Corsair

Now that he was standing, she could see he was nearly six feet tall, with broad shoulders and, judging by the thickness of his bare wrists, strongly built. She couldn’t see his features, and in the wavering light and through the burqa’s lace she could discern little of his eyes, other than the impression that they were deep-set and dark.

“Your Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Did you know he is a prophet in Islam? Not the last one, of course. That is Muhammad, peace be upon Him. But your ‘Savior’ is recognized as a great teacher.”

“We both worship the God of Isaac and Abraham,” Fiona said.

“But you do not believe in His final pronouncements to His last chosen Prophet, the holy words written through Muhammad and laid into the Koran.”

“My faith begins and ends with a death and resurrection.”

Al-Jama said nothing, but she could tell he had a stinging retort. He finally uttered, “Back to the quote. Do you think you are blessed?”

“If I can bring about the end of violence, I think the work itself is what is blessed, not those who participate.”

He nodded. “Well said. But why? Why do you desire peace?”

“How can you ask that?” Despite her earlier reservations, she felt herself drawn into the conversation. She had expected a tirade on the evils of the West, not an intellectual Q-and-A session. It was obvious the self-styled Suleiman Al-Jama was well educated, so she was curious how he would justify his brand of mass murder. She’d listened to tapes of Bin Laden’s ramblings, read transcripts of detainees at Guantánamo, and watched dozens of martyrdom videos. She wanted to know how he differed, although she already knew that the difference, if any, had no meaning at all.

Al-Jama said, “Peace equals stagnation, my esteemed Secretary. When man is at peace, his soul atrophies and his creative spirit is snuffed. It is only through conflict that we are truly the beings that Allah intended. War brings out bravery and sacrifice. What does peace bring us? Nothing.”

“Peace brings us prosperity and happiness.”

“Those are things of the flesh, not of the spirit. Your peace is about owning a better television set and fancier car.”

“While your war brings suffering and despair,” Fiona countered.

“Then you do understand. For these are things of the spirit, not the body. These are the things we are meant to feel. Not the comfort of a grand home but the experience of shared hardship. This is what brings us closer to Allah. Not your democracy, not your rock music, not your pornographic movies. They distract us from our true reason for existence. We serve no other purpose on earth than to subjugate ourselves to Allah’s will.”

“Who knows what His will is?” she asked. “Who decided you know His intentions more than anyone else? The Koran forbids suicide and yet you sent a young man to intentionally crash a planeload of people into a mountainside.”

“He died a martyr.”

“No,” she said sharply. “You convinced some poor boy that he was dying a martyr and he would have his seventy-seven virgins in heaven, but don’t tell me for one instant you believe it. You are nothing more than a cheap thug trying to wrest power from others and exploiting the blind faith of a few to obtain your goals.”

Suleiman Al-Jama clapped his hands together and gave a delighted laugh. He switched to English. “Bravo, Secretary Katamora. Bravo.”

Though he couldn’t see it because of the burqa, a surprised look crossed Fiona’s face. The sudden shift in language and the conversation’s intensity momentarily confused her.

“You seem to recognize that this has always been about power on the world stage. Centuries ago, England gained it using her superior Navy. The United States has it now because of her wealth and nuclear arsenal. What do the nations of the Middle East have but the willingness of some of their citizens to blow themselves up? A crude weapon, yes. But let me ask how much your country has spent on Homeland Security since a handful of men with hardware-store knives took down two of your largest buildings? A hundred billion? Five hundred billion?”

The number was closer to a trillion, but Fiona said nothing. This wasn’t going as she had expected at all. She had thought Al-Jama would spout a bunch of corrupted passages from the Koran to explain why he’d done what he had, not expose himself as a man bent on dominance.