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  These were not Kurt Vermulen’s values. He believed in God, but his faith was a personal, private affair. When it came to the country for which he had so frequently risked his life, he believed that the Constitution was a more important document than the Bible, and that the nation’s Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they argued for the separation of Church and State.

  At this moment, he wasn’t in the position to debate such philosophical niceties. He needed every friend he could get, and if that meant talking to his audience in their own language, he would do it. So Vermulen aimed to pay careful attention to Ezekiel Ray: to both what he said, and how.

  For a while, Ray stood in silence, acknowledging the applause that had greeted his arrival at the podium. He waited till it had risen to a crescendo before he bowed his head and clasped his hands in front of him, murmuring the words of Psalm 19: “ ‘Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.’ ”

  His audience responded with a murmured “Amen.” Again, the preacher let the silence build, holding himself in a pose of prayer and contemplation until he suddenly stood tall again and flashed a smile that lit up the room as brightly as the chandeliers.

  “My friends,” he began, “I bring you joyous news of our Savior’s return! This is news of exultation for those who are brothers and sisters in Christ. But it is news of pain, and death, and eternal torment for those who have turned away from Christ, those unbelievers who mock the Lord and wallow in the sin and temptation offered by the Antichrist.

  “You know the news I’m talking about. You have the words of the first letter to the Thessalonians, chapter four, verses sixteen and seventeen, engraved upon your heart. ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

  “ ‘Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.’ ”

  Many of the congregation had mouthed the words as they were spoken, and murmurs of approval greeted their conclusion.

  Ray nodded in acknowledgment. “Gentlemen, we only have to look around us today to see those who are pious, God-fearing, and living a life of decency and morality. But if we turn on the television, or read the poisonous words of the media elite, we see those who mock the word of God… who sneer at those who believe… who degrade the holy institution of matrimony… who wallow in decadence and fornication.

  “Believe me, they will soon be cut down by the sickle of Christ, and all the followers of the Antichrist with them. For their day of reckoning is coming soon, as the word of the Lord makes plain.

  “Consider the second epistle of Timothy, chapter three: ‘In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection… despisers of those that are good… lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.’

  “The Gospel of Matthew, chapter twenty-four, warns that ‘nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom… And many false prophets shall rise… iniquity shall abound.’

  “Sounds familiar. Sounds like the world today. So now we wait for the final warning that the end is nigh, the arrival upon the earth of Satan himself. Gentlemen, you must be on your guard. For Satan will come soon, and when he does come we must make ready for war.

  “We know where that last, great battle will take place, for it is written that ‘he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.’

  “As you know, this place truly exists. It is the hill of Megiddo, which stands in the land of Israel. And you can visit this place. You can see it with your own eyes.

  “But do not be afraid of this great battle. For the Christ who will return in glory is a mighty Christ, a warrior Christ, riding on a white charger, a Christ who will make His enemies tremble. So be joyful that He comes. Be happy that you will be saved. But be prepared for that final conflict between good and evil.

  “For He is Christ…

  “He brings us rapture…

  “And He is on His way!”

  As the shouts of “Amen!” rang around him, and the Reverend Ezekiel Ray settled back down in his seat, accepting handshakes and backslaps from the men on either side, Kurt Vermulen clapped politely. He was assessing the room as he’d so often assessed a battlefield, looking for strong points and weaknesses, calculating threats and opportunities, seeking out hidden dangers. Above all, he was considering the men he was about to face. He knew now exactly what his audience wanted to hear. But could he give it to them?

  He was about to find out.

  14

  It was half past six, and Alix was sitting on a bus, three rows behind the housekeeper, as she made her journey home. She would, Alix knew, be carrying her own personal set of keys to virtually every working room in the hotel, as well as a pass card guaranteeing access to every guest room. Chambermaids had pass cards, too, but they were kept on cords tied around their waist so that they could not possibly be dropped or mislaid. Only staff as senior as a housekeeper were entitled to put their keys in a handbag. Somehow Alix had to get inside that bag.

  It happened in a neighborhood supermarket. Alix watched as the housekeeper paused by the first aisle, reached into her bag to get her shopping list and left it open as she put on her reading glasses, then ran her finger down the piece of paper, mentally ticking off everything that she had to buy.

  Alix walked by her, glancing down at the bag. There were two sets of keys clearly visible: a small ring with her car and front-door keys, and a much larger bunch of hotel keys, one of which looked like a credit card. That was the one Alix wanted.

  But for the next ten minutes she had to wait, her frustration growing, unable to find an opening. The housekeeper had almost reached the checkout when she suddenly stopped dead in the middle of an aisle. She replaced her glasses on her nose, consulted her list again, hissed crossly at her own forgetfulness, and scuttled away to another aisle, leaving her cart behind her.

  Alix walked steadily toward the cart. Making no sudden movements, she reached into the bag with her wire cutters and snapped the link that attached the housekeeper’s pass card to her key ring. She palmed the card and put it in her own shoulder bag. At the checkout she paid for a lettuce and a jar of Bolognese sauce, then disappeared into the night.

