The Command полностью

As if He were answering her thought of Him, Aisha heard the adhan from outside, the call to prayer. It was time for asr. She said “Excuse me,” to Hooker and Diehl, who looked surprised, and followed the other Muslims out of the room.

Down a hallway, past a bearded cleaning man shutting off his buffer to follow them into a large empty room with rugs thrown over the polished parquet. The Arabs glanced at her in surprise. Some frowned. Others, observing her pulling hijab over her hair, murmured a welcome. Since she was the only woman, she separated herself from the men, choosing a corner where she could pray with them, but not as one of them.

The general didn’t lead the prayers, but rather the bearded older fellow who’d been running the floor buffer a moment before. He stared at her, seemed about to say something; glanced at the general; then smiled. Then they all did the ritual ablution and began murmuring through the rakas. Like most African-American Muslims she knew the prayers in both English and Arabic, so joining in wasn’t a problem, now or anytime she’d gone to masjid here on the island.

“God is greater than all else.”

“God is greater than all else,” they repeated, generals, colonels, civilians, waiters, all together facing God and setting aside the world and its temptations.

“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the universe. The Compassionate, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment. Only You do we worship. Only to You do we cry for help. Guide us to the straight path. The path of those on whom You have bestowed Your grace, whose lot is not anger, and who go not astray.”

She emptied her mind, going through the bows and prostrations. Feeling her heart empty of the resentment she’d felt moments before.

You couldn’t expect perfection from human beings. The only perfection was in God. She added her own prayers and intentions: for her mother; her father. That she herself might act in the cause of justice against those who intended evil. And further, act with modesty and without thought of praise or reward. They ended in the sitting position, with the central affirmation of Islam, the shahada.

None has the right to be worshiped but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.

The day after the raid, Diehl had put her on a flight to the States, to report to Washington about the attack on the Horn, how they’d averted it, and to present a threat assessment as far as the possibilities of other attacks on units and personnel in Central Command. There’d been high-level interest, he said.

But by the time she got to the new NCIS building in the navy yard, it seemed to have dissipated. She saw the new director, but only for five minutes. He said he’d read her report on the dhow bombing, complimented her on their work, and asked her to “share her expertise” with the agent who ran the Antiterrorist Alert Center.

Who, when she sat down with him after a quick tour of the ATAC, asked her several pointed questions: how they’d gotten their initial warning, what the relationship was with the local police. He seemed more interested in base security than obscure Islamic religious groups. He didn’t know anything about an Egyptian doctor who specialized in bombings.

When they were done, he’d shaken her hand and asked if at some point she might be interested in a double agent operation. She’d almost laughed in his face. It was hard enough being a female, Muslim, and African-American, without setting loose the rumor she was working for the other side. She said politely she was still new in the counterintelligence world; she’d better not get involved in anything like that until she had more experience.

When she got back to Bahrain, Diehl put her in charge of the Anto-nia case. “Antonia” was their name for an unknown infant found in a Dumpster at NSA. The worst part of it was no one had noticed the baby until the outside contractor had been about to dump the container. Fortunately she was still alive, if dehydrated, and while the little girl recovered at Ibn Sina Medical Center, Aisha was supposed to find out who’d carried her for nine months and then gotten rid of her the day she was born. Bob also wanted to push hard on the drug front before the next ship arrived. She spent a lot of hours sitting in her car outside the stables. A good location for hashish dealing; sailors and marines headed there to ride a “real Arabian horse” after they’d done their bar crawling and bought their rug. And of course there was the usual caseload of thefts and bad checks.

That was what she was doing during the day. In her off hours, she’d decided she needed to find out more about the stranger who’d brought enough hatred to Bahrain to turn four young men into suiciders. Because — surprise — she wasn’t hearing anything back from Major Yousif. Except for today’s showcase briefing, which had left them all knowing nothing they hadn’t known before.