were clammy and even though he had rubbed on massive amounts of deodorant to prevent perspiration in his armpits lest he be detected too soon, he felt some wetness there.
Scarcely one block away, he saw his target, Madrid’s famous and busy Gaudi Galleria, a shopping and entertainment center that at this afternoon hour would be crowded with hundreds—no, thousands—of infidels. Although people were dashing across the boulevard, he crossed the street at the light. He must do nothing that might call attention.
Half a block from the entrance, his vision of the glassy Galleria structure ahead momentarily blurred. He stopped, his legs shaking, and sucked in a breath.
“Don’t stop,” Ahmad al Hassan had coached him repeatedly. “It will seem strange.”
To cover the moment, he glanced in the window of the shop beside him. Nothing he saw registered in his mind. He turned again to his target and walked at the same practiced pace. Not too fast.
But his heart raced with his eagerness to get there, to have it done. He prayed he would not lose courage at the last minute, that he would be the one to press the button. If for any reason he froze, two others were with him on this mission, and one of them would do it for him. There was no way out now, no way back, only forward to honor and paradise.
No one seemed to notice a clean-shaven, nicely dressed youth with dark, intense eyes and well-combed hair.
Fifteen paces inside, he put his shaking finger on the detonator button. “God is great,” he shouted in Arabic. He pressed, the circuit completed connection.
The roar, which he did not hear, was deafening.
In his small, tidy office on the second floor of a building in Amalfi that housed a bakery on the first floor, Ahmad al Hassan fought the urge to squirm in his desk chair. The aroma of fresh bread seeped into the room from below and his mouth watered despite his anxiety. His two assistants, Mohsin and Brahim, appeared to be busy laboring at their desks.
He stroked his beard, kept short so that he would not draw excessive attention to that fact that he was Muslim in this heathen land. So much was happening all at once. In his pocket he carried the e-tickets that would take Nissia and the children out of Italy, and he was anxious, now, to tell her she must leave. But he could not possibly leave work until he knew if today’s attack had succeeded. Ahmad had spent enormous emotional energy and substantial Al Qaeda financial resources to get the bomber in place.
To Mohsin he said, “If the boy is caught—”
He spoke in Arabic, which he allowed his assistants to speak only in the office. Outside it, they were never to speak anything but Italian, the better to blend in.
Success meant he could concentrate his efforts immediately on the still greater spectacle, one that would bring Italy and the continent to its knees. Failure in Madrid meant he would have to deal with criticism from Syria.
Again he checked the television screen. The station put out continuous news but Ahmad had ordered Mohsin to silence the sound. He simply had too much to do to have the monstrous machine blaring at him in Italian.
He checked the clock. If the boy had succeeded, the Galleria would be in chaos at this moment and the boy in the presence of Allah. The news should appear on the screen soon.
Mohsin sneezed. His head, a small round ball atop a long skinny neck, nodded over the fake documents he was preparing for Al Qaeda recruits due to arrive soon from Palestine, Egypt and Syria, on their way to Germany.
By habit, the dua associated with sneezing spilled from Ahmad’s lips, “May Allah have mercy on you.”
“May Allah be praised,” Mohsin responded.
Mohsin was a graybeard of fifty-five, much older than Ahmad’s thirty-six years. They had met in Palestine. Then ten years ago, Ahmad had become a sworn member of Al Qaeda and the two of them had been sent here to Amalfi. Now fronted by Ahmad’s profitable and legitimate fishing business, both of them were deep undercover. And although Mohsin felt the creeping affliction of Parkinson’s disease, the fire of jihad still burned hot in his soul. He would sacrifice his life, if he had to, to get all Westerners out of the Holy Lands.
“I am sure that all will go as we have planned,” Brahim said from across the room. His voice, high with anxiety, betrayed his confident words. Brahim, twenty-five years old, short and plump, was a financial whiz, skilled at laundering money through the fishing business.
Ahmad studied Brahim for a moment, fascinated as always by his remarkably fat yet agile fingers, then he snapped, “Concentrate on your work. The list of weapons needs to be sent to Greco by tomorrow at the latest.”
The weapons, to be secured from the weapons dealer Fabiano Greco, who lived in Positano, would be smuggled via Lebanon into Syria. The heart of Al Qaeda now resided in Syria under the leadership of the Saudi imam, Ramsi Muhammad.
Ahmad forced his eyes once again to his own work. Because of his language skills, one of his tasks was to translate all-important, sensitive messages from Kenya, Libya and France, brought by courier to this office, into Arabic. Another courier carried them on to Syria. The secret to remaining undetected by the electronics of the infidels was to avoid electronic devices for all really critical communications. At the moment, he labored over a report from the Al Qaeda cell in Kenya.
“That’s it,” Brahim shouted.
With his two assistants, Ahmad turned to the TV, his gaze transfixed by the scene of twisted metal, broken glass, scattered paper, here and there, something recognizable as a body.
“Allah be praised,” Ahmad said, almost a whisper, his head bowed.
Mohsin leapt to his feet and turned on the sound.
The news anchor spouted the basics: how many known dead so far, twenty-three but the death toll swiftly rising; that it was the work of a suicide bomber, but as yet no clues and no one claiming responsibility; that the wounded were being taken to nearby hospitals.
Ahmad turned to Brahim. “I am going to be busy with preparations for the fourteenth. You are in charge of getting the information out to the usual outlets that this is our accomplishment. Make sure Aljazeera receives it first, by at least an hour. They are fanatical about having priority. And the video, too.”
Brahim nodded.
Mohsin said, “I have the article for the Web site ready. Do you still wish it to be posted tomorrow, not today?”
“Yes.”
From the beautifully carved cedar PrayerKeeper on the wall came the call to prayer, interrupting Ahmad’s growing sense of joy, swelling sense of pride and relief that the boy had not been caught and they were all still safe. As the head of the Al Qaeda cell in Italy, keeping this Amalfi operation safe—their home base in Italy—was his most solemn duty.
Like the good Muslim that he was, he prayed five times daily at the appointed hours, and the PrayerKeeper let him know the correct moment. It could indicate the time for prayer at any place in the world. In addition to playing the call to worship, it indicated the direction of Qiblah. The time was 16:09, the time for mid-afternoon prayers.
The timekeeper had been a gift last year from his son, Saddoun. A good son. Smart. Devoted to Allah. Ahmad could never have hoped for a better seed. He had tried to have at least one other boy, but Allah, the one true God, had blessed him with three daughters instead. Allah’s will be done.
He made ablution, as did Brahim and Mohsin. Afterward, he unrolled his carpet as they did theirs. They all took the position of reverence. “Allahu Akbar” they intoned.
Praying on clean ground would be better, but even the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, had used a carpet. Although Islam was growing in fertile soil in Italy and the country now had more than four hundred mosques or cultural centers, there were none yet in Amalfi, so they prayed together at the office.
He prayed thrice, at the end said Aameen, and used both hands to rub his face. He stood and rolled up the carpet.
“I