Madness, he thought. Madness. How wrong in the head must the guy be, to think there was even a chance I’d say yes? It isn’t possible. It’s totally not even within the realm of the possible. Well yeah, of course. But what if . . . What if—in some other world, not this one—what if it were possible? What if that, or something like that, could really happen, and work out? Hah! Right! If only . . . If only . . . I w—

No.

No. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t even conceivable.

That isn’t how the movie ends.

He rode the number 6 train to the end of the line. The last stop was aboveground, the elevated station heavily graffitied and lit by harsh fluorescents that made it much brighter than the neighborhood below, where most of the streetlamps were out. As always at this point, Samir thought about crossing to the far platform and heading for home, but with no wife or children waiting for him there, the thought was only a formality.

He descended to the street of shadows. Along the curb near the base of the station steps, a pile of rubbish had been set ablaze. At the edge of the firelight two women loitered in an open doorway. Samir moved swiftly past them, trying to project the lawman’s sense of immunity he was no longer even close to feeling. In the next block more rubbish piles were burning, and in the next. He passed more open doors, each offering some hint or glimpse of depravity within; in front of one, a very young boy serving as a tout tried to latch on to his sleeve, but Samir pulled free and quickened his pace.

A half kilometer from the station he turned left into an alleyway, bracing himself as he did so, for predators sometimes lurked here. Tonight the alley was empty. He followed it to where it dead-ended at a blank iron door. A bulb in a wire cage was socketed into the wall above the doorframe and a security camera was mounted beside it. The camera, Samir knew, was there to warn of incoming police raids and wasn’t normally set up to record, but all the same, he was careful not to look up as he rang the door buzzer.

The door opened and Samir stepped inside, into soft red light and the thump of disco music. The doorman was new. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way—his chin and cheeks were rough, and it looked as though he’d cut himself several times while shaving. He smiled a welcome, nodding in gratitude at the twenty-riyal note Samir offered him. He placed a hand in the small of Samir’s back and propelled him gently forward, then turned to shut and bolt the door.

A beaded curtain separated the entryway from the club proper. As Samir passed through it, more hands reached out from either side to catch him above the elbows. Iron grips crushed his biceps, lifted him up, and pitched him headlong into the center of the room.

The music stopped. The lights came up. Samir pushed himself to his knees and stood, eyes adjusting to the brightness. The club had been gutted: The bar that had just three nights ago taken up the entire right-hand wall of the room was gone, ripped out, leaving only a few bent nails and bits of broken mirror and bottle-glass. All the tables and chairs were gone too, except for a single high stool at the center of the room on which a man sat perched like a dark-eyed bird of prey.

His identity at least was no surprise.

“Idris.” Samir let out a sigh, more dazed than frightened at first, some part of him clinging desperately to the hope that this was all a bad dream. He turned to see who had thrown him to the floor. There were four of them, all rugged types like the doorman but with their beards intact. They stood in a line, blocking his escape, and Samir noted with dismay that they were all holding bludgeons of some sort: a wooden plank; a steel reinforcing rod; a splintered chair leg; a crowbar.

“Idris,” he repeated, this time with panic edging into his voice. “Please—”

“Be silent, sodomite,” Idris said. “I did not come to listen to you beg.” A braver man might have challenged that assertion. Looking him in the face, Samir saw the same Idris he had known and feared back in grade school: a religious thug who claimed to love God, but who also loved bullying—and therefore loved sin, as a pretext to violence. You disgust me, his expression said. I’m so glad you disgust me. Now I can hurt you with God’s blessing.

“I offered Mustafa a chance to work with me, but he refused,” Idris continued. “He is proud and he is not afraid of dying. So I am forced to deal with weakness and perversity instead.” He waved a hand at the blank wall where the bar should have been. “This is overkill no doubt. You are a coward, and cowards break easily. But Senator Bin Laden has instructed me to make certain you understand how serious we are, and what lengths we are willing to go to, to destroy you, if you don’t do exactly as you’re told.”

The doorman appeared beside Samir, holding a stack of photographs. Like a sorcerer weaving a magic circle, he began walking counterclockwise, peeling photos off one by one and dropping them at Samir’s feet. Samir looked down to catch a glimpse of himself in an embrace with another of this club’s patrons; then he shut his eyes.

“For what you are you deserve to be put to death,” Idris said. “And you know I will gladly do this. But understand, if you give me cause, I won’t just kill you. I will bury your memory in shame. Everyone who knows you, everyone who has ever called you friend, or spoken a single kind word about you, will learn precisely what sort of person you are. Everyone. I swear it.”

Samir opened his eyes again as the doorman finished his third and final circuit. The doorman held up the last photo from his stack, a blow-up of Samir’s wallet snapshot: Malik and Jibril, smiling, happy, maybe a little sad too that their father no longer lived with them—but innocent, thank God, as to the reason why.

“Everyone,” Idris said.

THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

Republic

A republic is a government whose chief of state is not a monarch, and which is to some degree answerable to its citizens. The term was coined by the Christian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli from the Latin phrase res publica, “a matter for the people . . .”

Like “democracy” and “freedom,” the word “republic” is sometimes used by tyrants to create the suggestion of limited government without its substance. Thus the phrase “people’s republic,” which at first glance appears redundant, but is in fact an example of reinforcing a lie through repetition.

The Israelis were bombing Vienna.

Over the weekend, Roman Catholic guerrillas had attacked an IDF patrol along the border west of Salzburg, capturing two soldiers and carrying them back into Austria. The hills around Salzburg were riddled with tunnels and fortifications, and so many hidden rocket launch sites that the region had been nicknamed Peenemünde South; Israeli troops attempting to rescue the kidnapped soldiers came under heavy fire, and as they pressed the attack the Von Brauns up in the hills began lobbing terror bombs at Jewish settlements in Bavaria.

The Israeli Air Force blasted Salzburg and its environs for two days without letup, but the rocket attacks continued. On the third day the prime minister in Berlin decided to adopt a new strategy, holding the Viennese parliament and the Austrian people collectively responsible for the guerrillas’ misbehavior. Israeli bombers began hitting infrastructure targets all over the country: highway bridges and tunnels, railroad yards, river ports, as well as any vehicle that looked like it might be transporting rocket parts. Now the capital had made the target list. Vienna’s airport was a cratered ruin, and the bridges over the Danube were all heavily damaged or destroyed, cutting the city in half.