Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber

“No! No, oh, God, what is this? This is madness!”

  She went to the blocks and hefted one. The big, gray thing almost caused her to fall back, it was so heavy against her frail nakedness.

  Certainly a woman going naked would be severely punished. But a child?

  “Daughter, there is nothing in the law to require the punishment of a foolish girl.” He went to her and lifted the great block out of her hands, and returned it to the stack.

  Then Zaaria, who was Jamila’s mother, came out of the curtained room. She came to the center of the garden. He knew her by her eyes. His wives obeyed the sura, and thus she was in full purdah.

  “Zaaria, your child is misbehaving. Please take her away.”

  She reached up and unbuttoned her robe, her dexterous fingers working quickly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You are not of the Ahul al-Bayt. You did not become known in Medina.”

  The robe opened, and in her hand he saw the knife used for the dressing of chickens.

  “You are no Mahdi, but I will tell you who you are, because I know.”

  “I am Aziz, of course, only Aziz, son of the carpenter. The Mahdi is concealed within me. Only when the Caliphate is restored will you see my transfigured form.”

  “ ‘The Dajjal will bring hell to paradise, and what he will call paradise will be actually hell; so I warn you against him as Noah warned his nation against him.’ ”

  “How dare you quote scripture to me! And stop this immodesty. Get the naked child and go away.”

  Then his other wives came into the garden, one of them wearing a Western bathing suit, little more than a gaudy yellow string. The other was in jeans and a sweater, and, like Jamila, wore the blue veil.

  “Dajjal,” Maya, his second wife, hissed. “You murdered a whole city!”

  “I saved the whole world!”

  Maya carried a big butcher’s cleaver and Salwa an iron bar. Salwa hefted it and came forward. “You’re the monster of the whole world!”

  He knew what these weapons meant. He knew that he was being betrayed. Only one thing mattered now. “Eshan, is it completed?”

  Zaaria said, “Tell him nothing.”

  “Tell me!”

  Eshan saw what was happening. The Mahdi was leaving this man. “I must go, now, Aziz.” Eshan had been told exactly what to do in this event. Should Aziz become too dangerous a receptacle, Allah would simply move the Mahdi to another.

  “Help me! Get the gun, the gun, Eshan!”

  Eshan left the garden and went into the house. Aziz shouted after him, “Is it completed, Eshan?” There was no response. “ESHAN!” But Eshan did not answer. He must go now to a certain madrassa.

  The women came closer to Aziz.

  “What are you doing?” He tried to smile. Their faces were awful.

  “Do you know that Salwa lost toes?” Zaaria asked him.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “While you were warm on your djinn of a horse, do you remember the figures walking behind you? The shadows!”

  “Of course I remember!”

  “And no hospital, then. No hospital for her! She has gangrene, you scum.”

  He backed away, toward the outer door.

  “Don’t let him,” Maya snarled.

  Wasim took a few steps, until he was between Aziz and the door. He turned around and threw Wasim against the wall. “You’re all apostate! I am the Mahdi!”

  “Dajjal,” Jamila sang, twirling with her hands over her head. She danced on her mother’s discarded burka.

  Outside, there were shots; there were screams. The sick-sharp odor of cordite sifted through the air.

  “They are purging Pakistan of the ones like you, the followers of the Dajjal.” Salwa raised her arms high. He watched the beautiful arms, watched the black bar in them. Above it, he saw the fading green of the trees that overhung the gardens and, higher, white clouds in the blue.

  There was a pain, and then ringing silence. He knew, then, that he was on the ground. Salwa stood over him, the iron bar in her two hands.

  As he was raising his arms, she hit him again, this time a blow that glanced off his shoulder, making him cry out as the bones separated. A rush of nausea swept him. He pushed himself away, and the third blow slammed into the ground with a sickening thunk.

  “No! Please, I’m young; I deserve to live! I was forced. Yes! They told me if I did not obey, you would all die! Yes! They told me this!”

  Maya came down to him, pressed her soft face into his. “You deserve hell! What of the children you burned? Have you seen that? The fields full of charred bodies? What of them, Dajjal?”

  Then he felt a coldness on his neck, then searing heat, then an agonizing choking sensation. He reached up; he felt, his hands trembling, losing control—an effort now—he felt the handle of the cleaver. It was in his neck! He fought the growing weight of his own hands, fought to close his fingers—and then it was out; it was in his lap. There was a sound. Rain. No, his blood—blood—gushing out of his neck.

  He managed to raise his head, and they were all there, Maya, Zaaria, Salwa, Jamila, and Wasim.

  Aziz’s throat had a torch in it. “Please, I can’t breathe,” he said.

  Wasim barked out a laugh. “Kiss the feet of the dead, Mahdi.”

