Havoc

Samarsskaya Mine, Southern Russia

The sun had burned away the morning mist that had filled the valley like a blanket of snow. A few birds fluttered around the tops of the nearby pine trees, and the cloudless sky seemed to arch forever.

Ludmilla and the other Russian scientist, whose name Mercer didn’t know, had salvaged a pair of radiation suits and some radiation detection gear from a crate that had survived the chopper crash, and using a handcart found on a small siding under the ore-loading hoppers, they had headed down the tracks to make certain none of the barrels had been breached by the train derailment.

Sasha Federov was resting while the pilot, Yuri, was inventorying their meager supplies.

As soon as Professor Ahmad had told Mercer the stele had been destroyed, he had gotten to his feet and begun to pace with his head bowed. He’d sent Booker and his team on a fool’s errand into one of the most dangerous places in the world. Book knew how to take care of himself, and Mercer wasn’t too worried about him, but the thought was heavy on his mind. What bothered him more, or at least in a different way, was the dead end he now faced.

He was convinced that the stele would have told him the location of Alexander’s tomb, especially since one of the conqueror’s generals had erected the marker well after his death. Archaeologists had been searching for the tomb for centuries, so without some new clue Mercer was stymied.

The worst of it was he was sure Ahmad hadn’t been lying about not knowing the tomb’s location. The Janissaries’ system of protecting the location eliminated temptation among their members. It was truly brilliant.

Mercer returned to where Cali and Ahmad sat on the ground, but he said nothing as Cali and Ahmad continued to talk.

“What became of the woman?” Cali asked. “The one that your mentor fell in love with.”

“Montague and Capulet I’m afraid,” Ahmad said, lighting a cigarette. “Her father would never allow her to marry a Turk and he made her return home as soon as he learned of the affair. He was enlightened only to a point, you see, and the girl had already been promised to another, a member of a royal household.”

“That’s so sad.”

“They were different times, although I’m sure if it happened today the results would probably be the same. Marrying outside one’s tribe is a modern idea that has really only taken root in the West.”

“Outside your tribe?”

“For lack of a better word. What I mean is it isn’t uncommon for an American to marry someone from France, or Germany, or a white to marry a black, for that matter. In the Middle East you would never see a Shi’a marry a Sunni or a Turk marry a Kurd. It just isn’t done. And ever since 1980 any chance there could be a melding of the various sects and ethnic groups has been further eroded.”

“Why is that?” Cali asked. “What happened in 1980?”

“Iraq invaded Iran,” Ahmad told her. “That conflict is largely a footnote to you but it was a watershed moment in the Middle East. The Iranians were totally unprepared for the invasion and were nearly defeated early on. In order to inspire his people Ayatollah Khomeini delved back into history, resurrecting the story of the Battle of Karbala, when in 860 Husayn ibn ‘Alī, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, was defeated by the Umayyad caliph, Yazid. The date is still a holiday for Shi’a Muslims. Khomeini cynically turned what was a sectarian grab for land and oil resources into a holy war.”

“How is that?” Mercer asked, drawn back into the conversation despite his foul mood.

“Husayn and his army were slaughtered to a man. They became Islam’s first martyrs. What Khomeini did was tell his people that Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, was the modern reincarnation of Yazid and that in order to defeat him it would be necessary for every Iranian to sacrifice themselves, as did Husayn. He went on to decree that anyone who martyred themselves was guaranteed a place in heaven. In one move he negated the Koran’s pronouncement that suicide was a sin against God and created the Middle East’s first suicide bombers.

“Even as he was battling the Iraqis, Khomeini sent cadres of trained men into Lebanon during their civil war and occupation by Israel, to spread the word that suicide bombing is not a sin, but a glorious sacrifice to Allah. Remember this is something expressly forbidden by the Koran, yet he managed to convince desperate people that his word superseded the very words God uttered to Mohammad.

“Of course word of his pronouncement spread from there to the West Bank and Gaza, where again Muslims were fighting a superior force. Thus we had young men convinced by a madman that taking your own life by blowing up a bus or a restaurant serves God’s purpose.”

