General Steven Chase of the USMC responded, “Our man from the old Recon side of things will get the job done. He’ll do what he does best, and clean the mess up.”
Marks carried on, “Hopefully it won’t come to that. We have only had a rogue Activist one time in our history, and that was when Kennedy was President. And I think we can all agree that the Ghost is a little more capable than Oswald ever was.”
They all nodded in agreement.
“So here’s what I think we should do – you guys jump in if you have a better idea - but I think we should keep our eyes and ears on the FBI case. If anything else drastic happens, especially if it could expose us, then we send in the Arbiter. Are we all in favor?” Marks finished.
The military men looked at one another, and the Airman in the room, General Dwight Johansen, piped in, “I’ll speak for the military here and say I concur. Let’s keep our ears to the ground a little longer.”
The men who knew each other and their families very well then proceeded to carry on in small talk and trivial matters as if it were no big deal if by some off-shot chance they had a rogue agent in the Activity.
19
New York City
Rockefeller Center
Imam Kareem Hassad was a famous man. He wasn’t your typical religious figure; he loved the limelight, and perhaps was not as humble as his peers would have preferred. Due to the previous US president showing an affinity to Islam, and the media falling in love with his silver tongue, Imam Kareem Hassad had taken full advantage of the new and improved Islam - and was going to appear on the Today Show. The show was set inside the famous Rockefeller Center; a large skyscraper in the center of Rockefeller Plaza. The Imam was inside his dressing room in very elaborate and extravagant robes with a certain Arabian flair to them. He had to wow the public and fit the part all at the same time. Although the sincerity of the Imam’s beliefs had been questioned by several of the more prominent Muslim leaders around the world, the man was financially generous to the cause of Allah – and he had thousands of faithful followers. He also played the part well by always saying the right words during the Salats – saying just about anything he could think of to show Allah in a positive light, including tempting promises of salvation; if they would only submit to the will of Allah. The Today Show was having the Imam as a guest because of the controversy of the large cross that had been included in the 9/11 Memorial Museum. There had been both Muslim and atheist protesters lining the streets near the museum, and it had caused quite a stir as of late. The Imam had informed both his security as well as Today Show staff that he needed some time alone in his dressing room to make supplications to Allah; he wanted Allah to bless him with all the right words. Unfortunately none of those parties were aware that he really just needed some time for his vanity. The narcissistic man could not help staring in the mirror and constantly adjusting his head dress and wrinkling the robes just the right amount for the camera.
In the meantime, the activist had become the assassin once again. A large man who looked like a hippie on steroids in something like a blue custodian’s uniform - with his long brown hair and a long beard to his chest, walked up to the security guard outside Hassad’s door. He was carrying a basket of what appeared to be Green Tea and some fruit in one hand; a clipboard in the other.
“Excuse me, dude – but the show sends its regards and thanks to Mr. Hassad, man. I need to give him this stuff and have him sign for it…k bro?” the stranger asked the security guard with a surfer-dude accent.
The large Asian guarding the door said, “Hold on; I will only take it if the Imam is willing to see you.”
He slowly turned around and knocked on the door.
“Excuse me, your holiness – but the TV show has sent you a gift. There’s a man out here who wishes to give it to you and watch you sign for it,” the guard finished.
The hippie added, “Your guard can come in and have some of this fruit and water, too – Sir!”
The Imam yelled to the guard at the door, “It’s okay, Quan; let the man in; I could use some refreshment.”
The hippie smiled at the guard as he held the door open for him.
The guard still didn’t completely trust this hippie, so he followed him into the dressing room. The man with the long brown hair walked right up to the Imam and presented the basket.
“Sir – if you wouldn’t mind – I’d like you and your guard here to try the Green Tea. It’s got a special flavor; it’s the latest craze in the studio, dude!”
The Imam reached for one of the tea bottles, but his bodyguard stopped him.
“Sir, I’ll try it first.”
He glanced into the face of the hippie and noticed his green eyes for the first time.
He squinted his eyes at him ever so slightly, and reached for a bottle. He twisted the cap off and tossed the bottle back, and even swished the stuff around in his mouth before swallowing – all the while glaring at the suspicious hippie. He then looked away for a second and back at the Imam.
He smiled and said, “Actually it’s not that bad.”
Suddenly his face turned a deep red, and he put both hands to his throat. The Imam stared at him in horror, then quickly looked at the stranger in the room. The hippie ripped off his fake beard and wig, and quickly grabbed the Imam and wrapped the parts of his disguise around his neck. He held him there and strangled him, as he had to stand there choking and watching his security guard grasp at his throat and scrape at it with his own fingernails as if he could scratch out whatever poison he had ingested.
The assassin said nonchalantly, “You know, you really shouldn’t drink water laced with arsenic, snake venom, and sugar. It’s some real nasty stuff.”