  “Don’t call him that; it’s impious,” Zaaria said. She took out a pack of Marlboros and passed them to Salwa and Maya, and as his struggle turned slowly from agony to a sort of floating warmth, they stood smoking and watching him die.

  “It . . .” He wanted to tell them that it changed nothing. But there was no strength.

  Then it was dark; there was a child singing in perfect voice, like a distant lark.

  They watched his head loll, his eyes roll back. Then his breath stopped.

  “Well, it’s done,” Zaaria said.

  “Are we rich, now?” Wasim asked. “I want to go to live in Paris!”

  Zaaria went to Aziz’s office. There was little here, just his mysterious codebooks and Eshan’s laptop. She picked up the laptop and hid it under her burka.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “To get this money, we need to start with the police.”

  They opened the garden door onto a street that was quiet again. A police truck stood at the nearby turning. Beyond it, fire equipment rumbled; and white steam rose where the firemen directed their streams into the ruins of the mosque.

  It had come time for prayer, and muezzins raised their calls across the city—most of them, to be sure, electronically, but the age-old call of Islam nevertheless spread far and wide, echoing off the old stalls in the markets, off the walls of houses, floating through the gardens, the call to prayer.

  Zaaria walked up to the police truck. From the back, uniformed men watched her, lazy with disinterest. “Nobody prays?” she asked.

  One of them smiled a little; that was all.

  She went around to the front of the vehicle where their officer was facing Mecca.

  “The peace of God be with you,” she said as he finished.

  “And with you.” He came to his feet. He was a prim man with a neatly trimmed moustache and an aroma of ginger and roses. His uniform was so bright and clean, it appeared to have been just made. “Have you trouble for me?”

  “I have news that the man who is behind all these plots is dead.”

  “You can prove this? That it’s him?”

  “We have his codebooks, his radio equipment, a laptop, many things.”

  “So, you will have done Islam a great service.”

  “And the twenty million dollars the Americans are offering?” Salwa asked.

  “Is it so much now?”

  “I saw it on Al Jazeera. Last hour, they doubled.”

  “If this is true, you will have it.”

  “We can lead whoever you want into Pamir, and show them his hideaway. And his clerk is here in Peshawar. We can identify him.”

  So ended the life of the Mahdi Aziz, the son of a carpenter. His life
ended, yes. But nothing else did.

  27

  THE LOST PLANE

  At ten minutes to midnight, Bilal had embraced Hani. “Soon, you will know the joy of heaven! What happiness!”

  Hani had not smiled, but Bilal had not seen the danger of this, fool that he was. Now he hurried through the streets, looking for his brother.

  Bilal had thought that surely Hani was ready. He had prayed so earnestly, had worked so hard on the preparations. He would fly; it would be over in a minute; all would be well.

  Didn’t Hani realize that they were both dead anyway? The bomb had been removed from its shielded container. Nothing protected them from its radiation. They would both sicken and die in days. In any case, it didn’t matter, because this house in Alexandria was only ten miles from the White House. This house would burn—and, in any case, Bilal planned to be on the roof, so that he would be killed immediately. Why wait and suffer?

  The plane was stationed too near the point of detonation for it to be stopped in time. F-16s circled constantly, and an E-4B flew higher. It was officially a flying command post, but Bilal thought that this one must be modified to work like a very sophisticated AWACS, with the kind of downward-looking radar that would immediately guide the F-16s to a target.

  Hani needed under four minutes in the air, but still it would be a near thing. At the first sign of a missile launch against him, he would detonate, no matter where he was.

  It had all been so well planned. Their training had been so excellent, the aliases given, everything! And now look at this Hani; in the end he values his own life more highly than Allah’s will!

  Bilal thought of all the men and women who had so willingly given their lives in Palestine, in Iraq, all over the world, for love of God, and now this little fool, the most important of them all—here he was—he ran away.

  The promise of heaven was true. How could he, a good Muslim, not know that? Bilal had to find him. But where? Aleph Street was empty and silent.

  Bilal had kept Hani far from the Islamic Community of Northern Virginia, lest he be tainted by their apostate ways. They were worse than Shia.

  Bilal wished that the Mahdi with all his knowledge of the universe, of the souls of the living and the dead, of heaven and hell, were here to offer the advice that Bilal needed, but that could not be, because the Mahdi was still hidden by Allah himself, and would remain so until the final triumph. Must be, or he would certainly be killed. The Americans had always in the past paid their great rewards to those devils who gave up holy warriors, and now the reward for the Mahdi was up to $20 million. Even with the dollar falling like a stone into a bottomless well, that was still much money. If the Mahdi was indeed proved to be dead, the Crusaders’ wealth would rise again, along with their steel armies and their deadly, godless ways.

  “Hani,” Bilal called. His voice echoed. “Hani, I am weeping! Hani!” It was already twelve fifteen. “Hani!”

