41
The September night was cool and misty in Morden, a southwestern suburb of London, home to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. A cloud sat on the earth, and the air was a prickling vapor of water droplets that obscured vision beyond ten or fifteen feet. Street-lights seemed to be standing at attention with ghostly haloes around their heads.
Situated on more than five acres of land, the Baitul Futuh Mosque displayed a proud and powerful facade. Able to accommodate over ten thousand worshippers per day in three prayer halls, its interior filled with a gymnasium, multiple offices, a library, and television studios, it held claim to being the largest mosque in Western Europe. It was a statement to the people of London, and the world, that this Muslim community was to be taken seriously. The Ahmadiyya faithful represented a splinter sect of Islam, condemned by orthodox Muslims as heretical, and also by Western groups as harboring fanaticism and anti-Western sentiment. The Baitul Futuh, or House of Victories, was a defiant answer to all these doubters.
The parking lot in front of the mosque was deserted. Only a single military-standard personnel truck was parked in front of the structure, its color faded to gray in the darkness and fog. A minaret drove skyward for over one hundred feet, but this evening it was lost as it plunged into the gray, and the top of the silver dome began to blur. Several weary-looking soldiers stood at positions around the structure, weapons in hand or lighting cigarettes and cursing their foul duty to guard the property of a group many considered to be enemies of their nation.
One soldier cupped his hand over his lighter and puffed. He glanced toward the parking lot as streetlights suddenly went dark, plunging the area into near total blackness. As the flame went out, a small red circle the size of a pencil eraser danced over his forehead. For a moment, the laser light hit his eyes, blinding him as had the flame. Before he could understand, a soft pop was heard some thirty yards away. Instantly his head arched back, blown open, and he dropped to the ground with a loud thud. Several of his mates turned toward the sound, but before they could even complete the motion, a near simultaneous group of muffled retorts sounded around the mosque. Each of the soldiers fell. A sudden rush of dark shapes flooded over the steps like a polluted tide. Dressed in black from head to foot, only their eyes showing through masks, they quickly grabbed the downed soldiers and dragged them off the concrete around the mosque, several bending down and washing the ground of blood and remains. Riflemen rose from the fields and parking lot around the mosque, shouldered their weapons, and approached the others.
At that moment, two soldiers stepped out from inside the mosque and froze before the sights and sounds of the shadowed men around them. One grabbed for his weapon, but a shadow was on him from the side. The dark shape seized the soldier's gun arm in one hand, extending it with the weapon grasped tightly, then drove his palm into the back of the elbow, breaking the joint. The soldier screamed and dropped the weapon just as the dark figure drew back his palm and struck the soldier in the neck, shattering his windpipe. The man dropped to the ground, choking and gasping for air, unable to scream further. Beside him lay the other soldier who had stepped outside with him, an empty expression in his eyes, his neck twisted strangely to one side.
“Move these two out!” hissed one of the cloaked figures. Like the others, the two bodies were dragged away from the structure. A van had pulled up next to the military vehicle, and the bodies were loaded into it. Black bags were taken off the van and distributed to several masked figures who busied themselves pulling out dark bundles from the bags and stripping off their clothes.
Others moved around the mosque, placing devices that they camouflaged in various ways — with mortar and tile that matched the surface of the mosque or as electronic devices, some even resembling the cameras that were already in place around the building but that had ceased functioning several minutes previously.
Within thirty minutes, the scene had nearly returned to normal. The dark shapes were gone from the deep fog, like undead wraiths that crept back into the mists. A small group of false soldiers in uniform patrolled the site, glancing up only momentarily as streetlights winked back on, throwing a ghastly light over the building. Cameras mounted around the mosque turned on and began to transmit once again. At the end of the parking lot, a brown van turned out onto the road, its headlights off, only the red of its brake lights flashing momentarily like two grim eyes fading in the mists as the first light of dawn began to pale the evening sky.
Across the Atlantic, in Manhattan, the sidewalks were almost empty after midnight, and the streets around Ninety-Seventh contained only a handful of cabs and late-nighters. Few noticed that the streetlights along this side of the block up to Third Avenue had gone out. None noticed the darkly clad figures passing by a large structure, quickly darting out of sight, one by one over a span of five minutes. Inside the high fences, a building at a twenty-degree angle from the Manhattan street grid loomed upward yet was still dwarfed by taller apartment buildings around it. The building was squat, broad at its base, with sheer walls and a modern style tapering to a large black dome. It had been said that the geometry of the structure, founded on a repeating pattern of square units, followed Islamic law, which forbade the representation of natural forms. Atop the dome, on a spire, rested a crescent moon. A minaret rose next to the building, nearly in the middle of the block of land but open and easily visible to Ninety-Sixth Street. A sign outside read: “Islamic Cultural Center of New York,” but the place was better known to many as the Manhattan Mosque.
Within the fences, no one from the streets could see the dark figures quickly traversing the traditional exterior court that led to the entrance of the mosque, or the shapes gathered around the minaret, placing objects along its sides. Shapes entered and exited the mosque carrying loaded backpacks that appeared to be much lighter on their way out. Within forty-five minutes, all activity ceased; the dark figures were gone, and the corner displayed nothing out of the ordinary. Even the streetlights were back on.
Finally, across all of Europe and Africa, the morning sunrise drenched the lands. In a suburb of London, a tired-looking troop of soldiers drove off early, a little before the arrival of the morning shift, and disappeared, never to be seen by any regiment in England again. In Finland, Friday worshippers prepared to make the long trek to one of the handful of mosques in this northern country, grateful for asylum and a chance to worship in this new land. In Nigeria, the spires at the tops of the four minarets of the Abuja National Mosque lifted majestically toward the heavens in the orange light. Approaching from the main highway, the sun rose behind the stunning building, casting it in a dark shadow, a silhouette of a giant dome and four spears. Morning sounds played over the capital of Abuja and mixed in with the sounds of the adhan called out over the city by the muezzin.
42
Cohen sat down beside Savas at the table and smiled. By the calendar, it was nearly a week since he had shared that special Sabbath meal with her, but in the growing madness around them, his sense of time had begun to blur.
However absurd, he knew she loved the way he looked in the mornings. His hair, flattened and disheveled from the night's sleep, had always refused to obey even the roughest of brushings. Only after he had showered and shampooed could there be any management. Coupled with his unruly hair, she noted impishly that he had the shell-shocked look of being half-asleep. She said it gave him the expression of a little boy just slightly lost. She kissed him as he grumbled and drank his coffee, and stretched over to turn on the television.