When Mike Hammer was stumped, when he didn’t have a clue as to who had murdered his old buddy or raped his ex-girlfriend, when the last beer had been drunk and the last cigarette had been stubbed out and he was still grinding his teeth with a mad on that would have frightened the Frankenstein monster, there was always a guy from way back, a bootblack, a gravedigger, a wino who had once been number two or three at GM who owed Mike a favor, and at great personal risk would supply the information that would break the case. Or maybe it would be some former FBI agent or a Green Beret who had taken down a dozen Viet Cong in Nam. There was always somebody. That was the way it was and that was the way it should be. Then Mike would load Betsy, stuff an extra gun barrel in his pocket, kiss the broad he was sleeping with on the forehead—sometimes he did it in the reverse order—and the rat-bag, the cause of all his anguish and consternation, would have an appointment with I, the Jury.

Bernard Piffy was not Mike Hammer. There were no bootblacks or gravediggers in his past. Nor did he know Opie or Aunt Bea. There were the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and some old friends from back in Nam. That was as good as it got. He had been in England for three weeks and he was no closer to finding Yaser Abdel Said than he was getting the Queen’s autograph. He might as well have been in frontier Mayberry County riding herd on doggies or busting town drunks. And he was no closer to locating Asthma bint Marwan than the day he got off the plane at Heathrow and without bint Marwan there was no Said. But Inspector Clouseau was here and so were Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanijour and so was the smell of cordite and phosgene that had attached itself to their presence like fire and brimstone to Lucifer’s pitchfork. And there was the waitress slopping java over the plastic tablecloth. Some things were eternal.

No one had answered his ad in the newspapers. Maybe if he had wished upon a star…

As he left the Red Dragon he could hear kids yelling in the playground down the street. It was getting dark. His feet were killing him; there was a pebble the size of a cantaloupe in his right shoe. Maybe cousin Andy had been right about the private eye business. Yeah, cousin Andy was always right.

The voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it. “Hey, bud,” it said, “I hear you’re looking for Yaser Abdel Said.”

Piffy stopped dead in his tracks. It was a girl—a mere slip of a girl. She could not have been more than nine or ten years old. She was lounging in a doorway, or perhaps lurking was a better word to describe her presence. He remembered Ka'b. There seemed to be something around her head—an aura, a halo, a luminescence. He knew who she was, but he was surprised by her youth. “You are Asthma bint Marwan,” he said.

“You got that right, big daddy,” she said. “I am to guide you to the soul of Yaser Abdel Said.”

Piffy was puzzled. “You’re no bigger than Opie Taylor,” he said. “You should be home playing with dolls. Who put you up to this? And what’s with the halo? Are you a Christian saint of some kind? I don’t want to get mixed up in religion.”

“You already are,” she said. “I’m your escort.”

Piffy shook his head. “You’re way too young,” he said. “You’re younger than Joan of Arc.”

She put a finger to her lips. “Quiet!” she hissed. “He’s coming!”

“Who’s coming?” said Piffy.

Something was coming—a noisy something! An infernal racket had commenced from down the street, near the playground, perhaps—a screech of banshees intermingled with a dozen air-raid sirens. The wind had picked up. It snatched at Piffy’s hat. He made a grab for it. Then suddenly something happened to bint Marwan. She grew hazy, blurry, indistinct, a disembodied presence. She was merging into her halo, blending into the circle of light that surrounded her head. Something was dragging her into another dimension and then she reached back and drew the halo in after her. She was gone! Just like that! She had disappeared, vanished into the void…into Ka’b’s netherworld! To say Piffy was dumbfounded would have been a misstatement!

By now the screeching had reached a crescendo. Something was coming up behind him—a large something—a very large something—something of mastodonic proportions! The ground was shaking; the sidewalk was threatening to buckle! He turned to see what it was, stealing himself for an ugly confrontation.

My God! It was Shrek—or what Shrek might have looked like on steroids, an ugly Shrek stripped of every last semblance of humanity! The thing—the Shreckoid —glared at Piffy; then smashed a fist against the doorway where bint Marwan had been lurking reducing it to kindling. There came a fierce snarl of rage and the thing disappeared in swirl of wind.

