The hotel was just a three-block walk from Penn Station, but Bin-Hezam had traveled a roundabout way just in case. His luggage was not heavy, but anything that restricted mobility in the heat was a burden. When he was confident he had not been shadowed, he had headed for the hotel.

On Twenty-eighth Street, he had passed many open shop gates and idling flower trucks, the sweaty vendors working busily on the last day of the work week.

As well they should, Bin-Hezam had thought. Many memorial flowers would be needed before the end of this weekend.

Past a young Hispanic bellman inside the hotel’s chrome-and-glass doors, the clerk at the reception desk had been a young woman with dark ringlets and a false brightness that Bin-Hezam had found grating. A Jewess, of course. The neighborhood abutted the garment district, an old Zionist stronghold now flowing into Asian.

Bin-Hezam had masked his distaste, wiping his brow with a handkerchief and presenting himself for check-in. “I would like a suite for two nights, please,” he had said, in his refined British art dealer voice.

“Do you have a reservation?”

“I do not.”

“Because we are nearly full this weekend for the Fourth of July festivities.” She had smiled with nonsensical enthusiasm and clicked her computer keyboard in search of accommodations. “We have a junior penthouse suite available on the top floor,” she had said.

“That will be fine.”

“Wonderful,” she had enthused, as though by accepting her recommendation he had accomplished some great feat. “May I have a credit card and a driver’s license or other form of picture identification?”

“I will pay cash,” Bin-Hezam had said.

The girl had hesitated, having been thrown off her routine.

“Unless that is a problem?” Bin-Hezam had asked.

“No, of course not.” She had recaptured her smile, resuming her singsong voice. “The rate for the junior penthouse suite is eight hundred dollars. If you do not wish to leave a credit card, we do require a two-hundred-dollar cash deposit, which will be refunded—minus incidentals—to you upon your departure.”

Bin-Hezam had reached into the breast pocket of his rumpled but expensive brown suit jacket, retrieving a slim black leather billfold. He had selected sixteen crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and slid them inside his pale green Saudi Arabian passport, handing both to her.

She had smiled and counted the bills in front of him. In Manhattan, a foreign traveler bearing high denominations of U.S. currency was not at all unusual. “And the deposit?” she had asked, her voice inflecting the question mark.

“There will be no incidentals,” Bin-Hezam had said, offering her a tight smile that communicated his insistence.

She had hesitated again, looking into his tea-colored eyes—a greedy Jew, of course—then had set aside the alleged hotel policy without further complaint. “All right, Mr. Bin-Hezam. That will be fine.” She had counted out the sixteen hundred dollars again before depositing them into her under-counter tray. “Would you like to join our rewards program?”

“I decline.”

She had smiled and nodded. “No problem.” Another flourish of keystrokes and she had printed a receipt, returning Bin-Hezam’s passport to him. “Would you like one room key or two?” she asked.

“Just one.”

She had made the key and had slid it into a small folder, writing the room number on the outside. “Please enjoy your stay.”

Bin-Hezam had slept, something he had not counted on doing. He had budgeted his time for a lengthier detention in Bangor or at Newark. More questions. More computer checks. He was immune to any form of scrutiny.

He had been hours ahead of schedule. The sleep would sharpen him for the next day’s work. Insha’Allah it would all go this smoothly.

His room was so garish as to be painful to his soul, haute decor of a sort that reeked of competition among designers to prove who could combine the most outrageous colors in the most off-putting patterns. In this case, shades of purple with red counterpoints and aqua-blue details. He had looked out his window before drawing the shade, the lights of the city peaceful, unsuspecting.

Bin-Hezam had set his wheeled carry-on upon the luggage stand. He had drawn back the zipper but had not unpacked. He had gone into the bathroom, another assault of form versus function, and quickly had shed his clothes. He had hung the suit on a towel rod while he had showered, hoping to steam out the wrinkles and some of the perspiration.

Afterward, he had put on a light cotton dishdasha from his luggage and knelt to pray, seeking God’s blessing that he remain calm within this den of chaos. That he perform his duty with grace and cunning. And that he be brave at the end.

He had climbed into the bed. There, beneath the covers, Bin-Hezam had given himself over to a remembrance of the night he had been called to be. This had been his nightly routine while waiting for sleep to take him.

Like many before him, Bin-Hezam had once been visited by Mohammed in a dream. The prophet had shown him that hell was as real as Earth, and that the boy would be sent there when he died if he ever dared disobey his father.

He had shown Bin-Hezam fire that was a hundred times hotter than the noontime sun. It had burned off his skin, which grew back darkened only to be roasted off again and again. The burning had been agony. He had held his own innards in his hands while slung from a ceiling by chains of razor, the calluses of his feet just barely off the surface of the floor, near enough to it to be bitten by laughing scorpions.

His dry mouth had begged for sweet water, but the only drink he had been given was his own blood that never stopped flowing.

The following morning, young Bin-Hezam had reasoned that, because hell was real, not only must he believe that there is no god but one god and Mohammed is his prophet . . . but he could not tolerate anyone else who believed otherwise. To do so would be a sin. He had determined that he must do everything within his power to banish nonbelievers from the world, for the good of all mankind and the love of Mohammed.

Some years later, he had had the dream again, prompted, he had been convinced, by the hideous photographic evidence of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Young men like himself in that terrible prison, raped and defiled, tortured by the American Crusaders, including American women.

It had been a sign. Their pain became his pain, their chains his chains.

The Americans had tried to bring hell into this Earth. The jihadists at his mosque in Harad had taught him that the Crusaders and their Jewish masters would not rest until they had killed every last Muslim and unleashed the fire of hell.

Finally, his thoughts had turned to his dear parents, recalling his mother’s delight every time she found perfect dates in the market, his father’s firm instruction of Baada and his five siblings. His mother a goddess of kindness, baker of the best fatir he had ever eaten—and his father, a cobbler, a devout man but one never called to be a soldier of jihad.

Bin-Hezam had prayed for them. Secure in his purpose, saved from hell, he had drifted into a dreamless sleep mumbling his parents’ names.

Chapter 22

Okay, Fisk,” said Dubin, coming to the door, motioning him into the office. “I think you know the commissioner?”

Fisk shook the hand of the compact, buzz-cut ex-marine who ran the entire New York City Police Department. Commissioner Kelly made a point of meeting every one of his thirty-six thousand sworn officers, and Fisk had shaken his hand three or four times previously. But this was the first time he had ever seen the commissioner at the Brooklyn headquarters of the Intelligence Division.

The commissioner said, “Good to see you again, Fisk,” and abruptly sat back down in his chair, legs crossed, ready for business.