One
The Sheik’s bodyguard peered down the hillside through Waziristan’s thin, gray morning twilight, then pointed with his rifle. “The Asp! He made it!”
Propped up in his favorite wooden chair, beneath the mud brick house’s wooden front canopy, the Sheik leaned forward for a closer look. To improve his view of the frigid, dun-colored landscape he cupped one hand above his eyes. Today his fingers trembled as much from excitement as from the cold and the palsy. On clear winter days like this one, the canopy allowed him to enjoy fresh air, while it shielded his ever-more wrinkled hide from the sun.
The canopy also, his younger protectors insisted, hid him from the down-peering eyes of the satellites and the robot planes. Those could identify him by his height, as revealed by the length of his shadow, and by the walking stick upon which he now relied. Then his enemies could murder him by pressing a button. He didn’t doubt that the Americans were clever enough, and vicious enough, to do it. But he doubted that the Americans considered him worth looking for any longer.
His entourage no longer bothered to shuttle him back and forth across the nominal border between the region that had been Pakistan’s Tribal Areas and Afghanistan’s equally sympathetic southern border provinces. And the entourage, itself, was not merely shrunken but was comprised of trusted veterans too old and untried recruits too young. In the aftermath of the Great Blow’s failure Islam, his Islam, the only true Islam, had become impotent.
Six months earlier something—no one was, even now, sure exactly what—had gone wrong in a distant place called Brunswick, in the United States.
And in the following days and weeks Islam’s soldiers had been struck down with unprecedented suddenness and viciousness. True Islam’s voices had fallen silent around the globe, overwhelmed by false preachers of moderation and cowardice, who called themselves faithful. Not only the Sunni Islamic majority, but even the less resolute among the Shia, had been seduced by the West’s depredations and cowed by its power. And today those charlatans controlled Islam’s future.
Financial and technical benefactors, private and governmental, had been overcautious in the best of times. Now they shunned true believers as though they had become lepers.
On the slope below the Sheik two guides, rifles slung across their torsos, escorted a third man. He sprang from boulder to boulder up the hillside as though weightless. The Asp resembled the Egyptian Cobra from which he took his nom de guerre. Born on the Nile’s banks, quick, deadly, cunning, and equally at home in water as on the land. The Asp had traveled his long and circuitous journey’s last kilometers by night, even though the protection darkness offered was pitiful against the Great Satan’s eyes in the sky.
The Sheik sat back, brow furrowed, crossed his arms, and awaited the arrival of True Islam’s last hope.
* * *
The Sheik watched the Asp as they sat together on the woven rug that softened the house’s earth floor, and drank tea.
The Asp was the second son of a Cairo physician who had been a colleague of the Sheik, in the days when both had practiced medicine. The Asp resembled, to Egyptian eyes at least, his Peruvian mother. The Asp’s dark eyes and beard, and his wiry, athletic, body, reminded the Sheik of himself in youth. But the Asp’s complexion was somehow darker, his features less sharp and prominent, his eyes rounder, and his stature shorter. Those more widely traveled than the Sheik had said that the Asp could pass for a Mexican gardener. The Sheik hoped so.
The Sheik said, “You are breathing heavily.”
The Asp nodded. “It’s just the altitude.”
“Is the North Sea as cold as they say?”
The Asp smiled and wrapped himself with his arms, pantomiming a shiver. “In the water, yes.”
They spoke, one to another, the colloquial but cultured Arabic of the upper-class Egyptians they were.
The Asp continued, “But when one is dry, and appropriately clothed, the North Sea’s disamenities are no more severe than the disamenities of this place.” He shrugged. “When you instructed us all to disperse and await your call, I went to work where there was work to be found. But I long for the Red Sea.”
“And I long for the warm spring in Cairo.”
“Perhaps we will both return. When the apricots are in season.”
The Sheik smiled, as much because the Asp remembered and honored the old colloquialism as at the expression itself. Apricots were never in season, in the way pigs never flew, and Hell never froze.
The Asp’s smile faded.
The Sheik scratched his white beard. “You believe Islam—real Islam, not the westernized rubbish peddled on the television—has become like the apricots?”
