The Blasphemer

by John Ling

  Finally, Tim printed out a receipt and handed it over along with the passport and a keycard. ‘That’s all cool. You’re in room twenty. It’s at the end of the corridor on the second floor. Would you like me to show it to you?’

  ‘Thank you, but I think I can find my way.’

  ‘Righto. There’s an elevator you can use. It’s just outside. To your right.’

  ‘Good to know. Thanks again.’

  ‘If you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. It’s just me and my wife running the place, but we can pretty much help out with anything.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Have a pleasant stay.’

  Devlin exited the reception. He skipped the elevator and opted for the stairs—he needed the workout.

  When he got to his room, he found it to be basic, but otherwise clean and tidy. Most importantly, it didn’t reek of cigarette smoke, because if there was one thing he despised most in the world, it was the lingering and perverse smell of nicotine. Even a smidgen of it was enough to remind him of his father, long-dead, long-buried, but whom he still found reason enough to hate with a passion.

  Devlin peered out the windows. Perfect. He had good visual coverage of the parking lot below, allowing him to keep an eye on who came and who went.

  Smirking, he drew the curtains, secured a chair against the door for safety’s sake, then got down to searching the room. He inspected the picture frames. The light fixtures. The power sockets. The dressing table. The wardrobe. The television. The fridge. The sink. The bathtub. The bed. Every corner. Every crevice. Every hollow. He needed to be sure. He needed to be safe.

  But a physical search wasn’t enough. The room could still be bugged with devices that were too miniature, too well hidden, even to his practiced eyes. So he launched an app on the cellphone Emmerich had given him and used it like a wand, waving it this way and that way, trying to locate illicit frequencies. But the app remained silent throughout. The place was secure.

  Great.

  He flopped down on the bed, stretching out. He could feel his nervousness dissolving into exhaustion. Sleep. He badly needed sleep. But there was one last thing he needed to do. And he couldn’t possibly rest until he did it.

  Stifling a yawn, forcing himself to rise, he removed the chair from the door. Opening it, he stepped into the corridor outside, shutting the door behind him.

  Devlin looked this way and that way. Made sure he was alone. Then he got out a roll of Scotch tape from his pocket. He unspooled it and snapped off a translucent strip, pasting it on the junction where the door’s edge met the frame. Running his thumb back and forth, he smoothed it over, making it invisible.

  Satisfied, Devlin headed downstairs. He strolled across the parking lot. Across the road. Across the park. The shrieks and laughter of the children caused him to shiver, and he had to stop himself from staring at them. Why muddy his soul any further?

  Quickening his pace, Devlin approached the large departmental store beyond. It was only when he stepped inside that he realised it was a discount outlet similar to Walmart.

  The crowd bustled and teemed. Entire families out shopping on a Saturday afternoon. Good. He would be well hidden despite the CCTV cameras.

  Wandering the aisles, Devlin eventually found what he was looking for—a set of steak knives and a box of coloured chalk. He braved the long queue at the checkout, paid for the items in cash and was out of the place immediately.

  He strolled back across the park. Back across the road. Back across the motel’s parking lot.

  When he got upstairs, Devlin checked the strip of tape on his room door. It was unbroken, which reassured him that no one had intruded in his absence. Nodding, he yanked the tape away, crushed it in his hand and swiped his keycard.

  Once he got inside, he secured the chair against the door. He yawned and climbed into bed. Ripping open the packaging for the steak knives, he chose the one with the sturdiest grip and slid it under his pillow, within easy reach. No, a steak knife wasn’t exactly his ideal choice for a weapon. But it was the best he could manage at such short notice. And if push came to shove, its serrated blade would work just fine at slashing through flesh.

  Sighing, Devlin made himself comfortable and closed his eyes. First, a much-deserved nap. Everything else could come after.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘What do you know about tensions in the Muslim world?’

  Adam shrugged at the question. He was sitting in Dr Samantha LeRoux’s office, surrounded by charts and maps and files and books, most of which looked damn near ancient. A woody aroma hung heavy in the air, smelling like the weight of history.

