the airport in another hour, but first he had one last obligation in Ankara.
He settled back in his seat, but his heart still thrummed in his chest. Anxiety and excitement kept his muscles tense.
After so many centuries . . .
A long line of men took the title of Mūsā, going back to the ninth century, to the first of his name, Mūsā ibn Shākir, a great astronomer who was born in Khorasan in northeast Persia. He had four sons—though most historians only knew of three—who, due to their intelligence, studied at the famous House of Wisdom in Baghdad, during a time when Islam shone with a golden brightness. Following the fall of Rome, the sons spent their lives traveling far, gathering rare texts from Italy and Greece, preserving them, building upon the knowledge found in them. They would produce wondrous works, constructing canals and crafting ingenious devices, along with writing dozens of books.
But only a select few knew the secret history of the Banū Mūsā brothers, how four had become three, how one of Mūsā ibn Shākir’s sons betrayed the others, stole their greatest treasure and the secret it protected, destroying all records, leaving no trace to follow. For this treachery, his name was stricken from their books, his history in the family erased.
It was as if Hunayn ibn Mūsā had never existed.
Still, what that brother stole, what he sought to keep from the world, was not forgotten by a sect within Baghdad’s House of Wisdom. They kept that knowledge hidden, from generation to generation, from one caliphate to another, from one country to another. Forty-seven men had led this cabal in the past, each taking the title of Mūsā, knowing that someday what was lost would be found again.
And that time was upon the world now.
I am the forty-eighth Mūsā—and I will be the last.
He had suffered much to achieve this position, a birthright forged in blood and grief. His first wife—his dearest Esra—and his baby boy were killed by a Kurdish bomb. He eventually hunted the insurgents down, and in the dead of night, slaughtered those responsible, along with their wives and children. Still, all that blood could not wash away his grief.
Instead, he gathered a new set of Sons and Daughters to his side, those hardened to the cause. He intended not only to make all of Kurdistan suffer, but to ignite the entire region. With tensions throughout the Middle East at their highest, the time to bring about Armageddon had come. The return of what was lost was a portentous omen.
Into this powder keg, I will not just toss a match—I will cast forth a thousand flaming torches.
He considered what had befallen the team in Greenland, the horrors that had slaughtered them. It was proof that what Hunayn had sought to keep hidden did truly exist. With such knowledge, Mūsā knew what he must do, what he knew in his heart was always his destiny.
I will find the entrance to Hell, break open those gates, and unleash Armageddon.
He had always sensed the end-times were upon the world. From the unnatural disasters, the pollution of the planet, the endless wars, and most important of all, the moral decay around the globe. The signs were all around. Recognizing this, Mūsā had studied the Islamic apocalyptic writings and read the hadiths—words attributed to Prophet Muhammad—that spoke of the Last Days, when Isa, whom the Christians named Jesus, would return.
He closed his eyes and silently recited a much-quoted apocalyptic hadith: The Son of Mary will soon descend among you as a just ruler; he will break the cross and kill the swine. Unlike Christendom’s view of the end-times, Islam believed that when Jesus returned, he would shun Christians and side with Muslims. He would end his own worship by destroying the cross and prohibiting the eating of a pig’s flesh, as was already dictated by Muslim law.
And Jesus would not come alone.
Preceding his momentous return would be the arrival of a twelfth imam, a divine caliph and descendant of Muhammad, who would purge away injustice, battle Satan, and burn the world clean.
That figure was called Mahdi, whose name means the guided one.
Over the past centuries, many men—false prophets—had claimed to be the twelfth imam, but Mūsā knew the truth. He knew with certainty that there was only one who could purge the world. And the discovery in Greenland—during the reign of the forty-eighth Mūsā—was surely proof.
I will find the gates of Hell, steal Satan’s flame, and cleanse the world with