Blink of an Eye Read online

  But today he would use Omar to attain his own ends.

  Both father and son embraced the teachings of the Nizari, a fact that very few knew. As such, they were uniquely qualified to overthrow the current monarchy and restore the days of glory, as God willed.

  “It takes great discipline to be a great leader,” Khalid said. “The country is floundering.”

  “There’s a difference between talking privately about changing things and doing so,” Ahmed said. “Look at Al-Massari. He was exiled to England with his band of dissidents. Osama bin Laden and his Reformation Committee—we all know what happened to him. The government won’t just welcome change for the sake of—”

  “I’m not asking them to change,” Khalid said. “If there is a cancer, you don’t persuade the cancer to change. You cut it out. That was both Al-Massari’s and Bin Laden’s problem. Neither had the resources to cut it out. I do.”

  Omar spoke for the first time. “We do.”

  Ahmed stared at him. Khalid had waited until now to bring the director into full confidence.

  “What do you mean, you have it?” Ahmed asked.

  Khalid smiled. “Let me ask you a question. If a man in my position was to have the full support of the ulema and twenty of the top-ranking princes, and the undeterred ambition to overthrow the king, could he do it?”

  Ahmed glanced at the door. They all knew that talk like this could earn death. He studied Khalid’s face. “No,” he said. “Even with the princes and religious scholars, it’s not enough for a lasting success.”

  “You’re honest. I’ll remember that when this is over.”

  Omar chuckled from his perch on the pillow and threw back the last of the scotch in his glass.

  “You’re right,” Khalid said. “Overthrowing a government isn’t the same as installing a new one. But what if a man in my position also had the full support of the Shia minority in the eastern provinces?”

  “That would not be possible. We are Sunni.”

  “Anything is possible when such great power is at stake. You should know that. Indulge me for a moment.”

  Ahmed hesitated. “Then, yes.” His eyes shifted with his thoughts. “It could be done.” Eyes back on Khalid. “How would such support be gained?”

  Khalid stood and walked to a bowl of fruit. He picked up a piece of nangka, a sweet yellow fruit imported from Indonesia. “Through the sheik, of course.” He pushed the fruit into his mouth. If there was a leader among the four million Shia living in the eastern parts of Saudi Arabia, it was Al-Asamm, and to call him the sheik was enough.

  “Al-Asamm hasn’t flexed his muscles in ten years. And he’s not a friend to the House of Saud. What do you hope—”

  “Actually, he hasn’t flexed his muscles in nearly twenty years. Have you thought about that? He offers a token demonstration now and then, but not like he was once known to.”

  “That doesn’t make him a friend.”

  “The Shia are a passionate people. Look at Iran—they know how to overthrow. We wouldn’t give them too much power, of course, but they do constitute 15 percent of Saudi citizens. We will give them a voice.”

  “And how in the name of God do you propose to approach Sheik Al-Asamm?” Ahmed waved his hand. “It’ll never work.”

  “Yes, it will,” Khalid’s son said.

  They both looked at Omar.

  “Yes, it will,” Khalid agreed. “Tell him why it will work, Omar.”

  Omar regarded his father and Ahmed, trying to keep his contempt for both hidden. He’d sat through numerous meetings like this one, plotting and gathering support for his father’s plan. Now, less than a week away from the actual coup attempt, it was becoming his plan. Not because he had conceived it, but because without him, the plan would fail. Then he would become king himself, after Father was killed. The reign of the kingdom would be built on blood, he thought. Blood and marriage. Both at his hand.

  “It will work because I will marry his daughter,” Omar said.

  His father faced Ahmed. “You see? It will work because my son will marry Sheik Al-Asamm’s daughter.” He grinned.

  “What daughter? And how will that help?”

