The Aisha Prophecy (24 page)

“Only the guilty. They flee from their sins.”

“Really?” Mansur asked him. “What was Shahla Darvi’s sin? Never mind. You can educate me later. On the subject of the good doctor’s clinics, they treat those in need, men and women alike, and have improved a great many lives. They are built by Sadik because no one else builds them. Why not? Why didn’t the PLO build them? It’s because they’re free clinics and because they treat the poor. Corrupt bureaucrats find no profit in the poor. You want sin? There it is. What could be more unIslamic? I, for one, salute him. Let’s proceed.”

He glanced through his papers, tapped a finger on one of them. He raised his eyes to Sadik. “While we’re on the subject of women who flee, we hear that your Saudis are missing a few. We hear that one in particular has escaped a betrothal to a powerful and feared Wahhabi cleric. We hear that you’d been asked to find her. As with me, you refused. So what happened? They turned off the tap?”

Sadik answered, “It was something like that.”

“The daughter of a prince. One of thousands, but a prince. She grew up in comfort, perhaps more or less content, until she was promised to this cancer-scarred fleabag while still a budding flower of fifteen. I can’t say that I blame her for running.”

Mansur gestured toward the man who’d grown too fat for his suit. “And we hear that she, like this man’s two daughters, is quite skilled in the use of computers. We further hear that she’s believed to be in the same place where this man’s two daughters have gone underground. It’s a safe house, run by the Nasreens.”

“They have many safe houses,” said Sadik.

“This spurned Saudi fleabag heads the Hasheem. Did you know that they’re hunting this princess?”

Sadik shrugged. This should not be unexpected.

Mansur turned to the colonel. “And some Hasheem hunters have been sent to America?”

“We’re sure of one,” Jalil answered. “Sent a few days ago. We know that he was routed to Savannah, state of Georgia. Why there, we don’t know. We’ve lost track of him since.”

Mansur asked Sadik, “Might you know why?”

Savannah, thought Sadik. He felt sure that he did. But he only spread his hands in response.

Mansur moved a finger back and forth slowly as if he were attempting to make a connection. The finger slowed. It now tilted toward Darvi.

“This man’s daughters, by defecting, have humiliated him. A man who can’t control his women is no man at all in the eyes of his neighbors and business associates. Yet this one now takes the attitude; ‘Let them go and good riddance.’ One suspects that they must have some hold over him that prevents him from doing his duty. Does this Saudi girl have such a hold?”

“Most do.”

“Well?” Mansur asked. “Do you know what it is?”

“I know the girl’s father. He works for Saudi Charities. The money doesn’t always go where it’s intended. The daughter seems to know more than she should.”

“Is her father so important?”

“Not at all. Lowest rung. He has the brain of a bird. But there are others involved, very powerful Saudis. They are about to find themselves inconvenienced.”

Mansur grinned. He clapped his hands. “They can’t get at their money?” He said to the others. “The reports are correct.” This caused the cleric taking notes to smile broadly as well. Mansur tossed a salute toward Colonel Jalil who was apparently the source of this intelligence.

Mansur’s grin faded. He said to Sadik, “You say this Saudi’s a nonentity and not very bright.” He cocked his head toward the father of the sisters. “All these daughters seem to have much in common.”

The girls’ father reddened at these words, but said nothing.

“Here’s another good guess,” said Mansur to Sadik, “The Saudi girl’s been at her father’s computer.”

Sadik nodded. “More than once. She’s done considerable damage. He only learned its full extent a few days ago.”

Mansur seemed impressed. “These young girls have such skills?”

“They were considerable already. The rest, they were taught.”

“Taught by whom? The Nasreens?”

Sadik nodded again.

“So they’re taught how to blackmail.”

Sadik shook his head. “No demands are made except to leave them in peace. That’s not blackmail as far as I’m concerned.”

“Aha. But you see, they’re not leaving us in peace. They are spreading this prophecy. You can’t log on anywhere in this part of the world without seeing the words, ‘She is coming.’ They’re not only saying that Aisha’s reborn; they’re saying that they’ve seen her; they’re with her. They have caused great mischief. As you’ve seen, they’ve caused pain. The Nasreens would seem to have a new agenda.”

“It’s not the Nasreens. They would not have allowed this. They help only women who wish to be helped, but even then they are very selective. They help those whom they deem to have a promising future, but whose future is being denied them. They are not out to change the whole world.”

“Then who is? Three young girls? They cooked this up among themselves?”

“Not likely,” said Sadik. “But not impossible.”

“Not likely without help. Or adult supervision. Or should I use the word instigation?”

“I will say it again. It is not the Nasreens.”

“Then who?” asked Mansur. “Let me think. Who might it be? Could it be an adult named Elizabeth Stride?”

Sadik was startled. He tried not to show it. The basement chamber of the prison. A room used not just for torture, but for interrogations. He should have known that there would have been a listening device.

He said, “That was… only a shot in the dark. The girl gave no sign that she recognized the name. If I’d had time, I’d have tried several others.”

Mansur had already reached into his folder. He held up several pages. He said, “I have here a transcription of your words. You didn’t simply ask if the girl knew the name. You asked whether this Stride was in fact the angel Qaila. One assumes that you had reason to ask.”

“Elizabeth Stride has been a friend to the Nasreens. She’s especially been a friend to a young girl named Aisha. But it truly was not much more than a hunch. Tens of thousands of young Sunni girls have that name.”

“And many have been picked up for questioning, did you know that?”

Sadik did. That, too, had been splashed on the internet. Young girls all aged between twelve and twenty in at least a half dozen countries so far. Especially any seen riding a camel who happen to be wearing too much white. “So I’ve heard.”

