San Diego
Nicole held up the eight-year-old Dior and the seven-year-old Narciso Rodriguez, one a flattering periwinkle blue, one a chic black. Blue, black, blue…she couldn’t decide.
It was a very good thing that she hadn’t lost or gained weight over the past few years because there was no way she could now afford a new Dior or a new Rodriguez. Caring for her father ate up every spare dollar and then some.
That was okay. She didn’t miss her heady days in Geneva—young, single and rich. She’d had those years, enjoyed them, and now they were over.
She was a little less young now, still single and far from rich. Her life had changed beyond recognition. But she didn’t mind. It was worth scrambling to be able to take care of her father.
Black, blue, black…
It wasn’t like her to be so indecisive. And late. When was the last time she’d been late for anything, let alone a date? No, not a date—an appointment. An agreement. Dinner-out-as-thank-you-for-unlocking-her-door. Whatever—just not a date.
And yet here she was, dithering about what she was going to wear, argh!
This was so crazy. What was she doing, going out with a man she didn’t know? Had only exchanged a few words with? Would have crossed the street to avoid only yesterday?
It had never even occurred to her that the lowlife she’d seen walking into and out of Reston Security might actually be the owner of the company. Clearly, security-company executives didn’t need to dress for success. Every time she’d seen the man in the corridor he looked like he was coming off a drunk—incredibly scruffy, pissed off and none too clean.
As soon as she got off the phone with the hedge fund manager and her Russian experts, having happily negotiated an excellent contract, she’d checked out the website for Reston Security and had read the bio for Sam Reston. It was a long one. He was ex-military, a former SEAL, in fact. She remembered he said he’d been in the Navy. Well, that was modest of him. Being a SEAL was a little bit more than having spent some time in the Navy. SEALs were elite soldiers who underwent a gruelling selection process. As a soldier, Sam Reston had been the best of the best.
He didn’t list his medals but there they were on his chest in the formal military photograph, for those who knew how to read them. Nicole was familiar with Special Forces. It was quite likely there were other medals in a shadowbox he would take to the grave with him for missions no one would ever know about, secret to the end of time.
He didn’t have the Marine high-and-tight she was so familiar with from Embassies around the world, but his hair in the picture was definitely military-short and he was clean shaven.
The grim expression was the same, though. She’d been right. Take away the military trappings and he still looked like one dangerous dude. The kind of man she ordinarily wouldn’t speak to, let alone spend an evening with.
But she’d given her word and that was that.
Still, it looked like there was much more to Sam Reston than met the eye. The medals, for one.
Nicole’s father had always drummed into her enormous respect for the US Armed Forces. Her father had served in places where often the US military was the only thing that stood between civilization and the abyss.
The medals on Sam Reston’s very broad chest weren’t there for showing up on time or keeping his shoes and brightwork shined. They were medals of valor, for bravery under fire.
She’d swallowed heavily as she perused his website, letting the facts filter in, changing perceptions.
He’d been a very successful soldier and he was now a highly successful businessman.
Not an angry drunk, after all.
So she had to peel a layer of fear off the strong reactions she’d had to him every time their paths crossed in the Morrison Building’s hallway, which had been often. Sometimes she’d wondered if he had some kind of radar. More often than not, when she’d turned around from locking up her office door, there he had been, behind her, just closing the door of the company he worked for. His company, she now had to remember. He seemed to have been just behind her or just in front of her every single time she moved from the building. And every single time, her entire body had gone haywire.
Every cell in her body had stood to attention in his presence. He often seemed to be going to the office when everyone else in the building was knocking off for the day. She’d been intensely aware of his presence even when he was behind her, as if she were made of iron filings and he were the lodestone.
This morning, it was only paralyzing anxiety that had kept her from sensing him behind her. At all other times, she’d had a sixth sense for his presence.
At the time, she’d thought it was fear. He looked so utterly frightening. Terrifying, actually.
She’d never seen male power like that up close before. His muscles were long and lean, not bulging, and looked as if they were used, and used hard instead of being for show, as most modern men’s muscles were nowadays. It was as if Sam Reston belonged to another race of man.