  Omar picked up a fig and rubbed its skin, eyes on Ahmed. “The reason Sheik Al-Asamm has remained quiet these past twenty years is because my father bought the sheik’s allegiance,” he said. “My father convinced Salman bin Fahd to adopt Al-Asamm’s daughter in exchange for the sheik’s loyalty. Her name is Miriam. When she marries me and bears a son, we will create an inseparable bond between Sunni royalty and the Shia. The sheik insisted that she not be married until she reached twenty-one. Evidently he wasn’t in a rush to weaken the bloodline. She is now a week from that birthday.”

  Ahmed stood. “Salman’s daughter Miriam is really the daughter of the Shia sheik? Abu Ali al-Asamm? They are Shia; we are Sunni.”

  “Thus the secrecy,” Omar said. “When she marries into the royal family and has a son, Sheik Al-Asamm will be linked to the throne by blood.”

  Ahmed looked too stunned for words.

  “Miriam will marry Omar in a secret ceremony,” Khalid said. “In exchange, Al-Asamm will support our coup. I will give him governor ship of the eastern province. This was planned twenty years ago, when Omar was just a boy.”

  They had no assurance Ahmed would support this plan, but they’d disclosed the same with two dozen ministers, and all but the minister of education understood the stakes. The man died within the hour—a tragic accident.

  Omar stood and picked up an apple. He bit deeply into its crisp flesh. “We need your support, Ahmed. Your position is critical to our plans. We need the airports.”

  The minister of transportation lowered his voice to a whisper. “This talk is treasonous. You’re plotting your own death.”

  “Today what we’ve said is treason; in one week your speaking to my father in such a way will be treason,” Omar said.

  Ahmed glanced at Khalid and then back. “You have Sheik AlAsamm’s full commitment?”

  “Would we be talking to you if we did not? I will take his daughter Miriam as my wife in four days.”

  “And then?”

  “Two of our generals have Shia blood,” Khalid said. “If we have AlAsamm, we have them. We will unseat Abdullah the day after the wedding. I will be king in one week. We will be a fundamentalist state within the month.”

  Ahmed’s lips curved into a faint, sweating smile. “Then you have my support.” He paused, studying Khalid’s face as the prospect sank in. “You have my full support.” He dipped his head. “There is no god but God.”

  Omar took another bite. Just like that, the man had switched his loyalties from the reigning king to Khalid. Of course, if he refused, he would pay dearly.

  A bell rang near the tent door. “Come,” Khalid commanded.

  A thin man dressed in a business suit entered and dipped his head. Omar felt his pulse quicken. His servant approached the table and looked at them without speaking.

  “Well?”

  “It is done.”

  The corner of Omar’s mouth twitched. “The girl is dead?” he asked.

  “She was drowned an hour ago, as you insisted.”

  They stared at the servant in silence. Stonings were a slow, drawn-out nuisance. Better to drown and be done with it.

  “And the girl?” Omar asked.

  “As you said.”

  “Thank you. You may leave.”

  The man lowered his head and left.

  “What was that?” Ahmed asked, face white.

  “That was the judgment of God,” Omar said. “And a message to my dear bride.”

  chapter 5

  seth crossed the North Field and angled for Berkeley’s Department of Philosophy. His corduroys bunched slightly over worn sandals as he stepped through the grass. To his right, a dance squad performed flips in short skirts. The Faculty Club building stood beyond them, bordered by a manicured glade. He’d been inside on four occasions, each time for an ev
ent that required his attendance. Receptions in honor of his awards, mostly.

  Like the one scheduled for Thursday evening. The American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics had named him something or other of the year, and, like it or not, the graduate dean was obligated to acknowledge the award. Thinking about it now, Seth wondered what would happen if he didn’t show. He wasn’t feeling too social after yesterday’s fiasco with Baaron. He envisioned two hundred faculty dressed to the nines with champagne glasses raised and no one to toast.

  “Seth!”

  He turned to see Phil—a third-year undergraduate and the epitome of a nerd with glasses, pocket protector, and pimples—run up behind him. Phil was among half a dozen down-and-outers that Seth felt truly at home with.

