Critical Mass (33 page)

Rashid stopped his car near some woods. On the other side was the Columbia Pike and, just north of here, a small neighborhood. He got out and moved in among the trees. A Rugby would be passing over now, and there were drones, he felt sure, running high and silent. Moving from trunk to trunk, he made his way beneath the thickest foliage he could find. If they were able to locate his implant without NAVSTAR online—and he assumed that they were—they probably didn’t need a Rugby to find him now. But you never knew; he might get lucky.

He had to get to Alexandria and get that bomb detonated. Even if he needed to do it in the garage, that was fine. Just get the thing to go off, that was the key. If they’d turned coward or been killed—whatever—he would do it himself, never mind, and regard the task as what it was—a privilege. Death excited him, and the prospect of the wonderful heaven Allah had prepared was delicious. He’d wanted a boy first, then a girl. He’d wanted his own house, and the love of a wife. But those things were not to be, because Allah, it seemed, wanted him.

Walking out of the woods and into the little neighborhood, he wondered if he would have to kill now, which person, innocently living? It didn’t matter. He would kill if he had to, but stealth was better.

The first house he came to was empty. Shortly he would need a car, but right now this was exactly right. He went to the garage, broke a pane in the
door, and went in. As he did so, a small dog began barking frantically. It hopped up his leg, groveling and panting, absurdly grateful that he had come.

Of course, there was nothing absurd about its gratitude. The animal had been left in this garage with nothing but a bowl of water.

Well, good, in a moment he could make use of the dog.

How American this garage was, so tidy and yet so cluttered with possessions. Why would a man with a tiny property like this one require a chain saw? Or a collection of model ships, gathering dust on the workbench? It was all stupid, all this obsession they had with material. The Crusaders fed their hunger for God with rubbish like this. Television instead of prayer. That was no way to live.

He went into a splendidly appointed kitchen, where he found a good knife, small but with a blade of excellent quality. For some little time he sharpened it in the electric sharpener that stood on the gleaming granite counter. Then he went through the dining room with its silver-laden sideboard and glowing mahogany table, and into the bedroom wing. He found a bathroom, where he searched the cabinets for alcohol.

Because he had no choice but to do it this way, he took the knife in his clumsy left hand and sawed away at his right arm. Gritting his teeth, sucking back his screams, he cut deep, dissecting away fluffy folds of fat and lean strips of muscle, until he found the dull silver capsule he was seeking. Pushing at it, working the wound until it frothed and bubbled, he gradually got the thing between his fingers.

He looked at it. Featureless, dull silver. Inside, he knew, there was an intricate array of circuitry, a masterpiece of subminiaturization. The telemetry the thing generated could even be used to determine his state of consciousness, whether or not his eyes were open and functioning, his speed of movement, and, if he was wounded, how long he had to live.

All of that, and the only thing it would do now was feed a hopping, snorting little dog. Not much of a watchdog, this little thing. He opened the fridge and found a plastic container of turkey salami. Taking out a slice, he folded it around his implant, then gave it to the animal, which ate with the frantic gusto of the starving.

Taking it by the scruff of the neck, he put it out into the garden. It ran yapping to the back fence and began jumping at the gate. He followed it, remaining close to the few trees, then using a garden shed as cover.

When he opened the gate, the animal raced out, dashing off along the alley.

So now they had a dog to catch.

Rashid had no idea which Mahdi sympathizers in the FBI or the CIA cut orders to arrest or kill people like Jim Deutsch—or even if they were Mahdi sympathizers. Maybe they had other agendas. That was the nature of intelligence, now. There were too many players, too many agendas. The entire process was out of control. Unbeknownst even to most world leaders, the whole vast planetary community of spies had long since descended into anarchy.

Rashid reached the house, went through it onto the front porch, and walked quickly down its covered expanse. There was a little rail, a porch swing, some drying flowers on a white stand. This had once been somebody’s refuge, their little nook where they had, perhaps, sat and read books. Filth. Western nonsense. He hated it all. The only book was the Quran. The rest was worthy only of the fire, all of it from Genesis to
The Great Gatsby
and beyond, without exception. He even favored burning the Islamic texts, the endless interpretations and such. Why did you need this when you had the original word of God?

