The crusader was staying on the ninth floor of the Zawra Park Hotel. His name was Joseph Simeon and he was the last surviving member of a five-man cell that had left Heidelberg two weeks ago.

Following a route common to both legal and illegal immigrants, the members of the cell had traveled by bus to Istanbul. There they’d met with a forger who was supposed to supply them with guest-worker ID cards and other documents, but when the cell leader insulted the man’s Orthodox faith and tried to convert him to a more proper form of Christianity, he threw them out of his house. They were forced to turn to another counterfeiter, who charged three times as much for inferior work.

In fact it was worse than they knew. This second forger, having determined the crusaders had no Arabic, decided to play a prank on them. The Roman-letter portion of Joe Simeon’s ID card gave his cover name as Thaddeus Schulman. But the accompanying Arabic text said he was Princess Jezebel and listed his occupation as “pole dancer.” The cell leader’s card identified him as a professional camel anus.

The crusaders continued on to Gaziantep, where they hired a guide to sneak them into the UAS. The guide got a look at their papers and realized they’d been taken for fools, but as they’d already managed to offend him too, he said nothing. He did what they paid him to do, smuggled them into Syria and delivered them to a workers’ hostel in Aleppo. The manager of the hostel was highly amused by something but wouldn’t share the joke.

ICE showed up in the middle of the night. Thirsty and unable to sleep, Joe Simeon had gone in search of a soda machine and wasn’t in the room when the immigration agents kicked the door in. He heard shouting and then gunshots, and ran off into the darkness clutching a bottle of orange Fanta.

He thought about going home, but he was almost out of money, so even if he’d made it back over the border he’d have been stranded in Turkey. He decided to continue on alone to Baghdad, where additional conspirators were supposedly waiting, though he didn’t know who they were or how to contact them. Praying to God for guidance, he went out to the highway and hitched a ride.

In Baghdad he found a cheap motel out by the airport. He was still using the Princess Jezebel ID, but the motel clerk, who’d lost a brother on 11/9, didn’t laugh or crack a smile. He gave the crusader a room key and called the Homeland Security tip line.

An hour and a half later Joe Simeon woke to find a large Arab standing over his bed. “Get up,” the man said. “The authorities are on their way to arrest you.”

“Who are you?”

“You may call me Siraj al Din. I am a friend.” He neglected to mention that he was a member of Al Qaeda and that he’d been sent here by Idris Abd al Qahhar.

Siraj al Din took Joe Simeon to the Zawra Park Hotel and got him another room. He told him to keep the DO NOT DISTURB sign on and the shades drawn. “Don’t go out. Don’t make any calls, not even to room service. I’ll be back later with food and fresh clothing.”

Joe Simeon crawled into the bed—much more comfortable than the one at the motel—and fell into a dead sleep. When he next opened his eyes, Siraj al Din was pushing a cart loaded with covered dishes into the room. “What time is it?”

“About eight o’clock in the evening. Come, eat something.”

After the meal, he took the bag of clothes Siraj al Din had brought for him and went to shower. When he came back out the cart was gone, and a cardboard shirt box and a street map were lying on the bed. “What’s that?” he said, nodding at the shirt box.

“First I must ask you, are you prepared to do what you came here to do?”

Joe Simeon had just been contemplating this very question. The answer seemed simple enough. By all rights he should be dead or in custody by now. That he wasn’t was all the proof he needed that God wanted him to proceed. He would do what he was told, and then he would go to heaven. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” Siraj al Din said, picking up the map. “Your target is the Ground Zero Mosque. The city is close to breaking ground on the project, and tomorrow afternoon there will be a rally at the site. A large crowd is expected, and many politicians. Also lots of security—but I’ll show you a path to bypass the outer ring of barricades and police. After that it’s up to you.”

“No,” Joe Simeon said. “After that it’s up to God.”

Mustafa spent the night in Karkh General Hospital, sleeping at his father’s bedside.

That morning, Abu Mustafa had gone out for a walk and not come home. Mustafa had divided his day between napping and abortive attempts to compose an official report of his meeting with David Koresh. By late afternoon, when his father had still not returned, he began to grow concerned. He was just about to get Uncle Tamir and the cousins and organize a search when he received a phone call from the Bunia Mosque.

It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten such a call. His father often gravitated to places of worship when he got lost—Baghdad’s holy sites, he said, being among the few things about the city that hadn’t changed. But Al Bunia was across the river in Karkh, a long way for an old man on foot. “Is he all right?”

“I’m afraid not,” the caller said. “He was dehydrated and having heart palpitations. We had to call an ambulance.”

Mustafa and his aunt and uncle drove to the hospital. By the time they arrived, Abu Mustafa had responded to IV fluids and was sitting up, looking embarrassed. “I got on a bus,” he confessed.

Mustafa understood immediately. Abu Mustafa treated much of Baghdad’s mass transit system, especially the subway, as if it didn’t exist; he acknowledged buses but rarely used them, since the routes almost never went where he thought they should. Today, though, having wandered a bit too far along Abu Nuwas Street, he’d tried to ride back, only to discover that the coach he boarded was an express that made no further stops before crossing the Tigris. He’d stayed on the bus for a while, hoping it would eventually turn around, but the increasing strangeness of downtown had overwhelmed him, until he spotted Al Bunia in the distance and decided to make for it.

“I don’t understand,” Aunt Rana said. “Why didn’t you just hail a taxi?”

“Because I was confused!”

