us to Sufis…’
‘Sufis like Abraham Khan.’
‘Yes. Strange as it may sound, Sufis are what you might call the Evangelicals of the Muslim world.’
Adam scratched his ear. ‘So… what? They are fans of being born again and having a personal relationship with God?’
Samantha spread her hands. ‘They are mystics, yes. Muslims who have retreated from the political infighting between Sunnis and Shiites and are solely interested in the inner dimension of Islam—being in touch with the heartbeat of God, as it were. For them, understanding and loving the divine is more important than physical bickering. And their jihad is the most noble form—it’s about struggling to better oneself through meditation and reflection.’
‘They sound almost… pacifist.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Well, yeah. It’s not something you’d expect. Not in this day and age.’
‘Now you can see why your principal is a target. To the fundamentalists, what he stands for is heresy; the fiercest moral challenge that they’ve seen for years, if not centuries. And that… well, that is not something they will abide by. You can damn well count on it.’
CHAPTER 24
Leaving the university, Adam felt like he had made some progress. Sure, the conflict between Sunnis, Shiites and Sufis was a byzantine maze, and he couldn’t possibly hope to understand all of it. Not in a single conversation. But at least he had established something about the mindset of the unsubs who might be gunning for Abraham Khan.
Adam squeezed his steering wheel as he drove. Thought things through.
Essentially, there were two kinds of killers—psychopaths and sociopaths. A psychopath would kill you because he thought you deserved it; a sociopath would kill you because he didn’t care. They were both ruthless, and they both dehumanised their targets, but they did so in different ways.
Was one personality inherently more lethal than the other? Maybe. Maybe not. Just to be safe, Adam preferred to give both personalities equal weight while carrying out threat assessments. Because when push came to shove, a nutjob with a gun was a nutjob with a gun. Didn’t really matter how he got to that point or why. You just had to focus on taking him down fast and hard.
But based on what Samantha had said, Adam was beginning to feel like he needed to rethink his approach. Reorient his profiling. Because unsubs driven by religious fanaticism were almost always psychopaths—they harmed their targets out of self-righteous hatred, not stone-cold apathy. It was the torrent of emotion that defined them, not the lack of it.
For such unsubs, religion acted as an accelerant, a stimulant, indoctrinating an ‘us versus them’ attitude. And the more exclusive a religion’s outlook, the more prone it was to fostering bigotry and militancy. Which was why a Christian or a Muslim was far more likely to commit an assassination than, say, a Buddhist.
Oh yeah. I’m a better believer than you are. And to prove it, I’m going to go all out to bury you.
That was exactly kind of unsub Adam needed to zero in on,political correctness be damned. A religious psychopath.
CHAPTER 25
Yusuf did not know where he was going. He had a hood drawn tight over his head, and every time he breathed, the scratchy fabric would rustle and stick to his face. It was not a pleasant feeling.
‘Please,’ Yusuf gasped. ‘Give it to me. Give it to me now.’
‘We’re almost there,’ Magellan whispered into his ear. ‘Not too far now.’
‘Please...’ Yusuf twitched, straining against his seat belt.
‘All in good time, my friend. All in good time.’
No. No. No. Yusuf wanted to push Magellan away. Wanted to tear his hood off. Wanted to shout for the van to stop. But he couldn’t. His body was weak. So terribly weak. Khat . He needed khat right now. If not for the damned craving, he would never have allowed himself to be hooded and then taken for a ride.
Yusuf’s chest
‘Sufis like Abraham Khan.’
‘Yes. Strange as it may sound, Sufis are what you might call the Evangelicals of the Muslim world.’
Adam scratched his ear. ‘So… what? They are fans of being born again and having a personal relationship with God?’
Samantha spread her hands. ‘They are mystics, yes. Muslims who have retreated from the political infighting between Sunnis and Shiites and are solely interested in the inner dimension of Islam—being in touch with the heartbeat of God, as it were. For them, understanding and loving the divine is more important than physical bickering. And their jihad is the most noble form—it’s about struggling to better oneself through meditation and reflection.’
‘They sound almost… pacifist.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Well, yeah. It’s not something you’d expect. Not in this day and age.’
‘Now you can see why your principal is a target. To the fundamentalists, what he stands for is heresy; the fiercest moral challenge that they’ve seen for years, if not centuries. And that… well, that is not something they will abide by. You can damn well count on it.’
CHAPTER 24
Leaving the university, Adam felt like he had made some progress. Sure, the conflict between Sunnis, Shiites and Sufis was a byzantine maze, and he couldn’t possibly hope to understand all of it. Not in a single conversation. But at least he had established something about the mindset of the unsubs who might be gunning for Abraham Khan.
Adam squeezed his steering wheel as he drove. Thought things through.
Essentially, there were two kinds of killers—psychopaths and sociopaths. A psychopath would kill you because he thought you deserved it; a sociopath would kill you because he didn’t care. They were both ruthless, and they both dehumanised their targets, but they did so in different ways.
Was one personality inherently more lethal than the other? Maybe. Maybe not. Just to be safe, Adam preferred to give both personalities equal weight while carrying out threat assessments. Because when push came to shove, a nutjob with a gun was a nutjob with a gun. Didn’t really matter how he got to that point or why. You just had to focus on taking him down fast and hard.
But based on what Samantha had said, Adam was beginning to feel like he needed to rethink his approach. Reorient his profiling. Because unsubs driven by religious fanaticism were almost always psychopaths—they harmed their targets out of self-righteous hatred, not stone-cold apathy. It was the torrent of emotion that defined them, not the lack of it.
For such unsubs, religion acted as an accelerant, a stimulant, indoctrinating an ‘us versus them’ attitude. And the more exclusive a religion’s outlook, the more prone it was to fostering bigotry and militancy. Which was why a Christian or a Muslim was far more likely to commit an assassination than, say, a Buddhist.
Oh yeah. I’m a better believer than you are. And to prove it, I’m going to go all out to bury you.
That was exactly kind of unsub Adam needed to zero in on,political correctness be damned. A religious psychopath.
CHAPTER 25
Yusuf did not know where he was going. He had a hood drawn tight over his head, and every time he breathed, the scratchy fabric would rustle and stick to his face. It was not a pleasant feeling.
‘Please,’ Yusuf gasped. ‘Give it to me. Give it to me now.’
‘We’re almost there,’ Magellan whispered into his ear. ‘Not too far now.’
‘Please...’ Yusuf twitched, straining against his seat belt.
‘All in good time, my friend. All in good time.’
No. No. No. Yusuf wanted to push Magellan away. Wanted to tear his hood off. Wanted to shout for the van to stop. But he couldn’t. His body was weak. So terribly weak. Khat . He needed khat right now. If not for the damned craving, he would never have allowed himself to be hooded and then taken for a ride.
Yusuf’s chest
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