Mustafa said nothing to that. He'd known that his family had been hunted like animals all over the planet. It was not much of a surprise that this vicious, filthy, crusading swine had wielded the guiding hand of murder.
Carrera lit a cigarette. He saw Mustafa's eyes widen with barely repressed desire. Why not? Isn't everyone entitled to a last cigarette? He handed the lighter and pack to one of the guards and said, "Give him one."
Mustafa took the cigarette in his bandaged and bound hands and held it to his mouth while the guard flicked the lighter for him. One it was lit, he puffed frantically, eyes closing in unaccustomed bliss.
Carrera waited patiently for Mustafa to finish the cigarette. He had time.
"You were going to use nuclear weapons on both of my homelands," Carrera said. It wasn't a question and so Mustafa didn't answer. "Did you know I've had nuclear weapons since 461? Those were small things, though. Nothing like the citybusters I captured at your base. The ones I had had other defects, too, mainly that a clever man might trace them to me and my people."
Mustafa's eyed darted to the screens. Carrera caught the movement.
"Oh, yes. One of those captured, a true citybuster, is headed toward your family compound. That's the screen on the left. It's rated at seven hundred and eighty kilotons. I am informed that we can expect one hundred percent deaths at your family compound, and anything from half a million to a million in the city of Hajar."
His face a study in horror, Mustafa shook his head in denial. "You can't . . . "
"Sure I can," Carrera said. "Moreover, why should I not? I mean, think about it. Here you are, the greatest—known—terrorist in the history of this world. You've been trying to get nukes for decades. Your chief assistant, Nur al-Deen, even insisted you had them. He quoted the price you paid, did he not? And then a nuke goes off at ground zero, right inside your family compound, a place you conceivably might have stored one. That, alone, will make your movement very unappealing to the bulk of even young, idiot, male Salafis."
"But there will be doubts, too. 'Maybe,' people will say, 'just maybe it was a deliberate attack.' Now if that attack were to be from someone identifiable, then there would be a great cry for vengeance. But when the attack seems to come from nowhere? When they can't even identify a target for vengeance? No, old friend, that will be truly effective terror. That will have no focus for revenge. That will have your people shitting themselves at the thought of retaliation and beating their sons the first time the little bastards shout 'Allahu akbar' a bit too enthusiastically. It's perfect; don't you see? And you gave me the means. That's perfect, too.
"Lastly, I think that when the King of Yithrab—whoever ends up as king, the day after tomorrow—has to spend money to rebuild his capital, he'll find he can't afford both a capital city and madrassas all over the planet."
Carrera went silent then, leaving Mustafa in torment as the clock displayed on the left hand screen ticked down.
After that long silence, with the clock down to under five minutes and Mustafa's face showing mental agony beyond agony, Carrera said, "I could change the target now, I suppose. Tell me, would you rather your family die en masse or would you prefer that I obliterate Makkah al Jedidah and the New Kaaba?"
Mustafa cringed, both inside and out. "Devil!" he spat. "Spawn of Shaitan!"
"Which really doesn't answer the question," Carrera observed, still genially. "Would you rather I obliterate your family, your entire family, or that one stone building, which includes but a single stone from the original on Old Earth, should go up in smoke? I remind you that the number of civilian dead will be about the same."
Deprivation, stress, physical torture, and now this. Mustafa felt his heart begin to crack even as it had not cracked previously. To lose my entire family . . . to destroy the sacred Kaaba? He sank; physically, as he slumped and drew in on himself, mentally, as the weight Carrera had laid upon his soul bore him Hellward.
"Destroy . . . Makkah," Mustafa forced out. "Spare . . . my . . . family."
"No."
"But . . . "
"I said I could," Carrera's genial tone changed to one of pure cruelty. "I didn't say I would. Your family dies, as you murdered mine. I would kill them anyway, if only to terrorize any in the future who might contemplate going down the road you traveled. I just wanted both God and yourself to know that your faith, your personal faith, was a fraud. I may join you in Hell, someday, Mustafa. Indeed, after this, I probably will. But at least, if I do, it won't be because I betrayed my God as you have just tried to betray yours."
Mustafa's jaw went slack, his eyes wild. As the clock on the screen wound down, he began a wordless moan. When it reached zero, and the image on the screen changed to a single enormous flash, the lesser terrorist in the cabin aboard the von Mises began a horrible keening. It was the sound of a man who has lost everything, in this world and the next.
Carrera arose to leave. "Cheer up, old man," he said. "You still have one son left. Me." To Mahamda he gave the order. "Turn him into what he despises, a woman. Then crucify him . . . her . . . it."
"And the Earthpigs?"
"Let's save them for a while and see what use we might make of them."
Bridge, UEPF Spirit of Peace
Life is looking up, Wallenstein thought, as she lounged in her command chair. Robinson is gone. I am in command here, now, so it seems very likely that I shall be raised to Class One. All in all . . .
A crewwoman at a sensing panel started back as if the panel were passing electricity through her body. "Captain, I've got a nuclear detonation on the planet's surface!"
Wallenstein's eyes grew wide in horror. Policy, long established, was that the fleet would retaliate for any nuclear weapons use . . . but that would mean nuclear war with the FSC. Oh, Annan, I don't want to die, not now, not when I'm so close to my dreams.
"Where? Who?" she demanded, lurching strait upright.
"Yithrab, Captain. City of Hajar. Devastation is near total. There must be a half million dead. Hell . . . maybe two million. As for who . . . "
"Yes?"
"Unknown. The analysis is different from any we have a record of. All I can say is it wasn't one of ours."
"Get me a line to the President of the Federated States," Wallenstein ordered. That son of a bitch, she thought. He promised he wouldn't tell the FSC that Robinson was trying to give nukes to the Ikhwan. And, so far as I can tell, he didn't. But he never said he wouldn't use one. And he just did. And I thought I was ruthless . . .