A group of police officers was standing guard at the end of the street. They eyed Mandali suspiciously as he slipped past without a word and set out along the cacophonous boulevard overlooking the western bank of the Nile. Two minutes later he turned left onto a bridge and crossed over onto Zamalek. How different it was here, he thought. Zamalek was an island of privilege surrounded by a sea of misery, a place where the vast majority of Egypt’s population could not afford to buy a pastry or a cup of coffee. Zamalek would soon feel the wrath of Egypt’s legions of downtrodden Muslims, Mandali thought. So would the entire world.

He followed July 26 Street across the island, then wandered for a time through the quiet side streets north of the Gezira Sporting Club to make certain he wasn’t being followed. Thirty minutes after leaving Imbaba, he approached a luxury high-rise apartment house called the Ramses Towers. The tall Sudanese standing guard over the entrance was a member of the Sword of Allah. He guided Mandali into the marble lobby and instructed him to use the back staircase so that none of the other tenants would see a poor man in their gilded elevator. As a result, Mandali was heavily winded when he presented himself at the door of Apartment 2408 and knocked in the prescribed fashion: two knocks, followed by a brief pause, then three more knocks.

The door was opened a few seconds later by a man dressed in a pale gray galabiya. He admitted Mandali into a formal entrance hall, then showed him into a magnificent sitting room overlooking the Nile. Seated cross-legged on the floor, dressed in a white galabiya and a crocheted white skullcap, was an elderly man with a long gray beard. Hussein Mandali kissed the old man’s leathery cheeks and sat before him.

“You have news from the street?” asked Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq.

“Mubarak’s forces have surrounded Imbaba and have started to infiltrate the district. In other parts of the country, the army and the police are hitting us very hard. Fayoum, Minya, Asyut, and Luxor have all seen heavy raids. The situation is tense. One spark and it could explode.”

The sheikh fingered his prayer beads and looked at the other man. “Bring me a tape recorder,” he said, “and I’ll give you a spark.”

The man laid the recorder at the feet of the sheikh and switched it on. One hour later Hussein Mandali was once again picking his way through the alleys of Imbaba, this time with a cassette tape concealed inside his sock. By nightfall the sermon would be circulating through a network of popular mosques and underground jihadists cells. After that it would be in the hands of Allah. Hussein Mandali was sure of only one thing. The open sewers of Imbaba would soon be flowing red with the blood of Pharaoh’s soldiers.

Chapter 22

22

AMSTERDAM: 9:30 A.M., MONDAY