Tougher, stronger, faster, bigger.
A bell rang downstairs and Nicole started. Oh my God! It was seven and she still wasn’t dressed!
Luckily, Manuela would be there to open the door, since her father couldn’t. It saved Nicole from having to run down the stairs in bra and panties with no makeup on and still-drying fingernails. Wouldn’t that be a way to greet Mr. Sam Reston, former US Navy SEAL?
It wasn’t like her at all to run late for a date, but she’d been running late all day. She’d only made it back home half an hour ago, craving a long, cool shower, but her father had waylaid her when she got in. He was agitated about an article on the government’s response to the latest bombing in Indonesia.
Her father had spent three years as ambassador to Indonesia and was infinitely better informed than the hapless State Department mouthpieces or the hacks who covered the press conference on the bombing.
It was such a pity that his illness prevented him from sharing his experience and expertise. Nicole’s heart ached for him. He had been planning a rewarding retirement of lecturing, writing newspaper articles, starting up a diplomacy blog. Finally finishing that book on the diplomacy of the Medici he’d been writing forever. The sudden onset of cancer had shot those plans down.
To Nicole, her father was the very embodiment of light and reason and goodness. The very best of humankind. She’d never seen him do or say a dishonorable thing. The world desperately needed men like him and yet his light would soon be snuffed out by illness. Even desperately ill, often in pain, he remained kind and considerate. Never complaining. It was breaking her heart.
Nicholas Pearce had always been her hero. Tall and handsome and smart and affectionate, the very best. A wonderful husband and father. She’d grown up feeling her family was blessed. Then they lost her mother in a car crash and now he had stage-four brain cancer, diagnosed a year ago.
That was when Nicole quit her job with the UN in Geneva to take care of him. It wasn’t easy, taking care of a severely ill man, but there was no question in her mind. He’d been a wonderful father to her all her life. Taking care of him in his time of need was a privilege.
However, having a very sick father wreaked havoc on her love life. One whiff of what she was dealing with, and a lot of men who’d been very interested in a date suddenly lost interest.
It was her little test. As her philosophy professor in college would have put it, being able to deal with her father was a necessary but not sufficient condition for her to think of hooking up with a man.
If the man in question could deal with her life and all its troubles, fine. They might just take it a step or two further. If not…good-bye. If you wanted her, she came with her father. They were a package deal.
She’d had a lot of good-byes before the relationships even started, and now that her father was deteriorating so rapidly, she wasn’t open to dating at all.
Not that tonight was a date, of course. It was a thank-you.
Blue, black, blue, black…
Blue, she finally decided. The periwinkle blue polished cotton sheath paired with a black linen jacket. After ten years of Swiss winters, San Diego’s mild climate never failed to delight her.
Makeup! My God, there was no way she could go down with a naked face.
She glanced at her watch and shuddered. Twenty minutes late, unheard of for her. Nicole dressed and made up in record time and started descending the stairs when she suddenly stopped, transfixed.
There was her father downstairs, facing her, sitting in the fabulous wheelchair she’d bought with part of her severance pay from the UN. It did everything but make coffee and sing. He had a celebratory finger of whiskey in a crystal glass on the occasional table at his elbow and Sam had his own glass of twenty-year-old Talisker. Guests were few and far between and her father rejoiced at visits.
Sam Reston was sitting across from her father—she couldn’t see his face but she could see his shoulders, so broad they over-shot the chair back—clad in an expensive midnight blue suit.
But what had her blocked at the top of the staircase, one foot up, one foot down on the first step, was the expression on her father’s face. He was…happy. He looked animated and there was color in his cheeks. His eyes—the color so like her own—sparkled. No doubt he’d been telling one of his wicked jokes.
She hadn’t told Sam Reston that she lived with her father and that her father was ill. She hadn’t told him anything, in fact. So when he came to the door expecting to find a woman to take out to dinner, he’d been confronted with a visibly very ill man. An ill man he’d made smile.
