There wasn't time enough for the full course with this group, however, the schedule was far too tight. It was the one thing he didn't like about this operation. He had never liked keeping to someone else's timetable. It caused haste, and haste caused carelessness. He hadn't lived this long by being careless.

In this case, though, he reminded himself, the end result would be well worth the inconvenience. It was another reason for the size of the cell, and for the group training. He was breaking his most stringent security protocols, and he knew it, risking all their lives and his own freedom. Still, it could not be helped, and if they were successful the reward would be great.

His two lieutenants answered questions, Akil dropping in an occasional low-voiced comment when Yussuf or Yaqub got off track. The recruits were too awed to speak to him. Most of them couldn't even look at him. Good. Awe inspired unquestioning obedience in the faithful.

They met over a month, never in the same place and never on the same day of the week, and once, again upon Akil's instruction, changing locations at the last moment, more as an exercise in tradecraft than because he thought they were being watched. At the end of their last meeting, he gave them the same speech he had given Yussuf and Yaqub before sending them ahead of him to England, almost word for word. "You understand, once you set out on this path, there will be no turning back. You must 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 immediately, as he had on that day in Diisseldorf.

Akil nodded his head once, gravely. "I cannot tell you what will happen in the end. 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 the sword."

They looked back at him, attentive, alert, perhaps breathing a little faster, but with no timidity or faint-heartedness or second thoughts on display. Yes, Yussuf and Yaqub had chosen well. "If we ourselves die in the execution of this sacred task, 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, exactly as he had said it in Diisseldorf.

"But you are men of faith, you know what will come to you, 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 have chosen to do."

"We will follow you," Yussuf said, predictably.

"Today?" Akil said to the men sitting in front of him. "Now? Are you this moment prepared to walk behind me out this door and never look back?"

They were on their feet cheering with one voice when he was finished. That the cheer was led by Yussuf and Yaqub was not noticed.

He smiled, then, patting the air with his hands. "Your joy in being about good work is music to my ears, but quietly, please, brothers, quietly." They subsided, eyes brilliant with excitement.

"You leave tonight," he told them.

"Where are we going?"

It was a natural enough question, and he saw no reason not to answer it. "You will be traveling separately, some on different planes, and I urge you not to congregate in the air or at either airport, and certainly not as you are going through customs and immigration. Yussuf has your identity papers and your airline tickets. You were each of you told to bring a suitcase large enough to be checked. Did you?" Eager nods all around. "Your destination is Vancouver, British Columbia."

" Canada." " Canada!" " Canada?"

"You will be met." There were some old contacts Akil trusted because they worked exclusively for money. "Yaqub will give you the details. You will travel by various means from Vancouver to a small training camp. There, you will learn to use small arms. The four best with the small arms will train on larger weapons." He didn't specify, and by now they knew enough not to ask. "You will also learn how to hide in plain sight, either on the move or in place, in a community such as your own here in York."

"When will we see you again, master?" Yussuf said.

"Soon," Akil said soothingly. He was keeping the timetable as vague as possible. When he gave the call, they would move into immediate action. He would withhold the target and the means of taking it out until they were on the last leg of their journey. "After your training, which should take all of your time for the next two months, you will be instructed to either return to Vancouver or go on to Calgary, Edmonton, or Winnipeg, there to hide in plain sight until you hear from me."

They digested this in silence, their awe momentarily suspended in lieu of the practical considerations involved. There were a few more questions. One of the older men had his elbows on his knees, his hands folded in front of him, his head bent over them as if he were praying. "What is it, brother?"

"My wife is pregnant."

"You are to be congratulated," Akil said courteously. "May it be a son."

The engineer raised his head, his face troubled. "I have a family, friends, a good job."

"Are you having second thoughts, brother?" Akil said softly. "There is no shame in that. The movement is not for everyone. Allah needs as many of the faithful in this world as he does in the next." A statement bin Laden would have refuted with vigor, but Akil wanted only true believers in this cell. The right touch of ideological fanaticism required so much less hand-holding down the road.

"Oh no!" The engineer was clearly shocked at the suggestion. "I see no other way," he said, more moderately, after Yaqub frowned at him and gave the door a significant look. This evening they were in a room off the main hall of a railroad workers' union headquarters, the walls oak-beamed and plastered. "Our people are being dishonored, oppressed, tortured, slaughtered by the tens, the hundreds of thousands. These people voted in this government, they support it. That makes them directly responsible for its actions, and we must hold them accountable for those actions. And then there is Palestine. No," he said. "There is no going back."

It now sounded as if Akil were in need of being convinced, which was what he had intended. He contented himself with saying mildly, "Then what troubles you?"

"I worry that after I have gone to paradise my family will suffer, my friends, my community." The engineer raised a troubled face. "It doesn't seem fair."

"Never fear, my son." Akil placed his hands on the man's shoulders and looked earnestly into his eyes. "We will do our best by them. They shall not want. And they will live in the knowledge that their husband, their father, their friend died a hero. Died for them. Died for Allah."

The engineer's face cleared. "Then I am ready to do my duty, to serve my people and my faith."

"Inshallah," Akil said. They embraced, and the others stood in a circle around them, their faces lit with a glow of righteousness and camaraderie.

Really, he had become very good at this.

THE NEXT DAY HE TOOK THE TRAIN TO LONDON. ALL AROUND HIM THE English sat, oblivious to their imminent danger and unconscious of their apostasy, every second person chattering about nothing into a cell phone, others buried in the sports sections of their newspapers, when any but a fool could see the headlines. Another car bomb and thirty more dead in Iraq. An American Army helicopter downed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. In London Dhiren Barot sentenced to forty years in prison. Israel launching missiles into Gaza.

Madness. Madness, all of it. And his part in it maddest of all.

In London he checked into an anonymous hotel and spent the afternoon in pilgrimage, first in three rides on the tube, on the Circle Line from Liverpool Street to Aldgate, on the Circle Line again from Edgware Road to Paddington, and on the Piccadilly Line from King's Cross St. Pancras to Russell Square. From the station at Russell Square he walked and took a series of buses to Tavistock Square, where he stood in silence for ten minutes, communing with the spirits of the departed. It had been another simple plan, well executed. He only hoped his next plan was as blessed.