WRATH & RIGHTEOUSNESS

[Episode One]

CHRIS STEWART

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used factiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locals or persona, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Original Edition © The Shipley Group Inc. (Published by Deseret Book Company) Condensed Edition © 2012 The Shipley Group Inc. (Published by Mercury Radio Arts, Inc. under license from Deseret Book Company)

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Cover design by Richard Yoo

ISBN: 978-0-9854619-0-4 (eBook)

And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

2 Corinthians 3:17

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning!

Isaiah 14:12

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Coming In Episode Two...

Prologue

In war there are no unwounded soldiers.

José Narosky

It was calm. Peaceful and sweet. Like that brief moment in the morning before waking and thoughts settle in, before the dim light filters through and the morning winds blow. It was the calm of nature, a peace that man cannot produce, like the silent roll of dark clouds before the coming storm or the calm of glassy water before the first raindrops fall. The peace seemed to come from above and below, from the sky and the ground, as if the Earth itself paused as it took a long deep breath.

It was the last peace, the great peace, the deep breath before the storm. The Golden Age was closing and the heavens paused and waited for the long plunge ahead.

Some people saw it coming.

But they were few.

Arlington National Cemetery—New Annex

(Formerly Alexandria National Cemetery)

Alexandria, Virginia

It had rained all night, thunderclouds rolling in from the Blue Ridge Mountains, the dark clouds boiling with power as they met the moisture from the sea. Lightning and heavy rain pounded the night, then suddenly stopped as daylight drew near. The first line of storms moved off to the Chesapeake Bay and lingered over the sea, caught between the rising sun and the musky coastline behind. But the rain wasn’t over. What was already the wettest spring in a century had much more to give.

The day dawned cold and dreary. Another band of dark clouds gathered in the morning light, moving in from the west, blowing over the hill that loomed on the horizon. Heavy mist hung in the air until the weak morning breeze finally carried it away.

The grass around the freshly dug grave was wet and long, with tiny drops of moisture glistening from the tips of each blade. The pile of dirt next to the grave was dark and rich, loamy with many years of rotting vegetation and now soaked and wet. A patch of Astroturf had been placed over the pile of dirt and pinned down on the corners to keep it from flapping in the wind. A sad arrangement of plastic roses and baby’s breath set atop the Astroturf.

Only recently had Alexandria been designated as the annex to Arlington National Cemetery, which had been destroyed. Although smaller, it was just as beautiful, nestled on the west side of the Potomac River. But like the rest of Washington, D.C., it had been destroyed, too. Rows of elms and oaks stood over the graves, but the trees’ bark facing north were burned, and soon the trees would die.

Within the confines of the cemetery, the world was peaceful and quiet. Indeed, the cemetery appeared much like it would have a few months before. But outside the cemetery gates, there was appalling evidence of how the world had been thrown on its back.

Underneath the heavy clouds, the sky was heavy from the dust and ash that had been kicked into the air. Above the clouds, there was a layer that blocked out much of the sun and turned the moon blood red. Every night was ablaze with the aurora borealis, sheets of green and blue that, for the first time in history, reached as far south as the tropics. Outside the cemetery gates, there were a few people walking—even a man on a horse—but no operating motor vehicles could be seen anywhere. The roads were littered with cars, buses and trucks that had not moved since the moment of the event, all of them remaining where they had rolled to a stop, their metal carcasses cluttering both sides of the streets. In the skies above the cemetery, no aircraft could be seen descending toward Reagan National Airport. Indeed, all across the nation, there was no air traffic at all. And that was not the only modernity that was no more. Postal service, banks, electricity, communications, refrigeration, modern travel . . . the list of things that had disappeared was very long.

In the median that separated the highway, a desperate group of people who now called themselves a tribe was working the ground with a plow that had been improvised from a sheet of metal and piece of rope. Two men pulled while another man guided the makeshift device. It was slow and painful work, and barely suitable, for the plow barely turned the earth. But they were desperate to till the ground in any way they could. If they didn’t plow, they couldn’t plant the few seeds they had been given by their benefactor—a foreign government. If they didn’t plant, they didn’t harvest, and if they didn’t harvest, they didn’t eat.

The world was back to the 1880s.

It was not a good place to be.

*******

The six-man color guard waited by the grave. Their uniforms were so crisp they almost cracked as the men moved. Their polished boots reflected the gray light from the sky. The sergeant in charge stood in front of his men, giving them one final inspection before the mourners appeared. “Gig line!” he hissed to a junior non-commissioned officer. He glanced at his chest and aligned the buttons on his shirt with the zipper cover on his pants. “Cover,” the sergeant whispered as he moved down the line. A young corporal adjusted his headgear, pulling it down uncomfortably over his eyes. Satisfied, the sergeant moved to the end of the line, put himself into position, then glanced at his watch. It was 2:56 p.m. The service was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. It would begin exactly on time, of course. Perfection was the standard when it came to paying respect to their dead.

The sergeant heard the soft clip-clop of hooves coming up the narrow strip of asphalt that wound through the National Cemetery. Glancing to his right, he saw a single mare, old but proud, her dark mane perfectly curried and braided to the right. She emerged from around a tight bend in the road, drawing a small carriage behind her. Black and shiny, with wooden wheels and a leather harness, the carriage carried a single bronze casket on its sideless bed. Seeing the casket, the sergeant took a deep breath and straightened himself. “Ten-HUT!” he whispered powerful from deep in his chest. His soldiers drew themselves straight, their shoulders square, their chins tight, their hands fists. They looked straight ahead, their faces without expression as they stared at some unknown object on the distant horizon.

As the funeral procession approached, the sergeant placed his right foot exactly behind his left foot, his right toe pointing down, barely touching his left heel, and turned right with perfect mechanical precision. He faced the approaching wagon, staring at the metal casket so as to never make eye contact with the mourners who followed. The dark horse walked with high steps, her flanks glistening with sweat.

As the wagon drew close, the sergeant felt his heart quicken. This one was special and he wanted the funeral ceremony done right.

The wagon passed by a huge oak tree and he caught a better glimpse of the casket, a dark bronze box draped in an American flag. Atop the flag, an enormous ring of flowers, freshly cut and beautifully arranged, had been placed over the center of the casket.

Twenty-four roses. Twelve red and twelve white.

White roses for virtue. Red roses for blood.

Seeing the flowers, the sergeant had to swallow against the catch in his throat. Although he felt a severe sense of pride in each funeral ceremony that he participated in, he knew this dead soldier’s story and he felt unprepared for the emotion he suddenly felt welling inside.

Next to the roses, glistening in the humid air, a copper medallion with a blue ribbon had been carefully draped over the stars on the flag. For the first time in his life, the sergeant saw the Congressional Medal of Honor, the most sacred tribute a nation could bestow upon a man. Ten thousand soldiers could die in battle and not one of them would earn the privilege of receiving this award. It was rare, it was sacred, and too often it was given posthumously.

The sergeant’s color guard stood stone still as the funeral procession approached, the mourners following the carriage as it moved toward the grave. And though the sergeant didn’t focus on the family, he couldn’t help but see her out of the corner of his eye.

She was small, maybe six or seven years old, with blond hair, slender arms and pale eyes. She glanced around anxiously, bewildered, fear and pain bleeding through the tight look in her face. Her mother walked beside her, a perfect reflection of the child: blonde hair, dark features and blue eyes. She was tall, slender and dressed in a simple white dress. No dark colors, the sergeant noticed—no black dress or mourning veil. And there was something strong and wonderful about her. Even in their sadness, the mother and daughter were beautiful.

The child approached the grave like it was a terrible monster, a dark gaping passage leading into the next world. Thunder broke and rolled through the trees. Deep, sad, and somber, the sound echoing across the wet ground as another thunderclap rolled and slowly faded.

A cold breeze blew at the sergeant’s neck, raising the hair on his arms. “Please,” he prayed, “give this family twenty minutes before You let Your rains fall.”

With a flash of lightning, another thunderclap rolled across the rolling hills. But the rains didn’t fall.

The sergeant had performed a hundred ceremonies over the past eleven months; indeed, this was the third funeral ceremony he had presided over on this day. But as he watched the black wagon and proud horse, as he saw the small child grasping her mother’s hand and the Congressional Medal of Honor over the flag, he couldn’t stop the emotion boiling up inside him. A single, salty teardrop rolled down his cheek to settle on his jaw before slowly sliding down his neck.

Too many funerals. Too many good men. Too many young children and too many wives.

White roses for virtue. Red roses for blood.

The family approached, stepping across the wet grass while staring into the darkness of the open grave. An army chaplain reached out and took the mother by the hand to direct her to a set of wicker chairs. The mother and child sat down carefully, the young girl gripping her mother’s hand as if she was holding onto life. A crown of white flowers had been braided through her hair and she tugged at them gently to keep them in place.

The funeral procession formed a half circle on one side of the grave. The deceased soldier’s parents stared solemnly at the casket. A man reached down and placed his hand on the widow’s shoulder, and she leaned her face against his hand. Six generals watched and waited. To their right, two army captains stood in their dress uniforms, a shadow on their faces that seemed to age them somehow. A young woman with dark skin and long hair waited behind the others. A foreigner, Middle Eastern maybe, she was one of the most beautiful women the sergeant had ever seen. A small boy stood beside her; dark-haired, olive skin, darting eyes. Behind him, at least a dozen bodyguards blended among the heavy trees, all of them keeping a careful eye upon their charge. The young boy glanced quickly at the little girl, then lowered his eyes to the dirt, his face clouded with shame. One of the young officers noticed his reaction. He knelt down and whispered to him but the little boy didn’t respond.

The chaplain nodded to the color guard leader and the sergeant commanded under his breath, “Element, post!” The six men moved forward in perfect step toward the carriage, three on each side. Without verbal commands, the men reached out, took the casket by the metal handles and lifted together. The casket was light, for it was nearly empty. The men turned crisply, carried the flag-draped casket forward and placed it over the nylon straps that had been stretched across the grave, and then stepped out of the way. The chaplain leaned over, whispered a few words to the widow, and then stood.

In that brief moment of quiet, one of the young army officers took a short step toward the casket. Looking around bashfully, he knelt and placed his hand on the flag. “You are my brother,” he whispered through his tears. “I will love you forever. And none of us will forget . . . .” His voice trailed off. “We will always remember what you did for us . . . what you did for them.” He knelt there a moment, his forehead touching the flag, then forced himself to stand and walk back.

The young mother reached out as he passed. He touched her hand with his fingers before stepping back in place.

Everyone fell quiet as they waited for the service to begin.

The chaplain straightened his uniform before he offered his final words. He spoke of simple things—duty, honor, bravery, truth, the obligations that came with freedom and the price that had been paid to keep people free. Then he nodded to the young widow and lowered his voice. “In a moment such as this, there is little comfort I can give you,” he said. “Indeed, were I to say too much, my words might only diminish your loss. Only time and the Lord can ease you of this pain. But though I don’t have the answers, this much I believe. All men will die. All of us will be called upon to pass on to the other side. But only a few special men are given the honor of dying for a cause.

“In this life, especially in these trying times, all of us will be called upon to make a sacrifice. When, or in what manner that sacrifice may be required, only God knows. All we can do is wait and prepare and pray that when our time comes, we will be ready to complete the task He gives us. All we can hope is that when our sacrifice is over, we might look to the Lord and say the same words that He said: ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.’”

The chaplain paused and looked again at the widow. “I am so grateful there are still men like your husband in this world,” he said in a low voice. “He fought for the freedom of others. That is why we fight wars. We don’t conquer other nations; we don’t occupy other lands. Indeed, the only foreign soil our nation has ever claimed have been tiny spots such as this where we seek a quiet pasture to bury our dead.

“So I speak for a thankful nation when I tell you that we are not only grateful to your husband, we are also grateful to you. We are grateful for your sacrifice and the price that you and your daughter have paid. Your sacrifice is sufficient. Your husband is now home. And I pray the Lord will bless you until you are together again.”

With that, the chaplain took a step back and nodded to the color guard. Two of the soldiers stepped to the casket and lifted the American flag. Another sergeant marched to the side of the dark oak and watched over the grave. The sergeant lifted a silver bugle and began to play.

“Day is done, gone the sun,

From the hills, from the lake,

From the sky. . . .”

The sound of “Taps” was low and mournful and it trailed through the trees and across the wet grass, melting over the graves of the American dead. As the bugler played, the two solders reverently folded the American flag into a perfect triangle, tight and firm. The junior non-commissioned officer held the folded flag, clutching it with crossed arms at his chest. The sergeant took two steps back and stood at rigid attention, then quickly drew his fist from his thigh and up across his chest, extending his fingers as his hand crossed his heart, then moving upward until his finger touched the tip of his brow. He held the salute, the last salute, for a very long time, then slowly, almost unwillingly, lowered his hand.

Stepping forward, he took the flag from the junior non-commissioned officer, then turned crisply to the young wife. “On behalf of a grateful nation,” he whispered as he handed her the flag.

She reached out and took it, placing it on her lap. The soldier passed her the Congressional Medal of Honor, and she clutched it in her hand. Then the soldiers turned together and moved to the side. The bugle faded away and the silence returned.

And with that it was over. The service was done.

At least it should have been. But no one moved, for it seemed as if there was something left unsaid. Every eye turned to the widow and her child. The young mother glanced down at the little girl and nodded. The mother smiled encouragingly and the little girl stood, moved slowly to the casket then turned hesitantly to her mother, who nodded again. The crowd waited in breathless silence. It seemed as if even the Earth held its breath.

The little girl stood for a moment, and the clouds seemed to part. The wind turned suddenly calm and the thunderclouds paused. The girl placed her hand on the casket, then lifted her head. “Daddy, I want to tell you something,” she said in a quivering voice. “I want you to know that I’m going to take care of mommy, just like you asked me to do. I will make her cakes for her birthdays, just like I promised that I would.” Her voice trailed off and she quickly looked away then turned back to the casket again. “I love you, Daddy. I want to believe the things you told me. But daddy, I’m scared. I miss you, I miss you! And there’s so much I don’t understand . . . .”

She fell silent, lowering her head in frustration then closed her eyes. Crossing her arms, she held herself as if in an embrace. No one spoke. No one moved. There was a reverence in the moment that no one dared to break.

How much time passed, no one knew, but the little girl eventually lifted her head. And when she did, something had changed. Something was very different. Her face was calm and peaceful. For the first time in months, her eyes were bright and clear.

Her mother pulled her close.

Then the little girl broke into a smile.

*******

Behind the thick veil that separated the natural and the supernatural worlds, other souls observed the funeral scene from the shadows of the trees. They were the dark and evil spirits the mortals never saw but often felt.

As had been the case since the beginning of man, these dark ones watched and listened, they studied and they plotted, their evil wafting like a heavy stench upon the world. And their power—Satan’s power—was growing, their devastation having already brought the world to its knees.

A lean-faced spirit named Balaam stood among the unseen crowd. One of the darkest of the evil spirits, he was aggressive and mean. But despite his aggression, he was also insecure, for he had failed his master a few too many times before. Now, he only thirsted for more. More blackness. More evil. He was never satisfied.

As the group of evil spirits looked upon the little girl, seeing her courage and her smile, as they looked out on the strength of her mother and the bravery of the soldiers who stood so near, the dark and evil swarm could not hold back their pain and fear.

Together, they let out a scream of hate so clear it echoed across the wet grass into the very bowels of hell.

Balaam howled loudest among them, for he hated what the mourners represented the most.

ONE

Eighteen Years Before

Prince Abdullah al-Rahman lay slightly inebriated on a beach on the southern tip of France. Behind him, the La Villa de Ambassador II rose above the shoreline, one of the finest resorts on the Mediterranean coast. The water was clear and a perfect blue sky shone overhead. Cyprus trees swayed in rhythm with the wind and the sand was so even it looked as if it had been raked. The grass above the beach was perfectly manicured, the air was clean and the water sparkled with a million diamonds from the Mediterranean sun. Behind him, on the other side of the wrought iron security gates that surrounded the Ambassador II, the beautiful resort towns of Monte Carlo and Nice lay equidistant, one city to the east, the other to the west. It was late afternoon as Prince al-Rahman sat alone on the sand, staring out at the sea.

Prince al-Rahman and his entourage had leased the entire La Villa de Ambassador II for the week; all 225 rooms, three gourmet restaurants, spa, golf course and private beach. For the next seven days it all belonged to him and his group of 97: bodyguards, concubines, wives and friends. Al-Rahman and his family had come to France to shop and get away from the desert heat, which meant that in addition to the cost of the resort, one of his wives had transferred several million dollars into their petty cash account.

But Al-Rahman wasn’t interested in shopping. He had other things on his mind.

At twenty-five, the prince was young and trim, with a finely sculpted face and almost European features, thanks to his mother, an Italian beauty herself. He had a fine nose and strong eyes over thick lips. And unlike most Arabs, the prince didn’t consider facial hair an indication of his manhood or his devotion to Allah, so he kept his face clean, his beard never more than three or four days old.

One of the wealthiest men in the world, Prince al-Rahman was the second oldest son to King Faysal bin Saud Aziz, monarch of the House of Saud, grandson of King Saud Aziz, the first king of modern-day Saudi Arabia. As a royal prince in the kingdom that held the largest oil reserves in the world, he and his family were unbelievably wealthy. There was no whim or desire, no pleasure or need that the prince could ask for and not have it given to him; and along with his wealth, the royal prince held the reins to great power, for the world economy revolved around oil and the politics of oil revolved around the Saudi Arabia peninsula.

Yet despite all his power and wealth, the prince was unsatisfied and always wanted more. It was as if he had an insatiable hunger, an unquenchable thirst. Like a starving man in the desert who was forced to eat sand, no matter how much he ate it did not satiate what he craved.

And now, what he had been given was going to be taken from him! His idiot father was going to pack up the kingdom and give it away. In the name of democracy, a completely foreign concept in this part of the world, his idiot father, King Faysal bin Saud Aziz, was going to destroy everything his ancestors had worked for in almost 300 years. He was going to give up the kingdom and institute a democratic regime.

All of it gone, in one generation, destroyed! Like a wisp of black smoke, his family’s wealth would disappear.

He had to put a stop to it!

But how? What to do? The prince was completely distraught.

Then he thought of his older brother, the Crown Prince, and his blood boiled even more. Could he trust him? Would he support him? He really didn’t know.

He cursed violently as the bitter rage grew inside him, a hot, burning furnace of equal hate for his father and lust for what he might lose. If it were not for his father . . . if al-Rahman had played his cards right he might have been king one day.

But his father wouldn’t let him.

He was going to give the kingdom away!

The prince pushed his hands through the sand as he sipped at his beer. He was frustrated and angry, more so than he had ever felt in his life. The day before, as he was preparing to leave for France, the prince had fought with his father, a bitter argument that had turned so angry three of the king’s bodyguards had been forced to step between the two men. And though the prince had argued and pleaded until he was blue in the face, his father hadn’t listened, but instead cut him off.

“Leave me, Abdullah!” his father had screamed in a rage. “Leave me right now and never speak of this again! I do not have to justify my decision to you. Now go and forget it. I will not discuss it again!”

And so it was that al-Rahman found himself on the beach, fuming, his dark heart growing cold, his mind constantly racing, trying to develop a plan. His father was a fool. No, he was worse than that, he was selfish and stupid, a conceited old man! He cared not a whit for his children! He was a slithering fool, a spider in the corner, a poisonous snake in the grass.

The sun moved toward the sea as al-Rahman raged, leaving a blood-red horizon above the hazy waterline where the prince sipped his beer and kicked at the warm sand.

Then he looked up and saw a withered old man. Al-Rahman had not heard him approach, and he stared up in surprise. Cursing angrily, he pushed himself to his feet. He looked around for his bodyguards, but they were nowhere in sight. The old man stared at him and grinned. “How are you Prince al-Rahman?” he asked in heavily accented English. His voice was weak and raspy, and he smelled of cigar smoke and dry breath.

The prince glared with contempt. “Who are you?” he demanded in a sour tone.

The man smiled weakly. He looked old and decrepit; fine white hair and large teeth were his predominate features, but he moved quickly and with an energy that belied his small frame. His eyes seemed to glow yellow from some inner furnace and al-Rahman wondered quickly how old the man was? He could have been 60 or 100, it was hard to say, for his face was blotched with liver spots but his eyes were young and intense. And though his face seemed ageless, he flashed a fast smile, his white teeth jutting brightly underneath a bony nose.

The old man pointed a slender hand to the east. “Your father is a fool,” he said without introduction.

Al-Rahman glared but didn’t answer. The old man waited, then ran a withered finger across his lips, wiping away a line of dried spit.

“Speak not evil of my father!” al-Rahman sneered angrily.

The old man scoffed, looked away, then glanced down the beach. “Al-Rahman, please, don’t play the loyal son with me. There’s no need to impress me. I know what’s in your heart, and I don’t have the time or inclination for role-playing right now. We need to focus on our enemies, those we both need to bring down.”

Al-Rahman shook his head uncertainly, then shot a quick look back at the resort. Three men stood at the top of the trail leading from the beach to the pool. Large men. Caucasian. Determined. Dark glasses and dark suit coats to hide their sidearms. None of the faces were familiar and he swore to himself. It was suddenly very quiet, as if the sound of the street traffic on the other side of the hotel had stopped. He glanced east, down the beach to a line of low trees and saw another stranger standing in shorts and an oversized shirt. An enormous beach towel was draped over his shoulders and al-Rahman knew where his pistol was concealed. Behind him, in the distance, barely a bird on the horizon, a gray helicopter hovered above the coastline.

He glanced left and right, feeling naked, his gut tied in knots and his underarms sweating. For the first time in his life, he knew he was alone.

Where had his men gone? Cowards! He would have them shot!

Al-Rahman glared at the stranger, then nodded toward the hotel. “Who are they?” he demanded.

The old man looked up and hesitated, as if he didn’t know.

Al-Rahman growled, “Come on, old man, tell me!”

The old man glanced at the bodyguards. “They work for me. That’s all you need to know.”

“Where are my people?”

“It seems they have left.”

Prince al-Rahman shook his head in disbelief. Could it be true? He will have them shot! The old man watched him, then reached down and adjusted his loose T-shirt, pulling it down over his bony hips. “Don’t blame your men,” he said softly. “They did their best. My people are better, that’s all.”

Al-Rahman felt the panic rising, a knot of fear growing tight in his throat. His eyes darted up and down the beach, thinking of how he might escape. Another man appeared near the tree line. Al-Rahman looked in the other direction where a small schooner had planted itself on the beach. The two men who worked the small anchor kept a focused eye on the intruder.

His mind began racing. Was this a kidnapping? A murder? One of his rival cousins? He swore and looked down at the sand, then glared at the old man.

The stranger read the look on his face. “No harm, no foul,” he said calmly. “You are not in danger. Your men are not far away. So relax and forgive me, but I wanted to speak with you alone.”

“Who are you?” al-Rahman demanded. “What do you want?”

The old man smiled, then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a stick of chewing gum. He unwrapped it quickly and dropped the blue wrapper on the sand. “I want the same thing as you do,” he answered simply.

“How do you know what I want?”

The man smiled again, his glowing yellow eyes burning bright. “I know the hearts of most men. I know how they think and I know how they feel. I know what they desire and what they are willing to do. That’s what I know. And that’s what I know about you.”

Al-Rahman was quiet as the fear began to subside in his heart. He glanced past the old man. “How did you get past my bodyguards?” he asked. The old man dismissed the question, but waved a bony finger in front of his chest. “We need the royal family to hold on to power,” he said. “Your father, the monarch, must not go through with his plans. The last thing we need is another democracy in the Middle East. I’d say the filthy Jews are enough, don’t you agree?”

Al-Rahman certainly did, but he still didn’t answer, and the old man wet his dry lips again. “Your father will ruin everything unless we stop him,” he said.

Al-Rahman snorted in disgust. “My father is a fool,” he answered bitterly.

“No! You are wrong. You might as well say the sun comes up in the west as to call your father a fool. The king is a visionary! The most dangerous kind. But he is no fool, I promise, and until you understand that you will be useless to me.”

Al-Rahman stood silent. He wouldn’t quibble over words. Fool. Visionary. “Whatever,” he said.

The old man studied the prince, knowing he had not understood, but he also saw the fire of hatred and that was enough. “Your father isn’t the only enemy you have, Prince al-Rahman!” he continued. “You have more enemies than you know of, and I’m not talking about jealous brothers, bitter cousins or betrayed friends. I’m not talking about any man in the kingdom who could do you harm. I’m talking about the only real enemy you have, the only real force that could take from both of us what we most desire in this life.”

Al-Rahman stared at him. “What are you talking about?” he answered bitterly. Al-Rahman always spoke sharply—being raised as a prince made one prone to be rude—but his tone had changed now. His voice was soft and clearly interested.

“We can change things,” was all the old man said.

Simple words. Certainly not threatening. No indication of menace or obvious harm. But something inside the young prince trembled. We can change things. Yes, that was something he would like to see!

The prince thought a long moment, then pushed the trembling feeling aside. “Who are you?” he demanded in a demeaning sneer. “Who are you, old man, and what can you do?”

The man cocked his head toward his left shoulder. “Oh a few things,” he offered simply. “Like, I don’t know. For example, we caused the American invasion of Iraq. OK, I overstated. We didn’t cause it, at least not literally, but we certainly facilitated the natural progression of events. That’s no big thing, I suppose. Nothing, except for what did it lead to? Twenty trillion dollars of economic contraction. Governments toppled. Governments on the edge. People rethinking their expectations for the next entire generation. A reordering of the security relationship between citizens and governments all over the world. The U.S. government is certainly among those who have been affected, taking advantage of the crisis to reorder things, at least as much as they could, with the men that were in place.”

He paused, glancing toward al-Rahman. “Not bad, for a first step.” His voice was sarcastic and disdainful. “And we could do it again. In fact, there’s a chance that we will.”

Al-Rahman turned away when the old man looked at him.

“As to who we are,” the old one concluded, his dry spit bridging a white line between his lips. “Look where all the money goes today. Trillions of U.S. dollars being moved here and there. I know, I know, the saying is trite and overly simplified, but in this case it is at least partly true. Follow the money, and the power. That will tell you who we are.”

The prince didn’t move, the stiff breeze blowing back his hair. Although the fading sun shone upon him, he trembled again.

The old man turned to stare out on the water. “Now, do you want me to show you how to stop your old man?” he asked

Al-Rahman glanced around him, then was silent again.

The old man nodded. “Yes, I thought that you might. Now quickly. Come with me to the airport and I will show you a few things you need to know.”

*******

A short flight later, the two men sat in a rented car parked on a side street, half a block from the American Embassy in Paris. It was dark and warm, and the Parisian streets were busy around them. Cement barricades blocked the street twenty yards in front of their black Mercedes-Benz SUV, and a contingent of gendarmes guarded the security booth near the barricades.

Prince al-Rahman shifted nervously in the back seat of the Mercedes Benz. A driver and another bodyguard sat in the front, but a dark, bulletproof glass separated the front and back seats. The old man sat beside him. Al-Rahman still did not yet know his name. The old man glanced at his watch, then began to explain. “The American ambassador is hosting a reception for the Saudi OPEC delegation,” he said. “You probably know that. It has been in the news. The public explanation for the reception is to strengthen the American ties to the lead OPEC nation, but the real reason for the meeting goes far beyond that.”

The prince shot a look toward his new friend. “What else?” he asked.

The old man shifted, moving himself forward in the seat. “The U.S. secretary of state will be at the meeting. They will sign a document that will guarantee the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not reduce its output of oil for at least the next five years. It will also guarantee Saudi Arabia will exert its influence to ensure that none of the other OPEC nations will reduce their production as well. In exchange, the U.S. military will reassign the First Marine Expeditionary Force to the military base outside Dhahran. See, your father, King Faysal, knows the transition to democracy may be difficult at times and having a U.S. military presence established again in the kingdom will likely reduce the threat of bloodshed and instability. So everyone gets what they want. The United States secures its desperate need for oil as well as a reestablished military presence in Saudi Arabia, and the king gets the stabilizing influence of U.S. forces for the next twenty years. That is the essence of the secret deal that will be signed here tonight. No one will ever know.”

