Now …
At last.
“Uhlan wa-Sahian.”Welcome.
“Ahlan Bikum,”Nikmaddu said.
The proper reply, in plural because he was talking to three of them. He had never met any of them before. The men introduced themselves now. One of them, the obvious leader, sported a tiny uptilted mustache that made him look as if he were smiling. He had been trained in Afghanistan, was said to have links with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
“Ismi Mahmoud Gharib,”he said. My name is Mahmoud Gharib.
The second man had the harsh, leathery look of a desert camel driver, deep creases on his brown face, thick veins standing out on the backs of his strong hands. He told Nikmaddu his name was Akbar. He had the unsettling grin of a shark, all teeth and no sincerity. He was their demolitions expert.
The man who introduced himself as Jassim had the look of a pit viper, small and dark and pock-marked. His handshake was remarkably strong, his fingernails encrusted with a deep dark residue, perhaps the traces of explosive powders or oils. He was the one who would go in with the bomb.
One who smiles only with his mustache, Nikmaddu thought, another who smiles with false teeth, and a third—with dirty fingernails—who does not smile at all.
“So you’re here at last,” the third one said. Jassim.
“Il-Hamdu-Allah,”Nikmaddu answered. Thanks be to God.
“Was it a pleasant flight?” Akbar asked. All false glittering smile and bright dark eyes.
Nikmaddu shrugged.
“Did you bring the money?” Mahmoud asked. Mustache smiling. A direct question. Without the money, there would be no explosives. Without the money, there would be no preparations. Without the money, there would be no escape routes afterward, no safe passages home. Without the money, there would be nothing.
“I brought the money,” Nikmaddu said.
And now they could discuss the business at hand.
THE APARTMENT they were meeting in was rented by Mahmoud himself. He was already three months in arrears, another reason for him having asked so soon about the money, his bloodsucking Jew landlord threatening eviction on an almost daily basis. The apartment was in a four-story walkup in a section of the city called Majesta after Her Majesty, the late lamented virgin queen of England, when these United States were still colonies. Once upon a time, Majesta was inhabited by Irish immigrants. Then it became Italian. Then it became Puerto Rican. Now it was populated largely by immigrants—many of them illegal—from third-world nations in the Middle East. The men sat sipping strong Turkish coffee as they looked out past the swirling snow to the towers of the Majesta Bridge in the misty distance. Jassim would have loved to wire that bridge with explosives, but Mahmoud was of a more conservative bent.
It was Mahmoud’s opinion that all successful terrorist acts were premised on what had happened in Algiers almost half a century ago. It was there that the Arab struggle for independence from France began in 1954, culminating in July of 1962, when the Democratic and Popular Government of Algeria was formed. It was during those eight years that terrorism discovered its claws and its fangs. It was then that women wearing long dresses as prescribed in the Koran—O prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and the wives of the believers that they shall lengthen their garments. Thus, they will be recognized and avoid being insulted—wearing as well thehijab that covered all of the face except the eyes, and thekhimar that covered their bosoms, strolled unrecognized into grocery stores or onto buses, carrying shopping bags full of high explosives which they conveniently left behind while they went home to their families.
The world of terrorism—Mahmoud now told Nikmaddu—had expanded too greatly. The leaders were thinking too big. Their plans were too grandiose. Why bomb a World Trade Center in New York or a Federal Building in Oklahoma City or a U.S. Embassy in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam? Why bring down an airplane over Lockerbie or LaGuardia? Events such as these only created intense scrutiny and enormous animosity. Why not settle instead for leaving a small bomb in a cinema? Or a railroad station? Why not compromise instead for leaving a satchel with explosives under a sixth row orchestra seat at Clarendon Hall on the night Svi Cohen would be playing Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata in F Major, or his “Kreutzer” in A Minor, or whichever other tune the Big Jew chose to perform on his accursed Zionist fiddle?
“Why not committiny acts of terrorism that will allow them to realize we can strike anywhere, anytime we choose?” Mahmoud asked.
“Clarendon Hall is not so tiny,” Akbar said, grinning.
“You understand my point,” Mahmoud said reasonably to Nikmaddu.
“I understand your point,” Nikmaddu answered reasonably.
He was enjoying the coffee. He was not so sure he was enjoying the terrorist beliefs of a half-lira philosopher like the man with the comic mustache here. Nikmaddu himself had worked with Osama bin Laden on the Dhahran bombing attack in which nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed. It was his own belief that onlymajor attacks of terrorism would leave any impression at all on the forces of evil polluting the Arab world. Only desperation measures would provoke wholesale departures. The withdrawal of all U.S. and western forces from Moslem countries in general and from the Arabian Peninsula in particular was the stated goal ofal Quaida. Killing all Americans, including civilians, everywhere in the world was merely a means toward this end. But Nikmaddu was nothing if not a faithful servant of God. Someone higher up had ordered the Clarendon Hall bombing. He was here merely to serve.
They sat sipping coffee.
“Tell me the plan,” Nikmaddu said.
THE OWNER OF Diamondback Books was named Jotham Davis. He was in his early forties, Ollie guessed, a black man with an entirely bald and very shiny head. He was wearing black jeans, black loafers, and a black turtleneck sweater. A gold chain hung around his neck, dangling to somewhere in the middle of his narrow chest. He told them that in the Bible, Jotham was the youngest of Gideon’s seventy sons. He told them things were quiet after Christmas. He told them fifty percent of a bookstore’s sales were in the three months before Christmas. He
