The Aisha Prophecy (15 page)

Better to stay where God sent him to begin with. Better to stay where he is known to have been dining when that policeman’s body was found. Better to stay where he is likely to hear all of the latest developments. Better to get into conversations with the others. If they know this Harry Whistler, they would very likely know Elizabeth Stride. In conversation, where she’s living could easily come up. Yes, better and smarter. He would stay.

“Hello there,” came a voice approaching behind him. He turned to see the man dressed in denim pull out the stool nearest him. “Friend of Harry’s, are you? Let me buy to a beer.

He offered his hand. “Name’s Gilhooley.”

FIFTEEN 

Roger Clew replayed Leland’s call the next morning. He did so in the “Quiet Room” near his office at State. He realized that he had been less than respectful in response to some of Leland’s speculations. Leland, on the other hand, had been deliberately vague about what he knew of Haskell’s plans.

Why so? Because they’re huge? Earth-shaking? Life-altering? Or is it because he likes being in the game and not looking on from the sidelines. Perhaps he’s tired of knowing only what he’s been told by people who are closer to the action. Clew couldn’t say that he blamed him. So, Clew decided, let him have his fun. Let him, as he suggested, string Haskell along by saying that he’s got Stride on the case.

Clew considered downloading the recording and emailing it to Kessler with a little background added. Kessler would respond. He’d say keep me informed while probably shaking his head in… disgust? Disgust or amusement. More than likely, some of both. Amusement when he got to the part about Elizabeth being a prophesied angel. To say nothing of Aisha. Changing the world. Clew, in his place, would say “We don’t need this. Let’s get those girls to the nearest Nasreen safe house. This is nuts, but let’s not take any chances.” Kessler wouldn’t, however. Kessler thrives on taking chances.

Elizabeth is the one with the much shorter fuse. She would say, “What, for this? You’d uproot them again for this? Stride would say, “Tell you what. Where’s this Haskell right now. I’ll go and do some uprooting of my own.”

That sounds like Stride. Or at least the old Stride. She’d surely want to put an end to this quickly. But she might also want to put an end to old Roger for upsetting them all with this nonsense.

Clew extracted his recording of last night’s conversation. He slid his chair to a nearby computer. He hadn’t paid much attention to the prophecy before this. He typed in a code that accessed State’s data base. The data it contained was up to the minute, fed constantly by literally millions of items from sources all over the world. Only a fraction were intelligence reports. The bulk were, for example, almost every news item printed or broadcast by all the world’s media. There were also reams of NSA intercepts of wireless traffic by phone or computer, much of it in code or in some foreign language, but usually not decoded or translated because there was simply too much of it.

As with any computer one could narrow one’s search by entering a keyword or two. These might be the name of a person of interest or, in anything related to Muslims, a long list of words that had been known to appear in traffic related to hostile intentions. Clew entered “Aisha” and “Prophecy” separately. He clicked on a box that said “Summarize.”

Clew let out a whistle. There were thousands of entries. He’d need to narrow it down to… well, a real summary, but first he wanted to scan a few items in which names that he recognized appeared. One was that of Colonel Aram Jalil, heads up part of Savama, Iran’s Secret Police. Jalil had been trolling other Muslim nations’ services asking whether they could shed any light on the source of what he called “this bit of mischief.” He said he’d been so tasked by Abbas Mansur. He’d been at it for a couple of weeks now.

Abbas Mansur? The name seemed familiar. Clew entered the name and his bio came up. Oh, sure. A senior mullah. Currently chairing the Guardian Council. As Clew recalled, the mullahs rotate into the chair. Helps explain its wild swings from one year to the next in how hard they crack down on their citizenry. And Mansur’s a good one by most accounts. Thought to be the most open-minded of the twelve. Intelligent, urbane, educated in the West, known to be fluent in three or four languages and passably conversant with some others.

Under the bio were several sub-headings. One concerned an NSA intercept of a telephone call that was placed by Mansur to Rajib Sadik of Hamas. There was no transcript. Clew would have to request it. But it did contain the key words he’d entered. Mansur must be trying to track it on his own. Clew knew of Sadik. He knew that his bio would be similar to Mansur’s. Multilingual and highly intelligent. Except Sadik was a doctor. Trained as a surgeon, also somewhere in the West. Now based in Hebron on Palestine’s West Bank. Believed to have chosen Hebron as opposed to Gaza to distance his Social Services wing from the extremists. Good thinking. Israel doesn’t bomb Hebron. Not much more is known of Sadik’s prior life before he turned up over there a few years ago and quickly rose in Hamas.