  “Hey, Phil.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and rolled the Super Ball between his fingers.

  Phil slapped an open crossword magazine in his hand. “You ready?”

  “Sure,” Seth said. “Let me see it.”

  Phil held the page up, displaying a four-inch-square crossword puzzle. Seth made quick mental notes of the puzzle’s pattern—black squares, white squares, numbers. Category: GOOD MARKS.

  “Okay.”

  Phil withdrew the puzzle and glanced ahead. “So where you going?”

  “Meeting with Dr. Harland. You?”

  “To the cafeteria. Okay, ready? Seventeen across, ten letters, clue—expropriate.”

  “Commandeer,” Seth said.

  Phil flipped a page, checked the answer, and continued. “Good. Twenty-four across, seven letters, clue—horse back in the pack.”

  Seth considered the clue for a second. “That would be also-ran, Phil,” he said in his best game-show voice.

  “Never heard of it,” the younger student said. “Three down, five letters, clue—subdues.”

  “Three down? Tames.”

  “Final answer?”

  “Tames, Phil. It has to be tames.”

  “How do you do that without looking?”

  “I did look, remember? The M intersects with commandeer and the S intersects with also-ran,” Seth said.

  Phil slapped the magazine closed. “I heard you told Baaron a few things.”

  “You heard that?”

  “Yeah. True?”

  “True.”

  Seth saw that Phil was watching the dancers now. Seth decided long ago that women had an inexplicable effect on his mind, minimizing its ability to process thought in logical constructs. Without fail, females turned Seth into someone he really didn’t think he was, someone lost for clear thoughts and words.

  Phil, however, would kill to sit alone on a bench with a girl. Any girl. He aggressively denied the desire, of course.

  Phil saw Seth had noticed and ducked his head. “See ya.”

  “See ya.”

  He headed off, hands deep in his pockets, head lowered.

  They had named the philosophy building Moses—ironic but appropriate considering its current occupant. Seth had always thought that the chair of philosophy, Samuel Harland, PhD, was the spitting image of Charlton Heston with his dirty blond hair and soft blue eyes. He was the only man in the place worthy of the building’s name.

  He knocked on the department head’s office door, heard a muffled “Enter,” and stepped in.

  “Good day.”

  “Have a seat,” the professor said.

  Seth sat. “That bad, huh?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Baaron is seething.”

  Seth paused. If there was one person in his life he could confide in, it was this man. “You wouldn’t expect the academic dean of an esteemed institution such as this to let a little folly get under his skin.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Harland said. “But for whatever reason, you most definitely do get under his skin.”

  “I engaged him with famous quotations—”

  “I know what you did. You could have been a little more selective, don’t you think?” Harland couldn’t hide the glint of humor in his eyes.

  Seth shook his head. “I don’t know how I get myself in these crazy situations.”

  “I think you do. You’re a blatant challenge to his theories of order.”

  “For what it’s worth, I did speak the truth,” Seth said. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me? To doggedly pursue the truth?”

  “Pursuing the truth and presenting it are two different disciplines. How do you suppose I would fare around here if I walked around blasting my peers into the next county? This is becoming a habit for you.”

  Seth rubbed his hands together and placed them on his knees. “You’re right.”

  Baaron was brilliant, deserving of his lofty status at the university. But put him in a room with Seth, and half his chips seemed to go on the blink. He was an easy target, one that Seth couldn’t resist shooting at now and then. It didn’t help that Baaron reminded Seth of his father.

  The tension had set in a year earlier, when Seth wrote a paper on the Strong Force that questioned prevailing thought. The paper was picked up by several scientific journals and published to some acclaim. It was hardly Seth’s fault that the prevailing theory, which Seth trashed, was authored by none other than Gregory Baaron, PhD. The world of physics was a small one.

  “You’re going to have to learn more tact, yes? You have to learn how to blend in a little.”