Sam Reston just kept on moving up the scale. Lowlife to security company owner to guy who made her father smile. That last attribute was the best one.
Her father’s gaze shifted and his smile broadened. “Hello, darling.”
“Hi, Pops.” Smiling at her father’s expression, she walked down the staircase. If he was happy, even for a fleeting moment, then so was she.
Sam turned in his seat and their eyes met.
Nicole stopped. Everything in her stopped—head, lungs, legs. It was like taking a punch to the stomach. All the air left her system. His dark eyes were so intense, it was as if they were hands, reaching out to touch her. She could hardly breathe, hardly think.
She’d always seen him looking grim and dirty and dangerous. Now he still looked deadly serious, two hundred plus pounds of male potency, completely focused on her. His eyes made a quick trip down to her feet then back up to her face. With anyone else, she would have bridled at the blatant male once-over. Somehow Sam Reston managed to make it not insulting but…arousing.
At any rate, he was certainly aroused. Those dark eyes were full of heat; under the olive-toned skin of his sharp cheekbones was a faint wash of red, and it wasn’t a blush of shyness.
There was pure sex in his look, powerfully potent, stronger than anything she’d ever felt from a man before. It sapped the strength right out of her knees and her hand went reflexively to the railing for support. She stood there for a long moment under his heated gaze.
It was only a lifetime’s intense training in diplomatic circles where you never, ever showed your true feelings that got her feet moving again. She barely felt them as she descended the stairs, watched by the big dark man sitting across from her father.
It didn’t help that he cleaned up fantastically well. During the course of the day he’d managed to make it to a barber. An expensive one. His hair—long, unkempt and greasy—was now shiny clean and beautifully cut, showing off the elegant shape of his head.
She’d never seen him in anything other than torn, grungy jeans and filthy tee shirts. Now he seemed like another man entirely, dressed in a well-cut midnight blue suit, white cotton shirt and burgundy silk tie. Now he looked like the businessman he was, and a highly successful one at that.
And that businessman watched her intently, step by step.
Her father, normally so astute and alive to the ways of the world, wasn’t paying attention. He’d been caught up in the conversation and was excited at the company. Thoughtlessly, he reached for his whiskey and sideswiped the glass.
Oh no!
Nicole ran the few steps to her father, catching the glass just as it was about to shatter on the table.
Her father looked appalled, the high color of joy gone from his face. Nicholas Pearce, so graceful all his life, with an athlete’s build and coordination, which had been a pure gift from the gods because he never exercised, had become clumsy. The tumors were robbing him of his fine motor control. The loss had come so quickly, he often forgot he couldn’t control his muscles. He pulled his shaking hand back, stricken. He hated making a mess when it was just the two of them. In front of company it was even more humiliating.
Nicole’s heart gave a hard squeeze in her chest. She knew very well how crushed he felt inside, to have almost spilled a drink in front of a perfect stranger, a stranger whose company he was enjoying. Company was a real treat these days.
How lonely her father must be. He spent his days alone in a wheelchair, with the housekeeper for company during the day and a tired daughter in the evenings.
Losing weight, growing weaker, day by day.
Dying was so hard.
She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, picking up the glass, curving his hand around it. “Sorry to be so late,” she said to Sam Reston.
He’d instinctively started to rise to help her father, but a fleeting touch of his shoulder as she passed by and he subsided. Smart man.
“That’s fine,” he said easily. “It gave me an opportunity to talk to your dad, here. We were both in Jakarta at the same time.”
She casually held the whiskey glass to her father’s lips, watching him out of the corner of her eye. A slight tilt and he took a sip. She placed the glass back on the table next to him, movements natural and unobtrusive. Her father had his sip without making a mess, and without being humiliated.
“Doing slightly different things,” her father said.
“Yes, sir, that we were.” An unexpected smile broke out on Sam Reston’s hard face, the first she’d ever seen from him. She nearly did a double-take. It didn’t soften that hard face but it did highlight the strong features, making him look almost…handsome. “Our doings were less respectable than yours, sir, but we were still serving the same guy. Uncle Sam.”
