Outside Nick leaned against the balcony rail, gazing across the rolling snowy hills of Greenwich Park to the domed observatory that sat on the Prime Meridian. “Go ahead, CJ,” he said into the phone.
“My team made progress with those pictures you sent.”
“The symbols?”
“Negative. Those are still a mystery, but we found a guy at Georgetown who could translate the calligraphy.”
“Farsi, right?” Nick watched a group of children sledding on the observatory mount. His eyes followed a boy on a blue saucer, spinning in a slow circle as he sailed down the hill.
“Sort of. Our guy said the language was muddled by Turkic influence, but he’s confident he got the general idea. I’m sending it to you now.”
Nick put CJ on speaker and opened the file she sent him, turning away from the playing children to lean his back against the rail. There were four stanzas of text on his screen.
THE MESSENGER OF HIS MESSENGER SHALL DECLARE HIS COMING ON THE PLAINS OF THE GREAT EMPIRE,
AND THE MARKETPLACE WILL ERUPT IN TURMOIL SO THAT A LOAF OF BREAD SHALL COST MORE THAN A DAY’S WAGES,
AND PESTILENCE WILL SPREAD AMONG THE UNBELIEVERS, A DISEASE THE LIKES OF WHICH NO MAN HAS EVER SEEN.
THEN THE SUN WILL BE BLOTTED OUT AND MY SERVANT WILL OPEN THE GATE. A GREAT SMOKE WILL RISE UP FROM THE CENTER OF THE WORLD. THE SKY WILL BURN LIKE MOLTEN BRASS, AND FROM THE HIGH PLACE THERE WILL SOUND A DEAFENING NOISE, AS TRUMPETS, ANNOUNCING THE ENTRANCE OF THE MAHDI.
“Reads like the Quran, doesn’t it?” asked CJ.
Nick took the phone off speaker and brought it back to his ear. “It’s probably a hadith, a saying attributed to Muhammad. A lot of them mirror passages of the Quran.”
“Whatever it is, it ain’t good.”
At that moment, one of Scott’s laptops made a twittering sound, mimicking R2D2. “What was that?” Nick called into the apartment.
Instead of an answer, he heard a click, and then another, and then a furious stream of them. He poked his head into the room and saw Scott’s fingers blazing over the keyboard. “Thanks, CJ,” he said, ending the call before she could respond. Then he stepped into the living room and closed the door behind him. “You get something we can use?”
Scott changed the display projected on the wall. A new video showed Kattan walking across a plaza. When the killer reached the border of the camera’s view, the display flashed and another camera picked him up. This one showed Kattan approaching the same office building as before.
Nick watched the assassin casually stroll beneath a concrete awning and disappear. “How long ago did the cameras record that?”
Scott stared up at the display, his hands still hovering over his keyboard. “The software didn’t pull that video from the recordings. We’re watching the live feed.”
CHAPTER 35
The very sight of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral enraged Kattan, the thought of the daily throngs crowding beneath its extravagant portico, gazing mindlessly at the stone idols of the crusaders. The cathedral was not a house of worship. It was a tourist attraction for bloodthirsty Christians.
The assassin lingered in the shadow of a concrete awning a moment longer and then turned and pushed his way through a set of glass double doors. As he descended a flight of carpeted stairs to his temporary headquarters, his anger gave way to rapturous anticipation. Soon the masses would see the cathedral and all others like it for what they were: empty monuments to a false religion.
Soon. Very soon.
At the basement level, Kattan unlocked a heavy wooden door and entered the lab he had constructed for Dr. Maharani. A long table on one side of the room held a variety of electronic instruments, controlled by a pair of laptop computers. Most of the instruments were contained inside a large clean box, along with glass dishes and beakers and the canisters Kattan had brought from Egypt. The biochemist was on the floor a few feet away, completing his afternoon prayers.
“One day soon the Qiyamah will begin, and those rituals will be abolished,” said Kattan as the doctor rose to his feet.
Maharani averted his eyes from his captor. His hands shook as he lifted a lab coat from a cot in the corner and slipped it on. “And this,” he said, as he stepped up to the worktable, “this thing you have asked me to create will hasten that day’s arrival?”
“It is a necessary step, yes. It is a sign that must precede the age of peace.”
Maharani pushed his hands into the rubber gloves inside the clean box and carefully grasped the cylinder. “Are there other signs to perform? Is that the reason you are dressed as an electrician, today?”
Kattan looked down at his blue jumpsuit and then back at the doctor. He frowned. Maharani’s eyes were clearly not as averted as he pretended; and he was never this talkative before, never this inquisitive. Then the reason dawned on him. The scientist was stalling.
The amiable tone vanished from Kattan’s voice. “Do not forget that I am on a schedule. How much longer?”
“I need six more hours.”
“You have three.”
For the first time, Maharani looked directly at Kattan. “You do not understand. There are biological processes at work here. They cannot be rushed.”
Kattan was shocked by the doctor’s stern expression. It seemed Maharani needed a reminder. “Do you know what your daughter is doing right now?”
The stern expression fell away in an instant. “Please. I am doing everything you ask.”
“I am told by my people that she is on a train. What do you think would happen if there were an explosion in that tunnel?”
“But the timeline is beyond my control.”
“How terrifying it will be for little Chaya. A flash of fire, incredible pain, then darkness. To which do you suppose she will succumb first? The slow drain of her lifeblood or the crushing press of a thousand tons of concrete?”
Maharani quickly returned to his work, removing a sample from the canister inside the clean box. “I will get it done. See? I am working. You do not have to do this.”
“Three hours, Doctor.”
“Yes. Three hours. You will have your weapon.”
Nick left his car in a garage and hurried up Godliman Street toward the courtyard of St. Paul’s and the southern access to Paternoster Square — the home of the London Stock Exchange and the location where the camera had caught Kattan a half hour before. In his slacks and overcoat, he mirrored the smattering of London businessmen around him, all rushing back to the office after their long lunches. Most of them carried some sort of portfolio, either a briefcase or a satchel. No one seemed to notice that Nick had two — one for him and one for Drake.
The big operative was racing back from Cambridge to meet him. Thankfully, Drake could push the limits of the Peugeot without much fear of police interference. The Brits relied on speed cameras. Walker could compensate the rental company for the photo tickets later.
As he drove, Drake back-briefed Nick on his conversation with Rami. “Long story short,” he said over the comm link, “Kattan set himself up as the mouthpiece of the Hashashin messiah. They call him the Qaim, the Emissary.”
Nick slowed his pace at hearing Kattan’s screen name in the new context. “That doesn’t make sense. I see the benefit of controlling the Hashashin, but Kattan should be trying to hide the connection from us, not flaunting it through the chess app.”
A passing Brit glanced Nick’s way and gave him a curious look, trying to assess whether the man talking to himself was mentally challenged or simply drunk. Nick put his phone to his ear to make the SATCOM conversation look normal.
“It’s a mind game,” said Drake, oblivious to the interruption. “Kattan is overconfident, like his father always was. He’s giving you puzzles to break up your focus. Don’t get sucked in.”