GUNDERSON AND THE team on the Gulfstream would not be as lucky. They were boarded by French customs officials as soon as they landed. Hickman had retrieved a list of all the private planes that had been at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas at the time of the break-in of his penthouse. From there it had been a simple matter of searching flight plans to locate any that had traveled to England thereafter.
The Gulfstream had been the only one.
Hickman then made an anonymous call to Interpol claiming that the plane was carrying drugs. It would take two full days and multiple calls from Hanley and others before his people were released. The French could be difficult to deal with.
CABRILLO WAS LUCKIER. The Challenger 604 with him and Jones aboard left Heathrow within thirty minutes of Hickman’s departure. The pilot immediately set a course for Riyadh, the capital city, at her maximum speed of 548 miles per hour. They streaked through the sky at an altitude of 37,000 feet.
A half hour ahead and now over France, Hickman’s Hawker 800XP was at her maximum speed of 514 miles per hour. The Challenger carrying Cabrillo and Jones at a faster speed should have arrived first, but that would not be the case. Hickman had known his destination for some time—Cabrillo had become aware of it only recently.
On a good day, getting a visa to visit Saudi Arabia is difficult. The process is slow and arbitrary, and tourism is not only discouraged but outlawed. Several of Hickman’s companies did business with the kingdom, and he was a known entity. His application for visiting took mere hours to approve.
Cabrillo would not be so lucky.
EARLY THE MORNING of January 1, Saud Al-Sheik was awakened by the chirping of the computer in his home office, indicating an e-mail had arrived. The mill in England was reporting that the prayer rugs he had been waiting for had cleared customs and were documented in Paris. They were now en route to Riyadh via 747.
Once at the air cargo terminal in Riyadh, they needed to be trucked across Saudi Arabia to Mecca. There the containers would be opened, and the rugs would be sprayed with pesticide, then left to air out for a day or so before being placed in the stadium.
Al-Sheik stared at the clipboard on his desk. With the exact date the rugs would appear an unknown, he had scheduled all his trucks for other duties. The earliest he could truck the rugs was January 7. He’d arrange it so they were sprayed on the eighth, left to air out for a few hours, and then moved into place on the ninth.
That still gave him twenty-four hours before the official start of the hajj. Al-Sheik was cutting it close, but what choice did he have? He had a million details to cover and only so much time to do the impossible.
It would all come together, he thought as he rose to leave the office and climb back into bed—it always did somehow. Inshallah—God willing. Lying in bed, Al-Sheik’s brain bubbled with a thousand details. Deciding further sleep would not be forthcoming, he rose and walked into the kitchen to make a pot of tea.
THE CHALLENGER 604 was over the Mediterranean when the pilot opened the cockpit door and shouted to the rear.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “Saudi is refusing us entrance until we have the proper documents. We have to decide what to do now.”
Cabrillo thought about it for a few moments. “Divert to Qatar,” he said. “I’ll call the emir’s representative in a couple of minutes. Don’t worry, he’ll honor our request.”
“Qatar it is,” the pilot said, closing the door again.
IT WAS SUNRISE when Hickman’s Hawker crossed over the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia and across the desert to Riyadh. Touching down smoothly, the pilot taxied over to the jet terminal and slowed.
“Keep her fueled and ready,” Hickman said.
As soon as the door opened he walked out, down the steps and onto Saudi soil carrying the boxed meteorite.
“So this is the country I will ruin,” he whispered as he looked around at the dry hills near the airport, “the heart of Islam.”
Spitting on the ground, he smiled an evil smile.
Then he walked to where a limousine was waiting to take him to the hotel.
HICKMAN WAS ALREADY checked in and sleeping before the Challenger raced up the Indian Ocean, turned and crossed atop the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf en route to Qatar. The emir had come through with flying colors. His representative had smoothed out entry into the country and a suite of hotel rooms was awaiting Cabrillo and his team. It was arranged that Cabrillo would meet with the emir himself at noon today. First Cabrillo would grab a few hours’ sleep. Then he’d explain the problem in person.
The pilot opened the door again and shouted back, “The tower has cleared us, sir.”
Cabrillo stared out the window at the azure waters of the gulf. Dhows, the strangely shaped boats that carried fishermen and cargo across the water, bobbed peacefully. In the distance to the north, Cabrillo could make out the long expanse of an oil tanker heading south. The wake trail from the tanker’s massive propellers trailed back for miles.
Cabrillo heard the engines on the Challenger start to slow.
Then they began to descend for landing.
46
TWELVE HINDUS WEREclustered into a cheap apartment in an aging building in downtown Riyadh. They had arrived in Saudi Arabia a week prior using work visas listing their occupations as laborers. Once through customs and immigration they had disappeared, never meeting with the employment agency that had arranged their entry.
One by one they had made their way to the apartment that Hickman had had stocked with food, water and supplies enough to last for several weeks. Never venturing out or communicating with anyone, they were to lie in wait until contacted.
The twelve men would be the only forces that Hickman would use in Saudi Arabia for the plan he was about to initiate. What Hickman had in mind was simple on the surface, considerably more complex in application. He and the twelve Hindus were first planning to make their way to Mecca. Once there, Hickman was planning to steal the most sacred artifact to Islam, the meteorite inside the Kaaba that had allegedly been discovered by Abraham, and switch it with the one from Greenland.
Then he would take Abraham’s meteorite elsewhere to destroy.
Hickman was planning to stab Islam in her heart.
IN HIS HOTEL room in Riyadh, Hickman stared at his notes.
Mecca is the center of Islam. The city was the birthplace of Muhammad and the religion he founded. Located forty-five miles from the Red Sea on a dusty plain studded with hills and mountains, the city was once an oasis on a trade route that linked the countries along the Mediterranean with Arabia, Africa and Asia. There, according to legend, some two thousand years before the time of Jesus Christ, God ordered Abraham to build a shrine. Over the centuries the shrine was destroyed and rebuilt numerous times. In 630 the prophet Muhammad took control of Mecca and rid the structure of all false idols. All that Muhammad left was the Kaaba and the sacred stone housed inside. He made this the centerpiece of his new religion.
Over the centuries that followed, the area housing the stone was ringed by a series of walls and larger, increasingly more elaborate structures. The last major rebuilding, in the twentieth century, was funded by the Saudi royal family. This construction resulted in the surrounding mosque, al-Haram, the largest on Earth.
In the center of the mosque lies the Kaaba, a small structure draped in a black silk covering that is embroidered with passages from the Koran in gold thread. The silk covering is changed yearly, and once each year in a show of humility the floor around it is swept by the king of Saudi Arabia.
Pilgrims come to kiss the sacred stone and drink from the spring of Zamzam nearby.