'I cannot pretend to understand you.'
'Again it's not necessary.'
'Where do you come from?' asked the bewildered subordinate. 'We are told to obey you, that you know things that men like me are not privileged to know. But how, from where?
'From thousands of miles away, preparing for years for this moment… Leave me now. Quickly. Go downstairs and tell the guard to have the scaffold removed to the cellars, then signal the car as it circles the street. The driver will take you home; we'll meet tomorrow. Same time, same place.'
'May Allah and the Mahdi be with you,' said the tall Arab bowing and rushing out of the door, closing it behind him.
The young man watched his companion leave, then reached under his robes and pulled out a small hand-held radio. He pressed a button and spoke. 'He'll be outside in two or three minutes. Pick him up and drive to the rocks of the south coast. Kill him, strip him, and throw the gun into the sea.'
'So ordered,' replied the limousine's driver several streets away.
The youthful leader replaced the radio inside his robes and crossed solemnly towards the huge ebony desk. He removed his ghotra, dropping it on the floor as he walked to the thronelike chair, and sat down. He opened a tall wide drawer on his lower left and lifted out the jewel-encrusted headdress of the Mahdi. He placed it on his head and spoke softly to the mosaic ceiling.
'I thank you, my Father,' said the inheritor with a doctorate in computer sciences from the University of Chicago. 'To be chosen among all your sons is both an honour and a challenge. My weak white mother will never understand, but as you incessantly made clear to me, she was merely a vessel… However, I must tell you, Father, that things are different now. Subtlety and long-range objectives are the order of the times. We will employ your methods where they are called for—killing is no problem for us—but it is a far larger part of the globe that we seek than you ever sought. We will have cells in all of Europe and the Mediterranean, and we will communicate in ways you never thought of—secretly, by satellite, interception impossible. You see, my Father, the world no longer belongs to one race or another. It belongs to the young and the strong and the brilliant, and we are they.'
The new Mahdi stopped whispering and lowered his eyes to the top of the desk. Soon what he needed would be there. The greater son of the great Mahdi would continue the march.
We must control.
Everywhere!
Book Three
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 45
It was the thirty-second day since the wild departure from the island of Passage to China, and Emmanuel Weingrass walked slowly into the enclosed veranda in Mesa Verde; his words, however, were rushed. 'Where's the bum?' he asked.
'Jogging in the grounds,' replied Khalehla from the couch, where she was having her breakfast coffee and reading the newspaper. 'Or up in the mountains by now, who knows?'
'It's two o'clock in the afternoon in Jerusalem,' said Manny.
'And four o'clock in Masqat,' added Rashad. 'They're all so clever over there.'
'My daughter, the smart mouth.'
'Sit down, child,' said Khalehla, patting the cushion beside her.
'Smarter mouth infant,' mumbled Weingrass, walking over and removing his short cylinder of oxygen to lower himself to the couch. 'The bum looks good,' continued Manny, leaning back and breathing heavily.
'You'd think he was training for the Olympics.'
'Speaking of which, you got a cigarette?'
