Greg Bear: Quantico

‘This town’s going to the dogs,’ Grange said.

‘It’s getting worse,’ Periglas said. ‘Ambulances are trying to get through to the sick and injured. Soldiers are making them pay bribes or grabbing them for joyrides. Not that they can go anywhere. The roads are packed.’

Jane tuned their gogs to a midge tracking an old tourist bus. The sides were thick with strap-hangers and a few clung to the roof, trying to keep their parcels from tumbling away at the turns. Two of the strap-hangers fell into the street. The bus did not slow.

‘I think that’s the Abdul Aziz Road,’ William said. ‘There’s the Al-Malim Mosque.’ He had studied maps during the flight.

‘Correct,’ said Dalrymple. ‘Midge is heading east over the tent city.’

‘The pilgrims are on the move to Arafat,’ Periglas said.

‘How many so far?’ Grange asked.

‘We’re guessing one point two.’

‘Million?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Correct,’ Periglas said.

Another voice came on. ‘Is that Agent Grange?’ It was Fouad Al-Husam. He did not sound happy. ‘We were expecting American Muslim soldiers.’

‘This is Grange. No military. We’re sending agents to direct and render assistance.’

‘What sort of assistance?’ Fouad asked. ‘Without Muslims, we will do well enough on our own. There is no need to-’

‘It’s already been decided,’ Grange said. ‘Is that understood, Agent Al-Husam?’

A few seconds later, ‘Are your papers in order?’

‘All in order,’ Grange said.

‘There are three of us here with a Saudi driver and a minibus. Ten of our agents are already in Mina. They report the main mass of pilgrims are expected at Arafat in five hours. They will return tomorrow to Mina by way of the Jamarat. That could be the best time for pathogen release.’

‘Agreed,’ Grange said. ‘We have to intercept before eighteen hundred hours GMT.’

Rebecca faced William across the narrow aisle. The helicopter was eerily quiet. ‘He’s been with his Jannies for how long now, and we’re supposed to fit right in, without an introduction?’

Grange said, ‘He knows William and respects both of you. He’ll smooth it over with the others, if there’s a problem.’

‘And how are we supposed to help, exactly?’ William asked.

‘However we can,’ Grange said. ‘My guess, someone in Washington doesn’t trust our Muslims to get the job done.’

‘The ol’ FUBAR,’ Birnbaum called back cheerily. ‘Plan B with a vengeance.’

The whisper bird changed its subtle hum and pitched forward.

‘Drop in five,’ Higashi announced.

Desert, East of Mina

‘It is not fard , to go on Hajj when there is so much danger,’ Amir said.

‘What I read, if a few pilgrims die, bandits get them or whatever, it’s OK. Historically, some danger is inevitable, so it’s fard .’ Mahmud stood beside Fouad and watched the lights in the west. They had parked the minibus on a back road leading up and out into an empty, rocky waste of low hills. They were far enough away they could not hear Mecca, but in the dusk they could see its green and orange glow-the lights from the Grand Mosque catching the dust rising from all the trucks, cabs, and cars, forming a low haze in the dry air. The wind in the desert valleys had settled and it was still hot, in the eighties.

‘Only God would have told someone to build a city down there,’ Hasim said.

They were not particularly profane, the young former Iraqis put in his care; but they had too much energy and American attitudes, and so they hid their piety under a layer of banter. Fouad understood. Six years ago he had been like them-unable to believe his good luck at being in America and not Egypt, and yet-

His body and his soul had craved this part of the world. Coming back to Iraq and then to the Hijaz had awakened a deep nostalgia, reminding him of his childhood in the dry air of Egypt. There had been less fear, more variety, more wealth and distraction in America, but also there had been less life.

They were still in exile, thirsting.

For them, Hajj was out of the question. They had come to the Hijaz in the wrong frame of mind, with all the wrong intentions-they could not be pilgrims. Yet for every Muslim, even those inclined to an American sense of profanity and joking, simply seeing those lights, knowing how close they were to the House of God, to the Black Stone, to the beautifully and newly woven black and gold Kiswah that shrouded the Kaabah…

What they were about to do-allowing infidels into the Holy City-was necessary to save this sacred place, so that they could return when it was proper, when their time had come to stand before God and shed their earthly confusions with maximum spiritual benefit.

A black aircraft came up over the distant hummock with a sound like an angry wasp-and nothing more. As it approached, all five watched in alert silence, American boys pleased by this marvel.

Fouad stepped down from the bumper of the minibus. Through the windshield, he saw the silhouette of Daoud Ab’dul Jabar Al-Husseini, a rumpled, discouraged-looking man in his sixties, rousing from a pre-dawn nap. Al-Husseini had once occupied a high rank in the Saudi Secret Police. He had probably been a strong man, a pious man, a harsh man not above tormenting other men and their wives in the service of the Wahhabis. Now his eyes were haunted by the privileges and stability he had seen blowing away, the end of a good, cruel dream.

Al-Husseini opened the bus’s front door and jumped down heavily to the hard-packed roadbed. He rubbed his nose, then blew it into his fingers and wiped them on his pants. He had become an unkempt, dirty man. ‘So they’re here,’ he said. ‘It will soon be over, one way or the other.’

The whisper bird circled their position swiftly, little louder than a car but blowing up sand in a thin cloud around the minibus and across the road. The lights of Mecca dimmed.

Then it dropped spindly legs with round pads and set down on the sand twenty meters from the road like a moon lander.

Three people stepped down.

‘Shit,’ Al-Husseini said in English. ‘They brought a woman? I hope they have excellent papers. These are no more Muslims than I am a Jew.’

The Red Sea U.S.S. Heinlein

The chief working beside Jane Rowland was named Hugh Dalrymple. He was quick and businesslike as he took control of various midges that had reported interesting results. The video transmitted by the small flying craft was surprisingly clear, the colors almost too vivid-altered to enhance contrast and salient detail. Living things seemed to glow with an inner light in the pre-dawn darkness. Sleeping pilgrims laid out in rows and uneven clumps in the streets of Mina, lying on thin pads or blankets or prayer rugs, or just on the ground in their two towels, stood out like flames against the gray sand and packed dirt and black asphalt. Soldiers and security police had become scarce in the last few hours.

Not a few of the pilgrims that looked asleep were not glowing; they had died in the night.

Wearing the ship’s heavier gogs and zooming with Dalrymple through the crowded, noisy streets for the last two hours was taking its toll on Jane; she was almost dreaming awake-the ship’s strong coffee was not keeping her focused…The whisper bird had yet to report that it had disembarked its passengers…

‘A person of interest,’ Dalrymple announced, and nudged her gently with his elbow.

‘Midge thinks we have a westerner,’ Captain Periglas said from the bridge of the Heinlein . The midge had been circling at fifty feet over a crowded overpass. Cars and trucks and buses moved in a steady stream, as they had all night, crossing over a pseudopod of tents that had pushed through the formal boundaries of the tent city-if anything could be considered controlled and formal in Mecca now.