Chapter 15

45 km S.E. of Ithriyah,
Syria

“What news from our friends on the ‘net?” asked Sheikh Abu Mohammad, new leader of the Kalifate of Greater Islam, since the death of ‘El Pulpo.’

“It is strange, Yourself. We have had nothing at all since Sunday morning,” answered John Muhammad, born John Cartwright in Plymouth, England. He used the honorific that the Sheikh preferred: ‘Yourself.’ “Our website is running properly. I have tested it and even gone to another computer, logged in and found our website correct. But when I answered to the email links, I did not receive anything. Something is wrong.”

“Find another home for the website,” said the head of the Kalifi clan, who thought of himself as tech-savvy.

“Yes, of course, Yourself,” said John, somewhat annoyed at the chief’s attempt at micro-management. “I have moved it already. The strange thing is that within moments the same thing happened at the new site. So I moved it again – same result. Yourself, I think that someone is blocking us ... cutting us off from the ‘net.”

“Impossible! The West is so proud of their ‘Web Freedom’ ... none of them would dare to block our access.” His faith in the openness of the West was touching.

“Perhaps it is tied to the appearance of this so-called Angel.”

“You speak blasphemy! The Prophet would not send a mere woman.”

John started to backpedal immediately. “No, no, Yourself. Certainly you are right. She must be an agent of Satan. A Dark Angel, certainly.”

“Perhaps, but it is more likely that the whole thing is a sham ... a creature of the Great Satan here on Earth. Perhaps,” the Sheikh ventured another helpful suggestion, “you need to change your speck ... uh ... speck...” he was struggling for the word. “ ... Your speck-ai-fai-ka-shun.” Otherwise known as ‘specification.’

John Muhammad swallowed hard at hearing the sheikh’s mangling of the word. “Yes, of course, I’ll change them and try to load it on another server. I mean, I will load it on other servers. We will succeed, Yourself, of that I am sure. Fortunately, we still have our cell phone connections with our major contacts. I’m sure we’ll have more success there.” He was a firm believer in the Kalifate but he started to wonder about the advisability of taking a long vacation back in England.

Over the next few days, the Kalif disappeared from the SupraNet. The Kalifi had a new set of web sites suddenly appear, but they were all fake. Every time someone tried to sign on to the old – or new – web addresses, they were diverted to the new sites. Every person who tried to link to one of the fake Kalifi web sites, or to establish an email contact, found him- or herself the subject of intense scrutiny – and some of them were summarily executed and not by the authorities. All video contacts from the Middle East Kalifi sites were simply gone; there was no trace of them at all. That meant that Io had to screen every FaceTweet before it went online. She had to devote part of a mainframe just to screen messages, but she had plenty of computing power.

Most of the executions of the contacts were carried out while the subject was asleep: a laser gun was pointed at the person’s head from a close distance. That was troubling to the authorities that were called in to investigate because no trace of another person or the gun itself could be found. The executions covered all continents – except Antarctica – another puzzling fact. No evidence of a drone intrusion into the various residences was found.

One case in Marseilles was particularly confusing. An anonymous phone call had tipped the gendarmerie that there had been a lot of killing at a certain address. On investigation of the tip, they found an interesting scene: fourteen bodies, weapons, and bomb making equipment. A forensic study of the house revealed there had been no internet contact – there weren’t even any computers in the building – but there were several military-grade scrambled cell phones in the house. None of them, of course, showed the number that had been called, but all of them were in their chargers, indicating recent use. One was by the bedside of a person believed to be senior – he was found in his bed with two girls chained to the bedposts. One of the girls was in a modest sleeping gown; the younger girl was nude and chained more restrictively to the foot of the bed. The latter girl was choked to death and later found to be pregnant; her time of death was found to be several hours before that of the people in the bed. There were a total of ten men and four women in the house. All were shot at close range by a laser gun – assumed to be a pistol of some sort – except of course the strangled girl chained to the bed. The autopsies found that only the man-woman pair were killed at the same time. The others were killed, roughly, at five minute intervals. The authorities assumed that a pair of killers had silently gone from room to room waiting only for their pistols to recharge – which was strange: almost all pistols had enough power to fire half a dozen times before needing recharge. Why would an assassin use a single shot weapon? The house was found to contain a large armory of assault weapons, both laser and cartridge type, and enough bomb-making equipment to turn a large portion of the city into rubble.

The authorities were perplexed, they were confused, but they were glad to find the residents all dead when they arrived. Somebody, it seemed, didn’t want to go through the trouble of a trial. Armis was suspected because of the nature of the ‘victims, ‘ but it wasn’t her style. She always announced her killings, or took credit for them. And she didn’t use laser pistols. Situation mysterieux, to be sure.

Yanbu al Bahr, Saudi Arabia

Yanbu, as it is commonly known to its 200,000 residents, is a small city in the Al Madinah province of western Saudi Arabia. Its only outstanding features are the major seaport on the Red Sea, and that it is the site of one of the alternative residences of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Faisal III.

Faisal was lounging naked pool-side, eating dates and looking at the disheartening state of the oil market on his mobile device. He’d pick up a date from the naval depression of the blonde stretched out alongside his chaise lounge, dip the fruit in the whipped cream that covered her breasts, and pop it (the date!) into his mouth. He noticed the young woman hovering in a while gown over his pool, as he continued to eat his little noon-time snack.

Putting down his mobile device, he looked at Armis through the top of his sunglasses. Faisal covered his nude genitals with a towel and flicked away the hand of the blonde slowly stroking there. “What can I do for you, Miss Armis?” he asked calmly, in English that showed barely a trace of his Eaton / Oxford education. He was a man of middle years, still in good shape and darkly handsome.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, sir,” Armis answered, nodding her head toward the recumbent form of Miss Norway of the prior year. “Should I come back at a more convenient time?”

“No, no. Not necessary, I assure you.” He turned his head toward the blonde. “Ingrid, go and clean up inside.” The blonde fumbled a second with her hand under the towel, then scooped up the remaining dates from her belly, returning them to a bowl. She stood, wearing only the bottom half of a string bikini, nodded in the direction of Faisal and padded in the hip-swaying walk of a model toward the palatial building. Armis looked at the statuesque form with whipped cream dripping from her chest, and the strings draped over her tanned pubis and wondered: ‘why bother with the dental floss?’

“Would you like to sit? Or some shade, perhaps?” Faisal asked politely. “This Arabian sun can be blistering.”

“Yes, to both, I think.” She glided without walking to a chair nearby.

Faisal pushed a button on the arm of his lounger. A few seconds later, a man appeared from inside the palace. He listened attentively to the few words the Crown Prince said in Arabic and went to a nearby cabana, returning with a free standing beach umbrella. It was set up so that Armis would be in the shade. The prince was not; his genitals were covered by a towel and he wore sunglasses as his only concession to the ‘blistering sun.’

Faisal met the man’s questioning glance with a dismissive gesture. In Arabic he said, “If I was to be killed, I’d be dead already.”

He asked unctuously if her trip had been comfortable, if she’d had any troubles with customs or his guards, offered her refreshments, and so on. Meaningless chatter designed to put a guest at ease was a gesture of common courtesy throughout most of the Middle East. After nearly a half-hour, he braced the real subject of Armis’ visit.