AL TALIB: I am sorry, Mr. President, but once again I must raise the subject of the WMDs.
JOHNSON: WMDs?
AL TALIB: [Sighs.] Yes sir, weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear, biological, and—
JOHNSON: Nuclear? You’re asking me whether America has nuclear weapons?
AL TALIB: Yes.
JOHNSON: Of course we do. What do you think a superpower is, son?
AL TALIB: And where are these weapons, Mr. President?
JOHNSON: Out west.
AL TALIB: West of the capital?
JOHNSON: No, west west. Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas—
AL TALIB: Montana? In the Rocky Mountains?
JOHNSON: —and Missouri.
AL TALIB: But how could that be, Mr. President? Missouri is Mormon territory, is it not?
JOHNSON: Mormons? What do the damn Mormons have to do with it?
At no point during the interrogation or in any of his communiqués with Riyadh did Al Talib give any sign that he thought Johnson’s “delusions” might reflect a broader mythology shared by others, nor was there any explicit mention of the mirage. But perhaps in response to the “triggers,” Johnson’s mental state began to deteriorate again, and as his statements became more cryptic and oracular, gaps appeared in the transcript.
The last interview took place following a five-day period during which Johnson was ill with a fever. The Riyadhis, having accepted by this point that they were not going to get a confession, and fearful of having LBJ die in their custody, decided to terminate the interrogation process after one final exchange.
AL TALIB: How are you today, Mr. President?
JOHNSON: [Inaudible.]
AL TALIB: “Bushed”? You are tired? Here, have some water.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
AL TALIB: I won’t stay long today.
JOHNSON: No, it’s all right. Sit down, sir. I know we’re running out of time. Or rather, I am.
AL TALIB: Has someone told you something, Mr. President?
JOHNSON: The Almighty and I have been in consultation.
AL TALIB: God spoke to you?
JOHNSON: After a fashion. Would you like to hear about a dream I had?
AL TALIB: If you wish.
JOHNSON: I was back in Stonewall, in a one-room schoolhouse.
AL TALIB: This is the school you attended as a boy?
JOHNSON: The schoolhouse itself was a set, from the LBJ Library in Washington. But in the dream it had been moved to Stonewall, and because there was no roof I could look up and see the sky that I was born under.
I was alone, sitting in a pupil’s desk. There were ten desks in all, arranged in three rows of three, with the last desk in the middle of what would have been the fourth row. I was directly in front of that one, in seat number eight. And at the front of the room was a blackboard with ten digits written on it, one through zero . . . Your English is so good, Mr. Al Talib, I assume you’re also familiar with how we Americans write our numbers?
AL TALIB: You call them Arabic numerals for a reason, Mr. President.
JOHNSON: Oh yes, of course. Well, I was sitting there, looking at the numbers on the blackboard, and the sky above got very dark and there was an . . . earthquake, I guess, only more than that, as if God had picked up the whole planet in His hands and was shaking it. My desk stayed put, and I myself couldn’t move, but most everything else went flying. The blackboard came right off the wall and went tumbling end over end, whirling around the room. Even when it went behind my head, though, I could still see it, as though it were reflected in a mirror.
Now numbers, when you do reflect them in a mirror, you know what happens to most of them? They look different. You can still recognize them for what they are supposed to be, but they become strange, alien.
AL TALIB: But not the number eight.
JOHNSON: No, not number eight. You can turn it on its head, write it backwards or forwards, it stays the same.
AL TALIB: Also zero. And one, if you write it with a single stroke.
JOHNSON: Yes, but one is God’s number. And zero, you can guess who that belongs to. Eight, however, eight could be a man, or aspects of man.
AL TALIB: And how do you interpret this dream, Mr. President?
JOHNSON: Some things don’t change. The world could be turned upside down and still some things would remain exactly as they are. The Almighty Himself, of course. Good and evil. The creed of God’s disciples.
AL TALIB: And the person of Lyndon Baines Johnson?
JOHNSON: I am who I am.
AL TALIB: And the transformation of the world, what is that an allusion to? The invasion of your country?
JOHNSON: A week ago I would have answered yes. Now . . . Now I think my reversal of fortune is only a piece of a larger whole.
AL TALIB: What is the larger whole?
JOHNSON: You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. But it all makes sense now. I understand what I’m doing here. It’s about continuity.
AL TALIB: Continuity, Mr. President?
JOHNSON: God wanted to keep a Texan in charge. He upended everything else, but He still wanted that: a Texan, with something resembling a brain, to lead America in her darkest hour. And really, who else are you going to get to fill that role?
AL TALIB: I don’t understand.
JOHNSON: That’s all right, Mr. Al Talib. You will, in God’s own time. Peace be unto you, sir.
During the second refueling stop, in the Azores, some of the crew came off the plane to pray and Mustafa joined them. Afterwards he noticed something about the way they’d been facing, and realized that since leaving UAS airspace they’d crossed another invisible boundary. He spoke to one of the airmen, who confirmed that he was right.
“From here, the direction of the Qibla is eighty-six degrees, slightly north of east. It’s an effect of the earth’s curvature,” the airman added, used to dealing with civilian officials whose grasp of world geography was poor. “Mecca is closer to the equator, so on a flat map it looks as though you ought to pray facing southeast. But if you plot it on the surface of a globe, you see that the shortest distance to Mecca is actually a great-circle route, which—”
“I know what a great circle is,” Mustafa said gently, picturing a younger version of himself standing at the front of a classroom.
“The effect is more pronounced in America,” the airman said. “In Washington, the Qibla direction is fifty-six degrees. And should you continue on to the west coast of the continent, you’d be facing almost due north when you prayed. Of course the cannibals in the Rocky Mountains would probably eat you before you got that far . . .”
When they were airborne again, the pilot announced they’d be at Andrews Air Force Base in another five hours, around 9 p.m. local time. A flight attendant described the special landing procedure. To minimize the threat from ground-based missile attacks, the plane would stay above ten thousand feet until it was directly over the airfield, then spiral down quickly to the runway. “Especially in darkness, it may seem like we are out of control and about to crash, but God willing we’ll be fine, so please don’t panic.”
Mustafa had more reading to do but decided to rest his eyes for a few minutes first, and fell into an uneasy sleep that lasted for the rest of the flight. When the cargolifter began its terminal dive, he dreamed he started awake to find the plane packed with Americans. In the seat beside him a woman was reciting a rosary in terror, and when Mustafa stood up and looked about the now strangely enlarged passenger cabin, he saw other frightened faces—some praying, some crying, some whispering covertly into cell phones. None of these people seemed able to see him, but that could change in a heartbeat, and he did not think it would be healthy to become the focus of all that fear.
Struggling to keep his balance in the steeply angled aisle, he made his way to the front of the plane. Two Arab men in civilian dress stood guard outside the cockpit door, and with the certainty of dream Mustafa knew they were no more his allies than the Christians in the back. He passed ghostlike into the cockpit, where another Arab sat hunched over the controls.