Wells wondered if the “package” in the voicemail referred to Kurland himself.

Wells listened to the message again, realized something else. It was just ten p.m. now. The curfew didn’t take effect for another hour. So the caller wasn’t in Jeddah. He was somewhere nearby but not close enough to come here with only a few minutes before curfew. One city, forty miles east, fit that profile better than any other. “Is the Jeep close?”

“Just up the block.”

“Then let’s go.” Wells took one last look around the kitchen, opened the back door.

“Where to?”

Wells pulled the door shut behind them and they left 42 Aziz behind. “Mecca.”

CHAPTER 23

MECCA. UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, WELLS WOULD HAVE BEEN excited at the chance to see the heart of Islam. Christianity and Judaism had holy sites, of course — the Wailing Wall, Mount Sinai, Bethlehem. But no faith was as closely tied to a single spiritual center as Islam was to Mecca.

Muhammad had been born in Mecca, lived in Mecca when he received the prophecies that led him to preach, been forced from Mecca in fear and returned in triumph. Five times a day, 1.5 billion Muslims turned toward the Kaaba, the black stone at the heart of the Grand Mosque, to pray. The hajj, the spiritual journey to Mecca, was a central tenet of Islam. Millions of Muslims came each year. Their numbers would have been even greater if the Saudi government had not limited the size of the pilgrimage to control stampedes. Meanwhile, non-Muslims were barred even from setting foot in Mecca. “Oh you who believe! The idolaters are nothing but unclean, so they shall not approach the Sacred Mosque,” the Quran’s ninth verse said.

Yes, it was true that Muhammad had once commanded his followers to pray toward Jerusalem. He’d changed the direction of prayer to Mecca after falling out with the Jewish tribes in Arabia. And yes, it was true that many scholars believed that Muhammad had made the hajj part of Islam mainly to placate Mecca’s merchants. Even before Islam existed, Mecca had profited from pilgrims visiting the Kaaba.

No matter. Wells didn’t have to believe in the literal truth of every word in the Quran to feel the pull of the place. When he faced the Kaaba to pray, he imagined a billion whispered prayers coming from all over the world, from every direction, from worshippers of every color. Pleas of fear, hope, redemption, and revenge, dreams great and small, vows to honor and to love, all melding at the Grand Mosque into one holy message that only God could hear.

UNFORTUNATELY, AS A PLACE to live, Mecca left much to be desired. Home to almost two million people, the city was dust-clogged and overcrowded. Most Saudi cities dealt with their rapid growth by spreading into the desert. Mecca didn’t have that option. It lay in a valley ringed by low mountains. Unable to expand horizontally, it had occupied every square inch of space in the valley and then grown vertically. Office towers and apartment buildings now hemmed in the Grand Mosque from all sides.

The mosque itself looked very different than it had fifty years before. To handle the crush of hajj pilgrims, the Saudi government had repeatedly rebuilt and expanded the structure. The mosque was now the world’s largest, with gleaming white marble galleries surrounding a central plaza that held hundreds of thousands of worshippers. The Saudis had also expanded the city’s network of walkways and pedestrian tunnels to ease the traffic jams that occurred every hajj as pilgrims traveled between the mosque and their temporary homes in tent cities outside Mecca.

Mecca’s congestion offered endless hiding places for Graham Kurland and his kidnappers — assuming Wells’s hunch was right and they were in the city. For now the call Hassan had received was his only clue. He grabbed his sat phone, called Shafer. “I have a number for you. Saudi. Probably a disposable phone. Used twenty minutes ago. Can NSA do anything?”

“If it’s on, probably. If not, I don’t know. It may take a while. Depends on the carrier, how much cooperation we’re getting.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. How hot’s the number?”

“Maybe very.”

“Those two words don’t go together. What happened at the house?”

“One KIA, two WIA.”

“One what KIA?”

“I’m reasonably certain he was hostile.”

Shafer was silent.

“He wasn’t friendly, that’s for sure.”

“If you’re wrong, you’d better hope the king likes you. Not much we can do if you killed a Saudi civ on Saudi soil.”

“Just tell the FBI to get a team to the house. Tonight. One of the wounded is in bad shape.”

“Sounds like you had yourself a fun time.”

“It was unavoidable.” Aside from the guy I shot in the back. “I need that trace, Ellis. While I was there, somebody called, left a message. I think it’s related.”

“Give me the number. And the number of the phone that received the call.”

Wells did.

“I’ll let you know soon as I hear.”

The Jeep slowed as they approached a roadblock at the entrance to Highway 5, the road connecting Jeddah and Mecca. The cops running the roadblock weren’t cops. Half of them carried M-16s and wore Special Forces uniforms. The others were muk in black shirts and pants. They waved Gaffan over, put a floodlight on the Jeep. Wells kept his arms low by his sides. He’d noticed flecks of blood on the cuffs of his gown. On a close search, they’d be obvious.

Gaffan handed their identity cards to a Special Forces officer. He looked them over, then called the muk to check them out. Wells wondered whether Mansour had already learned the names on their cards.

“You should be home,” the muk barked. “Where are you going?”

“Mecca.”

“Mecca? Why tonight?”

“We have a job tomorrow. Cleaning a house. We didn’t want to get caught in the traffic in the morning.”

The muk shined a flashlight over the Jeep. “I don’t see any supplies for cleaning.”

“They’re all at the house.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The owner lets us sleep on his roof.”

“Where?”

“It’s on Abdul-Aziz Road. Two kilometers from the Grand Mosque.”

The muk handed back their identity cards. “Drive fast, then. You only have thirty minutes, and if you get stopped at the western roadblock, they may make you sleep in the car and wait until the morning. Or they may arrest you.” He handed back their identity cards, waved them on.

“Thank you, officer.”

“Next—”

Gaffan sped off. “Abdul-Aziz Road,” Wells said.

“Figured it was a safe bet.”

* * *

THE DESERT TOOK OVER, the land as dark and flat as an ocean. If not for the glow of Jeddah behind them, Wells would hardly have believed he was traveling between two multimillion-person cities less than fifty miles

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