  Adam and Samantha had done spook work together in South-East Asia, wheeling and dealing in the hot and sticky tropics, but she had since graduated to something a little more respectable—teaching political studies at AucklandUniversity. Which was why he had come to her. To gain a scholarly perspective on what he might be up against.

  Adam offered a wry smile. ‘Are you giving me an IQ test?’

  Samantha planted her elbows on her desk, knitting her fingers under her chin, peering at him through half-moon glasses. ‘Go on. Give me the first thing that crosses your mind.’

  ‘The very first thing?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay.’ Adam straightened. ‘Well, Saddam Hussein was Sunni, and his power base was Sunni. He marginalised the Shiites. But after the invasion of Iraq, the status quo came crashing down, and the Shiites rose up to fill the vacuum. They hung Saddam and took revenge on the Sunnis. Tit for tat.’

  ‘Civil war. Interesting example. But what about something a little subtler?’

  ‘Subtler?’

  ‘Something that doesn’t involve folks killing each another.’

  ‘Well, there’s Malaysia. Outwardly progressive, outwardly peaceful, overwhelmingly Sunni. It’s never had a civil war, but there’s repression under the surface anyway. Shiites are regularly arrested, imprisoned, tortured. They’re banned from participating in public life. Banned from worshipping out in the open.’

  ‘Mm.’ Samatha nodded. ‘I can’t help but notice how you keep framing the conflict between Muslim denominations in terms of violence.’

  Adam crinkled his lips. ‘That’s what matters most at the end of the day—who’s dishing out violence and who’s suffering from violence.’

  ‘You’re seeing power relations solely in terms of action and consequence.’

  ‘I’m being realistic. Is that wrong?’

  ‘No, not wrong. Just… lacking in the finer details.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Motivation and semantics.’

  ‘Motivation and semantics.’ Adam shook his head. ‘I think you’ve lost me there.’

  ‘Let’s start with numbers. Sunnis represent the majority of Muslims in the world today—eighty percent. Shiites represent a much smaller share—ten percent.’

  ‘Right. Ninety percent. And the remaining ten percent?’

  ‘Minorities like Sufis and Ahmadiyyas.’

  ‘Well, there you have it. You have the majority forcibly imposing their will on the minority.’

  Samantha smiled. ‘And what will is that?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by the majority imposing their will on the minority? Where does it come from? The schism? The divide?’

  Adam hesitated. He leaned back and folded his arms, his chair creaking. ‘You’re the academic. You tell me. All I know is that Sunnis and Shiites don’t get along. They’ve been at each other’s throats since the Iran-Iraq War.’

  ‘Oh, Adam, they’ve been at odds for much longer than that. For over a thousand years, in fact.’ Samantha unlaced her fingers and tapped her desk pointedly. ‘Look, if you want to get to the bottom of things, you’ll have to understand how and why the division started to begin with.’

  ‘Okay…’

  ‘Prophet Muhammad was the founder of Islam, as you know, and when he died, the issue of who w
ould succeed him as leader of the ummah polarised the community. Sunnis nominated Abu Bakr as the first caliph by way of popular vote, but Shiites backed Ali, who they believed had been selected by the divine mandate of heaven.’

  ‘Abu Bakr and Ali.’ Adam nodded, digesting as best he could. ‘So it’s purely a squabble about the political line of succession.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that. Since Sunnis and Shiites recognise different leaders, they have come to abide by different hadith—oral teachings. This presents a problem for the more extreme elements within Sunni Islam, particularly the Wahhabi and Salafi sects.’

  ‘Osama bin Laden was a Wahhabi, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Correct. They believe in purging any ideology and bringing Islam back to its purest form, which, in their minds, means bringing it back to the sharia norms and practices of the seventh century. Violent jihad is a means to an end, and they hate Shiites just as much as they hate Westerners. Which brings us to Sufis…’

  ‘Sufis like Abraham Khan.’

  ‘Yes. Strange as it may sound, Sufis are what you might call the Evangelicals of the Muslim world.’

  Adam scratched his ear. ‘So… what? They are fans of being born again and having a personal relationship with God?’

