‘A bit excessive for a bag that could be ripped apart with a knife,’ Jax said as he pointed towards the nylon blend.

‘I’d agree, if it wasn’t carbon-fibre reinforced and lead-lined,’ Sami smiled. The agent chuckled as he knocked on the soft-looking material, which turned out to be rock-hard. ‘CIA special order.’

Sami then unzipped and unclipped the bag and reached into it. His hand emerged clutching a plastic ziplocked bag marked ‘Evidence’. Through the clear plastic Jax could see a framed photograph of Imam Zuhdi, an Islamic cleric he’d learned about while studying for his counterterrorism degree.

‘It was hanging above the chaplain’s desk in his home office,’ Sami said as he pushed the opened package across the table.

‘Zuhdi,’ Jax said. ‘Founder of the Islamic Reform Movement and suspected terrorist.’ As he picked up the bagged photo for a closer look, he noticed the signed message: Mahdi, my friend. Turns out we are not so different. He shall rise. Zuhdi.

Sami then revealed that Father Martin had met Imam Zudhi at a religious conference six years earlier.

‘That in itself is no smoking gun,’ Sami said as he reached back into the bag. ‘But this is.’

He pushed another ziplocked bag across the table, this one holding a leather-bound notebook.

‘His diary,’ Sami confirmed. ‘The self-incriminating musings of a madman.’

Jax stared at the bag with wide eyes.

‘Go on,’ Sami said. ‘It has already been put through every forensic exam known to man. And some only known to the CIA.’

Jax unzipped the bag, removed the diary and began reading.

It had been Zuhdi, founder of the Islamic Reform Movement, who had first told Martin that Muslims believed in Jesus, that the Quran predicted His return – and that it would be a religious man called the Mahdi who would bring Him back. A diary entry recorded the priest’s response:

Mahdi. Almost what they call me. Marty, Mahdi. Uncanny. Could it be? I always believed I was destined for great things.

Jax was soon turning pages like it was an action thriller.

Martin’s interest in Islam had been piqued, and it soon became an obsession. He sought out Mahmud, a mufti before he was convicted of recruiting for both Al-Qaeda and ISIS, for advice. Mahmud showed him what had been left to interpretation and what was sacrosanct. He told him Surah 93, Ayah 241 was most certainly the word of God, or Allah, as he now correctly called Him: The High Priest. The uniter of all religions. The Mahdi. And eventually he convinced the priest that he, Martin, was the incarnation of that Twelfth Imam, ruler of the final dominion.