Fallen Masters (8 page)

Of late, however, Muti seemed different. Asima recognized the change in him, and she tried desperately to get him to talk to her, to let her in on what was troubling him. However, he would not share his private thoughts anymore, at least not with her. This lack of conversation was only getting worse, and to Asima, who prided herself on her ability to communicate with anyone, the silence was deafening.

“We used to speak to each other only with our eyes, and our souls danced together,” she told him. She had bittersweet memories of blissful, romantic, spiritual lovemaking, but now when they were together in bed it seemed purely mechanical on his part. She could not reach him. He was fast becoming an island—but an arid desert island, not a place where she wanted to live. Not like her beloved island nation. This was more like Atlantis, sinking slowly into the abyss … a place she could not go.

The loss was compounded by evidence that Muti was dragging their firstborn son, Shakir, under with him.

The shadows of Muti’s dead brothers, Rami and Hamir, seemed always present in their lives, and in their home. He now spoke of them incessantly to Shakir—and to Asima, when he spoke to her at all. His elder brother, Omar, who had been in London even longer than Muti and had welcomed the family into his home for several months before they found their own place, was an overbearing presence at their flat. He was a successful restaurateur and Muti worked fifty or sixty hours a week for him in one of three locations. They were on the verge of opening a fourth place.

Shakir idolized his father. The sun rose and set on anything and everything Muti said. Shakir listened for hours as Muti spoke to him about their ancestry, the family’s history in Iran over many generations, and the losses the family had suffered. He painted a picture of the world as a dark place that required a man to adopt a warrior mentality in order to fight his way through to victory against a host of enemies, seen and unseen.

Asima wanted only what was best for her three children, and for Shakir, she only hoped that one day he would find success in America. She did not see the United States as the land of the infidel or the sleeping giant waiting to pounce on the rest of the world. No, she saw the whole world in the same way: Each country was like a child behaving badly, one that needed a parental figure to step up and lay down the rules and regulations so that one child would not be able to bully any other child for too long a period of time.

It was clear to most people, and to Asima as well, that the United States’ reputation was not so pristine as it had once appeared, but it was a place and a culture that held such great promise nonetheless. She held on to high hopes for her family, and Shakir was her golden child. He was destined for great things, this son of hers and Muti’s; of this she was certain. He wanted to be an architect.

But as Muti became increasingly callous and empty, Shakir seemed to be maturing much faster than he ought to—and acting older than he was. Certainly he was behaving in ways Asima did not favor. One day she heard him weeping in his room after Muti had been picked up by his brother Omar for work.

When she walked into Shakir’s room, he had his iPod blaring in his ears, and he was wiping tears away from his eyes. On his bed were charts and diagrams drawn on beige typing paper and a photo layout of the newest restaurant that Muti and Omar were opening in Piccadilly. She was baffled at what this was all about and deeply disturbed.

Asima felt in that moment that Shakir was feeling the pressure of being Muti’s son and Omar’s nephew—that their dreams for him were much different from his own or Asima’s. Muti had told Shakir that he was to take his place in the family business. That would mean his desire to be an architect would have to be put aside for now. His urge to design and build would take a backseat to Muti’s will for him.…

Asima was walking with her little ones to the new restaurant location off Piccadilly Circus to meet Muti and Shakir there for an early dinner. It was a routine gathering, but she felt a strange foreboding this time that was different and disturbing to her soul.

CHAPTER

16

In the cluttered office at the back of the new restaurant, Muti and Omar were huddled, speaking in hushed tones. Because construction workers were making sufficient racket out front, they did not have to whisper, but they were used to talking like this, and they were paranoid about being overheard—by anyone.

“The sign is close at hand,” Omar said. He held up a copy of a local Farsi-language newspaper, then a copy of an English-language tabloid with blaring headlines:
11TH NEW ZODIAC BODY UNEARTHED IN BELFAST
. The men pored over the news story, especially the diagram of the field in which the bodies had been buried in shallow graves.