Oh God, he shouldn’t smile, Nicole thought. No, no, no. She had schooled herself to get through this evening purely as a thank you for opening her door when she was so desperate, and because she’d given her word.
She didn’t want to be attracted.
She didn’t want this to be a date, not in any way. This wasn’t a date, not at all. She’d dithered over the dress simply because…because she always tried to look as good as possible, it was in her nature. And the sucker punch to her stomach when he’d turned to look at her? Surprise at seeing him in businessman mode.
She was perfectly prepared to spend a very boring couple of hours with Mr. Muscle as a thank you, to pay off a debt. Drive with him to some bland restaurant, eat white-bread food, listen to him talk about himself—in her experience, men’s conversations ranged from their jobs to their latest toys and back, seldom deviating—lock her jaw so she wouldn’t yawn, be driven back home, fend off the gropes, say good night, be back in the house with a sigh of relief before ten.
Nothing she hadn’t done hundreds of times before. Her standard date.
Spending an evening with a man who made her father laugh, and who had a charming, rakish smile in him—no, that wasn’t in the program at all.
Not to mention a man who could punch all the breath out of her body with a mere look.
Nicole had no time for a man in her life. None. She had a very sick father. He was deteriorating almost daily. Each day brought some new heartbreaking loss.
Keeping a serene façade for him while she watched him die, slowly, inch by inch, was eating her alive.
Her entire life revolved around her father’s illness, as she tried to keep them afloat.
There was no time for a man, for a love life. The only things she could allow into her life were caring for her father and work.
Sam needed to know that, as soon as possible. That look he’d given her meant business. He had to know that there was no possibility of anything between them.
He stood, bent over her father and briefly held his hand, pretending not to notice that her father’s hand shook in his.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Ambassador Pearce. I look forward to talking to you again.”
Her father’s cheeks were pink again with pleasure.
“The p-p-pleasure was a-all m-m-mine, I assure y-y-you.” Pops was tired. When his scarce physical resources ran down, he started stuttering. Nicole went quietly into the kitchen and signalled to Manuela that it was time for dinner and then bed.
Manuela came into the room with a broad smile, wiping her hands on her apron.
Sam waited until Manuela was bent over her father and, with a nod of his head and a murmured “ma’am” to Manuela, he took Nicole’s elbow and walked her out the door.
They descended the stairs and walked down the driveway in unison. Nicole realized he was shortening his strides for her. He seemed to be somehow attuned to her movements, though he wasn’t looking at her at all. He was scanning the street ahead. Still, she got the distinct impression that though his attention was focused on the road ahead, he’d catch her if she were to trip on her very pretty and very impractical sandals.
Across the street, the curtains of the window of the living room opened and Creepy peeped out, then Creepier. She suppressed a shudder.
When her grandparents had bought this house in the early sixties, it had been an upper-middle-class area, the perfect place for a couple to bring up a family during the Kennedy years. Safe and ordered and prosperous. Nicole had heard her mother talk often and affectionately about life on Mulberry Street, among families that knew one another and socialized often.
But something had happened to the street after Meredith Loren grew up to marry Nicholas Pearce and spend the next thirty-five years abroad. Nicole didn’t know whether it was because of demographics or economics or whether someone had put a hex on the area. Whatever had happened, it had turned the whole area into a receptacle for the lost and the hopeless, people on the last rung before falling into the void.
The big house across the street where her mother’s best friend had once lived had changed hands twenty times and was now a run-down rooming house owned by an absentee landlord and inhabited by the saddest people imaginable. Poor single mothers barely scraping by, shabby middle-aged divorced men who had just lost their tenth job in a year, the odd illegal immigrant keeping his head down.
And, worse, it seemed to be Club Drifter—a place where angry, unbalanced young men congregated and spat their rage at the world. There were two in particular, one black and one white, both dreadlocked and heavily pierced, both with pant crotches down to their knees, both either high or drunk at all hours.
Both fixated on her.
