She rode back down to the lobby, turning the corner and returning to the small concourse behind the elevators where she had found him. He had appeared near a small jewelry shop catering to midrange tourists and a souvenir shop with the usual “I ♥ NY” kitsch, tiny Lady Liberties, and New York Yankees gear.

Across from the store was a pair of pay telephones—only, unlike the ones upstairs near the ballroom, these still contained actual phones. A rarity in modern Manhattan—if they still worked.

Gersten picked up each receiver. Both phones gave her a dial tone.

Chapter 36

D o not come veiled. Not even a hijab.

Aminah bint Mohammed pulled the twin loaves from the refrigerator. Each was wrapped in wax paper and clinging plastic. She padded the bottom of a large Macy’s shopping bag—blue with a big red star—with cotton dishcloths, laying the chilled cakes on top. She covered them with a brown cardigan sweater from the plastic storage bin at the back of her bedroom closet, about five years out of fashion and three months out of season.

Aminah prayed as she packed, giving thanks that the wait was finally over. She continued her prayers while she undressed. She had grown so comfortable with the black burka she had been wearing daily for almost three years that—with the exception of her nursing scrubs—she felt nude in ordinary Western clothes. Especially with her head uncovered—without a hijab, or head scarf.

This was the second time that week she had shed her comfortable current identity for her unfamiliar former one. When she had shopped for the ingredients three days ago, she wore blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a jacket. And it was as though she had disappeared. No suspicious looks on the sidewalks, for a change. No dismissive stares. No tiny pointing fingers from children. Her old style of dress had felt to her exactly like a disguise, symbolizing the completion of her three-year journey from Kathleen Burnett to Aminah bint Mohammed.

Kathleen Burnett had been born to a Methodist minister and his wife in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The youngest of five, she had an undistinguished public school education, trained at a community college, graduated with a nursing degree, and began working at a hospital there.

For twenty-nine years she was Kathleen Burnett. Thirty-two now, she was five feet, three inches tall, with a lifetime of trouble keeping weight off. She had dark curly hair that she believed was her best feature. She had never married. She was not a virgin, but only due to a traumatizing date rape in the summer between her junior and senior year of high school.

Following the death of her mother, less than twelve months after the initial diagnosis of kidney cancer, Kathleen scoured out-of-state employment opportunities and impulsively accepted a job as an emergency room nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. She had relocated to her Bay Ridge apartment five years ago and started her life over with great anticipation, becoming very passionate about saving lives. She was proud that, every time she went to work, someone who otherwise would have died without her did not.

Her first and best friend at the hospital was a physician’s assistant named Na’ilah Al-Mehalel, a Westernized Muslim with roots in Jordan. Kathleen experienced a kind of crush on the older, wiser woman. Accepting an invitation to accompany Na’ilah to the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque on West Twenty-ninth Street had at first seemed more like fellowship than religion. The religious barriers between men and women startled her at first, but she quickly came to honor them as a matter of respect and protection, rather than repression.

What began as her half-earnest pursuit of Na’ilah Al-Mehalel—which was unrequited, and remained Kathleen’s secret, more unfocused impulse than reality—led to something much more profound. Two years later, she became a Muslim. The imam asked her three questions:

“Do you believe in one God?

“Do you believe that Jesus was a prophet but was not the son of God?

“Are you willing to accept Mohammed as a prophet?”

Kathleen Burnett answered yes to all three questions. She had joined the Islamic religion by repeating the imam’s next words:

“There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet.”

Like many Western converts to Islam, she took a Muslim name, Aminah—it meant “Trustworthy”—and bint Mohammed. “Daughter of Mohammed.”

For a small filing fee at the Department of Records, Kathleen Burnett’s transformation into Aminah bint Mohammed was legalized, and her rebirth complete.

A few months later, Na’ilah’s brother, Robeel, was taken from his Queens apartment by men claiming to be law enforcement, though without a formal arrest. Na’ilah was inconsolable, and Aminah sat with her day after day after day.

Six months later Na’ilah’s parents received a letter from the U.S. government asking them where they would like their son’s remains to be shipped. Robeel had committed suicide in the prison at Guantanamo Bay—or so the letter claimed.

Some months later the father of another of Aminah’s friends from the mosque disappeared without a trace. Vanished. Na’ilah grew paranoid and embittered, talking ceaselessly about the United States’ war against Islam. Aminah was devastated when Na’ilah and her family decamped for Jordan, leaving Aminah angry and alone once again.

She came to believe that the accident of her birth had placed her on the wrong side of this conflict. When another American woman from the mosque befriended her and offered her the opportunity to enlist in the army of God, Aminah knew that she could not refuse. She met secretly with this woman, who encouraged her to stay away from Masjid Ar-Rahman due to American law enforcement surveillance. She was told that she would be most valuable to jihad as a deep-cover sleeper agent, though not in so many words. She was to continue to live quietly and pursue nothing out of the ordinary until the moment came when her presence in New York could turn the tide of battle. Asked if she would be willing to give her life for Mohammed, she answered yes, but she was thinking not of Mohammed but of Na’ilah.

In the swirl of this heady cause, Aminah bint Mohammed had found more purpose for her life than ever before. Saving the lives of the victims of street crime at St. Vincent’s paled by comparison with helping to bring God’s plan into this world. But St. Vincent’s Hospital closed in April 2010, and after Aminah’s unemployment payments ended, the woman from the mosque offered to offset Aminah’s lost salary so that she could keep her Bay Ridge apartment without concern. Most critical, said the woman, was that Aminah remain available and unencumbered for when the call to service arrived.

The first call had come earlier that week. A different man’s voice. A different code word.

He had instructions for her. She was to purchase six twelve-ounce bottles of hydrogen peroxide, six one-pint cans of acetone, and a gallon bottle of muriatic acid. Each item had to be purchased separately from different stores in different neighborhoods.

The voice had slowly recited the URL for an Internet site where she would find instructions for blending the ingredients. She wrote it down and read it back to him before ending the conversation and dressing in the strange disguise of her former life.

Chemistry lab had been Aminah’s favorite class in nursing school. Following procedures carefully and exactly was second nature to her.

Hydrogen peroxide was a common household antiseptic. The acetone was identical to nail polish remover. When mixed with water, and used carefully with rubber gloves, muriatic acid powder worked miracles on dirty stonework.

Mixing the explosive took her three days. On the counter of her tiny kitchen alcove, she laid out her tools. White, cup-shaped paper coffee filters. A measuring cup. A 60 ml syringe. A pint bottle of household ammonia. Two one-quart glass mason jars that had been in the freezer with her ingredients, as it was necessary to bring their temperature down to thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit.