated but had been alone in his office with his computer for a good five minutes.
Checking the server log, one message had been sent to [email protected] in the time frame between the clerk’s arrival at his office and his death.
Close examination of the message showed merely a technical text pertaining to plans to expand the harbor, but the message and its recipient had to be destroyed.
Google told him that www.wordsmith.com was a translation agency based in San Diego. Its owner’s name was Nicole Pearce.
Something had to be done fast. TheMarie Clairewas on its way. It would stop a hundred miles from the port of New York. The martyrs would be offloaded at night to four fast boats that would land in New Jersey, and from there would be bused to Manhattan. TheMarie Clairewould land briefly in port and be on its way to Panama by the time the bombs exploded. No one would ever suspect her.
It was all in place except for the wild card of Nicole Pearce, potential trouble.
Twenty years of planning was coming to fruition. It was unthinkable that they fail. Even more unthinkable that they fail because of a Western woman.
They wouldn’t fail. Muhammed had a plan.
At the topmost levels of American finance, in the heart of America’s softness, Muhammed had been astonished to learn that there were hard men. Money was defended as fiercely as land in this arcane world, by the iron laws of warfare, if necessary. Like all overlords, the kings of finance required warriors to deal with problems. A whistleblower threatening to bring down a lucrative deal, a divorcing wife threatening to report hidden assets to the IRS, the head of a rival company whose plane had to go down…these required warriors to deal with them. And the men of money knew where to go.
Several times, late at night, after a luxurious meal and over the thousand-dollar bottle of cognac or brandy Paul had learned to consume, a man was mentioned. He had many names and no one knew his background, save that he had been trained to be a ruthless but efficient killer by the US Army. It didn’t matter what his name was, what was important was what he could do.
Anything.
He could do anything at all for you, if the price was right. He also commanded vast resources and highly trained men. No matter what the mission, he could deal with it.
The world of high finance guarded its wealth ferociously when threatened and it had its enforcer—shadowy, fast, smart. Paul only knew his code name: Outlaw. He knew nothing else, except that there was a cell phone number.
He did not have it but he knew who did.
Muhammed picked up his phone and began the long process of arranging a meeting with one of the most powerful men in the world.
It was a humiliating process but Muhammed swallowed his pride.
Soon enough, the world of dishonor would be wiped out, and Umma—the entire community of believers—would rise from the ashes of the West.
FOUR
San Diego
To Nicole’s surprise,Sam Reston hadn’t booked at one of the top ten most expensive restaurants in San Diego, or one listed in the food guides, preferably one that had been recently reviewed by Lauren Spitz, the trendiest San Diego food guru, whose word was more authoritative than that of God.
Men have very simple thought patterns. Nicole had learned that fact through long exposure to the gender.
Sam Reston knew perfectly well that she had thought he was some kind of a low-level hired hand, one step up from a bum, where instead he was the proprietor of a successful company and probably earned ten or twenty times what she did.
