by Declan Finn
—an upright heart that no evil purpose may turn me from you.
Give me a steadfast heart that no tribulation may shatter and a free heart that no violent affection may claim as its own.
And finally, grant me O Lord my God, a mind to know you, diligence to seek you, wisdom to find you.
Give me a way of life pleasing to You; perseverance to trust and await You in confidence that I shall embrace You at the last. Amen.
As usual, I felt better after saying it and went about my day.
Once the restaurant fed me, I was out the door and headed for mass at Westminster Cathedral. It was not only Roman, but it was also where Father Pearson worked.
It was located in Central London, a highly modern part of the city. It was near Century House, the new home for MI-6, seen in the later James Bond films, from Brosnan to Craig. The entire area is a mass of silver and glass. And when you walked past some of the glitz, there was Westminster Cathedral. And it is pretty and very neo-Byzantine. While the main building is around five or six stories high, the spire is easily twice that. The floor was around 54,000 square feet, so that gives you an idea of how big it is. There were no flying buttresses on the outside. It was built of brick and concrete. The exterior broke up the red brick with white stone bands. The bricks were even hand-molded. The main entrance facade had a deeply recessed arch over the central entrance, flanked by tribunes and stairway turrets.
Outside was the plaza. The plaza itself was tiled, the gray stones running diagonally to the cathedral. The plaza was hemmed in by steel and glass buildings on either side. It looked like the 21st century had come crashing in on the 1890s and they were trying to live together amicably.
The problem came when you went halfway down the plaza. When I arrived for mass, there was a small gathering of a dozen people in front. They were yelling at parishioners as they tried to pass.
If you are automatically presuming that the gathering all happened to be young men of swarthy complexions, beards and wearing a variety of Middle Eastern headgear, you’d be right.
The ones I was concerned about were holding plastic bottles like the acid container I saw on the way to the museum.
Aw nuts.
I looked around. Two policemen were standing on the corner, doing nothing. I remembered Father Pearson talking about ignoring crimes because of the perpetrator being of X or Y disposition, but it was hard to believe that policemen would just sit there as innocent bystanders were assaulted.
Since the acid could have opened up at any minute, I knew I couldn’t walk around the buildings and flank them. I walked straight for them, in the center of the line, which was what everyone else was avoiding.
I prayed quickly. I didn’t know what to pray for, so I simply asked God to grant me whatever would best suit the situation. I didn’t care if He levitated me over and behind the line of thugs, or if He bi-located me several times so I could take them on one-on-one. Or if He gave me nothing at all … that would be the only thing I wouldn’t quite know how to work with.
So, of course, I received … nothing.
Okay, Lord…let’s see how this works.
I walked up to the leader. He had only just started on his beard, and it wasn’t quite groomed properly. If he was twenty, I’d be surprised. He wore a white Taqiyah (a Muslim Yarmulke) and a black t-shirt in Arabic script. I wouldn’t be surprised if it translated to Rage Against the Machine.
How did I know he was the leader? He looked at me, made eye contact, and didn’t look away. Everyone else looked forward to attacking several of the parishioners who had hung back. That was good. I didn’t want them keeping their eye out for any parishioners who circled around.
I stopped a mere four feet away. The men with the acid bottles were spaced out on either side of the leader. Every other person had a bottle. Aw nuts.
I smiled at him calmly and casually. “I’m giving you one chance to leave before this gets messy,” I said conversationally.
He sneered. “Really, infidel? You threaten me? You give me anything? The police fear me. The government fears me. Touch me, and the city burns.”
I rolled my eyes. “You? No. Mass rioting? Yes. Now get going before you have a problem.”
The leader laughed. He looked to the men on either side of him. “You think you can defeat all of us?”
I shrugged. “I may not have to. You want to see how many hang around after I beat you and your two closest companions into the dirt?”
“All of us?”
While I kept my eyes firmly locked on the leader, I wasn’t actually looking at him, but tracking everyone else with my peripheral vision.
“Listen closely to how I’m speaking. Do I sound like I care?”
The leader’s eyes narrowed. He reared back and roared. “You’re American!”
“From New York.”
The leader gave a slight nod. The acid holder on the left took a step forward, his bottle arm cocked and ready.
I shot forward and grabbed the leader by the shoulders. I yanked him forward and ducked behind him and shoved the leader into the path of the acid. The splash and sizzle of acid on flesh told me that the acid thrower had shot his wad. I took a step back with my right foot and spun the leader around, shoving him into the other acid bearer. They tumbled down to the pavement together. The second acid bottle popped open, splashing the bearer in the side of the face.
I swung back the other way, punching the thug that had stood on the leader’s left.
I continued the spin, snapping a kick into the side of the knee of the man who had been on the leader’s right. The knee buckled. I spun back with a hammer fist straight to the nose.
I jumped over the fallen fourth thug, my fist cocked by my ear. I hit the next thug with the entire force of my body weight, punching through the target. His head snapped back with a small spray of blood. I grabbed the empty acid bottle out of his hand. I stepped past him with my right leg, hooking behind his, and swept the leg out from under him.
