Shah sat bolt upright in alarm. “Gabrielle! It’s not safe to talk here.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “That’s the least of our problems right now.”
“What do you mean? Is Ihara….?” He left the question unfinished. Gabrielle might be unconcerned about electronic surveillance, but watching what he said to avoid self-incrimination had become a deeply ingrained habit for Shah, one he could not easily break.
“Oh, she’s fine. She sent them packing.”
“Oh. Well, then I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
Gabrielle leaned over his desk. “She’s fine, Atash. They didn’t kill her. That’s the problem. It was a ham-fisted amateurish attempt, and they completely blew it.”
Shah stood up and took Gabrielle’s elbow. “Not here,” he repeated, steering her toward the door.
If there was still active surveillance, then she had probably said too much already, but Shah needed a moment to think, and his office, where he labored day in and day out to conduct a strictly legal defense of the Islamic faith and its adherents, was not a place where he felt comfortable talking about orchestrating a murder attempt. Thankfully, Gabrielle waited until they were out of the office and in the elevator to resume the conversation.
“Things are spinning out of control, Atash.”
Shah glanced nervously up at the security camera mounted in the corner, wondering if the FBI had tapped into it. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” he said through clenched teeth. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Put her on the list and let the faithful take care of the rest. Nothing to directly implicate us. That was the plan, wasn’t it?”
“The plan failed. Ihara found something in Scotland. And now she knows that we’re coming after her. We can’t afford any more screw-ups.”
“What did she find? Roche’s book?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? She needs to be silenced.”
Shah felt overwhelmed by the intensity of Gabrielle’s demand, but he could not disagree with the last point. Thankfully, the elevator doors opened on the lobby, giving him another brief respite in which to process the rush of information. Gabrielle had been absolutely right about one thing: the situation was spiraling into chaos.
She had come to him only the night before with a reliable tip that Jade Ihara, the archaeologist Gerald Roche had visited just before his death, was in the United Kingdom, trying to pick up the pieces of Roche’s investigation. The last report was that she was on her way to Scotland so, at Gabrielle’s urging, he had put the word out on the CDL website. He had also circulated more explicit information anonymously on a number of Internet bulletin boards frequented by disenfranchised Muslims living abroad, mostly young men, who fulminated endlessly over the persecution of the faithful by Zionist puppets and were desperate to strike a blow in the ongoing Holy War.
Evidently, someone had heeded his call, but subsequently failed to deliver, and now Jade Ihara was one step closer to making a discovery that would shatter everything Shah and billions of faithful Muslims across the ages had fought to build.
Gabrielle was right about that, too. Jade Ihara had to be stopped.
He strode purposefully through the lobby, with Gabrielle matching him step for step, and emerged onto a chilly but nevertheless bustling Manhattan sidewalk. Out here, despite being surrounded by hundreds of people, they could speak with greater freedom.
“Where is Ihara now?”
“Still in Scotland,” Gabrielle said, her earlier zeal only somewhat diminished. Shah did not need to ask how she came by her information. In the twenty-first century, tracking someone in real-time was the easiest thing in the world.
Shah glanced at his watch. “It’s late evening there, but if we hurry, we should be able to arrange something.”
Gabrielle grabbed his elbow. “You need to take charge of this personally, Atash.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Personally,” she repeated. “We can’t entrust this to a bunch of hopped-up students who will turn and run at the first sign of trouble.”
He blinked at her. “You mean… Me?”
“I’m not saying you need to pull the trigger. In fact, we don’t have to kill anyone.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We take Ihara alive. At least until we know what proof she has. Then we can let someone else…” She paused as if searching for an appropriately benign euphemism. “Finish. But you need to take charge in person to ensure that there are no more screw-ups.”
Her grip on his arm tightened. “This is important, Atash. They’re looking for a leader. A real leader, not just some religious demagogue who will tell them to go blow themselves up. Someone who sees their real potential. Show them that you can be that leader.”
“You want me to drop everything here and fly to Scotland?” It seemed like an impossible request, but Shah knew he would not be able to refuse.
“It has to be done, Atash.”
He stared at her, marveling at the power she had over him. “Will you come with me?”
She smiled and the last of his resistance evaporated. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
THIRTEEN
Despite her playful suggestion that they sample some traditional Scottish fare, Jade had no intention of remaining in Kilmaurs. Their attackers were still at large, and aside from Kellogg’s assertion that the men were Arabs, they had no idea who the men were or what they looked like. Even the assumption that they were Middle Eastern was a guess. Arabic was the language of the Quran, but that did not mean all Muslims were Arabs. Over the centuries, Islam had spread far and wide, from Eastern Europe to Africa to Indonesia, and their descendants had brought their faith to enclaves in nearly every corner of the globe. It was not inconceivable that the two men might be locals. The safest course was to keep moving.
Jade called the car rental agency to arrange the recovery of her rental, then she and Kellogg struck out for London in his car. While he drove, she plugged the flash drive into his laptop and began scrolling through the directory. Her eye was immediately drawn to the label on one of the file icons.
“‘The Three Hundred Year Lie.’”
“That’s it,” Kellogg said. “That’s the name of Mr. Roche’s book.”
Jade clicked on the icon and opened a list of document files, several of which were marked with chapter numbers. She clicked on the first and began reading silently.
Her initial impression, after reading the first few chapters, was that Roche had somehow contrived a way to stretch the essence of their conversation at the Paracas museum into a forty thousand word screed. He relied on cherry-picked and often irrelevant data, logical fallacies, ad hominem attacks against the men allegedly responsible for the deception, and constant repetition of his core premise. There was nothing particularly persuasive in his argument, and if not for the fact that someone had killed Roche, evidently to keep the information from being released, she would have dismissed it as foolishness.
She turned to Kellogg. “You know what this book’s about, right?”
“I read a synopsis. It all sounded a bit daft to me.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that, too. So what about this has Muslims so upset?”
“You really don’t know?” Kellogg gave her a sidelong glance then returned his focus to the road ahead. “If the Phantom Time hypothesis is correct, then everything the history books say happened between 700 and 1000 AD is a complete fraud. That would include the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the accepted history of the rise of Islam. If Roche is right, then none of it really happened.”