Free Changeling by David Wood, Sean Ellis Page A

probed the interior of the apartment.
    “Raina is already in bed,” Shah said, answering the unasked question.
    He thought he saw something like a smile flicker across her face. It was probably his imagination.
    Wishful thinking.
    Even now, facing this unprecedented crisis, he could scarcely contain his longing for her. Just being around her was intoxicating. Working with her day in and day out at the Crescent Defense League home office was enough to make him perpetually giddy, but having her here, in his home, with his wife sleeping so close…that made the forbidden fruit of their unconsummated love seem all the sweeter.
    Gabrielle’s dark serious gaze fell squarely on him. “How bad is it?”
    Shah allowed the fantasy to slip away, and looked around furtively. He had it on reliable authority that he was the subject of a secretly sworn and executed FISA warrant. His telephone calls and emails were being screened and he was certain that both his apartment and office were bugged.
    Ordinarily, the watching eyes and listening ears did not concern him. He scrupulously avoided doing or saying anything that might even be faintly construed as illegal. As both a Muslim and a journalist who frequently exposed the government’s illegal excesses and abuses of power, there were many—both in government circles and in the mainstream news media—who considered him far more dangerous than any terrorist, and rightly so. The old saying was true after all; the pen was mightier than the sword. Tonight however, was a different matter. Tonight, the distinction between pen and sword had become very blurry indeed. He touched a finger to his lips and stepped out of the apartment, closing the door behind him. He led Gabrielle to the stairwell and up to the roof where, hopefully, they would be able to converse without being overheard by federally sanctioned eavesdroppers.
    Gabrielle understood the need for discretion. Thought she was not a Muslim, her hard-hitting investigative reporting, which often made use of highly-placed informants—men and women who were legally and technically committing treason by sharing what they knew with a journalist—had put her on the government’s radar as well. The fact that she worked closely with Shah, co-founding the Crescent Defense League with him, as well as using him as a source for her freelance articles, surely had not improved her reputation, but that was the price both of them were willing to pay to see a world free from tyranny and intolerance.
    It was their holy crusade. A jihad , not for Islam—Shah’s faith was a complicated thing, informed more by science than the words of the Prophet—but for the truth.
    With more than 1.6 billion adherents—twenty-three percent of the global population—the world’s fastest growing religion was also arguably the world’s dominant religious belief system, regaining a status it had once held for more than four hundred years, from the 8 th to 13 th centuries. That time, still remembered as the Golden Age of Islam, had been a period of unparalleled scientific, intellectual and cultural achievements, made possible by the unifying power of the Prophet’s writings. Shah, like many modern thinkers who shared his culture and faith, was skeptical when it came to matters of divine revelation, but he was a believer in the power of a united purpose. A second Golden Age of Islam was possible, but only if Muslims everywhere recognized and lived up to their potential for greatness.
    Shah’s mission in life was to make sure that happened. He would be the Mahdi, the last imam, who would reunite Sunni and Shia, and all the fractured sects of the faith and lead them to a greatness surpassing even the days of the Prophet. Truth was his weapon, a fire that burned through the endless storm of lies and prejudices. The articles he posted on the Crescent Defense League website not only exposed the agenda of Islam’s enemies, who sought always to characterize Islam as a