  15

  Kurt Vermulen looked out from the glare of the podium into the darkness of the room beyond. He had one last chance: one shot at getting the backing he needed to make his country aware of the threat building against it in mountains and deserts thousands of miles away. The nervous energy was building inside him, adrenaline parching his mouth. Then he began.

  He delivered a warning of a war that could engulf the world, a conflict to the death between religions and civilizations. And it was, he said, a war that America had brought upon itself.

  “I was there when it all began,” he said, his voice low-pitched but intense. “I saw our fatal mistake.”

  He took them back to the late summer of 1986 and the first secret shipments of Stinger antiaircraft missiles by the United States to the mujahideen, the resistance fighters battling the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “They called this fight the jihad, which literally means ‘the effort,’ or ‘the struggle.’ To them it was a battle against the enemies of Islam. It was their duty to fight in the service of their God.”

  Vermulen was not an orator. He was a man of action, and he spoke simply, without any of the vocal flourishes of a preacher like Ezekiel Ray. But he could feel the atmosphere in the room change as he talked about men who fought for God. This was language that the men in front of him understood, even if theirs was a different deity.

  “These jihadists were given our most deadly weapons, and they were trained to use them by U.S. mi
litary advisers under my command. We thought we were teaching them to beat Commies. We forgot that we were also training them to beat us. And it wasn’t till the Red Army was finally kicked out of Afghanistan in 1989 that we figured out that these warriors of the jihad didn’t like Americans, or Christians, any more than they’d liked Russians. And by that point, a register had been taken of all the men who had fought as mujahideen. It was a list of names and contact details, and it was called ‘the base,’ or in Arabic, al-Qaeda.

  “A year later, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, the Muslim leader of a Muslim nation, invaded Kuwait, another Muslim nation, and took his armies right up to the borders of Saudi Arabia. And I guess you all know how they worship there.”

  There was a ripple of laughter through the room, a relieved release of tension. When it died away, Vermulen said, “We beat the bad guy, gave the Kuwaitis back their country, and helped our Saudi allies. But the men of al-Qaeda and their allies in Egyptian Islamic Jihad didn’t care about that. Far as they were concerned, the presence of infidel Americans in the same country as the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina was a sinful pollution. They hated us for being there and they have never forgiven us.

  “So, we know these folks are out there. We know their stated intentions to fight against us, our faith, and our way of life. They have already attacked U.S. forces in Sudan, Saudia Arabia, and Aden. But it was not enough for them to kill Americans. They wanted to strike directly at America itself. You know that on February 26, 1993, Islamic terrorists detonated a fifteen-hundred-pound bomb underneath the World Trade Center in New York City. The guys who carried out that bombing had links to al-Qaeda and also to our own intelligence services. The Trade Center conspirators used a bomb-making manual originally supplied to them by the CIA. They also had access to combat manuals from our own Special Forces Warfare Center. We taught these guys to blow us up and we’re still doing it.

  “Just look at the civil war that has torn apart the European nation that was once Yugoslavia. Islamic jihadists trained and armed by U.S. corporations were active in Bosnia, and are joining the conflict currently starting in Kosovo. Al-Qaeda and Egyptian jihadists are operating in Albania and throughout the former Yugoslavia. Their aim is to use that war as a means of opening a back door into Western Europe. Yet the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA remain in total denial about the threat they pose. Gentlemen, this is madness.”

  For the first time, Vermulen was raising his voice and putting extra emphasis into his words. He had paced his speech like a long-distance runner waiting till the final lap before he put in his big effort.

  Sitting at a table in the far corner of the room, Waylon McCabe was impressed. He was beginning to understand how Vermulen had earned three stars before his fiftieth birthday.

  “I fear that we are witnessing the first skirmishes in a great war between faiths that could determine the state of the world for decades, even centuries to come,” the general continued. “The soldiers of Islam won’t use tanks or rockets, but bombs, strapped to their own bodies. For they are prepared to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, while too many of us lack the courage or the will to sacrifice anything at all.

  “Our society is soft. Our leaders dare not confront the electorate with the truth. They do not even want to hear the truth themselves. And so I come to you, the members of the Commission for National Values, because I know you will appreciate the stakes for which we are playing.

  “We are sleepwalking toward disaster. And if we do not wake up, our values, our freedom, and our faith will be murdered while we sleep.

  “Thank you.”

  As Vermulen stepped away from the podium, he sighed with relief, and felt his shoulders drop inches as the tension finally drained away. He’d been back at his table for a couple of minutes, sitting silently, too mentally spent to make conversation with the other men at his table, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  He turned in his seat to see an elderly man in a suit. But this was no amiable, silver-haired geezer. The face that looked down at Vermulen was as tanned and desiccated as a headhunter’s trophy, pierced by eyes that burned with a feverish intensity. And though the body beneath was clad in an expensively tailored suit, Vermulen could sense that it was as lean and tough as beef jerky.

