‘Around six hundred and twenty-two AD.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘The Archangel Gabriel, mounted on a winged horse, took Muhammad up through the seven heavens and finally into the presence of Almighty God himself, who instructed him in all the prayer rituals required of a True Believer. These he memorized and later dictated to a scribe as what became an integral part of the six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six. These verses became and remain the basis of Islam.’
The other three professors nodded in agreement.
‘And they believe that?’ asked the Deputy Director.
‘Let us not be too patronizing,’ Harry Harrison interrupted sharply. ‘In the New Testament we are told that Jesus Christ fasted in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights and then confronted and rebuffed the Devil himself. After that period alone with no food, a man would surely be hallucinating. But for Christian true believers that is Holy Scripture and not to be doubted.’
‘All right, my apologies. So Al-Isra is the meeting with the archangel?’
‘No way,’ said Jolley. ‘Al-Isra is the journey itself. A magical journey. A divine journey, undertaken on the instructions of Allah himself.’
‘It has been called,’ Dr Schramme cut in, ‘a journey through the darkness to great enlightenment . . .’
He was quoting from an ancient commentary. The other three knew it well and nodded.
‘So what would a modern Muslim and a senior operative in Al-Qaeda mean by it?’
This was the first time the academics had been given an inkling as to the source of the documents. Not an intercept, but a capture.
‘Was it fiercely guarded?’ asked Harrison.
‘Two men died trying to prevent us seeing it.’
‘Ah, well, yes. Understandable.’ Dr Jolley was studying his pipe with great attention. The other three looked down. ‘I fear it can be nothing but a reference to some kind of project, some operation. And not a small one.’
‘Something big?’ asked the man from Homeland Security.
‘Gentlemen, devout Muslims, not to say fanatical ones, do not regard Al-Isra lightly. For them it was something that changed the world. If they have code-named something Al-Isra, they intend that it should be huge.’
‘And no indication what it might be?’
Dr Jolley looked round the table. His three colleagues shrugged.
‘Not a hint. Both the writers call down divine blessings on their project but that is all. That said, I think I can speak for us all in suggesting you find out what it refers to. Whatever else, they would never give the title Al-Isra to a mere satchel bomb, a devastated nightclub or a wrecked commuter bus.’
No one had been taking notes. There was no need. Every word had been recorded. This was, after all, the building known in the trade as ‘the Puzzle Palace’.
Both professional intelligence officers would have the transcripts within an hour and would spend the night preparing their joint report. That report would leave the building before dawn, sealed and couriered with armed guard, and it would go high. Very high; as high as it gets in the USA, which is the White House.
Terry Martin shared a limousine with Ben Jolley on the ride back to Washington. It was bigger than the sedan in which he had come, with a partition between front and rear compartments. Through the glass they could see the backs of two heads: the driver and their youthful escorting officer.
The gruff old American thoughtfully kept his pipe in his pocket and stared out at the passing scenery, a sea of the russet and gold of autumn leaves. The younger British man stared the other way and also lapsed into reverie.
&n
bsp; In all his life he had only really loved four people and he had lost three of them in the past ten months. At the start of the year his parents, who had had their two sons in their thirties and were both over seventy, had died almost together. Prostate cancer had taken his father and his mother was simply too broken-hearted to want to go on. She wrote a moving letter to each of her sons, took a bottle of sleeping tablets in a piping hot bath, fell asleep and, in her own words, ‘went to join Daddy’.
Terry Martin was devastated, but survived by leaning on the strength of two men, the other two he loved more than himself. One was his partner of fourteen years, the tall, handsome stockbroker with whom he shared his life. And then on one wild March night there had been the drunken driver going crazily fast; and the crunch of metal hitting a human body; and the body on the slab; and the awful funeral with Gordon’s parents stiffly disapproving of his open tears.
He had seriously contemplated ending his own by now miserable life, but his elder brother Mike seemed to sense his thoughts, moved in with him for a week and talked him through the crisis.
He had hero-worshipped his brother since they were boys in Iraq and through their years at the British public school at Haileybury outside the market town of Hertford.
Mike had always been everything he was not. Dark to his fair, lean to his plump, hard to his soft, fast to his slow, brave to his frightened. Sitting in the limousine gliding through Maryland he let his thoughts return to that final rugby match against Tonbridge with which Mike had ended his five years at Haileybury.