The Aisha Prophecy (4 page)

“Are you going to hurt Rasha?”

He gasped at the suggestion. “Touch the daughter of a prince? He would chop both my hands off. All he lives for is to see his daughter again. I am instructed to look but never touch.”

“Then her last name is Stride. It’s Elizabeth Stride.” This Bernice’s voice was stronger as she spoke it.

Mulazim’s mouth fell open. He felt thunderstruck. Those slide shows in Piraeus. All those enemies of Islam, hundreds of slides, but of these only three or four were women. These were not so boring. To these he paid attention. The worst of the lot was named Elizabeth Stride. Worse, far worse, than most of the men. Her fatwa carried one of the biggest rewards. One million in gold for her head.

Could this possibly be that Elizabeth Stride? The one who was an assassin? In the pay of the Israelis? Sent to kill Muslim men on an Israeli death list? The one who the Israelis called the Black Angel?

And she had a lover. Equally dangerous. A German. An adventurer. The name might have been Martin. He couldn’t remember. This mention of her lover had been incidental. This man, too, had been known to work with the Israelis and with other intelligence services before that. Equally dangerous. That’s what it said. And yet this man was not on the list of most wanted. Why not, though? Perhaps because they thought he was dead? Like the Martin this Aisha had spoke of?

Slow down, thought Mulazim. Slow down and think. This must be a different Elizabeth Stride. Otherwise, would she use her real name? He would not have thought so, but then there’s the princess. She kept her real name although hunted.

So what do we have here? A friend to the Nasreens. One who’s known them from the Mideast. How many women named Elizabeth Stride would be such a friend to Muslim women? How could she have become a friend in the first place after killing Muslim men for the Israelis? Hmmph! Foolish question. That might even be the reason. And if it’s her, she’s worth a million for proof of her death. What proof, though? Her head? Showing up with both her hands? No good photographs of her have ever been found. They probably have no fingerprints either.

The slide show had one photo, but it was next to useless. For one thing it was taken from too much of a distance. Even worse it was only believed to be Stride because of certain people who were in the photo with her. Besides, this woman was dressed in an abaya so all you could see was from chin to mid-forehead and only a little more than half of her face.

Why would this Elizabeth be dressed in an abaya? It’s because full hijab was a tool of her trade. It was how she managed to get close to her victims. Close enough to use another one of her tools, the curved Moroccan knife that she favored. And then she could melt away into the crowd, looking just like a thousand other women.

Oh, and there’s more. It was slowly coming back to him. There were descriptions of scars on her body from wounds she is known to have suffered. Bullet wounds to her abdomen. They alone should have killed her. And a scar up high on her forehead.

He touched this Bernice’s knee with the knife. “Describe this Elizabeth. I will know if you lie. I have had this discussion with others.”

“White woman. Middle thirties. Maybe five nine or ten.”

“This describes many. Say more.”

“She is… very attractive. An elegant woman. Blond hair. Reddish blond. She wears it short.”

“Blue eyes or brown? I ask this to test you.”

“Not blue. Not brown. More like amber. Like a cat.”

One more test. He touched his chin. “She has a big mole right here?”

The woman shook her head. “There’s no mole.”

Correct. No mole. She was telling the truth. “But she has other markings on her face, does she not?”

Bernice wet her lips. “You sure you’re not going to kill me?”

“I have told you. I am forbidden.”

She swallowed. “There’s a scar on her forehead.”

Mulazim was thrilled. He tried not to show it. “Here? At her hairline?” He touched himself again. “This scar goes straight across side to side?”

“She wears her hair to cover it. But, yes, I’ve seen the scar.”

Mulazim felt transported. He was in another place. Other than the unusual color of her eyes, it was the one detail of the Black Angel’s description that most accounts of her agreed on. A wound from a knife fight. Some say a straight razor. Some say a bounty hunter was about to take her scalp when she managed to rip him crotch to chest. Which is true? Doesn’t matter. The scar is the main thing. It’s her. He had no doubt. She’s Elizabeth Stride, the Black Angel.

But what now, though? What’s first? Think this out.

The proof would be the scars. A pair of hands would not suffice. Nor would even her head because some might dispute it. They might say, “Not enough. Not worth the whole million. A few thousand maybe. Don’t complain.” But delivered alive? Forget the one million. They would gladly pay twice that and more. And only he, Mulazim, knows where she has gone or at least where she went from this island. She’s gone north to New England with four Muslim runaways, one of whom is none other than the princess.

Mulazim rubbed his hands. This gets better and better. And we haven’t even gotten to the best part. It’s this thing the princess took that makes her so important. The sheik wouldn’t say what, but it could do great harm. “More harm than you could possibly imagine,” he said. One assumes that she still has it, but look who has her. It’s the woman at the top of the most wanted list. A woman who would gladly do great harm.

Should he use one of his cell phones to make a report? The Americans claim that they monitor such calls, but in truth they intercept maybe one in five hundred and they translate maybe one in five thousand. Fewer still for calls made to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis always get kid glove treatment.

No, he would wait until he knew more. Even then, he won’t say anything about the Black Angel. If he did, the sheik might send many fighters, each one claiming a share of the bounty on her. Well, to hell with them. Finders-keepers.

He was envisioning the Stride woman tied up like this one, him causing her more pain than she’d ever known. One cut for each of her victims, but none fatal. Him delivering the young princess in the bargain. Her and whatever she took.

In this other place where his mind had gone, he was barely aware of what his hands were now doing. From behind, they had seized this Bernice by the throat. Her chair was bouncing. She was bucking and kicking. Ice cubes clattered on the floor. She was trying to suck air, but it had no place to go. Before long she was quiet. She went limp.

