“I didn’t want to scare you,” he began. “But I’ve just escaped an ambush. There’s no doubt it was Khalid’s men. That’s when they took the amulet. I spent the night wandering around, hiding, looking for a way to get to you.” He spread the family tree in front of her, and quickly took her through it, skipping most of the lines, but the blood was pumping in her ears and a sudden thought occurred to her. She looked again in the safe, and there was the copy of the El Greco painting. She froze; how had it gotten there? And what had happened to Rafi? Was he one of them — or another of their victims? Had they used her as bait to get this drawing? She pushed the thoughts aside and opened the sketch for Yusuf, drawing his attention to the key held in the hand of the celestial creature reaching toward Mary’s lap. They stood motionless as he looked at the key; holding his breath, he took out the key hanging around his neck.
“It’s the same key,” breathed Nora, then told him about the man who had spent a quarter-century of his life in the peaks of Toledo, obsessively looking for that key, and left a copy of it fixed to his gravestone.
“Maybe you’re related to that guy — maybe he’s your lost father! Your mom Halima always talked about how Andalusia had kidnapped her husband …”
Nora went back to the safe and took out the drawing Khalid al-Sibaykhan had showed her one morning in Madrid, to compare it with the copied key stolen from the grave.
“All these are copies of that,” she said, pointing to the key around his neck. “It must be the key.” She emphasized the words the key. She looked around them, struck by the deafening, blinding discovery. Her ears were ringing and her saliva tasted like blood. Her mind was racing against time to create a bomb as big as this explosion Yusuf had caused in her blood.
“What do you think this is all about?”
An obscure instinct was honing in on that threat hung around Yusuf’s neck.
“You’re a Shaybi, Yusuf.”
They stood either side of the key, looking at the two interlinked mihrabs on the bow, and the third, bearing the verses of the Surah of Fidelity, in engraved gold, which watched over their embrace from above.
They returned to the safe to look for more clues, but there was nothing except for a DVD on the top shelf. Yusuf quickly played it on the computer: it was a promotional film, which opened with the logo of Elaf International Holdings. They couldn’t fathom the images of the Mecca of the future that rolled across the screen: everything around the Kaaba had been erased and replaced by a vast marble space that extended northwest from the Haram Mosque, rising in three tiers, like a sundial, to another five tiers that led to a flat, paved plain stretching to the very edge of the city, sweeping away the Lane of Many Heads. Skyscrapers enclosed the horizon on three sides, a line of seventeen giants on the right and the same on the left, meeting in the center in a vast idol that looked like the Empire State Building and was flanked on each side by a miniature version of itself. Next came another ring of skyscrapers, seven to the right and seven to the left, and in the center two enormous creatures guarding the great idol. They all looked like spaceships that had landed on Earth to besiege the Kaaba in a postmodern metallic standoff. The whole lot was surrounded by an outer ring of inferior towers that stood like wretched guards protecting the backs of the giants against the assault of the sand and the poor who were massed like ants outside the massive conurbation. It looked like life itself had been chased outside the circle of the Holy Mosque.
“Look, these zones around the Kaaba are what gave Khalid al-Sibaykhan his nickname, Long Belt. He’s tying the whole city around his waist …”
When the promotional film ended, it took them some time to make sense of the idea that this what the Kaaba would look like in the future. The stone structure covered in black silk had been taken away, and in its place was a metal box of the same dimensions as the old one but elongated like an obelisk pointing to the sky, and around it were countless levels of walkways that would hold huge numbers of circumambulating pilgrims. The new Kaaba was like the shaft inside the grinding cogs of a huge mill.
Their hearts scarcely beat any longer. Their mouths felt dry. Yusuf was frozen in the desk chair and Azza stood motionless behind him, the scent of Medinan mud rising to her from his dirty hair, their eyes still fixed on that vision of the postmodern Kaaba. Azza could feel the emptiness behind her, the abyss brushing the back of her neck. At any moment, al-Sibaykhan could walk in and the hair-fine line would be broken, pushing them to some zone as extreme as the designs that had just left them speechless.
“Now I understand. It might sound like some crazy film plot, but I think the disappearance of the key, and all the rumors about their failure to cast a new one, were planned to make way for this … To redesign the Kaaba …”
“Would you really mind if it looked like this? Stone or metal, what difference does it make? The important thing is it’s a symbol.”
“Azza, this isn’t the Kaaba we know. This is Hubal. The idol, the same idol that’s worshipped by the Devil’s Horns tribes, is taking over the House of God, rising to the sky on the Kaaba’s foundations. Those foundations were built by Adam and the angels out of stones from heaven. It’s a human treasure …”
“But didn’t you say those emeralds from Heaven were dug up and thrown into the sea so nobody would worship them?”
“Not the foundations … I really hope they haven’t done anything with the foundations. Any attempt to dig up those foundations would destroy Mecca. The least we can do is expose these documents so the authorities can see what these people are planning to do!”
She stared at him in silence. He looked skinny and pale, but unshakably determined. “Expose them to who?”
“The organizations that protect cultural heritage in London and New York, the royal court, the Consultative Assembly, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice …” He sounded naive, even to himself. “But first, you have to come with me, we have to get you out of here.” He gathered the papers, ready to leave.
“I’ll repeat what a crazy woman once told me: this key, in the hand of the right man, can open all the doors to God’s houses, doors you’ve never even imagined …”
“But look at the metal Kaaba of the future … What key could open that contraption?”
“Even that,” she replied, touching the key around his neck. “This key is everything. You need to get it out of here, now.”
“No, Azza, you are everything,” he said desperately, hoping it would penetrate her head this time. “You and Mecca. I’m not leaving unless you come with me.”
Her head was spinning, so her body moved automatically. She put on her abaya and followed him out of the suite.
As the elevator door opened onto the lobby, they spotted al-Sibaykhan coming in through the main door with his assistant, his bodyguards spread around the entrance and the lobby. Yusuf yanked her back into the elevator and pressed a button, but the minutes it took to respond seemed like forever. Azza moved forward, lifting her abaya in an attempt to hide Yusuf from sight, but a man suddenly appeared in front of the elevator, his eyes meeting Yusuf’s. He was one of the ones who’d surprised them at the fort. The man’s hand shot out to stop the door closing, and like a flash across Azza’s line of vision, Yusuf’s hand struck the arm, pushing the man backward. With a grimace of pain, the man hit the floor just as the elevator doors slid closed.
They didn’t know what floor they were going to for a moment, but the elevator took them to the second floor, and the moment the doors opened they raced to the nearest emergency exit. Yusuf smashed the glass on the fire alarm, sending the hotel into an uproar. They bounded down the emergency stairs, pushing through endless doors until they finally burst out into the parking lot. In front of them, Nasser was just getting out of his Land Rover. He stood paralyzed at the sight of the two figures that had suddenly appeared in front of him, his eyes a waxy white as he stared agog at the woman. Azza retreated, while Yusuf rushed forward eagerly with a sigh of relief.