Chapter 3 #5
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 message in his inbox, with instructions on how to delete it completely 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 video. 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 had been sent to pearce@ in the time frame between the clerk’s arrival at his office and his death.
Close examination of the message 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 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—the entire community of believers—would rise from the ashes of the West.