The lights dimmed. A nervy stillness fell over the room. A video screen four feet by four lowered from the ceiling. Chapel leaned forward in his seat, tasting a sour bile in his throat, as his heart drummed faster. The tape began. A man dressed in a fatigue jacket, Arafat’s red-checkered khaffiyeh, and mirrored sunglasses filled the screen.
“Americans, Zionists, and your sycophantic allies, I address you in the name of Muhammad, peace be unto him, and in the name of everlasting peace between all peoples…”
The language was English, spoken with a colloquial American accent. The man was either native-born or a gifted linguist. Glancing around him, Adam noted that everyone had assumed his own posture of stiff anticipation. Everyone except Leclerc, who stared at the screen with undisguised nonchalance.
“In your holy book, David rose up and slew Goliath with a stone. And with a stone we have slain those who oppress us, who force an unjust peace on the land of Abraham, and who occupy the Land of Two Holy Places. The time of humiliation and subjugation is over. On this day, a new history has begun, and its first pages have been written in the blood of the Zionist Crusaders. Feel our hate, for it is yours. Know our desperation, for it is yours. Choke on our rage, for it is yours. It is time for the hypocrites to leave and take their reign of false values with them. The light of Islam shall sear every trace of Western corr-”
Abruptly, the tape dissolved into a stuttering patchwork of black and white lines, interrupted by stretches of darkness.
“From here on out, the picture quality is quite poor,” said General Gadbois, pulling his muscled forearms more tightly around his chest. “The original is at our lab. They tell me that it is unlikely we shall be able to recover anything further.”
The images regained clarity, but it was clear that this portion of the tape had been damaged by the blast. The speaker moved jerkily. His words were garbled. For the next sixty seconds, Chapel was unable to make out more than a phrase here and there, a few stray syllables. “Struggle has come… land… attack… ’tember morning… die…”
The audio cut out, and a moment later, the picture began to deteriorate. Color bled from the images. Darkness peeled across the screen. As the figure faded to obscurity, Glendenning froze the picture.
“Look at him,” said Glendenning, and for once, Chapel heard real malice in his voice. “Smug bastard. He’s smiling. Thinks he’s pulled one over on us.”
Chapel scooted forward an inch. Yes, the bastard was smiling, and for a shocking moment he reminded him of Leclerc, that smirking, know-it-all look he wore to beat back the world. Then he saw something else. “Hold it,” he said, barely containing his urge to shout. “Keep it there.”
Chapel walked to the screen. “There!” he declared, his index finger touching the mirrored lens of the speaker’s sunglasses. “That’s a reflection of someone else in the room.”
“Probably Taleel,” said Leclerc. Despite his dismissive tone, he was pulling himself out of his chair, craning his neck toward the screen.
“Maybe,” said Chapel. “Maybe not. This figure looks like it’s on the side of the room.”
It was hardly a figure, more an hourglass pastiche of red and blue.
“No, no, Mr. Chapel’s got something,” said Sarah Churchill. Rising, she walked to the screen, a silver-dollar smile to move him aside and allow her a closer view. “I’d be inclined to agree that it’s a human form,” she announced after a few seconds.
Glendenning offered Gadbois a tired, disappointed glance that summed up the history of the two nations’ relations. Cooperation without trust. Friendship without affection. “Let’s get a copy to our boys in D.C. They can blow up the image to a hundred times that size, manipulate the pixels and lighting. If someone is there, they’ll be able to tell us their height, weight, and what they ate for breakfast.”
“We can do the same,” said Leclerc.
“Then do it!” chided Glendenning, with an angry turn of his head.
Overhead, the panels of fluorescent lights blinked to life.
“We have no idea who this man is,” Gadbois announced with evident frustration. “Or who filmed him, though we are assuming that since the tape and camera came from Taleel’s apartment, he was the cameraman. Let’s hope our respective photographic laboratories can shed some light on the question. Until then, we are working with the Sûreté to canvass the area. They are going door-to-door with members of your FBI showing Taleel’s picture. Give us a few days. We’ll have something about him and his friends.”
“Excuse me,” said Chapel, tentatively. “Is that it? Is that all there is to the tape?” To his eye, it appeared that the speaker had been cut off midsentence. He felt puzzled. While the threat was sobering, it was hardly specific enough to warrant the DDO flying to France at the drop of a hat. There had to be something more. “Seems like he’s got something else to say. Is that really the end of the speech or was the tape damaged at that point?”
“That is the entire speech,” said Gadbois, turning his bulk toward Chapel, his bullfrog’s glaring eyes and blemished features all but telling him to shut the hell up and stop making waves. “We’re lucky we got it at all.”
“Of course,” said Chapel, sinking back into his seat. “I’m sorry.” Exception noted, he mused sourly.
“Miss Churchill’s been closer to the case than anyone,” said Glendenning. “She’s the one who first posited the existence of this group. ‘Hijira,’ you call them. Why?”
“From what I gather, it’s what they call themselves,” Sarah answered. “Hijira marks the beginning of the new Islamic calendar and dates to the time Muhammad fled his persecutors.”
She was back in the debater’s corner at Cambridge, first affirmative making her team’s argument. She didn’t know why she felt so nervous. She’d done the same thing often enough with the analysts back at Legoland, which was what everyone called MI6’s new modernistic headquarters on the south bank of the Thames. She kept her voice even, her eyes passing from one man to the next, mustering support, always ready to deploy a smile when necessary to bring the doubters to her side.
“Who are they? Why have we heard so little of them until now? And, mind if I ask just exactly what new era it is that they hope to usher in?”
It was Chapel, and behind the polite demeanor she sensed a challenge. Another “newbie” not content with being low man on the totem pole.
“Pan-Arab nationalists,” she explained. “One more group sick and tired of Western cultural and political hegemony. You heard what he said about allowing ‘the light of Islam to sear every trace of Western corruption.’ He wants a solution to the Palestinian question, and the Yanks out of Saudi Arabia. Saudi’s what the man in the video called the ‘Land of Two Holy Places. He was referring to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in the Muslim world. As Admiral Glendenning hinted, until a few days ago, pretty much everything we’d gathered about Hijira was supposition, if not speculation. Their primary focus appears to be generating income to support their operations. They’re into drugs-cocaine, heroin. That’s nothing new. Al Qaeda’s up to its neck in the poppy trade. Bin Laden doesn’t have half the money everyone likes to believe, and he spent what he had ten years ago. Hijira’s taken it a step further. More than once we’ve picked up chatter that they’re involved in more sophisticated enterprises: gold smuggling, software piracy, conflict diamonds.”