Rotten Gods Read Online Free PDF Page A

who asks that your daughters are with relatives.’
    â€˜No, please, I need them … Rami.’
    â€˜Shut up, woman, my name is not Rami. Listen to me. You will be contacted and given further instructions at Rabi al-Salah. Make arrangements to stay at the centre itself. If you alert police, or anyone at all, your children will die. Understand this. They will die a terrible death … I will personally cut their hearts from their chests.’
    Isabella looked at the man who had touched her in the most intimate way. Believing his words.
    â€˜They are calling your flight. Board it. Now.’
    Walking on as if in a nightmare, holding back tears …
    Day 1, 12:00
    Zhyogal’s voice, when it comes, is the self-satisfied howl of a wild dog that brought down its victim in the night, of a cat with a mouse lying quiescent between its paws. The voice of an anti-god who promises destruction and death. That of a man who has sifted poison and hatred from a system of belief.
    First he restores communications with a flick of the bank of switches, then places both hands on the dais and glares out at the cameras and the delegations in their rows. ‘On behalf of our brothers in all lands, we make the following demands. First, the United States must withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia, home of the two most sacred Islamic sites, Maccah and Medina. If they do not, every person in this room will die.
    â€˜The United States must disband its AFRICOM military command, and remove all troops from the continent: Somalia; Mauritania; Nigeria. States moving to Sharia law will do so without interference. Foreign journalists will leave these countries without delay, or every person in this room will die.
    â€˜All Western troops, military advisors and security firms will abandon their crusade against the nations of Islam: Iraq; Libya; Afghanistan; Somalia; Pakistan; Yemen. They must withdraw immediately. Or every person in this room will die.
    â€˜Catastrophic global warming is killing Africa and Asia. Coal-fired power stations will be shut down. Immediately. Coal mining will cease. Immediately. High-emissions industries will stop production. All major cities must provide free public transport … the manufacture of luxury goods must cease … the production of immoral products such as Western music and fiction books …
    â€˜The governments of the West have seven days to act. If they do not, at the moment of Maghrib — sunset — on the seventh day, this room and everyone inside it will be destroyed.
    â€˜I make the following arrangements for the physical needs of the people in this room. There will be no tea, no coffee, no cakes, no biscuits. At sixteen hundred hours this afternoon I will allow the main doors to open while supplies are brought in. The only allowable food will be United Nations-issue emergency humanitarian ration packs.’ His voice rises. ‘Let the leaders of nations eat what refugees eat, what the luckiest of those dispossessed by their policies subsist on. You are free to use the toilets but no cubicle door will be closed. You will know what it is like to lack privacy.
    â€˜Finally, I warn that war criminals present in this room will be tried under Sharia law. Those found guilty will be executed, beginning one hour from now.’
    The mujahedin appear at the ends of the rows, weapons gripped tight, waiting with that same hunting-dog eagerness, barely controlled savagery on their faces.
    Zhyogal’s face twists with rage as he goes on. ‘These are the war criminals. Bring them to me. President Martin Bourque ofFrance; President Edward Purcell of the United States; President Eitam Yedidyah of Israel …’
    The mujahedin move in pairs, identifying the targets and sliding down along the rows, grasping men under the arms and dragging them back to the aisles and down the carpeted steps. One or two fight back, and their attackers respond