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comprends pas,” he said in French.
    The man blinked at him. Though he had come from Pakistan to France nearly three years before, he didn’t understand more than a few words of the language. Mussa, who spoke Arabic, English, and several North African languages besides French, switched back to English. “I don’t understand. Can you put this in words for a simple layman?”
    “Of course,” said the engineer indulgently. He had to speak very loudly, because the office was located in the upper floors of a printing factory in the city of Paris. There were advantages to this—the rest of the floor was empty and there were no workers nearby, save for the two men on Mussa’s payroll guarding the door outside. But the incessant pounding of the machines below made it difficult to think, let alone hear someone else speaking. The sound was so loud that a gun could be fired here without being heard elsewhere in the building—Mussa had already tested this for himself.
    “The explosion and collapse of the tunnel beneath the Channel is like the earth shifting across a fault line during an earthquake,” said the engineer. “The speed and size of the drop represent a great deal of energy. That energy is transferred through the water as a wave. As the wave hits the shallow shoreline, it bounds upward. Think of it as a water balloon being squished from the bottom—the water has to go somewhere. The effect is a wall of water that rushes over everything. It’s similar to a tsunami caused by an earthquake. In vulnerable areas like Japan and Alaska in the United States, waves have reached over fifty feet high and obliterated large buildings. The underwater geometry is different, but the size of the initial event should be larger and its effect more concentrated. Is that more understandable?”
    “Very,” said Mussa.
    “It’s a slight distortion, but the general idea is there.” The engineer flashed a series of equations on the screen that he said demonstrated the importance of speed and amplitude in the simulation. His model was conservative, he said, based on an earthquake that would be measured at “only” 6.0. The blast they were contemplating should yield at least 6.3, if not more. Assuming that his calculations were correct and the Channel tunnel collapsed, the shock wave would be several magnitudes greater.
    “I have a second set of simulations to demonstrate that,” said the engineer, tapping on his computer screen. The man loved his simulations, Mussa thought; he spoke of the equations involved as a fanatical wine lover might talk about a wine.
    “So you see, fifty feet of water, as a minimum. Assuming, of course, that the models and their assumptions are correct. I believe they are, but this is the thing one doesn’t know until it happens.”
    The sudden note of doubt in the engineer’s voice shook Mussa. “The bomb won’t explode?”
    “Oh, no, no, that’s a given. That part we’re sure of. I’ve told you that many times. That we’re sure of. You’ve seen those equations many times. Many, many times. The tsunami. That’s what I meant. And even there—something will happen. Something devastating and pleasing to God. I have dreamed of this effect for months. I’ve modeled it many times. I’m sure something will happen. Something brilliant. But will it be fifty feet? Seventy-five? One hundred? Those are things we cannot know.”
    A fifty-foot wall of water radiating through the English Channel would wipe out Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as much of the French coast. But as far as Mussa was concerned, all of that was simply a bonus to his actual goal—obliterating the Chunnel, which connected Britain and France. It was God’s revenge: the infidels had dared to claim their tunnel superior to the one true God’s decision to separate the lands; Mussa had been chosen to prove their folly.
    The engineer’s reassurance that the weapon would work relaxed Mussa, and he let the man prattle on. The