stairs. A storehouse of material, and smaller areas that indicated mess and health care facilities. The place was like an underground pyramid, with plenty of space at the bottom and narrowing to that single administrative area on the top. Down low was where the really dirty work was done, and Kyle, followed by Travis, went carefully to the bottom floor and finally into the individual spokes and tunnels. He breathed easier when they found that the dungeon cages were empty. All of the prisoners had been taken out and executed this morning. On the side of one of the cells, they found someone had used a rock to scratch numbers into the concrete wall-999. Hughes took pictures.
“Nothing more down here, Trav. Let’s go back up and gather those papers, then get out of here.” Kyle led the way back into sunlight, almost feeling the dark shadows pulling at him from down below, trying to take him into a cell and lock the door. He shook it off.
Travis stepped to the front door and waved up to Joe Tipp. It was time to get moving. “All clear,” Tipp acknowledged on the radio. “Bird inbound.”
Kyle took down a pair of white biohazard suits hanging on the wall and tossed one to Travis, and they both stuffed the papers on the floor into the garments. Scientific records, notebooks, computer disks and office documents, letters and notes, but they did not know if it was treasure or trash. Finally, Kyle searched the body of the director and found a cell phone and a wallet. He threw both into the makeshift sack. “Let’s go,” he said.
They trotted through the rain, letting the water wash off anything that might have clung to their suits. Joe Tipp was in the open, guiding the helicopter down, while Delara Tabrizi stood to the side.
Kyle and Travis stopped just outside the radius of the powerful rotor blast and peeled out of their biosuits, leaving them on the ground before they climbed into the Pave Low.
“What did you find?” Tipp asked, pointing to the two bulging white biosuits on the floor. The sleeves and arms were folded tight, but loose papers stuck from the neck openings.
“Don’t know. I’m not a scientist,” said Travis, “but whatever it is, I think the intel pukes will be having wet dreams for the next month or so.”
14
PARIS
JUBA HAD NEVER BEEN so scared. Not in his entire life. In the first twenty-four hours after escaping from the contaminated biochemical weapons site, he took five showers and still was almost mad with worry that he would never be truly cleansed.
His helicopter had landed at a small airport, where he showered and found fresh clothes, then abandoned the aircraft. The helicopter pilot was killed and the body hidden in the equipment shed; then Juba hired a small plane and flew back to Tehran. He was out of Iran on the first available international flight.
Only when he checked into the Four Seasons Hotel in Qatar did he begin to breathe easier, and immediately after being shown into the suite, he got into a shower with water as hot as he could stand, imagining that some of the deadly gel particles were sticking to him even then, burrowing beneath his skin, reaching for his guts and his brain.
He repeatedly coated himself with soap and shampoo, working the suds hard beneath the downpour of scalding water until his skin was red and raw. He turned his face into the falling stream and felt it cook. He vigorously scrubbed between his toes, the bottoms of his feet, deeply into his ears, beneath his crotch, fingernails, nostrils, everywhere. Shampoo the eyebrows and under the armpits, and even the pubic hair and the crevice of his butt.
Steam rose from his body when he turned off the water and stepped from the stall onto the cool tiles and wrapped himself in thick white towels. Wait-what if he had swallowed some of it? He brushed his teeth until the gums bled and gargled with antiseptic mouthwash. He studied the blood on the toothbrush and threw it away.
Moving into the bedroom, he noticed the full-length mirror. He dropped the towels and stood before it for a long time, examining his entire body, turning slowly, looking for rashes and lesions. Then he climbed beneath the covers, only to be seized again by unreasoning panic and break into a sweat. He rushed to the bathroom for another shower, his thoughts anchored on the memory reef of the prisoners dying, trapped in the small cages as the gas ate at them. Every itch he felt was magnified a thousand times, the lingering fear intensified by the knowledge that he had helped make the monster that was trying to devour him. Juba was new to fear, for he had never been frightened by any enemy. This invisible slayer was different, hungry and uncaring about who was right or who was wrong, nor obedient to its creator.
After a few hours and another shower, he calmed enough to have the concierge send someone to purchase new clothes from the nearby mall, and later had a nice dinner at a table overlooking the expanse of the Arabian Gulf. When he returned to his room, he called for a massage, then lay still in bed between clean sheets while the masseur pounded the twisted muscles, loosening the knots with pressure and pain. Afterward, Juba turned out the light, and to avoid thinking about the invisible gas and the wet drops that brought certain death, he concentrated on the long and tangled journey that had brought him to this place on this day.
As a boy, back when he was Jeremy Mark Osmand, he was teased at school in England for having a foreign father and for being a Muslim, although that stopped as he grew taller and stronger and fought anyone who belittled his family. Despite his superior abilities in rugby and soccer, he still heard the ridicule that swam just below the surface of many of his classmates’ polite geniality.
In the summer of 1988, his parents took him to Peshawar, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where his father joined the surgical staff at a Red Crescent hospital while his mother helped at the refugee center. They lived in a house among the eucalyptus trees of University Town, and from there, Jeremy set out each day to explore the boomtown spawned by the Russian invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. Spies and journalists, Russian planes overhead, distant explosions, the hubbub of the Smugglers’ Market and a crush of people, animals, and vehicles of all sorts and every color. Weapons and ammunition were strapped to the backs of trains of mules headed for the border.
The war was an awakening of an Islamic spirit within the boy, and in mosques and youth meetings, Jeremy discovered that London was not the center of the universe after all!
He learned much more about the Prophet and the holy places and was astonished to discover that the mighty Ottoman Empire was not an ancient myth. Although it had begun back in 1300, it lasted until 1924. Its creation was led by the venerable Osman I! His family’s original last name was the same as that great caliph, and Jeremy questioned his father’s decision to bastardize and anglicize it. “Come with me to the hospital today and I will give you the answer,” his father said one morning as they sipped strong black coffee. “One of my fellow physicians wants to meet you.”
Within the hour, Jeremy was at a small table in the rear of a coffee house near the hospital, deep in conversation, in English, with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Muslim firebrand who had been jailed and tortured following the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He had come to Peshawar to help the mujahideen freedom fighters, and Jeremy was spellbound by the intense man with the large eyeglasses, who made sense with his stern and unforgiving religious and political views.
Then someone else joined their group, a tall and slender man who wore common robes although he possessed great wealth. Osama bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia and was famed for lectures that painted a dark vision of Islam and reasoned that it was not only permissible to kill infidels: Under the Koran, it was a Muslim duty. Bin Laden extended a hand and uttered a soft greeting, then encouraged the boy to speak, and Jeremy’s new dreams of revenge and hatred spilled forth. Jeremy promised that he was a true Muslim and ready to die, today if necessary, for Islam.
The tall Saudi touched the boy’s forearm. “No, not today. Not for a long time.” He glanced at Dr. Osmand. “Were you aware that your father has long been one of us?”
Jeremy blinked as his father bowed at the compliment.
“It was at our request that he has endured such shame among the infidels, and the Prophet will reward him.”
“Father? I don’t understand. What is he talking about?”
