by Brad Thor
“That’s exactly what the president and I have been trying to find out,” said Nichols. “According to Jefferson, Mohammed was murdered shortly after revealing it.”
“Wait a second,” said Tracy. “Mohammed was murdered? I never knew that.”
“632 AD,” replied Harvath, who in order to better understand his nation’s enemy, had studied Islam extensively. “He was poisoned.”
“Do they know by whom?”
“Jefferson believed,” said the professor, “it was one of Mohammed’s apostles; the men he referred to as his companions.”
“Jefferson didn’t exactly have access to the Internet,” said Harvath. “How could he have done any substantive research on this kind of topic?”
“Per his diary,” replied Nichols, “the task was extremely difficult. He did have help, though. Besides an incredible network of international contacts in diplomatic, academic, and espionage circles, the European monastic orders charged with ransoming prisoners from the Islamic nations proved very useful.
“These monastic orders were exceptional record keepers. They debriefed all of the prisoners they repatriated and recorded the accounts of their captivity verbatim. Many of these orders had representatives and in some cases even headquarters in France. Through them, Jefferson had access to an array of archives detailing what the prisoners did during their captivity, as well as what they saw and overheard.
“There were many prisoners like Cervantes who worked in the homes and businesses of their Muslim captors and picked up very interesting bits of the missing Koran story over the years. Jefferson’s task was to take that information and put it together with other avenues of research he was working on to tease out a bigger picture.
“What we’ve been able to piece together of that bigger picture includes several references to one man in particular,” said Nichols as he reached for a sheet of paper, wrote down the name Abū al-’Iz Ibn Ismā’īl ibn al-Razāz al-Jazarī, and held it up.
“Who’s he?” asked Tracy.
“Al-Jazari was one of the greatest minds of Islam’s Golden Age. He was the Islamic equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci; an incredible inventor, artist, astronomer, and highly regarded scholar who was also interested in medicine and the mechanics of the human body.
“In 1206, he published The Book of Knowledge and Ingenious Mechanical Devices. In it he documented an amazing host of mechanical inventions including programmable automatons and humanoid robots, but he was best known for creating the most sophisticated water clocks of his time.”
“He sounds impressive,” said Harvath, “but how does he fit in with the missing verses from the Koran?”
The professor put up his hands. “That’s the problem. We don’t really know.”
“Even if you did, how could discovering something like this have any impact on fundamentalist Islam?” asked Tracy.
“Good question,” replied Nichols. “You see Muslims believe that the Koran is the complete and immutable word of God. To suggest anything else is considered blasphemy and an outright attack on Islam. Nevertheless, about a fifth of the Koran is filled with contradictions and incomprehensible passages that don’t make any sense.
“For example, in the beginning of Mohammed’s career as a prophet in Mecca, Allah revealed to him through the Angel Gabriel the concept of living peacefully with Jews and Christians. Later when Mohammed, who had been shunned by the Jews and Christians, became a warlord and raised a powerful army in Medina, Allah supposedly revealed that it was every Muslim’s duty to subdue all non-Muslims and not rest until Islam was the dominant religion on the planet.”
Tracy nodded. “That never made sense to me.”
“You’re not alone. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the Koran isn’t organized chronologically. It’s organized predominantly from the longest chapters, or suras, to the shortest. The peaceful verses from the beginning of Islam can therefore be found throughout. The problem, though, is that the violent verses take precedence due to something called abrogation.”
“What’s abrogation?”
“Basically, it says that if two verses in the Koran conflict, the later verse shall take precedence. The most violent sura in the Koran is the ninth. It is the only chapter in the Koran that doesn’t begin with the phrase known as the Basmala—Allah the compassionate, the merciful. It contains verses like slay the idolaters wherever you find them and those who refuse to fight for Allah will be afflicted with a painful death and will go to hell as well as calling for warfare against and the subjugation of all Jews and Christians.
“Although it’s the next-to-last chapter, it’s the last true set of instructions Mohammed left to his followers and it’s those verses that have been driving violence in the name of Islam ever since.”
“The difficulty for peaceful Muslims who do not espouse violence,” clarified Harvath, “is that they don’t have a contextual leg to stand on in their religion. When Mohammed said ‘go do violence’ and when he himself committed violence, Muslims are not allowed to argue with that. In fact, they are expected to follow his example.”
“Why?” asked Tracy.
“Because Mohammed is viewed as the ‘perfect man’ in Islam. His behavior—every single thing he ever said or did—is above reproach and held as the model for all Muslims to follow. Basically, Islam teaches that the more a Muslim is like Mohammed, the better off he or she will be.
“But, if Mohammed did in fact have a final revelation beyond Sura 9,” said Nichols, “and if, as Jefferson believed, it could abrogate all of the calls to violence in the Koran—”
“Then its impact would be incredible,” replied Harvath, who after a pause asked, “You found all of this in Jefferson’s presidential diary?”