The doctor wanted to keep Abu Mustafa in the hospital overnight. Abu Mustafa wasn’t happy about it but was too tired to argue, so Mustafa arranged to have an extra bed wheeled into the room. By the time that was taken care of, Abu Mustafa was already drifting off, but Mustafa stayed awake late into the night, thinking.

Farouk had phoned him at home earlier to give him a heads-up. “Idris is quite upset about Rumsfeld’s suicide. He’s blaming you for the security lapse that allowed it to happen, and he’s asked that you be suspended pending a full investigation.”

Mustafa was upset about the suicide as well, albeit for very different reasons. Still, he couldn’t help observing: “Idris is only sorry that he didn’t get to torture and kill the man himself. Even if it is my fault, I don’t know that I can bring myself to regret denying him that.”

“Regret it or don’t, that’s your business,” Farouk said. “But I hope whatever you learned in America is good enough to compensate for this failure. My influence with the president only goes so far, and Idris and Senator Bin Laden are out for blood.”

“Don’t worry,” Mustafa said. “I think the president will find my report most illuminating.”

One thing he had yet to decide was what to do with the artifacts David Koresh had given him—particularly the second Mukhabarat file. Mustafa’s first impulse was to destroy it and forget he’d ever seen it. But when he recalled how Samir had been acting lately, he was forced to consider that perhaps God had sent him the file for a reason.

He thought about Idris, turning up at Al Kharj with a presidential order already in hand. There were any number of ways Idris could have learned that they were bringing back a prisoner, but what if he’d been alerted by a member of Mustafa’s own team? And what if that same team member had also given Idris advance notice of their expedition to Sadr City? And then there was the matter of the ambush on the Jefferson Davis Pike. According to Amal, Rumsfeld had claimed that his militia learned about the Marine convoy from an informant inside the Green Zone. Fine. But who told the informant, and who told the person who’d told him?

Are you ill, Samir?

At some point Mustafa slept. He woke to the dawn muezzin’s call and found a prayer room on the hospital’s ground floor. This morning he said extra prayers: for his father; for Colonel Yunus; for Amal and her son; and for Donald Rumsfeld, who though an enemy had still deserved the protection due any prisoner of war. Mustafa considered praying for Samir as well, but was too unsettled by his suspicions, so instead he ended by asking God to grant him wisdom.

When he went back upstairs, his father was awake, sitting up in bed and looking out the window. Mustafa paused in the doorway, distressed by his father’s frailty, which the dawn light seemed to accentuate.

His father saw him standing there and gave a little grunt of annoyance. “I’m not dead yet,” he said.

“I am glad,” said Mustafa. He sat on the edge of the bed. “I could use some advice.” His father laughed, and Mustafa said, “What?”

“Nothing,” said Abu Mustafa. “I’m happy to help, but I think the last time you followed my advice was when you were eight years old.” Another laugh. “Never mind, go on. What’s the problem?”

Mustafa just said it: “I think Samir is a homosexual.”

His father looked at him quizzically, then waited to hear if there was more. Finally Abu Mustafa said: “Well, that’s not so big a surprise. Really, if you think about it, it explains a few things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when Samir got divorced?” Abu Mustafa said. “I was struck at the time by how eagerly he confessed his infidelities. In his shoes I think I’d have been more ashamed, and more discreet—unless I were trying to prevent speculation about some other problem with my marriage.”

Mustafa blinked, feeling stupid. “You think Najat knows?”

“The mother of his children? Is that even a question?” Abu Mustafa chuckled. “But what troubles you about this, Mustafa? Are you worried he wants to do something improper with you?”

“What? No! . . . It’s a sin, that’s all.”

Abu Mustafa shrugged. “Fornication with women is a sin too, last I checked,” he said. “But you didn’t get such a look on your face when you thought Samir was guilty of that. Is God’s law really the issue here, or are you just being squeamish?”

Mustafa couldn’t believe his reaction. “You’re not shocked by this?”

“As a young man I might have been. But after forty years teaching university, it takes more than a little sodomy to shock me.”

“Well, there is more. I think Samir is being blackmailed.”

“That’s not all that shocking, either. But it is serious.”

“And now I’m trying to decide what to do.”

“Surely that’s not difficult,” Abu Mustafa said. “Samir is still your friend, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know, father. I think he may have betrayed me in America.”

“Are you still his friend?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“Because he betrayed you, or because he’s a different kind of sinner than you thought he was?”

“Both,” Mustafa said. “Tell me what I should do.”

“Let me ask a different question first. Of all the sins a man can commit, which do you think is the worst?”

“Murder,” said Mustafa.

“I would say murder also. And if Samir were a convicted murderer, would you visit him in prison?”

Mustafa thought about it. “Yes. I believe so.”

“Well then,” said Abu Mustafa. “For one such as Samir, I imagine every day is like living in prison—all the more so if his secret shame has been discovered and is being used against him by his enemies. So if you ask what to do, I’d say go to him. Be his friend. And if his sin frightens you, remember your own conduct in this life has been far from perfect.”

“All right,” Mustafa said nodding. Reaching out, he took his father’s hand. “Will you be all right alone here for a while?”

“Yes,” Abu Mustafa said. “For a little while.”

The alarm clock woke Joe Simeon at 9 a.m. A shaft of sunlight was coming through a gap in the window shades, and he marveled at it as if it were the divine light of heaven piercing the firmament. As the alarm continued to sound, he thought: Today I’ll be in God’s house.