Read the word, pray, do your work—this was the world that was being created, a happy world at last, freed of the vast burdens of the soul that the Crusaders had imposed, as part of their service to darkness.

He passed down off the porch, into the yellowing grass beside the house, and went into the next yard, where a red Dodge stood in the driveway. He looked in the window and saw no Global Positioning System in the dash. Good, the car could be used. But he needed a key. Perhaps it was in the owner’s pocket, of course, but it could be in the house. He could get lucky. God could help him.

He went up the driveway, and stepped onto a porch similar to the one next door. There were shadings of difference, though—different plants, no swing. Also, the front door was solid, no windowpanes. So he kicked in one of the windows. Why not? What did the property of these faithless creatures matter? He reached in, opened the door, and entered.

“Excuse me!”

Rashid froze. A man stood back in the shadows of the room, a plump man of perhaps thirty-five, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. For a moment, he seemed like some sort of hallucination, his presence was so unexpected. But
then he came forward, and in his hand Rashid saw a small vase. Then the man reached down and lifted a side chair by its leg and threw it.

As Rashid stepped aside to avoid the chair, he pulled out the knife he had used to cut the implant from his arm. He advanced on the man, who was fat and confused but still quick enough to slam the vase into the side of Rashid’s head.

Just in time, Rashid turned, causing the blow to glance off behind his left ear. It hurt, but it did not stun him, and he slashed backward with the knife.

It connected; the man drew in breath; then Rashid thrust as hard as he could, digging and cutting, pistoning his fist as he had been taught.

The man gasped; his foot stomped so hard the whole house shook; then he drew back away from the knife, as Rashid had been trained that he would do. Rashid followed him, still cutting, feeling the resistance of cartilage and organs, feeling blood, hot, fast, gushing out around his plunging fist.

The man hit him with the flat of his hand, hit him hard enough to make his ear ring. Then the man came off the knife and fell against the wall. He made a noise, low, like he was gargling, as black blood gushed from his mouth. He slid down the wall, his eyes fixing on Rashid. “Hey, man,” he said, then another word, a garbled mutter. His head slumped onto his chest.

Rashid found himself kicking the man, and when he did, there was an almost musical sigh, a poetic little sound.

He looked down at the figure. Was he only pretending? Or was this, truly, death? Rashid watched the chest. No breathing. The eyes were still open, also fixed, slightly misted over. Dead, then.

Gingerly Rashid pushed a hand into one pocket, then the other. He took the wallet, the keys. He went quickly through the house and out the side door that led to the driveway. There was a pot boiling on the stove, which he shut off. No reason to attract attention with a fire.

Then he saw, sitting in the sun in a tiny breakfast nook, an ancient woman. She was silent, staring, her face so deeply wrinkled that it looked false, like a caricature of great age. In front of her was an empty soup bowl. In her hand, in among knuckles like great stones, was a silver spoon.

He went back to the stove, got the pot, and went to her. He poured her some soup. Her mouth began to work—and then she turned with all the sudden intensity of a striking snake and said, “You’re crazy; you killed my son. You’re crazy.”

He slammed the pot down on the top of her head with a huge clang. Soup splashed everywhere as her head snapped forward into the bowl.

He left, got in the car, grabbing the steering wheel as if it would somehow preserve his life.

At least the traffic was less daunting now, since the dispersal of the government was complete and most of the evacuees had left the area. He had no idea how long it would take him to get to Alexandria, but he had no doubt, now, that he was going to make it. His arm hurt. His heart was still pounding. The time for prayers had come, and he twisted his body so that it was indicating the east, Mecca, the true home of the human soul.

