Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05 (66 page)

Hovering over the distraught soldier, Lucifer seethed in hopeless anger. He’d have to find another useful mortal. Another path, he’d have to go. But that didn’t worry him particularly, for if there was one thing he had learned it was that there was always another myrmidon willing to do his work. Some did it for passing pleasure. Some did it out of anger. Some out of pride or for revenge. Some did it because they were bored and there was nothing else to do. Some did it because they hated. Some did it because they loved. Either way, it didn’t matter. Plenty of mortals would help him if they could.

So he leaned toward the general.

“Abdullah will kill you!” he breathed into the general’s ear. “He will tear you apart; a finger, an ear, a piece of flesh at a time. He will prolong the suffering until you beg for death! So come unto me, mortal. Embrace me. Fall into my cold and waiting arms. Come into my world, for there is no hope for you here. Walk into the black eternity that is ready for you now. Walk into the shadow where there is never any light.”

He was finished with him now.

* * *

General Mamdayh’s body was found early the next morning by one of his maids. He had slumped at his desk as if he had simply fallen asleep while at work, his hands resting peacefully on his lap. The empty bottles of Valium
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and OxyContin
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were found on the floor. And though he died with his eyes open, his lips were pulled back in what looked like a smile of relief, as if the life he expected could not be worse than the one he had left.

He knew it was coming. The forecast had warned them:
Di kulâk
on its way. Devil’s Storm. The Sudden Darkness. It would be here within the hour.

It happened two, maybe three times every year. The great sandstorms rolled in from the desert to fall on the city like a wave.

Something about the
Di kulâk
excited the new king to the bone. In the old days, his ancestors had lived in terror of the storms. But Al-Rahman loved them. They connected him with his land, making him feel as if he were a part of the desert that he cherished so much.

So he stood at the window, waiting for the great sandstorm to appear. He knew it would come from the east, across the great plain, and he stood watching, surrounded by luxury while waiting for the huge wall of sand.

King al-Rahman thought as he waited. There was much on his mind.

He was standing at a window in the presidential penthouse in Riyadh. Surrounded by gold and teak and every fine thing in the world, the king was alone in his private lounge. To his left, a forty-foot, custom-made plasma screen—one of the largest privately owned plasma screens in the world—showed a satellite feed from Al Jezzera TV. Under his feet, fifteen other television screens had been inlaid in the marble floor and covered with glass. Each television was tuned to a different satellite feed from the West, and the flashing images on the screens added an unnatural texture to the light in the dimly lit room, creating shifting shadows and flashing contrasts everywhere. The muted televisions inlaid in the floor were obviously not designed to be watched, they were only for decoration, but they did make a statement as to how the king felt about the western culture that flashed on the screens. To his right was an exquisite bar stocked with the finest liquors of the world. The liquor was only for his foreign guests, of course, alcohol being prohibited in the kingdom, but if the king were to indulge from time to time, who would dare to question that?

Did it bother King al-Rahman that his kingdom developed, funded, taught, spread, and advocated Wahhabi fundamentalism, the strictest and most repressive interpretation of Islam anywhere on earth, while the king exempted himself from almost all of its teachings—the use of alcohol, for example, or, say, murder for another? The answer was clearly no. Al-Rahman did what he did for the good of the kingdom, and he had long ago gotten past the irony of his hypocrisy. To those around him, his closest advisers, his brothers, his few friends, the king made his personal feelings very clear: Allah had given the royal family religion as a means of controlling their people. That was its only purpose. It meant nothing more. The only thing Allah truly cared about was keeping the kingdom pure to sustain the royal family, the chosen vessels on earth.

Wahhabi Islam, with all its teachings and prohibitions, was a tool given to them. And it was a good tool. Important. But it was not the only tool they had. Allah had provided other means to keep his children safe from the great influences of the world.

And King al-Rahman would use every one of them.