Muti said, “So, when do you think the final revelation will come? It has to be very soon. We are ready.” He looked eagerly at Omar.

The eldest son in the family, Omar had been calling the shots for his younger brothers for years. It was he who had assigned the bombing to Rami and Hamir. It was he who had arranged for Muti and his family to relocate to London, and he who had found a place for Muti in his thriving Persian restaurant business. He was a puppet master who, in turn, took his instructions from a dark, ethereal force that had no name—that is, no name that he shared with Muti.

“The world will be watching Belfast, just as we are. Then the world will witness attacks on each continent as our strategic action is unleashed.” He smiled and sat back, drumming his fingers on the office desk. “We hold no enmity for Christians, Jews, or any religion, nor any Muslim sect here or anywhere. We are called to act against a weak mankind who are blind to the will of the Almighty. They have been soiled for centuries by false beliefs and false prophets. Now will come the time of the cleansing.”

“Brother, I have long wanted to avenge our younger brothers, and we have both worked for long years to assimilate ourselves here in London, indeed in the very heart of the city. I must say I am impatient and on edge, waiting for the final signal.”

“Yes, Muti, you have been most faithful to our cause, even though you cannot fully understand the scope of this war—or its ultimate outcome. But I can tell you that the forces of righteousness—which some call the Dark Side—plan to control the energy of the human spirit. This has been revealed to me. I speak this as the truth. You have put your trust in me and placed your life and the lives of your family in my hands. I could not ask any more of a friend or a brother than that. We are truly one now, and we will be one in the glorious new world.”

The younger man looked down at the papers strewn over the desk in the restaurant office: bills and letters, advertisements, newspapers, sample menus, maps of the city. His eyes focused on one piece of paper, a drawing his son Shakir had made of the new place’s main dining room. He said, “We must tell Shakir what part he will play in the plan. It has been two years since we agreed that he is the chosen one who will carry out this act of vengeance in our name.”

“It is a great honor for him and for our family,” Omar said, nodding gravely. He looked at Muti, trying to detect any sign of doubt or wavering in his commitment to the act. He saw none. “Your wife will be here soon. Let us be seen taking care of our business when she comes.”

*   *   *

That night, as she lay in bed alone, Asima suddenly remembered an incident from her university days in Grenada. A brief encounter in the market with an older woman, a native of the island, who had told her something about herself that, over the years, she had nearly forgotten. Now it seemed prophetic and deeply disturbing.

“Girl,” the woman had said, reaching out to touch Asima with both hands on her cheeks, “my name is Patricia Rose Greenidge, but most folks just call me Mama G. I am what they call a seer. Oh sure, it goes by other names like psychic, soothsayer, oracle … but me, I’m just a God-fearing woman with a gift of knowing. I only claim to be what I am.” The woman smiled, exposing large white teeth and a warm fire in her dark eyes. “You are beautiful, both in your body and your soul. One day you will make a great sacrifice—the greatest sacrifice that could ever be asked of a woman and—” She paused significantly. “—a mother. You will help many in a way that you cannot know. Yet you will know it at the time. You will be a hero and the mother of heroes.”

Asima thought about that encounter from her past and wondered why of all times this would come to her now and knew that as much as she tried sleep would not come easily that night.

CHAPTER

17

Melbourne, Australia

Dawson Rask was in a garden of beautifully sculptured shrubbery in Hampton Court Maze. He had started out with other visitors and a guide, but somehow he had become separated, and as he tried to find his way back to them, he just got deeper and deeper into the maze. Then he tried to find his way out, and he could swear that the path that was open but a moment before was now closed.

“This is dumb,” he said. “How can I be lost in a three-hundred-year-old garden in the middle of the day with hundreds of people within the sound of my voice?”

As he stood there, the shrubbery began closing in on him, actually moving toward him so that the place where he was standing became more and more confined.