Al-Rahman nodded gravely. He had already heard rumors and he wasn’t completely surprised.

The two men were silent and the night grew darker around them. The old man reached to the console between them and pulled out a package of cigarettes and lit up, the orange-yellow glow illuminating his scrawny face. He offered one to al-Rahman, who took it and lit up with his own silver lighter. The old man pointed to one of the gendarmes who stood near the cement barricades. “Do you see the young sergeant there?” he asked. “The one in the black hat?”

Al-Rahman moved forward on his seat and nodded.

“He has twenty pounds of plastic explosive strapped up and down his legs,” the old man explained.

Al-Rahman grunted. He didn’t believe it. The old man stared at him, reading the dull expression on his face. “You have a question?” he asked.

Al-Rahman grunted again. “Your guy does not have any explosives on him,” he said.

The old man looked hurt. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

Al-Rahman pointed to two guards with German shepherds standing at the barricade. “Sniff dogs. If your guy had explosives, they would be going crazy right now.”

“Hmmm, of course you’re right. But you see, Prince al-Rahman, earlier this evening the dogs were exposed to a 50 parts per million whiff of hydrogen sulfide, a strong enough dose to destroy their olfactory abilities for the next ten days or so. Truth is, you could throw those dogs a stick of dynamite and they would happily retrieve it and drop it at your feet. Those dogs couldn’t smell a skunk if it climbed on their faces and rolled on their noses.”

The old man took another drag then continued, “In five minutes, at exactly 9:15 p.m., the young sergeant, our man in the black hat, is going to walk toward the embassy and talk to the canine guards at the door. He will be cleared to enter the embassy to use the restroom, but he will have to use the service entrance on the south side of the building. It will take him just more than three minutes to get inside. Once inside the building, he will make his way through the kitchen, toward the service elevator. The reception for the OPEC delegation is being held on the second floor, just above the main reception hall. He can get to the main hallway from the service elevator. Once he is in the main reception hall, he will detonate the plastic explosives that are strapped to his legs. Most of the east side of the building will come down in a grand fireball.” The old man spoke as calmly as if he were announcing the future demise of rats. “We estimate forty or fifty casualties,” he concluded. “Most of them will be Americans, but there will be many Saudis as well.”

Al-Rahman turned toward him, his face stretched in surprise. “You’re going to kill them!” he cried.

“No, al-Rahman. You’re going to kill them. The decision is yours,” The old man answered calmly.

Al-Rahman shifted, his eyes wide with sickness and fear. “But why? What is the purpose? What do you hope to do?”

“Our only purpose, Prince al-Rahman, is to test you. We want to know who you are. We want to know what you value and how far you will go. That is the only reason we’re here. Now we have chosen to strike the Americans, but that hardly matters to us right now or at least in this case. Our only purpose in this exercise is to see if you will go along with us and find out who you really are.”

“But,” al-Rahman stammered, “if you kill the U.S. secretary of state . . . .”

“Relax,” the old man answered as he pulled another drag on his smoke. “The secretary of state isn’t scheduled to appear for another hour or so. He’s not a target. This is just our little test.”

Al-Rahman gasped, his heart slamming in his chest. “I don’t understand,” he sputtered.

“Oh come on, al-Rahman, it’s not that difficult. Say the word, say one simple word, and the entire operation is called off. One word from you and poof, not a thing happens here. Say the word and that’s it, we call the entire thing off. You and I say goodbye. You’ll never see me again. I drop you off at a private airport where one of our executive jets is waiting to fly you back to the beach. You forget me. I forget you. This whole things becomes a strange dream, nothing more. Just say the word and you save the lives of your countrymen and some American civilians as well.

“But if you decide you want to join us, if you decide you want us to show you how to hold onto power, then don’t say anything and at 9:21 p.m., fifty people will die, many of them Saudis, your countrymen, even friends. Many more will be injured, but I can’t say how many for sure.”

Al-Rahman remained silent, his heart slamming his chest in shock and fear. “I don’t believe it,” he stammered.

The old man studied him by the glow of the street lights. “Have you ever seen the result of a suicide bomber?” he asked.

Al-Rahman shook his head.

“Hard to explain what it looks like. Bloody . . . really bloody . . . a horrible mess. Pieces of bodies, bowels, heads, and ears. I’ve seen the face of a child lying on the street. No head, no bone, just the face, as if it had been surgically removed from the skull. I’ve seen dead hands reaching for something that was no longer there. Teeth and burned toes scattered on the sidewalk. And the smell, oh the smell! Burning flesh and charred hair! Smoldering bones is a smell that you will never forget!”

Silence for a moment.

“Everyone who dies here will be innocent,” the old man then observed in a suddenly sympathetic voice.

Al-Rahman stared at his hands.

The old man looked at his watch, then looked harshly at al-Rahman. “You’ve got to decide,” he commanded. “What are you going to do? Join us, and we help you. I can guarantee you power. Join us and I promise you will be the next king. Or say no and we forget it. We call off the mission and just drive away.”

“I need time to think!” al-Rahman hissed.

“No, al-Rahman. You are young! I am old! I’m the only one who needs time!”

The prince frowned and cursed violently.

“I know it may seem a little awkward,” the old man continued, “but you’ve got to decide now. This is how we do it. This is how we find out what’s in your gut. If we give you time, you will think, you will rationalize and consider. You will weigh the pros and cons and come to a decision in your head. And that’s not what we want. We want to know what’s inside of here!” The old man reached over and tapped the prince on his chest. “We have learned this is the best way to know what’s inside a man’s heart. Will he kill? Will he flounder? Will he hesitate to act? Or will he move with the commitment we hope that he will? Trust me, Prince al-Rahman, this is a very effective test.

“If you really want to join us, you’ve got to have blood on your hands. If you don’t want to get bloody, then we’re not interested in talking to you. If you’re not willing to go the extra mile, if you’re not willing to sacrifice innocent lives, then you’re not ready to work with us and we will say goodbye.

“But if you think I can help you, then you have to be willing to take a chance. You have to be willing to get bloody. And that’s why we’re here. So what’s it going to be? You’ve got to decide, my new friend.”

Al-Rahman was silent as his eyes darted widely in doubt.

The old man glanced at his watch. “Thirty seconds,” he said. “Tell me what to do. It’s up to you. Say you will do it or we say goodbye.”

“No! Not right now! Give me a little time!”

“No, Prince al-Rahman,” the old man sneered his name now, “you must decide now. Join us and we can show you a way to be king, King of the House of Saud, one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the world. Join us, and we stop King Faysal’s foolish plan. Join us, and we save you, but understand this as well. You will be joining a battle that goes far beyond what you see. You will be joining a battle that goes far beyond the simple struggle for power inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We have a much larger battle, a much greater war, a much longer vision and a much longer plan. And you will have to fight those battles with us if we fight this battle for you. Now that is all I will tell you. What are you going to do?”

Prince al-Rahman sat speechless, his mouth hanging wide, his cigarette burning to a long, gray ash in his hand.

The old man’s voice rose, a snarl in his chest. “Fifteen seconds,” he cried as he stared at his watch. “Commit now to join us! Tell me to kill your countrymen! Prove to me we can trust you! Now what are you going to do!?”

Al-Rahman leaned suddenly toward him, his eyes burning with fire. “You swear to me, old man, that I will be king!”

“I swear it,” the old man cried shrilly.

“Swear you won’t fail me!”

“I swear it, al-Rahman!”

Al-Rahman swallowed, then smiled and the old man stared at him. “Swear to me you will join us!” the old man hissed to the prince.

Al-Rahman didn’t hesitate. “I swear it,” he said.

“You will bring down this building?”

“Kill them all!” the prince sneered.

The old man looked at him a long moment, then smiled and relaxed. “So be it, al-Rahman. And welcome, my new friend.”

The old man leaned forward to tap on the glass and the driver started the SUV and turned it around.

*******

As the black SUV drove away, the gendarme in the black hat stood and stared at its red taillights. He knew it was a go and he sighed wearily, the massive dose of Valium the only thing that kept him calm. He was a dead man anyway, he might as well go in a sudden explosion instead of being tortured to death. If he tried to hide they would find him, they had already proven that. He had a debt. They wanted payment. It was simple as that. So he had agreed he would do this so he could go without feeling pain. In return, they would take care of his daughter and the debt would be satisfied.

He sighed again sadly, then turned away from the receding taillights of the car.

At exactly 9:15 p.m., the guard turned and walked toward the embassy door.

*******

The SUV was two miles away and driving down L’Infante Boulevard when al-Rahman saw the flash of orange light behind him. He didn’t hear the explosion or feel its expanding concussion, but the flash and rising fireball was strong enough to light up the night.

TWO

Two days later, the old man and Prince al-Rahman sat together at a small café on a narrow and crowded sidewalk in the Place du Casino. The golden square of Monte Carlo sparkled around them, a sensory overload of beautiful sights, smells, and sounds. Both men had checked into the Hotel Hermitage the night before and were rested and comfortable in the morning air. They wore summer suits and dark shirts and they smoked as they talked. Native peace lilies, roses, and daisies created a natural bouquet around them and the air was heavy and warm with the smell blooming flowers. It was a lovely spring day and the flower shops, boutiques, art galleries and small cafés bustled with tourists, most of them overweight working stiffs from the continent and United States who had come to bask vicariously in the reflected glory of the young and beautiful. A few locals hurried through the crowd on their way to their minimum wage jobs that couldn’t buy them a closet in the city, let alone an apartment or small home. Because it was Monte Carlo there was constant wealth on display, and the prince and the old man mingled comfortably with the ostentatious crowd.

More than a dozen security men subtly worked the sidewalks and streets, some of them Prince al-Rahman’s, some of them belonging to the old man. The two sat at a small table on the sidewalk near a flowing fountain. For almost three hours they sipped French coffee and nibbled tiny pastries, deep in conversation. The old man did most of the talking. Prince al-Rahman sat straight, his eyes intense, sometimes incredulous, sometimes unbelieving. Yet, despite his eyes, he smirked constantly.

Al-Rahman had made a good decision. The old man had a plan. Just hearing his ideas was worth the “small” price of the blood on al-Rahman’s hands.

“You will be responsible to liaison with our Pakistani agent,” the old man gave his final instructions. “We have planted the seed, but it will be your responsibility to nourish it and bring it along. It will take several years of your undivided attention. We will take care of the security, but the rest will be up to you.”

“And the objective?” al-Rahman asked. The old man had been talking around it for hours now and the prince was growing impatient.

The old man smiled smugly. They had finally arrived. It was time that the prince knew. The old man leaned across the table and whispered the objective, his breath dry and foul.

The Saudi prince listened, then pushed away from the table, his mouth hanging open, his eyes smoldering. “Impossible!” he sneered. “Do you think you are the first ones to try this? It has been tried many times before. All of them failed. And you will fail, too.”

The old man snapped angrily back in his chair. “Are you stupid?” he asked, like irritated father scolding his child. “Haven’t you been listening? Haven’t you heard anything?!”

Al-Rahman slowly nodded. “I have heard every word.”

“Then how can you doubt us?”

“I don’t doubt you, my friend.”

“Of course you doubt me. Isn’t that what you just said? Have I completely misjudged you? Haven’t you heard anything!?”

“Friend, I only wonder have you thought this thing through? Many of the best men have tried, and all of them failed. There are too many countermeasures, too much security. Everyone who has tried it has ultimately failed. And I’m sorry to say this, but it is my objective judgment that you will fail, too.”

The old man thought a moment, then softened. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“But why not?” al-Rahman prodded eagerly. He wanted to believe him. He really did.

“Because we are patient,” the old man explained. “Because we invest in the future. We don’t demand results right now. Because we know it will take time, maybe ten or twelve years. Maybe more. But trust me al-Rahman, we will succeed. By then I will be old, I will be a dying old man, but I will live to see it. I will live to see our success.” The old man sipped at his coffee, then took a deep breath and leaned forward again. “I will live to see the burning glory,” he smirked sarcastically.

Al-Rahman shook his head. He couldn’t help smile. “The burning glory,” he repeated, almost laughing. “Yes, that’s good!”

The old man laughed with him and then turned serious again. “Take care of our man in Pakistan,” he commanded. “That is your only job. And you must learn to be patient. This will take many years. But the payoff will be worth it, I assure you of that.”

A little more than three weeks later, Prince al-Rahman made his way to Karachi, Pakistan. For five days he explored the city, traveling anonymously, moving through the slums and markets, staying in a classic yet modest hotel. He was an oil supply businessman from Riyadh hoping to land a $500,000 dollar deal. He camped out at the Hotel Karachi, an old brick-and-marble structure that dated back to the colonial era, one of the very few centers of international commerce in Pakistan. He brought with him only four bodyguards, and he never talked to them or acknowledged them in any way, though he noticed them around him from time to time as he walked.

It was the first time he had ever been in Karachi and he found it nearly as despicable as he had been told. It was noisy. It was hot. It was the murder capital of the world. The men and women relieved themselves in the open, right out in the street, squatting over rusted holes drilled into the sidewalks before moving on. The children looked hungry and thin, and everything smelled; the food, his hotel room, the taxis and streets, there was a permanent odor of humans, animal feces, garlic and sweat in the air. Standing beside his bed, he sniffed at his suit. He would have it burned the second he got back to Saudi Arabia. He looked out on the street at the poverty below. How in the world did these people develop the technology to build a nuclear weapon? It was an incredible irony he could not understand!

But they had. And he hadn’t. And so he was here.

For five days, he moved around Karachi, feigning low-level business meetings, looking and watching, wondering when it would come. He knew the other party was watching him, testing his patience while making certain he wasn’t being trailed. So he waited, passing the time as convincingly as he could. By the third day he was growing impatient. By the fifth day he was furious. Who did this old man think that he was? Didn’t he know with whom he was dealing? Didn’t he have any sense?

He had been told they would make contact and until that time, there wasn’t a thing he could do. He was completely at their mercy. But the whole thing made him furious and he raged like a chained bull inside.

Then, on the evening of the fifth night, Prince al-Rahman was sitting alone in a small bar in the back of the hotel. It was quiet and growing late when a small, mustached gentleman approached his table and nodded to him. “Come with me,” he commanded without introduction.

Al-Rahman glanced around. Two of his security people sat and talked at the bar. He caught one by the eye and the bodyguard turned away, though al-Rahman could see he was still watching him through the smoky mirror behind the bar.

Al-Rahman didn’t move. “Excuse me,” he said.

“My master would like to speak with you,” the stranger answered curtly.

“And who is your master?” al-Rahman replied, his heart skipping suddenly as he drew a quick breath.

The stranger lowered his voice. “Dr. Abu Nidal Atta, deputy director, Pakistan Special Weapons Section, principal advisor on national security to the Pakistani president.”

Al-Rahman nodded slowly. This was why he was here.

He glanced toward his bodyguards, then stood and followed the man.

The meeting took place in a small room on the fourth floor of the hotel. It was a short discussion, direct and all business, and both men left satisfied.

It would be a very long time before Prince al-Rahman would see the Pakistani scientist again. Although they would work closely together, they agreed they would never meet face-to-face, always communicating through intermediaries, a very few men they could trust.

At the end of the process, both men would get what they wanted most. Prince al-Rahman would have his nuclear warheads. And the Pakistani scientist would become one of the richest men in the world.

THREE

The two men were not alone in the Pakistani hotel suite.

Lucifer had always been and he would always be among the mortals, standing close enough to whisper his lies in their ears. He walked and talked beside them, interacting with mortals through his temptations of violence, lust, betrayal, and a ravenous hunger for the dark things of the world. Those he didn’t have, he tempted. Those who fought against him, he sought to destroy. Those he had already won, he directed, turning them into his servants in his quest to devastate the world.

And he certainly had al-Rahman; his body and his soul.

Lucifer, prince of all the evil in the world, watched the conspirators shaking hands and smiled before emitting a violent snarl from his throat.

Then silence.

Outside, the sky was growing dark and sandy, the wind kicking up dirt and dust before the coming rain. Standing in the shadows of the musty suite, Lucifer embraced the darkness of the night as the storm clouds gathered near. But he didn’t stand alone. Behind him, invisible behind the thick veil that hid them from the mortal world, a cluster of other fallen angels waited for his command, rage upon their faces, cold stones of death within their sullen eyes, all of them dark and loathsome warriors in the battle to destroy. They seemed to sway together in agitated and filthy swarms; chanting, hissing, seeking strength from one another in their desire to kill, a stinking mass of the wretchedness, their faces dead and callow from their desire to destroy. Having sold their souls for nothing, having followed Lucifer into the depths of darkness, they had but one desire now: to share their pain and misery; to bring death; to steal any love, hope or happiness from the world’s dying embers.

Balaam stood at Lucifer’s side. At one time, Balaam had been one of Lucifer’s most trusted lieutenants, a member of his inner circle, one of the most evil and powerful. But over the past few moments of eternity, Balaam had fallen from Lucifer’s grace. Too many botched ideas and operations. Too many good things gone awry.

After his fall, Balaam was desperate to climb back up the ladder, willing to do anything in order to get closer to Lucifer who he hated with every fiber of his damned soul. It was ironic that he wanted to please the one he hated, but Balaam didn’t care. Power and ambition drove him like an overheated furnace ready to explode.

Glancing in Lucifer’s direction, but careful not to catch his dreadful eye, Balaam noticed the spider web of creases that ran from the corners of his mouth. Lucifer’s masculine face was angry and unpredictable, his eyes pale and piercing and incredibly intense, questioning and suspicious behind a dark stare. His long fingers were elegant, though in the penumbra they looked bony and weak.

If there were one word to describe Lucifer it was cold. Cold skin, cold hands, cold smile, cold heart. Like an exquisite ice sculpture, yes, there was some beauty there, but there was nothing in his presence that invited an embrace. He was a bitter winter morning, ice chips running through his veins. There was no warmth or good within him. Like a dead and dried out insect, he had a hard and brittle shell. But inside he was empty, hollowed out with hate.

Over the years, Lucifer had taken on several names, some respectful, some offensive, some old and some new. In the ancient times, long before the creation of the mortal world, they had called him the Son of the Morning, but he hated that name now. The connotation was insulting. So he had taken on other names; Lucifer, Satan, Dragon, the Fallen, Rahab, the Deceiver, the Father of Lies. Sometimes he was called Master Mahan, but only in whispers, and always in the dark, when the angels weren’t watching and the wind wouldn’t carry the name.

But whatever they called him, one thing was clear: Lucifer was miserable. Balaam knew that. All his fellow demons knew it, too. Lucifer was powerful. He could work miracles to deceive or appear as an angel to the mortals; he could cite Scripture to make mortals unholy, believing they were on the right course while he soothed, manipulated, cursed and controlled. He could stir secret combinations, murder and sinister works in the dark. But he could never be happy. He was beyond any of that now. He was a dismal wretch, dark, ugly and perfectly miserable.

The only purpose that he had now was to destroy the mortals and their freedom, and then drag them down to hell.

Behind him, the dark angels continued chanting. It excited them to see the great plan of destruction take shape, the possibility of destruction pouring fuel upon their fire.

Lucifer felt the heat of their breath, the rage of their despair. He felt their power. It was his power. Without them he was nothing! And they had come so far!

A few more steps, a few more victories, and he could claim this world.

Lucifer snarled at his accomplishments, then looked upon the mortals once again.

It would take a few years. What they were planning wouldn’t be quickly put in place. But he was patient. He had learned that lesson. It took time to destroy an entire world.

Thinking of what was coming, he felt the thrill of death run down his spine. His plan would kill a hundred million mortals. And not just any mortals, but the very worst kind, the filthy ones who lived in the land of freedom, stretching their sickening light of liberty across his world.

But he could kill them. Their country and their freedom. He could kill it all. That’s what it all came down to. That’s what the fight was all about. Simmering in the memory, the hated words slipped again into his mind. And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

He remembered it very well; the defeat, the humiliation, every tear and battle scar. The war had taken place long before the mortals were even placed upon the Earth, but even now, the things that they were fighting for remained the same. Liberty. Individual rights. The worth of a soul. Their ability to determine their own path.

“And that great dragon was cast out[.]”

Yes, they had cast him out. They defeated him! Humiliated him! But now, after eons of waiting, he had a chance to fight again, a chance to destroy everything that the Enemy had built, to destroy His kingdom and His glory, the freedom of His children, the liberty that a million souls had died for. He could destroy it all.

And that was something that was worth waiting a few more years to do.

*******

Balaam watched Lucifer quietly, then bowed and approached him in a quiver of fear. He hated Lucifer. They all did. But Lucifer was all Balaam had now and he worshiped him with every fiber of his damned soul.

“Master,” he begged in a whisper.

Lucifer glared at him and snarled.

“Master,” Balaam repeated while bowing so low his head and shoulders were parallel to the floor.

Lucifer waited a long moment, keeping his servant bowed. “What do you bother me with, servant Balaam?”

“Master, if I could . . . .”

“Say it, slave!”

“Master, I was thinking . . . sometimes I wonder . . . .”

The Dark One turned toward Balaam and pulled his hair to lift his head. “You interrupt my rejoicing, servant Balaam? It will be much better for you if you have something meaningful to say.”

Balaam quivered but did not turn away. What he had to say was important, and Lucifer would see that once he had a chance to explain. “Deceiver, there are some children. They are young now . . . .”

The brief moment of jubilation over what the mortals had agreed to do immediately fled from Lucifer’s damned soul. “Children! What are you talking about?” he demanded in a terrifying voice.

“There are young ones,” Balaam started. “Young, but strong. I think . . . I believe the Enemy has saved them to be born into this day. They seem to be the best, so capable, Master Mayhem, able to bring failure to our world. But if we can find them . . . identify them, we could destroy them before they grow stronger.”

Lucifer stared at his servant as if he were going to snap him in two. Then he suddenly stopped and took a step back.

Could it be that Balaam was right?

Lucifer stood there, his eyes fading, as if he were looking upon another world, his vacant stare dark and empty as his face tightened up with rage. He stared into the distance for a long moment, searching the corners of the earth.

In his mind, he saw them; the good and faithful of the world. So many of them were coming. It made his skin crawl. He hated them. His stomach rolled, a magma of anger that was impossible to control.

The young ones. The great ones. Full of faith and destiny. Some of them were already here. Willing to fight and pay the price for freedom.

How dare they fight against him? How dare they intrude, with the final battle almost here?

How long had he been waiting?! How long had he been scratching and clawing for this day?! Too long! Far too long!

The end was growing near, the final crisis at long last here. But the outcome hung in the balance and nothing was assured. No one knew how it would end.

But this much he did know, for he had learned it in hard lessons fought since his downfall.

The final result wouldn’t be decided by the presidents or within the mighty kingdoms or the great capitals of the world.

It was the ordinary people that had the power to save the world.

Much as he hated to admit it, that was the bitter truth.

He knew it. His servants knew it.

The question was, did the mortals know it, too?

FOUR

Major Neil S. Brighton stared through the large plate glass window of his home office on Chevy Chase, Maryland. The old plantation house, a classic two-story brick Victorian with lots of polished wood and white paint, was large and quiet and smelled of pine. The house was almost 125 years old, but exceptionally well-maintained; and from where he stood, the major could look south and see most of the downtown Washington, D.C., skyline. The house sat atop one of the highest hills inside the Beltway, and from his second-story window it offered an exceptional view. The National Mall and national monuments were a little more than seven miles away. The George Washington Memorial, a pointed pillar of white bathed by enormous floodlights tracking skyward, jutted up to the east of the George Washington bridge. Even from this distance, he could see the glow of the lights that surrounded the National Mall. He jogged there daily; four miles, every afternoon come rain, sleet or shine. His secretary always cleared his schedule between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. It was the only time he ever had to be by himself, which made it the most productive hour of his day. And as a former college boxer, he considered it a big deal to stay in shape. When asked how many pushups he could do, the answer was always the same: “At least one more than you.”

And though he couldn’t see it from his second-story window, he knew the White House was less than a mile to the north of the National Mall. He envisioned the security fences around the White House lawn, the covert bunkers for Secret Service personnel and the hidden surface-to-air missiles on the government buildings next door.

The major was very familiar with the White House. He worked there daily. Which was bad news and good news. Bad because it was a competitive, cunning, cutthroat environment, one that wore him down unlike anything he’d ever done before. Good because it certainly was exciting, the brutal hours aside.  “I work at the White House,” he sometimes found himself thinking. “How freakin’ cool is that!” The adrenaline kept him going. At least it did for now.

Before stepping out of his office, he checked his wall safe, armed the security system, pulled the tab to synch up the secure telephone to the next code of the day, flipped off the overhead light, then walked from the room. His wife had turned on the nightlight in the hallway so he wouldn’t have to stumble to bed, and he started unbuttoning the buttons on his Air Force jacket, stiff with rows of ribbons, as he walked down the hall. When was the last time Sara and I went to bed at the same time, he wondered? Too long. And it made him sad. In the old days—the old days being when he had been blissfully happy flying combat jets, before he had been indentified with the “audacity, initiative, and tenacity to make an excellent general officer,” as his performance report had read—they would frequently lie alongside each other and talk well into the night. But now he was so busy with his new assignment with the national security staff that he hardly had time to think, let alone lie next to her and talk in bed. Truth was, nothing had prepared him for the demands of his job. Flying combat was a piece of cake compared to the political combat that took place inside the White House.

After undressing in the dark, he slipped into bed, exhausted. Sara didn’t wake as she rolled onto her side. He laid his head on the pillow, but sleep didn’t come. He tried to close his eyes but something compelled him to stare at the shadows that flirted through darkness.

The night was quiet, the moon hovering above the western horizon. Then a sudden wind blew, whistling with unexpected violence through the trees. Brighton listened carefully, something catching his attention in the sound of the wind. The windows rattled with each new gust, the fall leaves ripped from their dry branches to beat against the house. The wind picked up in intensity, seemingly coming out of nowhere, fierce and without direction. But it was a stormless wind, for moonlight continued shining through the venetian blinds, showing the skies were clear. He rolled to his side, watching the shadows of the blowing branches a few feet beyond his window then sat up on the side of the bed.

Like the wind, Brighton was agitated. He had been agitated all day. He’d been agitated for a week. Something was coming. He could feel it deep in his bones. Something moving, something watching, something that was bringing evil change.

He shook his head to clear it, but the feeling didn’t go away.

He glanced at Sara, who remained asleep, her blond hair tossed about, the streetlight on her face. He watched her sleep a moment, her breathing heavy and slow, then she seemed to wince and pulled back, as if in her dreams she felt it, too. Neil reached out to touch her, placing his palm on her cheek and she leaned into his touch. But she didn’t fully wake and soon was in deep sleep again.

Neil felt tight; a sprinter ready to explode from the starting blocks. He shook his head again, but the fear only settled deeper into his chest. The blackness seemed to consume him. He’d felt nothing like this before. He glanced at his wife, then, angry at the frustration, he pushed himself up from the bed.

He walked down the hall, pausing at the top of the stairs. He placed his hands on the rail, feeling the beautifully carved oak. He listened for a moment to the grandfather clock ticking at the bottom of the winding stairs, then took a deep breath, fighting the anxiety. He stood a long moment, alone, in the dark.

Then he thought of his sons, who mere children still. A feeling of fear sank into him and he turned suddenly for their room.

He opened their door just enough to let a crack of light cut into the hall from the nightlight by their junior beds, getting a whiff of baby oil and sippy cups half filled with milk; the musky smell of little boys he knew so well. He looked across the toys and picture books scattered across the floor, toward the wooden beds.

Ammon, eleven minutes older than his brother, lay sprawled across his small mattress, his hair, like his mother’s, a blond tousle on his head. Luke, dark haired and lean, opened his eyes to look at him without really seeing, then lay back and went instantly back to sleep.

Having been driven from his bed by a dark power that seemed to move across the land, Neil looked at his children and wondered for the thousandth time, “Who are you, really? Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

Although they were still so young, his sons were better than he was. He knew that already. They were more clever, more . . . he didn’t know, but there was something about them that he couldn’t deny. Something strong. Something . . . focused. It was as if they understood things he didn’t, things they knew but couldn’t tell.

Yes, they were stronger than he was.

But he was afraid for them now.