“And then on to 9/11,” Cali said.

“And Madrid and London and Indonesia and Pakistan and Iraq and the list goes on and on.” Ahmad ground out his cigarette bitterly. “While Shi’a and Sunni have always had a difficult relationship, it wasn’t always like it is today. Now it has become acceptable for a Sunni carrying thirty pounds of plastic explosives to walk into a Shi’a mosque and blow himself up. Khomeini unleashed the savagery of the bloody war that first divided Islam, just to defeat his neighbor.”

“Can it be stopped?”

“Not until there is a cleric powerful enough to rescind Khomeini’s declaration and make suicide a sin once again. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of his actions and how it has damaged our faith. And I’m afraid your country’s invasion of Iraq hasn’t helped matters.” He held up a hand when he saw a blaze of anger flash in Cali’s eyes. “I’m not saying Hussein wasn’t a tyrant or that he should have remained in power. At the time of the invasion, France and Russia wanted to end the embargo and I am certain that the Iraqis would have gotten the nuclear weapons they so desperately wanted. No, the invasion was a necessary step in the larger scope of world events, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t, ah, stirred a hornet’s nest.”

Mercer suddenly remembered Ahmad’s first words when he entered the camp. “You said Istanbul, Ankara, or Baku are more likely targets for Feines and the plutonium. Why?”

“You’ve been paying attention. Very good,” Ahmad said as if now praising the unruly student he’d chided earlier. “I believe you’ve been operating under the misconceived notion that Al Qaida is bankrolling Poli Feines and that they want to contaminate an American city using the plutonium, thus spreading more fear around the world. That is not the case. There is no such thing as terrorism for terrorism’s sake. Each act has a specific goal.”

Cali interrupted. “Like getting the U.S. out of Iraq or Israel out of the West Bank.”

“Not entirely,” Ahmad said. “Those are the stated goals, yes, but what the organizers behind the suicide bombers ultimately want is power after those withdrawals. The poor soul who blows himself up next to a police checkpoint thinks he’s fighting for the liberation of his people. The men who gave him the bomb are merely using him as a tool to further their political ambitions. They want to rule over that man’s family.

“This is true in all cases. The men who carried out the London and Madrid bombings want to force the United States and Western interests out of Iraq, even though the bombers weren’t even Iraqi. It was the men behind them who wanted these things. The men who blew themselves up just wanted to obtain paradise. Unfortunately your media focuses on the soldiers and pays scant attention to the generals.”

Mercer saw a flaw in Ahmad’s logic. “If that were true, who does Osama bin Laden want to rule, since he was the one who masterminded 9/11?”

“Masterminded,” Ahmad agreed. “But did he pay for it?”

“The guy’s worth a couple hundred million. Sure he paid for it.”

“Ah, but where did he get his money?”

“I think his father was a rich contractor or something in Saudi Arabia?”

Professor Ahmad said nothing, waiting Mercer out, knowing he’d make the connection.

“Are you saying the Saudis paid for the attacks? There’s no evidence they were involved other than that most of the bombers were Saudi citizens.”

“Isn’t that enough?” Ahmad said archly.

“By your way of thinking, the U.S. government was behind Oklahoma City because Timothy McVeigh was an American. I don’t buy it.”

“Perhaps I overstated,” Ahmad conceded. “However, there are factions within the Saudi government who would like nothing more than see the United States off balance. And now they have selected someone new to help them carry out their plans. Before it was bin Laden. Now they are paying Poli Feines to do their dirty work. The man most directly involved is the Saudi representative to OPEC currently working with the United Nations in New York, Mohammad bin Al-Salibi.”

In the silence that followed, Mercer and Cali exchanged a look. This wasn’t what Mercer expected at all. Apart from exporting Wahhabi fanatics to the four corners of the globe, Saudi Arabia had never threatened her neighbors. Ibriham Ahmad was saying that the Saudis were responsible for the greatest terrorist attack in history and now wanted to use a dirty bomb against their neighbors.