He tired of trying to choke the Imam to death, so he stood the man up straight and reached far around the front of his head with one hand, and held the back of his head firmly with the other. With a great twisting motion and several pounds of pressure, he broke the man’s neck. Quan the security guard still had some fight in him despite the fact that his throat was on fire, and swelling profusely. He reached out and grabbed the hippie assassin by the neck with one hand and rushed forward. The assassin reached over the top of the man’s arm and ripped over and downward with his arm, twisting his hips, pulling the security guard’s face down and forward. The assassin then elbowed the man square in the nose, and it was lights out.
The assassin dragged both bodies over to the counter in front of the mirror and left them in the floor. He leaned their upper bodies up against the cabinets underneath the counter. He placed them close together so that the bodies would hold each other up without falling over. He then took out two golden crosses. He placed one on the forehead of the security guard, and then struck his head very forcefully with an open hand. When he took his hand away, the cross was embedded in the flesh of the security guard’s thick brow. He wasn’t quite as violent with the Imam. He took the other gold cross and carefully stuck it in the Imam’s thick beard, sticking it out far enough to stand out, but burying its bottom just enough so that it wouldn’t fall out of his beard. The two bodies on the floor made quite the pair. The assassin knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Right then, there was a knock on the door.
“Mr. Hassad, sir – we’re on in fifteen.”
The assassin heard footsteps grow fainter, and he knew he had to act fast. He unzipped the custodian’s jump suit and climbed out of it, revealing a pair of khaki’s and a green and white striped polo shirt. He had a small, home-made name tag clipped to the collar of the shirt, and he reached down to pick up the basket of fruit that he had set on the counter.
He opened the door to the dressing room just a tad, and peeked out into the hallway. He could see the hustle and bustle of the crowd back stage at the end of the hall. He saw that no one was looking in his direction, so he walked out the door and walked straight into the crowd.
One person wearing a set of head phones who looked like they were o
f some importance to the show stopped him and said, “Who are you?”
The assassin put his best smile on and with his most feminine voice, he blinked several times and sucked his teeth one time.
“If you will excuse me, sir – I need to get this basket of fruit to the producers back stage as soon as possible.”
The man with the headphones raised his eyebrows, but then shrugged his shoulders, moved aside, and headed back in the direction that he’d been going.
The assassin came to another turn in the hallway and looked back over his shoulder. The set of the show looked like pandemonium as they scrambled to prepare for the next take. The assassin saw that he was of no consequence to anyone, so he proceeded to the elevators. He casually pressed the bottom button of the two options placed in the middle of the silver pad on the wall. The elevator took several minutes to get all the way up to his location, but when the doors opened, he just walked in and turned around; looking like someone going on their lunch break. The doors closed and it was just another day on the set of the Today Show.
The man with the headphones knocked heavily on the Imam’s dressing room door. No one was answering, and the man began to panic. He called his supervisor, and they asked him if the door was locked. He turned the knob, and the door started to open. He still had his supervisor on the phone as he walked into the dressing room. The supervisor was in the process of asking the stage hand what was going on when the man dropped the phone on the floor. He stared in awe at the blank stares on the faces of the men leaning up against the cabinets. Then the man screamed. He then floundered around on the floor and picked up his phone; he stuttered into the phone.
“S-s-sir, you need to call 9-1-1. We have two dead men in the dressing room!” he screamed.
Several people came running down the hall to see what the stage hand’s scream was all about, and the hallway filled with more screams. People flooded in and out of the crime scene because security hadn’t even shown itself yet. Unfortunately there wasn’t a soul in the place with enough common sense or shred of decency to secure the scene and keep nosy on-lookers and prying eyes out of the room. The place had been busy before because it was the set for a popular TV show; now it was an animal house. By the time security got to the room, people had gone in and out of the room with cell phones, probably taking video and screen shots with their phones and posting them on Facebook. Once the room was secure and nobody else could enter the room except law enforcement, it was too late. Social media and the internet had been filled with pictures of the dead. The gall some people had was deplorable to anyone with an ounce of respect for their fellow man – but this crime had taken place on a TV set; controversy and basic de-sensitization was the name of the game.
The assassin was long gone. The FBI and Interpol was aware of the matter in a matter of minutes once photos hit the internet. The stage had been set, and there was definitely going to be some harsh feelings between at least two very large sects of people in the country – no, the world. The headlines the next day were not going to be pretty. Pretty was not what the assassin was shooting for anyway. War was never pretty. Although he knew Christianity was going to take its lumps, he knew it would be worth it. He knew that he would have the world’s attention, and he wanted the world paying close attention. He wanted the world to see that the people were waking up to the violence of Muslims. He hoped that he had the attention of the Muslims, too. If they kept seeing the gold crosses, perhaps they would get the message. What he didn’t expect that day was to become a legend. That day, the legend of the Jesus Assassin was born.