In a flash of foreboding, he imagined their future, so dangerous and unsure. The world was tipping; he could feel it, ready to roll onto its side. It wouldn’t come at once, it would take a few more years, but things were going to change. A feeling of fear and uncertainty exploded in his chest. He wanted to take a step toward them but the sinking feeling almost dropped him to his knees.

“My sons,” he whispered. “What is your world going to be like? What challenges, what heartaches, are you going to see?”

******

Balaam heard the father’s words of doubt, recognizing the agonized expression on his face. He had seen it a million times before. Indeed, he was the one who had planted the fear within the mortal’s soul. Now that he had planted it, all he had to do was make it grow.

He jumped into his lies, well-practiced from thousands of years of having been repeated. “There is no hope for them!” he whispered into the father’s ear. “The world is too uncertain! They have nothing to look forward to, but doubt and fear. There is no good now, only worry, and that will only grow with the years.”

The father paused, sensing the blackness of the lies that had been planted in his mind. He seemed to look around, then fell silent in the dark.

“They are not strong enough. You think that they are special, but there is nothing great or extraordinary about them. They are common! Merely common! What chance do they really have?”

Brighton grasped the doorknob, his fist tight around the metal. His sons seemed to grow restless in their sleep, both of them turning onto their sides.

Balaam pressed his cunning lies, sharing the darkness of his world. “Your country is growing weak now. What you’re seeing is the beginning of its great decline. Chaos will follow! The world will come apart! Most of the world already hates you, and there is much more hate to come. Your economy will continue to crumble! The best days are behind you. Nothing but unrest and bitterness lies ahead.”

Brighton gripped the doorknob tighter, feeling the anxiety well up in his chest.

“Your sons have no future!” Balaam almost cried now, his voice filled with bitterness and hate.

Brighton felt Balaam’s influence so near that Brighton actually repeated the words: “No future . . . no future . . . .”

“The world is too dark now. And it will only get worse. Your sons have nothing! You have nothing! There is no more good or hope in any of your futures. This is my world. I have claimed it. And you would cry and quiver if you could see all of the misery I have in store!”

FIVE

Allah is greater than any description

I testify that there is no god but Allah

I testify that Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger

Hasten to prayers

Hasten to deliverance

Hasten to the best act

Allah is greater than any description

There is no god but Allah.

From the Adhan

(Muslim Call to Prayer)

Agha Jari Deh Valley

Twenty kilometers southwest of Behbehan, Iran

Later that night, the same moon looked down upon another man who was about to become a father, too.

This one thought of himself as a fallen king, but that wasn’t really true. He was not fallen, but denied, for fate had kept him from ever climbing upon the throne.

The young Persian was tall and slender, with brown eyes, a clean face, and short, wavy hair. He was handsome, almost regal, with a fine Roman nose, high cheekbones and widely spaced eyes of a prince. Indeed, in another time, under different circumstances, he would have been one of the kings, for the royal blood that ran through him was a thousand years old, and the fact that he wasn’t was but a twist of timing and fate. Had he been born a few generations before he would have sat on a throne, along with his cousins and uncles, all of them tracing their roots to the trunk of that great royal family tree.

But it wasn’t so. Instead, Rassa Ali Pahlavi was a Iranian sheepherder and sod farmer, a man who scratched out an existence, living from one season to the next, praying for rain, then praying for sun, praying for a harvest that could carry him through.

Here, in his country, the royal family name meant nothing at all, nothing but memories of disappointments and the failures of the generations long past.

So despite the fact that Persian royal blood ran through him, it bought him no advantage and he preferred to keep his lineage a secret, unwilling to be reminded of how his ancestors had failed. His own grandfather, the Great Shah Pahlavi, last in a line of Persian monarchs dating back to Cyrus in 559 B.C., had, through arrogance and corruption, lost the claim to his kingdom and been expelled with his family, leaving behind but a few, all of whom where stripped of any prestige, money or power. Thinking of the royal family’s exile, it was as if Rassa could picture the ancient royals of Persia packing up their caravans and slipping into the desert. His family, too, had packed up their wealth and slipped into the night, transferred enormous sums of money into overseas accounts, loaded their jewels and their paintings, the riches of their kingdom, and sulked away with their caravans of wealth, disappearing into the dark. With the fall of the shah, his family’s power and wealth—and worse, their ambition—had slipped into the desert and completely disappeared. Most of Rassa’s family lived in far-away lands; fat and discontent, but too scared to come home.

Yet Rassa was not like them. He was neither fat nor discontent. And he was certainly unafraid.

Still, it appeared there was no turning back the clock. The age of Greater Persia had passed. The Rule of Pahlavi was gone. The timing of his birth had ensured he would live his life in the mountains, herding sheep and plowing fields, and never sit on a throne.

It seemed ironic to Rassa that so much was left up to fate. Fate and the Master. Timing and place. They could all be so cruel, the young man had learned.

But still, life was good. Rassa said those words to himself daily. It wasn’t perfect, there was sadness, and no, he was not a prince. But that was all right. It mattered not. Life was always worth living, and worth passing on.

And on this night, at this time, that was his only concern. His young wife and their child. That was all that mattered to him now.

Rassa Ali Pahlavi, twenty-six and broad-shouldered, walked along the narrow trail that led through the trees, away from his village. Twilight fell quickly, and the shadows under the canopy grew dark as he walked. The jungle of trees along his path formed a perfect canopy and the air was musky and wet, almost salty from the wind blowing in from his back. Behind him, the briny salt flats ran parallel to the shore of the Arabian Sea, some twenty-one kilometers to the west, and the evening air carried the smell of salt water and decaying brine shrimp. The terrain between his village and the sea was steep and rugged, with narrow valleys and foothills rising from sea level to meet the peaks of the great Zagros Mountains, the mountains that acted as a barrier to the mighty storms that rolled in from the Persian Gulf, a wall over which the clouds couldn’t climb without dumping their load, leaving the valleys on the west side of the mountains rich, green, fertile and wet.

As Rassa moved off the trail and from under the trees, the evening light broke through. He climbed a grassy embankment that looked over his village, a neat square of squat, clay houses, wood fences and tidy courtyards surrounded by brick walls. The barnyards were filled with white and brown goats, dark-skinned children, gnarled plum and fig trees and tangled grapevines, a hundred years old. To his back, the mountain rose above his village; rich green grass and gray rock, with tiny pockets of snow in the highest crevasses left behind from the winter snows. The terrain sloped up to the mountain from his village in a near perfect half-bowl, rising ever more steeply until it merged with the rocks. An enormous wedge of granite, like a huge piece of rock pie, jutted at the peak of the mountain, almost 12,000 feet up. Lower, on the southern tip of the bowl, a thick forest lay, with large oaks and tall pines swaying in the dim light.

Standing atop the rolling crown of the hill that looked over his village, the young Persian looked back to the east where the rising moon was now low, a huge blood-red orb on the distant horizon. He could see the haze and humidity rising off the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. The moon soaked through the wet warm air.

Blood red and warm. Yes. That was right. Blood red and warm. Like the birth of his child.

Rassa thought quickly of his wife, Sashajan, a woman he loved more than he wished to live. She was young, she was beautiful, she was everything to him and as he stood there in silence thinking of her young face and anguished cries, as he pictured the consternation in the midwife’s dark eyes and the feel of her arms pushing him toward the door, he felt a shudder run through him and the anxiety rose again.

His child was coming. On this night, it would be born.

Then he fell, his knees buckling, his arms heavy and weak. He put his hands together and bowed until his forehead touched the dirt.

He hunched there, unmoving as the evening grew still.

*******

It seemed to him as if time stood still. He wasn’t asleep, but he saw it as if it were a dream. The vision was bright, but still misty, as if he were watching through a great gulf of distance and time. There was a sheen to it all, as if wet from heavy rain. He saw shimmering trees, wide and gentle, and an enormous stone gate.

She stood alone at the gate. He almost gasped out loud. She was so beautiful! Young. Strong. Dark hair. Black eyes that seemed to dance with light. Anticipation and excitement in every motion of her hands.

He watched her intently.

Did she see him, too?

She took a careful step toward the gate, a gaping hole leading to some unknown world. She paused and trembled, and then Rassa understood. She was excited, but scared, maybe even terrified. Yet she continued moving forward, unwavering, strong and confident!

And he knew, somewhere inside him, that this was his child!

She stopped and glanced toward him. Staring through the distance, she looked directly into his eyes. Then she smiled and nodded. “Yes, it is true!”

He gasped. It was a moment of joy so intense, so powerful and pure that he almost couldn’t breath.

She nodded to him again then stepped through the stone gate.

*******

The vision faded quickly and soon it was gone. Rassa felt his chest tighten and a rush of blood flow to his head. A shadow fell over him and the enormous space between them seemed to grow suddenly more vast and powerful.

He found himself kneeling in the darkness, his head touching the ground. The night had settled around him and the hilltop was now dark. The evening wind blew, chill and dry from the mountain, and he felt a cold shiver run up his spine. Looking up, he stared at the dark night. Then he saw the shooting star. It flamed from the north, stretching across the entire evening sky, trailing a stream of sparkles that seemed to reach toward the ground.

An angel falling from the heavens . . . falling to the mortal world . . . .

He didn’t move, his eyes closed, his head touching the soft grass. Finally, he took a deep breath, bringing himself back to this world.

Then he heard a voice speaking to his very soul.

“This thing that is about to happen, know that it is my will.”

A deep sense of brooding seemed to seep into his soul.

“This thing that will happen, know that it is my will.”

He held his breath and listened to hear the cry of his child. Hearing nothing, he pushed himself to his feet, turned and ran through the night down the hill.

SIX

Rassa Pahlavi ran through the streets of his village toward his home. The half-moon had climbed, a burnt orb in the eastern sky just barely above the rocky peaks of the mountains. The air was calm. The sky was crystal clear and the stars were shining brightly, for the dark had settled in. Dogs barked as he passed, and he could hear the sheep bells tolling from the pastures to the east, but the baked brick and stone streets were deserted and dark.

He paused on the cement step outside his front door, then let himself in. He found three neighbors there, all old men, village leaders who had come to bless his home, bringing gifts for Rassa and Sashajan. He hugged them all, pressing his face against their cheeks, their beards pressing against the fine hair on his neck. He walked through the simple kitchen, past a set of wooded chairs and old table, a worn vinyl couch and small television, then stopped at the door to his bedroom and listened. He could hear movement and the sound of water being poured into the steel basin, then laughter, and hushed voices, then the cry of a child. He bowed his head and took a breath, then pushed back the door.

Sashajan was sitting up on their bed holding their child in her arms and he moved quickly to her. Her face, though drawn and weary, could not hold back her joy as she leaned to the side, her cheeks touching the top of her daughter’s soft hair. The midwife worked around them. Rassa glanced to her as she pulled a clean cotton cloth across a small mattress and placed it inside the wicker crib that Rassa had constructed from dry reeds he had pulled from the banks of the stream that ran through the center of the village. He caught her eye and mouthed a quick “Thank you,” then turned back to his wife and child.

Sashajan smiled, her dark eyes beaming brightly. She drew a contented breath, then held out her hand and Rassa touched her fingers lightly as he sat on the edge of the bed. The smell of talcum powder and olive oil rose from his new baby’s body. The child was sleeping, her lips puckered into a tiny circle, her hands clenched into tight fists at her chest, as if she were bracing from some unseen blow. She was wrapped in a cotton blanket, her legs tucked tightly against her body. Her head was covered in dark hair, thin as silk, and the midwife had already pinned a tiny white ribbon on the crown of her head.

The young parents stared at the baby. Neither one of them spoke. Rassa felt a shiver run through him as the peaceful feeling settled again.

Sashajan looked at him, thirteen hundred years of tradition pressing heavily on her mind. “You have a daughter,” she said, her voice quiet and apologetic. It was, after all, a wife’s duty to produce a fine son.

Rassa stared at the child, thinking of the vision he had seen. “Yes, I know,” was all he said.

Sashajan began to question, then glanced nervously to the midwife, who had stopped her work and placed her hands on her hips, ready to defend the young mother if Rassa were so foolish as to say the wrong thing. Sashajan turned from the midwife and dropped her dark eyes. “You wanted a son!” she said simply.

“No!” Rassa answered. “I want this child.”

Sashajan looked up quickly, her eyes filled with relief. She squeezed the tip of his fingers. “Thank you,” she whispered. There was far more meaning in her expression than most could understand, for it was a seal of their commitment, a commitment which surpassed the boundaries of their culture, the boundaries of their people’s traditions or time.

Rassa stared at the infant that slept at Sashajan’s breast. Reaching down, he lifted her carefully and pulled her into his arms. The baby remained still, and he bent and whispered quietly into her ear. “I witness that there is no god but Allah, and I witness that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah.” Words from Mohammad himself. It was the desire of all Muslims that these would be the first words a child would hear from their father’s mouth as well as the last words that they would utter or hear before death. Rassa repeated, “I witness that there is no god but Allah,” then pulled his head back to look into his child’s face.

She slept peacefully, taking shallow breaths, light as a bird sleeping in the palm of his hand. He placed his little finger inside her palm and the baby girl instinctively grasped it, her tiny fingers unable to extend around his finger. Then she opened her eyes and stared at him blankly. Her eyes were dark and deep, her face calm and unmoving, as if she were intent on keeping her thoughts to herself. Rassa stared at her and wondered how much was going on inside her head? Did she understand things . . . did she remember things? Is that why God made His infants unable to communicate? Did a child only watch and learn, or did they already know? Was she learning or forgetting during these first few days on earth?

Sashajan watched Rassa, then moved closer to her child. The infant turned toward her and it seemed that she smiled. Her lips turned upward, her eyes brightened, and her face seemed to beam. “Did you see that, Rassa!” Sashajan cried in delight, “she smiled at me, Rassa. I know that she did.”

Rassa didn’t answer and Sashajan glanced toward him. “Do you think she knows I’m her mother?” she asked.

Rassa answered slowly. “I don’t know, Sashajan.”

Sashajan lifted her finger to touch her new baby’s cheek. Rassa watched her a moment, then lifted the child to his face. He dropped his mouth to her neck, feeling the softness and warmth of her flesh on his lips. “I saw you,” he whispered so that Sashajan couldn’t hear. “But where did you come from? I do not understand.”

Sashajan glanced up, a questioning look in her eyes. “Rassa?” she asked him, “what are you saying?”

Rassa looked at his wife. She looked so young and so small, as if she had shrunken from the experience of delivering their child. She was pale and shaking, and Rassa knew that she was weak. He turned back to his child. “We will call her Azadeh Ishbel,” he announced, lifting her to present her to the heavens. “Freedom is my oath to God.”

Sashajan leaned forward and placed her head next to his. “‘Freedom is my oath to God.’ Yes, Rassa, that is a good name. There is something about her—it seems to fit her perfectly.”

Rassa smiled. “She is beautiful. She is Azadeh. Thanks be to God.” He lowered his arms and kissed the infant’s brow and she unconsciously tightened her lips into another tight circle. “Azadeh, I love you,” he whispered as he placed the child in her mother’s arms. “And though I don’t understand where you came from, still I welcome you here.”

*******

Before she left, the midwife pulled Rassa into the next room and spoke to him in a low voice.

“It was a difficult birth,” she said wearily. “She is young, but not strong. It was very hard for her.”

Rassa looked worried. “What do I do?” he asked anxiously.

“Let her rest. Keep her warm. Don’t let her out of bed. I will come by first thing in the morning and see how she is.”

Rassa felt his knees weaken. “She will be fine, though?” he asked anxiously.

“Insha’allah.” “If God wills it.”

The midwife studied the deep worry lines on Rassa’s face, then patted his arm, her hands heavy and strong. “I have seen many women worse,” she offered as she gathered her things. “Birth and death. Death and birth. The cycle of life carries on. Who are we to intervene in the will of God? But she is young and there is no reason to assume she will not mend in the next day or two. But she needs time to rest and recover from all the life she has lost. I can’t do that for her, Rassa, and neither can you. But if you let her rest and keep her warm, she will be fine, I am sure.”

Rassa swallowed hard. The midwife swept through the room one final time, then her work was complete, she let herself out the door.

Rassa returned to the bedroom. Sashajan opened her eyes as he walked in. “We are a family,” he muttered as he sat beside her on the bed. “God has blessed us. We have reason to rejoice.”

Sashajan nodded wearily. “I love you, Rassa,” she whispered as he gently stroked her hair. She fell asleep almost instantly. Rassa sat on the bed and held her hand as the child, wrapped in her soft cotton blanket, slept at her side. Sashajan eventually rolled away from him and he tucked the covers around her back, then placed the baby beside her so that she could nurse. For a long moment he watched them by the moonlight, the night so quiet that he could hear Azadeh breathe.

He was a man. He had a daughter and a beautiful wife. And one day he was certain that he would also have a son.

Life wasn’t perfect, but on this night at least, it was very good.

After some time, Rassa moved away from the bed, stripped off his clothes and pulled on a nightshirt. Moving carefully, he lay down close to the child, eager to keep her warm against the cool mountain air. As he lay on his back and wearily closed his eyes, he suddenly remembered the silent words again.

“What is about to happen, know that it is my will.”

He felt his chest tighten and his mouth seemed to grow dry. It was a warning, he realized, and for the first time he grew scared.

He lay tense; his eyes open, staring into the dark, wondering again what God was trying to say. But eventually sleep overcame him and he slept restlessly.

He woke at the first light of the sun. Moving carefully, he pushed himself out of bed, then turned to look at his wife and daughter. Azadeh was staring at him, her eyes dark and wide. She followed his movements as he walked around the bed. Sashajan was still asleep and he bent carefully to kiss her cheek. It was cold, almost clammy, and he carefully studied her face. Her lips were tight and so dry that they almost looked blue. He placed his hand on her forehead and felt the shiver of cold. He panicked, his heart racing, as he bent to her side. “Sashajan!” he whispered, trying to wake her.

But a blood clot had already lodged firmly in her brain.

She never regained consciousness and by afternoon, she was dead.

*******

After the spiritual rituals and cleaning of the body had taken place, Rassa led a procession of mourners up a winding, dirt trail. Behind a small hill, ancient stones had been set into the soil in an intricate pattern, establishing the area as holy ground with the same rights and benefits as a mosque. Tucked away in a small dell, the cemetery was a little square of grass completely out of sight from the village. Although it was small and almost 800 years old, there was always enough room for one more. The mountain villagers were practical people, having been taught by hard life, and they accepted death easily. Out of sight, out of mind, was their thinking when it came to their dead and once the mourning was over there was no need to be reminded of those who were no more.

But Rassa wasn’t like his people. And he didn’t accept Sashajan’s death. Like his ancestors, the ancient Persians, he was romantic and soft-hearted, and he missed her so much that his heart ached in his chest, each beat pounding at him like a drum of pain and despair. He hardly saw the sunlight around him, so thick was the blackness inside.

And though he didn’t see it, it was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, with a light breeze from the sea. The sycamore trees were in full color, and the grass was still green and full. In another month, the cemetery would be covered with dead grass and brown plants, but for now it was beautiful, alive and green.

Rassa led the mourners while desperately holding his child. Dressed in a white gown that flowed from her head to her feet, she was a sparkle of light in a sea of black turbans, long robes, dark scarves and long veils.

Rassa laid Sashajan to rest, somehow believing he would see her again, then dropped a handful of dirt on her pine casket and walked away, following the winding path that led to his home.

That night, he held his newborn baby in his arms while feeding her a bottle. She watched him intently and he couldn’t help but smile as she stared into his eyes. “What are you thinking?” he wondered. “What emotions are you hiding behind that deep stare?”

Azadeh looked away, then yawned deeply, clenching her fists to her side. She fell asleep quickly and Rassa held her tight. The house grew quiet and dark, the rocking chair creaking on the wooden floor. Rassa kissed her cheek then sang in her ear:

“The world that I give you

Is not always sunny and bright.

But knowing I love you

Will help make it right.

“So when the dark settles,

And the storms fill the night,

Remember I’ll be waiting

When it comes,

Morning Light.”

*******

Two weeks after the funeral, Sashajan’s sister came to him and insisted that she be allowed to take the child. “It is not a man’s job to raise her,” she demanded.

Rassa turned away and looked at Azadeh sleeping contentedly in her crib. She had grown full and healthy in her first few days of life and the formula that he fed her seemed to keep her satisfied. He watched her a moment, then shook his head.

Allah had sent her to him. She was all he had left. He would keep her and raise her. It was Allah’s will.

*******

The next day came and then passed, then another after that. A week, then a month, then another month came and went. It was summer, it was fall. The snows came, and then the spring, then another spring after that.

Rassa fell into a routine. And though he had opportunities to remarry, he never could find the heart, for the image of Sashajan’s face never quite left his dreams. Every year, on the week of the anniversary of her death, he left the child at Sashajan’s sister and disappeared for a day of private mourning. No one knew where he went, though a few of his friends tried to guess, and when he returned he always brought wildflowers, which he placed on her grave.

Azadeh grew into a stunningly beautiful young woman. Rassa continued to love her more than he loved anything, for the emptiness inside him seemed to disappear when she was near.

And the time that passed soon slipped into years.

SEVEN

Eighteen years had passed since the night Major Brighton had stood outside his son’s bedroom door, listening to the frightening wind while fighting the silent fear.

Since that night, he had left his assignment at the White House to lead a fighter squadron in Alaska, came back to Washington, D.C., to be fill the dreaded staff job at the Pentagon, then down to take command of the First Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, where he earned his first star. From Langley, the new general took an assignment at NATO, then back to the Pentagon (very happy that he and Sara had decided to keep the old house), then on to Central Command where he’d overseen aerial operations over Southwest Asia, the most hostile and war-torn region on earth.

The day he earned his second star, he got another call from the White House. A new president had come to power. The president knew of General Brighton.

It was time for him to come back to Washington, D.C.

*******

Major General Brighton stood at the office window of his home in Chevy Chase, the old plantation house that had been the family home for almost half of his military career. Everything about it was familiar. The smell. The old wood. The creak on the stairs. The slope of the basement floor. Although they had moved every couple years, it seemed they always ended up back here and his family considered the Victorian house to be their permanent home. It was full of happy memories and he was glad to be back in the old house.

He looked out on the city, seeing the glow from the lights on the National Mall, thinking of the huge floodlights that illuminated the grounds around the White House where he worked once again. He had a slightly larger office than he had before, though it was still tiny compared to others he had occupied throughout his military career. The underground parking lot was larger now, the environment more chaotic, the security procedures he had to go through every day far more thorough.

He took a deep breath and wondered for the thousandth time, “Who am I kidding? I’m just a farm boy from Texas. What am I doing here?”

He stood still for a moment, thinking on the passing years. Since his first assignment at the White House, so much had changed. The world was different now. So much had gone wrong.

At 45, Brighton was still tight and lean, with a strong jaw and laugh lines on the corners of his mouth, but over the past couple months his hair had taken on a hint of gray. His job was prone to do that. Truth was, he hadn’t slept a full night since returning to Washington, D.C.

The thrill of being a White House insider had long since faded away, suffocated by the stress of working in the most demanding environment on the planet. A military officer inside a very civilian White House. Staffers viewing him as an enemy at every turn. A boss who was as demanding as Genghis Khan, the weight of the world upon his shoulders. The world going crazy all around him. He remembered a time when working at the White House, the White Thrill as staffers called it, made up for the sacrifices he had to make. But those days were long gone, leaving little that he enjoyed about his job.

He glanced at the old English clock on the faux mantel. Almost midnight, and here he was, still dressed in his air force blues, the formal uniform he wore to work every day. As military liaison to the national security advisor, one of the most demanding jobs in the entire Department of Defense, he hardly had time to think. He took his secure cell phone with him to the bathroom, the shower, running, outside while working in the yard. He kept it by his bed at night. It was like his pants and underwear, he felt utterly naked without it. And it didn’t just ring with an emergency every once in awhile. It rang every day. Sometimes every hour. Nothing was as demanding as the job he held now; not flying fighters, not commanding a combat wing, not masterminding an air war—nothing compared with the pressures he dealt with daily. Eighty-hour workweeks were the norm. He was exhausted all the time. He knew his family was suffering. Surely his sons resent it! How could they not? But he didn’t know what to do.

His only comfort, his only consolation at all, was that his wife had assured him that he was doing what he was supposed to do. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of things at home. What you’re doing is important. I think it is part of the reason you were brought into the world. Besides, someone’s got to do it. And I really believe that no one else will do it as well as you.” Sara had written the words of encouragement on a yellow slip of paper and tucked it in his uniform pocket one morning several months before. After reading the note, he had folded it up and kept it in his wallet. He was certain she didn’t even remember writing it, but during the most difficult times he found himself pulling out the wrinkled slip of paper and reading her words again.

He stretched, feeling the stiff fabric and the pressure of all the ribbon bars on his chest. He missed wearing his flight suits, they were much more comfortable, and he certainly missed flying, especially after days like today. His morning had started with a private meeting with his boss, the national security advisor, after which he had suffered through no less than 14 appointments, then ended with a reception at the Libyan Embassy, a typically stuffy and formal affair, the kind his wife enjoyed and he absolutely despised.

Then he remembered how beautiful Sara had looked in her black dress and suddenly the evening didn’t seem like such a waste. “Sara, oh Sara,” he thought to himself, “when I asked you to marry me, did you know I would drag you from one corner of the world to the next? Did you envision the challenges of the life we would choose?”

He wondered, supposing not. It had been a wonderful journey, but not without cost.

“Sometime soon,” he frequently promised himself, “things are going to change. Life will slow down.”

The general breathed deeply, knowing it probably wasn’t true.

He glanced at the clock again, then turned to check the wall safe and security system before turning off the lights. He had to get up in five hours and it was time to get some sleep.

As he was reaching for his bedroom doorknob, his secure cell phone started ringing, stopping him in his tracks. “Please go away!” he mumbled. “It’s late. I am tired. Let it wait until morning.”

But the STU-IV secure cell phone continued ringing and he turned to pick it up, noticing on the digital screen that the call was coming from the CIA. “Yes,” he said as he put the phone to his ear, the delay from the encryption providing a noticeable delay.

“Sorry to bother you, boss.” Brighton recognized the voice of a junior member of the security team. “Colonel Jensen and the night watch have a little problem with the PDB.”

Brighton shook his head. The Presidential Daily Brief. Every morning at the White House. The president attended. No screw-ups were allowed. None. No forgiveness. Another beast that had stolen his life away.

“Do we need to take care of it tonight?” he asked, trying to keep the impatience from his voice.

“The watch supervisor said it can wait until morning, but they need you in by four.”

“OK. I’ll be there.” He glanced at his watch. Then he remembered. “No, no, I almost forgot. I’m leaving for Saudi Arabia day after tomorrow. I’ve got briefings with the guys at the Pentagon in the morning to wrap up a couple things before I go. You’re going to have to call my deputy.”

“Of course, sir. The watch supervisor must have forgotten. I’ll give Colonel Hampton a call.”

“Tell him I’m sorry, but he’s going to have to handle it.” Brighton wasn’t worried. Important as it was, the PDB was one of the least of his concerns. “Anything else?” he asked.

“No sir. Sorry for bothering you. Have a good trip, sir.”

“Thank you, Patty. Good night.” Brighton hung up the phone.

He had barely turned out the light again when the secure cell phone started ringing a second time. He stared at it in anger. “Brighton!” he said abruptly as he jammed it to his ear. He hadn’t noticed the call was coming from the White House.

“Major General Brighton?” a communications specialist asked.

“Yes.”

“Sir, this is Sergeant Bendino at the CIC communications center. I have a call from Prince Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia. We have traced and authenticated the phone number to verify it is coming from Riyadh, but voice recognition has not confirmed his identity. He wants us to patch him through.”

“Crown Prince Saud bin Faysal?”

“Yes, sir. That is who he says.”

“Then of course, patch him through.”

“Sir, do we need to notify the operations desk?”

“No, Sergeant Bendino. I suspect this is a personal matter. I have known the crown prince for a very long time.”

“Yes, sir. But you realize, of course, that as with all communications with foreign heads of states, these communications will be recorded and monitored.”

“I understand, sergeant. Now please patch him through.”

