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“Mustafa al Baghdadi,” Idris said. “You have something that belongs to me.”

“You are mistaken,” said Mustafa, stepping forward to interpose himself between Idris’s men and the prisoner. “This man is coming back with me for a proper interrogation at Homeland Security headquarters.”

“Ah, I’m afraid there’s been a change in plan.” Idris pulled out a folded sheet of letterhead and presented it with a flourish. “The president, in consultation with Senator Bin Laden and several other members of the Intelligence Committee, has decided to classify this prisoner as a high-value detainee. We will be transferring him directly to Chwaka Bay.”

Mustafa scanned the document, which bore the president’s seal and his signature. “This isn’t right.”

“You are welcome to take the matter up with the president yourself,” Idris said. “But I understand his schedule is quite busy today, so it may be some time before you are able to reach him. In the meantime . . .”

He signaled to his men. A group of four advanced towards the prisoner. “Wait!” Mustafa shouted. He turned to the MPs: “Stop these men!”

But before they could do anything, a man in an Army colonel’s uniform got out of Idris’s SUV. “Stand down,” he told the MPs. “Do not interfere!”

The prisoner meanwhile seemed to have wilted in the heat. He was limp when the mujahideen seized hold of him. They hauled him up roughly and began dragging him, his bare feet trailing across the hot tarmac.

Mustafa took a step towards them and Idris said, “Go ahead. It’s pointless, but if a beating will complete your day my men will be happy to supply it.” The good humor with which he said this, more than the words themselves, convinced Mustafa that there really was nothing he could do.

The mujahideen bundled the prisoner’s limp body into the back of their SUV. “I suppose,” Idris said, disappointed that Mustafa had declined the beating, “there’s no point in my asking what this man already told you.”

“Nothing. I haven’t interviewed him yet.”

“Really.” Idris looked skeptical. “Well, I’ll know soon enough if that’s true . . . And don’t worry, I’ll copy you a full report of my interrogation.” Laughing at this joke, he signaled his men and they all got back in their vehicles and drove off.

“They won’t get anything out of him,” Amal said.

“You don’t think so?” Mustafa looked at her. “You were with him for most of the flight. You’re saying he didn’t tell you anything?”

“No, he told me plenty: about America and Iraq, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden . . . Strange stuff. Crazy stuff.”

“Well if he told all that to you, why wouldn’t he tell Idris?”

“Because I made a deal with him,” Amal said. “He knew Idris would be waiting here to take him. Not Idris specifically, but someone like him, someone from Al Qaeda. He said he wasn’t afraid to die, but he didn’t want to be tortured—something about how he didn’t feel the Golden Rule should apply to him . . . So I offered him a bargain. I told him if he talked to me, I’d make sure he wasn’t tortured.”

“And he believed you?”

Her hand was in her pocket. She brought it out and spread her fingers again. There was a green twist of cellophane in her palm: an empty candy wrapper. They both stared at it, and then the updraft caught it and carried it away as it had the paper.

“Amal?” Mustafa said. “What have you done?”

And Amal said: “That man tried to kill my son.”

Book Four

The Stone

THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

Truther

A “Truther” is a skeptic who questions the official account of the events of November 9, 2001. Many Truthers belong to organizations such as the 11/9 Citizens Commission and Ulama for 11/9 Truth and Justice. They hold meetings and rallies, petition for the release of secret government documents, and use the Internet to publicize their alternative theories about the November 9 terror attacks.

Almost all Truthers believe that the UAS government has suppressed important information about what really happened on 11/9, though they disagree about the nature and extent of the cover-up. Some Truthers claim that the intelligence community knew about the hijackings in advance, and some go even farther, positing that government agents participated in the planning and execution of the attacks.

Suggested motives for such government involvement in 11/9 include:

· To justify massive increases in military and intelligence spending.

· To create a pretext for the

War on Terror

and the invasion of America.

· To undermine the popularity of the

Party of God

and the

House of Saud

by making them appear weak.

· To halt the “

secularization

” of Arabian society and frighten people into embracing a new

Islamic Awakening

.

Government officials have been generally dismissive of the Truthers’ claims, when they bother to acknowledge them at all. 11/9 Commission spokesman Mohammed Atta called theories of government involvement in the attacks “offensive,” adding: “There is no cover-up. No one denies that pre-11/9 anti-terror efforts were inadequate, but people need to accept that there’s no deeper mystery here . . .”

Regarding the suggestion that the 11/9 attacks were an attempt to literally “put the fear of God” into people, the President’s United Arab Fiqh Council has released a fatwa stating that the use of terrorism to spread belief in Islam would be a clear violation of God’s law, citing as evidence Holy Quran chapter 2, verse 256 (“Let there be no compulsion in religion . . .”) and chapter 5, verse 32 (“If any one slew a person—unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land—it would be as if he slew the whole people”) and also chapter 6, verse 151 (“Take not life, which God hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law”). “While we obviously cannot say that no one in government would do such a terrible thing,” the Council concluded, “we can say that no true Muslim would.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, such statements have done little to dampen Truthers’ enthusiasm for their theories. They continue to seek “the reality behind the mirage.”

The crusader was staying on the ninth floor of the Zawra Park Hotel. His name was Joseph Simeon and he was the last surviving member of a five-man cell that had left Heidelberg two weeks ago.

Following a route common to both legal and illegal immigrants, the members of the cell had traveled by bus to Istanbul. There they’d met with a forger who was supposed to supply them with guest-worker ID cards and other documents, but when the cell leader insulted the man’s Orthodox faith and tried to convert him to a more proper form of Christianity, he threw them out of his house. They were forced to turn to another counterfeiter, who charged three times as much for inferior work.

In fact it was worse than they knew. This second forger, having determined the crusaders had no Arabic, decided to play a prank on them. The Roman-letter portion of Joe Simeon’s ID card gave his cover name as Thaddeus Schulman. But the accompanying Arabic text said he was Princess Jezebel and listed his occupation as “pole dancer.” The cell leader’s card identified him as a professional camel anus.

The crusaders continued on to Gaziantep, where they hired a guide to sneak them into the UAS. The guide got a look at their papers and realized they’d been taken for fools, but as they’d already managed to offend him too, he said nothing. He did what they paid him to do, smuggled them into Syria and delivered them to a workers’ hostel in Aleppo. The manager of the hostel was highly amused by something but wouldn’t share the joke.