“No,” replied the professor. “The diary was only a jumping-off point. Jefferson had been on the trail of the missing revelation long before he came into the presidency and he kept working on it until well after he had left the White House.
“We’ve had to sort through many other Jeffersonian documents to try to find more information. The problem is that Jefferson died heavily in debt and his estate was broken up and sold. Certain key items have gone missing. That’s why the president dispatched me here to Paris.”
“To locate more of Jefferson’s missing documents?” asked Tracy.
“In particular,” said Nichols, “Jefferson’s first-edition Don Quixote. We believe it contains handwritten notes that can lead us to what we’re looking for.”
“Where is it?”
The professor took a deep breath and then replied, “That’s where things start to get tricky.”
CHAPTER 20
THE WHITE HOUSE
President Jack Rutledge had just finished his morning briefing when his chief of staff, Charles Anderson, stuck his head back inside the Oval Office. “The Saudi crown prince is on the phone for you, sir,” he said.
“Any idea what he wants?” replied the president as he walked behind his desk and sat down.
“He didn’t say. Do you want me to tell him you’re unavailable?”
“No. I’ll take his call.”
When Anderson had left the room, Rutledge picked up the phone. “Good afternoon, Your Highness.”
“Good morning, Mr. President,” said Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz from his residential palace in eastern Riyadh. “Thank you for taking my call.”
“Of course, Your Highness. We are always happy to hear from our friends in Saudi Arabia.”
“I trust you and your daughter, Amanda, are well?”
“We are,” said Rutledge, ever mindful of the Arab custom to make small talk about the health and well-being of the conversation’s participants and their respective families before getting down to business. “How are you and your family?”
“Everyone is well, thank you.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Mr. President,” said the crown prince, “may I speak frankly with you?”
“Of co
urse,” replied Rutledge.
“I understand that you may be searching for something that doesn’t belong to you.”
The president waited for the crown prince to elaborate. When he didn’t, Rutledge asked, “Could you be more specific, Your Highness?”
“Mr. President, Islam is one of the world’s three great religions. It brings comfort and solace to a billion-and-a-half people around the world. I am concerned that you may be attempting to shake the faith of those billion-and-a-half people.”
“And just how exactly are we trying to do that?” asked Rutledge.
“I’m not talking about America in general,” corrected the Saudi leader. “I’m talking about you specifically, Mr. President. You and the personal vendetta you seem to have against our peaceful religion.”
The president reminded himself that he was talking to a foreign head of state; one whose country actively promoted and financed the radical Wahhabi ideology embraced by so many of the world’s terrorists, but a head of state nonetheless. “Your Highness, you asked me if we could speak frankly, so let’s do so. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The connection was so clear, it was almost as if the overweight Saudi was standing right next to the president when he said, “There is no lost revelation of Mohammed, Mr. President.”
Rutledge couldn’t believe his ears. How the hell did the Saudis know what he was looking for? “That’s good to know, Your Highness. Thank you.”
“Saudi Arabia has been a very good friend to the United States,” cautioned the crown prince.
Sure they had. The president wanted to thank him for the fifteen hijackers the Saudis sent over on 9/11, the countless Saudi nationals who had over-stayed their visas and had been picked up in the United States on terror-related charges, and numerous other examples that suggested Saudi Arabia was anything but a friend to the United States, but he kept his mouth shut. Until America pulled the oil needle out of its arm once and for all, it would have to deal politely with Saudi Arabia. “And America appreciates your country’s friendship, Your Highness. I think you’ve received some incorrect information, though.”
The Crown Prince clucked his disapproval over the phone line. “My sources are very reliable. As is my warning, Mr. President. If you want what is good for our two nations; if you want what is good for America and the billion-and-a-half Muslims of the world, you will abandon your fruitless search. The lost revelation of Mohammed is nothing more than a fairy tale. The Loch Ness monster of the Islamic world.”
It was a monster, all right, thought the president, and if the crown prince was calling to dole out such “friendly” advice, it had to mean that he and Anthony Nichols were getting close. And the closer they got, the more dangerous all of this was going to be.
CHAPTER 21
PARIS
The professor cleared his throat and said, “On October 27 of 2005, the worst rioting in France in the last forty years erupted and spread across the country when two Muslim teens from a poor housing complex east of Paris were killed. The teens thought they were being chased by police and attempted to hide in an electrical substation, where they were electrocuted. The riots lasted for nearly three weeks during which over nine thousand cars were torched, a fifty-year-old woman on crutches was doused with gasoline and set on fire, and weapons were fired at police, firefighters, and rescue personnel.
“An internal French investigation gave conflicting reports that the police were after two other men who were either evading an identity check or had trespassed at a building site. Either way, that differed with a statement given by a friend of the deceased teens who claimed the boys had been accused of burglary and were running because they feared interrogation.”
“So what was it?” asked Harvath.
“All of it actually, but we didn’t learn that until much later.”
“How can it be all of it?” asked Harvath.
