Yes, he could kill. Of all the skills he learned that year in the camp near Herat, it was his most difficult and ultimately his proudest achievement.

His first was a Reuters journalist traveling in an area still controlled by the Taliban, with whom Zarqawi had very close ties. The journalist had been filing uncomfortably accurate stories about the Taliban's renascent activities that were appearing in newspapers all over the world. Alerted to his presence, Zarqawi declared that here was an obvious agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and sent Akil and six trained veterans after him with his blessing.

It was almost absurdly easy, a simple roadblock that stopped the jeep and extracted the driver and the translator. Both, aware of the reality of life in Afghanistan at that time, were white and shaking. Akil filmed the journalist bound and gagged in front of a two-day-old issue of the Independent News Pakistan and sent the driver off with it, trembling with relief.

The journalist, a middle-aged white man thick through the waist and addicted to Marlboro cigarettes, was Canadian, spoke English and French, and was at first philosophical at his capture. No ideologue, his view of the world and its leaders was sanguine and cynical and very amusing, and Akil quite enjoyed his company while they waited for the negotiations to play out. Ransom was demanded, and refused. A deadline passed. When AMI, properly masked, shot the translator on camera, in front of the journalist, the journalist was shocked and disbelieving. Conversation ceased. AMI regretted the necessity, not least because conversation ceased afterward.

When the second deadline passed and AMI had the journalist dragged before the camera, squat and malevolent on its tripod, under the impetus of sudden inspiration he borrowed a dagger from one of the other men, a sharp curve of silver, the hilt set with semiprecious stones. He turned the camera on, and walked toward the journalist, forced to his knees with his arms twisted behind his back. The journalist swore and began to struggle. One of the men holding him laughed.

AMI could sense their excitement. He went around behind the journalist, knotted a fist in his hair to pull his head back, and looked into the camera lens. "In praise of Allah!"

"Allah!" "Inshallah!" "Allah!" "Death to the infidel! Death to America! Free Palestine!"

"Motherfucker," the journalist said, his voice a growl of hatred, staring up at AMI through narrowed eyes, his teeth bared. "Do it if you're going to and stop preening for the fucking camera."

Akil brought the knife down and in one clean stroke cut the man's throat open from ear to ear. The gush of blood was immediate and immense, turning the hand that held the knife red, flooding the front of the journalist's body and splashing the men holding his arms. The weight of the body tore the wound open further and left Akil holding it up by the journalist's spine. He tossed the body from him and it thumped soddenly to the floor.

Again, he looked straight into the camera's lens. He raised the bloody blade in the bloody hand. "Alhamdulillah!"

The men's cries rose around him. "Alhamdulillah!" "Alhamdulillah!" "Alhamdulillah!"

It was the beginning.

There was a soft knock at the door, and the memory faded for the reality of the flat in Dusseldorf. When he opened the door, he found Yussuf and Yaqub standing there.

"Basil?" Yaqub said.

He shook his head gravely. "They caught up with us. Basil told me he would distract them, and for me to run."

He made mint tea and they toasted the bravery and self-sacrifice of their missing comrade. Yussuf was fervent in a prayer for those who had been hurt and arrested. Yaqub was quieter and a little hesitant, regarding Akil with wide, troubled eyes.

Akil took no outward notice. It was their first taste of action. There had to be reaction of some sort. He smiled to himself. It was a law of physics.

When their glasses were empty Akil began again to pack. They watched him in silence until Yussuf said tentatively, "You are leaving us?"

"It has become too dangerous for me to stay," Akil said. He sorted through a selection of shirts and tucked them neatly into his case.

"Where will you go?" Yussuf said.

"Somewhere else," Akil said.

"But where?" Yaqub said.

"And to do what?" Yussuf said, the one Akil had always thought the superior in intellect.

"To continue my work," Akil said. He sorted through the papers in his desk. None in a name anyone would recognize, so he left them. He pulled out the German passport in the name of Dandin Gandhi he had bought in Barcelona and deliberately ripped it apart, piling the resulting fragments in a large bowl. He lit a match and the three of them watched his photograph melt and reduce to charred ash.

"Your work against the infidel," Yussuf said. "For the greater glory of Islam."

"Yes," Akil said.

Yussuf nodded at Yaqub. "We wish it to be our work as well," Yussuf said. "We will go with you."

Yaqub looked at once thrilled and frightened, but he didn't contradict his friend.

Akil closed his suitcase and stood it next to the door. He shrugged into his jacket and stood for a moment, looking around the room, checking to see if he'd missed anything. No.

He looked at the young men. "You understand that if you set out on this path there is no turning back."

Yussuf met his eyes steadily, without flinching. Yaqub was breathing a little faster than normal, his color high. He shifted from one foot to the other, once starting at a sound from the street.

Akil always felt bound by honor to give them more than Zarqawi had given him. His face was serious, his voice grave. Their eyes widened and they glanced at each other before looking back at him. "You will leave behind family, friends, everything you have ever known. You will be hunted by policemen of every nation, always on the move, often hungry, always tired, never again knowing a night's peace, and at the end only death."

"But a glorious death," Yussuf said quickly.

"Glorious indeed," Akil said. The rest came by rote. He had said it so many times he was hard put to it to infuse the words with any conviction. "We will either convert the infidel to the true faith, make them our slaves, and have sole dominion over the earth, or we will put them all to death. If we ourselves die in this endeavor, Allah will take us as his own, and we will be most richly rewarded in the afterlife."

"Seventy-two virgins for each of us," Yaqub said, and nudged his friend.

Akil pretended not to hear this. As useful for recruiting suicide bombers as it might be, he himself doubted the seventy-two virgins. "But all this you have had from the imam, and you are men of faith, so I need not repeat it to you here. My concern is what happens between now and then. It is not an easy task, what you wish to do."

"We will follow you," Yussuf said immediately.

"Today? Now? Are you this moment prepared to walk behind me out this door and never look back?"

"We are," they said in chorus. Yussuf walked to the door and opened it for Akil.

He didn't look back, but their footsteps echoed in his ears.