He hadn’t taken communion since leaving Heidelberg. He knew there were Christian churches in Baghdad but didn’t know what kind they were or what sacraments they offered, and anyway he wasn’t supposed to leave the hotel before it was time for his mission. So he made do in the room. He took a hunk of leftover bread from last night’s meal and found a bottle of red fruit drink in the mini-fridge. He recited the words of the Last Supper as best he could recall them. Christ’s body was stale, His blood more pomegranate than grape and not at all fermented, but still Joe Simeon felt refreshed, his sins washed away.

Just to be sure, he ran a bath, pouring in a handful of floral-smelling salts. He lay in the tub, pictured Jesus in the river Jordan, and holding his nose and mouth submerged himself completely.

He got out and dried himself off and opened up the shirt box. The suicide vest was heavy, in form very much like a flak jacket, but padded with plastic explosive rather than Kevlar. Strings of nails had been pressed into the squares of plastique to serve as shrapnel. The nails seemed like a crude touch, but the detonator and wire work were first-rate, and great care had been taken to minimize the vest’s profile.

He slipped it on. There was a long-sleeved cotton shirt in the box as well, which he buttoned over the suicide vest, and a second, outer vest of dark cloth that he pulled on over that. He examined himself in a mirror, turning sideways to check: Does this make me look fat?

It didn’t. He’d seen one other explosive vest, worn by a crusader in Bonn to blow up a busload of Israelis, and that one had been a lot bulkier, hard to conceal even under a winter parka. This one he thought might evade the scrutiny of even a trained observer, and he should be able to move in a civilian crowd without drawing suspicion. The hardest part would be not sweating to death in the midday heat.

It was ten o’clock. He still had a couple of hours to wait, so he undressed again, laying the vest carefully back in its box, and sat on the bed in his underwear. He was keyed up and giddy, feeling as though his soul had already begun the process of leaving his body. He picked up the TV remote and channel-surfed manically, unable to focus.

The image of a cross caught his attention briefly. It was a broadcast of a Coptic church service, an Egyptian priest reading from the Gospels: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners . . .”

The words, unsubtitled, were just so much babble in Joe Simeon’s ears. He changed the channel again and prayed to God to speed the hour of his death.

Samir was waiting in the tea shop near the Israeli embassy. He had a dark bruise on his cheek and a split lip on which the swelling had only begun to go down.

“Samir, what happened to you?” Mustafa said when he saw him.

“Najat’s father,” Samir told him. He touched a fingertip to his lip and checked it for blood. “I went to Basra yesterday to warn Najat to take the boys somewhere safe. Getting punched in the face wasn’t part of the plan, but it did seem to convince her to take me seriously.”

Mustafa pulled out a chair and sat down. “Idris threatened your children?”

“Among other things.”

“Why didn’t you say something? We could have—”

Samir bristled. “Why didn’t I say something? You mean like, ‘Mustafa, I think it’s a really stupid idea to piss off the head of Al Qaeda?’ Something like that?”

“I’m sorry,” Mustafa said. “You’re right, I’m an idiot.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking that too,” Samir said. Then his anger deflated and he shrugged. “What the hell, it doesn’t make a difference. That son of a bitch has had it in for me since grade school. Even if I’d walked away from this investigation—even if I’d convinced you to walk away—he still would have found a reason to ruin my life.”

Mustafa nodded at the suitcase in the chair to Samir’s right. “Is that from your trip to Basra, or are you going someplace else?”

“Keeping my options open,” Samir said. “When I got home this morning, someone had been in my apartment. I was going to make myself a snack and noticed a thumbprint on the refrigerator door. Lost my appetite . . . So I threw some things together and got out.”

“Where would you go? To be with Najat?”

“No, I don’t know where she is going. It’s better that way. I don’t expect to see her again.” His voice hitched. “Or Malik and Jibril . . . I was thinking I might go to Greece.”

“What’s in Greece?”

“A chance I was too cowardly to take.” He smiled sadly. “I’m still too cowardly, really. Really what will happen, I’ll slink around Baghdad for a couple of days until Idris catches up to me. Then my troubles will be over.” He sighed. “Mustafa, I’ve got something to tell you . . .”

“Before you do,” said Mustafa, “I’ve got something to ask you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you still my friend?”

“Not a very good one I suppose.”

“The same could be said of me, the reckless way I’ve been acting,” Mustafa pointed out. “And you did save me from being burned alive by that Minuteman.”

Samir shook his head. “That doesn’t count. You and I were supposed to be dead already, along with everyone else in the convoy.”

“But we didn’t die. God gave us another chance—and you made good use of yours. Now I would like to do the same. Tell me you’re my friend and I can trust you, and whatever happened in America—whatever Idris forced you to do—it’s behind us. Forgotten.”

“Just like that, huh?” Samir barked a laugh, but then his throat hitched again and he began to cry. His shoulders shook as he wept, all the fear and shame that had been weighing on him releasing in a torrent. Mustafa took his hand and held it.

“Fuck, man,” Samir said, when the storm had passed. He swiped water from his eyes, wincing as the heel of his palm pressed the bruise. “You know God didn’t really give us another chance, don’t you? Just a little reprieve. Idris is going to kill us both, Amal too probably.”

“God willing, that is possible,” Mustafa conceded. “But I choose to be optimistic.”

“Remember what we were just saying about you being an idiot?”

“Yes,” Mustafa said smiling. “Your idiot friend.”

They were both laughing a few minutes later when Amal came in the tea shop. She approached the table slowly and asked Mustafa: “Do you need more time?”