  The man bent down and spoke in a rasping, dry-throated Texas accent.

  “Liked what you had to say, General. The name’s McCabe. I believe I could help you some. Maybe we could talk about that.”

  Then he turned away with a hurried “ ’Scuse me,” and hunched over with a hand to his mouth as his whole body was wracked by a fit of coughing that seemed to tear at his lungs like a ravenous predator, ripping his chest apart.

  16

  Alix put on her shades, then strode right into the Hotel Impérial as if she owned the place. Confidence was the key to acceptance. Aside from the occasional casual glance as she went by, no one paid the slightest attention as she walked toward the main staircase and made her way to the first floor of guest rooms.

  She walked to the end of the corridor, checked to see that there was no one else around, and knocked on a door.

  “Entrez!” came the voice from within, the word spoken in a British accent: “Orn-tray.”

  Before she could get away, the door opened. A middle-aged man was standing there, fresh from the bathroom, a towel around his waist. He raised an eyebrow and looked her up and down.

  “Yes? Can I help?”

  “Sorry,” she stammered. “Wrong room.”

  “Well, do come in anyway,” he said, oozing an unwarranted confidence in his powers of seduction.

  She shook her head and scurried away. The man stood and watched her, then retreated into his room.

  She tried a second time, at the other end of the corridor. There was no reply. She slipped the pass card down the slot in the lock and a green light appeared by the door handle.

  The room was unoccupied, the beds undisturbed, the closets empty.

  The third room’s guest wasn’t in, but he was a lone male, with nothing that Alix could use.

  Finally, in the fourth room she tried, she struck gold. A couple was staying there, the name SCHULTZ inscribed on their luggage tags. It looked as if they’d already gone out for the evening. There were daytime clothes scattered on the bed and chairs, damp towels on the bathroom floor, and Chanel makeup strewn around the marble basin. The woman had packed for a busy social life, because whatever she was wearing this evening, there were two more evening gowns hanging in the closet. The frocks weren’t Alix’s style, but the pretty pair of high-heeled black leather sandals, perched on a rack below them, fit just fine. By the time she left, five minutes later, the shoes were in her bag and her face had a freshly applied coat of foundation and blush.

  On the second floor, she knocked on a door, received no answer, walked in, and found a couple making love. They had the lights down low and soft music playing. She’d raced from the room before they’d even realized she was there.

  Five rooms later, she emerged with a black silk corset on under Carver’s coat, and glossy scarlet lips, courtesy of another woman’s Christian Dior. On the third floor Alix made excuses to an African woman about her own age and, a few doors down, a Chinese businessman hard at work at his laptop. But another room she tried provided a black skirt that clung to her in all the right places and a pair of sheer black stockings to wear beneath it.

  She had been pondering the question of jewelry as she worked her way up the hotel. In one of the rooms there were a pair of simple diamond studs that would have finished her outfit off perfectly. But stealing someone’s diamonds seemed a step too far, both morally and practically. You don’t call the police if you can’t find a skirt. But you press the panic button when your rocks go missing.

  She went up another floor. When she got there, she had to use the housekeeper’s card just to get out of the elevator.

  On the ground floor, in the office behind the main rec
eption desk, the hotel’s duty manager was checking the latest telephone logs, trying to sort out a complaint from a guest who swore he was being overcharged. A computer printout monitored all guest-room activity, including the use of phones and key cards. The duty manager couldn’t help but notice that one staff pass card was being used to gain access to numerous rooms, on at least two floors. The printer chugged and spat out another entry. The same card, this time exiting the fourth-floor elevator.

  The manager sighed irritably. This distraction was the last thing he needed. He checked the pass-card number. It belonged to Madame Brix, the senior housekeeper. She had left work almost two hours ago, and it was unthinkable that she would knowingly allow anyone else to use her card.

  He picked up the phone and called for the head of security.

  17

  As she looked in the full-length mirror, plumping up her freshly sprayed hair, adjusting the way her breasts sat in the corset, and examining the cut of the waist-length black jacket she’d just purloined, Alix felt reborn. For the first time in months she recognized the face looking back at her in the glass and took pleasure in her appearance. It was like meeting a bunch of long-lost friends, not just her looks, but her feelings of self-assurance, and even power. The dowdy, downtrodden woman she’d been that morning had vanished. This was the real Alexandra Petrova.

  Satisfied that her makeover was complete, she put her old jeans, T-shirt, scarf, hat, and bag into one of the hotel laundry bags that were hanging in the suite’s closet. She couldn’t really afford to let them go, but they were a necessary sacrifice. Only her coat, and the purse she’d stuffed into one of its pockets, would stay with her. Next, she went into the suite’s bathroom, took a tissue from the dispenser, wiped down any surfaces she had touched, then flushed it down the lavatory. She pulled out one more tissue from the dispenser, to use on the door handle, then left the suite, carrying her coat and the laundry bag.