A ghost in his mid-forties wearing tan corduroys and a navy blue cashmere sweater sat on a narrow green bench admiring the medieval ruins of the Parc Monceau. He hadn’t been seen by anyone from his past life in over five years.
His brown hair was medium in length and his wire-rimmed glasses framed a rather unremarkable face punctuated by two sharp green eyes. When standing in his brown leather shoes he came to just over five feet nine inches tall. He had the trim frame of an endurance athlete.
In a discreet pocket inside the man’s Barbour jacket was a passport that bore a false name. It was as good a name as any-no better or worse than any of the names he had assumed throughout his career. Distinctly Anglo- Saxon, like the name he had used for his assignment in Rome, it suited him, as had his true Christian name, Matthew Dodd.
He had renounced that name when he embraced Islam. It wasn’t hard to let go. With all of the different aliases he had assumed over his career, it was difficult to remember who he really was anyway.
The only things that had ever grounded him and given him a true sense of purpose were his beautiful wife and his little boy, but they had been gone from his life for almost ten years now; killed in a car accident by a spoiled, drunken teenaged girl in her brand-new BMW while he had been away on an assignment.
His handlers hadn’t even had the decency to tell him when it happened. They had waited until the operation was complete and then informed him-a full month after his wife and son had been buried. One week later, the teenaged girl who took his family from him walked out of the substance abuse program her well-connected family’s slick lawyer had arranged with the court and picked her life back up where it had left off. The girl had never spent a single day in jail. It was not only wrong, it was immoral.
When he found out, the assassin had felt as if hooks on long chains had been sunk into his skin, tearing the flesh from his body in sheets. After the pain had come a disturbing numbness. In a culture of gray where anything could be justified, rationalized, or spun to mean just the opposite, he longed for a line to be drawn between black and white. More than that, he longed for someone to explain how all of this could have been allowed to happen. Some placed the blame on the driver’s parents, some on her peers, and others still on society in general. Dodd just slipped deeper into depression.
His employers put him on medical leave and then, when they needed him back, shuttled him through a battery of tests, rated him ready to return to the field, and dispatched him once again to do what they needed him to do.
He had drowned his sorrows in booze and blood, taking chances and assignments no one else wanted to take. There was nothing else for him in his life anymore. Or so he had thought.
He could still remember the day he became a Muslim. That’s when he had chosen for himself the Muslim name of Majd al-Din-
Through the bitter anguish of losing his wife and son, Dodd had realized that the Muslims had something in overwhelming supply that his countrymen were very quickly running out of. That something was faith. More than that, Muslims abided by a clear moral code that delineated the difference between what was right and what was wrong.
Up until the 1950s, American children yearned for adulthood. When their time came to be adults they stepped into the role proudly, leaving childhood behind and taking up the mantles of responsibility, honor, and dignity. They embraced and championed the ideals of those who came before them while valiantly tackling new ideas and problems that their families, communities, and nation faced. Those days were long gone.
Americans now shunned adulthood, preferring to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence. By failing to move forward with grace and dignity, they left a gaping hole in American society. They treated relationships like disposable lighters, tossing marriages away when they ran out of gas. Children were left without families, and even worse, they were left without adults who could be role models of responsible behavior.
With this lack of willingness to step forward and embrace adulthood, the nation had lost sight of its core values and ideals. In its place had morphed an
Dodd saw it as a lack of respect and a lack of order in American society and therein lay the appeal of Islam for him. Skeptical at first, the more he witnessed the lives of the devout Muslims he came in contact with in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the other places his assignments took him, the more he realized Islam was the answer he’d been seeking.
Islam provided honor. It provided a code by which to live with dignity and in peace. It wasn’t the problem-it was the solution, and it was the only thing that would save the United States.
CHAPTER 8
To hasten America ’s salvation, Dodd had given himself wholly to Allah. He viewed himself as a precision instrument which would be guided as Allah saw fit.
That guidance arrived quickly in the form of a soft-spoken imam in Baltimore where Dodd kept a small apartment. The imam had been suspicious at first, but when he realized that Dodd had truly embraced Islam he looked into Dodd’s background and then introduced him to another imam he thought Dodd could be useful in serving.
The imam’s name was Mahmood Omar. Dodd had never met the man before, but he was immediately impressed. Not only did the Saudi-born, forty-something cleric’s penetrating eyes and large stature contribute to a commanding presence, but he was well schooled in the ways of the West and America in particular.
Dodd was determined to put his unique skill set to work for the betterment of America, and Sheik Omar was pleased to have such an experienced warrior fighting on behalf of Islam.
Omar was a facilitator of international jihad and started Dodd out on small operations, always outside the United States. As both his confidence and trust in Dodd grew, so too did the scope of the assignments he was being sent on. More often than not, Dodd was carrying out sanctions on behalf of Omar’s colleagues and benefactors in the Middle East.
It was tedious work that Dodd began to chafe under. After a time, he could see no benefit to America in any of it, nor could he fathom how it might be advancing the Muslim cause in the U.S. As corrupt and decadent as it was, Dodd still loved America and he missed it. He wanted to be back home. He was tiring of death and wanted to get on with living. Then the Khalifa assignments had come up.
Omar had assigned him to Rome and used two other men for Washington. Though Dodd had consulted on the assignment at the Jefferson Memorial, it had not worked out as planned.
The Park Police had apparently altered their patrol patterns. Omar’s men should have had twenty minutes, but another patrol unit had been right on their heels.
If the men had been allowed to take Nura and Salam at one of their homes as Dodd had suggested, they wouldn’t be having this problem right now. Sheik Omar, though, had had other plans. His greatest flaw was that he liked to make statements.
When Omar discovered that Nura and Salam already had a rendezvous planned at the Jefferson Memorial, he decided that would be the perfect place to kill them. He saw it as laden with ironic symbolism.
In reality, it had been laden with incredible complications, not the least of which was the security camera system. Salam had survived and was in police custody, but Omar didn’t seem to be losing any sleep over it. Dodd could only trust that the evidence they had planted would be enough to convict Salam for Nura’s murder.
The car bombing outside the cafe in Paris had also been overkill, just as Dodd had said it would be. Omar still didn’t care. Once he set his mind on a course of action, he stuck with it regardless.
Killing Anthony Nichols up close in his hotel room would have made more sense. It would have been quiet and efficient-the way these things should be done. But Omar didn’t want quiet and efficient. He wanted to send another message that would be heard loud and clear. It was loud and it was clear, all right. The problem was that car bombs were not Dodd’s area of expertise.
Dodd was an assassin, not a bomber. And despite Omar’s justifications backed up with extensive recitations from the Koran and Hadith that non-Muslims could never be considered innocents, Dodd disagreed. He didn’t like
