“Idris Abd al Qahhar,” he said. “I arrest you for conspiracy to commit murder. By the grace of God the All-Merciful and Compassionate, you have the right to remain silent . . .”

“Hello,” Farouk said, closing the interrogation room door behind him. “I understand you wish to speak with me.”

“Oh, I try never to make wishes,” the man in the white tunic said. “They so rarely turn out the way you expect. I am happy to speak with you, however.”

“Good, then. Let’s start with a name.”

“Of course.” The man’s smile turned mischievous. “What would you like to call me?”

“How about your real name?”

“It would mean nothing to you, I’m afraid. I’m not in any of your databases.”

“What about a home address then?” Farouk pulled out a chair and sat opposite the man. “You don’t sound like a Baghdadi to me.”

“My family home is in Arabia, in the Rub al Khali.”

“I didn’t know there were homes in the Empty Quarter. Do you work in the oil industry?”

“We mind our own business.” That mischievous smile again. “Most of us.”

“And what brings you to Baghdad?”

“I fly all over the country.”

“On your family’s business?”

“A personal research project of sorts. I’ve been going from place to place, studying how things have changed.”

“Changed since when? Have you been away somewhere?”

“That too,” the man in the white tunic said. “I was in prison for many years, and the world changed quite a bit during that time. Since my release, it’s changed again. It’s the second set of changes I’m most interested in. One should recognize one’s own handiwork, but I keep encountering things that surprise me, things that suggest the intervention of another, greater power. So I’ve been trying to work out what it all means. What the larger plan might be.”

“Prison,” Farouk said. “I thought you said you weren’t in our databases.”

“It wasn’t one of your prisons.”

“You know we have access to Interpol files here too, right?”

“My jailer was not a member of Interpol.”

“Where were you locked up, North Korea?” Receiving no answer but that same smile, Farouk continued: “Let’s talk about this afternoon. What were you doing at the rally? More research?”

“I was following that man, the one you are holding in the other room.”

“Why? Do you know him?”

“I know his type. A maker of burnt offerings. Such men were common in my youth, and time doesn’t seem to have lessened their numbers much. I’ve encountered quite a few in my travels.”

“When you encounter them, what do you do?”

“Usually nothing. Interfering in others’ affairs, even with the best of intentions, well it’s like making wishes—there are always unforeseen consequences. I really should have learned that lesson by now. But today, crossing paths with that man, sensing what he was about to do, I felt a powerful urge to intervene. An impulse not entirely my own.”

“What does that mean, not entirely your own?”

“You know how it is,” the man in the white tunic said. “God allows evil to exist in the world. Sometimes He permits it to operate unchecked. But sometimes, He puts a stone in the path of the wicked.”

“And today you were the stone?”

“I thought so.” The smile a bit sheepish now, as he looked down at the steel cuffs on his wrists. “Now I’m thinking I may have been mistaken about the source of the impulse . . .” He shrugged. “Ah well. Ultimately all things proceed from God’s will.”

“Let’s leave God’s will aside for the moment,” said Farouk, “and get back to what happened at the rally. You say you decided to intervene. How?”

The prisoner sighed. “Forgive me. I don’t wish to be uncooperative—”

“Then don’t be. Tell me what you did.”

“You wouldn’t believe it. I could convince you, but it would require yet another intervention. Anyway, we are almost out of time.”

“No, we’re not,” Farouk said, allowing his annoyance to show. “You are a suspect in a terrorism case, and you’re not going anywhere until I get answers.”

From over his shoulder came the muffled sound of shouting. Farouk turned in his chair and saw the mirror shudder as something slammed the other side of the glass.

“They are here for me,” the man in the white tunic said, as Farouk stood up. “Do not resist them. They will only hurt you.”

The interrogation room door burst open. A big man stepped through, holding a pistol.

“What’s the meaning of this interruption?” Farouk said. “Get the hell out of here!”

Siraj al Din didn’t bother to reply. Instead, stepping forward, he brought the butt of the gun crashing down on Farouk’s forehead.

The sandstorm arrived as they were loading Idris into the arrest wagon.

Abu Naji and Sayyid had parked on the east side of the block. Idris offered no further resistance as he was led out of the apartment building and manacled to a bench in the back of the wagon. Samir watched from the curb with a mixture of unease and disappointment, the satisfaction he’d felt reading Idris his Mirandas already ebbing away. He turned to Mustafa and said: “You know this isn’t the end of it.”

“I know,” Mustafa said. He held up the tape recorder. “But it’s a good start. Now—”

A shadow fell over the street, and at the north end of the block someone cried out in alarm. Mustafa and Samir turned towards the sound. There were people running from the corner, while others stood staring and pointing to the west.

They knew what was coming, of course—they’d seen it from the apartment—but timing was always tricky with sandstorms, and no amount of advance warning could lessen the shock of fear at the appearance of the dust cloud, boiling through the streets of the city like debris from some mighty tower’s fall. It surged across the intersection, swallowing up everything—people, cars, streetlights—and came sweeping towards them.

“Fu-u-u-uck!” Abu Naji said, a long exhalation. He jumped down from the back of the wagon and slammed the door. Mustafa looked up. A billow of dust and sand overtopped the apartment building and wrapped around its sides, making it seem for a moment as though the upper floors were pancaking.

“Come on!” Samir shouted, tugging on Mustafa’s arm. Leaving Idris in the wagon, they ran back to the building, making it inside with just seconds to spare. As the lobby door swung shut, a woman darted past on the sidewalk, clutching the ends of her headscarf with both hands. Then the dust cloud swept down in a thick curtain, obscuring everything.

The bulbs in the apartment building lobby seemed to flicker, but it was just their eyes adjusting to the sudden loss of daylight. Fine dust puffed through the cracks around the door, bringing a smell like fresh chalk. Abu Naji stifled a sneeze.

As the leading edge of the sandstorm continued sweeping eastward, the air outside cleared enough that they could see again. The Homeland Security agents looked out into the haze at a city transformed, and compared this vision to their memories of another day nearly a decade in the past. They noticed the arrest wagon rocking back and forth, and though it was surely only the wind, none of them were above wishing that it might actually be Idris, driven mad by the storm and tasting just a fraction of the terror he had chosen to inflict on others.

“All right,” Mustafa said finally, breaking the silence. “Now we go pick up Osama bin Laden.”

“What?” said Sayyid. “You want to drive all the way down to Riyadh? In this?”

“He’s not in Riyadh,” Amal said. “Bin Laden is here in Baghdad today, for the rally. That will be over now, but he’s supposed to be staying at the Rasheed Hotel. We should be able to catch him there.”

“The rally?” Abu Naji said. “The Ground Zero rally?” He looked at them. “You mean you guys haven’t heard?”

A figure in a black burqa, head bowed against the wind, was pulling a wheeled shopping basket along the sidewalk behind AHS headquarters. All the other pedestrians in the area had been driven indoors by the storm, but Siraj al Din, hands cupped to shield his eyes from blowing sand, made a careful scan of the doorways and rooftops across the street before stepping out into the open.