The new king stood at a tall window, twenty feet from ceiling to floor, and looked out on the city that he loved. He could see it coming in the distance now, the great, rising storm. Thick sand was moving slowly toward them like a huge wall of brown water, boiling and mean. It stretched from north to south as far as the king could see and rose upward to four or five hundred feet. It rolled and raged as it moved across the land, swallowing everything in its path, a terrifying brown wave of sand. It was small now, still in the distance, but it was coming fast. The king’s heart skipped a beat. It was a terrifying sight, like something out of a nightmare, except this was real and moving toward him. The king stood and watched.

Above the wall of sand, the sun was rising over the desert and the buildings of Riyadh were splashed in bright colors of the early morning light, the predominant browns of the Arabic arches and porticos mixing easily with the pastels, desert pinks, and light blues. Some of the main buildings in the city were fascinating works of architecture, almost playful pieces of art, but even the tallest buildings seemed to shrink from the coming wall of sand, the billowing wall looming over the tallest building in Riyadh.

The buildings on the outskirts of the city were swallowed as the storm moved toward him.

He heard his office door open behind him. He turned his head just a bit, lowering his chin to the side, but he did not turn around, and he could not see who it was. Then he heard the shuffle of soft feet, and his heart jumped in his chest. He heard the deep breathing, the rattle in the chest, and his lips turned up in a smile. Then he smelled him. The stale clothes. The smell of medicine and disinfectants. The smell of sour breath.

He turned around slowly.

The old man was standing there.

The king bowed at his waist. He didn’t think, he just did it; it was an instinctive reaction, one he could not have explained. Yes, he was king, but this was the only man on earth that Al-Rahman feared. He bowed his head, then rushed forward and took the old man by the arm. He felt the thin flesh, the tender skin and weak muscle hanging like limp cloth on the bone, as he guided the old man toward the nearest chair.

“Old friend!” he cried. “I did not expect to see you here!”

The old man smiled sarcastically. “What you really mean,
King Abdullah,”
he accentuated the title with obvious satisfaction, “was that you did not expect to see me
at all.
Here. Somewhere else. You thought I was too close to death to be seen anywhere.”

Al-Rahman didn’t deny it. He knew he couldn’t lie to this man. “I did think, my good friend, that you were too weak to travel. So, yes, I’m surprised to see you anywhere.”

The old man looked up and grinned, his teeth brown from a lifetime’s worth of drinking dark tea and smoking cigarettes. “Have you got any whiskey?” he asked impatiently.

Al-Rahman nodded and fixed the old man a glass. He sipped, and then leaned back his head. “Your little episode with the Iranian general was a disappointment, my friend.”

Al-Rahman hesitated.

It had been twenty-four hours since the Iranian general had chosen to kill himself. What a coward! What a woman! The king cursed to himself.

The old man watched Al-Rahman carefully, studying the look on his face.

Al-Rahman shrugged in frustration. “He failed me,” he said.

“He did more than that. He failed us all.”

“He said he would find him.”

“Yet the young one still lives.”

Was there anything the old man didn’t know? No. There really wasn’t. He had learned that before. “It is a disappointment,” he answered slowly. “I needed him. He deserted me. There is nothing I can do about that now.”

The old man nodded slowly. He didn’t accept it so simply—that was clear from the look in his eyes.

Al-Rahman looked at the old man, though he tried not to stare. There was something about him, something strange and powerful. He still looked old, that was true, but he looked healthier somehow. Last time they had met, he would not have given the old man a week to live. Yet here he was once again, sitting with him in this room. And not only was he here, he looked better. Not younger, but
recycled.
Freshened and new, as if, through some miracle, he had been granted more time.

It was unnatural. Abnormal.

And Al-Rahman wanted to know how it was done.

But there was a lot about the old man that the king wanted to know.

Once, years before, after too many questions, the old man had taken his hand and squeezed it so hard that it hurt, all the time looking him straight in the eye. “It is better if you don’t know too much,” he had said. “It is better for you and it is better for me. Let’s just do our business. That is all that you need.”

