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Guardians of the Khalifah listened raptly. “The invader in our midst will fall before the sword of Allah.”
    Siddiq Aziz, a clean-shaven man with manicured hands and diamond cuff links, leaned forward upon the low suede sofa. He was handsome enough to grace the pages of
GQ,
and his financial cunning exceeded his looks. “And Palestine will glory in the obliteration of the infidels,” the Saudi banker murmured.
    Stretched across the wall behind him, the golden-hued painting of Al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, caught the sunlight splashing through the window. Each of the men glanced involuntarily at the image of the sacred site.
    The ancient stones of Jerusalem seemed to glisten with aholy radiance that spilled from the golden sphere dominating the hilltop. The infidels called it the Dome of the Rock, but these men knew it as Qubbat as-Sakhrah. Each man in the apartment was acutely aware at that moment that with the sweetness of impending victory there would come a price.
    The Noble Sanctuary, Islam’s third holiest site, had towered over Jerusalem since the ninth khalif, ’Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, oversaw its construction in A.D . 685. Byzantine craftsmen sent to ibn Marwan from Constantinople had built the octagonal shrine over the sacred Noble Rock. According to Islam, Allah had instructed Abraham to take his son, Ishmael, to the rock to sacrifice him, and from that same rock the prophet Muhammad had ascended through the center of the golden dome and on to heaven, accompanied by the angel Gabriel.
    The Noble Sanctuary had withstood centuries of war and turmoil, even defilement by the Crusaders who conquered it. Augustinian priests had converted the Qubbat as-Sakhrah—the Dome of the Rock—into a church. Crusader King Baldwin I took the Al-Aqsa Mosque as his palace, and later the Knights Templar had used it as their headquarters, believing the ruins of King Solomon’s Temple lay nearby.
    But soon, the terrorists knew, the magnificent gold foil–covered pinnacle above the Noble Sanctuary would stand no more.
    â€œIn a very short time the world will once again call the city by its rightful name, Al-Quds. ‘Jerusalem’ will be no more,” Sabouri reminded them, sensing the emotions running through the room.
    The sacrifice would be steep, but temporary.
    The bin Laden family, powerful construction magnates who held the exclusive rights to repair the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, would rebuild a perfect replica. But first, every edifice of the Noble Sanctuary compound—the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Chain, the Dome of the Prophet, the Dome of the Miraj, the Dome of al-Nahawiah, the Dome of the Hebronite, Minbar of Burhan al-Din, the Golden Gate, Musalla Marwan, Ancient Aqsa, and the Islamic Museum,totaling one sixth of the walled city called Jerusalem—would be gone in a cataclysm of fire and thunder.
    And all of Islam would rise up in rage.
    The bombing had been in the planning for two years—fueled by the continued defilement of Arab holy lands by the West. The presence of the infidels had grown increasingly unbearable to the Shi’ah. Even the Sunni majority in Saudi Arabia resented the U.S. audacity in forcing the boots of its military upon Saudi Arabian soil. Defiling the land where Islam’s holiest shrines stood was bad enough, but America’s two arrogant and criminal invasions of Iraq, and the proliferation of their heretical Western culture, further enraged the faithful. But their greatest source of fury was the continued illegal existence of Israel.
    Now all of those outrages were about to be avenged by these men, the leaders of the Guardians of the Khalifah, dedicated to the return of the khalifate.
    There had been no khalif since the Ottoman Empire fell in 1924, dissolving into the Republic of Turkey. The khalif—the earthly successor to Muhammad and the Islamic head of state—was also known as the