If they happened to see her, it was like some inaudible signal had been beamed to dogs. They’d stiffen, start whistling, calling out obscenities. Nicole’s only defense was to get into her car as quickly as possible, hit the locks, and pull out, fast. The other day, horribly, the blond had moved fast and knocked on the passenger-side window of her car just as she was getting in. She’d closed the locks with a whump and taken off as quickly as she could, heart pounding.
The whole thing was incredibly…unpleasant, to say the least.
And there they were, both of them. Just her luck. As if the door closing behind her were a secret signal, Creepy came out on the porch followed by Creepier.
Sam felt her stiffen, followed her gaze, and tightened his hand on her elbow.
They started with the cat calls and whistles, loud enough to pierce eardrums. Nicole watched her feet and walked as fast as she could. Experience had taught her that looking at them, acknowledging their existence, only made things worse.
She and Sam walked down the street together as he calmly escorted her to his car, a late-model, dark blue BMW. He seated her in the passenger seat and walked around to the driver’s side. He stopped for a second before getting in, looking out over the roof at the two creeps grinning and whistling from the porch.
She knew what they were seeing. A guy dressed like a businessman who…wasn’t. When he’d seen the two, he had instantly morphed into the soldier he’d been. Amazing. She’d been standing next to him, thinking he was so very big when the air around him became supercharged and he grew even bigger.
The man had been a Special Forces soldier, a Navy SEAL, for God’s sake, and had won a chestful of medals. He beat Creepy and Creepier on the male scale, hands down.
All she saw was a chunk of male torso through the driver’s window but the two creeps must have seen more, because the whistling and cat calls stopped, as abruptly as if someone had put a hand around their throats and squeezed.
Males are, above all, animals. Herd animals, with a very keen instinct for the alpha male and when to keep out of his way.
Just a minute’s look, and the creeps’ eyes were on the ground in subconscious submission, another minute and they sullenly turned and slouched back inside, slamming the front door closed.
Never, ever, in a million years could Nicole have achieved that, not even with a gun in her hand, let alone with a look.
Sam got into the driver’s seat, jaw muscles jumping. As soon as he was seated, he activated the locks.
“It’s truly a man’s world,” Nicole said, sighing. “I could never quell them with a look.”
“No, you couldn’t.” He shot a look at the front porch, then his gaze shifted back to hers. He reached over her, pulled down her seat belt, latched it. His shoulders were so broad they blocked out the evening light from the driver’s-door window when he turned to her. “Is that their usual MO? Standing on the porch, shouting and whistling at you as if you were a dog?”
“Yes.” Nicole sighed. Tense muscles started relaxing again. It was almost impossible to feel afraid inside the big, safe, locked car with Sam Reston at the wheel. “I think that they have a very narrow behavioral repertoire.”
His dark serious gaze met hers. “Are they escalating? Becoming more forward? Because that’s what punks like them do. Feel for the boundaries, then push until you push back. You’re not going to pull a gun on them. If you were, you would have already. So they take one step forward. Then another.”
Were they escalating? They’d moved in a month ago. Or maybe not moved in. They just appeared, like mold, out of nowhere. The first week they’d stared out of the front window at her. Then they came out on the porch and stared. It was unnerving, but she dealt with it. By the time she got to the corner, she’d forgotten they existed. The second week the whistles and cat calls started, together with rude gestures. It took her the entire drive downtown to shake the disgust from her system. The other day, when Creepy knocked on the car window, well, that had been truly frightening.
“I think—I think they might be escalating,” she said quietly. There. She’d put it into words, that vague sense of unease hanging like a gray cloud in the back of her mind. “One of them knocked on the window as I took off the other day. I remember thinking that I could have been in trouble if the car hadn’t started.”
He nodded. “I was afraid of that. There are things you can do to block the escalation. Even better, there are things I can do…”
He left it hanging in the air.
Nicole closed her eyes in relief. Oh God, yes.
Let the Dreaded Dreadlocks problem go. Just tip it into those broad, tanned, very capable-looking hands. There was no doubt that Sam could deal with the punks with almost embarrassing ease, much much more easily than she could ever hope to. He’d frozen them literally with a look.