The next thug seemed shocked. I tossed the empty acid to him. He flinched and caught it. I promptly kicked him in the chest, knocking him back into another acid-wielder. That was six down and a seventh inconvenienced.
I shot to one side, closer to the church. I both wanted to show them that I had clearly passed their barricade and give them a moment to consider that I had just dropped half of their number.
The remaining six had three acid bottles between them. That seemed to tip the balance in their thought process. All three of the acid wielders unscrewed the bottle tops.
Okay, Lord, what’s the next step?
Out of the side, behind the McDonald's, a black streak shot out, plowing into the nearest acid-wielder, smashing down on the wrist with the acid. The attacking arm came back up in a blade hand that slammed into the thug’s throat. It made him gag and fall back, trying not to choke.
The black blur was Father Michael Pearson. He shoved the gagging man aside.
I decided to chance it and charged them, screaming.
The remaining thugs ran away, dropping their acid on the pavement.
After they turned the corner, I doubled over, hands on my knees. My heart rate had spiked. And I hadn’t even noticed it during the fight.
Dear God. I’m glad You have as much faith in me as I do in You. Though it would have been nice if You sent Pearson earlier. Just saying…
I took a breath and stood. Pearson had wandered over and waited for me to catch my breath.
“Stressful morning, is it?” he asked.
“Just a little. Who knew it would be this hard to get to mass in the morning.”
Pearson rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it. Come on, mass is about to begin.”
After mass was a trip to the other side of the River Thames, to Thames House on 12 Millbank. It had a very nice view overlooking the river, a rock’s throw from the Double Tree by Hilton.
According to Pearson, the building was constructed in 1930 on riverside land, cleared afte
r a flood in 1928 had damaged multiple run-down residential properties. Thames House was built by the Government's Office of Works, which is why it was a near carbon copy of Imperial Chemical House down the road. It had once housed International Nickel Ltd. and even the Northern Ireland Office. It was owned privately until it was sold to the British Government in 1994.
The design was ‘Imperial Neoclassical’—which looked like they just wanted to take Victorian England and smash it up a bit with the Roman Empire.
MI-5 had moved into Thames House in the late 1980s, due to their previous headquarters being 1) all over the place (with headquarters, technical services, and administration being in two different places) and 2) falling apart. In 1989, Thames House had just been vacated by the Department of Energy, so the timing worked out.
Thames House wasn’t that far from Westminster, so Father Pearson and I legged it. Along the way, he explained to me the history of the location.
To be honest, it was not the most impressive building I’ve ever seen. It ate up the whole block like it was trying to be the museum, but the shining tower of glass and steel next to it was more impressive, even to a New Yorker like myself (though after 9-11, I honestly prefer steel and concrete, like the Empire State Building).
Though the most distinctive part of Thames House was the archway in front, which felt more like a massive maw, ready to devour all.
“Subtle,” I told Pearson.
“Isn’t it though? Come along. We have an appointment.”
We were met at the front door by someone who was, generously speaking, the epitome of “bureaucrat.” He was a little gray man in a little gray suit, vest, and tie. His thinning hair was gray. Even his eyes were gray.
He offered me his hand and said, “Griseo Grayson. My coworkers call me Gris.”
I did not laugh at his name. Honest I didn’t. Especially when you realized that “griseo” meant “gray” in Latin. I didn’t ask him if he came out of the womb with the color palette of a 1940s Cary Grant movie. Though it was close.
Coworkers? Most people call them “friends.” I smiled and said, “So, how much do you know about what we’re here for?”
Grayson gave a sad little smile. He waved us down the hall and said, “Let’s find some more private quarters to have this conversation, hmm?”
We followed him down the marble halls. Much to my surprise, we didn’t change floors. We didn’t even go far. Instead, we ended up in the men’s restroom.
Grayson entered first, then came back to get us. “Come in,” he whispered. “You can’t trust anyone here. This is a house of spies, after all. And there are more politics in this building than there is spying.”
The small bathroom was five stalls wide. Grayson leaned up against one of the sinks. He crossed his arms and frowned. “The official answer of MI-5 is that there is nothing interesting about the dead thieves from the East London Mosque.”
I arched a brow. “And unofficially?”
Grayson’s frown didn’t shift much. He pursed his lips pensively. “We’re not allowed to even look at a mosque. Even after the London attacks in 2014, any surveillance on … any Muslim whatsoever … results in harassment and racism charges.”
I blinked once, hard, then shook my head in confusion. “Wait, what about watch lists? What are those for?”
Grayson rolled his eyes and sighed. He shook his head sadly. “So we can tell the media that we had some idea of what was going on before all Hell broke loose. How many different terrorist attacks have you seen in the news where the statement afterwards claims they were on a watch list? And yet, no one seems to be watching them. Because if we even go near a mosque, or a London resident who’s Muslim, the mayor of London blows our cover, then feeds the surveillance team to the mob. The Mayor has decided because he’s Muslim, it means that self-defense is Islamophobia. He bans ownership of kitchen knives, but not acid. So we have nothing.”
