"Inshallah," they echoed, and by ones and twos, dispersed.

He and Karim set out on foot, with the clothes on their backs and a thick wad of American dollars. Any border, no matter how well guarded, was susceptible to bribes. This was especially true of the Syrian border. They were stopped many times, and each time either their identity papers passed muster or the cash smoothed their passage.

They spoke but little, both concentrating on escape. There had been much opportunity in Iraq, their way in opened by the invasion and occupation. The country they left behind was in shambles, and the invader, bent on crusade, was on the verge of being utterly routed instead.

He had had a part in that, Akil thought, and not a small one. He smiled to himself.

It was a long way from Pakistan, and not only in distance.

After Adara's death he had wandered across Pakistan, his only goal getting as far away from his tiny village as possible. Eventually he settled in Hayatabad. With his fluency in English it was easy for him to get a job answering the 800 number for an international banking firm. He rented a room from a Hindu family who, while they shunned the Muslim socially,

were only marginally solvent and were more than happy to cash his rent checks. He made no friends, although at work he was appreciated for his willingness to trade shifts with anyone wanting a day off to celebrate a birthday or a wedding or a high holy day.

For years he did not pray, and when after years of turning his shoulder to God he began praying again, he did not go to the mosque. Never again would he tolerate intercession, interpretation, guidance. His appeals were simple and direct, from him to God. He prayed for strength. He prayed for wisdom.

He prayed for vengeance.

The years passed. God did not answer his prayers.

He did not hate God, though. He hated the mullahs who held his people by the throat. Even more did he hate the Western powers who supported them. After his years in America, he understood the rationale behind it, that the pursuit of capitalism required a stable base. That stable base was provided by a strong leader, whose absolute authority was made possible by allowing the mullahs and the imams free rein to enlighten the faithful as to the will of Allah and the laws of the Koran. They would not foment rebellion if left alone to practice-and enforce-Islam as they saw fit. Akil had never dreamed of questioning the source of that dual and complementary authority. Truthfully, he had never really paid much attention to it.

Clearly not as much as his parents had. The memory of the closed door of what had been until that moment his home still burned redly in his mind.

Adara had been his only sibling, a bright-eyed, mischievous child grown into a beautiful woman, the light of their family's life. And now she was gone, and he would never see or speak to his parents again. He had, essentially, orphaned himself that night.

In the lonely years that followed, he had time to reflect on the forces that had worked such havoc on his life. He read a great deal-histories, the Koran, newsmagazines-finding nothing adequate in any of them to explain why he was where he was now. He did, however, believe that he had achieved a better understanding of why the world was where it was. That understanding did nothing to alleviate his anger.

Quite the contrary.

They had burned witches once for sleeping with the devil. It was easy to see America as the devil in bed with his own nation, made even easier by the memory of Adara's body hanging from the neem tree. That memory was the last thing he saw before he went to sleep at night, and the last thing he dreamed before he woke again the next morning. It never varied. In a way, he was glad of it. The memory and the dream nourished his anger, kept it alive.

One day in the summer of 1999, he met a man. The man was not in his first youth, with slightly stooped shoulders and a hard round belly, although his stubby-fingered hands were strong and calloused. He had dark eyes, a long strong nose, and a wide upper lip edged with a thick black mustache, a description that could have fit almost any man in the Middle East, but unlike them, once seen this man was not forgotten. His bright eyes snapped with interest, his speech was rough but decisive and ultimately spellbinding, and his whole attitude was one of purpose and resolution.

The first time AMI met him was at a coffeehouse near where he worked. The man who occupied the desk next to his introduced them.

"Ah, Akil," the man said, examining the young man with those bright eyes. "A good name. It means 'intelligent,' and 'thoughtful,'" he told the others around the table.

There was a bobbing of heads. In another group there might have been some fun poked at Akil, but no one felt they had the right to take liberties with the sober young man, especially without invitation from their host, of whom they were all slightly in awe.

They would become more so.

"And where do you come from, Akil?" the man said.

Akil told him, and then had to explain where in Pakistan it was. Briefly, because even now, five years later, awareness of his exile brought him pain.

The older man's eyes were steady on his face. "And now you live in the big city. What do you do here?"

He was grateful that the subject had been changed. It was only later that he realized the man had seen his distress and had changed it for him deliberately.

The man's name, he said when asked, was Ahmad, Ahmad al-Nazal. He was Jordanian, and when asked he said with a self-deprecating smile that he did many things, none of them really well. For a time he had been a journalist. A few years after that he had gone into video rentals, which explained his near total recall of every movie made since Ben-Hur (Ahmad adored Hugh Griffith). Later, he said, he had worked in a computer store, where he had acquired enough skill to introduce Akil to the Internet. It was from Ahmad that Akil learned of the wonders of email, the ease of anonymous communication, and its incredibly infinite reach. Akil was astonished at how much Ahmad knew about online banking, including things that were at this time only possibilities spoken of in executive meetings. Ahmad predicted that soon everyone with a bank account would be able to pay bills without money ever changing hands. Sums of money would be moved from one account to another from one country to another with a pass code and a keystroke. One's banker would never know one's face, a distinct advantage, Ahmad said, in certain professions.

Ahmad was also a student of history, with his own theories as to the causes of the many global conflicts current the world over. Akil's thought had not gone beyond the local, what he could see, what he had experienced. Ahmad took a more global viewpoint, quoted Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and lectured Akil and a small but ever more devoted group of acolytes on the ability of guerilla warriors to attack not only the enemy's strength but, and what Ahmad said was even more important, the enemy's morale.

There was some politely but inadequately concealed disbelief at this assertion. Ahmad saw it. "No," he said, "I assure you," and hastened to give examples dating from the Scythians attacking Darius to the American war of independence. "A guerilla army has certain significant advantages over a regular standing army," he said. "It's smaller, for one thing, which makes it not only more mobile but easier to conceal, and infinitely easier for its soldiers if escape is necessary. It strikes not on command but when it wills, at dawn, in the middle of a week, on a high holy day, keeping the enemy in a constant state of apprehension over where the next strike will be."

They digested this in silence. Akil, looking around, saw no skepticism.