The secure satellite line clicked and then buzzed and then fell silent again. “Neil?” he heard the prince’s deeply accented baritone.

“Your Highness! How are you? I hope everything is OK?”

“OK? Yes, of course. Everything’s fine.”

Brighton considered the differences in time, knowing it was early morning in Saudi Arabia. “It’s good to hear from you, Prince Saud. It’s been a long while.”

“Too long, general, too long. Listen, I know it is late there, and I don’t have much time, but I heard you were flying over to meet with some of my air force leaders. I would hope we could get together. Nothing special, just an hour or two to catch up on, how do you Americans say it . . . older times?”

“Old times, Prince Saud.”

“Old times. Of course. Anyway, could we try to get together?”

“I’d be honored, your Highness.”

“Excellent, Neil. Now listen, I’m going to be in Medina for most of the week, but I’m going to fly back to meet you in Riyadh. I’ll have my people give your staff a call and work out a schedule. Will that be all right?”

“Of course, Prince Saud. Whatever you want. But let me ask, is this important? Anything formal? Do I need to do bring my staff or do anything to prepare?”

The line was silent a long moment, and Brighton could hear the prince breathe. “Nothing important, Neil,” he finally answered, “It is a personal matter. That is all.”

The general sensed the hesitation and was about to press but the crown prince spoke before the general could say anything. “Same number at the Pentagon?” Prince Saud asked.

“The switchboard will always get you through.”

“OK, then my friend. I look forward to seeing you.”

The phone clicked and went dead and the general pocketed the secure cell phone in his pants. He turned again for the bedroom door.

EIGHT

During the millennia that passed since Balaam had been cast to earth, he had claimed many souls; a million, perhaps ten million, he really didn’t know, for once he had destroyed them he never thought of them again. And though he and his fellow fallen angels had mastered the art of destruction, it was not always easy, and this one lesson they had learned: never give up. Everyone had a weakness. Even the great could fall. Think of Cain. Think of Judas. Think of King David and a million other souls. Many of the strongest had been taken and everyone was fair game.

Through the years, Balaam had seen it all until he reached the point where there was no pain or disappointment, no depravity or torture, no betrayal, hate or hurt he had not mastered. He had been there and cheered when Cain had lifted the stone. He had witnessed Abel’s blood flow and learned the power of greed. Soon after, he and the other fallen angels realized the astonishing power of lust and its incredible potential to destroy. It was a short step from lust to far greater sins. Soon, there was no aberration or depravity they had not introduced to the world.

Over time, Lucifer’s followers had developed a real love for the blood and horror of war. How many battles had they started, then watched the outcome with glee! Armies were their playthings, the cries of the dying sweet music to their ears. In his mind, Balaam could smell the smoke from the fires and the stench of dead flesh. He could hear the cries of broken mothers as their children had been tortured and taken as slaves.

In one particularly brilliant display, Balaam had convinced a young mother to sacrifice her own children to a pagan god, a moment they all remembered with particular pride. And they had called it religion! Even Lucifer had laughed. On another night, Balaam had laughed while Judas put a rope around his neck, promising the mortal he’d keep on fighting to the end of the world.

Looking down on the Iranian village from the hills up above, Balaam thought of all of the millennia that he had wandered the Earth, considering all of the changes he had witnessed. He had seen great cities rise and great nations fall. He had seen deserts grow out of marshlands and the seas flood their coast. But now Earth was growing old. He shook his head in anger and snarled a hot stench of breath. So much time had passed!

Short! Time was short! And still so much work they had to do!

Yet, as he stared down on the Iranian village, he felt the pull of something large. Something strong and great and powerful. Something that brought him great fear. It was here. Something dangerous lived in the village.

Someone who could hurt him.

He had to discover who it was!

NINE

The ground above the Agha Jari Deh Valley rose sharply to the west. There, on a rocky spot looking over the haphazard village, an ancient guard tower rose like an arm and fist from the ground. The tower was made of stone cut from the mountain and stood almost sixty feet above the sloping terrain. The base of the tower was some forty feet wide, the granite walls six feet thick, with a large and high-ceilinged room inside. A single metal door allowed access to the ground floor room and a narrow set of wooden stairs along the back wall wound up to the top of the tower. In ancient days, the tower was manned constantly to provide warning to the villagers when an attack was imminent. In the early years, or the lean years, when the population of the village was small, most of the village’s women and children could be crammed inside the base of the tower. There they would huddle while they listened to the sounds of the battle outside.

The tower, known as el Umma, or the community, had through the years fallen into deep disrepair. The huge metal door was nearly rusted off its hinges, and the steps were so dry and rotten they sagged mightily under even a little weight. But the tower was one of Rassa’s favorite places to think, and through the years he had retreated there many times to ponder and pray.

The day before Azadeh’s eighteenth birthday, he got up early and hiked the steep trail that led to el Umma. It was spring, but the hay was coming near to full, and his day would be busy for there was much work to do.

Rassa entered the tower just as daylight was beginning to break. Inside, el Umma smelled of mold and dust and ancient, rotting wood. Four-inch slits in the rock walls provided light to illuminate dimly his way as he climbed the stairs and every ten or twelve feet the walls were scorched and black from where oil-soaked torches had been attached to the walls, suspended by steel latches that were embedded into the mortar and stone. He climbed carefully, testing each step, though he was familiar with most of the weakest boards. The sun was just rising between two of the highest peaks when he emerged at the top of the tower. A round rampart with a short wall provided a barrier to keep him from stepping into space. Rassa knelt, facing Mecca, and bowed his head for prayers, then sat back and leaned against the tower, the rising sun to his back.

He kept his eyes open, looking out on the sea. The sky was clear, and a cold front had moved through in the night, clearing the air of haze and humidity. From where Rassa sat, he could see most of the eastern coastline of the Persian Gulf, the dark waters stretching north and south, lapping at the brown sands and dry foothills that made up the Iranian coast. The sea was hazy and gray, and sparkled in the rising sun. Looking north, he could clearly make out the oil platforms and pipelines that crossed the shallow waters of the gulf. Further out, he could see the drilling platforms and pumping stations of Khark and Ganaveh, the heart of one of the richest oil fields in the world. A row of tankers, perhaps four in all, lined up at the Bandar-e Bushehr offshore pumping station to take on their load. Even from this distance, he could see those that were already loaded with oil, for they sat much lower in the water than those that were waiting to be filled. After filling their holds with Arabian crude oil, the tankers would steam south and east, through the Straits of Hormuz and into the Arabian Sea. It would take the tankers several weeks to reach their destinations in Japan, Taiwan and the southern U.S. gulf ports. Rassa watched with only casual interest, for the Iranian oil fields meant very little to him. He benefited not at all from the incredible wealth that was generated through Iranian oil production, and because he had been watching the oil tankers since he was a child, there was little there he had not seen before.

Yet as he stared to the west, something did catch his eye. Far out at sea, maybe twenty kilometers off the coast, a monstrous ship steamed into view. It started as a gray dot on the southern horizon, but grew quickly, and Rassa watched it carefully. As the ship moved closer, he saw the deck and the enormous, steel mast, and he knew it was an American aircraft carrier. The carrier cut through the water, its sharp bow slicing through the three-foot seas, and made good time as it cruised to the north. If it hadn’t penetrated Iranian coastal waters, it must have been very close. Minutes later, Rassa saw one, and then two, aircraft launch from its deck, pointed-nose fighters that disappeared for just a fraction of a moment below the carrier’s deck, then formed up together and turned to the west. Rassa could tell from their shape of their wings that the aircrafts were F-18 Hornets.

The fighters accelerated, then pulled their noses steeply into the air and disappeared beyond a high strand of gray clouds. Rassa watched them, curious, then something else caught his eye. To his right, along the mountains, he saw two Iranian fighters, old Iraqi MiG-29s that Saddam Hussein had sent over the border to Iran during the first hours of the Gulf War and which the Iranian government had never returned. The MiGs screamed in from the north, low and fast, following the contours of the mountains before turning toward the brown sands of the coast. The MiGs always stayed away from the international waters, and certainly never ventured near the American carrier as they circled over the coast, though one made a feint for a U.S. destroyer before quickly turning away to fly back over the coast. They were flying very fast and they soon disappeared behind him, heading back to their base, already running low on fuel. Like everything made in Russia, the fighters were loud and fast, but they drank fuel like an elephant drinking water from a glass.

Rassa watched with interest. He had seen the game of cat and mouse before; an American carrier group would move up the coast, flanked by escorts and destroyers while launching their Hornets on combat air patrols. The Iranian (or, in the old days, Iraqi fighters) would follow the American ships, watching and teasing in their own show of force. Rassa wasn’t a military man, but he suspected if the U.S. fighters ever got serious, if they ever made a turn for Iranian fighters, his brothers would run. It was one thing to tease. It was another to get blown out of the air.

As Rassa watched, he realized such scenes were far more common over the past several months than they had ever been before. And he had witnessed other things, things which worried him and were only whispered about by a few. The government was very close to maybe six nuclear warheads. Such would be a game changer, everybody recognized, even poverty stricken people in remote villages such as his. And with unstable governments springing up throughout the region, everyone was on edge, including his masters in Tehran. Now there seemed to be a constant line of army convoys moving up and down the coastal highway. Some said these army units were there to act as a barrier to the constant flow of insurgents and foreign fighters who hid out in the Iranian deserts, where they had established base camps from which they would train and prepare for strikes into the struggling Iraqi democracy. Some claimed the Iranian army wasn’t there to stop the rebels, but to provide them training, as well as food, money, ammunition and aid. Rassa had also recently seen many more American warships than he had ever seen before. Normally, the Americans would keep their battle groups much farther to the south, rarely venturing much farther north than the northern coast of Bahrain, but lately the American ships regularly docked at the Iraqi ports near Umm Qasr, as well as the ports at Kuwait. And there seemed to be many more western oil tankers in the Gulf. He glanced again to the offshore loading docks at Bandar-e Bushehr. On any given week, he might see one or two tankers load up at the port, but over the past year or so, and especially over the past several months, the number of American tankers had doubled, even tripled. And Rassa wondered why.

As he watched, the American aircraft carrier turned forty degrees to the west and was soon out of sight, though an escort trailed behind, staying between the carrier and the coast. There were no longer any fighters in the air, and Rassa shifted against the tower to look on his village below.

Agha Jari Deh was an ancient town, with maybe a little more than four thousand people, a number which hadn’t changed much over the past couple centuries. From where he sat, on the top of the tower that was uphill from Agha Jari Deh, Rassa watched his town come to life. He saw a pair of mutawwa, the religious police, walking the streets dressed in their black turbans and white robes, ready to enforce the morning call to prayers. In the center of the village, a new civic center was being built, a modern brick building going up alongside ancient mud huts reinforced with palm leaves and logs. The suq, or village market, was exactly as it had been for almost five hundred years. The money changers were out, already clinking their coins to advertise their business as the merchants set out their wares—flour, copper, peaches, fine rugs, ancient spices (catalyst of too many wars), coffee, tea, sugar, holy water from Mecca, pistachios, goat meat and finely thin cuts of lamb—everything needed for daily life could be bought in the market. The streets were busy with pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists, but there were also many more automobiles than there used to be, including Mercedes Benzes and Land Rovers brought in from Europe. Islam had never preached that it was a sin to grow rich, and many of the villagers had grown relatively wealthy working the offshore oil fields or trading with those who came to the market daily. From where Rassa sat, he could see the fault line that ran almost straight through the middle of the town. Every hundred years or so, a powerful earthquake shook apart his village, but afterwards, whatever houses or shops that were shaken down were quickly rebuilt. His people were not easily rattled and what they lacked in resources, they made up in tenacity, patience and reduced expectations.

The sun was rising now, and it was quickly growing warm. Rassa felt drowsy and peaceful, and he considered for a moment his home and life.

Rassa was a simple man, but he was not unlearned, having been educated in one of the finest private schools in the region (one of the few benefits of being a descendent of the shah) and he knew this place where he stood truly was unique in the world. He surveyed his village, a place whose roots dated back almost 2,500 years, back to the days when men were first learning to plow, when they realized an ox could do more work than a boy, back to the age of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the first great civilization that was to rise to the Middle East. He knew that some of the world’s greatest warlords and emperors had stood in this place. From the first nomadic tribesmen to the Persian kings, from the Roman senators to the Muslim caliphs, Russian czars, and British generals—many of the greatest leaders had fought for this ground. How many men had died, how many wars had been fought, how many empires had risen and settled over Persia, this fertile piece of land that he called home?

Persia. The White Pearl. Treasure of ancient days.

The world had been changed here.

Might Persia change history once again?

Rassa had a feeling that it would. This feeling, this thing he had felt since he was a child, had been one of the reasons he had chosen to stay. In the years following the fall of his grandfather the shah, most of the royal family (and they had numbered in the hundreds) had accepted luxurious exile in various nations outside of the Persian Gulf. There they had retired with their millions, their servants, aides, butlers and wine. But in leaving, they had forgone any influence on their nation, as well as any hope of a respectful return. But Rassa’s father, now dead, had chosen to stay, and Rassa had followed his lead; even if anonymous, even if poor, he wanted to remain in this land, for he believed a time would come when the glory of Persia would rise once again. And he wanted to be here when that great day arrived.

As Rassa stood in the rising sun, he sensed a sudden rush of both good and bad; the passing of time, the passing of history, of dreams and disappointments, of birth and death. The emotion passed over him like a warm wind. Bending over, he ran his fingers through the two hundred years of dirt that had settled on the stone bulwark at the top of the tower. It was black, like the soil below it, and he let it sift through his fingers, then lifted his hand and smelled the richness there. He turned in a slow circle, looking from the forest to the mountain, then back to the valley below. Where else could man stand and look down upon more than two thousand years of civilizations, the tracings of wars, long forgotten, but which had shaped the world’s history?

As he stood alone at the top of the tower, he pondered the birth and death of nations, the birth and death of peoples, the birth and death of his ancestors who had lived here for so many years.

Then he thought of the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife, the only women he had ever loved.

Thinking of them, he shrugged. Who was he to understand the cycle of life? Who was he to question what it was for? He could ponder, he could ask, but he could not comprehend.

Might he know it one day?

Insha’allah. If God wills it.

TEN

Rassa heard heavy footsteps echoing up from the base of the tower. Soon, Omar Pasni Zehedan emerged at the top of the stairs.

“Rassa,” he offered simply as he moved to his side. From where Rassa had been sitting, it would have been impossible for Omar to have seen him from the ground, for the low wall around the embattlement would have hidden him from view. But it wasn’t uncommon for the two to meet here, and the neither of them was surprised to see the other there.

Omar sat next to Rassa and leaned against the cold stone. Rassa was quiet as he settled down.

“You see the aircraft carrier?” Omar asked after catching his breath.

Rassa nodded and hunched his shoulders toward the sea.

“There were also a couple of our fighters up north.”

Again, Rassa nodded.

Omar pulled out a crumpled pack of unfiltered cigarettes and stuck one between his fat lips. He was a huge man, with legs like tree trunks and a thick, hairy neck. His hands were round as grapefruits and he had a steel vise for a grip. Father of fifteen children, husband of six wives (the Qur’an only allowed for four wives, but he didn’t count the two who had failed to provide him with offspring), Omar was wealthy, cynical and wise. As a young man, he had grown rich through illicit trade, selling black-market supplies to the Iranian army, smuggling dollars and various European currencies (without which little business could be done), selling passports, bribing the port tariff managers to export rare Persian rugs, running drugs, alcohol and guns—there was little he hadn’t bought, sold or traded at one time or another. But he was far more conservative now, for he had much to lose. He had many friends, about as many enemies, but all in all he was as well-connected and financed as anyone Rassa knew.

Their relationship went back many years. Their fathers had fought side by side in the Iran-Iraq war, cringing in sandy trenches while chemical warheads had flown overhead. Upon the death of Rassa’s father, Omar, twenty years older, had taken him under his protective wing and over the years they had become loyal friends.

Omar spit a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue. Rassa watched him shift his weight from one hip to the other, knowing the cold stone exacerbated his arthritis. Omar cursed and stretched his legs. “I drove up to Bandar–e Mah Shahr yesterday,” he then said. “It normally takes me two hours. Took me almost four. I was stopped at three roadblocks. There used to only be one. I passed an army convoy that must have been three miles long. I made note of the unit, their commander proudly, and stupidly, had his unit flag waving from his staff car.” He spit once again. “They were the Twelfth Special Security Forces,” he announced, as if he were breaking important news.

Rassa stared blankly. It meant little to him.

Omar was silent as he lit up his smoke. “The Twelfth is normally posted to the central headquarters in Tehran,” he continued. “So I did a little reading.” Omar was well traveled, but far more important, he had a computer hooked up to a phone line! Access to the Internet meant access to an entire world of information. Many times, Rassa and Omar had spent until the wee hours of the morning learning things for which they could be hanged.

“They are posting the Twelfth to protect the oil fields to our east,” Omar concluded.

Rassa glanced toward him and shrugged, “Protect them from what?”

“One begs that question, it would seem. I don’t see enemy navies ready to invade our shores. I don’t see an enemy ready to knock down our doors. It seems the mullahs and bureaucrats are growing both suspicious and bold. They don’t see an enemy, they see us. But it appears they intend to protect their theocracy, even with Muslim blood.”

“You knew they would, Omar. How many times have we said the same thing?”

The older man growled and shifted his weight to his other oversized hip. He adjusted his turban and glared to the south, then reached under his robe and pulled out a curved knife from a leather sheaf strapped to his leg. Extracting a peach from his pocket, he cut it in half and extended a piece toward Rassa, using the end of his knife. Rassa took it and thanked him as he took a healthy bite.

“Too much is going on,” Omar answered. “Too many rumors. Too many whispers of war. Too many army units on highways and too many threats from the mullahs who hide in Tehran. But the enemy isn’t the Great Satan like we used to think. The enemy comes from within. And there is a darkness, a mist, spreading like smoke in the air. I don’t like it, Rassa. It is calm now, I know that, but I feel it is the calm before the crashing storm.”

Rassa nodded weakly. “Yes,” he agreed.

The world was changing, even here in Iran. There was too much information, too much travel, too much talk, for the ultraconservative unmans and mullahs to keep their people in the dark. Rassa had heard all their arguments, all of their bile and fear. Having been raised in the swamp of their loathing, how could he have not heard it all before? But he knew it wasn’t true. The ayatollahs were lying. The men who ran Iran, the mullahs, the local district leaders, the policemen, teachers and bureaucrats, all of them hated the United States; it was a part of their jobs, one of the qualifications they were screened for before they even applied. But not everyone shared in their hatred and there was a growing sentiment, especially among the educated and the young, that the Iranians had a decision to make; enter the 21st century or step back five hundred years. Take a step toward freedom or toward the Dark Ages once again.

Omar glanced to Rassa, expecting to see him roused with anger. The two had conspired many times, and Omar knew how Rassa felt about the Iranian government. But Rassa’s face remained passive as he stared at the calm morning sea.

Omar crushed his cigarette and turned his eyes to the rising sun.

A long silence followed. Omar started talking, then fell silent, then shifted his weight against the rock once again.

“Should he tell him,” Omar wondered? “Should he tell Rassa of his dream about his daughter?” Truth was, he wanted to forget it, to drive it from his mind. But he had always been a dreamer and his dreams had always proven true!

He glanced uneasily at his young friend. “And Azadeh, how is she?” he asked. It would have been considered very rude to ask about another’s daughters or wife had he not been a close friend.

Rassa didn’t see the flash of concern in Omar’s eyes. “She is growing restless,” he answered, a look of pride on his face. "She wants to leave to go to school."

Omar pushed himself up to his feet, eager to get off the cold stone. “You know, Rassa, I have nine daughters,” he said. “Some of them are goat ugly. I don’t mean to be unkind, but I am an honest man and I know what I see. There aren’t enough blind men in the valley for my daughters to marry. But thankfully some of my daughters look like their mothers and not me. Some of them are beautiful, Rassa, I am proud to say. But I tell you now, Rassa, there is something in Azadeh. She has a beauty that goes far beyond the eye.”

Rassa smiled proudly. “Thank you, Omar,” he said.

“I’m not just being pleasant, Rassa. She is a vision, an angel who fell from heaven. Sometimes angels fall among us. Where angels fall and why, Allah does not reveal. But Azadeh is an angel and she has fallen here.”

Rassa nodded slowly. “Our children are like angels in our midst.”

“Yes, Rassa. But this generation, these children, I don’t know . . . there is something about them, something I don’t understand. They are better than we were. They are better than we are now. And we are all the time speaking of how our children need us, but I have come to believe that before this time is over, it is us who will be needing them.” Omar glanced down at the village and rubbed his hand over his face. He felt himself tremble and he was embarrassed. He was a hard man, a businessman, a man of great wealth and means. But this dream, this cold warning, it had cut him to the bone. And he loved Azadeh as much as he loved his own.

He turned to the younger man. “Take care of her,” he warned him. “I’m worried for her, Rassa . . . ,” his voice trailed off.

Rassa rose to his feet, his eyes hurt and intense. “What are you talking about Omar?” he demanded.

Omar started to answer, but the words didn’t come. He remained silent for a moment, his mouth open, then turned away and shrugged, wishing he hadn’t said anything. What could he tell him? How could he make him understand? “Your child is in danger Rassa, for I had a dream!” He would sound like a fool if he tried to explain!

“I just worry for her, Rassa,” he finally said. “She is young, she is special, and you have been left to care for her yourself. She needs a mother, like we all do, and you need a wife. I worry for you both. That’s all I meant to say.”

Rassa watched his friend’s face, knowing there was more, but Omar waved his hand and moved toward the steep steps. “It is nothing, Rassa. Nothing. I must go. It is getting late and we both have work to do.”

Omar stopped short of the stairs, then turn and lowered his voice. “There is a meeting tonight,” he said

Instinctively, Rassa looked around. “I can’t come,” he said. “Tomorrow is Azadeh’s birthday.”

Omar grunted, “Yes, yes, of course.”

Omar started down the stairs.

“Be careful,” Rassa whispered to him as he disappeared.

ELEVEN

Balaam found Lucifer in a dark room, casting his temptations over his flock, draping them in a cold and passionless blanket of sin and despair. “Master,” he whispered as he crawled to his side.

Lucifer turned toward him, his eyes cold as wet stones. Balaam looked away, unable to look into Lucifer’s dark eyes. Normally, Balaam wouldn’t have bothered Lucifer, but this was important. Maybe very important. Balaam had identified one of the great ones who had the power to change the world. So he whimpered one more time. “Master . . . .”

“What are you doing here?” Lucifer sneered.

Balaam almost quivered from the rage in Lucifer’s voice. It hurt him, burning like a hot knife in his chest. “Master Mayhem!” he pleaded, his head almost touching the ground, “I have located a girl. She is only a child, but I know her, I can feel it, she is important to the Enemy’s plan. She will do things, she will accomplish things, that haven’t been done before. But . . . ” Balaam hesitated, suddenly feeling unsure, “but if we destroy her, Master, before she is able to make a difference, it will help us over time.”

Lucifer seemed to hesitate then stared deeply into Balaam’s eyes, bent on reading his thoughts. Balaam almost quivered, the knife cutting deeper into his chest, feeling the power of Lucifer’s cold stare. “Yes,” Lucifer finally answered when he was finished rummaging through Balaam’s mind. “Yes, we must destroy her. Now how do you propose we do that?”

Balaam thought desperately, his mind racing. Lucifer was asking for his opinion! He wanted to know what he thought! It was a glorious moment of recognition. He could share with Lucifer some of the magnificent things inside his head.

Then he froze, his heart thumping!

His mind went utterly blank.

Nothing. He had nothing.

What was he going to say?

Lucifer glared at him, waiting.

Balaam’s mind raced through a dark fog.

Lucifer snarled, then turned away. “It is as I thought,” he muttered. “You bring me a problem but no answers.”

Lucifer stared at his feet as he thought, then turned back to Balaam, gesturing over his head. “There is another angel who works this village. His name is Roth. He is slow, weak and lazy, but he might be the only choice I have. I want you to find him. Talk to him. Tell him I need him to kill her. Tell him he will do this for me and I will reward him graciously.” Lucifer cocked an eye to Balaam before twisting the knife. “Tell him that I trust him.” He waited as he smiled.

The words cut so deeply Balaam had to catch his breath.

“But tell him not to fail me,” Lucifer went on, “or his punishment will be swift and sure. And you know about that, don’t you, Balaam? You know about my wrath. You can warn him of my anger as well as anyone.”

“Yes Master, I will find Roth,” Balaam muttered, trying to hide his disappointment and disdain. “Yes, Roth will do it. I will tell him Master. I will do anything you say.”

TWELVE

The morning broke orange and yellow over Washington, D.C. As the sun rose, the winds shifted to a light breeze from the Chesapeake Bay that smelled of brine and wet marsh weed, humid and cold. Traffic started early as it always did in the city, the legions of government minions and private sector bloodsuckers heading into the district to fight their unending battles over government money and power. On the surface, everything looked as it always did; a steady stream of airliners took off from Reagan National Airport, the Metro line ran on time, and the I-495 Beltway had bumper-to-bumper traffic, same as it had been for more than forty years.

Nothing had changed. But there was change in the air, a tension and expectation that had finally risen to the surface after bubbling underneath for a generation.

The continuing economic uncertainty had stirred the pot of insecurity and resentment, the great American machine never throttling up to full power. Instead, it had limped along until it had created a new normal of expectations very far below what generations of Americans had anticipated before. Bit by bit, one disappointment and frustration at a time, the American Dream had slipped away until it had been redefined to mean nothing more than mediocrity among all the turmoil in the world. And it didn’t end there. The sputtering economic system that seemed to be always standing on the edge of a cliff was just the beginning of . . . something.

And more was coming. People sensed it in their bones.

Washington, D.C., was a tense city. It had always been high strung, for the people who lived and worked there were by their nature ambitious and cutting edge. But over the past several years, it had changed from nervous to neurotic, the growing global tension having completed the transition from uneasy to scared. The truth was people who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., knew they were the primary target, the most likely to burn, and they seemed to have grown used to the stress of the bull’s eye on their backs. How many other American cities had so many police barricades? How many had surface-to-air missile batteries hidden on the tops of their buildings or secret “sniffer” units that scanned the highways and ports, searching for the telltale radiation emitted by a nuclear device? How many other American cities had already suffered an anthrax attack, revived their underground shelters or had their hospitals drill regularly for a mass-casualty attack?

Such was business as usual in Washington, D.C. But something even more was astir now, a dark expectation that had been building for years. The people felt the pressure growing, a dark, rising cloud that was ready to burst, until there was an almost fatalistic acceptance that it was only a matter of time. A week, a year, maybe longer. Disaster was coming. It was just a question of when.

*******

General Brighton woke early, showered and dressed quietly while Sara slept. When he sat on the chest at the foot of the bed to pull on his shoes, she stirred and held out her hand. He stood and came to her, kissing her on the cheek, then sat next to her on the bed.

“The boys are going rock climbing this morning,” she told him, glancing at the bedside clock.

Brighton nodded. He had heard them getting breakfast downstairs.

“You were up late," she then said.

“I had some papers to review.”

“I think I heard your phone ring. Did you get a call on the secure telephone?”

“A couple of them, really.”

“Anything important?”

Brighton almost laughed. “Everything is important.”

Sara nodded, understanding.

“Prince Saud called from Riyadh. He wants to get together when I’m in Saudi Arabia.”

“Prince Saud? How is he? You haven’t seen him in a long time.”

Brighton paused, thinking of the strain in his old friend’s voice. “He seemed a little anxious,” he answered. “But I can understand that. He’s sitting on a powder keg, and most of the people around him are striking matches and tossing them on the floor.”

Sara sat up and brushed her blond hair from her eyes. Brighton watched her and wondered how she could be so beautiful, even in the morning, even barely awake.

“And the absolute secrecy of the kingdom only makes things worse,” he went on. “They are private and protective to a ridiculous degree. It’s like looking into a dark well, trying to discern what is happening in their world. You drop a rock and listen, hoping to pick up a bit of information from what you hear echoing back. But it’s difficult . . . no, impossible, to really know what’s going on. Prince Saud opens up from time to time, but believe me, those times are very rare.”

