“Yes,” came the calm voice.
“Send this message to the White House: You will give a live speech from the Oval Office or they will all die of thirst, and then I want you to shut down all fifty-one pumping stations that feed water into Las Vegas, Nevada, and don’t turn them back on until I say so.” He’d learned earlier that he needed to be very specific with place-names.
“Task complete,” the computerized voice said tonelessly.
“Let’s see how long he’ll let those people bake in the desert heat before he tells the world that he no longer controls his nation’s destiny. What do you think, Abdul? Clever, yes?”
“Yes, very,” Mohammad said, but he didn’t agree. If it were up to him, every reactor in America would have gone critical days ago. He didn’t understand why his superior was toying with the Americans.
“That was hardly convincing, my friend. You think we should destroy the Great Satan and be done with it.”
Bahar never asked his opinion, so it came as a surprise now. Unsure, Mohammad finally nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You don’t enjoy the irony of us meddling in their policies the way they have meddled in ours. For two generations the Americans have said which regimes rise and fall, and used that capability with little regard for the people it affects. Now we can do the same to them, to tell them their place in the world, to make them feel what it is like to be under someone else’s thumb for a change.
“They call the American president the most powerful man in the world. Well, tonight he will do my bidding, making methe most powerful man. We couldn’t defeat them on the field of battle or break their will with suicide attacks, but now we have used their dependence on technology to cow them.
“Soon I will decree that American Christians must begin to study the Koran in their schools so that, over time, they will convert to the one true faith. Why destroy them, Abdul, when we can enfold them into Islam?”
Emboldened, Mohammad said, “That will never work.”
“At one time there was only one Muslim, the Prophet Muhammad, blessings be upon him, but from that single seed the faith spread through conversion after conversion. It is still happening today, as Arabs move into Europe and begin to make converts of the people. True, it happens mostly in prisons, but when these new Muslims are released, they tell their families of their wonderful conversions, and maybe one or two join as well. By exposing Americans to the Koran at a young age, we will accelerate the process. In fifty years America will be an Islamist state. The rest of the Western world will follow suit, mark my word. And I won’t even have to threaten them.”
Bahar placed his hands on each side of Mohammad’s face as though he were about to kiss him, and, for a moment, Abdul feared he might. “Let go of your hatred, my friend. The struggle between the Muslims and Christians has endured for more than a thousand years. So what if it takes fifty or a hundred more? We have guaranteed that our side shall be victorious.”
Abdul Mohammad knew his superior’s plan was doomed to fail for the simple reason that somehow, and not that far in the future, the Americans would figure out where they had constructed the computer and find a way to isolate it or, more likely, destroy it. Their window of opportunity was a short one, and Bahar had delusions of becoming like the Prophet himself. They should strike the U.S. now, he thought, and tear her apart at the seams. Playing games and planning for a future that would never come to pass were a waste of the only opportunity they’d ever had to conquer their sworn enemy.
He hadn’t been privy to Bahar’s plans for the quantum computer and wished they had discussed it previously. Maybe he could have changed his mind. But looking into Bahar’s eyes and seeing the spark of megalomania that lurked in their depths, Abdul knew it was too late. They were committed to his fantasy that he was to become the Madhi of Islamic prophecy, and it wasn’t in Abdul to go against his superior’s wishes.
24
THEY MET THE FOLLOWING MORNING IN THE OREGON’S sleek conference room. Juan wanted to keep the group small, so it was just him, Eric Stone, Soleil, and, because they were becoming good friends, Linda Ross. Up on the monitors Eric had the financial information pertaining to all of Roland Croissard’s recent business deals. The man had his finger in a lot of pies, and, because she was not part of his life in recent years, Soleil knew little of it.
Juan believed that whatever Bahar wanted from Roland Croissard, the deal would have happened shortly after her kidnapping, but, to be thorough, they went back six months. The material was so dry that dust seemed to fall from the plasma screens. This was work only an accountant could love, and, by the beginning of the second hour, he could tell Soleil was becoming frustrated.
“ Non, I did not know my father bought into an Indian steel mill,” she said when Eric pointed out the three-million-euro deal. This happened just a day before she was abducted. “Why should I?”
“No reason,” Juan assured her. “Okay, what about this? Two days after you were taken, he sold his stake in a Brazilian appliance company. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No. Nothing.”
“And here, he leased out something called Albatross to what looks like a shell company. Eric, who or what is Hibernia Partners?”
“Hold one second. I know I went through this stuff before.” He worked his laptop for a moment. “Okay, here they are. It’s an Irish company, chartered four years ago. They were going to import salt for roads, but they never made it off the ground. Six months ago they were given a large loan through a New Hebrides bank, but the money’s never been touched.”
“That is it!” Soleil cried.
“What?”
“Salt. My father bought a salt mine before having an outside expert look at it for him. It was only after the deal was done that he called someone in. He was American, like yourselves, and when he told my father that the mine was unstable, he fired him on the spot and hired another. I never met the second one because—”
“The reason’s not important,” Juan said. “Tell us about this mine.”
“It’s in eastern France, near the Italian border and very close to a river.”
“That’s a lucky break,” Eric said. The ship was fast approaching France’s southern coast.
“The river was the problem,” Soleil went on. “He said it was dangerous. I think the term is ‘seepish.’ ”
“Seepage,” Juan corrected.
“Yes. That is what he said. Seepage. Anyway, it was the worst deal my father ever made, but he said it taught him humility. He said he would never sell it but would keep it, like an albatross around his neck, so he would never forgot. That is why he named the company Albatross, like from the poem.”
Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Marinerwas about the only poem Cabrillo knew. “ ‘Instead of the cross, the Albatross /About my neck was hung.’ ”
“My father would never even lease the mine,” Soleil added. “You wanted me to find something unusual. I think this is it.”
“Okay, let’s set this aside for now. There’s still a lot more to go through. We need to be certain.”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
It took another hour, but in the end they circled back to the Albatross Mine. Juan had suggested that Mark Murphy dig deeper into Hibernia Partners while they worked in the boardroom, but Eric said that wouldn’t be a good idea. If the company was one of Bahar’s fronts, then hacking into its system would alert the quantum computer and give away their investigation.
Cabrillo thanked him for his foresight, not realizing how much they’d come to rely on computers until the capability vanished.