The temptation to let him handle the two punks was so strong she had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands to bring herself back to reality.
Having him take care of this problem for her was a huge temptation. But—she didn’t know Sam Reston at all. He wasn’t her partner in any way. If he warned off the Creeps by acting as her proxy, and she never saw him again, they’d notice and double the harassment.
“No,” she said reluctantly. “I think I’d better handle it. Or try to.”
He nodded, but didn’t switch on the engine yet. He sat, big hands curved around the steering wheel, looking at her.
“Tell you what.” His gaze went past her to where two thuggish faces looked out the porch window. He gave a sharp punch to the horn and the faces disappeared, the dingy beige curtain fluttering back into place. “My brother Mike is a cop. I can have him drive by a couple of times in a patrol car. Stop in front of your house and say hello. That way they know you have the cops at your back.”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you.” Nicole tried to keep the relief out of her voice. It was a perfect solution. Enough of a deterrent to keep the two thugs off her case, without it being directly linked to Sam Reston. It was an elegant solution. “That sounds great. I’m very grateful.”
“His name’s Mike Keillor and he’ll stop by tomorrow. I’ll give you his number.”
“Perfect. I’ll—” She stopped. “Keillor? I thought you said he was your brother.”
“He is, in every way that counts.” Well, that was intriguing. Sam didn’t elaborate.
“Okay. Having him stop by a couple of times would be a big help. I think those two are dumber than they are nasty, but—”
“You can be stupid and dangerous at the same time.” Sam’s mouth tightened. “The world’s full of very stupid and very dangerous ass—men.”
“I grew up all over the world,” she answered. “I know that deep in my bones.”
She smiled at him. He was still turned toward her, a set expression on his face. However grim he looked, he’d actually been very kind, finding a good solution to a thorny problem while allowing her to save face.
Instead of putting the car in motion, as she expected him to, he leaned forward and gave her a kiss. A peck, really. But Nicole somehow found it hard to breathe. She huffed out a little breath of air, opened her mouth—and nothing came out.
She could object, of course. It was beyond forward to assume that he could simply up and…and kiss her. Just like that. But Nicole knew herself and knew that pretending to be outraged wouldn’t work, because it would be a lie. The brief kiss had been far from unpleasant. Unsettling and unnerving, but not unpleasant.
It had been like coming into fleeting contact with something immensely powerful, something that could burn if the contact was too close. She could almost hear the hum of power coming from him.
He started up the engine and was pulling out before she could react. He was staring straight ahead but she felt he was aware of her every move. Soldiers developed good situational awareness, as they called it.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw you moving in.” The deep voice was matter-of-fact, stating something obvious. He slanted a quick glance at her, not grinning like a male who’d made an advance. No, he was deadly serious, as if stating a military objective. “It was better than I imagined.”
Nicole huffed out a breath from a suddenly tight chest. She had no comeback, none at all.
New York
June 28
He was tall, blond and blue-eyed. Very fair, prone to freckling in the sun. Courtesy, no doubt, of a Crusader who had raped one of his ancestors in Acre, bequeathing the cowardly genes of the West. The cowardice had been bred out of him by centuries of Arab warriors, but the coloring remained.
He didn’t mind. It was a gift from Allah. His weapon against the infidels, to be used to the fullest, imshallah. He’d been born for this. Born to fit in with the unclean. Born for revenge.
Muhammed Wahed, aka Paul Preston, had the perfect cover. A Manhattan stockbroker, one of the tens of thousands toiling in the money mills on Wall Street. It was a genuine cover. He’d studied economics at Stanford and had made more than $10 million in the past five years investing in futures. He was one of few traders to profit in the recession.
Most of the money had gone to “the Cause.” Freedom for Palestine. The destruction of the Jews. And where better to make the money for that destruction than in the belly of the beast, Manhattan?
His brethren in Hamas had worked hard on this. Twenty years training him to blend in, and three years of planning, of procurement, evading the sensors of the NSA and the spies who were everywhere.