Sara’s blue eyes, pale and shining, narrowed as she thought. “Prince Saud is a good man. I have always said that, and it’s not because I’m overly impressed that he’s the crown prince.”

Brighton nodded, knowing that was true. With an advanced degree in philosophy, and having lived in some of the most sophisticated capitals of the world, Sara moved comfortably among the elite. She had met presidents, ambassadors, senators and kings, but she was hard to impress and unafraid to speak her mind, even to argue, if the opportunity presented itself. He remembered a reception at the White House about four months before when she had had a strained disagreement with the French president’s wife over the inherent difference in the nature of boys and girls. Raised a traditional Catholic (meaning she actually believed what the Church taught) and educated in private schools in Boston, she had become what she called a motherhood feminist, a vocal advocate of homemaking as a legitimate career.

Sara watched her husband. He looked worn out, even more so than usual. “Anything going on at work?” she asked sympathetically. “You look a little tired.”

Brighton didn’t answer. The truth was, something was always going on at work. Always. Forever. It would never change. He felt like the kid holding his thumb in the dike. He only had ten fingers and there were hundreds of holes, gushing cracks in the dam, all of them spurting powerful streams of dark water. He could move to the worst breaks, but more popped up every day. Pakistan was in shambles. Russia was moving into Chechnya again. North Africa was on fire. Syria hanging by a thread, its leader shooting his own people as if they were at war. Lebanon, the same. Oman. Yemen. Bahrain. Egypt had been taken over by Islamic fundamentalists, all in the name of democracy, an irony so fresh it would have been hilarious if hadn’t been so sad. The Arab Spring of years past was now a distant memory. Their friends in Europe had abandoned them, then sat back and laughed, hoping the Yanks would finally fail. Argentina had just reelected a socialist government that immediately announced they had developed the first nuclear weapon in the Western Hemisphere outside of the United States. The new Brazilian government was courting ties to Cuba and Venezuela, the bastions of communism that sat at their door. And North Korea! North Korea! He hardly had time to even think about that! Afghanistan was a mess. No, it was much worse than that! After years of near-civil war, the people appeared incapable of governing themselves. The Mullahs in Iran were growing bolder, taking courage in the mess they had helped create in Iraq. According to the Threat File, they were only months away from testing their first nuclear warhead, maybe a year, if they were lucky. Would the United States have to go in? Would Israel act on its own? Then there was Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Fetaheen—all of them spewing more bloodshed and hatred toward the United States than any one nation could absorb. Israel, their only democratic ally in the area, was isolated and terrified, the United Nations demanding sanctions for their refusal to honor the 1967 boundaries, an order which would have resulted in national suicide. Their enemies didn’t grow weaker—they grew stronger. There was no way to reason with them, absolutely no common ground. General Brighton sometimes felt they were more likely to reason with a snake than negotiate with these radicals, for a snake, if it were to see an option that would benefit its position, would at least consider the move. But not these people. Brighton had seen it enough to be completely convinced. They cared not about improving their position, their people, their children. They only cared about one thing and that thing was death. Death to their enemies! The glorious death of a martyr. Death in the jihad.

To the radical Islamist, the Americans weren’t human, they were jahili. Barbarians, subhuman. Decadent and soulless. Without value to God. They had rejected the one True God and so were worthy of indignity and death. And whereas Westerners found value in most cultures or societies, it was not so for the Islamists, who considered Western culture completely devoid of value, populated by savages with whom they could not coexist. Which explained why it was acceptable to kill their children. They were not innocent. They would grow up to be barbarians. Was a young scorpion less deadly than the mother who gave it life? Was there any law that insisted they couldn’t kill their enemies until they were strong enough to fight?

Brighton had seen such thinking illustrated a thousand times before. They were not true Muslims, for Muslims didn’t believe in such hate. No, the men he fought were not religious in any way. They were nothing but religious hacks, evil men who had hijacked a religion to further their cause, men who were as likely—even more likely—to kill their fellow Muslims as an American if it furthered their cause.

Brighton understood now that this wasn’t a contest of religions or philosophies. At its core, it wasn’t even a battle between cultures or nation-states. It was a battle for freedom. It was simple as that. Good against evil, black against white.

And it was a battle they were losing. At least that’s how he felt.

Of course, he believed in God. He believed in mercy and redemption. He believed in faith, optimism and hope in the future. But this was beyond that. He had read the Threat File. He knew they were in trouble. Which is why he didn’t sleep at night.

Give him another day, another small victory, another chance at hope and he would regain his optimism. He had been down before and he had always scratched his way back up. But his faith was growing fragile. The battle had worn him out and he was getting scared.

Brighton thought quickly of a copy of an instant message the CIA had intercepted just the day before, an exchange between two Iraqi brothers who had forced their younger sister to participate in an uprising in the Iraqi central town of Ramadi. The message was crude and halting, and translated loosely, but the meaning was clear:

Al-Anbari: All of the people in the area have started to move. I put our sister in the crowd and thrust my AK-47 in her hand. I see other mothers push their children into rioting crowd. I didn’t think that the people in this area were so heroic. And she was only nine!

Kamal: Whatever God wants! Blessed be the Almighty!

Al-Anbari: She just tried to come back, but I shut the door. I told her I would kill her if she dishonored our name.

Kamal: Oh God! God is great!

Al-Anbari: It is done. She was killed by our brothers, our own Iraqi police. But we will avenge her. We still have others we can put in the fight.

Kamal: Do what it takes, al-Anbari. You strengthen my pride.

Brighton thought of the captured exchange and wondered how he should answer his wife’s question about “How things were at work?”

Truth was, they were losing. They knew, all of the agents and officers he worked with, that they couldn’t stop it. It was coming some day. So yes, he was tired. He was worn to the bone. He was weary physically, mentally and emotionally. Even his spirit was worn thin, like a sheet that had been laid on for too many years. There were too many battles. Too many enemies. He had to protect the country; he had to protect the president! It was his responsibility to advise him on what he had to do. But there weren’t any answers! At least not enough! Their enemies were like rats climbing over the wall. They were shooting them one by one, shooting as quickly as they could, but there were so many! The rats kept spilling over. Which meant he was failing. But what more could he do?

He glanced at Sara sadly, then forced a smile. Like he did everyday, he pretended everything was all right. “Got to go,” he said as he kissed her hand. “Want to talk to the boys before I leave.”

“See you tonight then,” she said to him. “Are you going to be late?”

“Hopefully not, maybe even early. I’ll let you know.”

He bent down to kiss her forehead and left the bedroom.

*******

Brighton walked down the winding staircase and into the kitchen where he found his two sons, Luke and Ammon, sitting at the table dressed in baggy shorts and oversized T-shirts. Overflowing bowls of cold cereal sat before them and he noticed the spilled Lucky Charms on the floor. “Morning guys,” he said as he walked to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He glanced at the bowls of cereal. “You could cook some eggs. Or there’s frozen waffles in the freezer.”

Ammon looked up as he spooned in another mouthful of sugar and bleached wheat. “That’s OK, dad. We’re in kind of a hurry, you know.”

“You are going down to the river?”

“Yeah. Carderock.”

Brighton poured himself a small bowl of rolled oats, added some milk and placed the bowl in the microwave. “Carderock? Is that at Great Falls in McLean?” he asked as he punched the buttons on the microwave.

“Yeah. It’s a good rock. Plenty of handholds, but if you don’t climb it just right you can find yourself hanging under some pretty awesome outcroppings.”

Brighton knew his sons could climb like flies. He was pretty good himself, but he couldn’t even come close to keeping up with them. But sometimes they made him nervous. It was one thing to be aggressive, another to be stupid, and sometimes the line was a fine one, and blurred. “How high is the rock?” he asked.

Ammon shot a quick look to his brother, who paused eating long enough to hunch his shoulders.

“I don’t know, Dad,” Ammon answered, “maybe fifty feet or so. It’s not the highest climb in the area, but because of the angle and outcroppings, it’s one of the hardest.”

Brighton pressed his lips as he pictured Luke and Ammon hanging from their fingers, their hands gripping the tiny ledges that extended from the rock, their feet and legs swinging through the emptiness as they pulled themselves up and over the sandstone outcroppings by only their arms.

He opened the window blinds that looked out on their back yard. “You don’t have any classes this morning?”

Luke poured himself another bowl of cereal. “Ammon’s got labs this afternoon. I’ve got calculus at ten. That’s why we’re in a hurry. We want to get in a couple hours climbing before I have to get to class.”

Brighton watched his sons slopping in their cereal as he sipped his juice. Something was up. He knew his sons too well. “Why are you climbing on a Tuesday? Why not wait until the weekend when you won’t be in such a hurry.”

Again they both paused. Ammon shot a knowing look to his brother, then ducked his head.

Although only older by minutes, Ammon had always been more responsible and it made his father nervous to see the guilty look in his eyes. It was Ammon’s nature to take things a little more slow, and if he was nervous, then his dad got nervous too. Luke, on other hand, was a full speed ahead, let’s-give-it-a-go kind of guy. If he left a wreck behind him . . . no, when he left a wreck behind him—he would apologize for the trouble, then speed off to the next crash.

When neither son answered his question, Brighton asked it again. “What’s up guys, how come you’re climbing today?”

Ammon took another spoonful of cereal. “Nothing special, Dad,” he answered. “A couple guys we met last week want to come with us. They’re a couple big-shot climbers from California, at least they think that they are. They were bragging about all the rocks they had climbed out West. We told them there were some pretty good climbs around here, but they didn’t believe us.”

Brighton sipped again as he filled in the blanks. Luke liked to talk. Talked a little too much. So he had met some new friends from California where there were lots of natural climbing walls and had talked himself into a situation where he not only had to prove there were good rocks to climb along the Potomac River in northern Virginia, but that he was the master of them all. Now it was time to make good. And Ammon was going along to keep his brother from killing himself.

How many times had he seen this before? Still, he had to smile. “You’re going to class though, right?” he asked as he sat down.

“We’ll make it, Dad.”

“You know how much tuition cost me?”

“Ah . . . yeah Dad, it seems like you might have mentioned that before. And you’re only paying half.”

“Still, I’m getting my money’s worth, right? You’re not just screwing around? Sometimes you go to class? Sometimes you actually learn something, right?”

Quiet for a moment. “We’re learning lots, Dad,” Ammon finally said.

Luke looked up suddenly, “Oh, yeah, that reminds me Dad, my history professor wants to know if you will come in and speak to our class. He’s a flaming idiot, I tell you. Revisionist history, through and through. It was his idea to have you come as a guest lecturer, but I was thinking maybe you could set him straight . . . .”

“Have him contact my office. He’ll have to schedule through them.”

“It would really help me, Dad, if you could come. I’m afraid I might have . . . ah, I don’t know, made him a little bit defensive, maybe. Sometimes I argue too much.”

“Can’t imagine that, Luke.”

Luke lifted his bowl and drained the milk, leaving a white mustache on his upper lip. Ammon looked at him and laughed and Luke wiped it with the back of his hand. “Dad, don’t worry about us missing class,” he said. “We both have partial scholarships—saves you boatloads of money, no, really, it’s OK, no need to say thanks—but we’re kind of thinking we might head out west to school after our freshman year anyway. Maybe UCLA.”

“No way,” Luke shot out. “California beaches suck. What’s the point? Me and the real men are heading to Texas A&M.”

“Whatever,” Ammon answered before turning back to Brighton. “What I’m saying, Dad, is that we’re both probably going to switch schools next year. So we’re trying to keep things cool, you know, enjoy things our first year and all.”

Brighton nodded slowly, a sense of sadness passing over him. His sons were as comfortable in one place as another, but they didn’t call anywhere home. They were happy and adaptable, they could make friends in weeks when others took years, and they wouldn’t have had it any other way, but they had no roots to speak of, there was no doubt.

It was one of the prices his family paid for his military career.

The general finished his orange juice and straightened his uniform. “Hey guys,” he said. “If you’re going to go climbing, I don’t think that sugar crap is going to be good enough. Hang on a minute and I’ll make you some eggs.” He pulled out a large skillet and placed it on the stove.

“No time, Dad,” Luke answered quickly. “And you’ve got to get to work, too.”

“It will take me three minutes. Put some bread in the toaster. You’ll be glad you did.”

Luke hesitated, then walked to the toaster and dropped in four slices of bread. Brighton pulled out an egg cartoon and scrambled six eggs, dumped in some bacon bits as the skillet grew warm, then poured the eggs and stirred them while watching his sons.

Ammon sat at the table, reading the sports page while grumbling about his Wizards who had started 1 and 10 (bottom of the division again!), while Luke grabbed his calculus textbook and started cramming his way through some problems that, no doubt, should have been done the day before. How Luke managed to keep his grades up, Brighton would never know. So far as he could tell, he and his youngest son took very different approaches to life. While he believed that preparation was 90% of the battle, Luke seemed to think that true inspiration came only under great stress, and self-induced stress was the most inspiring kind.

Although they were twins, his sons were different as any two brothers could be. Both were freshmen at George Washington University, but Ammon was tall, a little more than 6’2”, with broad shoulders and long legs while Luke was shorter and stockier, with thick arms and thick legs. Ammon had his mother’s blond hair and fine eyes while Luke had his father’s dark hair and Roman nose. Ammon was smooth as Georgia cream; he could talk himself out of any situation, manipulate any teacher, make any friend. He always knew what to say (even if it wasn’t always exactly the truth). Luke, on the other hand, was extremely straightforward; there was no pretense to him. He didn’t sugarcoat the situation, just the opposite in fact, he sometimes made things worse just to liven things up. With Luke, what you saw was what you got and if someone didn’t like that, that was OK with him.

Ammon had been named after one of Brighton’s great-grandfathers, a gambler who had discovered his purpose in life soon after finding a young Alabama blonde and bringing her out to the Wild West. After going straight, Grandpa Ammon had gone on to become one of the most feared lawmen in West Texas, a sheriff who was known for getting his man dead or alive. It apparently mattered not a whole lot to him. Luke was named after the missionary who had baptized his great-grandfather, bringing him religion after a hard life of imposing the law.

Watching Luke and Ammon, Brighton knew he had probably mixed up their names. Luke was the gunslinger, the fearless lawman with the “get ‘em or kill ‘em” attitude. Ammon, on the other hand, was the mediator, the smooth-talking ladies man. But he was proud of them both, and loved them as only a father could love his sons. If they had any faults, and both of them did, he often found the same faults in himself, and knew that was where most of their weakness came from.

Brighton looked down to see the eggs were cooked and he spooned them onto two plates, buttered the toast and set the plates on the table. The two sons dug in, stabbing at the eggs as if they hadn’t eaten in days, their stomachs apparently forgetting the multiple bowls of cold cereal they had just wolfed down. Ammon scooped his eggs onto a piece of toast, took a large bite then turned to Brighton. “Sam called last night,” he said.

Brighton perked instantly. “You’re kidding!”

“Yeah. He’s in Germany this week.”

“He’s out of Afghanistan?”

“For a while anyway. He has two weeks in Europe for R&R.”

Brighton stared as he thought. Sam, his adopted son, the lost sheep of his fold, the young man he loved as much as he loved his natural sons, was off on his own now, having joined the Army right out of high school. No college, no hesitation, just a jump into life. But ever since joining the Army, his relationship with his adopted family had become distant and it seemed they heard less and less from him now. “Did he say anything?” Brighton prodded.

“Not really. He was in kind of a hurry.”

“How is he?” Brighton asked eagerly.

“Seemed OK. I told him you were on your way to Saudi Arabia this week. He wanted to know if you were stopping in Germany to refuel. If you are, he wants to hook up.”

Brighton frowned. Much as he’d love to, it’d be very difficult to make it work. “How’s his unit in Afghanistan?” he asked, eager to hear Sam’s report. He kept a very close eye on the status reports from the Special Forces units operating in Afghanistan, but word from the theater was hard to come by, especially from the Ranger units who were working with the CIA.

Luke smiled. “He was glad to get a hot shower and sleep in a bed, but you could tell he was really satisfied. He said he’s making a difference. It sounds really cool!”

Brighton eyed his son. “It’s not as cool as you think, trust me, Luke. Sleeping in tents. Every meal an MRE—cold soup and spaghetti out of plastic bags. Sharing a latrine with fifty other filthy men. It’s muddy, cold and extremely hard work. Don’t even think of enlisting! You’ve got to be an officer! So do what I say, Luke, enroll in an ROTC program. And for heaven’s sakes, don’t be a grunt. Why would you join the Army when you could learn to fly jets! You talk about cool, but what could be cooler than that?”

Luke didn’t answer. They had had this conversation before. Flying? Yeah, he thought it would be OK. But it seemed the Air Force took their best pilots and jerked them out of the cockpit and into staff positions long before they were ready. And besides, there was something else, something greater, a feeling that the real men fought their wars in the blood and mud, not from some sterile cockpit at forty thousand feet. But he had never told his dad that. And he never would.

Brighton moved to the hallway and returned with his flight cap and briefcase. “When is Sam taking his R&R?” he asked.

Ammon and Luke were gathering their climbing gear. Ammon hesitated, then shook his head. “He didn’t say. But he said he could meet you at Ramstein if you layover there.”

“Did he talk to your mother?”

“Only for a minute,” Ammon answered. “She was on her way to meet you at the embassy reception. And he was in a hurry, too; he said he wanted to call his old man. He hasn’t seen him in a couple years and apparently the old bag isn’t feeling too well.”

Brighton shook his head. “Don’t call him that,” he said.

Ammon hesitated. “He doesn’t deserve any better. After what he did to Samuel, he deserves a lot worse.”

“Doesn’t matter!” Brighton answered, his voice growing sharp. “It doesn’t help Sam when you call his father that.”

“You should hear what he calls him!” Ammon replied.

Brighton looked stern and Ammon shut up. This wasn’t an argument he was going to win. And his father was right. It’s just that he hated Sam’s natural father so. All the things he had said, all the things he had done, how could Sam want to talk to him, let alone still call him dad!

The three were silent, then Luke headed for the door. “Come on, Ammon,” he shouted. “We should have left fifteen minutes ago.”

Ammon stopped at the built-in locker in the back hallway of the old Victorian house and pulled out a pair of gum-soled climbing shoes. “See you tonight, Dad,” he called as they walked out the door.

THIRTEEN

Rassa was silent during the evening meal. Azadeh cleared the table, washed the dishes, then sat down beside him as he smoked by the fire. A biting wind blew down off the mountain to claw at the clay shingles that lined their low roof. Azadeh could feel the cold draft as she passed by the window to sit beside her father.

Rassa turned to her, looked away, then turned to her again. “Let’s go for a walk,” he offered in a low voice.

Azadeh stared at him, her eyes bright with anticipation. It wasn’t like her father to offer such a thing. More, it was cold and blowing. A hard storm was coming and the weather on the mountain could be violent and unpredictable. Still, he stood and pulled his coat on. “Come with me,” he said. “We’ll go to the market and walk around for awhile.”

Azadeh’s heart flipped. The market? At night? She had already completed their shopping. They had milk and eggs, cooking oil, and honey. They did not have to go shopping for another couple days. In her mind, she pictured the market, its shops crowded with people, merchants displaying their wares to the wealthy that had come up from the valley. She thought of the multicolored lanterns that would be hanging to light the night.

Going to the market at night when they didn’t need supplies? It could only mean one thing! He had not forgotten her birthday. He was going to buy her a present! Her heart leapt with joy!

Azadeh quickly draped a dark shawl over her shoulders and flipped the hood over her long hair, pulling it forward to protect her eyes as she followed her father out the front door. He waited for her and she ran to catch up as he turned toward the town square. She glanced down the dark streets toward the lights in the distance. They burned with an intensity she had not seen before.

Of course he had remembered! He would not forget. But the fact that he always remembered her birthday didn’t mean there was always a celebration. In a culture that never ran short on reasons to celebrate—birthdays, weddings, Mondays, anniversaries, leap years, government holidays, untold religious celebrations, it seemed they celebrated anything—there had been precious few presents or parties in Azadeh’s life. “No money,” her father would explain in a pained voice. It hurt him and she knew that, but the truth was there was rarely so much as an extra rial to spare. Although he was one of the ex-royal family, Rassa was nearly penniless, an anonymous and struggling farmer who had to scratch out a living just like everyone else. And it had been a brutal year. The cotton had nearly wilted in the fields from the lack of spring rain and then several flash floods had washed away some of the best cows in their herd.

Still, as they walked toward the market, Azadeh stepped quickly with hope. Could it be her father had somehow managed to scrape a few rials together? Might there be some extra money? Some unknown fountain of which she was unaware?

Tomorrow was her birthday. And not just any birthday, she was turning eighteen! In a few hours, her childhood would be left behind her. It was supposed to be a great celebration, a time to celebrate the passing of the young ways and the coming of the responsibilities that came with being a woman.

She shivered from excitement as she clutched her father’s hand.

He looked at her, then pulled away uncomfortably. The mutawwa would be angry if they saw them holding hands.

If Azadeh had been forced to be truthful, she would have admitted that there had been times in the past when she felt her birthday had become more a day of mourning her mother’s death than a day to celebrate her birth. Sometimes Azadeh wondered if her father realized that she felt lonely, too. And though she wanted a present terribly, what she really needed was a token, some kind of sign that her father loved her as much as he had loved his wife. She needed a symbol of his affection, some indication that he realized that she missed her mother, too.

She lowered her head against the wind and didn’t look up again until they were almost at the market.

She knew what she wanted. She had eyed it in the market some three months before. But it was no article of clothing, piece of china, or something for her dowry. No, this was something more.

In her mind, she pictured the only photograph that she had of her mother, a faded black and white taken on her mother’s wedding day. She thought of the bright dress, her mother’s eyes peeking above the white veil that covered her face. She thought of the golden headband woven through her black hair, the single diamond centered just above her eyes. Simple in design, it was beautiful and elegant.

It was nothing but a dream to think that she might own something so beautiful one day. Far too expensive. It was ridiculous. It was for too much to even ask.

But they were walking to the market. And it had been his idea. Who knew what he was thinking? Perhaps a miracle was in store!

The market was not crowded, the coming storm having chased most of the people away. But the wind had died down now and it was no longer cold. The lanterns cast multicolored shadows in every direction. Rassa moved toward a small booth with handmade dresses hanging in display, a clash of lace and colors. Azadeh hardly looked at them. These dresses were for little girls! Her father watched her reaction, checked the price, hunched his shoulders and moved to the next stall. They worked their way around the market. Dresses. Handbags. Shoes. Denim pants from the West. A silver flute. He checked the prices carefully, occasionally lifting some less expensive item as if to suggest it to her before placing it carefully back on its shelf. Azadeh tried to show interest, but her heart felt faint. They were moving in the wrong direction! The birthday present she wanted was on the other side of the market, almost a block away.

Rassa lifted a set of small gold earrings, holding them next to Azadeh’s cheeks. “These are beautiful,” he said hopefully

Azadeh smiled and agreed. “They are beautiful, Father.”

“How much?” he asked the merchant.

“Forty-five thousand rials,” the merchant answered. Five American dollars! Rassa’s eyes dropped in a look of despair. Azadeh watched him, her heart breaking. She heard the sound of the coins clinking in his pocket and she knew he did not have enough. What might he be holding? A few thousand rials? Not enough for the earrings. Not enough for anything.

She would not get a present. But she didn’t care about a birthday gift, at least not any more. She only cared about her father and how he must feel. What a failure he must feel like. How disappointed and embarrassed! She watched him carefully and for the first time she saw it, a look of complete despair. Everything he had, he had given to her. But it was not enough. He looked away in shame.

She leaned tenderly toward him. “It doesn’t matter, Father. I know we don’t have any extra money, but that is all right. Come on, let’s go home. It will be OK.”

Rassa looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It has been a bad year. The cotton. The cows. We’ll do better this year. And then I will get you . . . .” He gestured toward the shops and the brightly lit kiosks with their playful displays. “I’m sorry, Azadeh,” he repeated as he lowered his head.

She took his hand and pulled him toward their home. “It’s OK, Father. I really do understand.”

They walked in silence, making their way up the dusty roadway that led to their home. At the top of the hill they stopped and turned back, looking down on their village. The wind had swept the skies clear and the moon was bright and orange, a large ball rising over the mountains. The lights from the village shone in the clear air and a huge bowl of stars shined over their heads. The Milky Way was full and fat, a bright band of stars. They looked at each other and Azadeh forced a quick smile.

“She is up there,” she whispered.

“Who?” Rassa asked.

“Your wife.” She hesitated. “My mother.”

Rassa shook his head slowly. “I hope so,” he said.

They looked at the sky a moment longer then turned again for their home.

They were just coming under the light of their front porch when Rassa turned and said. “You wanted something special, didn’t you?” he asked.

Azadeh shook her head. Her father watched her, then pressed. “I could see it in your eyes. I could see it in your actions. Did I even come close to guessing what you wanted? I don’t think that I did.”

Azadeh was silent, hoping she would not have to tell him what she had been hoping for. “It was nothing, Father,” she answered softly.

“This is a very special birthday. I know you had your eye on something. I have tried to figure out what you hoped for, but I had no idea. Fathers are not good at these sorts of things. This is where you need a mother. She would know what to get you. But I couldn’t even guess.”

Azadeh was silent.

“What was it?” her father prodded.

She kicked her sandaled feet through the dirt, then whispered in an embarrassed voice. He nodded slowly, a look of great sadness clouding his eyes. It would have been far too expensive. “I’m sorry,” he apologized for the last time.

“I still love you, Father,” Azadeh teased in reply.

*******

After Azadeh was asleep, Rassa sat alone for a time, then pushed himself up from his chair and walked to his bedroom and stood by his bed. Leaning down, he pulled out a small chest from under the headboard then extracted a hidden key from a chain around his neck. Opening the chest, he extracted two American silver dollars, the only wealth he had ever accumulated in his entire life. He fingered the coins. They were heavy and firm. He held them tightly in the palm of his hand, then closed the chest and pushed it back under the headboard.

*******

Azadeh woke early. The sun was just breaking over the mountains and the dawn was pink and purple from the clouds overhead. She heard her father working in the kitchen and smelled his special jellyrolls, her favorite treat. She lay on her pillow and smiled. He was the best father in the world. She knew that she was blessed. It really was enough.

She lay there a moment, enjoying the laziness of lying in bed, then threw back the covers and put her feet on the floor.

She saw it on her bedside dresser and her heart almost stopped. The gold headband had been laid on a purple cloth, the delicate links having been carefully arranged into a nearly perfect circle that glittered in the morning sun.

She didn’t move. She couldn’t move. For a long moment she just stared, her heart slamming in her chest. She glanced toward the door, then back to the beautiful gift again. She reached out for the headband then pulled her hand back. For now, it was enough just to look at it and know that it was there.

She held her hand to her mouth, then jumped out of bed. She ran into the kitchen, slamming back her bedroom door. Rassa turned in surprise as she burst into the kitchen. She ran toward her father and fell into his arms. Pressing her face against his shoulders, she cried like a baby in his arms.

FOURTEEN

Sara Brighton watched her husband pack as she sat on the edge of their bed, legs crossed, her nightgown pulled tightly around her knees and tucked under her feet.

Like all military officers, Brighton had spent much of his career on the road and it only took him minutes to pack for the trip. One suit bag and one carry-on, the general had it down to an art. His travel bag was like his schedule, tight and precise. And he always traveled light; no fluffy bathrobes, extra clothes or personal pillows. The only non-essential item he would carry would be whatever history book he was reading at the time. For the major items he kept a pre-packed military suitcase in the back of his closet which contained a fully packed toiletry bag, underwear, dark socks, Air Force shirts, two dress uniforms, dark leather dress shoes, a long overcoat and athletic gear.

After joining the National Security staff, Brighton was surprised to discover how often he had to travel with only a few moments’ notice. (He had to laugh at seeing the look on his neighbor’s face the first time a military helicopter set down in their cul-de-sac to whisk him away. In a town that lived and died by perks, even the Armani-suited attorney had trouble matching that power play.) Because of the short notice requirements, Sara had learned to launder his clothes and repack his bag immediately upon his return, for neither of them knew when he would have to head out again.