  Most of the shops were dark, the Flair Cleaners, of course, but also the 7-Eleven on the corner—dark and the door chained closed. But then, at the far end of the street, Bilal saw a glow. That could be that little café, the place of the badly seared hamburgers. Those men in there were Muslim. They would do their business and trust to Allah’s will. Or the Starbucks on Kingdom Street, perhaps, but the blacks in there, they were like all Americans; they would certainly run.

  Bilal raced down Aleph, his legs pumping, hating to get away from the plane and the bomb. Crusader trucks bristling with antennae were ranging the streets, helicopters passing overhead. There was a reason that he and Hani had rented an apartment on a street directly behind a medical-imaging center, full of radioactive elements to throw off just such a search. And so far, it had worked, but it would not work much longer. With the bomb no longer shielded, it was only a matter of time before the searchers would see that the imaging center was emitting too much radiation, and would investigate.

  There was no hiding an unshielded plutonium bomb, not for long. “Hani!”

  “Can I help you?”

  Bilal stopped, breathing hard. He tried to smile at the Crusader policeman, knew he had failed. “I am sorry. My brother, he is—” Bilal touched his head. “Beloved of God, we say, do you know?”

  The cop nodded. “A little slow?”

  “Yes, that’s right. And he’s afraid. He’s wandered off.”

  A big hand came down on Bilal’s shoulder. “He’ll be all right.” The policeman smiled, then, and his smile was strong, firm. “Look at your watch; what do you see?”

  “Twelve twenty-two,” Bilal said, trying to keep the despair out of his voice.

  “So, they missed! Your brother’s probably celebrating!”

  Bilal raised his hands. “Oh, thank God,” he intoned.

  “Him and all the angels, buddy,” the cop said. “We got a curfew, now, so you need to get back home. Has your brother got a cell? I might be able to reach it through the police net.”

  “No cell. Oh, look—the Starbucks—is that open?”

  “Cops only.”

  Bilal hurried past him, but a moment later there was the squawk of a siren, then the flashing of the police car’s lights. Bilal stopped, raised his hands. The cops, two of them, now both in their squad car, gave him genial looks. “Hop in. If he’s not in the Starbucks, we’ll cruise you for a while. We’ll find him.”

  So Bilal got into the police car, sitting in the cage in the back. Had the devils captured him? They were clever, the Crusaders. He sat forward on the seat, trying to appear calm.

  “Rough one, today,” one of the cops said.

  “Yes, Sir. Very definitely.”

  “You guys staying under cover?” asked the other cop. “Because there’s a lotta folks—you know—well, it’s a tough time for you now. You Arab?”

  “We are Iraqi. I’m a procurement specialist. My brother—well, he keeps our house, God willing.”

  “What agency you with?”

  “No. Iraqi government.”

  “Yeah. That must be interesting work.”

  “Very interesting!”

  Then he saw Hani. He was sitting in the Starbucks, but what was worse, he was there among a dozen police and other helmets, sitting working on a laptop! What was he doing there with that computer? Was he giving them all away?

  “Oh,” Bilal said, “he’s there. Stop. Stop now.”

  “Hey, we found ’im!”

  Bilal pulled the handle, and found that the door had not been secretly locked, after all. These Crusader fools had helped their enemy.

  He went into the Starbucks. There was music playing; was it Joni Mitchell? Sweet voice, anyway, some Crusader harlot or other, “Give Peace a Chance.” Idiots. “Hello, Hani.”

  “Hello.”

  “Is this betrayal?”

  “No. I’m only playing King Kong.”

  “King Kong?”

  “That game. It was in the house when we rented it. It’s good fun!”

  “Hani, it’s half past twelve.”

  “I know it.”

  “Are you not going?”

  Hani played the game.

  Bilal sat down across from him. “My brother, this is defamation for our family. Even in the eyes of God.”

  “It’s fun, but hard to get the gorilla to leap. I think perhaps it’s a little defective.”

  The first of the two policemen came in. A few of the others greeted him.

  “Here we are in the den of the Crusaders! Hani, please come home.”

  “Hey there, guys, we gotta roll. You comin’ or not?”

  “We will come.”

  “He can use a computer?”

  “All the time, he plays a gorilla game. We will walk home later.”

  “You better come with us. It just ain’t safe for you folks.”

  Bilal looked up sharply.

  The policeman smiled. “I’m embarrassed, but I think you understand that it’s not safe for somebody who looks like you. Not safe tonight.”

  Bil
al took Hani’s arm, and gently brought him to his feet. “Come, my brother. You need never do that chore I asked of you. Come home with me.”

  Hani touched Bilal with his eyes. “There is no other way.”

  “Brother, there is. When we are home, I will show you this.”