“No.” He gave Samir’s hand a last squeeze. “We are good.”

“Good.” Amal nodded to Samir, noting the bruise but not saying anything about it. She sat down. “The coast looks clear outside. Or at least, if Al Qaeda is following us, they’re doing a good job hiding the surveillance.”

“We shall have to trust to God about that too,” Mustafa said. “Now, speaking of Al Qaeda: Tell Samir what you told me, about Osama bin Laden.”

The noon prayer had just ended and men and women were coming out of a mosque adjacent to Zawra Park, exchanging the blessing of peace as they headed off to lunch or back to work. Joe Simeon watched them from the back of an air-conditioned cab. He wiped condensation off the window to get a clearer view and stared at the mosque’s entrance, wondering what it was like inside. Would they have stained glass, like a real church?

The cabbie mistook the nature of his interest: “You are Muslim?”

“What?” said Joe Simeon. “No. I’m a Christian.” So there was no ambiguity: “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

“Christian, I thought so,” the cabbie said nodding. “American?”

“Originally.”

“ ‘Originally,’ ” the cabbie repeated slowly, the word not in his lexicon. “This is your hometown, Originally?”

“Yeah,” Joe Simeon said. “Originally, New York. It’s just outside Manhattan.”

“Manhattan I have heard of.” The cabbie nodded again. “You know, the Muslims of Baghdad, we pray for the Christians of America, of Manhattan. Now that the war is over—now that you are free—we have very high hopes for you. That you will become, what is the word? Civilized!”

“Like the Arabs, you mean.” The crusader’s expression soured. “You really think we’re going to turn into you?”

“With God’s blessing, even the greatest miracle is but a trifle,” the cabbie said pleasantly. “You’ll see, my brother!”

Traffic began to back up as they got closer to Ground Zero. While Joe Simeon tracked their progress on his map, the cabbie switched on the radio, tuning in a flurry of Arabic that apparently constituted a weather report. “Shamal,” he said.

“What?”

“Sandstorm.”

Joe Simeon wiped off his window again. The sky overhead was blue and clear.

The cabbie chuckled. “Not yet. But it’s coming.”

“When?” A sandstorm, if it was anything like the movies, could disrupt the rally and screw up the plan. On the other hand, like the inside of a mosque, it’d be an interesting thing to see.

“A couple of hours,” the cabbie said.

He’d miss it, then. Or on second thought, maybe he wouldn’t—maybe he’d already be looking down when it happened. “OK,” Joe Simeon said. “Let me off at this next corner, here.”

“Are you sure? I can get you closer.”

“No, that’s all right, I’ll walk from here. I don’t want to be late.”

“According to Donald Rumsfeld,” Amal said, “in the real world Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization and Osama bin Laden is responsible for the September 11 attacks.”

“This is what Bin Laden has been trying to cover up?” Samir said. “The Americans think he did to them what they did to us?”

“I suppose it might be a political liability, if anyone in Arabia could be made to believe it.” Amal smiled. “Imagine the push-poll questions: ‘Would you be more or less likely to vote for Senator Bin Laden if you knew he had an evil twin?’ ”

“Not a twin,” said Mustafa. “The same man with a different history. Or the same history remembered differently.”

“Would it really be a liability, though?” Samir asked. “Suppose he did kill a bunch of Americans in some other reality. So what? In this reality, which is the only one most people care about, the Christians attacked us.”

“That is the official story,” Mustafa said. “And given the bloodthirstiness of some Christians, it might well be true. But remember a key element of the mirage legend: America is the real superpower, while the individual states of Arabia are just that, independent nations. Weak ones. When a weak state is drawn into a fight with a superpower, what happens to it?”

Samir shrugged. “It gets its ass kicked.”

Mustafa looked at Amal. “What did Rumsfeld say America did, in response to 9/11?”

“Invaded Iraq,” she said. “His story about what happened to the Hussein family was heartwarming, but when I asked what the war did to the rest of us he pretended not to understand the question.”

“Wait,” said Samir. “So you’re saying that in this alternate reality of Rumsfeld’s, Osama bin Laden is an Iraqi?”

“No, he’s still from Jeddah,” Amal said. “A ‘Saudi’ Arabian.”

“Then why the hell would America invade Iraq?”

“Because God put a Texan in charge,” Mustafa said. “The point I am getting at is this: A terrorist who attacks a Christian superpower in the name of Islam knows he is setting up his fellow Muslims for slaughter, because that is how superpowers react when they are struck. Which raises the question: If in one version of history, a man is willing to murder thousands of innocent Muslims by proxy, is it not plausible that in another version, he might be willing to commit the same sin more directly?”

“So we’re to become Truthers, now?” Amal said. “You think Osama bin Laden is responsible for the 11/9 attacks as well?”

“That is what I am suggesting.”

“But the November 9 hijackers were Christians. That’s documented—I don’t care what the conspiracy theorists say. And Al Qaeda won’t even recruit Shia Muslims, so how—”

“Oh God,” said Samir.

Amal looked at him. “What?”

“There are Christians in Al Qaeda. Or at least people pretending to be Christian . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

“The ambush on our convoy in Fairfax County,” Mustafa explained. “Al Qaeda was behind that.”

“No, that was Rumsfeld’s militia. I told you, he admitted to it. And Rumsfeld was not Osama bin Laden’s ally.”