  Samantha spread her hands. ‘They are mystics, yes. Muslims who have retreated from the political infighting between Sunnis and Shiites and are solely interested in the inner dimension of Islam—being in touch with the heartbeat of God, as it were. For them, understanding and loving the divine is more important than physical bickering. And their jihad is the most noble form—it’s about struggling to better oneself through meditation and reflection.’

  ‘They sound almost… pacifist.’

  ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Well, yeah. It’s not something you’d expect. Not in this day and age.’

  ‘Now you can see why your principal is a target. To the fundamentalists, what he stands for is heresy; the fiercest moral challenge that they’ve seen for years, if not centuries. And that… well, that is not something they will abide by. You can damn well count on it.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Leaving the university, Adam felt like he had made some progress. Sure, the conflict between Sunnis, Shiites and Sufis was a byzantine maze, and he couldn’t possibly hope to understand all of it. Not in a single conversation. But at least he had established something about the mindset of the unsubs who might be gunning for Abraham Khan.

  Adam squeezed his steering wheel as he drove. Thought things through.

  Essentially, there were two kinds of killers—psychopaths and sociopaths. A psychopath would kill you because he thought you deserved it; a sociopath would kill you because he didn’t care. They were both ruthless, and they both dehumanised their targets, but they did so in different ways.

  Was one personality inherently more lethal than the other? Maybe. Maybe not. Just to be safe, Adam preferred to give both personalities equal weight while carrying out threat assessments. Because when push came to shove, a nutjob with a gun was a nutjob with a gun. Didn’t really matter how he got to that point or why. You just had to focus on taking him down fast and hard.

  But based on what Samantha had said, Adam was beginning to feel like he needed to rethink his approach. Reorient his profiling. Because unsubs driven by religious fanaticism were almost always psychopaths—they harmed their targets out of self-righteous hatred, not stone-cold apathy. It was the torrent of emotion that defined them, not the lack of it.

  For such unsubs, religion acted as an accelerant, a stimulant, indoctrinating an ‘us versus them’ attitude. And the more exclusive a religion’s outlook, the more prone it was to fostering bigotry and militancy. Which was why a Christian or a Muslim was far more likely to commit an assassination than, say, a Buddhist.

  Oh yeah. I’m a better believer than you are. And to prove it, I’m going to go all out to bury you.

  That was exactly kind of unsub Adam needed to zero in on, political correctness be damned. A religious psychopath.

  CHAPTER 25

  Yusuf did not know where he was going. He had a hood drawn tight over his head, and every time he breathed, the scratchy fabric would rustle and stick to his face. It was not a pleasant feeling.

  ‘Please,’ Yusuf gasped. ‘Give it to me. Give it to me now.’

  ‘We’re almost there,’ Magellan whispered into his ear. ‘Not too far now.’

  ‘Please...’ Yusuf twitched, straining against his seat belt.

  ‘All in good time, my friend. All in good time.’

  No. No. No. Yusuf wanted to push Magellan away. Wanted to tear his hood off. Wanted to shout for the van to stop. But he couldn’t. His body was weak. So terribly weak. Khat. He needed khat right now. If not for the damned craving, he would never have allowed himself to be hooded and then taken for a ride.

  Yusuf’s chest quivered. In the name of God, what had he gotten himself into? He could feel the van turning, rolling over a bump. He heard a metallic clang, and the van pitched forward. The sounds of traffic dimmed. They were on a ramp. Spiralling. Going down.

  ‘Where...? Where are we?’ Yusuf asked.

  ‘Where no one can pry into our business,’ Magellan said. ‘And where you will perform your favour for me.’

  Favour.

  Yusuf swallowed. He found himself wishing he was back at home. Back with his grandmother. Yes, the old woman grated on him. Always badgering him to study English and to get a job. But even her tedious ways had to be better than being in the company of this strange man.

  Soon the van touched bottom, its tyres screeching on concrete. It coasted to a stop. Its side door swooshed open.

