“It doesn’t mean anything,” Professor said, a little more forcefully than he intended. “It’s a coincidence. The kind of thing men like Roche and Stillman use to spin their conspiracy webs. Nothing more.”
“Except now Roche is dead,” Jade countered.
Professor lowered his voice an octave, as if afraid that someone might overhear. “Jade, you don’t seriously think that some shadow conspiracy killed hundreds of people just to keep a crazy man from publishing his book. The world doesn’t work that way.”
Even as he said it, he knew better. The world did work that way, all the time.
“You know I don’t believe in Changelings or aliens or any crap like that,” Jade said, “but we both know that conspiracies and secret societies do exist. Maybe Roche stumbled on something in his research, something that they don’t want anyone knowing. Probably something that doesn’t have anything to do with Phantom Time. The answer will be in Roche’s book. There’s got to be a copy of the manuscript. Either at his place in London, or with the publisher. If you’re right, and this is all just a bizarre coincidence, then we won’t be in any more danger in London than we are right here. But if Roche was killed to keep this a secret, then whoever did it is going to come after us eventually. We need to know.”
“Even if you’re right, and there is some kind of conspiracy at work, why go to the trouble of taking out a whole plane just to kill one guy? They could have just popped him on a street corner, made it look like a mugging. Or simply walked up and shot him, like Rafi did. And for that matter, how did our intern get mixed up in this?”
“Maybe this Parrott guy wasn’t the only target on that plane. As for Rafi, I have no idea, but you’re right. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why we have to go to London. We have to figure out what Roche’s big secret is.”
Professor sighed. “You’re insufferable when you’re right. You know that, don’t you?”
Jade just grinned.
SIX
Atash Shah opened his front door before the visitor could knock. “Gabrielle. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Of course. I was still at the office when I heard. I came straight away.” Gabrielle Greene gripped Shah’s hand, not shaking but clasping it in both of hers. Her dark eyes, framed by even darker hair, a stark contrast with her pale skin, probed the interior of the apartment.
“Raina is already in bed,” Shah said, answering the unasked question.
He thought he saw something like a smile flicker across her face. It was probably his imagination.
Wishful thinking.
Even now, facing this unprecedented crisis, he could scarcely contain his longing for her. Just being around her was intoxicating. Working with her day in and day out at the Crescent Defense League home office was enough to make him perpetually giddy, but having her here, in his home, with his wife sleeping so close…that made the forbidden fruit of their unconsummated love seem all the sweeter.
Gabrielle’s dark serious gaze fell squarely on him. “How bad is it?”
Shah allowed the fantasy to slip away, and looked around furtively. He had it on reliable authority that he was the subject of a secretly sworn and executed FISA warrant. His telephone calls and emails were being screened and he was certain that both his apartment and office were bugged.
Ordinarily, the watching eyes and listening ears did not concern him. He scrupulously avoided doing or saying anything that might even be faintly construed as illegal. As both a Muslim and a journalist who frequently exposed the government’s illegal excesses and abuses of power, there were many — both in government circles and in the mainstream news media — who considered him far more dangerous than any terrorist, and rightly so. The old saying was true after all; the pen was mightier than the sword. Tonight however, was a different matter. Tonight, the distinction between pen and sword had become very blurry indeed. He touched a finger to his lips and stepped out of the apartment, closing the door behind him. He led Gabrielle to the stairwell and up to the roof where, hopefully, they would be able to converse without being overheard by federally sanctioned eavesdroppers.
Gabrielle understood the need for discretion. Thought she was not a Muslim, her hard-hitting investigative reporting, which often made use of highly-placed informants — men and women who were legally and technically committing treason by sharing what they knew with a journalist — had put her on the government’s radar as well. The fact that she worked closely with Shah, co-founding the Crescent Defense League with him, as well as using him as a source for her freelance articles, surely had not improved her reputation, but that was the price both of them were willing to pay to see a world free from tyranny and intolerance.
It was their holy crusade. A jihad, not for Islam — Shah’s faith was a complicated thing, informed more by science than the words of the Prophet — but for the truth.
With more than 1.6 billion adherents — twenty-three percent of the global population — the world’s fastest growing religion was also arguably the world’s dominant religious belief system, regaining a status it had once held for more than four hundred years, from the 8th to 13th centuries. That time, still remembered as the Golden Age of Islam, had been a period of unparalleled scientific, intellectual and cultural achievements, made possible by the unifying power of the Prophet’s writings. Shah, like many modern thinkers who shared his culture and faith, was skeptical when it came to matters of divine revelation, but he was a believer in the power of a united purpose. A second Golden Age of Islam was possible, but only if Muslims everywhere recognized and lived up to their potential for greatness.
Shah’s mission in life was to make sure that happened. He would be the Mahdi, the last imam, who would reunite Sunni and Shia, and all the fractured sects of the faith and lead them to a greatness surpassing even the days of the Prophet. Truth was his weapon, a fire that burned through the endless storm of lies and prejudices. The articles he posted on the Crescent Defense League website not only exposed the agenda of Islam’s enemies, who sought always to characterize Islam as a violent faith, filled with radicals and terrorists, but dug deeper, revealing more subtle forms of intolerance, such as unflattering portrayals of Muslims in movies and television shows, which all too often conflated “Muslim” with “terrorists.”
Unfortunately, like fire, the truth was sometimes difficult to control, and letting it loose could have unpredictable consequences.
“Roche is dead,” Shah said.
Something like relief or satisfaction spread across Gabrielle’s countenance. “How?”
“That’s the problem.” He briefly related what his sources had told him about Rafi Massoud and the brutal murder the young student had committed. “They’re going to try to put this on us,” he continued. “They’ll say that I incited this young man to commit murder.”
Gabrielle made a cutting gesture with her hand. “Let them.”
Shah swallowed nervously. Gabrielle may have shared Shah’s mission, but her motives were more complex.
“This is what we do, Atash,” Gabrielle went on. “Turn their attacks against them. If you distance yourself from this, you’ll appear weak. Apologize and they win. You have to own this.”
“I don’t think that will work this time. They want to paint us as a religion of violent extremists and terrorists. You would have me admit they’re right?”
Gabrielle reached out and took his hand again. Shah felt an electric tingle at the touch. “This is how the world works now, Atash. A lunatic shoots a school full of children. What does the gun lobby do? Do they apologize for the behavior of one crazy person and admit that maybe some common sense regulations might be a good idea? Not a chance. They double down and turn the tables, blame the victims for not having guns of their own and paint everyone who says otherwise as the real extremists.”