Jaspre Bark - Dawn Over Doomsday

"They don't," said Vinny, starting to shake. "I swear to God I'm the only one."

"They was armed too boss," said one of the men who'd got the drop on them.

Frankie didn't look happy. "I swear to God Vinny, if you were trying to double cross me."

"No Frankie no. I could never… how could you even think… "

"Cut it out Vinny," said Linda. "The games up. He's on to us. I told you Frankie was too smart.

"Oh, so it all comes out now," said Frankie, smacking Vinny across the face with the back of his hand.

"Frankie, on my mother's grave. I don't know who these people are. I have never seen them before."

Frankie raised his fist. "Still you lie to me, right to my face you lie!"

While Frankie and the rest of them were distracted, Linda stood up and took her hands off her head. "That's enough," she said in a commanding voice. "Now I want all of you to drop your weapons and lie face down on the floor."

Everyone pointed their weapons at her. Frankie was non-plussed. He turned to Linda with a smile of bemusement. "And do ya mind telling me why we'd want to do that?"

Linda lifted her top to reveal the belt of gelignite she was wearing. "'Cos I'll blow everyone of you to hell if you don't."

Cortez heard a scuffle behind him. It was Anna behind the filing cabinet. She was praying. He went over to where she was hiding and bent down. "Are you alright?"

"Are you going to sacrifice me to Satan now?" she said.

Cortez was stunned by the question. "Why do you think I'd want to do that?"

"Well that's who you worship isn't it? That's who you're talking to when you do all that praying on your mat."

Cortez shook his head and laughed. There was something so child-like in the way she asked the question that he couldn't take offence. "No. I abjure Satan and all his works. I worship God, just as you do."

"But don't you hate Jesus?"

Cortez shook his head. "Muslims recognise Jesus as a great prophet. We revere his teachings. We also believe he will return in the last days, transported bodily down from heaven to slay the Anti-Christ at the gate of Ludd in the Holy Land."

It was Anna's turn to look shocked. Cortez recognised that look. He knew what it was like to re-think all your prejudices about Islam. He'd been there himself.

When he first worked for them, Cortez had a lot of respect for the CIA. Without them he'd have been nothing. They killed all that on his last assignment though.

He was transported to a secure facility in the back of a van with no lights and no windows. Not even the guards there were allowed to know its location. The US government wanted full deniability on its existence.

They kept the suspects who were brought to him in cages too small to stand up or sit down in. At first they were just glad to be out of them. Their relief didn't last long once Cortez's got his hands on them. What did seem to last was their inability to tell him anything. No matter how much pain he inflicted.

To begin with Cortez wondered if his paymasters were testing him. Did they distrust his loyalty? Were they trying to see if he could tell a genuine terrorist from a loudmouthed idiot? The people he had worked with before always knew something, even the nuns and the priests. They could usually call up one tiny bit of information to make the pain stop. The name of a neighbour with sympathies, a deal they'd heard about in the street, anything. The suspects Cortez were sent weren't even aware of what they were supposed to be telling him.

Neither were the officers Cortez reported to. At first they wanted to know about the network of secret underground caves that the suspects used. When Cortez failed to get even a shred of evidence out of his subjects, and when the troops on the ground in Afghanistan also failed to turn up anything, command changed their minds.

Next they wanted to learn everything they could about the suspects' terror cells and how they were organised. Who the suspects reported to, how they were recruited, where they met and what they were planning. When, once again, Cortez was unable to uncover any information of note, the officer in charge starting asking for things on the strangest of whims.

Finally they decided they wanted to create double-agents and to get some of the suspects to turn. They were going to do this by getting the suspects to foreswear their religion and convert to Christianity. Cortez was ordered to get them to turn their back on Islam and accept Jesus as their personal saviour. This was where he met his biggest failure yet.

Given enough pain most people will say and do just about anything you want them to. Including spit on their religious icons and call their god a cock-sucking motherfucker. But not the Muslims Cortez worked on. They would sooner give up their lives than their faith. Cortez had never come across such conviction and strength of purpose. It actually earned the poor wretches his respect and grudging admiration.

One of the men they were holding was an Imam. A much revered holy man, who was a great inspiration to the other prisoners. If Cortez could break him, the officers reasoned, then the other men would soon fall into line.

Cortez had worked over some tough bastards in his time but no-one had ever held out on him like the Imam did. He was easily into his sixties but he took everything that Cortez did to him and never gave an inch.

Cortez changed tactics. He decided to learn a little something about the Imam's faith, so he could have something to use against him. As he tore off the Imam's finger nails, worked heated knives into his nerve endings and broke the Imam's toe bones to grind together the jagged ends, he questioned the teachings of Islam. Slowly it dawned on Cortez where the Imam got his strength and endurance. It was his faith. Cortez had never seen anything so powerful.

After a few sessions Cortez forgot about the torture altogether and just asked questions, tending to the damage he had earlier inflicted on the Imam. He now came to see the man as wiser, braver and more saintly than anyone else he had ever met. The Imam's words felt the same to Cortez as water feels to a man about to die of thirst. Something ugly, black and misshapen began to come to life inside Cortez. Something he had long thought discarded. His soul.

Finally Cortez asked the Imam how Allah, in all His perfect love for mankind, could allow a man as devout as the Imam to fall into the hands of a person like Cortez. The Imam smiled and said: "Because He knew that you, above all people, needed Him the most. The evil that we do and the harm that befalls us does not come from Allah. We ourselves are responsible for that. The loving grace of redemption, that comes from Allah alone."

Cortez felt something wet run down his cheeks. He thought at first that he must have accidentally cut himself, but when he put his hand to his face he found it was tears. He hadn't cried since he was a child. Now he couldn't stop himself. He had a lifetime's worth of tears to shed over a lifetime's worth of sins.

He fell to his knees in front of the Imam and offered him his knife. When the Imam declined he held the knife to his own throat and offered the Imam his life in recompense for what he had done. The Imam stood slowly, in spite of the pain, and took the knife from Cortez.

He placed his hands on Cortez. "Do you bear witness that there is but one God and his name is Allah?"

"Yes."

"And do you bear witness that the Prophet Mohammed is the messenger of Allah?"

"I do."

The Imam told Cortez to go and shower. Then to leave the compound and to do no more harm to his Muslim brothers.

Cortez stood in the staff shower. The water rarely came out hot, but this time it was ice cold. It didn't matter. Cortez was washing away his former life of sin. The shower was a declaration of faith. He was stepping over a line into a new life. He left the shower and walked out of the compound. No-one bothered to stop him. The world seemed as though it had been created anew. Everything was golden and full of the divine grace of Allah.