“That does not preclude him from being Osama bin Laden’s stooge. If anything, his fear and hatred of Al Qaeda would have made him easier to manipulate.”

“To what end, though?” Amal said. “Why would Osama bin Laden want to provoke a war between Arabia and America, or between Islam and Christendom? What would he be hoping to accomplish?”

“I think,” said Mustafa, “that he wants to turn the clock back. Undo modernity and the Republic, and usher in a new Caliphate.” He brought out the CIA report David Koresh had given him and laid it on the table. Then he continued: “Imagine you are Osama bin Laden. A son of privilege, heir to one of the wealthiest men in Arabia. Like many a rich kid before you, though, you’re not content to thank God for your blessings. You become disaffected, contemptuous of what you see as a decadent society and a corrupt political culture.

“Eventually you drop out, go to Peshawar and then Afghanistan. The harsh life of a holy warrior suits you, and your experiences on the battlefield lead you to a dark epiphany. The people of Afghanistan have never lacked for hardship and their suffering has only multiplied under the Russians, yet despite or perhaps because of this, the men you fight alongside practice what seems to you a much purer form of Islam, untainted by latter-day heresy. At some point you ask yourself what a dose of the same suffering might do for the state of the faith in your own country.

“Of course you can’t turn Arabia into Afghanistan. But perhaps you don’t need to. Modern living has made your countrymen so soft, maybe a hard shock to the system is all it would take to herd them back onto the righteous path. God willing, anything is possible; and if there’s one thing being a holy warrior has convinced you of, it’s that you know the will of God.

“So you go home, a hero. You pretend to make peace with the political elite of Riyadh, let them help you into a position of power. Behind the scenes you assemble Al Qaeda, the foundation of a new world order. You send scouts into Christendom to find the crusaders who will serve as your pawns, to make unprovoked war against Islam.

“And so November 9, 2001: The plan is set in motion and succeeds beyond your wildest dreams. Three planes out of four reach their targets. The carnage is spectacular. Even the downing of the fourth plane—the one you’d hoped would kill the young Saudi president—turns out to be a blessing. That same president, horrified by the destruction and his own close brush with death, declares a jihad against terrorism—the holy war you wanted, and then some. Political opinion tilts sharply towards the Party of God. Citizens return to the mosques in droves. God’s will, as you’ve conceived it, is about to be made manifest.

“And then, somehow,” said Mustafa, “it starts to unravel. The Republic trembles but does not fall. As the shock of 11/9 recedes, doubts are raised about the wisdom of some of the president’s actions. And it’s not just the die-hard secularists in the Unity Party asking questions. As the occupation drags on, as word of certain abuses is leaked to the press, fatwas are issued from some surprising quarters: fatwas condemning torture, condemning the erosion of civil liberties, condemning the persecution of Christians—condemning, even, the attack on America.

“To you, for whom devotion to God and devotion to liberal democracy are mutually exclusive, this must all be very baffling. Clearly the rot goes deeper than you realized. More shocks are needed. Fortunately the crusaders are ready to provide them. The Americans are spoiling for vengeance and the Europeans are happy to help. You don’t even have to do anything, just sit back and watch them converge on Baghdad with their bombs and their scriptures. But the guardians of the homeland are alerted now, and a lot of these would-be martyrs are captured and interrogated. And they tell a very strange story.

“As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you are one of the first people in Arabia to learn about this peculiar legend the crusaders have latched on to. The parallels between the mythical September 11 and the real November 9 are alarming, to say the least. Some of these people are naming you as the architect of the attack, and even though they’re talking about a different attack, even though they’re madmen, that doesn’t mean your secret won’t be exposed.

“You need to bury this story. You put Al Qaeda on alert and start monitoring interrogation sessions. Crusaders who say the wrong thing are made to disappear, along with whatever artifacts they possess. In the course of this cover-up you become an expert on the mirage legend, and the more you learn the more familiar it all seems, like something from a half-remembered dream.

“Another world. A world in which America is the invading superpower, defiling the holy places of Islam. A world in which Arabia is broken up into minor principalities, in which men like Saddam Hussein and Muammar al Gaddafi are not just criminals or the butts of jokes but heads of state. A world in which the suffering of ordinary Arabs is, correspondingly, multiplied.

“It’s your turn to be shocked. You realize, if this is true, you’ve been wasting your time, struggling inside an illusion, while the situation you were trying to create already existed. All you have to figure out is how to restore it.

“And so, very late in the day, you have a new mission. It’s the same mission the crusaders are on, which ought to be ironic but really just makes sense, since in your pride, you’ve invited the same person to come whisper in your ear. In any case, that is your wish: To return to a world of sorrow, to an Arabia whose people will be ripe to receive your message, the word of God the All-Merciful and Compassionate as interpreted by the mass murderer Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.”

Mustafa paused and drank some tea. Samir was staring at him uneasily, and Amal had picked up the CIA report and was flipping through it.

“It’s an interesting story,” Amal said good-naturedly. “But even with this”—she dropped the report back on the table—“you know no one is going to believe it.”

“No,” Samir agreed. “If you go to the president talking like that, he’s going to think you’re nuts.”

“Oh,” said Mustafa, “but I haven’t even told you the crazy part yet . . . Here. Let me show you a photograph.”

Uday Hussein had come upstairs in pursuit of a maid. He’d been stalking her on and off since she’d started work at the Adhamiyah estate, following her through the house each time he caught sight of her, each time letting her elude him, confident that he could corner her whenever he wished. Today though he’d grown tired of the game and determined to end it, and so he was very annoyed when he burst into a bathroom where he was sure she was hiding, only to find it unoccupied.