  Seth’s trust in Harland was in large part due to the man’s humble form of brilliance. If Seth’s formal education had taught him anything, it was that celebrated intelligence had nothing to do with intellectual honesty, with being genuine. People who appreciated both brilliance and frank honesty were in short supply. The system preferred the kind of brilliance that lined up with the flavor of the day.

  Samuel Harland was anything but the flavor of the day. He had no interest in kissing the elitists’ beliefs so he could smoke his pipe in the Faculty Club. He simply and methodically pursued every thought to its logical conclusion and put his faith there, in what he saw at the end of the trail.

  The smile faded from Seth’s face. “Well, you’ll have to forgive me, but I’m not built for a system like this one. I can’t seem to fit in.”

  Harland nodded. “Baaron’s got some of the faculty on his side. They’re talking about official reprimands.”

  Seth looked out the window. “I’m thinking about dumping the program. Heading back down to San Diego.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Maybe I should have done it before. I talked to my mom last night. She lost her job.”

  Harland hesitated. “The best thing you can do for your mother is finish your doctorate. What are you going to do for a living—pump gas?”

  “We both know of a dozen corporations that would offer me decent money right now.” Seth stared at the window and sighed. “Did you hear about the calculation I drew on the board?”

  “I heard something about the Lagrangian field equation.”

  “That was part of it. But I came up with an equation that limits possible futures to one.” Seth smiled. “That should be music to your ears.”

  “How so?”

  “It supports the existence of an all-knowing higher being.”

  “Ah, yes, the higher-being theory. You’ve decided to swing that way, is that it?”

  “No. I’ll remain comfortably blank on the subject for now, despite my proof to the contrary.”

  Harland chuckled. “You’ve actually proven God’s existence now?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but it does have a ring to it, don’t you think?” Seth leaned forward and took a sheet of paper from Harland’s desk. “May I?”

  “Be my guest. You’re going to show me the equation?”

  “No. I’m going to translate it into a hypothetical syllogism of sorts.” He spoke his argument as he wrote it out in longhand.

  (A) If an all-knowing God exists, then he knows precisely what THE future is. (He knows whether I’m going to cough in ten seconds.)
/>   (B) If God knows what THE future is, then that future WILL occur, unless God is mistaken. (I WILL cough in ten seconds.)

  (C) Because God cannot be mistaken, there is NO possibility that any other future, other than the one future that God knows, will happen. (There’s NO possibility I won’t cough in ten seconds.)

  (D) THEREFORE, if God exists, there is only ONE future, which is THE future he knows. (I cough in ten seconds.)

  Seth set the pencil down. “Basically, if God exists, the probability of there being more than one possible future is zero. And vice versa. To believe God exists also requires you to believe that the future is unalterable. By definition. There can only be one future, and no amount of willing can change it.”

  “And the ramifications of this theory?”

  “Religion has no purpose.”

  “Knowledge of fact doesn’t necessarily prove singularity of future.”

  “You’re only splitting hairs between knowledge of fact and probabilities.”

  Harland nodded slowly. They’d argued the subject on several occasions, and he didn’t seem eager to dive in again.

  Seth looked out the window. “You should reconsider deism—”

  A pigeon slammed into the window with a loud thunk.

  Seth blinked. “Ouch. You’d think that would break the window.”

  “What would?”

  Seth looked at him. “The force of the bird slamming into the window.”

  Harland looked at the window. “What bird?”

  “What do you mean, what bird? You didn’t just see that?”

  “No.”

  Seth looked at the window. “You didn’t hear a loud thunk just now?”

  “No. I didn’t hear—”

  A pigeon slammed into the window with a loud thunk. It fell away in a flurry of feathers.

  “Like that?” Harland asked.

  Seth stared at the clear pane of glass. Yes, exactly like that.

  “Huh. I could’ve sworn I just saw that ten seconds ago. Like a déjà vu.” He shook his head.

  “You okay?”