“And just so you understand our culpabilities as Janissaries in what has transpired recently,” Ahmad added, “Salibi’s great-grandmother was the woman who stole my mentor’s heart. I can only assume she told Salibi about the alembic and its fearsome potential.”

Mercer couldn’t care less about that. He was still grappling with the reason why anyone in Saudi Arabia would perpetrate such an act. “I don’t get it,” he said after a moment. “Why?”

“Think like Khomeini thought,” Ahmad said, wanting Mercer to come to the right conclusion on his own. “This is war, Dr. Mercer, and all war is about power. Be more cynical than you usually are.”

“Oil,” Cali said. “Caspian oil.”

“Sorry, Mercer, but Miss Stowe gets to move to the head of the class.”

She turned to Mercer. “What we were talking about back at your house. About how the only way to defeat fundamentalism is to make oil obsolete. Well, the only way for the Saudi government to maintain their house of cards is if they continue to be our principal source of oil. If we start getting crude from the Caspian Sea, they become marginalized.”

“Two major pipelines are already running, one to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, and another will transport a million barrels a year to the Turkish city of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean,” Ahmad said.

“Poli’s orders are to take out the Caspian oil infrastructure?” Mercer asked, then went on to answer his own question. “Won’t work even if he got his hands on a lot more plutonium. Nothing short of nuclear bombs or a full-scale invasion could take out all the refineries, tanker ports, pipelines, and terminals surrounding the Caspian. I’m no petroleum geologist but I’ve seen pictures of Baku. The infrastructure in just that city alone is enormous.”

“You’re not being cynical enough. You don’t need to destroy those things you mentioned. All that need happen is to introduce suicide bombings at a few key locations and have clerics and imams in place to rile the faithful. In short order there will be dozens, or hundreds, of ‘martyrs’ ready to kill themselves, believing they are fighting a holy war against Christianity when in fact they are preserving Saudi oil interests. In a few months oil from the Caspian will slow to a trickle and Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC will be secure.”

“Do they have such clerics in place?”

“I’ve heard them in the mosques of Baku and Istanbul, Ankara and Groznyy, where Chechens are already employing suicide bombers for their own aims.”

“What the hell is wrong with the world?” Mercer said rhetorically, hating that he saw the logic behind the plot.

“The question I often ask myself,” Ahmad replied sadly, “and one that is more difficult to answer is, What remains right with the world?”

Mercer would never let himself fall into that trap. He’d spent a lifetime searching for the good amid the chaos. The image that would be with him longest from his most recent time in Africa wasn’t the misery and bloodshed. It was the refugee giving him the tomato for saving his family, an intimate act of friendship that he would cherish forever.

It was too easy to give in to the hate and ugliness. He’d been numbed by Tisa’s death, struck hollow by his own loss, but he realized just now that he was allowing that pain to turn him away from who he’d always been. Yes, he would mourn her for the rest of his life, but that wasn’t the same as allowing her passing to poison him.

Harry White had been trying to tell him that all along. Mourning wasn’t about how a person’s death made you feel. It was about what that person’s life did and how you carry forward with those memories. The choice is yours.

“We’re going to stop them.” There was a flinty edge to Mercer’s voice, honed by a new sense of confidence he hadn’t realized he’d lost.

Cali noted the difference and gave him a long sideways glance. She smoothed the goose bumps that pricked the skin of her arms.

“My duties as a Janissary are to protect the Alembic of Skenderbeg,” Ahmad said rather pompously. “Beyond that we have no responsibilities. If Feines attempts to locate it directly we will act. However, the plutonium ore and what he does with it isn’t our concern.”

“What about your responsibilities as a human being, for Christ’s sake?”

“It is not for his sake I do anything, Miss Stowe. I have devoted my life to protecting the people of this planet from a devastating weapon, as have all the men who have come before me. I think that is enough to ask.”

“Bullshit!” Mercer was nearly shouting.

Again Ahmad arched his eyebrow, a half smirk canting his dense mustache.

Mercer went on, hotly. “You’ve been feeding us just enough clues to whet our appetites and keep us going. You wanted us involved because you needed our help. You couldn’t have pulled off the salvage job in New York, but you practically led us to it by planting that canteen in Africa.”

