“Yes,” said Bar Abbas. “I gave him the cell phone and told him what to do. But I don’t know if he’ll go through with it.”

“You told him what would happen if he didn’t?”

“Yes, and from the way he reacted, it’s clear he loves his sons’ lives more than his own. But that may not be enough when the moment comes. He seems . . . weak-willed.”

“He is a coward,” Idris said sternly. “You have a contingency plan?”

Bar Abbas nodded. “I’ll be there to set it off if he doesn’t.”

He might have asked, Why involve this Samir at all? but Idris would likely regard such a question as impertinent. Bar Abbas assumed it was a subterfuge of some kind: Military investigators would find the modified cell phone on Samir’s body, and Idris would use that fact to cast him and his colleagues as traitors, and discredit whatever government agency had sent them on their mission to America. Hearing the way Idris said “He is a coward,” Bar Abbas decided there might be a secondary motive, as well: Perhaps Idris, for personal reasons, wanted Samir’s last hours to be filled with fear and torment. This was not professional behavior for an Al Qaeda leader, but Bar Abbas, who had tortured a number of his own enemies in the past, was in no position to pass judgment.

“What about the other matter?” Idris said next. “Have you investigated V. Howell Industries?”

“I took a squad of men to the address you gave me,” Bar Abbas told him. “The offices were abandoned—but recently. It looks like they cleared out in a hurry.”

“They knew you were coming.”

“If they did, it wasn’t any of my people who warned them. There wasn’t time.”

“And you found nothing?”

“There were some artifacts in one of the rooms. Books, mostly.”

“Books about what?”

“The history of Arabia,” Bar Abbas said. “The real history, I mean.”

Idris’s face expanded on screen as he leaned forward. “What did you do with these books?”

“Burned them in a dumpster behind the facility.” Or most of them. Bar Abbas had saved a few volumes for himself.

“And the other men who were with you . . .”

“They were curious, but nobody read anything they weren’t supposed to. Anyway,” he couldn’t resist adding, “it doesn’t matter. Once God lifts the mirage, everyone’s going to know the truth.”

“Yes, but until that day, there are certain truths we don’t want widely known . . . What else did you find?”

“A Texas state flag. That was in another room that was being used as a dormitory. There were some empty pill bottles in a wastebasket.”

“What kind of pills?”

“The bottles weren’t labeled, but I’d guess Valium or some other sedative,” Bar Abbas said. “Almost everyone takes something to sleep here.”

“What else?”

“Just some personal effects. Somebody must be a Green Desert fan—I found a copy of the Son of Cush CD under one of the dormitory beds.”

“Son of Cush? What is Son of Cush?”

“Alternative punk rock,” Bar Abbas explained, which judging from Idris’s expression didn’t clarify matters. “Don’t worry, none of the songs are about Osama bin Laden.”

“If it’s music, you should destroy it anyway.”

“Already done.” Bar Abbas lied. He looked up, hearing a board creak overhead. “I should go. I still have preparations to make.”

“You’ll contact me again when it’s accomplished?”

“If I can,” said Bar Abbas. “If you don’t hear from me, it’s because God had other plans.”

At that same hour not far away, two disciples crouched on a wooded ridge overlooking the Jeff Davis Pike.

The lead disciple’s name was Timothy. He was tall and thin, and paler than any man who ever sat at the foot of the living Christ. He wore a pair of night-vision goggles and was using them to spy on a trio of Christian militiamen as they planted an IED in a culvert beneath the roadbed.

He could not help but admire the militiamen’s bravery. They were dressed in the reflective jackets of a legitimate road crew and had a Dominion Water & Power truck parked on the median, but while that might fool passing civilian drivers (or at least give them an excuse to play dumb), it would be no protection at all against a military patrol. In the early days of the insurgency, when Army snipers sat on D.C. rooftops with orders to shoot anyone carrying a shovel or a toolbox after dark, Washington utilities employees had suffered a horrible death toll. After years of entreaties from the citizenry, the capital’s defenders were a little less trigger-happy now, but out here in the Virginia suburbs it was still open season on potential saboteurs—and rather than a quick clean bullet through the head, you were likely to get a shower of explosive shells from a helicopter gunship, leaving you torn up and dying in slow agony beside your burning vehicle.

As the militiamen ran a wire from the bomb to an antenna on the back of a mile-marker post, a clatter of rotor blades echoed from the east. The militiamen didn’t stop working or even look up. More bravery, or maybe it was just fatalism: If the chopper pilot had spotted them, they were as good as martyred already. But minutes passed with no deadly hail of shells, and the sound of the rotor blades gradually faded away. Not long after that, the job was finished; the militiamen got back into the truck and drove off.

“All right.” Timothy stood up and peeled off his goggles. “Let’s do it.”

The other disciple made no move to rise. “I don’t know about this, Tim,” he said.

“There’s nothing to know. You heard the director’s orders.”

“What if that chopper comes back?”

“It won’t. You heard the director. We’re protected from on high.”

“Yeah? If the director’s so sure about that, how come he’s not here?”

A crunch of leaves as Timothy half turned towards him: “We’re doing this, Terry. You’re doing it.”

After so much time in the dark, Terry didn’t need night-vision goggles to see the expression on his companion’s face. He shuddered, trying in vain to summon up the nerve to tell Tim to go fuck himself. But there was a reason Timothy was a leader while he was only a sidekick.

“OK,” he said, ducking his head in submission. “OK.” Then: “Fuck it.”

Mustafa opened his eyes around 4 a.m., disturbed by silence. Samir had been tossing and turning most of the night, but now the other bed was empty. Mustafa got up and went to use the restroom. Samir wasn’t there either, but the toilet stall smelled strongly of vomit.

He found Samir in the deluge room, seated on the “mountaintop” beside the velociraptor skeleton. The ’raptor remained poised to leap at Noah’s ark, but Samir looked like he’d already tried that and failed: His face and neck were damp, and his hair was plastered to his skull.

“Samir?” Mustafa said. “Are you ill?”

“I suppose I am,” Samir replied, his voice thick like a sleepwalker’s. “Many would say so.”

“Do you want me to get a doctor?”

“No. It’s not that kind of sickness.” Then: “Is it time to go already?”

“Not just yet. But listen, Samir, if you’re unwell, perhaps you shouldn’t go at all. Amal and I can—”

“No!” Samir came suddenly alert, looking alarmed and then angry. “I’m not a coward!”

“All right,” said Mustafa. “I’m going to go find Colonel Yunus, to pray. Would you like to join us?”

Samir’s face had gone slack again, and he took so long answering that Mustafa became convinced that he really was still asleep. Finally Samir said: “No. If God has no time for me, I have no time for Him . . . Come get me when you’re finished.”

A covered foxhole had been dug into the hillside by some previous group of partisans, abandoned and forgotten, then rediscovered by Bar Abbas as he scouted the highway for ambush sites. He crawled inside just before dawn. Twenty other militiamen were dispersed along the top of the ridge, lying belly down in the dirt with their weapons beside them.