He backed out into the hall, turning towards a gallery that overlooked the domed chamber containing the Nebuchadnezzar statue. A male servant was polishing the balustrade; sensing Uday’s attention upon him, he recalled another chore in a distant part of the house and hastened away.

Uday went the other direction, poking his head into rooms at random. In the westernmost part of the hall he paused in front of a massive wooden door banded in iron. The chamber beyond was off-limits but Uday decided to check it anyway, reasoning that if the maid were inside he’d have an excuse to punish her—not that he needed an excuse.

The door somewhat surprisingly was unlocked. Uday leaned into it and swung it wide, then spread his arms and cried “Aha!” No one tried to bolt past him. He lowered his arms again and stood just inside the threshold looking around.

The chamber was octagonal, ten meters wide. In the past it had been used as both a prayer room and an astronomical observatory, and its single broad window was oriented towards the Qibla. Its current focus, however, was neither Mecca nor the heavens, but the heart of the vast desert in the Arabian Peninsula’s southeast quadrant. Sand from that desert had been poured in a series of curving lines on the chamber floor, forming a pattern like a whirlwind viewed from above. In the whirlwind’s eye the brass bottle from Al Hillah had been placed atop a mound of sand, its unstoppered mouth tilted towards the window. Incense burners and stands of bells and chimes were spaced around the whirlwind’s outer edge, and other trinkets and talismans had been arranged within the swirls of sand according to some system Uday had not been schooled in.

The sight of it made him dizzy, and being dizzy made him angry. He approached the near edge of the whirlwind and nudged one of the smoking braziers with the toe of his boot.

“Do not disturb the pattern!”

Mr. Rammal, his father’s sorcerer, stood in the doorway holding a set of iron shackles. Uday clenched his fists at the rebuke and for a dangerous second contemplated stomping through the whole design like a boy kicking apart a sand castle—and then maybe, for an encore, pistol-whipping Mr. Rammal until his brains came out his ears.

He resisted the urge. His father was home and not far away, and maids weren’t the only ones in this house subject to cruel punishments.

Instead he glared at Mr. Rammal. “Who do you think you are talking to that way?”

“You mustn’t disturb it,” Mr. Rammal repeated. He came forward to make sure that it hadn’t already been damaged, and Uday suppressed another impulse to violence.

“What’s this supposed to do, anyway?” Uday said. “Suck the jinni into the bottle like a magic vacuum cleaner?”

“You should not refer so directly to the creature,” Mr. Rammal cautioned. This time he moderated his tone. Though he knew he was under Saddam’s protection, he also understood that there were limits to Uday’s self-control—and standing this close, the younger Hussein’s rage was palpable. “But to answer your question, no, this is only a lure. What it will do, if it works, is draw the creature into this city and compel it to reveal itself. Then while it is visible we must find it, and bind it.” He held up the shackles. “To incant it back into the bottle will require a final ritual.”

“Do you actually believe this shit you’re spewing?”

“Your father believes it.”

“I’ll tell you what my father believes,” Uday said. “My father believes in making examples of people who try to cheat him. When he realizes you’re a charlatan—and he will—he’s going to want you hurt. And guess who he’s going to call on to hurt you.” He bent his head close to the sorcerer’s and exhaled sourly against his cheek. “Go ahead, guess.”

A gust of air came through the window, causing several of the chimes to jangle. Uday reared back laughing at Mr. Rammal’s reaction. “Praise God the All-Compassionate!” Uday said. “The wind is ringing the wind chimes! It’s a miracle!”

Then the breeze ceased, but the noise didn’t. It spread around the circle, an unseen hand gripping each stand, agitating the bells. The clean lines of smoke rising from the braziers twisted and dispersed. An incense burner near the window shot up a column of blue flame, as if a gas jet had been fired through the bowl; the flame rose to a height of a meter before flickering out. There was a pause, long enough for a heartbeat, or a whisper, and then another brazier spat fire, and another, and another—but only one at a time, as if it were really a single flame jumping playfully around the circumference of the circle. Uday, feeling as though the room were revolving, stayed rooted in place until the flame reached the brazier by his feet. Then he fell back shrieking all the way to the door, his spine fetching up painfully against the jamb.

Mr. Rammal remained where he was, observing the progress of the fire and listening to the rustle of the chimes. A cold smile bloomed on his lips.

“Go and get your father,” he said to Uday. “If you please.”

The rally was being held just south of Ground Zero Plaza, on a wedge of land where the World Trade Center Number Seven building had once stood. In 2002 this property, cleared of debris and converted temporarily into a park, had been used for the memorial services commemorating the one-year anniversary of the attacks.

The idea of erecting a mosque on the site had first been floated in April 2003 and had met with near-universal approval. The devil was waiting, as he always is, in the details, and soon enough a squabble had broken out between various Sunni and Shia factions over just who would be in charge of funding, planning, building, and administering the project. Public meetings called to discuss the matter ended in acrimony, and closed-door sessions between city, state, and religious officials fared no better; a visiting mullah compared the atmosphere of the latter to Prime Minister’s question time in the Persian parliament, “only not so friendly.”

The politicking and debate over the mosque had continued for another six years—culminating in an announcement five months ago that a deal had finally been reached. Since then several deadlines for fixing a start date for construction had been missed, and new fault lines had appeared in the mosque coalition. Today’s rally was an attempt to get things back on track. Billed as a celebration, it was really more an act of sympathetic magic, the idea being to get all the principals together in public acting as if construction of the mosque were going forward. Then, assuming they made it through the ceremony without the world coming to an end, maybe they could bring on the builders and the cranes for real.