The Asp shifted on the rug, frowned. “I believe apricots cannot flourish in a drought.”
The Sheik motioned to his assistant to bring the manila envelope and remove it from its protective plastic bag. The Sheik caressed it, then handed it across to the Asp. “You read English. Behold the rain.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the Asp tapped the papers together against the floor, slid them back into the envelope, and frowned.
The Sheik said, “You’re an engineer. Is it possible?”
The Asp shook his head. “An engineering degree does not make an engineer. And my degree is not in that kind of engineering, in any case. As for possibility, the date on the document is old enough that you should have had time to investigate this. You wouldn’t have dragged me here from Amsterdam if you had disproved this. So, may I ask what you’ve learned since you received it?”
The Sheik shook his head. “What I have learned in my life is that when a thing seems too good to be true, it generally is. This stank in the way bait stinks. The sort of cleverly disguised deception of which the Jew is fondest. Besides, at the time we received it we presumed the Great Blow was the better option. Therefore, I elected to set it aside.”
The Asp narrowed his eyes. “Then why have you now reached out to me? Surely I haven’t traveled from Amsterdam to Pakistan to render a layman’s opinion on this document’s aroma?”
The Sheik said, “You speak English. And some Spanish, I believe.”
“I could not pass for British, let alone American. And never for a Spaniard, if you’re suggesting—”
“I am not suggesting. I am pointing out that you possess unique talents and skills required to confirm and exploit this opportunity.”
The Asp snorted. “The talents and skills required to exploit this opportunity, assuming it is not a Jew trap, are equivalent to those the Prophet used to split the Moon. If you want a miracle-worker I suggest you inquire whether He is available.”
The Asp’s response was blasphemous, theologically unsound, and shockingly disrespectful of authority. But it underscored that he possessed the independence, the audacity, indeed the Western-ness, this task would require.
From childhood, the Asp had always competed with his older sibling’s size and strength. He had compensated with daring and imagination, tempered and assisted by tenacity and careful planning. It was the moment to invoke the Asp’s special connection to this project.
The Sheik raised one finger. “The Prophet did not split the Moon. God in his greatness did. God may choose any man as his messenger. He chose the Crocodile to strike the Great Blow. He and another soldier died in the attempt, unmourned among the infidels. Does your irreverence extend so far as to dishonor your own brother’s sacrifice?”
The Asp sat back, stunned, his jaw agape.
His reaction surprised the Sheik. Operational security had restricted the details of the Great Blow. But surely the Asp had suspected his older brother’s role, if not his fate? Both had chosen names of creatures of their native Nile Valley. The Crocodile more powerful of build, more gregarious, than his slender, silent younger brother. But both had survived close-run calls, had lost friends, and had shed their own blood and the blood of infidels, all in Islam’s name. Both were highly regarded fighters. Both knew the risks and rewards.
Tears formed in the younger man’s eyes. Whether of shock, sorrow, or pride the Sheik could not read.
Finally, the Asp blinked, swallowed, then bowed his head and whispered. “Please accept my most sincere apology, Sheik. I am honored you have selected me for the team that will pursue this opportunity.”
The Sheik smiled and shook his head. “There is no team. You will operate alone. And with unfettered discretion.”
The Asp stiffened and shook his head. “No one man could accomplish this undertaking.”
The Sheik raised his palm. “The mouse passes easily between the stones of a wall that the camel cannot break through.”
The whole truth was rather more complicated than the Sheik chose to reveal. The Sheik was sending a mouse because that was all he had left. The personnel available since the post-Brunswick bloodbaths had dwindled. The maimed, the simple-minded, and the too-old and too-young, were all that remained of the Sheik’s army today.
Many in the West superimposed their own egalitarian ideals on jihad, presuming it was waged by impoverished dimwits, plucked like fish from an inexhaustible sea of peasants and motivated by a dearth of wealth, or by a desire to redistribute it. This pleased the Sheik, for a self-deluding enemy was an easily defeated enemy.
