Let me start with the reader. I thank him for his indulgence in allowing me to alter the names of people whose identities are either unimportant or need to be protected. The Engineer’s name was Yahya Ayyash, but I saw absolutely no purpose in cluttering up the text with foreign names. The same goes for my protagonist, Hajj Radwan. His real name is Imad Fayez Mughniyah. The same applies when I play around with some of the narrative. Again, it’s in the name of protecting “sources and methods,” as well as telling a more coherent story. The book was vetted by the CIA not for opinion or storytelling but to ensure it exposes no secrets.
The list of references I drew on is long. But there are a couple of sources I cannot fail to thank. First of all, the Lebanese police. Without their superb work I would have no idea Hajj Radwan was behind Hariri’s murder. And while the tribunal conducted a thorough and fair investigation, I did not draw on evidence collected for the trial. Nicholas Blanford’s Killing Mr. Lebanon is a wonderful source on Hariri’s assassination, as his Warriors of God is on Hezbollah. Joby Warrick’s The Triple Agent is the main source for my retelling the Khost tragedy. Michael Newton’s Age of Assassins is the best book out there on modern assassination. A lot of his thinking bled into mine; I apologize for not citing him appropriately.
Special thanks go to my editor at Blue Rider, David Rosenthal, and my agent, Luke Janklow. If they hadn’t encouraged me that there was something here—whatever this odd blend of memoir and political science is—this book would never have been written.