“French immigrants of North African descent who are normally Muslim are often hired as day laborers on construction jobs, much in the same way Mexican laborers are in America. Their employers pay them off the books in cash and turn a blind eye to their residency status.
“According to intelligence picked up by the American embassy in Paris, two such workers from Clichy-sous-Bois, the flashpoint of the riots, were hired to help renovate a building not far from the Luxembourg Gardens.
“During the demolition phase, the two laborers stumbled across a strange wooden box hidden behind a false wall. Though the men had no idea what they had discovered, after forcing it open they realized its contents were old and most likely valuable. So, in hopes of making a little extra money on the side, they smuggled it out of the building and began selling it off in bits and pieces in an attempt to avoid drawing any unwanted attention. It wasn’t long, though, before the French security services began looking into it.”
“Back up,” said Harvath. “The French security services?”
“Why them?” added Tracy. “Why not the police?”
“Good question,” replied Nichols as he took a sip of his drink. “What got them interested was who the box belonged to.”
“Thomas Jefferson.”
Nichols nodded.
“How did they know that?” asked Harvath.
“An antiquities dealer they tried to sell documents to got suspicious and contacted French authorities,” said the professor.
“What was a box filled with Jefferson’s stuff doing hidden in a building near the Luxembourg Gardens?” asked Harvath.
Nichols swirled the liquid in his glass. “In addition to his home on the Champs-Élysées, Jefferson kept a small suite of private rooms at the Carthusian monastery in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where he could work and think in peace. The Carthusians observed a strict vow of silence and expected their tenants to do the same. The arrangement was perfect for Jefferson.
“His house on the Champs-Élysées had been broken into three times in 1789,” continued Nichols. “In fact, the robberies had gotten so bad that he had to request private security.”
Tracy massaged her temples with her index fingers. “What were the robbers looking for?”
“No one knows for sure. It may have been as simple as petty theft, or it could have been government sponsored espionage. The fact is that the monastery was much more secure and it is likely that Jefferson would have felt comfortable leaving important items there.”
“That still doesn’t explain why the French security services were so interested in the box, or what the box was doing walled up in some building in the first place,” said Harvath.
Nichols attempted to explain. “The box belonged to the third American president and many of the documents inside were encoded. The French have an obsession with codes. They never broke any of Jefferson’s, so when the opportunity to get their hands on items he had encrypted popped up, they jumped on it. The only problem for them, though, was that the codes were created using an ingenious machine Jefferson had invented while living in Paris called the wheel cipher.”
“What’s a wheel cipher?”
“Imagine twenty-six wooden discs, like donuts or circular coasters with a hole drilled through the center of each. They were a quarter of an inch thick and four inches in diameter with the letters of the alphabet printed randomly around the edge. The donuts slid onto a metal axle, the protruding edges of which allowed it to be placed in a special rack. From there the discs could be rotated at will to spell out the desired message.
“For the message to be decoded, the recipient not only needed their own wheel cipher, but they also needed to know the order in which to place the wooden wheels along the axle. Without that information, any encoded message was useless.”
“And along with the encoded documents,” said Harvath, “Jefferson’s copy of Don Quixote was in that box?”
“Yes,” replied Nichols.
“What was in the documents?”
“From what we can tell, some of his early work on the missing Koran te
xt. The bulk of what we have been able to piece together from other documents is all encrypted and our best guess is that he used his wheel cipher to do it. To unlock that information, though, we need to know how he ordered his discs.”
“Which means you have a Jefferson wheel cipher,” said Tracy.
“We do.”
Harvath was impressed. “And the key to placing the discs on the axle is what’s inside Jefferson’s Don Quixote?”
“Yes,” said Nichols. “For whatever reason—the sensitivity of the information or concern over what his many enemies might do with it—Jefferson encoded most of his research. In fact, some of the entries in his presidential diary, as well as most of the pages of notes that President Rutledge has acquired and hopes may pertain to Mohammed’s missing revelation, are encoded. That’s a large part of why I was hired.”
“To help the president decipher the codes?” asked Tracy.
The professor nodded.
“But why would Jefferson have left the box behind when he returned to America?” inquired Harvath.
“Because,” said Nichols, “when he left, he didn’t know he wouldn’t be coming back. He was barely off the boat back in America before George Washington asked him to accept a position as his secretary of state. Congress moved quickly to approve the appointment and Jefferson’s life changed in the blink of an eye.”
“But he would have sent for his things.”
“Of course he did. But in 1789 he couldn’t just pick up a phone. Arrangements had to be made and they took time. The French Revolution was in full swing and before he could claim his belongings from the Carthusian monastery, it had been sacked and burned by the Parisian mobs.”
“And with it, presumably, the belongings Jefferson had left there,” said Tracy, “including the hidden box.”
“So where’s the Don Quixote now?” asked Harvath. “Do the French have it?”
“No. The laborers suspected they were under surveillance and recruited the two teens that were killed to deliver the rest of the cache to several intermediaries.