But the Asp, like his martyred brother, the Crocodile, resembled elite knights, rather than rabble. Born of good family, and personally known to the Sheik since childhood, they were university-educated and multilingual. They were skilled in the use of weapons and explosives, blooded in battle. And, most importantly, dedicated to God. The Asp was not merely a knight. He was the last knight that remained on True Islam’s chess board.
The Asp at last responded to the assignment with which the Sheik had tasked him.
The younger man said, “Just me? A small army would find this undertaking challenging.”
The Sheik said, “If this document is accurate, the two most difficult obstacles to success are already overcome.” He crooked an oft-broken finger at his bodyguard, who brought the knapsack and placed it between the Sheik and the Asp.
The Sheik laid his palm on its canvas. “Also, this will in many ways be more useful than an army. The wealth packaged inside, in various fungible commodities and currencies, represents virtually every rupee’s worth of value that we have been able to scrape together over the past six months.
“Inside you will also find a list of persons and institutions. We believe each of them remain either loyal enough, or mercenary enough, to sell you the various travel and other documents you may require. Also, to procure and provide apparatus and information not readily available. Commit the list to memory then destroy it.”
The Asp nodded, tucked the manila envelope back into its plastic Ziploc, and then into the knapsack. “How will I communicate my plans and my progress to you?”
The Sheik shook his head. “You will not. Your autonomy and anonymity will be your sturdiest shield. Even when our ranks were filled with soldiers I trusted, we were too often compromised by secrets unkept. Today I trust no one. I counsel you to do the same. Your success will be the only report I need. And it will announce itself not only to me, but to the world.”
The Asp inclined his head. “As you wish.” He gathered himself to stand.
The Sheik reached out and tugged the younger man’s sleeve. “Your eagerness is admirable. But sit. We will pray. We will dine together and talk of your family. And of better times past and to come. You will sleep. Then tonight you will begin.”
* * *
The full moon had risen by the time the Asp shrugged the pack onto his shoulders.
The Sheik, with his bodyguard’s assistance, rose and walked with the younger man as he took his leave.
Outside, the wind blew thin and cold, and the Asp assisted the Sheik, one strong hand supporting him beneath one elbow. The older man picked his way, using his walking stick for balance. The going was easier than it could have been, because the bright moon’s light illuminated each rock and pitfall, and even cast faint shadows.
They traveled together the few steps to the end of the tiny, open flat upon which the house had been constructed. Beyond, the downslope became steep and rocky.
The younger man paused there, turned, and embraced the Sheik. “I don’t even know where to begin. Especially alone.”
The Sheik patted the Asp’s shoulder. “No man is alone when he goes with God.” The Sheik pointed his stick at the Moon. “This is his sign to you. You carry with you the hope of the world against the darkness. God will illuminate your path always.”
Then the Sheik frowned, looked around, and spotted one of the two soldiers who had escorted the Asp up from the valley trail during the previous night. They would escort him down, as well. The man dozed, his back against a boulder, his rifle across his knees.
The Sheik called, “Yusef! Our guest is about to leave!”
The man sprang to his feet. “Yes, Sheik!”
The Sheik called again, “Where is Ali?”
The sentry looked around, then shrugged. “Perhaps he has gone to piss, Sheik.”
The Asp’s eyes met the Sheik’s as the younger man’s fingers tightened around his elbow.
Without a word, the Asp spun around and ran, headlong and stumbling, down the slope.
The Asp had put perhaps thirty meters distance between the house, and himself.
Then, for an eye’s blink, the Sheik saw the missile. Black, as it crossed the Moon’s white face, it was scarcely larger than a young olive tree’s trunk. It streaked above his head, then struck the house, ten meters behind him.
The warhead’s explosion, a red thunderclap, flung the Sheik through the air. Stone and timber, blasted from the house, battered him and caused him to tumble.
In his life’s final instants, the Sheik glimpsed the Asp, also tumbling. Limp, as a mountain goat shot through its heart, Islam’s last hope plunged toward the valley’s floor.
A boulder rushed up at the Sheik.
Before his skull struck it, with an arrow’s swiftness, he relaxed his body and awaited his entry into Paradise. His sole anxiety was whether the Asp would greet him there.