But why would Mansur be calling Sadik? Iran was far from a supporter of Hamas. They supported Hezbollah and other Jihadists. Hamas, itself, was not really jihadist except where the Israelis are concerned. And yet… wait a minute. Rajib Sadik. He’s known to have semi-regular contact with Yitzhak Netanya of Israel’s Mossad. Not surprising in itself. We all need our back channels. And Yitzhak is a friend of both Kessler and Whistler.

The world is suddenly getting much smaller.

Clew typed in his request for the transcript of that phone call and more on both Mansur and Sadik. He also wanted a charting of all media items that mentioned the prophecy, pro or con. In other words, a summary of a summary. He also wanted to see more detail on the sort of responses Colonel Aram Jalil was getting from the other Muslim states. The report said that these were all over the lot, some seeing it as a major concern and others brushing it off. It said some were actually blaming Iran for permitting the existence of Internet Cafes. They said Iran could have nipped this in the bud. What does this mean? That it started in Iran? He’d have to wait for the translated text.

For now he’d see what’s available on the web to anyone who with access to a PC. Let’s see how real people are reacting. He brought up Google. He typed “Aisha Prophecy” Again the screen exploded with thousands of hits. Most were written in Arabic, several dialects thereof. He scrolled down until he found a site that translated the prophecy’s text into English.

It read:

“The Lady of the Camel will come, born again, to show men that they have fallen into error. She comes to raise up the women of Islam. She comes to teach and she comes to bring justice. It is not revealed when, but she will come. She will be of the East, but turn your eyes to the West because that is where her banner will unfurl. She will have grown up among you, dressed in white, pure of heart, until the day when she reaches full womanhood. The flame-haired angel, Qaila, sent to guide her and protect her, will, on that day, reveal to her that she is the Lady of the Camel reborn. She will know that it is true and she will come. She will speak to all nations with words writ on wind. Her words will ride the lightning. They will be as shooting stars. And the angel, Qaila, will be with her, sword in hand. Woe to those who would deny the truth of her words. Woe to those who would silence her. Woe to those who would slay her. The angel, Qaila, will send them to hell.”

The prophet, it says, was a 12th century Berber named Muhammad Ibn-Tumart. A major figure in his day, led the Almohad clan. Their turf covered more than half of Morocco including the whole Atlas Mountain range and another good chunk of Moorish Spain. A reformer who, among other things, stopped the practice of kidnapping Christian women and shipping them east through his territory to be sold in what is now Saudi Arabia as concubines and slaves. So it seems his interest in raising up women went beyond just the women of Islam.

Clew had expected that he’d be some wandering ascetic. Obscure. But not so. This guy was an emir, a spiritual leader and a military leader, never defeated in battle. As for the Lady of the Camel, no doubt about her. The Lady of the Camel was Aisha for sure. Wonder why he didn’t come right out and say so.

Clew found a dozen or so other sites that were written in English or translated into English. Most translations of the prophecy were essentially identical although he found several variations here and there. Some of them added to the scope of Aisha’s mission. They tacked on some additional “Woe to…” threats that condemned, not so much the suicide bombers, but the “slinking rats” who recruited and encouraged them, especially the “ignorant clerics.”

Most, however, stuck to Aisha’s feminist agenda, arguing mostly pro, but sometimes con. He spent an hour browsing through them, curious to see how Muslim women reacted in various parts of the world. Quite a few of the entries rejected the suggestion that Muslim women needed raising up. Were they posted by men pretending to be women? Clew thought not. Muslim men tend to rant. These sentiments seemed genuine. They thought that their way of life was just fine. They felt valued and respected in their roles as wives and mothers. They were deferential, more or less, toward the men in their lives, but that, they wrote, was the way it should be and the way it has been throughout human history. They said that they did not feel oppressed.

