Checking the cross-reference notes again, she turned to Revelation 6:1–4.
Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.
The more Marseille read about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the more fearful she became. For after the white horse bearing a conqueror and the red horse bringing global war came a black horse unleashing global famine and a pale horse with death in so many forms that a fourth of the earth, the text said, would perish. Marseille quickly did the math. If there were nearly seven billion people alive today, that meant something like 1.75 billion people could die in the early years of the Tribulation of which the prophecies spoke. Had that time come? Was the arrival of the Twelfth Imam going to trigger the release of the four horsemen?
She set aside her Bible and notebook and decided to take a break. She ordered some oatmeal with brown sugar and a glass of orange juice from room service and then opened her door to pick up her complimentary copy of USA Today, which was waiting in the hallway. Checking the front-page headlines below the fold, she was relieved to see the president was improving and might be released from the hospital in another day or two, though she grieved for the families of the slain Egyptian president and all the others who had perished in the attacks in New York.
As she turned the paper over, she was startled by the lead headline: “Twelfth Imam Miraculously Survives Assassination Attempt, Says Nothing Will Stop Rise of Global Caliphate.” Marseille stared at the large color photo of the unscathed Mahdi carrying a badly burned little boy in his arms. She read how everyone else in the Mahdi’s vehicle and the SUVs in front of him and behind had been killed in the attack; only the Twelfth Imam and the eleven-year-old boy had walked out of the burning wreckage. How was that possible? How had they survived? It made no sense, Marseille thought.
What struck her most, however, were the quotes by the Twelfth Imam toward the end of the article, from the impromptu press conference he had given in Beirut just prior to the attack. “I am calling on all the countries of the world to join the Caliphate… I have come to declare that Islam is the answer to all the world’s ills… Will you truly submit to the will of Allah? Will you live for him? Will you die in his service?”
He added that his would be a purely Islamic government based upon Sharia law. He warned that opposition would not be tolerated and that “to revolt against Allah’s government is to revolt against Allah. And to revolt against Allah has its punishment in our law…. It is a heavy punishment.”
The most chilling line of the article was the last, Marseille thought. Asked if he was disappointed that the Israeli prime minister had survived the attack, the Twelfth Imam had simply replied: “The Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation, one way or the other.” The word annihilation jumped out at her and drove her again to her knees in prayer.
“What does all this mean, Lord?” she cried out. “What does it mean for me? I’m just a schoolteacher. And hardly a very good one. I feel all alone in the world, Lord, and I fear a great evil is rising. But I love You, and I know You love me. Show me what You want me to do. Please show me what would please You. This is what I want, Father, until You take me home… or send Your Son to get me.”
19
Eva stood behind Navid.
She was still not yet ready for him to see her face. That would come in due time. He was hooked up to all kinds of physiological sensors that were streaming data to the analysts in the next room. They sent her periodic updates through her earpiece, keeping her in control and him guessing.
“We recovered your cell phone, Navid. Prepaid. Disposable. Untraceable. Smart choice. Very smart. Except that you made a little mistake, Navid — just one. But then again, it only takes one.”
“His blood pressure just spiked again,” Agent Taylor said in her ear.
She nodded and kept going. “Now, Navid, I know you want to be a martyr,” she said calmly. “Like your brother. I’m sure you’re very proud of him. I’m sure that you’ve always looked up to him. But he died in action. I oppose everything he stood for and everything he did, obviously. He gave his life for something he believed in. I’ll give him that. You, on the other hand — I’m curious about you. The FBI caught you sitting in a car doing nothing. I mean, presumably you were waiting for the others. You were supposed to drive the getaway car. But you were just sitting there. You didn’t put up a fight. You didn’t try to escape. Of course, you were surrounded by two dozen guys with automatic weapons. But hey, you could have gone down in a hail of gunfire like your brother, shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ I guess I’m just curious why you didn’t.”
She paused a moment, then changed course. “That’s all right. Don’t answer that. We’ll get back to why you gave up so easily in a little while. Let’s focus on your execution.”
“His blood pressure is off the charts now,” Taylor said.
“I’m figuring at this point that you want to go to the electric chair. Heck, you’re probably looking forward to it, which is good, because you will. Believe me, you will die. This is an easy case. You were part of a terrorist team that killed dozens of people, including the president of Egypt. I doubt there will even be an appeal. I give you two weeks, maybe three, before they execute you.”
She was lying, of course. She couldn’t remember the last time the feds had executed anyone with the electric chair. What’s more, she figured they’d be lucky if they could give Navid Yazidi any type of death sentence in less than a decade. More than likely, they would cut him some ridiculous deal in exchange for information. But his reactions were proof he didn’t know any of that. She thought the fact that he was so nervous strongly suggested he’d never seriously considered the prospect of being caught. She guessed he had figured he would likely be killed in action or — more likely, in his mind — somehow slip through the American dragnet and escape capture or punishment entirely because he was a servant of Allah and Allah took care of his own.
Uncertainty clearly unnerved him. So did the prospect of death. That was good. Those were his Achilles’ heels. She needed to exploit them.
“I’m afraid I won’t be there, though, Navid. There’s a lot I can handle, but watching a man be electrocuted to death is not one of them. But you’ll be fine. You want to be a martyr like Rahim, right? You’ll probably be grinning ear to ear when they strap you into the chair.” She stopped talking, and all was quiet, save the hum of the fluorescent lights. She waited awhile for everything to sink in, then continued.
“You got caught, Navid. You didn’t resist. You didn’t try to escape. Maybe you weren’t really so committed to this mission, like Rahim was. And you were drinking alcohol — lots of it — the night before the attack. That’s right, Navid. At one point you called your hotel with your disposable phone. That was your mistake; we found the number, went to the hotel, and saw your room. I was there myself. And I personally saw the hotel security tapes. I know you checked into that Sheraton. I saw you get into the elevator and push the button for the ninth floor. I saw you key into room 919. I went to room 919, Navid; I saw that you ate everything in the minibar. And you drank everything in the minibar. Had they ever let you be in a room by yourself with a minibar? I’m guessing not. Because you really went to town. Which is fine. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, you all paid your bills with cash. I’m just thinking Allah might not be too pleased. And I’m guessing he was watching. And I guess if I were sitting in the electric chair soon, waiting to pass from one world to the next, I’d be wondering where I was going. Because it’s one thing to be executed in one of the most painful ways imaginable — did I mention your whole head is going to explode into flames? — but that might be nothing compared to what’s coming the moment you leave this world and enter the next.”