Not everyone had been able to make it. The president, while offering a strong message of support for the mosque, had declined an invitation to the rally, promising instead to attend the actual groundbreaking, assuming there was one. He’d sent a group of Unity Party functionaries in his place, and the POG, not to be outdone, had dispatched a delegation of Sauds.

Saddam Hussein had also respectfully declined to attend—and unlike the president, he hadn’t bothered to wait for an invitation before doing so. Given the identity of the woman in charge of the guest list, this was a tactically wise move.

One other notable no-show was the Arabian senator, Osama bin Laden. He had planned to attend the rally and had come down from Riyadh with the Sauds, only to fall ill at the very last moment. He was presently recuperating at his hotel.

For Amal’s brother Haidar, chief security coordinator for the event, the news of Bin Laden’s absence was a welcome relief. He only wished it could have come sooner. While all of the rally attendees were concerned about safety, Bin Laden’s advance team had been uniquely paranoid, questioning him repeatedly about every detail of the security arrangements. Haidar had no objection to thoroughness, but he did have a problem with people who obviously didn’t trust a Shia to do the job correctly.

Now he had a bit more energy to devote to other problems, of which there was no shortage. The security setup consisted of three layers. The outer layer of barricades and checkpoints was being manned by the Baghdad PD. All the necessary bribes had been paid, so Haidar expected little trouble here—unless Saddam, miffed about his nonexistent invite, decided to arrange some sort of payback. The innermost security layer, directly around the stage, was composed mainly of bodyguards of the various attendees. Here the potential for mayhem was greater, since despite the ongoing show of solidarity, many of these people couldn’t stand one another. Haidar was particularly troubled by reports of new hostilities between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps, both well represented here, and he could only hope that the presence of news cameras would convince them to honor their good-conduct pledges.

But his biggest concern was with the middle layer of security—armed men, some in uniform and some in plainclothes, whose job was to circulate through the crowd, looking for any threats that might have made it past the police checkpoints. Haidar had wanted to use only his own people for this, but several of the more high-profile guests had insisted on detailing additional personnel to the effort. Unable to refuse the help without precipitating a political crisis, Haidar had instead broken the park into separate patrol zones and assigned each group its own territory. The Mahdi Army got a strip on the far west end of the park, next to the Arab Telecom building, while the Badr Corps got the east end, alongside the post office. The Saudi security team was placed in the center, surrounded by members of other, more local Sunni groups, arranged according to Haidar’s understanding of their current relations with the Badrists and the Sadrists. Haidar’s own men were scattered throughout the park and instructed to watch the watchers.

Haidar himself roamed freely, using radio, eye, and instinct to try to keep tabs on the whole show at once. As his mother stood onstage talking about The Moment, he stopped at one of the police checkpoints to get a head count on the crowd. Turnout was low, around two thousand people in a space that could hold five times that number. Not that it mattered for PR purposes: The estimate released to the press would be inflated to suggest a capacity crowd, and the cameras were all down front near the VIP seating, which was full.

Senator Al Maysani finished her remarks and turned the podium over to the governor, Nouri al Maliki. Haidar walked the northern perimeter, scanning the park. Mist-spraying machines had been set up at various points to keep the crowd cool and to add a none-too-subtle rainbow effect to the proceedings, but they also interfered with the sight lines. As Haidar maneuvered to get clearer views, his suit went from dry to damp and back again.

Al Maliki was followed at the podium by the man who also hoped to succeed him as governor: Muqtada al Sadr. Haidar, now standing among the Guardian Angels, made a quick radio call to the men he had monitoring the Badrs. “It’s OK,” came the reply. “We’ve got a few people here who look like they just bit down on lemons, but nobody’s acting up.”

“No problems by the stage, either,” added a second voice.

“The Anbaris are starting to grumble,” said a third voice. “I hope we’ve got some Sunnis on the speakers’ list.”

“Don’t worry,” said Haidar. “The mayor of Ramadi is up next.” He kept moving.

The rally was approaching the fifty-minute mark, and a few bored spectators were beginning to drift towards the exits, when the only Christian scheduled to speak got up to use the microphone. The Patriarch of Babylon was an old man from Kurdistan. Like a number of the speakers before him, he seemed a bit off-balance at first, unsettled perhaps by the still-shocking emptiness above the plaza to the north. But he gripped the sides of the podium and steadied himself, and looked down at the crowd, and smiled.

“Good afternoon,” he began. “I would like to say a few words about peace.”

Haidar was over in Badr territory, hunting the source of a strange noise—a metallic bang, possibly a door slam—that he’d heard just a moment before. The murmur that went through the crowd at the Patriarch’s first words caused him to look up at the stage. As he was turning away again, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye: a figure, stepping out from the side of the post office. By the time Haidar turned all the way around the figure had vanished behind a spray of mist, leaving a jumble of impressions: White shirt. Dark vest. Pale skin. Straw-colored hair.

“ ‘Christianity is a religion of peace,’ ” said the Patriarch. “We’ve all heard that sentiment many times over the past few years, voiced by well-meaning apologists. I’m sure to many Muslims it must seem an absurd, even an offensive, statement. And nowhere more so than here, in Baghdad, at Ground Zero of the War on Terror.” He raised an arm, waved a hand at the empty space where towers should be standing. “Christians, peaceful. How ridiculous!”

