Abdul was a large man for a Chechen. Slightly over six feet in height, he made an imposing figure with a neat, black beard graying at the sides of his chin in sharp contrast to his thick, disheveled eyebrows, angling up at the periphery, giving him a devilish appearance. He was ruggedly handsome with a wind and sunburned face. A large frame, none of it due to fat, added to the impression of power. He had respect for others of his own ilk, was faithful to his God, but his wartime exploits had made him a heartless killer. Orders were never questioned, but were carried out less grave consequences be suffered.
He still knew Anatoly Shenko with whom he had kept in close contact. Anatoly had the power to make him an important force in the global religious war. He had worked with him in microbiology labs in and around Moscow, in Novosibirsk, and in Gradient. With the changes in the former Soviet Union, Anatoly, always underpaid and under great personal pressure, was desperate to make a living. What he needed was money. What Abdul needed was money. With this in mind, Abdul set out for Waziristan, and his contacts took him to the leaders of Al-Quada.
A group of masked men armed with Kalashnikoff rifles and grenade launchers met Abdul. His companions were told to go back home. The men took a blindfolded Abdul over mountainous terrain. When they arrived at their destination, they removed his blindfold. He sat on a large square rug, blinked to clear his sight and he saw the same armed masked men standing at his sides. He recognized the men he had come to see, sitting on the other side of the rug.
He thought, so these are the men who sent a message in blood to the United States, the Great Satan. These are the men who bring Islam to the entire world. They resembled their pictures except for more gray in their beards. Allah had blessed him.
They feasted and spoke, and three days later, he was back in Chechnya with a promise and a warning. The promise—that an Imam with two chipped front teeth would deliver the money to Abdul and pick up the promised packages from Abdul. The warning—that his life would be forfeit if he reneged on the delivery of what he had promised.
The meeting took place in the same cave Abdul had found when he was a child playing in the mountains. The entrance to the cave was invisible to any one of the rare villagers who happened to pass by, but if they knew where the hidden, tiny entrance was, they could crawl for fifteen meters and then enter a large empty space with a high ceiling. The room was circular in shape with a diameter of approximately six meters, furnished only with a large square oriental rug bequeathed to Abdul by his father. It was right that the type of meetings held here plays out on his father’s gift, for his father had also been a dedicated Islamist, and Abdul had learned of Allah on his father’s knee. This room was where he would hold secret meetings away from the prowling eyes of his enemies. This was where he met with the Imam, with the two chipped front teeth, and the Imam’s small band of believers who had come all the way from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Imam passed the money to Abdul who in turn passed it to a shadowy round figure with his face draped like a woman who arrived before the Imam had. For this, they received two large boxes, climate controlled, well insulated and heavy. The Imam and his entourage took the boxes and left. The round figure took his money and left.
Abdul smiled at the ease of the operation. He had been the transfer agent. He was content, for he played a major role in the great global religious war for world control. Soon there would be a decisive blow for Allah.
CHAPTER 8
PAKISTAN, The Imam
“Yes, Yusuf, that is right. The Koran forbids suicide.” The Imam paused. He looked at Yusuf sitting in silence. This was an important day in the learning process. His student, Ben Marzan, an American citizen, given the name of Yusuf, needed careful handling. He was the perfect candidate. He was born of an American mother, who had converted to Islam, and a Muslim father. Yusuf had grown to manhood in the United States, therefore was already assimilated into the culture and for the assigned task, this assimilation was the principle requirement.
Yusuf, after a year of indoctrination, would be sent back home to the United States and join three others as a group of Trojan Horses and live in the Chicago area where he planned to go to school. Only these Trojan Horses would be different from the Trojan horse as told in Virgil’s Latin poem epic, The Aenid. Their goal would not be to capture a city, but rather to destroy a city—and that city was Chicago picked as the next target in the great global religious war. The city, a major rail, air hub and financial center was perfect. Americans would be expecting another attack on New York or Washington, D.C. Yusuf would be one of the avenging angels. He would be welcomed back in his country, but soon after, the Great Satan would know he had returned.
Yusuf and the Imam sat cross-legged on a rug facing each other. They were the only ones in the office, a small 10 by 10 feet room with a circular oriental rug and six pillows. Yusuf’s dark brown eyes stared at his teacher. Behind the Imam, and facing Yusuf, was a small bookcase filled with Pashto language books and the Koran. The Koran, held upright by golden eagle-shaped bookends, stood by itself in the center of one of the shelves at eye level to a seated Yusuf.
Yusuf’s pitch-black beard hid his mouth under the growth and betrayed the fact that he was eighteen years old. His bright eyes shone forth like twin lighthouse beacons from above his beard and from under his turban. He was clothed in a long cloth, mantle and baggy pants. He was ready for prayer.
The Imam, dressed in similar garb, was fifty-five years old. He had a bulbous nose, a black mustache, pointed at the ends, and a long salt-and-pepper beard. His fingers were thin and tapered and they danced in the air as he spoke. When he read from the Koran, his right index finger, never touching the pages, pointed to what he was reading. When he was not quoting or reading from the book, his fingers drummed on the rug. Even when he was not speaking, his hands were in motion. He read every word from the book with a booming voice, each word enunciated with devotion. Normal conversation, not involving the book, was spoken in a quieter voice forcing Yusuf to extreme attentiveness less he might misunderstand the Imam’s words. Several of the Imam’s front teeth chipped as the result of a fall on a mountain climbing expedition, he left as proof that appearance was unimportant in a world where dedication to Allah meant everything. The Imam stared at his pupil and smiled. He knew: Yusuf’s mind and body had been receptive. He was a quick learner.
“If you look at statistics, Yusuf, you would learn that suicide is a rare occurrence in Muslim society.” He choose to speak to his student in perfect English, the birth language of Yusuf’s mother, rather than Pashto, the language, less familiar to Yusuf, of his father, born and reared with the tribes of Northwest Pakistan. “Suicide is a major sin. The Koran says, ‘Do not kill yourself, for if you do you will be cast into the fire and cannot go to paradise.’”
Yusuf did not speak. He continued to stare into the eyes of his Imam. The Imam stared back. “But there is a difference, Yusuf, between suicide and martyrdom.” The Imam paused again. He closed his eyes and raised his arms, his fingers moving in ecstatic motion. “For martyrdom is not suicide, but rather it is a self sacrifice when done for Holy War to please Allah, and he who performs martyrdom in the name of Holy War will win the eternal gratefulness of Allah, and eternal affection from the beautiful maidens in paradise. Plus, and I stress this, you receive eternal knowledge. You will understand the mind of God. You see, Yusuf, when you attack the enemy and die, you strike a blow for Allah and put fear and terror in the hearts of the oppressors. There is no greater homage that can be paid to Allah.”
“Yes,” said Yusuf with quiet passion, his eyes staring into the Imam’s face.
“Our enemies have precision weapons, Yusuf, the so called ‘smart bomb,’ a bomb that can be directed with great accuracy to a target. As good as those are, they are not as precise as our own precision weapon, our own smart bomb, the suicide bomber. Here you’re talking precision in millimeters. What could be more precise than a person dedicated to Allah intent on a target that he or she walks to? Let the great Satan spend the billions on the high-tech armaments. We counter with