“Ah!” he shouted.

His shout woke him up, and he lay there breathing heavily, thankful that he was not actually lost, though he was wondering, just for a moment or two, where he was.

He was in Melbourne, Australia, and it was, according to the digital clock on the bedside table, 3
A.M
. Okay, it was 3
A.M.
here, but back home in New York, it was 5
P.M.
That meant that it was also
P.M
. by Dawson’s body clock.

Dawson sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Reaching over to the bedside lamp, he turned it on. The light illuminated the hardcover book that lay on the table. Both the title of the book and the author’s name were in gold embossed letters. It was a beautiful book, and it was selling very well both in the United States and in foreign sales. The book was just released in Australia, and Dawson had made the long—very, very long—flight from New York to promote the book.

He reached down to touch it, feeling a bit of creative pride; then he walked into the bathroom. After turning on the light, he looked at himself in the mirror. Unshaven, he saw gray among the stubble, as well as a few gray hairs waving from the top of his head, like excited fans at a red-carpet premiere. All of this paled in comparison to the “baggage” directly under his eyes. He had passed the forty-year milestone last month.

“Dawson, don’t get old,” he said aloud. Then he chuckled, because he was repeating something his ninety-year-old grandmother had told him when she would sometimes complain about the aches and pains of aging. She had been dead for eight years now, but she had been such a vivid part of his life that he still remembered her fondly, especially her sense of humor.

His body clock might tell him it was 5
P.M
., but he clearly had morning mouth, so he brushed his teeth, then turned sideways to look at his body. Now,
that
he was still happy with. He had been blessed with good genes and a muscular build that enabled him to maintain the body of a Greek statue. It was still clearly defined but required a daily workout regimen in order to be sustained.

Realizing that sleep was not going to be an option, he decided to get a jump-start on the day of media and press interviews.
The Moses Mosaic
was his third novel, following hard on the heels of two previous international bestsellers.

“A writer?” Miss Hall had said. Miss Hall was his freshman high school English teacher. “Dawson, I don’t mean this as a put-down, but you have dyslexia. The first time you turned in a paper, I thought your name was Noswad.”

It wasn’t just the dyslexia Dawson had to overcome. It was also that he was following in the wake left by his brother, Boyd, who was two years older. Boyd’s transgressions were infamous, and he had left all the teachers embittered and predetermined not to let another Rask run amok in their classroom.

But Dawson, despite, or perhaps because of, the legacy left by his brother, excelled in high school, not only in academics, where he overcame his dyslexia, but in athletics, becoming a conference champion cross-country runner. A writer for
Profile Magazine
, while doing a piece on Dawson, wrote:

It is fitting that the bestselling author, Dawson Alexander Rask, ran cross country in high school and college. Cross country is a grueling sport that pits the runner against himself as much as against the other participants. It requires strength of body, as well as strength of character. Dawson Rask’s character, Matt Matthews, exhibits those very traits, and one must wonder, as one always does, if Matthews isn’t Rask.

Dawson had been born and raised in Decatur, Illinois. His grandfather had served in the Korean War, his father as an army draftee in the early 1960s. When he came back he began teaching at Milliken University in Decatur, becoming a full professor a few years later. Dawson’s father didn’t talk much about his military service, which included a two-year tour in Vietnam in 1965 and ’66—and when he did talk about it, it was always some innocuous story or a humorous event. He never talked about any combat experience, and Dawson would not have known that he won a Silver Star if he had not accidentally found the medal and the citation.

Because of his father’s position, Dawson could have gone to school at Milliken very cheaply, but he chose to attend Washington University in St. Louis, instead. Washington U. was a fine school with a great academic reputation, and he was able to put together several academic scholarships, including one scholarship from a beer company, simply because he was the son and grandson of veterans. He also chose Washington University because, while it wasn’t in his hometown—and he did want to get out on his own—it wasn’t so far from Decatur that he couldn’t make it back home on long weekends.