  Yusuf could feel his seat belt being unclicked and unfastened. Then two pairs of hands seized him and heaved him out of the van. Everything was happening so fast. Too fast. Bile spiked at the back of his throat, and he fought the urge to vomit as they pulled him along, his feet swimming. Hollow echoes everywhere. Somewhere ahead, a door swung open, its hinges creaking.

  Yusuf was hustled through before being released. Dazed, he just stood there, swaying awkwardly. He felt vulnerable. So terribly vulnerable. Right here, right now, they could pump a bullet in him, and he wouldn’t even see it coming. Or perhaps they would use a knife. Yusuf flexed his jaw. Painfully aware of the veins in his neck throbbing.

  What does Magellan want with me? Why am I here? Why—?

  His hood was ripped off, the action sudden and sharp. Yusuf gasped. The harsh glare of fluorescent light stabbed his eyes, and he threw up his arms to shield them, blinking hard. Whispers and footsteps trailed off behind him, and the door banged shut.

  Slowly, surely, his vision adjusted, and everything came into focus. They had place him in a tiny, featureless room. Grey walls. Grey floor. Grey ceiling. One door behind him. One door ahead of him. And before him was a table. On it, a pistol, a box of ammunition and several magazines had been laid out. The pistol looked brand new, its nickel-plated shine beckoning him. Breathing shallowly, Yusuf reached out to touch it.

  ‘Load your weapon.’

  Startled, Yusuf cowered and whipped around, searching the room. Magellan’s voice had come from his left, just over his shoulder. So close. So intimate. But how could this be? Magellan was not here. And there were no speakers. Not on the walls. Not on the ceiling.

  Now Magellan’s voice came from Yusuf’s right. ‘Get on with it. Load your weapon. Perform your favour. Then you can have khat.’

  Yusuf shivered, feeling faint. What manner of sorcery is this?

  ‘My friend, get on with it. The sooner you do, the sooner you can have khat.’

  This time, Magellan’s voice seemed to float directly in front of him. Breathing shakily, Yusuf turned back to the table. He couldn’t afford to offend Magellan. True, he had not used a gun since he left the old country, but it was one of those things you never forgot. Much like riding a bicycle.

  Yusuf unboxed the ammunition. They were nine millimetres, he coul
d see. He got down to work. The rounds felt slippery in his sweaty fingers as he inserted them into the magazines. More than once, he dropped a round and had to fumble for it. Choking back dizziness, nausea, he loaded all the magazines, then slapped one into the pistol, racking the slide, chambering a round.

  ‘Good,’ Magellan said. ‘Now take the gun and the spare magazines and go through the door in front of you.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Beyond the door lay a maze. Its walls stretched out, built from old tyres, huddled and stacked, and a red line had been painted across the floor. The smell of gunpowder clotted the air, and the lighting was dim and yellow and flickering. Yusuf felt as if he had stepped into a ghoulish haunted house.

  Snot dribbled from his nose. He wiped it on his sleeve, but it wouldn’t stop flowing. Now, more than ever, he needed khat.

  ‘My friend,’ Magellan’s voice whispered into his ear. ‘Follow the red line. Use your gun. Shoot everything you see.’

  Yusuf did as he was told. He had barely taken five steps into the maze when something cracked on his left. Like an overstretched rubber band being let loose. Turning, he saw a cardboard cut-out of a woman springing up from the floor. She was leering at him, and she had a shotgun. His heart skipped. His stomach went hot.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Magellan hissed. ‘Take her down.’

  Trembling, Yusuf raised his gun and double-tapped. Two shots. Centre of mass. The woman’s chest splintered, and the target collapsed.

  Two cracks came from Yusuf’s right. He spun to face them. A boy on a bicycle. A man on a bicycle. They were smiling. Yusuf hesitated, his breath caught in his throat. They didn’t seem to be armed.

  ‘Don’t take the risk. Eliminate everything.’

  Yusuf shot the man first, vaporising his face, then he shot the boy, taking off the top of his head. Fragments flecked the air like confetti.

  There was another crack. Yusuf jerked as a target popped up right in front of him. This time, it was a woman pushing a baby in a carriage. Yusuf hesitated once again before blinking. No, it wasn’t a baby in the carriage. It was a bundle of grenades.