Ahmad’s jaw loosened and his dark eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“Two reasons.” Mercer was on a roll and checked off fingers as he spoke. “First of all the woman who gave it to me seemed unsure of it. It even slipped from her hands. A canteen like that would have been very familiar to her since it was probably her job to fetch water, but she acted like she’d never seen it before. Secondly there’s no way in hell the canvas would have survived seventy years in the jungle. You gave it to that woman a couple of days before we entered the village because you knew we were coming.”

Cali was as stunned by Mercer’s deductions as Ahmad. “Wait, Mercer, how did he know we were going to be in that village?”

“Remember when I told you I was there on behalf of the United Nations looking for a mineral deposit I knew wouldn’t be there? It was a setup from the beginning. What’s his name, Adam Burke, the UN representative who requested I go, wanted me to find the plutonium mine instead.” He turned to Professor Ahmad. “I assume you know him.”

“You’re mangling his name,” Ahmad said. “It’s not Adam Burke. It’s Ah-dham Berk with a silent r. He was a student of mine fifteen years ago.”

Mercer had never met the man, only spoken to him on the phone a couple of times, and he hadn’t detected an accent. He would have never guessed that Berk, with a silent r, was Turkish. He sounded more American than Mercer did.

“So yes, I did set you up.” Ahmad suddenly sounded very tired, but also relieved to get the truth out. “You have rather unique talents and contacts that no one within the Janissary Corps possesses. And you, Miss Stowe, I hate to admit, are as much a victim of my machinations as Dr. Mercer.”

“What?” she cried.

“Who do you think made available the information about the elevated cancer rates in that village? You haven’t had time to speak to him much but perhaps you will recognize my pupil, Devrin’s, voice when he returns with our vehicle. He was the one who called posing as an archivist from the Centers for Disease Control.”

“What would have happened if Cali and I hadn’t met?” Mercer asked.

“It was inevitable,” Ibriham said dismissively.

“No it wasn’t,” Cali shot back. “I would have gone on alone if some stupid kid hadn’t used my truck for target practice.” Ahmad gave her a patient, long-suffering look. “That was you?”

He nodded.

“What if I had refused to help her?”

“My dear doctor, you weren’t chosen at random, I assure you. Neither of you were. Did you seriously question whether to help her or not? Of course you didn’t. You would have no more refused her than you would push an old lady into a crosswalk. Your dependability is one of your greatest assets.”

“Jesus,” Mercer muttered, raking his fingers through his thick hair. He’d been played for a sucker the entire time, blithely following the trail of crumbs Ahmad had doled out. He’d called it dependability. Mercer saw it as predictability. “So what the hell happened at the village?” His tone was accusatory. “You let Dayce and Feines slaughter those poor people.”

A shadow of guilt and remorse crossed Ahmad’s face. “After all the planning we put into this, would you believe something as stupid as a flat tire? We were delayed on the road up from Kivu when we were following you, and only arrived after it was all over.”

“And what about poor Serena Ballard,” Cali said. “Have a flat in New Jersey too?”

“Miss Ballard spent a frightened day being watched over at a hotel in Philadelphia so Poli could get no information out of her. The scene at her house was staged using blood drawn from my men. She’s back home now, more than a little confused I’m sure, but I needed some way to warn you Poli Feines was aware you had gone to Atlantic City. I didn’t realize he’d get to your hotel so quickly.”

Mercer and Cali shared a relieved glance. Both had liked Serena and had taken her senseless death especially hard because they’d believed her last moments on earth being tortured by Feines had been excruciating.

A truck raced up the mine’s access road, a newer model of the UAZ four-wheel drives Poli Feines had brought to loot the old weapons depot. Young Devrin was behind the wheel. No sooner had he braked next to where Mercer and Cali had been talking with Ibriham, than he threw open the door and spoke quickly to his teacher in Turkish. He brandished a satellite phone, and judging by his ashen pallor and the restrained anger in his voice the news wasn’t good.

“What? What is it?” Mercer asked, his guts suddenly tight.

“We’re too late.”