own eyes.
“But do not be afraid of this great battle. For the Christ who will return in glory is a mighty Christ, a warrior Christ, riding on a white charger, a Christ who will make His enemies tremble. So be joyful that He comes. Be happy that you will be saved. But be prepared for that final conflict between good and evil.
“For He is Christ . . .
“He brings us rapture . . .
“And He is on His way!”
As the shouts of “Amen!” rang around him, and the Reverend Ezekiel Ray settled back down in his seat, accepting handshakes and backslaps from the men on either side, Kurt Vermulen clapped politely. He was assessing the room as he’d so often assessed a battlefield, looking for strong points and weaknesses, calculating threats and opportunities, seeking out hidden dangers. Above all, he was considering the men he was about to face. He knew now exactly what his audience wanted to hear. But could he give it to them?
He was about to find out.
14
I t was half past six, and Alix was sitting on a bus, three rows behind the housekeeper, as she made her journey home. She would, Alix knew, be carrying her own personal set of keys to virtually every working room in the hotel, as well as a pass card guaranteeing access to every guest room. Chambermaids had pass cards, too, but they were kept on cords tied around their waist so that they could not possibly be dropped or mislaid. Only staff as senior as a housekeeper were entitled to put their keys in a handbag. Somehow Alix had to get inside that bag.
It happened in a neighborhood supermarket. Alix watched as the housekeeper paused by the first aisle, reached into her bag to get her shopping list and left it open as she put on her reading glasses, then ran her finger down the piece of paper, mentally ticking off everything that she had to buy.
Alix walked by her, glancing down at the bag. There were two sets of keys clearly visible: a small ring with her car and front-door keys, and a much larger bunch of hotel keys, one of which looked like a credit card. That was the one Alix wanted.
But for the next ten minutes she had to wait, her frustration growing, unable to find an opening. The housekeeper had almost reached the checkout when she suddenly stopped dead in the middle of an aisle. She replaced her glasses on her nose, consulted her list again, hissed crossly at her own forgetfulness, and scuttled away to another aisle, leaving her cart behind her.
Alix walked steadily toward the cart. Making no sudden movements, she reached into the bag with her wire cutters and snapped the link that attached the housekeeper’s pass card to her key ring. She palmed the card and put it in her own shoulder bag. At the checkout she paid for a lettuce and a jar of Bolognese sauce, then disappeared into the night.
15
K urt Vermulen looked out from the glare of the podium into the darkness of the room beyond. He had one last chance: one shot at getting the backing he needed to make his country aware of the threat building against it in mountains and deserts thousands of miles away. The nervous energy was building inside him, adrenaline parching his mouth. Then he began.
He delivered a warning of a war that could engulf the world, a conflict to the death between religions and civilizations. And it was, he said, a war that America had brought upon itself.
“I was there when it all began,” he said, his voice low-pitched but intense. “I saw our fatal mistake.”
He took them back to the late summer of 1986 and the first secret shipments of Stinger antiaircraft missiles by the United States to the mujahideen, the resistance fighters battling the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “They called this fight the jihad, which literally means ‘the effort,’ or ‘the struggle.’ To them it was a battle against the enemies of Islam. It was their duty to fight in the service of their God.”
Vermulen was not an orator. He was a man of action, and he spoke simply, without any of the
“But do not be afraid of this great battle. For the Christ who will return in glory is a mighty Christ, a warrior Christ, riding on a white charger, a Christ who will make His enemies tremble. So be joyful that He comes. Be happy that you will be saved. But be prepared for that final conflict between good and evil.
“For He is Christ . . .
“He brings us rapture . . .
“And He is on His way!”
As the shouts of “Amen!” rang around him, and the Reverend Ezekiel Ray settled back down in his seat, accepting handshakes and backslaps from the men on either side, Kurt Vermulen clapped politely. He was assessing the room as he’d so often assessed a battlefield, looking for strong points and weaknesses, calculating threats and opportunities, seeking out hidden dangers. Above all, he was considering the men he was about to face. He knew now exactly what his audience wanted to hear. But could he give it to them?
He was about to find out.
14
I t was half past six, and Alix was sitting on a bus, three rows behind the housekeeper, as she made her journey home. She would, Alix knew, be carrying her own personal set of keys to virtually every working room in the hotel, as well as a pass card guaranteeing access to every guest room. Chambermaids had pass cards, too, but they were kept on cords tied around their waist so that they could not possibly be dropped or mislaid. Only staff as senior as a housekeeper were entitled to put their keys in a handbag. Somehow Alix had to get inside that bag.
It happened in a neighborhood supermarket. Alix watched as the housekeeper paused by the first aisle, reached into her bag to get her shopping list and left it open as she put on her reading glasses, then ran her finger down the piece of paper, mentally ticking off everything that she had to buy.
Alix walked by her, glancing down at the bag. There were two sets of keys clearly visible: a small ring with her car and front-door keys, and a much larger bunch of hotel keys, one of which looked like a credit card. That was the one Alix wanted.
But for the next ten minutes she had to wait, her frustration growing, unable to find an opening. The housekeeper had almost reached the checkout when she suddenly stopped dead in the middle of an aisle. She replaced her glasses on her nose, consulted her list again, hissed crossly at her own forgetfulness, and scuttled away to another aisle, leaving her cart behind her.
Alix walked steadily toward the cart. Making no sudden movements, she reached into the bag with her wire cutters and snapped the link that attached the housekeeper’s pass card to her key ring. She palmed the card and put it in her own shoulder bag. At the checkout she paid for a lettuce and a jar of Bolognese sauce, then disappeared into the night.
15
K urt Vermulen looked out from the glare of the podium into the darkness of the room beyond. He had one last chance: one shot at getting the backing he needed to make his country aware of the threat building against it in mountains and deserts thousands of miles away. The nervous energy was building inside him, adrenaline parching his mouth. Then he began.
He delivered a warning of a war that could engulf the world, a conflict to the death between religions and civilizations. And it was, he said, a war that America had brought upon itself.
“I was there when it all began,” he said, his voice low-pitched but intense. “I saw our fatal mistake.”
He took them back to the late summer of 1986 and the first secret shipments of Stinger antiaircraft missiles by the United States to the mujahideen, the resistance fighters battling the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “They called this fight the jihad, which literally means ‘the effort,’ or ‘the struggle.’ To them it was a battle against the enemies of Islam. It was their duty to fight in the service of their God.”
Vermulen was not an orator. He was a man of action, and he spoke simply, without any of the
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