Too late, he realized that he should have waited. He’d forgotten about her laptop computer. He might need her help with its workings. He put his fingers to her throat. He felt no pulse. She was finished.

He sat before the screen. He saw the icon for documents. Among them was her address list. He spent twenty minutes browsing through these. There was not a single name that he recognized. Friends and family, probably, almost all from this area. Also some doctors and a dentist. He spent another twenty minutes on her other documents. He did a word search in each for Nasreens and then for Stride. He also tried Rasha, even Martin.

No results. Nothing. Not even a mention of the tennis school. Her office computer might contain something useful, but she’d probably been cautioned against taking files home. Near the bottom of the screen he saw the icon for the internet. He took a deep breath, not daring to hope that she had told it to remember her password. But she had. God is great. The screen came alive with long lists of emails that this woman had sent and received. Even recent emails that she had deleted were still listed under “Deleted.” He scanned down the names of the senders of these emails hoping for a name that he recognized.

Again, no luck. At least not for the moment. Most email addresses are cryptic. Most offer no clue as to their owner. He would read every message, but no time for that now. He would take this laptop with him when he left here.

He was about to shut it down when a heading caught his eye. The heading was called “Favorite Places.” It referred to those websites most frequently visited by the person who owned the computer. He clicked on the heading and a long list appeared. There were sites for getting Internet news, a few about cooking and some black history sites. There were also quite a few involving Islam. Of these there were some that spoke of the Nasreens and five or six websites that showed the name Aisha.

His hopes rose, but were dashed. They referred not to Aisha, the girl who went with Stride, but only to this blasphemous prophecy. That Aisha was known as “The Lady of the Camel” because of some battle in which she led an army, giving orders from the back of a camel. He opened one of these sites. It gave the whole text. It also told of the flame-haired angel named Qaila who will send men to hell if they don’t change their ways or if the try to hurt Aisha. Down below there were comments, dozens of comments, by women, it seemed, from all over the world.

“Bring her on,” wrote one. “What took her so long?” Another woman wrote that she lived in Damascus and hoped that Damascus would be her first stop. Someone wrote back, “Never fear. She is coming. Her words will soon ride the lightning.”

Even this angel had a website about her. Its first comment to this angel was, “We’re with you, Qaila. When do we start kicking ass?”

Stupid women.

He was about to slam the laptop shut when his eye caught the user name of person who answered the woman from Damascus. The user name was Nikram102. This name seemed familiar. Where else had he seen it? Ah, yes. Among the emails that were sent to Bernice. He rolled the mouse and returned to that list. No, not there. Try the ones that she’d meant to delete.

And there it was. Nikram102 at a server called Hotmail. When he opened it, Mulazim squealed aloud with delight. It read:

Oh, please don’t. Elizabeth would kill me. I only emailed that one girl at the school. She’d been nice to me. She was helping me lose weight. I promised that I’d let her know how I was doing. I told her and I said that we’re all still together. Yes, I mentioned Aisha’s birthday and Rasha’s new kitten and that Elizabeth is back with Martin again, but only because these are happy things to say and I couldn’t see how it could hurt. I did not say where we are or anything like of that. I promise I won’t email her again.

She’d signed it “Niki”

Niki. Short for Nikram. He should have guessed it. Nikram, like Shahla, is a proper Persian name. He scrolled down and saw that beneath this message was the one from Bernice to which Nikram had responded. Bernice had written:

You were told no contact except through me. That meant NO CONTACT EXCEPT THROUGH ME. If you do this again, I WILL tell Elizabeth. The least that will happen is you’ll get your butt kicked and she’ll take away your computer. More likely, she’ll conclude that you can’t be trusted and have the Nasreens come and get you. I have a good mind to tell her anyway.

God is great, thought Mulazim. This is gold. True, it’s only an email address. Hard to trace to a source, but there might be no need. He can email her from Bernice’s machine. He can think of some reason to ask for her address. She will think it is Bernice who is asking.

He slapped his head. Aisha’s birthday. Of course. This Bernice would want to send her a card of birthday greetings. Possibly even a gift.

Mulazim could barely contain his excitement. He stood up from the laptop and stepped to Bernice. Leaning close, he shouted into her ear. “Liar,” he snapped. “I wish you were still living. I’d show you what you get for lying to me. But see? You didn’t fool me. I am Mulazim the Greek. No woman fools Mulazim the Greek.”

Bernice dead, however, presents problems.

First things first. What to do with her body? With luck, she won’t be missed until Monday morning when she fails to arrive at her desk.

She had one closet that was large enough to accommodate her and the chair. He could drag her. When eventually found, it would be clear that she’d been tortured. By whom? By thieves. Maybe looking for drugs. From what he had heard about the blacks in America, the police, when one is murdered, always think in terms of drugs. He would spend a little time ransacking her house. He would take whatever jewels and money she had and whatever else a robber would take.

And of course her car because he needs a car, but also so it looks like she’s away. Wait for dark, get off this island, put some distance between us. Her car was a small SUV painted silver. Made by Ford, it was called a Ford Escape. He’d seen others much like it. It was probably quite common. There would be no urgent need to find another.

Along the way, he would stop at some large shopping center that has many cars in its lot. There, he would steal a new license plate and scrape the tennis school’s sticker from her windshield. He would shop for new clothing, American clothing, after noting what other men who shopped there were wearing. Also for binoculars and, of course, for a weapon. A more suitable weapon than is found in a kitchen. Then he would find a motel for the night where he could go through her laptop at his leisure.

Mulazim felt sure that he would find what he needed. He was doing God’s work; God would help him. His sheik had said, “You must also use your head.” Well he has. Look what he’s found. In just one afternoon. And once again, he will be leaving no trail.

But first he would finish his sandwich.