Overview
A former CIA field agent on an early retirement, Larry Larson falls out of rank with the CIA bureaucracy. 
After serving his country for years, he is disillusioned. His devotion to his work ruined his personal life. His wife divorces him, and his only son won’t talk to him. With the help of his old friend, Kris Klug, Larson finds a way to return to Saudi Arabia.
This time, though, he’s working on his own terms. With a goal to make up for the time lost in his personal life, he tracks down 
high-value targets, al-Qaeda leaders. A free-lance bounty hunter, Larson hunts for the multi-million-dollar reward money. When his main source of information, Prince Kabir, is killed, Larson wants to solve the mystery of this murder in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—on the trail to his rewards.
Larson actually witnesses the murder and later finds out that the victim was Kabir, dead in the Najd Desert region of Riyadh, clothed in a robe and positioned like a mole with his head in the sand, an image that Sufi poets retell in an Aesop fable. In the Arabic Sufi version, the Arabic word khuld,or mole, is from a word root KHLD, which serves as the first step on a trail of clues leading to the discovery not only of the mystery behind Prince Kabir’s murder but also to an extremely powerful religious secret about which Larson has no clue until he meets Carmen.
While looking over the circumstances of Prince Kabir’s death, 
Larson finds an ancient rosary (Misbaha) in Kabir’s pocket, which includes coded messages that can lead a careful thinker to solve the mystery of the prince’s death and much more.
Carmen Finds Larson—They Flee the Police
The estranged and abused wife of Saudi Prince Jafar, Carmen is a close friend to one of Prince Kabir’s wives, Kadisha. Carmen leaves her husband’s house and disobeys his orders when she informs local CIA agents about Kabir’s killers. Disobeying her husband is a capital crime. She becomes a fugitive.
The local CIA agents are Arab, bought and paid for by the Saudi Royalty. Once the Saudi authorities learn that Carmen knows too much about Kabir’s death, they take particular interest in stopping her. She seeks Larson’s help to leave the 
country. He understands that the Saudi authorities might pursue him as a suspect in Kabir's murder. They take Carmen's Mercedes and make a run for the border.
As Carmen becomes more acquainted with Larson, she feels at ease and shows him that Kabir’s notebook contains coded messages. She begins to decipher the messages by using her understanding of Sufi codes, typically used in poetry. The two fugitives feel compelled to solve the mystery behind Kabir’s death and the messages he left behind.
Discovering Messages
One step at a time, Carmen discovers that Kabir’s notebook and rosary contain coded messages about how to find a sacred text, a missing chapter from the Koran. The first message she finds in Karbir’s notebook is a five–line fable by Aesop that includes a Sufi method to code words for hidden, otherwise illegal messages.
She explains to Larson how the Sufis use ciphers, various word codes in their writings, in order to avoid persecution from conservative theocrats. One
way to hide the intended meaning of a message among Sufis is to use the root of a word that represents other words to express the writer’s true thoughts. Like any other innovative thinkers and artists living under suppressive regimes or authoritarian theocracies, over the centuries Sufis have used various means to disguise their true thoughts. In the case of KHLD, it alludes to several other words that reveal Prince Kabir’s affiliation with Sufism, a mystical philosophy considered heretical among most Muslims, and especially among the Wahhabbi fundamentalists who rule over every aspect of the daily behavior of regular citizens in Saudi Arabia.
Sufi Mysticism
The use of hidden messages in the many famous Sufi poems and other artistic works, enable these agnostic thinkers to 
express their individual desire for freedom and self-realization while living in religious or political regimes that otherwise condemn their points of view as free thinkers. For the mere sake of appearances and to seem in conformance with social convention, Sufis accept various religions as mere envelopes around their eclectic way of thinking which embraces honor for the sacred feminine. Knowledge about the encryption methods used by Sufi poets such as Rumi and Nizami figure prominently in the solution to the mystery.
The unraveling of the mystery requires the solution to a series of brain teasers, including various types of Sufi cryptography. The solution itself is intimately connected with the possible location of the Key to the Kaaba and to a mysterious society called the Order of Sufis, the eastern parent of Freemasonry at times protected by the Hashshashin (origin of the word Assassin).
A Need to Control the Documents for Power
Two Islamic organizations—the Wahhabis (Salafism), and the Muslim Brotherhood—as well as sophisticated mercenaries like Backwater are ready to kill to control the information that the Sufis have kept hidden for centuries, according to legend.
Since the 7th century, when Mohammed’s close friend and cousin, Ali, helped to write the sacred, Islamic book, the Koran, controversy arose about the new religion of Islam. An angel, Gabriel, had dictated the sacred text to the Prophet Mohammed, and Ali had helped to put it to paper from oral recitations.
When Mohammed died (632 A.D.), factions of Islam arose and disputed who should take over the Prophet’s role as religious leader, or Caliph. Ali was killed in this political and religious 
struggle over the inheritance of power and leadership. Ali had become Mohammed’s son-in-law when he married Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima. Should this family line take over the new church’s leadership? The family line of a female heir? Or should the power be placed with other male leaders?
During these political struggles after Mohammed’s death, a schism in Islam grew strong between the Sunnis, who claimed the male leaders should take control, and the Shiites, who claimed that Fatima’s family lineage should lead.
Some believed that Ali, the scribe of the Koran, had preserved certain verses, Suras, from the Koran that answer these important questions. Could this explain why Ali was murdered by a Sunni, a Kharijite, in 661 A.D.? The answers to these questions raise the stakes for many political battles. To this day, great struggles arise between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Powerful Islamic leaders hold huge investments in one faction or the other.
If Ali did preserve hidden chapters from the Koran, as legend has it, many powerbrokers would want to control this crucial information. Historical sources indicate that Ali had passed these secret verses of the Koran to the Sufis, mystical philosophers, to keep them safe from the destructive interests of Islamic factions. To this day, some people believe that the Sufis still possess these hidden documents. In particular, the Sunnis are extremely eager to control this information. They contract expert mercenaries and spies in the hope of some day taking control of the lost chapters of the Koran.
Lee Raymerd, Executive VP at Elibom Noxxe Petroleum Co., also sits on the board of directors for Backwater USA, a mercenary militia, privately owned by neoconservative Christians. The owners of Backwater also contract with Saudi Royalty, Sunnis, and take special interest in suppressing the information that the Sufis hold, a harmful truth about their fundamentalist beliefs.
These lost Suras of the Koran pose a threat to the partriarchical authority of Islam as well as other major religions, including Christianity. Leaders of fundamentalist groups aim to control the documents at all costs.
Not only do the Sunni authorities in Saudi Arabia seek these lost Suras of the Koran but also all sorts of religious groups. Religious leaders believe that finding the lost Suras would undermine their theocratic control and totalitarian regimes. For this reason, such groups will stop at nothing to find and conceal the documents that Carmen and Larson have uncovered. All sorts of people, from religious fanatics to art collectors, are prepared to do anything to obtain the lost codex.
This includes people like Lee Raymerd and the owners of Backwater who take special interest in stopping the information the Sufis hold, a harmful truth about their fundamentalist beliefs.
