am afraid.” There was a gathering of books and notes. A hand shot up from the front.
Freckles, white T-shirt advertising a student rock group.
“All the bombers claim to be martyrs. How do they justify this?” “Badly,” said Dr. Martin, “because they have been duped, well educated though some of them are. It is perfectly feasible to die a shahid, or martyr, fighting for Islam in a truly declared jihad. But again there are rules and these are quite specific in the Koran. The warrior must not die by his own hand even though he has volunteered for a no-return mission. He must not know the time and place of his own death.
“Suicides do exactly that. Yet suicide is specifically forbidden. In his lifetime, Muhammad absolutely refused to bless the body of a suicide even though the man had ended his own life to avoid the crippling agony of disease. Those who commit mass murder of innocents and commit suicide are destined for hell, not paradise. The false preachers and imams who trick them down this road will join them there. And now I fear, we must rejoin the world of Georgetown and hamburgers. Thank you for your attention.”
They gave him a standing ovation, and, pink with embarrassment, he took his jacket and walked into the wings.
“Sorry to interrupt. Professor,” said the man from Fort Meade. “But the brass need the Koran Committee back at the fort. The car is outside.” “In a hurry?”
“Yesterday, sir. There’s a flap.”
“Any ideas?” asked Martin.
“No, sir.”
Of course. “Need to know.” The unshakable rule. If you do not need to know to do your job, they are not going to tell you. Martin’s curiosity would have to wait. The car was the usual dark sedan with telltale aerial on the roof. It needed to be in touch with base all the time. The driver was a corporal, but even though Fort Meade is an Army base the man was in plain clothes, not uniform. No need to advertise, either.
Dr. Martin climbed into the back while the driver held the door open. His escort took the front passenger’s seat, and they began to drive through the traffic out to the Baltimore highway.
Far to the east, the man converting his own barn into a retirement home stretched out by the campfire in the orchard. He was perfectly happy like that. If he could sleep in rocks and snowdrifts, he could certainly sleep on the soft grass beneath the apple trees.
Campfire fuel was absolutely no problem. He had enough rotten old planks to last a lifetime. His billycan sizzled above the red embers, and he prepared a welcome mug of steaming tea. Fancy drinks are fine in their way, but after a hard day’s work a soldier’s reward is a mug of piping tea. He had in fact taken the afternoon off from his lofty task up on the roof and walked into Meonstoke to visit the general store and buy provisions for the weekend.
It was clear everyone knew that he had bought the barn and was trying to restore it himself. That went down well. Rich Londoners with a checkbook to flash and a lust to play the squire were greeted with politeness up front but a shrug behind their back. But the dark-haired single man who lived in a tent in his own orchard while he did the manual work himself was, so ran the growing belief in the village, a good sort.
According to the postman, he seemed to receive little mail save a few official-looking, buff envelopes, and even these he asked to be delivered to the Buck’s Head public house to save the postman the haul up the long, muddy track-a gesture appreciated by the postman. The letters were addressed to “Colonel,” but he never mentioned that when he bought a drink at the bar or a newspaper or food at the store. Just smiled and was very polite. The local and growing appreciation of the man was tinged with curiosity. So many “incomers” were brash and forward. Who was he, and where had he come from, and why had he chosen to settle in Meonstoke?
That afternoon, on his ramble through the village, he had visited the ancient church of St. Andrew ’s, and met and fallen into conversation with the rector, Reverend Jim Foley.
The ex-soldier was beginning to think he would enjoy life where he had decided to settle. He could pedal his rugged mountain bike down to Droxford on the Southampton road to buy straight-from-the-garden food in the produce market. He could explore myriad lanes he could see from his roof and sample ale in the old beamed pubs they would reveal.
But in two days, he would attend Sunday matins at St. Andrew’s in the quiet gloom of the ancient stone and he would pray, as he often did. He would ask for forgiveness of the God in whom he devoutly believed for all the men he had killed and for the rest of their immortal souls. He would ask for eternal rest for all the comrades he had seen die beside him, he would give thanks that he had never killed women or children nor any who came in peace and he would pray that one day he too could expiate his sins and enter into the kingdom.
Then he would come back to the hillside and resume his labors. There were only another thousand tiles to go.
Vast AS is the National Security Agency complex of buildings, it is only a tiny fraction of Fort Meade, one of the largest military bases in the USA. Situated four miles east of the Interstate 95 and halfway between Washington and Baltimore, the base is home to around ten thousand military staff and twenty-five thousand civilian employees. It is a city in itself, and has all the habitual facilities of a small city. The “spook” part is tucked away in one corner, inside a rigidly guarded security zone that Dr. Martin had never visited before.
The sedan bearing him glided through the sprawling base with no let or hindrance until it came to the zone. At the main gate, passes were examined, and faces peered through the windows at the British academic as his escort vouched for him. Half a mile later, the car drew up at a side door of the huge main block, and Dr. Martin and his escort entered. There was a desk guarded by Army personnel. More checks, some phoning, thumbs placed on pads, iris recognition, final admission.
After what seemed like another marathon of corridors, they came to an anonymous door. The escort knocked and went in. Martin found himself at last among faces he knew, and recognized friends, colleagues and fellow members of the Koran Committee.
Like so many government service conference rooms, it was anonymous and functional. There were no windows, but air-conditioning kept the air fresh. A circular table and padded upright chairs. On one wall, a screen, presumably for displays and graphics, should it be needed. Side tables with coffee and trays of food for the insatiable American stomach.
The hosts were clearly two nonacademic intelligence officers who introduced themselves with give-nothing- away courtesy. One was the deputy director of the NSA, sent to attend by the general himself. The other was a senior officer from Homeland Security in Washington.
And there were the four academics, including Dr. Martin. They all knew each other. Before agreeing to be co-opted onto the no-name, no-publicity committee of experts steeped in one book and one religion, they’d known each other vicariously from their published works and personally from seminars, lectures and conferences. The world of such intense Koranic study is not large. Terry Martin greeted Drs. Ludwig Schramme from Columbia University, Ben Jolley from RAND, and “Harry” Harrison from Brookings, who certainly had a different first name but was always known as Harry. The oldest and therefore the presumed senior was Ben Jolley, a great bearded bear of a man who, promptly and despite pursed lips from the deputy director, drew out and lit up a fearsome briar pipe from which he drew happily, once it got going like an autumn bonfire. The Westinghouse extraction technology overhead did its best and almost succeeded, but was clearly going to need a complete servicing. The deputy director cut straight to the heart of the reason for the convocation of the scholars. He distributed copies of two documents, one file to each. There were the Arabic originals as teased out of the AQ financier’s laptop, and translations by the in-house Arabic division. The four men went straight to the Arabic versions and read in silence. Dr. Jolley puffed; the man from Homeland Security winced. The four finished more or less at the same time. Then they read the English translations to see what had been missed and why.
Jolley looked up at the two intelligence officers. “Well?”
“Well… what, Professor?”
“What,” asked the Arabist, “is the problem that has brought us all here?”
