Driving into work, Mustafa heard a news report that shed some light on his dream. Saddam Hussein’s not-guilty celebration, held at his riverfront estate in the Adhamiyah district, had included an unlicensed fireworks display. The midnight barrage of star shells had woken up the neighbors and prompted a number of alarmed 911 calls. Saddam had already issued a public apology and promised to pay a fine for disturbing the peace.

At headquarters, Samir had more details about the “disturbance.” After the fireworks had run out, Saddam and some of his guests had broken out hunting rifles. “At first it was the usual yahoo shit, firing into the air,” Samir said. “But then Uday had one drink too many and decided to take potshots at boats on the river. He put a tug pilot in the hospital with a burst femur.”

“Where did you hear about this?” Mustafa asked.

“From Abu Naji. His brother-in-law is the police watch commander for Adhamiyah. He and a bunch of his patrolmen were at the party.”

“But Uday’s not under arrest.” A statement, not a question.

Samir shrugged. “You know how it is. They’re treating it as an accident. The tug pilot will get some money to keep quiet—or if the leg turns septic, his family will.”

Amal sat nearby, sifting through a box of folders marked TOP SECRET. “So here’s a crazy thought,” she said. “Is there any way we could pin a terrorism charge on Saddam? Get him and his family declared enemies of the state and ship them off to Chwaka Bay?”

“Believe me, it’s been discussed,” Mustafa said. “The problem is, Saddam is the wrong kind of terrorist.”

“What would it take to make him the right kind of terrorist?”

Samir laughed. “First we need to convert him to Christianity . . .”

“Speaking of Christians,” Mustafa said, “are those the mirage files from Riyadh?”

“ ‘Files’ may be an overly generous description. You know that old joke about the intelligence service having stock in companies that make toner cartridges?” Amal held up a sample sheet from the folder she was leafing through. Everything except the page number had been blacked out.

“Idris warned us there would be redactions,” Mustafa said.

“It looks like they’ve redacted anything of substance,” Amal told him. “For example, I think this is an interrogation transcript. It’s got the prisoner’s name, his nationality, and his religious sect, but the actual Q&A—forty-nine pages’ worth—is a solid wall of black.”

“And they’re all like that?”

“Most of the ones I’ve looked at. With a few, the pages are missing entirely.”

“Very well,” said Mustafa. “If Idris and Senator Bin Laden insist on being difficult, we’ll just have to go to Riyadh with a presidential order granting us access to the original files.”

“And pray we don’t end up like Costello,” Samir added.

Gabriel Costello had been transferred to the maximum-security wing of Abu Ghraib. Less than a day after his arrival—and before Mustafa could conduct a second interview—he’d been found in his cell with his prison-issue jumpsuit wrapped around his neck and tied to the edge of his bed frame. The official cause of death was suicide by self-strangulation, though the autopsy showed unexplained bruising on his wrists and ankles.

“I don’t think we have to worry about Al Qaeda murdering us,” Mustafa said. “Not yet.”

“And why is that?”

“Because unlike Costello, we’re replaceable. If we die, the president will assign other agents to continue our investigation—and he’ll know there’s something for them to find. I doubt the senator wants that. So he’ll use delaying tactics, threats, perhaps bribery and extortion. But unless we uncover something truly devastating, he won’t send assassins.”

“Such comforting logic,” Amal said laughing.

“Don’t forget about Idris,” Samir said. “What if he decides to make this personal?”

“We’ll just have to hope his Al Qaeda training instilled him with a sense of discipline . . . Now come on, let’s take a closer look at these files and see if there’s anything the censor missed.”

Amal shook her head. “I’m telling you, there really isn’t much here.”

“Nationalities and religious affiliations, you said. Let’s make a list.”

Prior to 11/9, national security experts had only had to concern themselves with a handful of Christian denominations.

The biggest and the baddest were of course the Russian Orthodox. The Orthodox Union had had a multimillion-man army, a dream of world domination, and from 1952 onward, the ability to split atoms. Moreover, their church was part of the same eastern branch of Christendom that had produced many of Arabia’s Christians, a fact that caused no end of paranoia during the Cold Crusade. But those fears had ultimately proved overblown. Capable of ending the world, the Russians chose not to; instead of attacking Arabia directly, they fought a series of proxy wars—in Yugoslavia, in Chechnya, in Tanzania—before making their last, fatal lunge into Afghanistan, after which defeat their Union had simply evaporated. Though the church lived on and the men who ran Moscow still worshipped under an onion dome, their real god, these days, was Mammon.

Farther west, and so far proving more intractable, were the Lutherans and Roman Catholics of Germany and Austria. The creation of the modern state of Israel had displaced many northern German Protestants into the largely Catholic south. In hindsight, it was clear that the Allied architects of postwar Europe should have given more thought to the consequences of this; instead, they’d simply taken it on faith that the defeated Christians would learn to embrace one another, and their Jewish neighbors, in a spirit of true Muslim brotherhood. It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

The British Revolution of 1979 had added Anglicans to the list of Christians to watch out for. Their nuclear ambitions were worrisome, but they were really more of an annoyance than anything else, being content for the most part to stay on their rainy island, chanting “Death to Arabia! Death to Israel!” and defiling images of the Prophet in a pathetic bid for attention.

Orthodox, Lutheran, Catholic, Anglican: a simple enough taxonomy to keep straight. And then the events of November 9 had thrown North American Protestantism into the mix, making everything a thousand times more complicated.

The list that they compiled from the mirage files contained Methodists, Pentecostals, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, Adventists, and a few members of more obscure sects that even Mustafa had never heard of, like the Branch Davidians.

“What is ‘PMD’?” Amal asked, indicating one of the more cryptic sect designations. “ ‘MD,’ that’s the English abbreviation for doctor, isn’t it? Is there a Christian denomination composed of medical students?”

“I wouldn’t rule out the possibility,” Mustafa said. “But in this case I think ‘PMD’ stands for ‘premillennial dispensationalist.’ ”

“Heh.” Samir chuckled. “Try saying that three times fast.”

“Dispensationalism isn’t actually a sect,” Mustafa explained. “It’s an apocalyptic belief system—a prophecy—shared by multiple sects. A lot of these Methodists and Baptists are probably dispensationalists as well.”

“This is that rapture thing?” said Samir. “Where the Jews return to Palestine?”

“That’s part of it.”

“So it’s a Zionist belief, then,” Amal said.

“Not really,” said Mustafa. “According to the prophecy, most of the Jews die in a holocaust shortly after they reclaim Jerusalem.”

“I saw some of those rapture novels in Costello’s apartment,” Samir said. “Maybe this mirage legend is a new twist on the story.”

“Maybe.” Mustafa thought a moment. “You know who’d probably know, is Waj.”

“Is Waj another Israeli friend?” Amal asked.

“No, he’s a librarian,” said Mustafa. “The librarian, as a matter of fact . . .”