Scott Matthews - The Assassin's list

“I might be able to. The person I have in mind will require more than his usual high rate of compensation, due to the aforementioned short notice.”

“If the person you have in mind can meet me at the Hermiston airport tomorrow morning at eight thirty, with the Yukon, the gear I mentioned, and the stuff that person brought with him last time, I’m sure we can work something out.”

Before she died, Kay had asked if he missed being in the Army. He told her, with all the honesty he could muster, he did miss some of the excitement. He did not tell her that what he had done hadn’t made a damn bit of difference, for all the risks he had taken. Now, he was thinking the risk might be worth it. If the sum of the parts added up to the whole he feared, it would be worth the risk to stop ISIS and Kaamil.

Drake sat quietly for a moment. He had never considered his own father’s motivation. He must have felt the same way when he volunteered to return to Vietnam after his first tour. Why else would you put yourself in harm’s way, if you didn’t think you could make a difference? For the millionth time, he wished that he’d been able to know more about his Dad than stories his Mother told him and a name on the wall.

Drake broke out of his reverie, signed the letters and documents Margo had stacked on his desk, and headed downstairs.

“Margo, I signed the letters and things you put on my desk. I’ve got to leave for a bit. Call me if you hear from Detective Carson.”

He wanted to see his pastor. The man had comforted Kay through her cancer, and had become a friend. Drake had learned he was a student of history and understood the world’s religions. If anyone could shed light on how an American Muslim became a jihadist, Pastor Steve could.

Drake drove west on Hwy. 217 to Beaverton. The afternoon sun was low enough in the sky to require sunglasses on the way to the New Hope Faith Center. The church was a collection of new, utilitarian buildings scattered around a small college campus. There was an administration building, housing for permanent staff, a counseling center, a youth wing with a gym, and a main sanctuary accommodating as many as six thousand on Sundays.

A white Harley-Davidson Sportster XL 1200 was parked in the pastor’s parking space by the administration building. He normally drove a green Honda, but when summer rolled around not much kept Pastor Steve off his Harley.

Drake parked next to the pastor’s motorcycle, and walked into the building and down a carpeted hallway to the pastor’s offices. After the secretary called ahead, he was motioned into the pastor’s study. Pastor Steve sat behind his desk, holding his usual mug of coffee.

“Adam, come in,” Pastor Steve said, getting up to give him a big hug. Big, because before divinity school, Pastor Steve was one of the best six-foot-eight-inch power forwards in college basketball. He’d written more than a dozen books on church history, started a food bank that served as many people as two county food banks in the area, and was a popular guest on local television news.

“I didn’t make an appointment, sorry if I’m interrupting.”

“Nonsense, I’m working on a speech. I could use a break. How are you getting along?”

“Some days are worse than others, but I’m doing better,” Drake conceded. “I wonder if you have a couple minutes to talk about a case I’m working on.”

“We can spend as much time as you need. I’ve missed seeing you since Kay died. Would you like some coffee? I could use a refill.”

“Sure. I’m working on a case that may wind up involving some local Muslim jihadists. I’m curious about what makes a person of faith consider martyrdom, and even treason.”

Pastor Steve waited while his secretary brought in a carafe of coffee and a mug for Drake, before answering.

“Is this a question about my understanding of radical Islam, or about some of the arrests that have involved local mosques?”

“Both, I guess.”

Pastor Steve looked toward the books lining his floor-to-ceiling bookshelf while he decided where to start.

“Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, and the world right now. There are over two thousand mosques in our country. Most were built in the last twenty years with Saudi oil money. Wahhabism is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and that fundamentalist sect of Islam is the principal influence in the mosques they build and finance here. It’s also the subset of Islam that claimed the allegiance of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and most of the terrorist organizations in the world. The true radical believer pays allegiance to no country, only to Allah.”

“But why is that brand of Islam taking hold here?” Drake asked.

“I can only guess,” Pastor Steve said. “In our inner cities, Muslim organizations deliver materially in a way our government and churches don’t. They build community centers, patrol the streets and get people organized. In our prisons, converting to Islam means you have protection when you’re inside, and someone with money to help outside. When welfare reform came along, Saudi money stepped in when the government stepped out. Saudi-funded Islam has just done a better job reaching out to the disaffected and angry among our people.”

“But that doesn’t explain the appeal of radical Islam to well-educated, middle-class Americans. Not all the people who have been arrested on terrorism charges have been inner-city welfare types,” Drake said.

“You don’t have to be poor and uneducated to feel disaffected and angry. If you’re told that family breakdown, racism and poverty result from Western decadence and immorality, fundamental Islam can seem pretty attractive. By converting to Islam, people who feel they’re invisible and unimportant now belong to a powerful and moral civilization without borders. They’re told that someday they’ll rule the world, like Islam did in the days of the Caliphs. Hope of utopia has powered more than one ‘ism’ in the last hundred years.”

“Do you think American citizens, who grew up in our culture and aren’t taught in madrassas , to revere martyrdom, can be trained to be martyrs?” Drake asked.

Pastor Steve nodded slowly. “I’d have to say yes. Minority groups who perceive themselves as underdogs and blame America for their perceived oppression, can probably be persuaded to become martyrs. The reward of paradise, coupled with the teaching that Mohammed himself desired martyrdom, as bin Laden taught, is pretty powerful stuff.”

“Are they brainwashed by this religious training, or is it hatred that motivates them?”

“Hatred and religious doctrine have motivated people for two thousand years. Do you know who the original terrorists were?” Pastor asked, getting up to walk to his bookcase and pull a volume from the shelf.

“Terrorism has been with us for a long time, but no, I don’t know who the original terrorists were,” Drake answered.

“Marco Polo wrote about a secret sect of Islam using murder and assassination as a weapon of terror, ostensibly to keep the religion pure. The master of the cult, known as the Old Man of the Mountain, kept young boys at his court who would do anything he asked them to do. It’s said he promised them paradise if they carried out his assassination orders. Marco Polo wrote that he witnessed young men jumping off the Old Man’s fortress wall to their death to prove how the master controlled them. Does that sound anything like what we’re reading about today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, London? Why should America be any different?”

Drake didn’t have an answer. After finishing his coffee, he left, promising he would see Pastor Steve in church soon.

Drake was driving back to his office when his cell phone jarred him from his thoughts about American martyrs.