As Brighton stuffed military papers into his briefcase, Sara watched in silence, twisting a strand of light hair in her fingers. She frowned, then adjusted her nightgown, pulling it over her knees.

“How long will you be gone?” she asked intently.

“Couple days,” Brighton answered. “Three days in Saudi Arabia. A quick hit and go.” Overseas trips like this were no more unusual for him than a trip to the mall.

“Saudi Arabia is a long way to go for just a few days,” she said.

Brighton pressed his lips and nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“You say you have some meetings with the Saudi military commanders?”

“Yeah. We’ve had a little problem with some of our joint operations we need to iron out.”

“Joint operations? As in command and control or operational missions?” After years of being married not only to her husband but also to his job, Sara had the basic concepts of military operations and lingo down.

Brighton dropped to his knees and looked under his bed. Pulling out A Short History of the World, he shoved it into his briefcase. “There are some operational options we’re looking at,” he explained.

Sara considered. Operational missions with the joint Saudi forces. She knew what that meant. If one read the daily papers, especially the Washington Times, one could add two and two together and come up with a pretty good estimation of the top-secret information that was briefed to the president in his Presidential Daily Brief. For weeks now, even months, the Washington Times had been saying that King Faysal was preparing to move against many of the terror camps that had sprung up along the Iranian border across the Persian Gulf, many of which were, ironically, funded originally by the Wahhabi fundamentalists that ran his own kingdom. Many of these terror camps had been used as the operations centers from which they attacked targets within the kingdom, and the king had decided he had no choice but to act. A house divided will not stand, and the terror these Islamists were wracking within his own kingdom had to come to an end.

Sara thought, formulating in her mind some of the issues her husband would discuss with the Saudi commanders. Would the United States provide military or intelligence assistance? Almost certainly. Air assets? Without a doubt. Ground operators? Probably Special Forces, but nothing that would ever be mentioned in the press. All in all, she knew there was no way the Saudis moved without significant U.S. support. How would that play with the government in Iran? Iraq? Bahrain, Egypt and Qatar? Perhaps the better question was how would it play if they didn’t act? If the United States partnered with the already weakened Saudi king, might that more likely lead to his downfall, something that was a tremendous concern in the West? How would the Iranians react if they suspected the United States had aided the Saudi attacks on Iranian soil? Worse, how would they react if they perceived the Americans as too weak to take action in a case that so clearly had national security considerations at stake?

Sara bounced the possibilities back and forth, grateful for the thousandth time that she didn’t have her husband’s job. It was a lose-lose proposition. Indeed, most of the issues he dealt with had little positive potential but were bottomless pits when it came to the downside.

Which explained why he was so tired and on edge all the time.

She counted the months until the next election. A little more than a year. If the president wasn’t reelected, something that looked likely now, the new administration would bring in their own team. Although ideologically Brighton would be much more aligned with the new administration, he would still be reassigned. At that point, they would have—no, they would get—to move on.

She approached the possibility with very strong, mixed emotions. Personally, nothing would make her happier. It would be like casting off irons, her family would be so much better off without the stress of Neil’s job. But both of them would miss being in the middle of the fight.

The fight. Funny how the word seemed to capture the mood now. And funny how it was something that she thought about all the time.

While Neil seemed to concentrate on the battles overseas, it was the battles that were taking place at home that had her more on edge.

It was certainly different than it used to be. The tone of society’s dialogue had become so emotional and ill willed. The sides were evenly split, and both of them hated each other. There was very little common ground between them. Everyone ascribed the worst intentions to their political opponents, to the point that the loyal opposition had been replaced by characterizing the other side as the enemy. The president, the man her husband had made a commitment to serve, had been the first to coin the phrase, she hated to admit. Worse, it seemed as if there was an open and visceral opposition toward anything that was good, even against those who had sacrificed so that others might live free. “Dumb Jock Killed in Afghanistan,” a small but influential newspaper headline had read in reporting the death of a well-known athlete who had volunteered for the war. Sara had printed the article from the Internet and pasted it in her journal. As a sign of the times, nothing seemed to say more.

But after years of life in Washington, she knew her way around and wasn’t fooled by everything that she read in the press.

They could still keep things together. Things weren’t completely hopeless, and that was her job, to keep her husband buoyed up. To give her young sons hope.

Sara considered in silence, completely lost in her thoughts, until the sound of the ticking clock brought her back to the room. She looked at her husband, who was staring at her.

“Did you say something?” she asked him.

“Do you know where my security badge is?” he asked for the second time.

“You left it on the counter downstairs. I tucked it the zippered pocket in your briefcase.”

“Thanks,” he answered quickly as he checked to make sure that it was there.

Sara pulled the two pillows and leaned back against the headboard. “So you’re coordinating some operational issues with the Saudis?” she asked again.

Brighton nodded quickly but didn’t offer more and she didn’t press. He always told her what he could, which wasn’t much anymore, and she had grown used to his silence about the things he was involved with at work.

She shivered lightly and pulled her arms close to her body. A cold front had moved through and a fall chill filled the air. The house was quiet around them. Luke and Ammon had gotten up early and were already gone.

Something strange happened yesterday,” she murmured.

“What happened?” Brighton asked.

Sara hesitated. “Well, you know the Burkoughs at the end of the block?”

Brighton hesitated. He didn’t know his neighbors well. “He works for State?” he asked.

“No. Other side of the street. Young black family. He’s an associate in one of the law firms on D Street.”

“OK. I know who you mean.”

“Great family. I like her a lot. She works for the Red Cross.”

“Yeah,” Brighton answered absently. The comings and goings of his neighborhood would never be of much interest to him.

“They have two daughters,” Sara continued. “The oldest girl, I think she’s seven, put her hand in a nest of black widow spiders yesterday. It gives me the willies just thinking of it. She was bitten at least six times, I was told. She’s in the hospital. They think she will make it, but she is a very sick little girl.”

Brighton’s eyes narrowed. “You’re kidding!” he stammered.

Sara only nodded.

“A nest of black widows! I’ve never heard of such a thing. They are predatory insects, they don’t nest together, they eat each other, I thought.”

Sara shivered and looked around their room as if she expected to see spiders crawling up the walls. “I don’t know, Neil. But she isn’t the only one who was bitten. A couple kids at the school have been bitten too. They say it’s the warm winters we’ve been having. Warm winters, no snow or freezing temperatures to kill the spiders like the normal winters would. I was listening to the radio. They said there’s an infestation of black widows that reaches throughout the South.” She shivered again. “I want to get our house sprayed,” she said.

“Do it,” Neil said. “Call the exterminators first thing this morning.”

“I already did. They are swamped. Can’t be here for three weeks.”

“Three weeks!?” Neil replied in surprise. “You’re kidding.”

“No honey. I wish I was.” She looked around the room again and pulled the blanket up. “Yuck again. A ball of black widow spiders! I tell you, I’m not going down to the basement until the exterminators come.”

“Have you seen any spiders?”

“No. But I haven’t been looking until the past couple days.”

Brighton thought. “OK,” he said. “Stay out of the basement. And keep your eyes peeled anytime you’re outside or in the garage. This is an old house; there are too many dark places for them to hide. And be careful in the garden. Check your shoes and gloves. I’ll spray the house and yard first thing when I get back. That will get us through until the exterminators come.”

Sara nodded. “OK. I’ll be careful. But the first time I see a ball of black spiders rolling toward me, you’ll find me somewhere in Maine where the winters are very cold.”

Brighton smiled and reached down to kiss her cheek. “It’s a really nasty thought, isn’t it? It would give anyone the creeps.”

He checked his watch. He had a day packed with pre-departure meetings. His military executive jet was scheduled to take off from Andrews Air Force Base a little after 4 p.m. He had a pile of work he would complete as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean, then they would stop and refuel in Germany before heading to Saudi Arabia where he would arrive early the next evening. “Got to go, babe,” he said as he stood from the bed.

“All right, General Brighton. Have a good trip, SIR!” she teased as she pretended to salute.

Brighton looked through the open doorway to the twin’s room down the hall. “Where are the boys?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Intramural football practice, I think. But they both told me to give you a goodbye kiss for them.”

“Cool. I like it when you kiss me. No offense intended to the guys.”

Sara smiled and stood up, put her arms around his neck and kissed his forehead wetly. “That’s for Luke,” she said then kissed his right cheek. “And this one’s for Ammon.”

Brighton grinned in pleasure. Puckering his lips, he closed his eyes. “And from you?” he asked expectantly.

Sara looked at his closed eyes then took his hand and shook it. “That’s from me,” she said.

He smiled and pushed her back, making her fall on the bed. “I don’t think so,” he laughed as he tickled her bare feet.

She giggled then sat up and kissed him once goodbye. Before she let him go, she looked at him for a long time, holding his face with her hands as she stared into his eyes. She looked at him like this every time he went away and had done so since his first combat deployment during the Persian Gulf War.

“Couple days, right?” she confirmed.

“Five days. Three in Saudi Arabia, a couple days enroute."

“I always miss you.”

“You know I’ll miss you, too.”

She took a step back and let her arms fall to her side. “You’re going to see Crown Prince Saud bin Faysal?” she asked.

“Yes, we’re going to get together after my other meetings.”

“Where are you meeting?”

“At one of his homes in Riyadh.”

Sara looked worried. She knew something was up. The crown prince didn’t call in the middle of the night just to set up a time to get together for a chat. She studied her husband. “I think he’s in trouble,” she said.

“The entire freaking kingdom’s in trouble! Everyone’s in trouble. It’s the times that we live in.”

“Yes, I understand that. But he is particularly vulnerable. And he is a good friend.”

Brighton nodded quietly as he wondered if Prince Saud was still a friend. Things changed quickly within the kingdom and it had been so long since they had talked, and in a world of constant turmoil, he had learned to never assume anything. Allegiance could be as shifting as a desert wind.

Sara chewed on her lip. She was more believing, more willing to keep her trust in old friends. “Tell Prince Saud I send my regards. Tell him I love him. Tell him to be strong.”

Brighton only nodded then reached for his black bag. Lifting the strap over his shoulder, he turned to face her again. “Sam’s in Germany, you know. His unit has two week’s recuperation time.”

“Yes. I’m so relieved to have him out of Afghanistan for a while!” she answered.

“How was he when you talked to him the other night?”

“We only talked a few minutes but he sounded pretty good. He sounded happy. But he didn’t say much. He was in a hurry and didn’t have much time to talk.” She looked at Neil hopefully. “Maybe you could see him while you are over there?” she said.

Brighton shook his head. “Don’t think so,” he answered. “Very tight schedule.”

“He’s staying not far from Ramstein.” Her voice was hopeful, almost pleading.

Brighton put his bags down and looked at her. “I’m only in Germany for a few minutes. I won’t even get off the airplane except to stretch my legs.”

“But it’s your flight. You’re the boss. They will do what you want to.”

“Yes, Sara, I understand that, but I have meetings scheduled every minute I’m gone. We haven’t given ourselves any dead time; it’s over and back, sleeping on the aircraft, eating sandwiches for lunch. I wish I could see him, but I just won’t have any time. Next trip, I promise. I will schedule a few days.”

“But he won’t be Germany. He’ll be back in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or one of those other Ickstans by then. This is your only chance to see him. Don’t you even have a few hours?”

Brighton hesitated, then shrugged. Truth was, he had already been thinking of it, trying to figure out a way. “I’ll try,” he answered meekly.

But Sara knew that he probably wouldn’t have time. Her husband’s schedule was completely outside of his control. He was at the mercy of his superiors and his staff.

She walked to him and put her hands around his neck again. “Will you please try? If you have even a moment, will you please try to see him? He needs you. He needs us. Will you please try to see him if you can?”

Brighton took her hands. “I promise,” he said.

Sara dropped her eyes to the floor. “I really miss him,” she muttered. “I wish I understood. I really just wish I understood what he was thinking.”

“He’s happy. He’s doing his duty. God, duty, and honor. We can be proud.”

“We are proud! But that’s not the point! Why has he withdrawn from us? Why has he made it so hard?”

Brighton shook his head. He had asked the same questions at least a thousand times.

The two stood in silence a moment. “Got to go,” he finally said, not eager to talk about Sam anymore. Turning, he walked toward the bedroom door.

“Hey Neil,” Sara called to him and he turned around. “Can I remind you of something, babe?” He waited patiently. “What is the purpose of life?” she asked him.

The question took him completely by surprise and he paused a long moment as he thought. “I don’t know, hon. To do some good, I guess. To do the best we can.”

“That’s right, babe, that’s right. That’s what this is all about; to do a little good. To take care of our families. Our responsibilities. To do the best we can. That’s all you can do, Neil. But if you do that, it’s enough. You might not be able to save the world, though sometimes you think that you can. There are things you can do, and lessons I suppose that you must learn, but you might not be able to stop what is coming, not like you hope to anyway. You might not save our country, they have to save themselves. Sometimes you forget that. And you carry more of the burden than I think you should.

“So just remember why we’re here. Anything you do more than that is gravy. Try not to sweat things too much. It isn’t healthy, general, and you’re getting too old.”

Brighton stared at her, mouthed “I love you,” then smiled and walked out the door.

FIFTEEN

Lucifer stood in the center of Rassa’s village square, flanked by two of his servants. Balaam stood close, but the small one kept back. His name was Roth. He was a bent and broken spirit who had lost his lust for the fight and spent most his time now sulking about the things he had lost while toying with some of the mortals who had already fallen to their side. Roth had reached a point where he didn’t much care if he destroyed any more souls, for he was more interested in finding ways to pass the eternities of time, seeking any pastime that would provide a moment’s respite from the torturous knowledge that his misery would never end.

The black enternity loomed forever before him. This was it. Forever. This was all he would have. This misery, this darkness, it was all he would ever know. Endless eternity. His misery would never end.

But . . . maybe, just maybe, if he could get in the good graces of his master . . . if he could climb into the inner circle, then he could grab a hold of real power.

Turning, he eyed the lean one they called Balaam, his face growing cold. If he had to destroy him in order to scratch his way into the inner circle then that was what he’d do.

Lucifer watched Roth out of the corner of his eye, knowing what he was thinking. He smiled at the jealousy between his servants, one of his most useful tools. And though he knew that Roth was dumb and lazy—he’d be used then thrown away—if he could use him to frighten Balaam, then that was a useful thing to do.

The truth was Lucifer hated most of his followers. But he hated Roth more than most. He considered him lazy and childish, a spirit who couldn’t be counted on, a spirit who was more interested in his own diversions than bringing souls to his side. Yet Lucifer had made a decision not to deal with his slothful servants now. One day, when it was over, when the final battle was through, he would deal with Roth and the others that were as lazy as he. When that day came, he would punish them for their lack of service, for if there was one thing Lucifer hated, it was disloyalty. Lucifer smiled at the thought. When the time came, Roth would suffer in ways he had never even dreamed about.

But the time was not yet. Lucifer had more important work to do. He would have all of eternity to deal with lazy servants like Roth.

Lucifer turned back to Balaam. Like Roth, Balaam also had grown pale and thin, with bony fingers, thin arms and a long, slender neck. His face shimmered with darkness, like the reflection of water on a moonlit night, leaving a pale shadow that almost made him look dead. And there was tension and anxiety in the movements of his head, as if he was always hungry, always looking for something, starving for the taste of joy, love or success, but forever feeling famished. Like all of the dark servants, Balaam could never be satisfied.

Lucifer turned away from his servants to study the village around him. He remembered it well, for he had been here many times, going back to the days when men were just emerging from their primitive shells. Many times he had caused suffering in this place. Indeed, he had fond memories of this very square.

The market was crowded with shoppers. Children played in the streets, women walked by in dark scarves, only their eyes or faces exposed. On the corner, a group of young men talked while they tossed a small leather sack between them, kicking it expertly with their feet. Throughout the market, men haggled over prices, their voices rising until the deal was done. Lucifer turned in a slow circle, taking in the ancient market, the mud and brick shops with their small apartments above, the dirty brick streets and tangled electrical wires strung overhead. He noticed the tattered banners that denounced the Great Satan, the old movie posters, and the corner latrines that were holes in the ground. Everything was an earthy brown; the dirt, the cobblestones, the houses and shops. To his back, the great mountain rose over the village. The peaks were still capped with snow, but the hills that sloped up to the rock were covered in deep grass. He turned away, preferring to look at the shabby, manmade structures than the work of his Enemy’s hand.

Balaam stood in silence beside him. Roth remained in the background, his lower lip trembling, his eyes wide in fear. Like all the dark angels, he was used to being sad and alone, for they hated each other as much as they hated themselves, and most preferred to be apart.

He cursed Lucifer’s name. Lucifer noticed and glared at him, then took a quick step toward Balaam. “Where is she?” he demanded.

Balaam pointed toward a gentle hill on the south end of the village. A row of small houses lined the road along the top of the hill. “She lives there, with her father.”

“And her mother?” Lucifer wondered.

“She died shortly after her birth.”

Lucifer sneered. “So she doesn’t have a mother. Well isn’t that sad?” His face broke into a sharp grin, his lips curling upward, exposing his teeth. “That should make your task a bit easier, won’t it, Roth?”

Roth looked away. So far it hadn’t, but he didn’t reply.

Lucifer took in the dirty village, enjoying the sight of the rundown shacks and dirty streets. He knew some of the things that went on here, behind these dusty doors and tattered walls. He knew there were few other places where the people were so hopeless, so robbed of free will. Was there evidence of freedom in anything around him? Evidence of any liberty or self-government at all? No, everywhere he looked, it was dark and brown and ugly and he couldn’t help but smile.

What man built, he brought down! What they created, he destroyed! If there was anything beautiful, he defiled it. If there was anything innocent, he despoiled. If man were free, he brought bondage; where there was love, he brought lies. If he could not have happiness, then neither would man have it. This was the thing that drove him to work so hard.

He thought again of the girl. “She lives on the hill?” he repeated with a snarl.

“Yes, Master Mayhem.”

“And what do they call her?”

“Azadeh Ishbel.”

Lucifer looked surprised and then swore, shaking his head in disgust. “You don’t see it, do you Balaam? You don’t see it either, do you Roth? Both of you are so stupid that you don’t understand the significance of her name!”

Balaam stared blankly, the knot in his gut growing tight.

“Ishbel is the Greek variation of Elizabeth,” Lucifer announced with revulsion. “Her name stands for freedom! That hardly seems like a coincidence! Was her father inspired? Did he hear the whispers from the Enemy?”

Balaam shook his head, for he had not realized the significance of her name, and though he considered himself a master of every language, able to tempt and deceive with just the right word or phrase, the ancient meaning of her name had completely escaped him. He looked down, embarrassed and was reminded once again why Lucifer would always be the master. Bowing toward the fallen Son of the Morning, he said, “Master, why her father selected her name, I could not say with any authority. I have only recently found her. I would have to spend some time . . . .”

Lucifer growled, a familiar animal sound from his throat. “But it doesn’t matter, does it Balaam? In a short time, she will be dead.”

Balaam only nodded.

“Now where is the mortal that you brought me here to see?”

Balaam nodded toward a man who sat on the curb of the street. He was tall and lanky, all arms and legs, with a rough face, long nose and a wild, bushy beard. His hair rolled in greasy locks over his eyes, and he leered at the passing women from underneath the dark curls. He sat on a stool beside a small cart of poorly packaged cigarettes. A handwritten sign advertised his wares, “Cigarettes! Tobacco! Rolling Paper!” A small metal box sat at his feet, and every few minutes he would open it up and count the money, as if some unseen hand might have stolen from him. Three boys ran up and one extracted an orange from under his dark shirt. The man took the orange, shook his head in disgust, then reached to his rack and tossed them three cigarettes, which the boys took and ran.

Lucifer studied the stranger, thinking back, knowing he had seen him before, but in this place or somewhere else, he could not remember. Balaam stepped toward Lucifer and kept his voice low. “His name is Abd al Rahman al Than,” he said.

“I don’t care who he is! I don’t care about his name! Just tell me the things I need to know!”

Balaam nodded eagerly, then jerked his head toward the evil spirit Roth. “He talks to him. He can get into his mind.”

Lucifer turned toward Roth, who kept his eyes low, then nodded toward the mortal. “I’m not impressed,” he said as he jerked a hand toward the man. “He is stupid. He is lazy. He’s just like you, Roth! What can he offer us? What influence can he have?”

Balaam shot a cold glare to Roth. “Be silent!” he seemed to scream with his eyes. Roth nodded and stepped back into the shadows.

“The mortal will listen to Roth,” Balaam explained. “He listens for his voice. He even tries to make contact with him.”

Lucifer kept his eyes on Roth. “He will listen to you?” he demanded.

Roth glanced toward Balaam, then nodded eagerly. Lucifer moved toward the trembling devil and drew up to his full height. He stood majestic, even beautiful, his black hair falling to his shoulders, his face dark and alive. Roth fell to his knees at Lucifer’s splendor. Balaam cringed, but just a little, for he knew Lucifer could hide his ugliness for only a short time.

“So tell me, Roth,” Lucifer mocked. “What have you ever convinced this man to do?”

“Master,” Roth stammered in reply, “I am but a humble servant. I don’t claim to have the powers that you do.”

“Yes, of course. But what have you done? Quickly now, Roth, and don’t waste my time?”

The fallen angel fell back, unable to respond and Balaam moved forward, standing at Lucifer’s side. “May I speak for him?” he begged. Satan sneered at Roth, then turned toward the senior servant. “The mortal is not particularly bright,” Balaam began. “I think we all can see that. But we don’t need a smart one for what we want him to do. As I said, Master Mayhem, he will listen to Roth. They have a special relationship, one that is unique. The mortal is deviant. He has a dark place in his heart for any kind of pain. He loves to inflict it. Animals. Small children. He has done many things. Brutal things. Knives, rape and torture. And the society that he lives in allows it, for the fear he instills in his victims keeps them quiet. And this mortal knows Roth’s voice. We can use Roth to get him, then turn him over to you to do what you may!”

Lucifer narrowed his eyes and took a step toward Balaam. “All right!” he sneered, his voice piercing and mean. “I will give him a chance to prove he can be useful. I will give you a chance to prove you can do something right. But I will not be patient! Don’t let me down, Balaam. I am counting on you!”

Balaam backed up, feeling the cut in his chest. He had his instructions and he was not going to fail.

SIXTEEN

The day following Azadeh’s birthday, it started to rain as a foul-weather front moved in from the coast—wet, soaking, misty and cold. The ground became saturated and muddy, and a thousand tiny rivers of runoff spilled down from the mountains to join the stream that ran through the center of the village, swelling it to a frothy and muddy torrent of broken branches, silt, and debris. It rained hard all day, and by the time Rassa pulled in for the night, he was soaked to the skin, bone-tired and shivering with cold. He had spent the day moving his small herd of cattle into a lower pasture to inoculate and brand the heifers, work which had to be done to keep the cattle from getting hoof rot from the mud. By early morning, his raincoat had been soaked through and he had abandoned all pretense of trying to stay dry, spending his day wet and shivering from cold.

Azadeh was waiting for him at the kitchen table and she looked up as he walked into the room. She smiled, her face brightening as if a light had come on, her eyes wide and happy, her teeth flashing bright. Rassa stopped and looked at his daughter. How it warmed him just to see her! Her dark hair fell down to the middle of her back, and she was tall and strong. She had her mother’s olive skin, his eyes, and her grandfather’s strong cheekbones. Jumping up from the table, Azadeh ran to the stove and turned up the heat. “Poppa, I have some tea for you,” she said.

Rassa took off his wet coat and shook it out before hanging it by the oil furnace to dry. Then he sat on a three-legged stool and pulled off his leather boots. Azadeh worked over the stove, boiling some rice in water. “I would have had supper for you Father, but I didn’t know what time you would be in,” she said.

“That’s fine, Azadeh,” Rassa answered wearily. Shivering, he pulled off his wet shirt and grabbed a rough towel to dry his hair, then stood by the heater, reaching for its warmth. Despite almost being summer, it was cold outside, but that wasn’t unusual for the mountains had a mean streak when it came to weather. The higher elevation caused wide swings in the temperature and the rain might stay for days, even weeks, before finally pushing over the highest peaks to provide needed moisture to the dry valleys on the other side.

Rassa seemed stiff and unusually tired. Azadeh watched him for a moment then pulled off a fist-sized piece of bread dough from atop a warming pan she had placed near the stove, flattened it to the size of a dinner plate, then tossed it against the burning-hot side of the stove. The dough stuck to the dimpled side and immediately began to cook to a crisp and airy piece of pita bread. Two minutes later, she pulled the toasty bread off the side of the stove, cooked the other side, then cut it open and stuffed it with spiced beans and goat meat. She threw another piece of bread on the stove which they would eat later with honey and butter, selected a Lebanese orange from the copper bin, as well as some raisins and dates, then seasoned the rice with salt and butter, sliced some cheese and set the food on the table.

Rassa watched with pride but also sadness as she worked. It hurt him to come into a dark house and find her alone. She was alone far too much. She needed a mother. And little brothers and sisters to care for. She needed to spend more time worrying about her friends and less time worrying about him. She was so thoughtful of others, it was almost a fault, the way she jumped up, always willing to serve, and though she seemed content, Rassa knew that she wasn’t and it saddened him that she felt such a responsibility to keep her loneliness inside. She had fought the melancholy from the time she was a child, though she tried to be happy, always forcing a smile even when one didn’t come naturally.

“Men are that they be happy,” he remembered her saying one day.

Rassa had looked at her and then asked, “Where did you hear that, Azadeh?”

She thought a moment, then shrugged and pressed her lips. “I don’t know,” she replied.

As Azadeh grew, Rassa came to believe she would rather have needles driven under her nails than show him the sadness she hid inside.

But Rassa knew it was there. He was not so blind. He had noticed it even while watching her play with her dolls as a child (something every little girl did, no matter where they lived in the world). Azadeh would comfort her babies, sometimes crying for them, telling them that she loved them while holding them tight. As Rassa watched, he realized she was acting out all the things she had hoped her mother would have said to her if she had lived. And she not only mothered her babies, she mothered every child that she met, as well as every stray dog or cat that wandered into the village. One day a few years before, Rassa had made the mistake of bringing home a live rabbit from the market for supper. Azadeh had burst into tears and hidden in her room, refusing to come out until he had agreed they would let the creature live. Walking hand in hand to the fields behind their house, the rabbit inside a brown sack, they had set the rabbit free.

And though the memory made Rassa smile, it was a sad memory just the same.

Azadeh spent long hours writing poetry and stories, few of which she would let Rassa read. But one day he had found a letter she had written to her mother and hidden inside her small desk. Feeling guilty, he had read her letter, the words burning in his mind.

Dear Mother:

It’s been awhile since I wrote a letter to you, but I just wanted you to know that I still miss you. Sometimes I feel so alone. Father tries so hard, and I love him more than my heart can express, but I miss you, Mother, and I wish that you were here. And though I know you are gone, sometimes I feel you might be close. And sometimes I wonder; if we could talk, if I could hear your words, what would you tell me? Would you say that you love me? Would you say that you are proud? I hope that you are Mother, for I have tried so hard.

Your loving daughter,

Azadeh Ishbel Pahlavi

Although it tore Rassa’s heart to read what she had written, he cherished the beauty of her words.

And there was one thing of which he was certain; Azadeh’s mother would have been very proud. And if she was somewhere in the heavens, he hoped that somehow, through some miracle of Allah, that she might see the treasure she had created when she had brought Azadeh into the world.

*******

As Azadeh finished preparing the meal, Rassa slipped into his bedroom and changed into dry clothes and warm stockings, then sat at the table and sipped his tea. Azadeh put the food on the table, then sat down beside him. Rassa reached out and took her hand. “Thank you, Azadeh,” he said.

She bowed her head politely. “You’re welcome, Father.”

The two ate slowly, talking little, both of them hungry. Then, full and warm, Rassa stood to help Azadeh with the dishes. He had recently installed a new hot water heater, and they savored the steaming water that poured from the tap instead of the luke-warm dribble they would get before. Rassa washed while Azadeh dried and put the dishes into the painted wooden cupboard.

“You know, Father, my friends would die if they saw this!” Azadeh teased as she set a plastic cup on the lower shelf. “A father doing dishes! What is this world coming to!”

