“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All those records lost during the transition. Databases infected…I couldn’t find you anywhere. Just another displaced person. Who could blame you for rewriting your own history?”

“I’m a Muslim.”

“A Muslim who risks his life to save Jews? I’ve never met such a creature.”

“Jews and homosexuals, apostates and witches too-I’ve led them all to the promised land. Does that make me Moses?”

“It makes you too good to be true.”

Rakkim ignored it. “Any mention of China on the core? Or the Three Gorges Dam?”

“No, why?”

“How much do I owe you?”

“We’ll settle when I’m done.” Spider’s expression smoothed out. Serene almost. “What did you think of my daughter?”

“Carla? She seemed…” Rakkim laughed. “I wondered why you didn’t just have Elroy bring me here right off. I didn’t need to go to the restaurant. You could have told me everything she did. I’m flattered, Spider, but you didn’t need to run your daughter past for my approval-”

“Your approval?” Spider’s face crinkled with restrained laughter. “I sent you to the restaurant to see if you met with her approval.”

“She can do better.” Rakkim stood up. “Ask Elroy to take me back.” He didn’t need help, but there was no need to advertise it. “Keep working on the core.”

“Shalom, Rakkim.”

“Salaam alaikum.”

CHAPTER 17

Rakkim used the call to prayer to hurry past the No Admittance sign to the upper level of the House of Martyrs War Museum. The uniformed army sergeant at the top of the stairs was busy with his prayer mat-Rakkim stayed at the edges of the guard’s peripheral vision, silently mirroring the man’s posture as he slipped past. Fedayeen training, shadow warrior training, the closest thing to invisibility. Rakkim could walk through a crowd of devout women, barely grazing their chadors, and if questioned afterward, none of them would remember him, they would merely have a fleeting impression of someone urging them forward, a nagging sense that they were late to mosque. He could trudge along with a flood of coal miners in the Bible Belt, part of the conversation and the weariness, until a grimy peckerwood looked around and the man he had been talking to about the price of hogs would be gone. Shadow warrior training.

“In the name of Allah.” The collective whisper…“In the name of Allah.” From the balcony, Rakkim could see the early-morning visitors lined up on their mats below, beginning their ablutions. The air in the museum was purified; according to the grand mufti, believers were not required to perform ritual cleansing with water. Most still followed the proper forms, rubbing their hands, then mouth, nose, face, ears, forehead, head, and feet in the sanctified atmosphere. Finished, they stood in neat rows, hands raised to the level of the face. Men in front. Women behind them. Modesty and subordination, moderns and moderates and fundamentalists, wheels within wheels before Allah. Rakkim watched, calmed by the rhythmic movements of their devotions. Bowing forward from the waist, hands resting on their knees. Prostrate, hands flat, foreheads grazing the mat. Returning to the upright position, to start the process again and again, to finally end seated on their heels.

Unlike the rote prayers at the Super Bowl, the cycles of the believers here were graceful, hands and feet perfectly positioned. Something about the majesty of the War Museum, the somber minimalism of the interior, the wreckage of the shattered Space Needle visible through the windows, made even the moderns cleave to their faith. He listened to the believers reaffirm the power and protection of Allah, their voices echoing in the great hall-“Glory be to our Lord the Most High.”

Rakkim moved on. Redbeard was here already. Rakkim had spotted his advance team about twenty minutes ago-four men dressed as tourists, gawkers with nametags. He had watched them split up, ambling toward the choke points, the narrow areas of the museum where an ambush would be most effective.

Rakkim had barely slept after seeing Spider last night, but Redbeard had insisted on meeting this morning, eager to discuss Rakkim’s progress. You have made progress, haven’t you, Rakkim?

Of course, I have, Uncle, it just depends on what you mean by progress. Rakkim wandered over to the Devil’s Chamber, stepped aside as a mother quickly led her children out. The little boy was weeping. The chamber seemed five or ten degrees colder than the rest of the museum, a darkened room where a wall screen played an endless loop of Richard Aaron Goldberg’s confession. This year would be the twenty-seventh anniversary of his public confession to the Zionist attack. The newspapers and television would run round-the-clock coverage as they did every year on this date, billboards and cell phones flashing 5-19-2015 NEVER FORGET.

Rakkim watched Goldberg on-screen, the man thin and frightened as he sat facing the cameras. The sound was nearly off, but it didn’t matter. Everyone in the country could repeat his confession verbatim.

My name is Richard Aaron Goldberg. Eleven days ago my team simultaneously detonated three nuclear weapons. One destroyed New York City. Another destroyed Washington, D.C., and the third left the city of Mecca a radioactive death trap. Our intention… Goldberg placed a hand on his shaking knee. The plan was for radical Islamists to be blamed. To drive a wedge between the West and Muslims, and to create chaos within the Muslim world itself. I think…I believe we would have succeeded had it not been for some bad luck. He lifted his chin. My name is Richard Aaron Goldberg. My team and I are part of a secret unit of the Mossad.

Rakkim watched the confession again. Then he walked back into the main hall. Spider might believe the bits and pieces he had pulled off Sarah’s flash-memory. Sarah might even believe what she had written. Rakkim didn’t. For Sarah to be right about the Zionist Betrayal meant that Richard Aaron Goldberg and the other confessed Mossad agents were lying their way to a date with the executioner. It meant Richard Aaron Goldberg and the others, born and raised in Israel, had turned against their country and their religion. Nothing was impossible, but Rakkim had just watched the confession the second time ignoring everything being said. Concentrating instead on Goldberg’s posture, his involuntary muscular movements, the look in his eye…the bastard was telling the truth. Sarah was wrong.

There might still be an Old One, some Arab eager to assume the mantle of Mahdi, some sworn enemy of Redbeard. Fine, get in line, Redbeard had plenty of enemies, but the Israelis were solely responsible for nuking New York and D.C. and Mecca. Sarah’s alternative history was wrong, but it didn’t matter. She was still in danger. If Redbeard was losing influence, though, as Spider said, then his ability to protect Sarah was compromised, and the Old One, or some other enemy, was in ascendance. An ominous power shift. Maybe that was the real reason Redbeard had asked for his help.

Rakkim kept walking.

The War Museum was a modest, understated dome built beside the crumpled Space Needle, the old monument lying on its side, rusting in the weather. The exterior of the museum was surfaced with small tiles made by schoolchildren, each one inscribed with the name of a martyred soldier. The interior was sparsely decorated and dimly lit, the walls lined with blue-veined lapis lazuli. Visitors, even the young, found themselves walking slowly, adding to the somber elegance of the site. At the center of the museum rested a simple, Arabic edition of the Qur’an. No bulletproof plastic or nitrogen-rich bubble was necessary to protect it. The book had been recovered from the ruins of Washington, D.C., found surrounded by broken glass and twisted girders. The Qur’an was untouched by the atomic blast, the cover pristine, its pages shiny and white.