President, is any of this relevant? A Muslim is what a Muslim does and that’s attack our freedom and our democracy!’
‘What’s your point, Mr O’Connor?’ the President asked, looking even more confused.
‘Not long after September 11, on 7 October 2001, bin Laden made a video broadcast over al-Jazeera, not unlike the one we have seen today. In it he declared that “What America is tasting is only a copy of what we have tasted… Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than eighty years of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated.” Like bin Laden, Kadeer is deeply offended by the presence of our troops in the revered and holy lands of Saudi Arabia, and his speech today only underlines his outrage over what has happened in Iraq and Lebanon.’ O’Connor could feel the hostility of those around the table but he didn’t hold back. This was a rare opportunity to urge the President of the United States to change course. Curtis O’Connor had an uncommon ability to look at any given situation through the eyes of his enemy, and he was convinced that if he let this cabinet believe Esposito’s spin that Kadeer was bluffing, it would be another deadly mistake.
‘Whatever you may think of Kadeer’s religious beliefs,’ O’Connor said, ‘he holds to them strongly, including the belief that the end times have been predicted in the Qu’ran.’ O’Connor was tempted to observe that Dr Kadeer was not the only one who believed that the twenty-first century and the looming clash of civilizations heralded the end times. Biblical prophecies about a rapidly approaching Armageddon and ‘the rapture’ were also being aired by some of the President’s own equally fanatical religious advisors. Advisors like the Reverend Jerry Buffett who had unprecedented access to the Oval Office. Curtis noticed that the President was becoming increasingly agitated, and he decided to bring his forceful briefing to a close.
‘Kadeer has made a number of lesser threats in the past, and,’ O’Connor concluded solemnly, looking at Esposito and towards the camera at the Vice President, ‘he has always carried them out. The only difference this time is his final solution. When he issued the threat of a single strand meeting its double, he used the words “if Allah wills it”. He has not used that terminology before and it may mean he has yet to complete his plans for the final attack.’
O’Connor was not to know that he had got that part of the puzzle right. Although Kadeer had not yet secured everything he needed to put his final solution in place, he was ready to implement his series of warnings. He had not only issued a demand for coalition forces to be withdrawn from Muslim lands, he had brazenly pinpointed the exact location of the first warning attack. Neither Curtis O’Connor nor anyone else in the CIA had yet been able to decipher the deceptively simple code that gave this location. There was also a clue to the final deadly assault and if the nature of it wasn’t yet clear, it would be in time; a conspiracy that would have its zenith in Beijing, driven by the threat from Islam and by the rise of China. With chilling calm, Dr Khalid Kadeer had revealed he was close to acquiring the means to annihilate a large part of the human race.
CHAPTER 6
K ate Braithwaite tossed restlessly in her sleep in the small, one-bedroom apartment the government had provided for her in Atlanta. She’d drifted back to her boarding school days at St Catherine’s in Sydney and, as usual, her challenging mind had got her into trouble, this time with Sister Agnes, the history teacher. The lesson had been on wars and violence in the twentieth century. In 1987, Kate was in her third-last year at high school.
‘In summary,’ the stout and severe-looking Sister Agnes said, ‘Idi Amin was responsible for the murder of nearly a half a million of his countrymen; Pol Pot murdered three million people – a third of Cambodia’s population; Joseph Stalin was responsible for the deaths of twenty million, a million of whom were executed; Mao Tse-tung, somewhere between fifteen and twenty million; and Hitler, sixty million as a result of the Second World War, including six million Jews murdered in his Nazi gas chambers. In the twentieth century, somewhere between 170 and 200 million people have already been murdered or killed as a result of war and violence, and with Islamic fundamentalism on the rise, that number is likely to increase. On that rather depressing note, does anyone have any questions? Yes, Katherine.’
‘Sister, the one common denominator in all this carnage is that the perpetrators were all men, and in more recent wars, such as those in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, where religion is a major factor, once again those inciting the violence and bloodletting are men. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s Islam or Christianity. In our own church the leadership is always male. Don’t you think we females deserve a go, surely we couldn’t do any worse than the men?’
A titter rolled around the room.
‘I’m not sure what you mean by deserving a go, Katherine, but I will thank you not to cast any aspersions against the leadership of our Holy Church,’ Sister Agnes sniffed haughtily. ‘Now, for homework
…’
Kate was invariably at the top or second-top of her class in every subject except one. Every annual report had marked her down for religion.
Kate tossed onto her side as her dream changed tack.
‘What’s this “Religion – a disappointing attitude”?’ her staunchly Catholic father demanded after he had summoned Kate into his study on ‘Bulahdelah’, the family’s 30,000 acre sheep property on the New England Tablelands west of Armidale.
Kate shrugged, unable to tell her puritanical father that she’d lost the faith he’d instilled in her since as long ago as she could remember.
‘Well?’ her father demanded. Dalton McKenzie was a big man in every sense of the word. His square, weatherbeaten face was flushed, as it always was when he was angry. He’d been elected Mayor of the Armidale Dumaresq Council on no fewer than three occasions and was known throughout the district for his no-nonsense conservative National Party views. Once again, his disappointment with Kate surfaced. When Kate’s diminutive mother Muriel had produced a son and heir for her husband, the baby had been stillborn. Kate’s father had made no effort to hide his disappointment when the doctors told Muriel McKenzie she would not be able to have any more children.
‘I don’t see why we always have to agree with what the nuns teach us,’ Kate replied finally. ‘Why are the leaders of religions all men?’
‘There’s only one true religion, Katherine, and that’s the Catholic faith,’ her father replied angrily. ‘The leaders are men because the Bible says so, something you would obviously do well to read more often, young lady.’ Dalton McKenzie reached for the old family bible with its cracked and worn leather cover that held pride of place on his desk. Opening it at Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, he began to read from Chapter Two. ‘Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing
…’
‘One day you will meet someone and be able to establish a home for him and provide him with a family. Until then, I suggest you guard that unruly tongue of yours. Now go to your room!’
Kate stormed out of her father’s study, angry that she was fighting back tears and determined he wouldn’t see them. She had long ago come to terms with having a father who hardly gave her the time of day, although if she was honest with herself, deep down she still craved his approval. Kate slammed the door to her room and, as she often did when she felt alone in the world, she sat down at her desk, took the cover off her most prized possession and switched on the Nikon microscope that had been a Christmas present. Her father had been puzzled by her request but in the end he’d agreed. Cookbooks would have been far more appropriate, but if his daughter wanted to muck about with bugs, maybe it would make her happy. Kate’s tomboyish qualities only made him feel more acutely the disappointing loss of a son.
Kate tossed again in her sleep as her dreams shifted to Tiananmen Square. Standing at the Tian’an Gate, which separated the square from the Forbidden City, Kate gazed south across the vast flat snow-covered expanse of the largest paved square in the world. It had been designed to hold a million people, yet today the square was