Rassa only smiled, knowing it wasn’t as unusual as Azadeh might think. Once inside the home, the workings of a family were not what they always appeared to be. He also knew that many of the mutawwa who strolled through the village with their black sticks and frowns were more henpecked at home than they would have ever admitted.

Azadeh began to prattle as they worked. She would complete her final year of school in a few weeks, and she could talk of little else. “Father, might I one day go down to El-hiram to the School of the Masters?” she asked again. “That is where you went to the university, Father. Might I go there, too?”

Rassa lifted an eyebrow. “What have I always said?” he answered slowly.

“But I, too, am a Pahlavi, Father, same as you! Great-granddaughter of the shah. I need a good education! And I am capable . . . .” Her voice trailed off. She wanted to be careful. “Sometimes I think, Father, that even now I know as much as my teachers do!”

Rassa smiled. It probably was true. “Insha’allah,” he replied.

Azadeh frowned in frustration. That’s what he always said. But she knew not to push it. She was young, but not foolish, and she knew when to hold her tongue.

He leaned closer to her. “How are your English lessons with Omar’s son coming?” he asked in careful voice.

“He says I am his best student,” she answered in a whisper. Both of them knew the danger of learning English, and they couldn’t help but glance toward the windows.

“Hmmm,” Rassa seemed to think. “And do you find your teacher . . . acceptable?” he asked.

Azadeh looked away. They had talked about this so many times before.

Rassa waited, hoping for something more, then moved to the worn vinyl couch, pulled out a book he had already read a dozen times and started to read it once again.

Azadeh watched him, then moved toward her bedroom. “Think about the School of the Masters!” she called over her shoulder as she turned the light off in the hall.

*******

The night fell cold and dark with a steady drizzle that seemed to soak up the light. The quarter moon, low and yellow, was completely hidden above the thick clouds, and the wind blew in sudden gusts, pushing the drizzle through the trees.

The stranger waited in the darkness beyond the lights that fell from the house. He watched them from the shadows, peering through the window while stomping his feet impatiently. He had killed their dog already and he smiled as he remembered the wet cut of the knife across the mangy dog’s throat.

The first kill of the nighttime. Other kills lie ahead.

“That is fine. Take your time,” the dark voice whispered in his head. “I have prepared you for this moment. Now you must do as I say!”

“I will, Master Mayhem,” the slender man cried. “I promise, Master Mayhem, just tell me what to do.”

The angry voice hissed inside him, dark, evil and mean. An agreement had been made between them. Now it was time to act.

The man hunched in the shadows, rainwater dripping off his hair and down his neck to soak the thin shirt on his back. His face was thin and hungry, his eyes dark and narrow. His nose flared with each breath, misting the air. He waited, then started humming an old chant from many centuries before, an oath of the dark ones who ruled the earth with blood and terror. His eyes glinted, cold and dark in the freezing rain. He was nearly mad, almost drooling, completely out of his head.

But the dark spirit that possessed him didn’t care about his weakened state of mind. Would he do what he was commanded? That was all he cared about now.

*******

The hours passed and eventually the house fell dark and silent. The rain stopped, the clouds broke, and the dull moon emerged overhead. Still the man waited, his legs cramped, his feet cold, his hands numb and clammy inside his coat pockets. He fingered the knife as he waited. The entire village was silent. “It is time,” the voice inside him finally said.

The man emerged from the shadows and moved silently toward the house. He approached the back door, staying near the shadows of the trees that lined the courtyard. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he saw well enough without using any light. Stepping over the dead dog, he moved to the back door.

It was open. He knew it would be. No one locked their doors in the village. He cracked the door, then waited, listening in the dark. He pushed another inch and waited, then stuck his head inside.

A fire was burning in the oil heater and the room was almost steamy warm. A small light glowed from the other end of the hallway, casting long shadows across the kitchen. He sniffed the air and listened. He must be careful. He must not fail.

“Kill it . . . kill it . . .,” the chant started inside his head. “Kill it . . . she will hurt us! Kill it! We want her dead!”

The man stood without moving, only his head and shoulders inside the house, then slowly pushed the door back and stepped into the room. He pulled the knife from its sheath and, even in the dark, the nine-inch blade glistened red with the dog’s blood. He tried to wipe it off, but it was dry, so he licked the blade to wet it, then wiped it on his pants as he stepped toward the hall.

“Kill it! Kill it!” the voices kept chanting in his head. “Kill her. Take her. Feel the warmth of flowing blood!”

The man narrowed his eyes and kept on walking. “Lucifer,” he whispered without realizing it.

He stopped at the first door in the hall and held his breath. Which was the father’s bedroom? Which was the girl’s? He had to get it right. Pressing his ear against the door, he listened, but didn’t hear anything. The light shone from the end of the hall, a small bulb glowing yellow, and he turned and walked toward it with light feet. A single 20-watt bulb burned in the bathroom and he quietly pushed the button to turn it off. Thick darkness enveloped the interior of the house and he waited without moving until his eyes had adjusted once again, then moved back toward the first bedroom. He sucked in a breath and held it, then slowly, almost imperceptibly, moved the doorknob. The door creaked as he pushed it open just an inch. Inside, he could hear the man breathing, deep and heavy. He slowly pulled the door closed and moved to the bedroom down the hall.

He held the knife ready, then placed his hand on the handle, turned it gently and pushed the door back. The room was dimly lit from a nightlight on the other side of the small bed. He listened, then moved inside the room, holding the knife in both hands.

She was asleep, her dark hair spread out across the pillow, the covers tucked almost up to her chin.

“Kill it . . . kill it!” the voice started chanting louder. More urgent. More hungry. Full of lust and hate. “This is what I brought you here for. Do what I tell you, and you will be mine. We will be together! Forever! Now do what I say!”

This wasn’t the first time the man had listened to the evil voice that growled from time to time in his head. But this was a new voice. And this was the first time it had asked him to do something so . . . permanent. The man hesitated a moment. Could he do it? Could he kill her! Could he really plunge the knife?

But the devil inside him had become his best friend. He was his comrade, his companion, the only ally that he had, and he would do as his new friend told him for he really had no choice.

“Look at it!” the voice hissed. “Look at it sleeping! It is innocent now, but it won’t stay that way for long. Believe me, it will fight us, it will hurt us, it will haunt us one day. It will grow strong and wise. We must kill it while we can! So take your knife and do it. Kill it before it is too late!”

The man hesitated as he looked at the girl, seeing a glimpse of the good that lie within her soul. He could barely make out her face in the darkness, so peaceful and calm.

He faltered a moment. How could she be dangerous! She was beautiful and childlike. What threat could she bare?

“KILL IT!” his master screamed. “Do what I tell you or you will die!”

The man slowly raised the knife.

“KILL IT!” the master cried a final time.

The man sniffled, then grimaced. He would do as he was told.

Moving forward, he held the knife in a death grip and it trembled in his hand. He reached up to steady it with the other and took another step toward the bed. Having made up his mind, he was moving faster now, sweeping through the darkness.

Then he saw it. He froze mid-step and hissed in dread. A tiny light, like a star, began to shine over the bed. The light grew from a soft glow to a shimmer as an angel appeared, surrounded by fire, heat and an overwhelming power that filled him with dismay. The angel was dressed in a white robe with a silver hood pulled over the crown of his head. A single star, like a diamond, shone from a golden headband, identical to the one lying beside Azadeh’s bed. He lit up the room with his power and the flaming sword in his hand. The light hurt him! It hurt him! He wanted to turn and run!

“I know who you are,” the angel said in a voice that tore with power and thundered through the night.

The mortal was filled with terror. The light hurt him. He had to flee! But the Dark One held him, not letting him go. “And I know you,” the Dark One answered, his voice escaping like hissing air from the mortal’s throat. “But what have I to do with you? I only want the girl.”

The angel rose in power and lifted the mighty sword. “You will not touch this child,” he commanded. “She is worthy of my protection, and she is my friend!”

The mortal seemed to shake off the dark inside him and he cowered toward the corner. “I must kill her!” he then whispered. It was the mortal not the devil who was speaking to the angel now. “I must or he will hurt me. He will hurt me! I must do as the master says.”

The angel took a position over Azadeh and raised his sword again. “YOU WILL NOT HARM THIS CHILD!” he commanded. “Now go back to your master! Go back to your hell!”

The angel grew suddenly taller and more brilliant, shining with a fire that was brighter than the sun.

The mortal felt the heat and fell back in pain. The fire seemed to surround and consume him! The angel shook the silver hood from his head and his fine hair trailed back, blowing over his shoulders from an invisible wind. His blue eyes were so piercing they seemed to cut through the mortal’s soul. “Go now!” he commanded and the Earth seemed to shake. “In the name of Jesus, I command you to leave.”

The evil inside the mortal immediately recoiled, then cried out, cursing in a foul tone and then fled. The man felt the dark world falling all around him, the crushing weight of having been deserted and the emptiness of despair. He was alone now. His master had departed. He was on his own.

He stumbled backward like a coward, reaching for the bedroom door. The angel lifted his arm and pointed at him, and he squealed in wrenching pain, scrambling like a rat through the door and out into the night.

The next day, a fisherman found his body floating in the swollen river, twenty miles downstream. Having spent his life in the service of his master, the mortal had closed his final deal by jumping into the cold darkness of his master’s world.

SEVENTEEN

General Neil Brighton stood outside the famous Lelas Bar and Café, a small brick and mortar joint at the back of an alley off of Schandelberg Strasse. After finding out his flight would be delayed for a few hours due to mechanical problems, he’d taken the opportunity to call his son, Sam, and arrange for a quick lunch meeting. Sam had suggested Lelas, and the general had been very pleased to have a chance to visit his old hunting grounds. All through the Cold War, when there were more ex-pat Americans in Germany than anywhere else in the world, when the U.S. Army was massed and ready to drive back the Soviet hordes by defending the Foulda Gap, Lelas had been a popular U.S. joint. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces in Germany had been built up once again. On any given night Lelas was crammed to the walls, smoky and warm from the open pit grills, and bustling with U.S. soldiers and young German women looking for American husbands. Seven nights a week, Orleans blues could be heard wailing up from the basement bar from an old American jazz band that had somehow ended up in Germany and now played for tips and beer. The food came heaped on huge plates and for seven American dollars, one could eat until he was stuffed.

But though General Brighton loved Lelas for the food, there was another, much more important reason he was so fond of the place. This was the place where he had first met his wife. Sara was touring with some friends from college. He was a young pilot assigned to Ramstein. The fates had brought them together here and they had never looked back.

General Brighton stared at the old brick building, hearing the noisy crowd and the music pounding through the small windows and ancient wooden door.

It all seemed so long ago. A different life. A different world. So much had changed since that rainy day long before.

He took a step into the café and quickly summed up the crowd. It was a rough looking group, and he was surprised not to be able to pick out any other Americans there. He listened to the voices, but heard no English being spoken as he made his way through the crowd and sat down at a round table near the back of the bar. He felt suddenly uncomfortable in his uniform, his dark pants and blue shirt with pilot wings on his chest. The café was smoky and warm, just like it always used to be, but the music wasn’t familiar. Instead of the blues, European techno blasted from speakers over his head. He ordered three house specials; two to eat in and one to take back to the crew chief, then sat back and waited for Sam.

He thought back on the unlikely events that had brought the boy into their lives almost eight years before.

*******

Brighton and his family were living in southern Virginia where he was the commander at the First Fighter Wing, the oldest and most prestigious fighter wing in the U.S. Air Force.

The phone call came late one Sunday afternoon. “Neil,” his friend’s voice boomed through the phone. A huge black man from Mississippi, Gene was direct as a sledgehammer, with an equally powerful voice. Brighton had met him at a community luncheon (the kind of thing he hated, but was required to attend) and the two had hit it off. Brighton wished all of his pilots were such fighters. Gene wished that all the men he worked with cared about their families like Brighton did.

“Hey Gene, what’s going on?” Brighton replied.

“You military guys ever going to figure out all this world strife and warring crap?” Gene boomed back. A Child Protective Services employee (and part-time preacher) who had spent his life working with at-risk kids from some of the worst areas in Hampton, Virginia, a job that had gotten infinitely more difficult through the years, Gene was not impressed with Brighton’s military rank. Make him president for a day, and he’d shut the military down. Divert the funds to the hungry and homeless, those who could really use the help.

“Yeah, we’re figuring it out, I think. The answer is bigger bombs. More money. Faster jets. The usual thing. Speaking of money, you ever going to pay up your poker debts?” Brighton answered.

“Soon as the state gives me that pay raise they’ve been promising me for years.”

Brighton didn’t touch it. It was a sore spot to his friend. He waited but Gene was quiet until he finally asked, “What can I do for you?”

“Got a little problem, Neil. Need your help.”

“What’s up?” Brighton asked, already preparing himself.

“Got a boy I was hoping we could send over to spend a few days with your family.”

“You’ve got a what?” Brighton asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice.

“I just placed a foster child with another family, but it isn’t working out. He’s a good kid, but he’s had a real lousy start. Abusive home. Alcoholic father. Mother hardly ever around. He’s been with this other family for a couple days and, I don’t know . . . it just seems they haven’t hit it off like we all hoped that they would.”

Brighton’s chest tightened. “What has he done? Tried to burn their house down?”

Gene chuckled, his laugh as powerful as his voice. “Nope, nothing like that. Like I said, he’s not a bad kid, never been in trouble in his life. He’s OK with this family, but it just doesn’t feel right if you know what I mean? As I’ve been working with them, I’ve had a clear impression. Now you might think I’m crazy, but I’ve come to the conclusion there’s been a terrible mistake. This kid should be in your home. And just between you and me—and I’m not saying this as a representative of the state, so don’t you ever think that or repeat this to anyone, this is just between us friends—but I think that’s what the good Lord intended all along. We just had to take a detour to get there. Now what do you say?”

Brighton shook his head. “Look Gene, this isn’t a stray puppy you’re asking me to take in. We’ve never even considered . . . .” He was stammering now. “We’re not foster parents. We’re not prepared!”

“Life is full of surprises. And are we ever really prepared?”

“But Gene,” Brighton floundered.

“I could fast track all of the paper work. Get you and Sara qualified.”

Brighton shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Inside, his gut grew tight and his heart skipped a beat. But something Gene had said kept on rolling through his head.

“There’s been a terrible mistake. This kid should be in your home.”

The sound of Gene’s breathing filled the silence on the phone. “Neil,” he said, his voice softening now. “Forget everything that I just told you. Forget any of what the Lord intended, OK, that’s not fair of me. Put all of that aside. I’ve got to find this kid a place to stay, even if it’s only for a couple days. Now will you please consider it? Just for a few days. That’s all that I’m asking for right now.”

Brighton heard Gene talking but his voice seemed a long way away. The words rolled again and he felt a shiver down his spine.

“There’s been a terrible mistake. This kid should be in your home.”

Another long moment of silence. “How old is he?” Brighton asked.

“Thirteen. A couple years older than your boys.”

“He’s a good kid?”

“He really is, Neil. The problem isn’t him; it was the cards he was dealt. He’s never been in trouble. He has a good heart. I’ve got a good feeling about him.”

Brighton cleared his throat and shifted his weight a final time. “I’d have to talk to Sara.”

“Of course, of course. And it’s just for a few days. Meanwhile, we’ll keep working with social services to find him a permanent home.”

“OK,” Brighton answered. “Let me talk to Sara then I’ll call you back.”

“Great, Neil, thanks. If we could, we’d like to bring him over tonight.”

“Tonight,” Brighton answered. “That’s kind of quick, don’t you think.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, but he ain’t got nothing on the state. Now go talk to Sara, then give me a call.”

“Hey wait,” Brighton stopped him. “What’s his name?”

“Samuel Casey. He goes by Sam.”

*******

The little boy stood in the doorway, clearly as hostile as he was terrified. He was thirteen, but small framed and he could have passed for ten. He was grim and firm-faced, with the demeanor of a boxer, someone who had fought his way through life. Sara knelt down beside him. “Hi Sam,” she said.

“Where do you want me to stay?” he answered curtly while grasping a small suitcase in his left hand.

Sara stole a quick glance at her husband. “We’ve got a room upstairs for you,” she answered.

“Should I leave my bag here or take it upstairs with me?”

Sara hesitated, understanding his subtle point. “Don’t you want to unpack?” she asked him.

“Won’t be here that long.”

“You could still unpack your things and make yourself comfortable.”

“It’s hard to be comfortable in someone else’s home.”

Sara straightened herself and reached for his hand. Sam didn’t take it and kept his eyes on the floor.

Brighton studied him from the foot of the stairs. He saw the bruised cheekbones and the cigarette burns on the back of his hands. He boiled inside. Who could do this to him? He knelt down beside Sam and took the suitcase from him. “Come on, Sam. I’ll show you around. We’ve got a swimming pool at the officer’s club across the park. Do you like to swim?”

The young boy’s eyes widened in fear and he pulled back instantly, pressing against the wall. “I can’t swim,” he said. “Please don’t make me get in the pool!”

Neil shook his head quickly. “We won’t! We won’t! If you don’t like swimming, that’s OK, too. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

The young boy continued to cower, his face tight with fear. Sara bent down beside him and took both of his hands. “Listen to me, Sam. We’re glad that you’re here. It’s a pleasure to have you with us. We have two sons upstairs. They’re eager to meet you. We want you to feel at home.”

He looked at her defiantly. “My dad beats me at home. Are you going to beat me, too?”

Sara saw through the manipulation and didn’t react. She already understood him better than anyone in the world. “No Sam,” she said softly, “we’re not going to beat you and you know that. That’s not the way this thing works.”

She took his hand and he pulled back again, but she held to him firmly as she led him up the stairs.

Later that night, Sara and Neil stood by the kitchen sink and talked in quiet voices. “He’s a cute kid,” Neil said as he sipped a cup of tea.

Sara merely nodded as she stared out the window, seeing her reflection in the darkness outside. “What did Gene say when he called you?” she asked. Her voice and eyes were far away, absorbed in her thoughts.

Neil grunted. “Not much. Said he needed our help for a day or two. Said the other family was having problems. It didn’t feel right to them, I think was how he put it.”

Sara listened intently. “Isn’t that strange.” She was quiet for a moment.

“Sam didn’t give them problems?” she then asked.

Brighton shook his head. Sara bit her lower lip. “What do you think it means?”

Brighton hunched his shoulders. Truth was, he didn’t think it meant anything, at least not yet.

But Sara saw it differently, that was clear from her face. “He’s supposed to be here,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

Brighton sucked a quiet breath. He had heard those very words before. Yet he hadn’t told Sara what Gene had said.

“I feel it,” she continued. “There’s something going on. This is a pivotal event. It will change all our lives and I’m not prepared, but I’m as certain of this as I have been of anything in my life. Samuel was sent here. We have to try and help him. I know that in my heart.”

Neil stared at her a long moment. “Are you certain?” he whispered.

Sara nodded, her eyes clear, her face intent with conviction. “I know it,” she told him. “And you will know it too. Until then, you’ve got to trust me. We have to make this work.”

Brighton stared at his mug, slowly shaking his head.

*******

It wasn’t easy. A kid, even a good kid like Sam, couldn’t have been raised the way that he was and not carry a boatload of baggage on his back. There were long hours in counseling, long hours at school, long hours in the bedroom listening to Sam cry in his sleep along with thousands of dollars in court costs and untold other bills. There was heartbreak, frustration and occasional hate-filled accusations from out of left field. The progress came slowly, but it came, with milestones of progress achieved along the way. No more crying at night. No more tantrums of anger. Better health, better grades, more friends at school. More affection, more laughter, more smiles.

Time proved there were two turning points in Sam’s life.

The first came when he had been with the Brightons for only eight months. He was still small, vulnerable and utterly confused as to who he really was or what he wanted out of life. He knew he didn’t want his mother to shoot drugs or his father to burn him with his cigarettes anymore, but little else was clear in his adolescent mind. He knew that he liked his foster family, but they were so . . . good sometimes he felt like he would never fit in.

It all came to a head one day after school. Homework, helping with the chores, showing respect to his foster parents, saving his money and not playing football on Sunday afternoons—it all was too much. Sam decided he had had enough. He up and left, screaming, “I hate you!” as he slammed his way out of the house. He took off without taking anything but the shirt on his back and whatever money he had in his pockets.

Neil and Sara searched frantically for two days, along with the police, but Sam seemed to have melted into the underground of throwaway kids that hung out on the dirty beaches and rundown boardwalks that lined Norfolk and Hampton.

On the third day, Sam showed up, unexpectedly knocking at their front door. Sara stood there, her face pale, her cheeks stained from tears. Ammon and Luke stood behind her, holding their breath, not knowing if she was going to let him in.

“I’m sorry,” Sam told her as he stared at his feet. “I want to stay here. Will you please let me come home?”

Sara reached out and he took a slow step toward her, then rushed into her arms. Luke and Ammon ran forward and slapped him on the back. “Hey, Sam,” Ammon said as his foster brother turned toward him. “Leave us again and I’ll hunt you down and drag you kicking and screaming back home. Brothers don’t leave each other. And we are brothers now.”

Sam smiled, his lip trembling, then wiped his hand across his red eyes.

Yes, this was his family. He really was home.

*******

The second pivotal event occurred when Sam was sixteen years old.

He had been living with the Brightons for most of three years. Because his runaway mother had refused to consent to termination of her parental rights (she would lose food stamp money and state subsistence if she let him go), and though his old man didn’t care one way or the other, the juvenile courts had directed that Sam would spend one weekend a month with his parents. His dad, a former high school football star who still hung out at games on Friday nights, a sometimes charter fisherman who rented his cruiser for fifty bucks an hour (forty if the client was willing to furnish the beer), lived in a ramshackle clapboard house near the fishing docks in a small town called Poquoson at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Sam’s mom, an attractive blonde who was just thirty-three, lived where she wanted from one month to the next, wherever the party was or a new friend could be found.

One court appointed weekend, Sam was at the old house. It was a hot fall afternoon with a strong wind blowing through the trees. He and his dad were in the backyard patching the fiberglass hull of the boat, the old man pounding beers. His mom hadn’t been around for four months. Last Sam had heard, she was out in Las Vegas dealing cards at some low-rent casino on the outskirts of town; at least that’s what she claimed she was doing but Sam had his doubts, for the pockmarks on her arms suggested a habit that was much more expensive than minimum wage and drunken tips could sustain.

His old man, Jody (as Sam called him now with very little affection), cursed as he applied the liquid fiberglass sealant, a burning cigarette in his mouth. He rubbed at his left arm, tracing a four-inch scar, the reminder of a vicious knife fight in some unknown bar.

“You had a birthday last week, didn’t you?” the old man said.

Sam looked at him, surprised. It wasn’t like Jody to remember such a thing.

“That makes you what . . . fifteen?” the old man asked.

“Sixteen.”

“Hmm . . . ,” Jody thought, then took a step toward him and grabbed the bare bicep on his arm. “Not much there,” he miffed at Sam’s supple arm.

Sam looked at his bicep and frowned. His dad stood before him and spread his feet wide. He was a tall man, still solid, with thick arms and thick legs. And he was quick with his hands, able to pick a fly out of the air or slap his mother so fast that she never saw it coming. Sam watched his father, a sinking feeling in his chest.

“Can you take care of yourself?” Jody demanded in a sour voice.

Sam looked away before he answered, then quickly recognized his mistake. He turned back to his father and stared him in the eye, trying to hide any fear. “I do OK,” he answered defiantly.

His dad snorted angrily. He knew better.

“I can’t teach you a whole lot, boy, but I can teach you how to fight. And there’s only one way to learn. Just like with swimming, you’ve got to jump into the pool. And not on the kiddie side, you need to jump in over your head. So I’m going to help you, Sammy, and one day you’ll thank me for this.”

Sam looked at his father, his eyes wide. The older man took a short step toward him, a shadow passing over his face. He was six inches taller and weighed at least a hundred pounds more. “You’re going to need to know how to do this!” Jody explained as he lifted his fist. “There’s only one way to learn. It’s time to jump in, Sammy. And I ain’t the kiddie pool.”

Sam stumbled backward. “No, Dad!” he cried.

The old man moved forward. “No son of mine will be a coward!” he sneered.

*******

Jody beat his son so severely that he knocked him unconscious. Stepping over the crumpled body, he dragged him under a tree, then turned back to the boat and started slapping on the paint.

Sam came to later on. He lay there a long time, trying to clear his head, then forced himself to his feet, washed from the hose and stumbled into the house.

His dad eyed him warily, then slapped him on the back. “You’ll learn,” he said as if they were old friends. “You’ve got to keep your hands up to cover your face. And you’ve got to bulk up, you’ve got the muscles of a fly. I’m not asking that you be a jock like I was, heaven knows there’s no hope of that, but I won’t raise a kid who can’t take care of himself. And I bloody sure won’t have a son who is afraid of a fight.”

Sam only grunted.

“This is for your own good. I’m not raising a woman. I’m raising a man!”

“You’re not raising me!” Sam cried as he backed away from his dad.

Jody froze as if he had taken a sucker punch. “Bloody straight I’m raising you,” he sneered, reaching out slap him again. “I am your old man! And don’t you ever forget it! I gave up everything just to have you, without nothin’ in return. This is a tough world, don’t I know it, and I’m gonna teach you to survive.”

Sam stared at him and nodded.

The old man was probably right.

*******

“What happened!” Sara blurted when he drug himself into the house, her hand shooting to her mouth.

“Fell off the boat,” Samuel lied as he held a rag to his split lip. Neither Sara nor Neil believed him, but he wouldn’t say any more. They considered calling the authorities, but they knew Sam would never forgive them, for he followed a code of silence when it came to the old man.

That night, as Sam lay on his bed, his entire body screaming, he made a decision. His old man wanted him to learn how to fight. Then by hell, that’s what he’d do.

Next day he spent every dime he had on a set of weights and started pumping iron. He started working out with the boxing coach and running five miles a day.

Six weeks later, the old man took notice. “See there, boy, I’m helping you already,” he said as he thumped Sam on the chest. “Feel that,” he mocked. “The kid is building a six-pack of his own. Well, let’s see what he’s got now!” Jody peeled off his shirt and flexed his biceps.

Sam held his ground. His eyes were unafraid. “I don’t want to fight you anymore, Jody. You made your point, OK. I got it. I learned my lesson. Now let’s just let it go at that.”

“Who knows if you’ve learned anything? You ain’t proved nothing yet!”

“No one says we have to do this!”

His old man took a quick step forward and spit on the ground.

The fight only lasted eight seconds. Three hits; a right to the midsection, just above the kidneys, a left to the jaw which broke a back tooth, then a right to the eyebrow that sent his old man’s brain rattling in his skull. It was over and his father went down. He was flat on his back, his eyes open, his jaw gapping up and down like a fish. Sam went to the hose and turned it on to soak the old man.

“You satisfied?” he sneered as his father shook his wet head.

His old man nodded, his eyes unfocused, his breathing coming in grunts.

“Have I passed your stupid little test then?”

The old man grunted again.

Sam leaned down to face him, looking into his bleary eyes. “Then let me tell you something, Jody. You touch me again, and I’ll kill you! You understand that. I don’t want to fight you. Not ever again. But if you come after me, I promise, you won’t wake up in this world. And the same goes for Momma. You touch her, and I’ll find you. So grow up, old man.”

Sam threw the hose down and walked away. He left his dad sputtering and never looked back again.

That night he locked himself in his room, refusing to speak to anyone. He ignored Sara’s gentle knocks on the door as he cried into his pillow.

He knew it was time to start over. Really start over. Screw the old man and old lady. It was time to move on.

He had a chance at another life, a chance to do something more. He had a chance to be normal. A chance to make something of his life, a chance to do something besides drink beer, watch football and look for another party or the next sleazy lover who could provide a few thrills.

From that day forward he quit thinking of his biological parents as his mom and dad. Sara and Neil were his parents, the only true parents he would ever have. And he loved them with an emotion that could only be borne from the depths of despair, a depth of loyalty which came from a man who had been thrown a lifesaver in a sea of loneliness and fear. And he knew that they loved him too. Why they did, he didn’t know. It was a great mystery, something he would never understand. But they really did love him, they weren’t just saying the words. And they had saved him from a life of constant bitterness and self-inflicted wounds.

