McVeigh’s co-disciple Terry Nichols drove up in a silver van with a guitar logo and the words MESSIAH PRODUCTIONS painted on its side. The Marines let him through the roadblock, and McVeigh opened the van’s rear doors and bade Mustafa get in. “You’ll have to sit on the floor,” he said apologetically, “but it won’t be a long ride.”
“It’s fine,” said Mustafa. “Do you need to blindfold me?”
“Not for this part of the trip, no.” He glanced up knowingly at the helicopters overhead. “It’d be pointless.”
Samir, who had not been invited, stood by waiting to see if McVeigh would wave him aboard at the last moment. Umm Husam, in the midst of a planning session with Amal and several Marines, looked over as well, her expression making it clear that she still wasn’t happy about this. Mustafa nodded to them both, mouthing, “God willing.” Then McVeigh shut the doors.
The ride, as promised, was brief, their immediate destination a railway underpass just off the Davis Pike. As they entered the underpass and eased to a stop, Mustafa raised his head up and saw a second van, with identical markings, driving away out the far side: a decoy for the helicopters.
“Now we wait awhile,” McVeigh said. “Go ahead and stretch your legs, but stay under cover.”
They all got out. Nichols went to urinate behind a pillar. McVeigh lit a cigarette and offered one to Mustafa. As they stood smoking, Mustafa looked around the underpass, his attention drawn to a phrase—T.A.B., HAJJI!—spray-painted on the far wall. A shallow pit dug into the embankment beneath this graffito held the remains of something that had been doused in gasoline and burned. Mustafa drew deeply on his cigarette and tried not to think too hard.
Eventually a car came. The driver, a gray-haired white man with the beard and sun-leathered skin of a Rocky Mountain tribal warrior, got out and nodded to McVeigh and Nichols. “Keys are in it, Randall,” McVeigh told him, and the man nodded again and got into the van and sat behind the wheel with the engine off. Nichols got into the front passenger seat of the car.
McVeigh turned to Mustafa. He pulled a cloth hood from his pocket and said: “If you don’t mind . . .”
This next part of the trip was longer. With the hood over his head Mustafa couldn’t see the road, but the cloth was thin enough that he could still judge light from dark, so when they stopped again he could tell they were outside in the open. McVeigh helped Mustafa out of the back of the car and led him, still hooded, across a gravel-covered expanse.
“Two steps up, here.” They pushed through a thick plastic curtain. “OK,” McVeigh said, and Mustafa pulled the hood off.
They were inside a building that was still under construction. The outer plywood walls had been attached, but the windows were open holes covered with plastic sheeting and the interior was bare studs and concrete. The studs were furry with dust, as if construction had halted some time ago.
“This way,” McVeigh said.
The building was long and modular, each of its several sections consisting of a cluster of rooms surrounding a central corridor. Each section was more finished than the last—drywall appeared, then paint, fixtures, and carpeting—and the repetitive nature of the floor plan gave Mustafa the sense of a single office suite assembling itself around him as he walked. The final section had power. The sudden blast of air-conditioning caught Mustafa by surprise and he reacted as his father might have, clutching at the gooseflesh on his arms. “The director likes it cold,” Timothy McVeigh said.
A door at the very end of the hall was adorned with an official-looking seal that on close inspection proved to be hand-painted. It showed an eagle with a lone star on its chest and a scrap of parchment in its beak; one claw held a cross and the other a Bowie knife. The motto around the circumference was a quote from the Gospel of John: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
McVeigh knocked and opened the door. The office inside, like the building, was a work in progress. To the right as they came in were a mismatched sofa and chair that might have been collected off a street corner, along with a knee-high plastic table. To the left was a small pile of boxes. At the far end of the room was a desk, its top bare except for a massive leather-bound book that Mustafa assumed was a Bible, though which one he couldn’t say; stuck all around the edges of its pages and adding to its thickness were numerous slips of colored paper covered in writing.
A man stood behind the desk with his back to them. He faced a window as if contemplating a view, but the glass was still covered with a protective film that rendered it opaque.
“Sir?” McVeigh said. “I’ve brought Mr. Baghdadi, like you requested.”
The man turned slowly around. He was dressed in jeans and a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had thick, curly brown hair and brown eyes behind gold-rimmed aviator glasses. His dark stubble beard was fading to gray. Mustafa placed his age at around fifty.
“Mustafa al Baghdadi,” the man said. “Thank you for coming. My name is David Koresh.”
“Can I have Timothy get you anything, Mr. Baghdadi?” David Koresh asked. “Coffee? Tea? Ice water? We have beer too, if you indulge, but my understanding is you don’t.”
“No thank you, I’m fine.”
“All right . . . You can leave us now, Tim.”
“Yes sir,” McVeigh said. “I’ll be waiting outside.” He left the room.
“So, Mr. Baghdadi . . . May I call you Mustafa?”
“Please.”
“Thank you, Mustafa. Please call me David.”
“David,” Mustafa said. “And ‘Koresh’? That is a Hebrew name too, is it not? Your family is Jewish?”
“No.” Koresh laughed. “My family name is Howell. Vernon Wayne Howell, that’s my birth name. I changed it to David Koresh after my anointing, when I realized God’s plan for me.”
“Ah. I see.” David for the prophet who slew Goliath, presumably. And Koresh—Cyrus—that would be the king who conquered Nebuchadnezzar’s empire. Mustafa pictured Koresh’s face on a statue, a hall full of statues. “I should tell you, David, if you seek the throne of Babylon, you’re going to have competition.”
“Saddam Hussein, you mean?” He laughed again. “We’re not in competition. Mr. Hussein is a creature of the world. I’m not interested in earthly rewards or titles. Not anymore.”
“Saddam is interested in you.”
“I know. He’s the one who pointed you in my direction, isn’t he?” Mustafa nodded, and Koresh said: “He’s a clever man, in his way. Evil too, of course, and an egomaniac, which makes certain truths impossible for him to grasp, but still. He knows as much about the mirage as any other Arabian, and no one has done a better job at following my trail of breadcrumbs.”
“You are talking about the artifacts?”
Koresh nodded. “He’s hardly the only interested party, but no one else has come as far in tracing the source. Gaddafi’s people, they’re still chasing false leads in Europe. Al Qaeda too, until very recently . . .”
“So it’s true, then. You are the creator of these objects? And of the mirage legend itself?”
“It’s no legend,” David Koresh said. “And I’m not a creator, just a messenger.”
“Will you tell me what you know?”
“Of course. It’s why I had you brought here. But it’s a long story.” Koresh gestured to the couch. “You should make yourself comfortable. Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?”
“Perhaps some hot tea, if it’s a long story,” Mustafa said. “It’s chilly in here.”
“Agent McVeigh said you were CIA,” said Mustafa. “He called you the director.”
“And you’re wondering, if that’s true, what’s the head of the Texas CIA doing hiding out in Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“Well you know,” David Koresh said, “it’s traditional for both sides in a church schism to claim they represent the true religion.”
“There was a schism in the CIA?”