Through the years, Al-Rahman had accepted that he would never know about his friend. But looking at him now, with his renewed energy, he was certainly curious as to where he had been.

The old man looked at him, and then took his hand. “You have been an efficient learner,” he said in a raspy voice. “From the first time we met, that wonderful day on the beach, I knew you would be one of our stars. From that first night outside the embassy building, when you told me to kill your countrymen, I knew you would be someone our team could count on. I would lay my life on the table for you, Abdullah, and I know you would do the same thing for me.”

“Yes,” Al-Rahman answered. “I would die for you.”

The old man stared at him, his dark, sullen eyes boring into the king’s soul. Al-Rahman held his gaze the best that he could, but he finally looked away.

“You are frightened,” the old man mumbled. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“No,” Al-Rahman answered. “I am careful, that’s all.”

The old man shook his head. “You are hesitating. Always thinking. Waiting for the exact time to move. You can’t do that, Abdullah—you have to move now. We’ve been waiting for this moment a very long time. You must make a decision. Be willing to act. There will be no sign from heaven. Nothing will fall from the sky. You have to take a breath, be committed, and stay with the plan. And you must do it now. It is time that you move.”

“But I was thinking—”

“No more thinking, Abdullah, it is time to act!”

“But if we wait until—”

“You have only a few days,” the old man almost sneered. “The United States is suspicious and they are watching you now. Your older brother had a friend. He works for the American president. He knows about you, and he is watching. Every day that you hesitate gives him more time to think. Far too many people around you have died suddenly. Too many bodies can be found in your wake: the Pakistani general who provided the warheads, the Iranian general who killed himself recently, your brother, your father, all of their kin. You are surrounded by death, and they will want to know why. And though the U.S. intelligence apparatus isn’t perfect, they are not nearly as stupid as their critics think. They will figure it out if you give them too much time. So you’ve got to move quickly for this thing to work. You’ve got to strike the United States and strike them where it counts. If you take out D.C., you can take out their entire government. Then you can turn your eye on Israel. She will be waiting for you. After that, the final battle. After that, the final war.

“But you can’t wait a few months. You don’t even have days. If you haven’t moved within seventy-two hours, it may be too late.”

“All right,” Al-Rahman answered. “I can see that is true.”

“Three days. Maybe four. You must move by then.”

Al-Rahman only nodded.

“You are ready?”

“I am ready.”

“I hope that you are.”

The king turned and looked out the window. The sandstorm was almost upon them. It moved across the city like a great tidal wave, swallowing everything that fell in its path. It was a block away, then half a block, then a hundred feet. Then it was here. The sandstorm washed over the building. The light turned orange, then deep brown, then as dark as the night.

The old man moved forward, standing beside the new king. They watched the storm together without saying anything. The sand beat against the windows like a billion pellet shots, and the wind howled across the roof, causing the building to sway.

The two men stood in silence until the old man turned around. “There are still some things I must teach you,” he said in a solemn tone. “They will strengthen you in your weakness, provide you comfort and power. They will give you support when you need it to see this thing through.”

Al-Rahman nodded, waiting. “Then teach me, my friend.”

“There are secrets we should talk about. Secrets that go back many years. They are sacred and chosen, and they will change your life forever once you hear what I say. Once you have learned them, you will be bound to your oaths. You can never deny them. They will bind you, my friend, like the web of a spider wrapped around its prey. They will bind you forever. But you are ready, I am sure. You have been ready for a long time. And now I’m ready too.”

Al-Rahman waited, submissive, as the old man scrutinized him.

“You do not believe in God,” the old man went on, “but I’m here to tell you that is a terrible mistake. Not only is there a God, but in fact there are two. Two gods in the universe. They are eternally locked in battle and they are both powerful. One God is the spirit of freedom that has threatened your land. He is your enemy, your destroyer—He seeks to bring you down. He brings the idea of democracy and freedom, which will destroy the kingdom you’ve built. If He wins, He will leave you homeless and destitute. He will destroy your family and everything that your fathers have built.