I looked at Pearson. He said nothing, just shrugged. He told me so but apparently figured that I wouldn’t believe him unless I heard it straight from the source. I frowned, then looked at Grayson. I hoped to get something out of this encounter, despite knowing that there were more than enough dead ends in any investigation.
“If MI-5 were allowed to investigate,” I said, “how do you think you’d go about it?”
Grayson’s eyes finally lit up in amusement. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but the two men found at the Museum were Syrian refugees. They had no friends. They had no family. The only thing they had? East London Mosque. They lived there. They associated with no one outside of there for months.”
I nodded slowly. “Thanks. I guess we should have a talk with the Imam.”
Grayson nodded. He pushed off the sink. “I think we understand each other fine.” He headed for the door, then stopped. He looked back at us. “Do you know how the CIA spies on Americans who they suspect of international espionage?”
I paused a moment. “I know that they don’t call the FBI.”
Grayson actually smiled. “They call MI-6, and they bug the Americans for the CIA. Think of it as a similar matter of outsourcing intelligence work.” With that, Grayson left.
I looked at Pearson. “Are things really that bad around this city?”
Pearson looked at me over his glasses. “What were you saying about the last time you dealt with your city’s mayor? You sent him straight to Hell?”
“Point taken.”
It was four miles and a half-hour between Thames House and the East London Mosque. Half of that time was a twelve-minute walk to the nearest train station, a fifteen-minute ride on an “underground” so cramped that it made a New York City subway ride feel like a luxury yacht, and walking seven minutes to the Mosque itself.
Also, it took an hour to get there. Had I known that the homeless were so common, I would have converted more money. Since my salary was paid by the NYPD, and my room and board were being paid for by the Vatican (hence the cheap accommodations), I didn’t bother to carry a lot of cash on me. Since Pearson was on the same Vatican pay tab, he didn’t have loose cash, either. However, he had a lot of business cards for the Cathedral and Catholic services. I handed out one to every homeless person we met. Then I gave out more for their friends. Then I asked Pearson about staying in the Cathedral rectory so they could save money on my room and board at the hotel.
Welcome to the welfare state—it just made more poverty.
As we came up from the subway platform, I was sure that my mind played tricks on me. The area was … relatively undistinguished. It wasn’t as fancy as anything around the center of town, but it didn’t look any worse than my hotel. In fact, if it reminded me of anything, it reminded me of Main Street, Flushing, in Queens. The only real difference that stood out was that, instead of the Chinese of Flushing, it was the Bangladeshis of Whitechapel. Yes, Whitechapel, home of Jack the Ripper.
So that’s why I was absolutely certain my mind played tricks on me. Once more, the street felt far too dark to be late morning. It was as though the sun were scared to come out and rear its visage upon the world, and endless night seemed only a few days, if not hours, away.
As I said, the very knowledge of it being the area of Jack the Ripper colored my perception.
The mosque itself looked more like a library on Whitechapel Road.
According to Pearson, the three-story mosque was built in 1985, on land still left empty from bombing in World War II. The exterior was brick of beige, with light red brick trim. The mosque was capped with a large golden dome, but you couldn’t see it from the front of the building. It had three minarets—two small ones were on either side of the main entrance, and the main one seven stories off the ground. It was of a piece with the even larger London Muslim Center on the right, and an even larger hall.
It was church, gym, rec center, and school all in one stop.
“Funny,” I muttered. “Jam all of that together in New York, and you’ll be arrested.”
Pearson scoffed
. “No comment.”
We walked into the mosque.
6
Interfaith Discussions
We had only walked into the East London Mosque. We hadn’t even gone four feet past the door before we ran into the Imam.
Imam Abu Hamza Kozbar was a big man, somewhere around the size of a rugby fullback. His full black beard came down to his diaphragm. His cassock was solid white, complete with matching Taqiyah.
Kozbar had been talking to a small gathering of his followers when we walked in. We caught his eye. Pearson’s priest outfit probably gave him a clue that we were not members of the congregation.
“What are you doing here!” he barked.
Kozbar came in and raised his right hand to shove me in the chest. I knocked his hand aside with my left hand, pinned it against his chest with my right, and grabbed his bicep with my left.
“Hi. I’m Tom Nolan. We’d like to ask you about some of your parishioners.”
The Imam looked me up and down, sizing me up. The gears behind his eyes ground heavily away as he calculated whether or not he could take me in a fight, followed by contemplating if it was worth the time and trouble to find out.
Kozbar scoffed and pushed me away. “Fah! Under what authority? You’re no policemen.” He glowered at Pearson. “Not with a priest in tow, and that accent.”
“I am an inquiry agent sent in by a private party, concerned about the retrieval of the Soul Stone artifact from the British Museum. Father Pearson is a specialist in archaeology.” Which was perfectly true.
The Imam grimaced. “They sent an American?”
I shrugged. “I’m neutral as far as any and all local politics are concerned. The only thing my employer cares about in this instance is the return of the stone. That’s it. No one cares about whatever problems you and London have.”
Kozbar loomed over me, obviously reconsidering testing my mettle. But he sighed and waved it away. “Bah. All because the two were from my mosque. Would you harass priests if they were Catholic?”
