With that he heard the sound of crunching boots and five jihadists appeared at the rim of the crater, encircling him. Two of them shouldered their assault rifles and jumped down on either side of his bunched-up body. They dragged him up and, pulling his arms behind his back and unclipping his AK from his padded belt, half dragged him to level ground, whereupon they forced his head down. Straining so as not to show the pain in his leg, Basilios was frogmarched over to the man he now figured was their leader.
Getting within a few paces of the jihadist, Basilios was pushed down onto his knees, as his arms were splayed and pushed up painfully behind him. The pressure on his head increased, so that all he could see was the man’s dirt-stained sandals.
“You people are a plague upon the earth,” the man said.
Basilios heard a distinct sound and knew exactly what had happened: the leader had unsheathed his sword. He couldn’t stop himself from panting, knowing he had been duped. His mother and sisters would be alone in a dangerous world now, but he hoped God would forgive him for what he’d done. Amid his bitterness, he said a silent prayer.
But the strike didn’t come. Instead he felt the sword rest on his shoulder. He risked a glance at it. The blade was still bloodstained. He felt it move under his chin and push upwards, coaxing him to look up. He didn’t consider he had any option but to comply.
“Allah is most Merciful and Compassionate,” the man said. He motioned over his body with his left hand as if he was not quite of this world. “It is not I, His humble servant Ibrahim, who has saved you this night. Remember that, Christian. Now run like a dog. Run. Run.”
With that, the man withdrew the sword, and Basilios glimpsed briefly the faint triangle of scars above the man’s right wrist as his sleeve had ridden up, as if he’d had moles removed there.
Basilios was temporarily stunned. He didn’t know if it was a cruel attempt to extend his torment. Perhaps I will be cut down as I stand up or shot in the back as I head for the drainage ditch? he thought. But he knew he didn’t have a choice. As the congealed blood-soaked blade was lifted from his shoulder, he raised himself up in as dignified a fashion as possible, given his wounded leg and escalating uncertainty. He turned without looking at the leader and hobbled towards the ditch.
But he didn’t suffer any further humiliation. In fact, the men seemed to show him a grudging respect, nodding slightly and waving their hands in gestures of encouragement. He had survived.
When Basilios was some twenty yards away, the man who’d called himself Ibrahim handed the sword to a subordinate, who had stepped over to him for that purpose.
“Take it home for me, brother,” Ibrahim said, but hesitated.
He always hesitated at this point. To him, the weapon, steeped as it was in centuries of sacred warfare, possessed its own consciousness, and sometimes he thought it seemed to pulsate with the burden of it.
“Take good care of it.”
The man nodded.
Ibrahim’s potentially hazardous journey back to the Palestinian territories would not allow him the luxury of carrying his sword, but his select men would go via the tunnels in north-west Egypt, masquerading en route as opportunistic antique dealers before being smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
The other men took out their cellphones and started to take further videos and photos of the decimated town, which they would post on their burgeoning social media sites. The rationale was principally twofold: to recruit foreign jihadists and create fear in their enemies. It had been an effective digital strategy here, and particularly so in neighbouring Iraq.
Ibrahim had his eyes closed now and began reciting verses from the Qur’an, quietly, holding his hands crossed at his chest. Ibrahim’s Shia enemies prayed with their hands dangling by their sides, like apes, his imam had told him years ago. But the Christians didn’t even recognize the Prophet, peace be upon him. Killing them had been God’s will, he believed.
As for the release of the sole survivor of their attack on the town, that wretch would simply ensure that his own reputation as a ruthless commander would spread, adding to his already growing kudos. If these things hadn’t been a factor, he would have killed the Christian when he’d been forced to kneel before him.
He felt whole here, able to play out the purist doctrines of his religion, as he saw it. But the old one, the Amir, had called for him. People had told him it would be so, and then his real mission would begin in earnest. A great mission, Ibrahim thought, the Silent Jihad. And after the brief detour he’d decided to make to Ankara, Turkey, he would devote what little time he’d consented to have left on this earth to it.
The dry wind picked up, bringing with it the stinging sand grains, which clogged up engines and weapons, and swelled the eyes. He wrapped the ends of his black headdress over his mouth and nose. The aroma of lime grooves and climbing jasmine shrubs had left this place. They may never return, he thought. There was nothing but the dank odour of his unwashed sweat and the familiar scent of death.
“A plague is coming,” he whispered in Arabic, “a plague to wipe out a plague.”
Six Days Later
A heat haze rose above Ankara’s melting tarmac, the capital of Turkey experiencing its hottest summer in twenty years. Western tourists strolling around the historical centre of the city, situated upon a rock-strewn hill, stayed in the shade, their reddened skin pressed close to the battlements of the ancient citadel. If a breeze could have been bought with hard cash, there would’ve been a lot of takers. Even the fine-boned Angora cats hid in alleys under concrete overhangs, their feral nature drained by the fierce midday sun.
A little under a mile away in an inconspicuous office building with a bare concrete facade, the general, Tom’s father, was sitting on a padded chair in front of a chipped mahogany desk. He was wearing dark blue slacks and a white, open-necked shirt. His hair was turning from sandy to grey, but his waistline remained lean due to a mixture of jogging and a healthy diet. Although the room had functioning AC, beads of sweat formed on his furrowed forehead and rolled down his back. He thought it was just bad luck that it was so damned hot.
The Turk behind the desk was called Hassam Habib. He appeared to be too young to be taken seriously in intelligence circles. Mid-thirties at most, the general thought, his crow-black hair and eyebrows so immaculate that he looked as if he’d just had a makeover. He was a handsome man, with prominent cheekbones, a thin high-ridged nose and eyes as unblemished as shellfish flesh. He was an analyst in MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization. And he was looking as if he’d found himself in the wrong job.
The general knew the Turks had their problems, as every independent state did. The country was desperate to join the EU, for economic reasons, but they just couldn’t get to grips with the necessity for human rights and political expediency. And just as the threat of terrorism from the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was abating, they had to deal with the fallout from the Sunni-Shia conflict.
It was no longer confined to the Middle East and was taking hold in Turkey, too, fuelled by disgruntled Shia refugees from Syria, people who didn’t take too kindly to the Sunni Turkish president’s call for the downfall of the Assad regime. Then there were the Alevi, followers of a Muslim sect that made up twenty-five per cent of Turkey’s population. As a result of increasing sectarian violence against them, they were rioting on the streets and calling for independence. Habib had a right to look a little stressed, the general thought.
After they’d finished some small talk, the wooden office door creaked opened and a rotund middle-aged woman in a stained white dress, that seemed two sizes too small, walked in carrying a tray inlaid with brass.