So despite the court’s directions, it was almost a year before he saw Jody or his mom again.

*******

Sam continued to work out every day. He grew strong and fast. And he also grew smart. His senior year of high school, he went from a struggling C and B student to making almost straight As. He tried out for football and became a star running back.

“I’m too much like my real dad,” he once said to Sara as they sat at the kitchen counter after one of his football games.

She looked at him a long time. “Who is your real dad?” she asked.

Sam looked away guiltily. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What I meant was my biological father. I saw him at the game tonight. He used to play football, too. I’m too much like him.” He stared at his tight hands.

Sara’s eyes softened. “You were given a bad deal, Sammy, there’s no way around that. But I really think that it’s not so much the hand we’ve been dealt that matters as much as what we do with our cards. We have to play the best game; play the best way we know how, and that’s what you’ve done, Sammy. Your dad and I are proud. We’re as proud of you as any person we’ve ever known.”

*******

During his senior year in high school, Sam and Jody seemed to patch things up a bit and he started hanging out at the old home on the weekends every once in a while. His mom came back from las Vegas and took a few steps to clean up her life. She and Jody got back together and they settled down in the old house on the bay and took to the slow life. They expanded their business, taking it seriously for the first time. She drove the boat. Jody ran tackle and cleaned the client’s fish. Both of them attended Sam’s high-school graduation. They even gave him a present—a hundred dollars cash and a pair of black leather Italian shoes. Sam held them up, the soft leather shining in the afternoon sun, then looked at his dad.

“One day, you’re going to be someone,” his old man explained. “You’re gonna need to look good. And a good look starts with the right shoes.”

It was one of the happiest moments of Sam’s life.

*******

Sam stayed with the Brightons for six weeks after graduating from high school, a period of discontent and frustration. But Neil and Sara didn’t push him, knowing Sam just needed a little time to sort things out. He spent much of his time wandering around the house, reading in his bedroom or puttering in the garden. And though Sam had always loved working with the earth, even this seemed to cause him frustration. He frequently commented on how he was planting seeds that he wouldn’t be around to see grow.

One afternoon Sara walked into her bedroom to see him standing in front of the mirror wearing one of Neil’s suits. The leather shoes Jody had given him shined under the loose cuff of the pants. He turned from side to side, looking at himself in the mirror, Sara watching him with pride. “Wow, you look great,” she said as he adjusted the tie. “There is something about a suit. You really look good.”

He looked a second longer, then shook his head. “I don’t think so, Mom. It feels too tight.”

Sara walked to him and tugged on the shoulders. “It fits you just right.”

He looked at her and smiled. “That’s not what I meant,” he answered. “But thanks anyway.” He disappeared into his bedroom to change out of the suit.

Sara understood what he was saying, so she waited until he was dressed. “What are you going to do then, Sam?” she asked when he reappeared from his room.

He hesitated, and for an instant she saw a young child there; a thirteen-year old boy, small, beaten by circumstances. She saw all the misery and anguish of the past years. But she couldn’t change that. It was now up to Sam to decide what he was going to do.

“I’m sorry,” Sam muttered, “I know you and Dad want me to go to college. Get a degree in business or go to law school or something. But I can’t do it, Mom. Maybe I’m just a bad seed. Maybe I don’t have it in me. Look at my old man, and I think we’d agree there’s not a lot to be optimistic about. I want to be like you and Dad, but I’m just like my old man instead.”

Sara felt her chest crunch. She remained speechless, her throat tight. “You are who you choose to be,” she told him.

The way that Sam looked at her indicated he didn’t know if that was true.

“What are you going to do then?” she asked again.

Sam clenched his jaw. He had made his decision the night before. “My old man taught me to fight,” he answered. “That’s something I’m pretty good at. I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

“Neil will be disappointed that you don’t go to college so you can be an officer.”

“Yeah. I understand that. But that’s the way it is, I guess.”

*******

Six weeks later Sam left for army basic training. Twelve weeks after that, he graduated number one in his class. He was indeed a fighter. Very good at his job. Upon graduation, he was accepted to Rangers school and once again finished in the top of his class. He was then assigned to the 101st Airborne and eventually sent to Afghanistan to fight the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Two years after joining the Army, Sam received a hand-delivered invitation from his unit commander. He opened it eagerly. He had been waiting for months.

The invitation was short and direct. The Delta Force, the U.S. Army’s elite counterterrorism experts, were looking for a very few men. Did he want to apply? Sam stared at the invitation. A shot of adrenaline ran through him and he almost jumped in the air.

Delta Force are the crème de le crème, the most disciplined and highly trained soldiers in the world. They are part of the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces, and they conduct covert missions that were so highly controversial and dangerous that many of the team members had long hair and wore civilian clothes as they roamed around with CIA agents in the hellish spots of the world.

Fifty of the army’s very best men, those who had already proven themselves on the battlefield, would be invited to Delta training. Three, maybe five, would make it through.

Sam was one of the proud ones. Neil attended the low-key graduation, smiling proudly from his VIP seat. Sara wasn’t allowed to attend, but it didn’t matter, she would have only cried anyway.

Sam then spent a hellish twenty months crawling through the spider web of caves that lined the eastern Afghanistan border, hunting down and killing various enemies of the United States. During this time he finished college, getting a degree in International Relations, with a minor in Arabic and Urdu. Again, he graduated with honors. Then came a commission as an officer, a thing which made the general very proud.

EIGHTEEN

Five minutes after placing his order, Neil’s adopted son walked through the door.

Samuel had put on weight, twenty pounds, all of it muscle in his shoulders and arms. His hair had grown long and sun-bleached and it hung in bangs in his eyes and over his ears. And he was tan, almost dark, from the vicious Afghani sun. Brighton noted his goatee, which was so tightly trimmed it was barely a shadow of stubble. Dressed in dark jeans, a tan T-shirt and leather hiking boots, he looked more like a European than an American. He certainly didn’t look army and though Brighton knew the Delta’s often worked undercover, as a traditional soldier it was a little unsettling. He expected a GI Joe in a tight haircut and USA T-shirt. What he saw was a Hell’s Angel who has just slipped off his Hog.

But these were the new warriors. And he thought that it was cool. He stared a proud moment then stood and waved to his son.

Sam picked him out and moved through the crowd toward his table. Brighton stood to embrace him and they slapped each other on the back before they sat down. “Sam, it’s good to see you!” Brighton said in delight.

“No kidding! This is great. How are you, Dad?”

“A little nervous, actually.”

“Why’s that?” Sam cocked his head.

“I was only scheduled for a 40 minute refueling stop at Ramstein,” Brighton answered. “I didn’t think I’d have time to get together with you, but your mother was so determined that I see you, I’m thinking she snuck onto base and sabotaged my aircraft before I took off. Now I’m wondering what else she might have done. Is my airplane safe anymore?”

Both of them laughed then stared at each other, a proud father and proud son. “You look good,” Brighton offered, “but I’ve got to tell you, that isn’t what I have come to expect from a soldier.”

Sam pushed his hair back. “Welcome to the Deltas. This is how it is now.”

Brighton pointed to the long hair and rough clothes. “They wouldn’t let our Air Force guys get away with that,” he answered.

“Your boys jet around like Space Rangers. They don’t play down in the mud with the men.”

“I guess not.”

“And remember, Dad, we have to work with the locals. It helps us to blend in, which is a good thing.”

Brighton nodded. He knew that. “Things in Afghanistan OK?” he asked.

“Doing good, doing good.”

His father leaned toward him intently. “Really?” he asked.

“Well, Dad, I’m not really sure what you want me to say. For one thing, you’re a senior member of the president’s national security staff. Anything I say could be used against me. I’m not going go there, know what I mean. If you want information on operations in Afghanistan, I refer you to my commander, General Brighton, sir.”

Brighton cracked a thin smile. “OK, Captain Brighton. Duly noted. Now, just between you and me, how are things going in Afghanistan?”

“It’s a hole. Hot. Dusty. Too many idiots who hate the United States. Too many donkeys and not enough rain. The whole country smells like an outhouse in the summer. Chiggers and sand fleas. What more do you want to know.”

Brighton shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry! Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have it any other way! I can’t wait to get back there. It’s a miserable and lousy mission, but we’re killing more of the enemy than any other unit in the world. We’re shooting out the brains of those guys bent on destroying their own country and killing their own people. So no, I’m not complaining, I’m just doing my job.”

“You should have listened to me. You could have gone to the Academy and learned to fly jets.”

“And miss getting shot at while taking a piss over the side of an eighteen thousand foot cliff? Why would I ever do that?”

Brighton shrugged. “What was I thinking?” he answered sarcastically.

“And remember, Dad,” Sam continued, his emotion on the rise, “these guys don’t just want to destroy us in some vague or ambiguous way. They want to kill us. To hurt us. To cause us any kind of pain. Give any one of them a dull knife and they’d happily cut your head off, all the time laughing while they hacked away. Give them a nuke and they’d take out D.C. in a heartbeat, smiling and laughing while counting a million people dead. And if anyone doesn’t believe that then I think them a fool. If they’d seen what I’ve seen, then they wouldn’t have any doubt.”

“Hey Sammy, you’re preaching to the choir here.”

Sam quit talking, but even in the dim light his blue eyes burned bright. Brighton lifted his water and tilted it toward him. “I’m proud of you, Sam.”

Sam lifted his Perrier. “Thank you, general,” he said.

*******

The five Germans watched the two American soldiers intently while sipping their ale. They were all in their thirties and had missed most of the U.S. glory days. More, they considered Miss Lelas a local joint, off limits to the American riffraff, and they thought that had been made abundantly clear from the old BUSH IS HITLER poster hanging near the front door. And if that didn’t do it, the upside down British flag over the bar should have made their feelings clear.

Besides being angry at the world, the five men had been unemployed for going on three years and were nearly drunk despite the early hour. So they watched the U.S. officer and the local kid (probably selling secrets about the anti-war movement), whispering and cursing all the time. They quickly decided they detested the Yankees more than the sight of spilled beer.

“Look at him!” the largest German sneered. “Big shot American cowboy, just like Bush used to be. On his way to kill Afghans. That’s all they do is kill!”

His buddies shook their heads in agreement. Stinking Americans. All cocky and proud.

“You remember Wolf?” one of them asked. The other men stared. “You know, Wolfgang Struttger, runs the printing service downtown. He married an American, some woman who got a divorce from her soldier when she got over here. Then she dumped old Wolf and took off with most of his cash. Cleaned him out completely, then made off with his son. He’s seen the kid but one time since she left. She’s back in the United States now, but he doesn’t know where.”

The other buddies swore. “Filthy, arrogant bitch!”

They stared at each other and sipped miserably at their beer.

“He shouldn’t be here,” the largest man finally sneered to his friends. “This is our place. Our country. None of them should be here. They bring only death and destruction. They only care about war! They only fight when there’s oil they want to get their hands on! They only fight when it suits them. And have you ever noticed, they always fight against us. Look at all the wars of the past hundred years. Did the United States ever help us? No! Never once. They claim they’re our ally, but isn’t it funny how we always find ourselves looking down the barrel of their guns!”

His buddies all mumbled, boiling even hotter with rage.

“Jew-loving Amris!” the leader hissed. “Arab-hating scum. Closed minded bigots and self-righteous crusaders is all that they are. How many nations have they exploited and crushed through the years!”

The other men mumbled, content to hate from afar. But the fat one had had too many beers. “I’m going to get him!” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I hate these stinking Americans and it’s time I let them know.”

*******

General Brighton and Sam were working hungrily through a heaping plate of sausage and sauerkraut when Brighton saw the men approach out of the corner of his eye. Four of them followed their leader, who was a large man, tall as he, but at least 50 pounds heavier. He had a dark beard and short hair and he wore common work clothes. They all looked to be in their 30s and for a second Brighton thought they were coming to talk to him about flying. Back in the old days, it wasn’t uncommon for the locals to want to talk about the air force or what it was like to live in the United States. Then he saw the angry looks on their faces and realized these men were not in a talking mood. These men wanted trouble. And they were coming for him.

“Heads up,” he whispered to Sam as the five men approached.

Sam had already seen them coming. “I’ve been watching them,” he answered.

Brighton put his glass down.

“This isn’t going to look good,” Sam whispered. “A general and his son cracking a bunch of local guys’ heads.”

“We’re the ones who might take the cracking. We’re outnumbered pretty bad.”

“No prob, Dad,” Sam answered as he slowly pushed his chair back. “Just remember, strike to do damage. You’ve got to take them out of the fight. If the only thing you do is hurt them, then all you’ve done is piss them off.”

Brighton glanced around quickly, wishing he had brought his bodyguard, not because he was scared, but it would have made it much easier to get out of the café without trouble. Although he had popped a head or two in his early days, and been a pretty good boxer in college, he still swallowed tensely. General officers weren’t supposed to get into a fistfight with the locals. It was . . . unbecoming of their rank. And if the German press got wind of trouble, they would have a field day. He could almost see the headlines. White House Military Officer Brawls in Local Bar. His boss would freak. And Sara would faint!

He cursed himself silently. How had he gotten into this mess? He shot a quick look to Sam. “You OK?” he asked.

Sam only nodded.

“If this gets ugly, stay together.”

“I’ve got your six.”

“Don’t challenge them. Keep your head down and maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

The five men drew near. Sam cut a hunk of greasy sausage with his fork and lifted it to his mouth. Keeping his head down was the last thing on his mind. A soldier always watched his enemy as they approached.

Brighton heard a deep growl from over his shoulder. “Er sieht so hungrig aus. Er kommt sicherlich von dem tÖten vielen Irakishen kindern zÜureck,” the huge German mocked.

He struggled to translate, pulling the German words from way back in his mind. “Look at him, so hungry. He surely comes from the killing of many Iraqi children,” or something close to it, the German had said.

The five men laughed as Brighton looked up and smiled weakly, feigning ignorance.

The German shot a dark look to Sam as if to say “get out of here boy,” then turned back to Brighton, summing him up. “Big shot,” he sneered in German to his friends. “Fancy stars on his shoulders, but not smart enough to learn German. Another ugly American soldier, that’s all we have here.”

Brighton turned away. He felt his back tighten and his chest muscles grow taut, but he kept his head down and his eyes on his plate.

Sam looked up and smiled. “Hey guys,” he said in English, “we’re just having a quick bite to eat. We don’t want any problems. Give us a few minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

The thug nodded to his buddies then reached out and tugged on Sam’s hair. “You need a haircut,” he sneered, leaning across the table toward him. “I’ve got a knife in my pocket. Do you want me to cut it for you?”

Brighton leaned across the table, putting his arm between the fat man and Sam. Sam shook him off angrily, pushing his hand away. Brighton stared at the strangers and nodded. Five against two. Hardly a fair fight. And they probably had weapons, which made it much more dangerous and far more difficult.

The German leaned across the table and stuck his fat fingers in Brighton’s food. “Looks good,” he snickered. “Don’t mind if I do.” He swirled his fingers through the meat juice then licked them and wiped his hand on Brighton’s shirt.

His buddies laughed loudly, prodding him on. The German turned to Sam. “Why don’t you leave,” he said. “This isn’t about you. This is between this U.S. soldier and me and my buddies here.”

Sam pushed himself away from the table and stood. “You got problems with Americans,” he snorted in anger.

“Sit down,” Brighton told him, then turned quickly to the man. “We don’t want any trouble,” he said softly, being careful not to give any excuse for offense.

Their leader bent toward him. “You’re in Germany,” he sneered, spit spraying on Brighton’s face “We don’t speak English or wear cowboy boots here!”

“We were just leaving . . . .”

The German stood in his way. “I said speak to me in GERMAN, or I’ll cut out your Yankee tongue and shove it down your throat!”

“Get him!” his buddies taunted. “Take him out, Freidrich. You can do it!” they cried.

Brighton breathed deeply as he shot a look to Sam.

“You don’t want to do this,” he told him.

“Yeah, pig, I do.”

Brighton sighed again and the German sneered. “No stomach for a fight, boy. You just want to kill babies. Is that all you do!”

The German shoved the American’s shoulders and Brighton caught a glimpse of the knife sheath underneath his oversized shirt. He shot a quick look to the others, wondering if they too were armed. The German poked a fat finger in his ear. “I’m talking to you, Pigdog,” he shouted. “ARE YOU NOT HEARING ME!!”

“Walk away,” Brighton warned him.

“No way, Amri, not till I have some fun!” The German grabbed Brighton’s shirt and cocked his fist back.

Brighton bolted to his feet, sending the small table crashing to the floor. He grabbed the German’s wrist and twisted, almost breaking his hand, then swung him around and jerked his arm up behind his back, forcing the man to squeal in pain. His nearest buddy pulled a knife from his pocket and lurched toward Sam. Sam grabbed the metal fork from his plate and slashed it down on his arm. The man cried in agony as the fork penetrated to his bone, just below the shoulder, digging four prongs into the muscle. It stuck from his bicep and he dropped his knife to the floor. Sam kicked it aside and waited for the next assault. The other men hesitated, then rushed him as one. Sam stepped back and twisted, kicked his right foot high in the air. He smashed his boot in the lead man’s throat and he fell back, grasping his shattered Adam’s apple, sucking desperately for air. The third man grabbed Sam’s hair and jerked his head back while another approached him with a small knife in his hand. Sam grabbed the German’s arm and twisted, bringing all of his weight against the elbow while extending his hip and pushing down. There was a soft crack and a cry as the man stumbled backward, holding his broken arm.

Three down. Two left standing. It was all even now.

Brighton held the huge German and jammed his arm upward again until he felt the muscles in his shoulder begin to tear. The fat man screeched in agony, then pulled away violently, using his weight to try and knock Brighton to the side. Brighton moved with the German, using his momentum against him, then smashed his forearm across the German’s face, forcing his chin to one side until his neck almost snapped. Reaching under the German’s shirt, he gripped his collarbone and held it, using it as a handle to keep pressure against the German’s face. The fat man shrieked again, almost fainting, then fell suddenly still. It was too painful to scream. It was too painful to move. Brighton jerked the German’s switchblade from his sheath, flipped it open and tossed it in the air, then caught the handle. He held the knife loosely against the German’s neck and felt him grow limp with fear.

There was only one other German standing. He froze, his buddies rolling on the floor around him, all of them crying from their pain, then made a weak feint toward Sam before stopping again.

Brighton tugged on the fat one’s collarbone and whispered in his ear. “Look what you’ve done to your buddies. Some of them got hurt. I think you should apologize!”

The huge man huffed in pain. “I’d die first, Pigdog.”

“Your choice!” Brighton waved the knife in front of his eyes. The German cried in pain. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed.

Brighton almost laughed. “Now what is there in this situation that would lead me to believe that!” he asked. “I’m mean, look at this Freidrich! Help me understand.”

Sam took a step toward his father. “Don’t kill him!” he stammered. “Don’t kill this one, General. Just let him go.”

Brighton felt the German’s knees buckle and he jerked his arm again. “But I haven’t killed anyone this week,” he shot back to Sam. “Not a single Iraqi child! I need to taste some blood!”

“But you’re on your way to Iraq. You can kill someone there!”

“Oh yeah,” Brighton answered and the German realized they were jerking his chain.

“Help me!” the fat one coughed, but his buddy didn’t move. He wanted no more of this. Sam took a quick step toward him and he cowered again.

“You think I’m a killer!” Brighton hissed. “Should we find out if you’re right!”

“Nein, nein!” the German cried, his eyes wide in pain.

“I just came here for a quiet lunch. Now is that too much to ask?”

The German groaned in agony. “Nein, mein herr, nein. That is not too much trouble. No sir, not at all!”

Brighton swung his hand sideways, crashing the switchblade into the brick wall. The knife blade broke at the hilt and he dropped the handle on the floor. “Now perhaps we have an understanding,” he said in a calm voice. “You don’t want trouble. I don’t want trouble. It seems we agree.”

The German nodded eagerly. “I don’t want any trouble, no sir.”

“Then I’ll make you a deal. I’m going to let you go. Then you and your buddies are going to get out of here. I think your wives are calling. Is that what I hear?”

“Yes, sir, they’re calling. It is time to go.”

Brighton relaxed his grip and the German almost fell to the floor. He crawled away from the general, holding his hands to his neck. Brighton nodded to the waiter, who was standing wide-eyed by the bar. “How much I owe you?” he questioned.

“Nothing there buddy. Just get the hell out of here.”

Brighton stared at him, then nodded. He and Sam walked past the fallen Germans and through the front door.

They stood alone in the alley. Sam looked back at the café. “That was interesting,” he said.

Brighton stared back at Lelas and shook his head sadly. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered.

“Hey, Dad, let’s get this straight. We didn’t ask for a fight. And that guy would have killed you if we had given him the chance. He was too drunk and too stupid. And they all were carrying knives. You didn’t do anything wrong here. Those goons were looking to fight us before I even sat down.”

Brighton looked ashamed, then turned quickly to Sam. “Not a word of this to Sara. She would die if she knew this. Not one word, right.”

Sam smiled and patted his shoulder. “No worries, Dad.”

Brighton watched him, then turned. “Let’s get out of here before those goons call their friends.”

Sam followed him to his car. “You know, Dad, that was pretty good work back there. If you ever decide you want to join the Deltas, I know a few people. It’s a pretty tight club, but I think I could get you in.”

“No thanks,” Brighton answered. “I’m too old for this.”

“Apparently not,” Sam answered, glancing back to the café.

“I just held my own. You did all the hard work.”

Sam just shook his head. “You’ve got to go?” he asked his father.

Brighton glanced at his watch and nodded. “I was hoping we’d have more time to talk.”

“Next time, I guess.”

“Next time,” Brighton answered.

The two men stood in silence. “When are you going back to Afghanistan?” Brighton asked as he unlocked his car.

“A couple days, from what I’m hearing. By the end of the week.”

Brighton looked at his son intently. “Be careful,” he told him.

“Always, Dad.”

Sam stepped back and saluted. “General,” he said.

Brighton braced himself and returned the salute. “Captain,” he replied.

NINETEEN

Two days after the fisherman dragged the bloated body of Azadeh’s assailant from the river, another stranger pulled into Rassa’s village, equally mystifying, though certainly not insane. He moved comfortably through the crowded streets, for he had been in the village before, several times, in fact, in the previous two weeks alone. He was a large man, well kept, though he wore unexceptional clothes. His face was hidden behind dark glasses and a neatly trimmed beard. He drove a Swedish sedan, which he parked on the south end of the open-air market, then spent a couple hours walking through the village, taking everything in. He talked to each shopkeeper he visited, asking a few questions and occasionally even writing things down, then browsed through the market, testing several wares before buying some potatoes and garlic sausage for breakfast along with a cup of thick tea.

It was Saturday morning, the start of another workweek, and the market was noisy and smelly from the usual crowd. After the first call to prayer, Rassa and Azadeh made their way through the market, collecting the supplies they would need for the next couple days. Rassa bought two liters of goat’s milk and some sugar, then fifty nails and some wire to repair the fence around his yard. Azadeh picked out some fresh fruit and cabbage, then eight small carp. The fish were wrapped in old newspaper and tied with rough string. She dropped them in her basket, then ran to her father’s side.

The stranger watched them intently, always staying a comfortable distance behind and acting with care so as to not draw any attention to himself. As the sun rose, the air grew warm and the marketplace became oppressive. Their shopping completed, the father and his daughter left the market and walked the dusty road toward their home.

The stranger watched them go, then melted into the crowd and walked back to his car. Climbing in, he locked the doors, started the motor, then pulled out an encrypted satellite phone and dialed a number in Riyadh.

“I will speak to Crown Prince Saud,” he said after his call was put through. He grunted and waited. “Muhsin al-Illah,” he gave as his name.

Then he waited, his breathing heavy, his hands sweaty and cold.

“Sayid,” he said when the prince finally came on the phone. “I have been watching the target. There is nothing new to report.”

The Arab waited, then answered. “They appear to be of little means, Sayid, though they do have their own home, a small brick and mud house on a hill looking over the village. It is small but well kept.”

The large man fixed the air vent to blow on his face as he listened, then answered again. “Yes, your Highness, I agree. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that it might work. It seems that no one knows, or at least no one cares any longer, that Rassa Pahlavi is a grandson of the shah. He lives a quiet life, a simple life. And though I pray it never happens, and I hope you are wrong (blessed be your name, your Royal Highness, for I do not mean to ever disagree!), but from what I have seen I believe your plan could possibly work. If we are careful. And if we are left with no choice.”

*******

A little more than seven hundred kilometers to the west, the crown prince of the House of Saud, future king of Saudi Arabia, thanked his loyal servant then hung up the phone. He stared a long moment, considering what he should do.

Was he that close? Was it real? Was the danger as near as he feared?

He knew that it was. And there was no time to hesitate any longer. He needed to put his plan into action.

He huffed with emotion, then picked up his secure phone again. “When will General Brighton be here?” he asked.

COMING IN EPISODE TWO...

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“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world...”

Ephesians 6:12

Two days later, a rusted container ship loaded with barrels of refined kerosene, lubricants, and refurbished electrical generators, left the port at Karachi bound for the Straits of Hormuz. It only took three days to reach the port of Ad Dammam, the huge Saudi port on the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf.

On the burning pavement of the seaside dock, three large but non-descript crates were loaded onto the back of a two-ton army truck. The truck pulled away from the warehouse and turned to drive south. Overhead, two helicopters followed its path.

That night, the third, fourth and fifth nuclear warheads were placed in an underground storage facility on the Saudi air force base of Al Hufuf.

*******

Lucifer dismissed Balaam with an angry wave of his hand. “That is right, Balaam. I am the king of this world! I am its glory and splendor, its magnificent power! And I am still rising! My day is soon to come! And as my glory grows, the veil between my angels and this world will come down. A few see me now, but in time all will see. I will stand in my dark glory before them and they shall see me as I am! I appear unto a few now, but the time is soon coming when I will appear unto all. I will step forward in power and claim this world for my own! And then they shall know, and their mouths shall confess, that it is my glory that burns bright in this land!”

*******

The assassins jumped from their hiding places and ran down the hill. Behind them they heard the dull whop, whop, whop as their evacuation helicopter crested the saddle in the mountain and swooped toward the rising smoke. The assassins reached the road in a matter of seconds and came to a quick stop. Charred bodies, burning tires, blackened pieces of metal and melted weapons were scattered everywhere. The air was heavy with the stench of burning flesh and fuel.

It was a perfect hit. Not a soldier was left living. It was all that they could ask.

The team leader turned to the black BMW, the only vehicle in the convoy that had not been destroyed. The royal family was in there. He started to move.

*******

The Crown Prince had barely drifted to sleep when the Sikorski suddenly reeled on its side. Then he felt his stomach lurch as the chopper fell toward the ocean. His eyes flew open, his heart slammed and the adrenaline surged through his body. The helicopter lurched again and nosed over. The airspeed picked up and he heard the building noise of the airstream slipping over the cabin. Faster and faster. The chopper rolled left and then right and his stomach turned again. He caught a glimpse through the window and saw the sea shimmering but a few feet off the left side. They were right on the water, no more than four or five feet in the air. He cried as the aircraft lurched, then started climbing again. A sudden burst of light, bright as the sun and moving off the left side, cast a freak shadow under its light. The ocean lit up like at noonday as the flare burned across the night sky.

*******

The captain walked to the army truck that had carried him to the village. Reaching behind the front seat, he pulled out a small leather flask. He had come prepared for something new, something different today. The liquid sloshed in the flask as he approached the condemned man. Pulling the soft cork, he doused Rassa with diesel fuel. After soaking his hair, head, shirt and trousers, he poured the last cup of fuel on and around Rassa’s bare feet.

*******

Prince al-Rahman noted his reflection in the glass. Though he was middle-aged, he was still strikingly good-looking and well manicured. He was also as cold and hard and evil as any man in the world. More – far more - he was the future king, patriarch of the world’s great family, a great empire builder like the Sultans before. He knew that he was chosen. That was obvious to him now. His father didn’t believe him, nor did all of his kin. But he had proven them wrong. And he would prove it again.

*******

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