“Good advice, old boy,” said the host. And a jolly nice evening, too, and time for another whiskey. But Dr. Omar had to excuse himself. He was working part of this summer term at Bahria University, near the club, as an adjunct professor of computer science. He had come from Islamabad a few days before, and he had a bit more work to do that night at the lab. As he left the members’ lounge, he admired the old photographs and memorabilia once more, the shots of men in flannel shorts holding their oars, and of men and women bathing together in the creek, before the water became polluted and the culture was transformed.
Traditions mattered, said Dr. Omar’s friend, and the professor agreed that it was so.
Dr. Omar was tired. He did not like to admit that to his friend at the club, or to anyone, but it was a fact. He was a boat that was always moving against the tide. He had struggled as a boy to escape the flow of his tribal world, and to find a new set of connections in the West. And he had succeeded, visibly and invisibly. But once those attachments had become firm-visits and conferences and briefings-an event had taken place that compelled him to paddle back toward home, this time entirely in secret. He was never at home, even when he was at home. There was no place that was comfortable or safe.
The professor did not believe in permanent revenge, or in the permanence of anything that involved mortal beings. He had asked himself when it would be time to stop: How much blood would be enough? That was something his father had never explained when he talked about the tribal code. It was measure for measure, but how could you calculate the weight of an insult, or the commensurate volumes of honor and fear?
When he had seen the television footage of the American woman at the hospital in Islamabad, the face of someone he had intended to kill, soothing a Pakistani widow, he had thought: Perhaps it is time. But vengeance is a heavy weight, and the momentum of the thing had carried him forward.
Omar thought of his sister, the sole surviving member of his blood family, who was living in Peshawar. She had a son named Rashid who was now eleven years old. Omar had visited him six months ago, and brought him a small computer as a gift. The boy had pleaded for him to come back, but it was too dangerous to go more often. Too many people were curious about him, and he had worked so hard to erase his past.
It had been uncanny, but on that last trip to Peshawar, his young nephew had asked to play number games.
“I know all the perfect numbers,” the boy had said. “Six, twenty-eight, four hundred ninety-six, eight thousand one hundred twenty-eight.”
“Very good,” Dr. Omar had said. “You are a bright boy.”
“I know the prime numbers, too,” the boy had boasted. “Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen-”
“Those are too easy. Tell me the primes over one hundred.”
“One hundred one, one hundred three, one hundred seven, one hundred nine, one hundred thirteen.”
“Bahadur!” Omar had exclaimed, which means brave man. “Over five hundred.”
“Five hundred three, five hundred nine, five hundred twenty-one, five hundred twenty-three…”
“ W’Allah! ” Omar had said, patting the boy on the head. As he listened to the numbers spilling out, he had felt himself falling through time. He had rung that same scale as a boy, saying the primes out loud to himself because his father couldn’t understand. This boy Rashid would not be caught between two worlds: He would live only in one.
And Omar had thought to himself that day as he finished his visit to his sister’s home and said his goodbyes: Perhaps we have come to the end. Perhaps this is the balance.
Dr. Omar walked to the university compound, a half mile from the Boat Club. He passed the cantonment where the senior naval officers had their residences, and then entered the gate of Bahria, which was itself a creation of the navy establishment. The naval engineers had been interested in Dr. Omar’s work, like so many others. The porter waved him through the gate and he climbed the stairs to his office, which overlooked a lawn that had faded to a sickly lime-green in the summer heat.
He turned on his computer and checked his mail, account by account. The computer he was using at Bahria was a university machine whose IP address had no connection with him. The professor had nearly a dozen email identities, each with a different name and set of secrets. Near the end of this session, he visited a Yahoo account that he checked daily on the chance it might contain a new bit of information.
What he saw in the Yahoo account this evening astonished him: The mischief-maker was persistent. You cut off this creature’s head, and still it kept moving. You closed down its financial hub and it found another way to move money. And back to Dubai, the same bank, too, and fifty million this time, to pay more bribes. This was arrogance, surely.
The professor had imagined the time when he might be satisfied in his hunger for revenge, but this was a special opportunity. He sent his Belgian correspondent a brief reply in Americanese:
Good stuff. Take care. Perihelion.
The professor moved quickly to exploit this gift of information, using the confidential network he had assembled over the past year. He sent a message to a Pakistani who worked at the Citibank branch in Dubai, and asked him to monitor the receipt of a large transfer coming from an FBS account in Geneva. He emailed another Pakistani who worked for the UAE aviation-security authority in Dubai and asked him to forward the names and credit card numbers of all tickets purchased for travel to Dubai over the next week.
It did not take him long to find a match. By late that night, Dr. Omar knew the identity of the woman who was coming to Dubai and when her flight would arrive. It was a paradox: This very person had appeared to show mercy, and yet she continued her evil work. He could only wonder at the cruel determination of the Americans. Their front company in London was collapsing, and still they continued with their meddling. That was why their adversaries would triumph; this America marched ever deeper into folly. It did not know when to stop. He wanted to go to Dubai himself to settle this account, as it seemed to him. But that would be unwise. Better to contact one of the members of his network.
Dr. Omar sent all his messages and left the computer lab after midnight for his lodgings to catch a few hours’ sleep. He rarely communicated in such a burst, but he was impatient.
The watchers and listeners were in place when the mysterious professor surfaced on the Internet. Cyril Hoffman had done his work: Small teams were on the ground waiting in Karachi, Peshawar and other Pakistani cities. Half a world away, people saw the messages, and they carried out the operations that had been planned. They were impatient, as well.
Dr. Omar drifted in and out of time when he put down his head on the pillow. He was sleeping at the apartment of a new friend, Aziz. The professor was changing lodgings every few nights now, to be safe. This man Aziz was part of the network that supported Dr. Omar’s work. He was a “connected” man.
Omar awoke suddenly, bathed in sweat. He had felt a sense of vertigo, not just stumbling as we do in our dreams sometimes, but falling through space as if from a great height, with nothing to break his fall. He tried to go back to sleep but he was roused after an hour.
“There is a call, Ustad,” said his host. “A man wants to speak to you.”
“I am not here. Tell him that it is a wrong number.”
“It is one of the brothers. He says he must talk now.”
Omar put the phone to his ear. He listened to the voice. He cried out, as if a blade had punctured his skin.
“Call me back, sweet brother, when you know,” he said, tears filling his eyes.