The Jerusalem Creed: A Sean Wyatt Thriller Read Online Free PDF

back of a bike with another guy.
    Sean twisted his head to the girls, who were giggling in short summer dresses as they sipped their drinks. He flipped up his visor and said, “Yes, it is.” He patted Tommy on the leg to emphasize the statement.
    Just then the light turned green, and he hit the gas again before Tommy could try to defend himself.
    “Thanks, man!” he shouted over the swooshing wind and throaty engine. “Now they think I’m into dudes.”
    “So? You’re never going to see them again.”
    “You don’t know that! I could bump into them somewhere.”
    Sean laughed and spoke over his shoulder. “Yeah but now if you go back to that place you’ll look like a creep.”
    “Yeah, thanks for that. I love that cafe.”
    Sean yelled over the noise. “You’re too old for them anyway.”
    He weaved around a slow-moving minivan and into the left lane that had just opened up as the road widened on its way into downtown.
    “Too old? Those girls were, at most, ten years younger.”
    Sean thought about it for a second. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. My fault. If I see them again, I’ll be sure to tell them you and I are no longer an item.” He squeezed the throttle harder, increasing their speed, zooming past the Jimmy Carter Center. 
     

3
    Dubai, UAE
     
    A bluish-gray haze hung in the room. Through the fog of cigar smoke, the sandstone walls and columns appeared to be something out of a thousand-year-old palace. It may as well have been. To say that the mansion’s owner was wealthy would be a vast understatement, like saying the surface of the sun was warm. Mamoud Al Najaar puffed on his cigar as he watched the half-naked women dance in front of him. The doors to the balcony behind them were wide open, and the Persian Gulf beyond provided a unique and expensive backdrop to the view before him.
    Another scantily clad woman fanned him as he watched the show. He occasionally took a sip of tea from the silver cup on a table to the right of his Corinthian leather chair. Six feet away, his friend and bodyguard, Sharouf Al Nasir, watched with restrained pleasure.
    Mamoud smiled a toothy, perverse grin as the women moved in synchronized rhythm. Their hands flashed back and forth, gripping red silken scarves. The thin, lightweight fabric trailed around behind their bodies, occasionally grazing their bronzed skin.
    He’d grown up in the deserts of Syria, a child of privilege and high tastes. When his father sold their familial lands to the oil companies, the money ensured their lifestyle would be one the sheikhs of old would have envied, and without all the worries of drilling, refining, and exporting.
    When his father died, Mamoud inherited everything. He was one of two children, but his younger brother had died years before. Mamoud hadn’t understood why his brother joined the insurgency in Iraq, or why he had thought it a good idea to go head to head with an entire platoon of American soldiers.
    As children, their father had taught them that the only way to defeat the West was to learn everything they could about Western culture: its people, its way of life, and its weaknesses.
    He’d been trained to fight by some of the best martial arts teachers money could buy and still kept up an intense sparring regimen with his bodyguards to make sure he never got rusty. His expertise in Jujitsu and Isshin-Ryu was unrivaled throughout the Middle East.
    Mamoud went to school in Great Britain. Not just any school either. He attended the most expensive private prep schools and university. He was steeped in the ways of capitalism, freedom of thought and expression, and in their religious and atheistic learning. The more he learned about those things, the greater his hatred of the West grew. His father had encouraged him to bide his time, to be patient. When the moment was right, he would know what to do with the resources he’d been given.
    Know thine enemy. The quote went through his mind even as he watched the women