Piffy stared at the shattered door. No one came to investigate. Perhaps they knew better. He retrieved his hat. Something had eaten its way through the brim. He lost more hats that way. He felt his wrist. He still had a pulse.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, bint Marwan returned from the netherworld. She climbed awkwardly out of a reenergized halo. “I am getting too old for this,” she said.

“Who was that?” croaked Piffy.

“That was Umyar—my assassin,” she said. “He has a long memory.”

“What’s he mad about?” said Piffy. ”You were the one that got assassinated.”

“It matters little to them,” said bint Marwan. “Islam never forgives.”

Piffy hitched up his pants. “Well, little girl,” he croaked, “If you’re going to take me to Yaser Abdel Said—“

“Please,” said bint Marwan, “I am going to take you to the soul of Yaser Abdel Said. They may appear to be one and the same thing but they are different.” And with that she started off into the gloom. “And do hurry,” she urged. “Umyar is slow but he is not stupid.”

Piffy was hard pressed to keep up. Bint Marwan floated through the transmogrifying darkness like a butterfly fleeing a monsoon—first one way, then the other. There were flashes of light. He saw the sun setting over the Arctic Circle. Anyway it looked like the Arctic Circle but it was gone in a split-second. There were doors, hundreds of doors, cascading by, shedding evanescent shafts of light, windows opening on vast expanses of—of nothing! He thought he saw a dog. A Saint Bernard! Or maybe it was a horse. It was confusing. He did not know how long it kept up. It was a kaleidoscope with a hundred extra pieces.

Someone screamed, “Allahu akbar!” and for a split-second he thought he saw a man in a burnoose beating a woman in a burka. Was it Paris Hilton? It couldn’t be! It was unsettling!

“Most people in Hell are women,” someone was saying. “I was shown the Hell Fire and the majority of its dwellers were women who are disbelievers or ungrateful. They are ungrateful to their husbands for all the favors they have done them.”

“To the moon, Alice, to the moon!”

A boy was crying—maybe it was a girl, a low whimpering sound. It was too dark to tell. He had lost all sense of direction. One scene after another burned its way past his tormented eyes. A boy in a Madrassas was being beaten for having fallen asleep.

“Allahu akbar!” Yes, yes, God was great! Piffy was no longer so sure.

There was a blinding explosion. Something was falling! London Bridge? People were cheering.

Then suddenly everything was quiet and he was standing in a dimly lit room. He took a look around. Jumping Jehosophat! He was in a mosque! Bint Marwan was beside him. A group of men were on their knees in the middle of the room. Their heads were pressed to the floor. A man in a white robe and a matching skullcap was pacing up and down in front of them.

Piffy was more than a bit nervous. He tugged at bint Marwan’s sleeve and nodded at what looked like an exit of some sort.

“Don’t worry,” whispered bint Marwan. “They can’t see you.”

Piffy remained on edge—bint Marwan wasn’t Rooster Cogburn.

“Oh, Allah,” said the man in the white robe, “do not let us die until our eyes are cooled with the sight of banu Israel being punished for their crimes.”

And the chant came: “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

“Jew York…” said the man in the robe. “Sorry, New York…a slip of the tongue.”

There were more “Allahu akbars!”

The man in the robe went on and on:”Allah has warned us in the Koran, do not befriend the Kuffar, do not align yourself with the Kuffar…What crimes has the government of Afghanistan committed? All they have done is that they have refused to hand over a person whose guilt has yet to be proved.”

“How long do we have to listen to this guy?” grumbled Piffy.

The words were like a hand grenade going off in the Halls of Montezuma and ending up on the Shores of Tripoli. A dozen heads came up from the floor! The spell—whatever it was—was broken!

“Jesus!” whispered bint Marwan.

The man in the white robe was looking straight at Piffy.

“They can’t see you! They can’t see you!” hissed bint Marwan.

“No, but he can!” cried Piffy, pointing at the hulking Shrek-like giant that had come up behind the loudmouth in the white robe.

It was Umyar!

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said bint Marwan.

Yes, oh, dear…