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It was clear everyone knew that he had bought the barn and was trying to restore it himself. That went down well. Rich Londoners with a cheque book to flash and a lust to play the squire were greeted with politeness up front but a shrug behind their back. But the dark-haired single man who lived in a tent in his own orchard while he did the manual work himself was, so ran the growing belief in the village, a good sort.
According to the postman he seemed to receive little mail save a few official-looking buff envelopes, and even these he asked to be delivered to the Buck’s Head public house to save the postman the haul up the long, muddy track; a gesture appreciated by the postman. The letters were addressed to ‘Colonel’ but he never mentioned that when he bought a drink at the bar or a newspaper or food at the store. Just smiled and was very polite. The locals’ growing appreciation of the man was, however, tinged wit
h curiosity. So many ‘incomers’ were brash and forward. Who was he, and where had he come from, and why had he chosen to settle in Meonstoke?
That afternoon, on his ramble through the village, he had visited the ancient church of St Andrew, and met and fallen into conversation with the Rector, Reverend Jim Foley.
The ex-soldier was beginning to think he would enjoy life where he had decided to settle. He could pedal his rugged mountain bike down to Droxford on the Southampton road to buy straight-from-the-garden food in the produce market. He could explore the myriad lanes he could see from his roof and sample ale in the old beamed pubs they would reveal.
But in two days he would attend Sunday matins at St Andrew’s and, in the quiet gloom of the ancient stone, he would pray, as he often did.
He would ask for forgiveness of the God in whom he devoutly believed for all the men he had killed and for the rest of their immortal souls. He would ask for eternal rest for all the comrades he had seen die beside him; he would give thanks that he had never killed women or children nor any who came in peace, and he would pray that one day he too could expiate his sins and enter into the Kingdom.
Then he would come back to the hillside and resume his labours. There were only another thousand tiles to go.
Vast as is the National Security Agency’s complex of buildings, it is only a tiny fraction of Fort Meade, one of the largest military bases in the USA. Situated four miles east of the Interstate 95 and halfway between Washington and Baltimore, the base is home to around ten thousand military staff and twenty-five thousand civilian employees. It is a city in itself and has all the habitual facilities of a small city. The ‘spook’ part is tucked away in one corner inside a rigidly guarded security zone that Dr Martin had never visited before.
The sedan bearing him glided through the sprawling base with no let or hindrance until it came to the zone. At the main gate passes were examined, and faces peered through the windows at the British academic as his guide up front vouched for him. Half a mile later the car drew up at a side door of the huge main block and Dr Martin and his escort entered. There was a desk guarded by army personnel. More checks; some phoning; thumbs placed on keypads; iris recognition; final admission.
After what seemed like another marathon of corridors they came to an anonymous door. The escort knocked and went in. Dr Martin found himself at last among faces he knew and recognized: friends, colleagues and fellow members of the Koran Committee.
Like so many government-service conference rooms, it was anonymous and functional. There were no windows but air conditioning kept the atmosphere fresh. There were a circular table and padded upright chairs; on one wall hung a screen, presumably for displays and graphics should they be needed; small tables stood to the side with coffee urns and trays of food for the insatiable American stomach.
The hosts were clearly two non-academic intelligence officers; they introduced themselves with give-nothing-away courtesy. One was the Deputy Director of the NSA, sent to attend by the general himself. The other was a senior officer from Homeland Security in Washington.
And there were the four academics, including Dr Martin. They all knew each other. Before agreeing to be co-opted on to the no-name, no-publicity committee of experts steeped in one book and one religion, they had known each other vicariously from their published works and personally from seminars, lectures and conferences. The world of such intense Koranic study is not large.
Terry Martin greeted Doctors Ludwig Schramme from Columbia, New York, Ben Jolley from Rand and ‘Harry’ Harrison from Brookings, who certainly had a different first name but was always known as Harry. The oldest and therefore the presumed senior was Ben Jolley, a great bearded bear of a man who promptly and despite pursed lips from the Deputy Director produced and lit up a fearsome briar pipe on which he drew happily, once it was going like an autumn bonfire. The Westinghouse extraction technology above their heads did its best and almost succeeded, but was clearly going to need a complete servicing.
The Deputy Director cut straight to the heart of the reason for the convocation of the scholars. He distributed copies of two documents, one file to each man. These were the Arabic originals as teased out of the AQ financier’s laptop, and translations by the in-house Arabic division. The four men went straight to the Arabic versions and read in silence. Dr Jolley puffed; the man from Homeland Security winced. The four finished more or less at the same time.
Then they read the English translations to see what had been missed and why. Jolley looked up at the two intelligence officers.
‘Well?’
‘Well . . . what, professor?’
‘What,’ asked the Arabist, ‘is the problem that has brought us all here?’
The Deputy Director leaned over and tapped a portion of the English translation.
‘The problem is that. There. What does it mean? What are they talking about?’
All four of them had spotted the Koranic reference in the Arabic text. They had no need of translation. Each had seen the phrase many times and studied its possible various meanings. But that had been in scholarly texts. This was in modern letters. Three references in one of the letters, a single reference in the other.
‘Al-Isra? It must be a code of some kind. It refers to an episode in the life of the Prophet Muhammad.’
‘Then forgive our ignorance,’ said the man from Homeland. ‘What is Al-Isra?’
‘You explain, Terry,’ said Dr Jolley.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Terry Martin, ‘it refers to a revelation in the life of the Prophet. To this day scholars argue as to whether he experienced a genuinely divine miracle or whether it was simply an out-of-body experience.
‘Briefly, he was asleep one night a year before his emigration from his birthplace of Mecca to Medina when he had a dream. Or a hallucination. Or a divine miracle. For brevity let me say “dream” and stick with it.
‘In his dream he was transported from the depths of modern Saudi Arabia across deserts and mountains to the city of Jerusalem, then a city holy only to Christians and Jews.’
‘Date? In our calendar?’