“And many more Aishas have been hidden by their parents, lest someone should decide to start cutting their throats. Mass targeted murder is not without precedent. Herod tried it to kill Jesus. The pharaoh tried it to kill Moses. They survived, but a great many innocents perished. They didn’t have their own angel to protect them.”

He raised a hand before Sadik could speak. He said, “Elizabeth Stride. An assassin, is she not? An American who kills for the Israelis?”

“She was,” said Sadik. “Not any longer.”

“She did her work fully veiled. It was the perfect disguise. Moved about like a ghost, unsuspected, unnoticed. They called her the Black Angel, did they not?”

“Some did.”

“So now we have two angels. Or perhaps two in one. But first… how did a woman who killed Muslims for Israel become such a friend of Muslim women?”

Sadik rocked a hand. “When you say she killed Muslims…”

“I know. She was selective. Let’s not split hairs. Are you able to answer my question?”

“I am,” said Sadik. “Stride had been arrested and imprisoned by the Saudis. By the time they released her, she was very nearly dead. A Muslim woman took her in and restored her to health. That women was a doctor named Nasreen Zayed. She’s the woman from whom the Nasreens took their name. The original Nasreen was murdered soon afterward. She was burned alive, not for saving Stride’s life, but for daring to teach family planning in her village. Stride avenged her and she didn’t stop there.”

“Recruited and trained by the Mossad, was she not?”

“They taught her how to channel her… displeasure, as you put it.”

“And her weapon of choice was a knife, was it not? A long one? Curved? You could almost say a sword?”

Sadik saw where this was going. “Just a knife.”

The mullah asked, “And her hair. What color was her hair?”

“Underneath her hijab? Surely black or dark brown.”

“To pass as an Arab. We understand that. What was her natural coloring?”

Sadik hedged. “She’s a woman. Who knows?”

“I’ve seen her file,” said Mansur. “No clear photographs of her. And conflicting descriptions, but some speak of her eyes, an unusual color, and also the color of her hair. Some say that it’s the color of flame.”

“What flame? Yellow flame?” Sadik took a weary breath. “I’ve only heard it described as being blond. Dark blond, light blond, reddish blond, I can’t tell you. There are millions of women who have these same colors. Quite a few of them live right here in Tehran and they get such colors out of a bottle.”

The cleric smiled. He said, “More and more every day. There is also a new hair style that is suddenly in vogue. It’s shaped rather like a helmet with the added detail of hair flipping out on both sides at the shoulders. Care to guess what they call these little flips of the hair?”

“Angel wings,” said Sadik. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

“Most keep it covered when they are in public. But alone with other women, off comes the headscarf. Nothing need be said. The others know what it means. How does Stride wear her hair these days. Do you know?”

“I do not.”

“Short, I would think. Low maintenance. Functional. The shape of a helmet comes to mind.”

Sadik closed his eyes. He groaned aloud. “I’ll tell you this,” he said, “and with total conviction. Everything I know about Elizabeth Stride persuades me that she would have no part in this either. All she wants is to live a quiet life.”

“Having put aside all thoughts of revenge? Or might she have come up with an even grander vision of how to get even with Muslim men without the need to be so selective?”

“Out of the question,” said Sadik.

“And yet you suspect that she’s involved at some level.”

“Suspect is too strong. A possibility. No more.”

“Very well. A possibility. What leads you to wonder?”

Sadik hesitated. He said, “Someone close to her might – I say might – be involved.”

“And that someone just happens to bear the name, Aisha. A girl of what? Fifteen or sixteen?”

“Thereabouts.”

“A girl born in Cairo, but now living in America.” Mansur touched his temple. “That rings a bell somehow.”

Cute, thought Sadik. “She will be of the East, but turn your eyes to the West because that is where her banner will unfurl.” Sadik responded, “I can tell you this much. If the Aisha you speak of is a party to this – and that is still a very big if – Elizabeth Stride would put a stop to it herself. If it should be happening, but Stride doesn’t know it, she would end it within minutes of me talking to her.”

“You know her so well?”

“I’ve never laid eyes.”

“And yet you’re telling us that you know what’s in her heart,” said Mansur.

“I have other sources,” Sadik answered.

“Would one of these sources be a man named Martin Kessler?”

Once again Sadik was startled and again he should have known. The cleric had very good sources of his own. Sadik answered, “Kessler is one.”

“This Kessler was once Stasi, East German Intelligence. No plodder, however. Wild and wooly. An adventurer.” Mansur ran a finger down a sheet in his folder. “’A loose cannon,’ this one calls him. Another finds him amusing. The phrase here is ‘entertainingly reckless.’”

All true, more or less. Mostly more, thought Sadik. But he replied, “An adventurer. Not the rest of it.”

“If you say so,” said Mansur. His finger moved and stopped. “It says here the East Germans published comic books about him. Propaganda for the masses. Detailing his exploits. One can still find old copies on E-Bay.”

Also true, thought Sadik, and to Kessler’s chagrin. Those comics were a constant embarrassment to him. Sadik, himself, had teased Kessler about them.

“So what is he?” asked Mansur. “Is he some sort of clown?”

Sadik wanted to answer, “He’s anything but. He’s a man to take lightly at your peril.” But he didn’t. He just shrugged. Let them learn that for themselves.

“Have you been in touch lately?”

“I have not. I’ve lost track of him.”

“But you say he’s been a source as to Elizabeth Stride.”

“He and Stride have been together, on and off, for ten years. They first met when she was, I think, twenty four, but already as notorious as he was. They had their ups and downs. Sometimes he’d cry on my shoulder. Well, not actually cry. That is a figure of speech.”

The cleric flicked a hand. “I’d assumed so.”

“In any case, that is how I know about Stride. We spoke of her at length many times.”

“An adventurer,” said Mansur, “often does things for the fun of it. Might this prophecy business come under that heading?”