Muhammed had worked a lifetime for what would happen over a few hours in five days’ time. The day before the celebration of the Fourth of July. An apt moment to bring America down. By the Fourth of July, Manhattan would be a wasteland and America brought to her knees.
The plan was perfect. Forty martyrs in a secret hold of a ship. Several canisters of cesium 137, to be apportioned in equal parts to the martyrs. Forty martyrs wearing shaheed explosive belts laced with radioactive cesium, detonating at the same moment on July 3 throughout Manhattan.
Muhammed knew Manhattan, knew exactly where the financial nerve points were. He’d pinpointed forty buildings, the very nerve centers of the American and the world economy. Banks, brokerage houses, hedge funds. The SEC. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The martyrs didn’t have to go up to the offices, necessarily, though Muhammed had made appointments under false names with the CEOs and directors and presidents for all of them. But if they couldn’t make it to the heart of the buildings, it would be enough to enter the lobbies and blow themselves up to make the buildings uninhabitable. The tens of thousands of workers in the buildings would have to exit from the irradiated lobbies and would never go back to work again. Only hazmat teams would ever enter the buildings. By the next day, all of Manhattan would be evacuated.
All the paperwork, the computers holding the economy together—gone. Completely unusable. All the drones working in the financial mills—dying of radiation poisoning.
Perfect.
Finishing the work begun on September 11 and making the entire island a radioactive desert for thirty years, the way the West had made his homeland a desert.
Western capitalism would be no more.
Bringing the West to its knees has been his dream since he had been recruited into the organization at the age of ten.
They’d found him in the camps, a homeless orphan, scrounging scraps from the destitute, dressed in rags, this blond, blue-eyed, light-skinned freak.
They had taken him in, given him a family and a purpose. He was like an arrow, aimed straight at the heart of the corrupt and licentious West. Hamas had brought in tutors, instructing him not only in the language of the West, English, but in its ways.
At times, he had sensed that they were afraid that he would succumb to its lures, but there was no risk of that. None. There was no honor and no solidarity to be found among the infidels. Muhammed’s heart and soul belonged forever to Hamas and to his people, to the day of his death.
They’d fought, his handlers and him. He wanted to become a warrior, shaheed, a martyr. It was the purest life he could imagine, exacting vengeance against the countries who were trying to crush Islam. Giving his life up seemed like the noblest purpose he could imagine.
But it was felt that the gift of his coloring, his looks, was too precious to waste. So Muhammed watched with sullen jealousy as other young men in the secret training camps were dispatched to meet a noble warrior’s death while he spent his days and nights with tutor after tutor, instilling in him the ability to infiltrate the enemy with ease, the better to destroy him.
English, French, literature, music, math, science. And the terrible pop culture of the West, filled with shameless movies and music, whoreish women and soulless men. His head was filled with the useless knowledge necessary to pass as one of them. It turned out that he even had an aptitude for studies, which in his secret heart filled him with as much shame as his appearance. His young heart had ached to be just like his brethren, to move and live with them as one. But he’d been told over and over again that Allah had singled him out for a special mission.
That which had singled him out as a homeless boy in the camps, made everyone look at him with loathing and suspicion, was to be used in the name of Allah to slay their enemies.
So Muhammed studied hard, becoming well versed in the ways of the West. An identity was created: Paul Preston.
One entire edge of the Strip borders the Mediterranean. It was easy enough to smuggle him out and get him into Italy, where he emerged in Rome with a new US passport and a business-class ticket to California.
He was sent to Stanford to study economics, where he ex-celled. It was his way of combating the enemy, by studying its face, understanding its corrupt black soul.
He became Paul Preston, born of an American father and an English mother. He graduated summa cum laude in economics, with a network of future movers and shakers to use.
He was set up in Manhattan with a million dollars and orders to join a brokerage firm. Hamas’s backers had plenty of money, and had been willing to write the sum off.
But it turned out that Muhammed was clever in the ways of the Great Satan. The million soon grew to five, then ten. He developed a solid reputation as a very good, very careful steward of money.
