"I have no such intentions," Mr. Levy tells him, in the falsely relaxed voice with which he advises failing students, defiant students, students who have given up on themselves. "I just want to tell you a few things that might interest you."
"What things? Tell me, and I'll let you out when we get closer to my destination."
"Well, I guess the main thing is, Charlie's dead."
"Dead?"
"Beheaded, in fact. Gruesome, huh? He'd been tortured before they did it. The body was found yesterday morning, dumped in the Meadows, by the canal south of Giants Stadium. They wanted it found. There was a note attached to it, in Arabic. Evidently Charlie was CIA undercover and the other side finally figured it out."
There had been a father who vanished before his memory could take a picture of him, and then Charlie had been friendly and shown him the roads, and now this tired Jew in clothes as if he dressed in the dark has taken their place, the empty space beside him. "What did the note say, exactly?"
"Oh, I don't know. Same old same old, to the effect that he who breaks his oatii punishes himself. God will not deny him his recompense."
"It sounds like the Qur'an, the forty-eighth sura."
"It sounds like the Torah, too. Whatever you say. There's a lot I don't know. I'm coming in late."
"May I ask, how do you know what you do know?"
"My wife's sister. She works in Washington for Homeland Security. She called me yesterday; my wife had mentioned my interest in you, and they wondered if there was a connection. They couldn't find you. Nobody could. I thought I'd give this a try."
"Why should I believe any of what you say?"
"Don't, then. Believe it only if it fits with what you know. My guess is it does. Where is Charlie now, if I'm lying? His wife says he's vanished. She swears he was just in the furniture business."
"What of the other Chehabs, and the men to whom they supplied money?"
Ahmad is being tailgated by a midnight-blue Mercedes driven by an impatient man too young to have earned a Mercedes, unless it was in stock manipulation at the expense of the less fortunate. Such men live expensively in the so-called bedroom towns of New Jersey and jumped from the towers when God brought them down. Ahmad feels superior to this Mercedes driver, and indifferent to his tooting and swerving back and forth as he seeks to dramatize his wish that the white truck were moving less sedately in the middle lane.
Mr. Levy answers, "Gone underground and scattered, I suppose. They caught two men trying to fly to Paris out of Newark, and Charlie's father is in the hospital with what's supposed to be a stroke."
"He suffers from diabetes, truly."
"Whatever. He says he loves this country, and so did his son, and now his son has died for this country. There's one theory that he's the one who fingered his son. The uncle in Florida, the feds have had an eye on him for some time. These agencies are overwhelmed, and don't communicate with one another, but they don't miss every trick. The uncle will talk, or somebody will. It's hard to believe one brother had no idea what the other was up to. These Arabs all pressure each other with Islam: how can you say no to the will of Allah?"
"I don't know. I have been denied," Ahmad says stiffly, "the blessing of a brother."
"Small blessing, to go by what I see at school. In jackals, I read somewhere, the pups fight to the death as soon as they're born."
Less stiffly, remembering with a smile, Ahmad tells Mr. Levy, "Charlie was very eloquent for the jihad."
"That was one of his acts, apparently. I never met the guy. He sounds like a loose cannon. His mistake, my sister-in-law said-and all she does is echo her boss, she worships the bozo-his fatal mistake was to wait too long to spring his trap. He'd seen too many movies."
"He watched a great deal of television. He wanted some day to direct commercials."
"My point is, Ahmad, you don't need to do this. It's all over. Charlie never meant for you to go through with it. He was using you to flush out the others."
Ahmad reviews the unfolding, slithering fabric of what he has heard and concludes, "It would be a glorious victory for Islam."
"Islam? How so?"
"It would slay and inconvenience many unbelievers."
"You've got to be kidding," Mr. Levy says, as Ahmad deftly maneuvers the transition from 80 East to 95 South, seizing the inside lane and not allowing the Mercedes to pass him on the right as the bulk of the traffic continues east toward the George Washington Bridge. On the left, the Overpeck River crinkles in the breeze as it flows toward the Hackensack. The truck is on the New Jersey Turnpike, above swampland being exploited in every scrap that can be drained. The Turnpike branches; the leftward branch leads to the Lincoln Tunnel exit. The plotters saw to it that an E-Z Pass transponder is fixed to the center of the truck's windshield; it will let him roll smoothly through the toll booth, without more than a moment's exposure of the youthful driver to the eyes of a toll-taker or guard.
"Think of your mother." The conversational ease has gone from Mr. Levy's voice; a touch of stridency has entered. "She'll not only lose you but she'll become known as the mother of a monster. A madman."
Ahmad is beginning to take pleasure in not being moved by this intruder's arguments. "I have never been essential to my mother," he explains, "though she did, I admit, stick with her assignment once I was unfortunately born. As to the mother of a monster, in the Middle East the mothers of martyrs are highly esteemed and receive a substantial pension."
Mr. Levy says, "I'm sure she'd rather have you than a pension."
"How are you sure, may I ask, sir? How well do you know her?"
Gulls, at first a few in his vision through the windshield, then dozens coming into focus, and the dozens becoming hundreds, wheel above a waste site. Beyond their greedy gathering of wings, beyond the sullen Hudson, stands the stone-colored silhouette, notched like an immense key, of the great city, Satan's heart. Lit from the east, its towers loom in shadow from the west, a dust of haze radiant between them. Mr. Levy's silence foretells a new attack on Ahmad's convictions, but for now driver and passenger share without comment their glimpse of one of the world's wonders, suddenly snatched from view as the traffic hurtles onward and is replaced by relatively empty expanses on either side of 95-marsh grass shot through with blue flashes of sky reflected by the watery channels as they wander in the mud. High in his windshield, a silvery cruciform glint escapes Newark International Airport, carving in the milky blank sky a twin-tipped trail like a highway for others to follow, in the web of patterns the air controllers enforce. Ahmad momentarily feels exhilarated, like a plane lifting free of gravity.
Mr. Levy destroys the moment, saying, "Well, what else can we talk about? Giants Stadium. Did you catch the Jets game yesterday? When that kid Carter fumbled the kickoff, I thought to myself, Here we go again, just like last season. But no, they pulled it out, thirty-one to twenty-four, though you couldn't relax until that rookie safety Coleman came up with the interception in the last minute of the Bengals' final drive." This is presumably Jewish comedy, which Ahmad ignores. In a more sincere voice, Levy says, "I can't believe you're seriously intending to kill hundreds of innocent people."