20
New York City
Imam Hassad’s Dressing Room
Knox and White got off the elevator and followed the hallways around to the backstage area of the studio. The door to the Imam’s dressing room was standing open with a strip of yellow tape marked CRIME SCENE stretched across at chest level. The two FBI agents ducked under and came upon the Interpol Inspector. Malik was squatting down to get a close look at the two dead men leaning against the makeup counter. He had beat them to the crime scene from the airport. He turned his head to acknowledge his FBI counterparts, but stayed in his catcher’s stance.
Agent Knox asked him, “So I guess our man is escalating his tactics. What do you make of that, Malik?”
Malik scanned over the morbid scene before him, and he stopped at the bodyguard’s forehead.
He stood up and scratched his bald head.
“I don’t know what to make of the escalation, but I think we have a number,” he answered his cohort.
John Knox replied with another question, “How could you possibly know that?”
Malik grinned. “Well, my Christian ally – I am a Muslim. Let me tell you about the twelfth Imam.”
Knox and Agent White gave each other puzzled looks. Beth just shrugged, and Knox looked back at Malik.
He continued, “In Islam, there is the belief that one day, one of the great prophets from the Quran will return to this world. It is said – and I believe – that this twelfth Imam will be the savior of mankind who will finally bring about peace and justice to the world.”
Knox replied sarcastically, “Hmm, sounds like another story I’ve heard…one that is a little older than Muhammad’s.”
Beth punched him in the shoulder.
Malik just shrugged his shoulders. “Mock Islam all you want, Knox; that’s what the killer is doing.”
Beth pushed past Knox and went over to the bodyguard’s body.
She looked at the small cross embedded into the guy’s forehead.
“You guys can continue your religious stories later. What I am interested in is why this guy is suddenly becoming more violent. I don’t think he is your typical serial killer.”
Knox shook his head.
“That’s where I think you’re wrong. I think he is like half the serial killers we deal with; I think he thinks he is doing something righteous with these killings.”
Malik nodded in agreement.
“I agree with you; I think whatever he has against Muslims has made him angry. He might get angrier as he goes. I don’t think he is like most of the killers we have dealt with that escalate just to see how much they can get away with. I think this violence is stirring from the fact that each assassination seems to make him madder. Think about it…first kill – silent but deadly; just one victim. Second kill – still silent, but more dead as collateral damage. This one – silent entrance, but two dead with a big statement. How we found out about it, for starters,” finished the Interpol man.
“Tell me about it – this thing is about to bust wide open, right in our faces. That was intentional on our assassin’s part. He wanted to create bedlam with the media to distract us from running him down,” Knox added.
Beth also gave her input.
“All the more reason we nail this guy before it gets out of hand. Regardless of the religious implications this un-sub has brought attention to, escalation means he will make mistakes. Mistakes mean we will find this bastard.”
Knox began walking around the room. He was looking around the floor for any clues, when something out of place – and hairy – caught his eye.
“Speaking of mistakes – what’s this?”
He bent down to pick up what at first looked like a dog’s tail. He lifted it up for both the other agents to get a good look.
Beth spoke up and guessed, “Looks like we found how he got in here. Another sign of him escalating. Instead of darkness or virtual invisibility, he used a disguise.”
Malik picked up a small bottle with a Green Tea label on it.
“Look at this; there’s some kind of amber liquid trapped in the bottom of this bottle. I don’t know if he meant to leave this or not, but it’s something.”
Knox scanned the floor further, and saw a small puddle of a slightly colored liquid.
“Let’s get that fluid analyzed. I also think we need to process the bott
le for prints – maybe even the crosses. If he wore a disguise including the fake beard and wig here, he might not have worn gloves. It’s worth a shot.”
The agents walked around the room a little longer and decided they had pretty much found everything of note. Their response to the crime scene was the first time they had been back together since they had left the Detroit office and gone their separate ways for SAC McCoy.
Malik looked over at Knox as they were walking and asked, “So did you guys leave anything out over the phone when I last spoke to you? Did that Colonel Thornton tell you anything else…or that training Major – what was his name?”
Beth piped in, “It was Major Carson. He told us that the most likely suspect to fit our profile was a former Navy SEAL before he was in the CIA. And he told us that this Robert Brady lost his parents on 9/11. That’s when he quit being a SEAL and became a terrorist hunting agent.”
Knox shook his head, “Yeah, well too bad he’s dead.”
There was silence for a few minutes as they boarded an elevator that had to go down sixty floors. There were several occupants already on the elevator; probably tourists returning to the ground floor after visiting one of the three observation decks. When they reached the ground floor, the three of them headed out to the street.
Knox said to Malik, “We’ll see you at the hotel later…unless you want to join Beth and me for some site-seeing.”
Malik shook his head.
“No thanks – you guys have fun. I’ll see you at the hotel when you get back. I have to catch up with my Chief Inspector back in Belgium. I know he is going to have some major questions once this assassin’s handiwork gets broadcasted all over Europe,” he answered.