feared; it was a nation of men whose fathers abdicated their roles in teaching a man to pray and fight and die for a cause. Probably in deference to their wives, who were not intended by Allah to raise sons. They were half-men. He had fought the half-men of Russia as a Mujahedeen in the eighties. He volunteered in retribution for his father and sisters being brutally killed in his younger years. Lives extinguished for being nothing more than devoted Muslims; praise Allah, that he was able to save his younger brother. He and the Afghans with which he trained defeated the great Russian Army and sent them home to their weeping mothers to be breastfed once more. It was during those days he met the wealthy son of an Arab billionaire who traded a flamboyant life as a playboy in New York and Paris for the bone-chilling sanctuary of deep caves. Since those days, Osama had left his mark and, had the virus plan been executed, his name, Alizir, too would be blessed with the adoration of all those who fought the great Satan.
“Put it on the table.” The Sheik said, to the servant delivering his meal. His back was to the door. He turned when he didn’t hear the tray sliding onto the table.
It was her again.
“Good morning, Shiek,” was all she said as she walked over to the chain that was locked to the hoop on the floor. She tugged on the chain and gestured for him to give her some slack.
“You are releasing me?”
Without saying a word, she produced another lock and by threading it through the links, shortened the chain by about five feet.
“Sit down!”
He almost sat, but then remembered that this wasn’t a man or even an American half-man. This was only a woman.
“Are you going to sit?” She gestured to the chair.
He didn’t respond.
The impact between his shoulder blades made him lose his breath and he found himself dazed and confused on the floor. She was now standing in front of him, swinging a sock with a heavy weight in the end. He immediately scrambled to his feet and rushed at her, forgetting the newly shortened chain. It snagged him back just as he reached her.
“I used to do this with the neighbor’s dog. I knew how long his leash was and he just snarled and barked but couldn’t bite me.”
Brooke was lying; it was actually her dog that was tormented this way by her neighbor’s unbalanced son. But never let the facts get in the way of a threat. She smashed the sock onto the table, the energy and force made the Sheik wince.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Sheik. You scare the living daylights out of me. You have become a star in my nightmares.” Wham! She hit the table again. “My daddy taught me to face my fears, look them right in the eye, and see that they are nothing and only had the fear I gave them.”
She looked the Sheik in the eye and didn’t blink. It was he who eventually turned away.
“How did you achieve operational ability in America?”
He didn’t respond.
“Two, three, four.” Wham! She hit him so hard in the shoulder he was knocked to the floor on one knee.
“Hmmm didn’t leave a mark? Oh, we’re going to do this all day! And it will just be our little secret.”
He looked up at the girl. He noticed she was dressed differently. Not in the boxy man-suit of the female agent needing to conform to look like a man. She was in what the west called warm-up clothes. Tight fitting.
She saw his eyes on her chest. She had the AC turned up so that the room was cold.
Brooke’s chat with Aliz lasted about 40 minutes. As she left, she said to him, “You are so full of shit, you must have to flush twice.”
An hour after Brooke had her special “breakfast” with the Sheik, one of his guards came into the room.
The Sheik quickly complained, “That woman has tortured me!”
“I wish she’d torture me.”
“She hit me!”
“Aw… come on. That little girl? Nice try.” Counting the towels, he left.
Twenty minutes later, a man in a suit, whom he had not seen before, entered with the bitch who hit him.
“Shiek Aliz Berniham, I am Robert Fusco of the Inspector General’s Office. You have leveled charges against agent Burrell. I am here to take your statement to determine if any disciplinary action should be enforced. Do you understand English?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“Show me where she allegedly hit you.”
“My arm, my back, my shoulders, my legs…”
When Robert looked, he saw no signs of trauma or impact. He turned to Agent Burrell. “Did you strike this man?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you threaten him in anyway?”
The little bitch now in a skirt and jacket looked like a librarian and incapable of swatting a fly as she answered with a look of wonderment. “That is against procedure, sir. I will not expose my prisoner to any treatment not in compliance with the director’s guidelines, sir.”
The inspector gave both of them a final review and then left the room. Brooke looked at Aliz without a trace of the anger or rage she had previously shown him.
She left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“What’s the book about?” Peter asked, Feigning ignorance to hide the fact that he’d read it just before coming to Kasiko’s Sunday night dinner.
“Only Professor Ensiling has read it. We are all looking forward to studying it,” Brodenchy said as he took another ladle of creamed onions.
“Basically it’s a mathematical postulate asserting the teraphysics involved with maneuvering and navigating an interplanetary craft in the Earth’s atmosphere,” Ensiling said.
“Interesting term, Professor — ‘teraphysics,’” Brodenchy noted.
“Yes. It is the physics of Earth from a perspective outside of Earth’s domain.”
“How does one achieve that point of view?” the younger Brodenchy asked.
“The beginning of ‘teraphysics’ is best visualized by the following construct: coming from outside the solar system, Earth is the third planet from the sun. Therefore three was a logical divisor. So why not divide the Earth into not 24 but 27 hours per day. Twenty-seven being three to the third power also added parabolics to the mix. The author bought an ordinary globe of Earth and circumscribed 27-hour meridians on it. He almost had it, but there was no point of origin with which to anchor the new grid. Then he placed the crosshairs of an intersection over a point in Auckland, New Zealand where a flying saucer was rumored to cause a tremendous explosion. Everything then snapped into place. All previous UFO sightings were now along lines of the new grid. Not only longitudinally but latitudinally as well. His big discovery was that major grid intersections fell on places like Giza, where the great pyramids were. The Bermuda triangle was at the intersection of three lines. The Exeter Vermont sightings from the ’50s were right down the major line on America’s East Coast.” Ensiling paused to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe.
Brodenchy filled the pause with an observation of his own. “But Professor, now that Lathie had divided the Earth into 27 longitudinal meridians, then navigationally, the math also has to change, correct?”
