‘No. The prince insists that it was a Shia cell.’
‘No one had eyes on those people?’
‘No. Prince Khalid has found a trail that leads back to Shia extremists.’
‘Are they extremists?’
Webster approached the desk where his laptop lay open. ‘According to the CIA, they are.’ He glanced at the faces displayed on the screen.
Eckart and his men had found the ‘Shia terrorists’ nearly a month ago. They had actually been Shia businessmen operating in Financial City. During their surveillance, Eckart had sent pictures to Webster, who in turn had paid a computer hacker to insert the images into files at Langley. Overnight, they had become terrorists, but that hadn’t been revealed until the night they had killed the Saudi king and his firstborn son.
‘We knew about these people?’ Waggoner demanded.
‘We did, Mike, but we didn’t know they were going to do this.’
‘Or do it so well.’
‘No, we didn’t.’ Webster sipped his whiskey. It was bourbon mash from Tennessee and he took it straight. The fiery liquid burned the back of his throat.
‘If we could find these guys, prove it was them, do you think the prince would be satisfied with his pound of flesh?’
Webster watched the violence scroll across the television. More news, much of it directly linked to the fighting in Saudi Arabia, scrolled across the bottom in ticker-tape fashion. The death toll mounted almost every minute. Back on one of the new stations, a reporter on the ground covering an armed conflict was shot down. The cameraman got it all, then took off running for cover. Judging from the tumultuous way the camera flipped through the air and landed so suddenly, Webster didn’t think the cameraman made it.
‘It’s not just about Prince Khalid and his father,’ Webster said. ‘Not any more. Even if we could calm the prince down, do you think the Shia would back off at this point?’
‘No. But maybe we could open up peace talks.’
‘Because those have worked so well the past.’ Webster let the sarcasm sound in his voice.
‘We’ve got to do something. If the situation in the Middle East gets torn completely to shreds, the United States might not be able to withstand the economic repercussions.’
‘I know. You’re forgetting who wrote most of the Middle East diplomacy scenarios we’ve been working with while you’ve been in office.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten, Elliott. I just hoped it would never come to this.’
An excited smile spread across Webster’s face. He felt it stretch his lips. He hadn’t thought things were going to be so easy, or that President Waggoner would ever concede to the desperate measures they had concocted.
‘We’re not ready – our country isn’t ready – to give up our dependency on oil,’ Webster said calmly. ‘Steven Napier is close to a solution. But even when he has an alternative fuel source that works as well as we need it to, converting the United States over to that alternative fuel source is going to take time. We need time. That time was one thing you and I both agreed on.’
‘I know. I do know. And I still agree. I just don’t like where this leaves us.’
‘We didn’t leave us here, Mike. We didn’t leave the American people without recourse. Khalid did. If you’ll keep that in mind, that will turn everything around for you.’
‘Not entirely, Elliott. If we do this, a lot of lives are going to be affected.’
‘If we do nothing, a lot of lives are going to be affected. There’s no getting round that.’
Waggoner didn’t speak.
‘The American people – our people – are depending on us to do the right thing,’ Webster said. ‘And the right thing isn’t letting Prince Khalid hang us out to dry or start a religious war that may leave the whole Middle East disrupted for years, if not generations.’
Waggoner didn’t say anything.
‘Let them fight over whatever they want to out here,’ Webster said. ‘They’ve been doing that ever since the first one of them picked up a rock. No matter how much we try to civilize these people, they’re never going to tolerate someone who isn’t them.’
‘If we do this, if we – God help me – invade that country-’
‘Not invade, Mike. We’re only going to make sure the whole world isn’t disrupted. Someone has to. Otherwise, we won’t have heat in the winter. Our elderly and our children will freeze, our industries will lapse into recession. And these people won’t care. They don’t have to because we’ve always handled them with kid gloves.’ Webster set his empty glass down on the windowsill. ‘The world is always divided into us and them. Only civilization allows for one us. If these people can’t be civilized, then they have set themselves up against us.’
‘This is still a big step.’ Hesitancy vibrated in Waggoner’s voice.
‘Genocide isn’t an acceptable retribution,’ Webster said. ‘And that’s what Prince Khalid intends. That’s what all these countries over here intend. Retribution. Destruction. Winner take all.’
‘We can’t live like that.’
‘No, Mike, we can’t. Our people can’t live like that. Do you want your children growing up in a country without hope, without a future?’
‘Of course not. I just keep hoping there is some other way.’
‘If there was another way, I’d let you know. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘I always have, haven’t I?’
‘Then trust me now.’
Gazing into the window, Webster saw his reflection highlighted by fires burning aboard luxury vessels moored in the marina. Webster didn’t know if the fires had been started by Shia resistance or by Sunni military units seeking to do as much damage to Shia property as possible. In the end, it didn’t really matter. The flames just needed to be fanned.
Webster licked his middle finger and thumb and smoothed his eyebrows into place. ‘Mike? Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s get this done. Let’s set the hounds loose and let them hunt. We don’t have to get our hands dirty, and we’ll come out of this looking like heroes.’
Across the world, the President of the United States took a deep breath and let it out. Webster listened to the sound and knew he had the man right where he wanted him.
In fact, nearly everything was right where he wanted it.
‘All right,’ Waggoner said. ‘Make your calls.’
‘I will.’ Webster smiled at his reflection. ‘Everything will turn out okay, Mike. I’ll make a believer of you yet.’
‘Call me as soon as you know something,’ Waggoner told him.
‘This will take some time. Keep your chin up. We’re going to win.’ Webster broke the connection then started calling numbers he knew by heart.
Catacombs
Hagia Sophia Underground
Istanbul, Turkey
19 March 2010
The tunnel was only wide enough for them to walk comfortably in single file. Lourds’ head kept knocking against the low stone ceiling. Only the sound of shoes scuffing the stones beneath their feet and their breathing echoed within the tunnel. All else was silent as a crypt – a crypt like the room where the elder monks of the Brotherhood of the Scroll had willingly paid the final price to protect John of Patmos’s secret.
Sometimes, my friend, you are far too imaginative for this profession, Lourds told himself.
Imagination was a necessary component of his work, though. Translating and deciphering ancient and dead languages required someone who could navigate between creative thinking and logic, between fantasy and fact. Either one of those two disciplines could bring him to a basic understanding of a manuscript, but it wasn’t until he was able to combine both that he was at his best.
He flicked his flashlight beam round the tunnel. Shadows shifted like oily ghosts, plunging into the voids left by the lights. The halogen beam easily cut through the darkness and revealed the rough walls. Pickaxe scars showed in the strata, softened over the years by the passage of bodies. He wondered what stories those old scars could tell if they could only speak. The Hagia Sophia had enjoyed – or suffered, depending on one’s point of view – a vigorous history. It had been built on the site of a former pagan temple, a common practice in those days. It had stood for forty-four years before getting burned to the ground by Empress Aelia Eudoxia. The empress had been at odds with John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople at the time. Chrysostom had denounced extravagance regarding women’s clothing choices, and the empress had taken the matter personally.