They bought him an apartment on the Upper East Side that was perfect for someone of his socioeconomic status. Muhammed—now Paul—had a season ticket to the Met, wintered at Vail and summered at Martha’s Vineyard.
And all this time, his brethren’s plans were developing, all the pieces being put in place. Equipment bought or stolen, martyrs recruited. Radioactive material slowly acquired.
Finally, finally, the time had come. Muhammed had begun despairing of ever being of use to the Cause, when suddenly a message arrived. An encrypted DVD in his mailbox, with instructions on how to destroy it once he had absorbed its message.
How his heart had pounded, how proud he had been of his brothers, of the plan a hooded brother had laid out on the disk. It was sheer genius.
Forty men, walking dirty bombs.
All those years of study and work would finally pay off. The Brotherhood needed Muhammed’s help in knowing where to aim these human daggers. They needed names and places. Names and places only someone on the inside of the finance industry could know.
Muhammed knew them, oh yes. Knew exactly where the dagger’s point should thrust. Which businesses to destroy—a surgical strike at the very beating heart of the economy.
The entire financial district, gone, destroyed, rendered a wasteland. Manhattan emptied, its inhabitants rendered radioactive lepers, condemned to die a slow and painful death.
Perfect. A plan that would bring the West to its knees, in submission to the Prophet’s will.
It was all in place, all perfect. And now this. Muhammed frowned at the printout of the decrypted email he’d just received.
Trouble.
A crew member of the Marie Claire, the ship carrying the martyrs, reported that a member of the Marseille Port Authority saw the secret hold, had seen the men, the shaheed belts and the canister with its universally understood biohazard symbol and had grasped the significance. Luckily, the man had been terminated but had been alone in his office with his computer for a good five minutes.
Checking the server log, one message with attachment had been sent to pearce@wordsmith.com in the time frame between the clerk’s arrival at his office and his death.
Close examination of the attachment showed merely a technical text pertaining to plans to expand the harbor, but the message and its recipient had to be destroyed.
Google told him that www.wordsmith.com was a translation agency based in San Diego. Its owner’s name was Nicole Pearce.
Something had to be done fast. The Marie Claire was on its way. It would stop a hundred miles from the port of New York. The martyrs would be offloaded at night to four fast boats that would land in New Jersey, and from there would be bused to Manhattan. The Marie Claire would land briefly in port and be on its way to Panama by the time the bombs exploded. No one would ever suspect her.
It was all in place except for the wild card of Nicole Pearce, potential trouble.
Twenty years of planning was coming to fruition. It was unthinkable that they fail. Even more unthinkable that they fail because of a Western woman.
They wouldn’t fail. Muhammed had a plan.
At the topmost levels of American finance, in the heart of America’s softness, Muhammed had been astonished to learn that there were hard men. Money was defended as fiercely as land in this arcane world, by the iron laws of warfare, if necessary. Like all overlords, the kings of finance required warriors to deal with problems. A whistleblower threatening to bring down a lucrative deal, a divorcing wife threatening to report hidden assets to the IRS, the head of a rival company whose plane had to go down…these required warriors to deal with them. And the men of money knew where to go.
Several times, late at night, after a luxurious meal and over the thousand-dollar bottle of cognac or brandy Paul had learned to consume, a man was mentioned. He had many names and no one knew his background, save that he had been trained to be a ruthless but efficient killer by the US Army. It didn’t matter what his name was, what was important was what he could do.
Anything.
He could do anything at all for you, if the price was right. He also commanded vast resources and highly trained men. No matter what the mission, he could deal with it.
The world of high finance guarded its wealth ferociously when threatened and it had its enforcer—shadowy, fast, smart. Paul only knew his code name: Outlaw. He knew nothing else, except that there was a cell phone number.
He did not have it but he knew who did.
Muhammed picked up his phone and began the long process of arranging a meeting with one of the most powerful men in the world.
It was a humiliating process but Muhammed swallowed his pride.
Soon enough, the world of dishonor would be wiped out, and Umma would rise from the ashes of the West.