Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber Page B

had gone deep, and found gold . . . perhaps.

     

7
    INSHALLA

     

     
    On the day that the Americans found the message, the wind boomed in the long tunnels of the old base in Pamir, but down here in the long-abandoned command center the air was always still and cool, smelling of tobacco and people and the cook fires of the women.
    Aziz had been designated the receptacle of the hidden Imam, the Mahdi, two years ago. Although Sunni, he had accepted the ancient title, and with it the belief that the Imam had actually entered his body and become him. The brotherhood of Inshalla intended that both Sunni and Shia would accept the Mahdi as savior. They were relying on the Arab love of legend to overcome the antipathy between the sects, and the idea that he had at last come out of his long ages of hiding by entering the body of a believer would inspire them.
    Before this, Aziz had been a very Westernized Arab, had shaved himself and kept a closet full of fine English suits in his villa in Peshawar. All this he had given up to follow the law to the letter. The villa was behind him now, to be used only in case of emergency. He’d lived too many places to have a home anymore. The world was his home.
    “Oko is up,” his assistant said softly.
    “Ah.” He glanced up from the writing he was doing, a poem to commemorate the coming day, which would be first day of the new world.
    October 10 had been chosen because it was the anniversary of the Battle of Tours, which had driven the Children of God from Europe and condemned the poor Europeans to live now for more than a thousand years in misery, separated from God.
    Tomorrow, there would be a little moment of suffering among the worst sinners, but then Islam and happiness would come at last.
    Emir Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi, chosen of God, blessed of name, had seen defeat on October 10, in the year 117 Hirja, the Christian year of 732. Charles Martel—the Hammer—had shattered the emir’s faithful soldiers on that day, God have mercy on their souls.
    So tomorrow, all these years later, came another October 10, and this time the victory would go to God.
    Inshalla, God’s Will, was the name of the organization that was doing this work, of which he was now, as Mahdi, the head. Before Al Qaeda, there had been Inshalla. Al Qaeda had been born out of rage, after the Saudi king brutally murdered people of faith who had entered the Grand Mosque. Their holy mission had been to correct the apostasy of the king’s stooge of an imam.
    Inshalla had been created in an apartment in Brooklyn in 1981, long before the present troubles had begun. It had been created not in reaction to a crime but out of the simple joy that comes from being close to God and the desire that this joy creates in the heart to bring it to others.
    Even though Inshalla was a small group, for further security it was divided into cells of no more than four. Although it was unknown to most intelligence services, it was one of the most powerful entities on earth, behind only the Western nuclear powers, in terms of its weaponry. It also had two gigantic advantages over them, which Aziz believed would enable it to rule the world. First, it was invisible. Second, its nuclear weapons were already sited in their target countries and could be detonated quickly.
    Even as the fires of Islam resurgent rose all over the world, Inshalla had remained hidden, doing its patient work. They moved small things—a bolt here, a casing there, a bit of radioactive material to another place. It was all in the good cause of freeing mankind to taste the joy of Šar’ah and indulge in the sweetness of Islam.
    Now all preparations were done. When it had been founded, Aziz had been twenty years old. Now, at forty, he had been named Mahdi, not becausehe was of the Ahul al-Bayt, the House of Mohammed, in blood, but because, he had been assured, he was of the house in piety. However, everyone knew perfectly well that this was not true. God forgive him, he