THE ITALIAN LESSON

For the pope, the day had been long and oppressively difficult, with numerous
appearances, the reading of speeches, and the constant, vaguely disturbing presence of the Mufti. He had gone at last to the Domus Sanctae Marthae for the night. The pope could not house him in the Apostolic Palace itself, of course; that was not appropriate. Fortunately, he had not objected to the Domus. In fact, all day he had been faultlessly polite, even kneeling with the pope before the great altar in St. Peter’s to pray through the six o’clock hour, as a terrified world waited for Washington to be destroyed.

He looked at the clock on the table beside his favorite chair. It was just going midnight now, so the danger was perhaps past in America, at least for the moment. He had telephoned two hours ago to offer his support to the president, whom he had met and found to be a man deserving of respect. Instead, the call had gone to the vice president, a clipped individual with a difficult name, who had thanked him politely and rung off.

For a moment, his eyes closed. When they opened again, they swam across the prayer he had been reading in his Breviary. The midnight nocturne, so familiar to a man who often did not sleep. Cares dragged at him late. He saw the ruin of the world coming, in the form of melting ice, storms, drought, starvation, and the end of oil. He saw it also in the strangeness of the violence that seemed these days to be everywhere. He felt his prayers as a drop of pure
water in the dirty torrent of the demon. But here, now, in this silent room, with his beloved Breviary open in his hands, he felt close not only to God but also to the caressing arms of the Shepherd and his holy mother.

“Holiness!”

He looked up, startled at the sudden voice. Who would enter here without a knock?

A Swiss Guard was before him, and the expression on the man’s face caused a horror of coldness to sweep the pope’s whole body. “They have struck again?”

“Holiness, there is an airplane. An airplane in the night.”

He did not understand, and his face must have communicated his confusion, because the man spoke again.

“Holiness, there is an airplane, a small airplane. From the cupola, we have a call to alarm. Holiness, please come.”

He got up and followed the man. As they entered the corridor, other Swiss Guards came running, surrounding the pope.

“What is this airplane? Is the air force there?”

“The airplane is buzzing—we hear it. We can see nothing. And there are no jets.”

“Has anyone called the Aeronautica?”

“There is alarm. There is alarm.”

They went down the great staircase, now a whole phalanx of guards. “Where do we go?”

“Holiness, to the crypt.”

And with those words, the great tide of history that was sweeping the world entered the Vatican, for they would be the last words spoken in that place for thirty-one years.

The next instant, the tall windows that the pope was passing belched fire like the maws of a row of monster blast furnaces. The pope and his guards instantly became blackened ash, their bodies flying with the molten glass into the grandeur of the hall they had been passing through, imprinting their shadows on the opposite wall, which, a fraction of a second later, became dust.

The first millisecond after the detonation slammed St. Peter’s with an overpressure of 51 psi, the roof of the great church split with a massive crack. In the plaza, where many people were still praying, a sheet of light
came that left them all reduced to ash. There was no attempt to escape; it happened too fast. Their prayers had prevented them from hearing the buzzing of the airplane.

On the plane, a young Albanian mother had struggled with the controls, shifting the tiny airframe clumsily around the sky, trying to position the aircraft directly above St. Peter’s.

She had taken off from the Ippodromo delle Capannelle south of Rome. The plane had been hidden in a garage nearby, and brought there by her brother and her husband after dark. The Arabs had taken her children, Agim, Teuta, and tiny, dear Gezime, still nursing, poor little thing.

They would call on the cell phone and Gezime’s wailing would be heard, only her wailing. But now she would never again get mother’s milk! It was life, though, life for the children, if the woman did this. Otherwise, she was to be taken to them and watch as they were baked to death one by one in an oven. The Arabs has promised this, and she knew that they would keep their promise.

She had been taught to fly, but on the ground. This was her first experience actually in the air.

An hour ago, they had sent a video of Teuta with her hair burning, screaming, poor baby, her hair with smoke! So the woman and her husband and his brother had done as they had been told to do, had pulled the black plane onto the racetrack, and there a man had come, and instructed her. He had showed her how to make the plane rise only, not how to make it land.