Haidar had found what he was looking for. Set into the ground, in a recess along the post office wall, was a hinged metal grate. It should have been padlocked, but the lock was missing, and the front edge of the grate stuck up from its sill, having failed to close properly. “Code yellow, code yellow,” Haidar said into his radio. “We have a security breach along the east perimeter.”

“How ridiculous,” the Patriarch repeated. “And you know, it is ridiculous, if by ‘religion’ we refer to the practitioners of faith. Congregations are not made up of abstractions like peace. They are made up of human beings. Go into any church in the land, any synagogue, yes, any mosque, and that is what you will find: human beings. A few saints, perhaps”—the Patriarch shrugged a shoulder—“and perhaps also one or two demons, hiding their wickedness behind a mask of piety. But the great majority, the body of the faithful, neither angels nor devils, but ordinary sinners: men and women trying to make their way in the world with God’s help and forgiveness . . .”

“Suleiman, kill the waterworks,” Haidar said, and after a brief hesitation the misters shut off. As the rainbows dissipated, Haidar breasted forward through the crowd, searching for a white man in a dark vest. He stopped to do a three-sixty and spotted something else, something extraordinary: Another man, an Arab in a white desert tunic, who appeared to be floating in midair. The black-and-white keffiyeh around the man’s neck fluttered madly in a breeze Haidar couldn’t feel, and his eyes were filled with blue fire.

Then Haidar blinked and saw more clearly. The man wasn’t levitating; he was perched atop a concrete planter box, bright marigolds clustered around his sandaled feet. His eyes, reflecting the afternoon sunlight, were focused on something in the crowd. Haidar followed the direction of the man’s gaze and saw Joe Simeon, headed towards the stage.

“When we speak of a religion of peace, we refer not to Christendom as it is, but as we would like it to be, as we aspire and strive, daily, to make it—a struggle that is not different from the daily struggle of the Muslims. And if we often fail in that struggle, it’s not because we worship a different or a lesser God; it’s because we are, like you, only human.”

Haidar spoke urgently into his radio. He glanced at the man in the white tunic again and saw he was no longer staring; he’d closed his eyes and bowed his head, and his lips were moving as if in prayer. Feeling a sudden chill, Haidar turned back to Joe Simeon, who had almost reached the edge of the VIP area. As Simeon twisted sideways to slip between two other men, Haidar glimpsed his torso in profile and in a flash of intuition realized what was concealed beneath his vest and shirt.

“Oh God,” Haidar said. “Code black! Code black!”

“And so in the name of the Merciful Creator of the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims, I offer you this hope, this wish: Peace be un—”

The Patriarch’s blessing was interrupted by a sudden scramble of security personnel on the stage. At the same moment one of Haidar’s men tried to grab Joe Simeon. Simeon turned, almost casually, and stabbed the man in the chest with a knife taken from his hotel room. Someone else screamed and the crowd began surging backwards in a panic, trapping the other security guards who were trying to rush forward. Joe Simeon took a few more steps towards the stage, uttering his own benediction. Then he set off the bomb.

The flash that followed dazzled every eye that looked at it and blinded all the cameras, too. No one could say, afterwards, exactly what had happened. But there was no thunderous blast, no shock wave—and, once the light had faded, no scene of carnage. The stage, and the crowd, remained intact, and what should have been a locus of death and destruction had instead become, through some conjuror’s trick, a whirring mass of life.

Birds. A flock of birds, arranged around the would-be suicide bomber like points on a globe, and each one holding, in its claws, a single shining nail.

As one they dropped their burdens. The ring of the nails falling harmlessly to the pavement could be heard throughout the park in that moment’s hush. Then the birds flew up screaming. They weren’t doves. They were ravens, carrion-eaters of the desert, and they were angry, for here today in Baghdad, against all expectations, there was nothing for them—even the man Joe Simeon had stabbed was struggling to his feet, hand pressed to a bleeding gash above his breastbone that was painful but not fatal.

Joe Simeon, his vest and shirt hanging in tatters, stared into the sky, his expression of rapture changing to puzzlement as he realized he too was still among the living. “Jesus?” he said. The ravens ignored him and flew higher. “Wait!” he cried, raising both hands as if to claw his way to heaven. But gravity buckled his knees, and then men with earpieces were tackling him from all sides.

Across the park, away from the commotion, the nomad in the white tunic raised his head and opened his eyes. Nodding minutely in satisfaction, he prepared to step back into the unseen realm from which he’d come, only to find himself frozen in place by the cold steel ring of a gun muzzle pressed against his neck.

“Don’t you move,” Haidar told him, pulling out handcuffs. “Don’t you move a muscle.”

“You’re right,” Amal said, when Mustafa had finished. “That does sound crazy . . . Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know,” said Mustafa. He looked at the photo, at the brass bottle at his other self’s feet. “I do think Saddam believes it. I think he is seeking this jinni to do some wishing of his own, to remake the world closer to his heart’s desire.”

“And Bin Laden?” Samir said. “What’s his game plan? Are Wahhabists even allowed to make wishes?”

“Probably not. But then they’re not allowed to commit acts of terror, either, and yet that doesn’t seem to have discouraged him.”

“So what’s our game plan?” asked Amal.

“About the jinn I still can’t say,” Mustafa replied. “But as long as we’re still cops, I was thinking—don’t laugh—that we might try enforcing the law.”