Well and good, thought Clew. Southern Baptists feel the same. But those cons were in the minority. For every Muslim woman who took that view, he’d count five who thought it high time for a change. And not just for their own sakes. For the sake of Islam. It had been the most progressive society on earth while Europe was still in the dark ages. First in scholarship, science, the arts, you name it. Now all of that had been lost. New ideas were shouted down. And women had been “put in their place.” It was wasting the potential of half its population out of, as one Egyptian feminist had put it, “a blind adherence to the encrusted thoughts of old and incurious men.”

Some entries were flippant. “I love it. Bring her on.” One wrote, “I’m a Catholic. We could use her at the Vatican. They’re just as anti-women as the Muslims.” But most were more articulate and more deeply felt. Most thought that the prophecy was a breath of fresh air whether they believed it or not. Quite a few of the hits used only three words. The words were “She is coming.” A mantra. Sounds like it. Curious about it, Clew did a broader search. A prompt came on the screen. It asked, “English only?” Clew shrugged. What the hell. He opened a drop-down list of his choices. He clicked on the one that said “All.”

The result almost pushed him back in his chair. He saw that there seemed to be tens of thousands. “She is coming.” Only that. In many hundreds of languages. Unspoken, apparently, were the words, “Pass it on.” This thing now seemed to have a life of its own. It’s no wonder that Tehran is hot to track it.

Leland had asked him who’s reviving this prophecy. Who could it be? No idea, was his answer. He’d just wanted to get off the phone. But if he had to guess, he’d say the CIA. Or any of the western intelligence services. Why? Because they do this sort of thing all the time. They monitor all the Islamic websites, especially the radical sites. And they don’t just observe. They participate. They use those sites to spread all kinds of rumors meant to keep the jihadists off balance. Rumors that cause argument, disunity, confusion.

Sometimes they’ll pretend to be moderate Muslims and will troll the sites of those urging violence which are always under a pseudonym. They’ll have cyber-discussions that might last for weeks, pretending to gradually come around to a much more extreme point of view. They’ll ask, “What can I do? How can I strike a blow?” Then there’ll be a suggestion that they meet somewhere for coffee. Voila, they now have a name and a face. It’s not unlike on-line dating.

Or they might pretend to be angry jihadists themselves, spewing venom against Jews and Christians alike in the hope of being recruited. One might claim, for example, to be a technician working at some nuclear power plant. He’ll say he can cause an American Chernobyl if only he had the right help and some funding. Or he’s a chemist and he’s made a big batch of Sarin. What’s the best way to use it that will kill the most Jews. The New York subways? Holland Tunnel? Help me out here. Anyone who bites gets whisked off to Gitmo or wherever they’re being warehoused these days.

The problem is that anyone can log onto these sites. Time and again, they think they’ve been recruited and the person recruiting them turns out to be some nerd who’s just been amusing himself. No jihadist with a brain in his head would try to recruit on the internet. They’ll recruit through local mosques where they can see what they’re getting and where they can bring the recruit along slowly. Even better than the mosques, they’ll recruit in our state prisons where most, yes, most, Muslim chaplains are Wahhabis. Saudi Wahhabis, not a moderate among them, and all of them on the state’s payroll.

He had to give the Saudis credit. They pulled it off. They got some hack at the Bureau of Prisons to believe that moral guidance for poor black convicts can only be a good thing. Why not chaplains who represent the full range of Islam? Because theirs, they say, is the only true Islam. All other variations are heresies. A couple of respected Muslim organizations have finally caught on and have filed suit to change it. They know that the Wahhabis have an agenda that goes way beyond moral guidance. You want converts to Islam? Fundamentalist Islam? That’s where you’ll make them. In prisons. You want angry black men who hate the white world? You’ve certainly come to the right place. Who put you in prison? Who keeps you down? White cops and Jew judges, that’s who. Some convicts convert because they want to believe. Some have never had anything to believe in before. But many convert or pretend to convert because there is safety in numbers. Those numbers protect them from the skinhead gangs that are found in every prison in the country. Not to mention, of course, racist guards.

And that’s okay, Clew supposed, as far as it goes. The law protects a convict’s right to have access to a chaplain of his faith. But so many Wahhabis when they’re such a minority? So many Wahabbis when much of what they teach is an active hatred of Christians and Jews and of all other Muslims who aren’t Wahhabi.