His face was still lifted toward the heavens. Yes, the stars were bright this night, but not as bright as the stars of the desert. If he hoped to see them again, he had to leave now. Soon there would be another war—a war that would end with the defeat of the armies of Rome, in a town called Dabiq. There was no way the American president could avoid this war, he thought. Not after tonight.
He climbed into the BMW, started the engine, and entered his destination into the navigation system. It advised him to proceed to a road it recognized. Saladin did so, like the surveillance aircraft, with his lights doused, following the dirt-and-gravel road over the rim of the little valley and across the pasture to Hume Road. The navigation system instructed him to turn to the left and make his way back to I-66. Saladin, trusting his instincts, turned right instead. After a moment he switched on the radio. He smiled. It wasn’t over, he thought. It was only beginning.
74
HUME, VIRGINIA
THE LAST REPORT FROM THE FBI Cessna was the same as the first—seven individuals inside the cottage, three vehicles outside. One of the individuals was entirely stationary, one appeared to be pacing slowly. There were no other human heat signatures in the little valley, only the bears. They were about fifty yards to the north of the cottage. For that reason, among others, Gabriel and Mikhail approached from the south.
A single road led into the valley, the private track leading from Hume Road to the cottage itself. They used it only as a point of reference. They kept to the pastureland, Mikhail leading the way, Gabriel a step behind. The earth was sodden and treacherous with the holes of burrowing animals. Occasionally, Mikhail illuminated their path with the light of his mobile phone, but mainly they moved in darkness.
At the edge of the pasture was a steep hill thick with oak and maple. Fallen tree limbs littered the ground, slowing their pace. Finally, after breasting the ridgeline of the valley, they glimpsed the cottage for the first time. One thing had changed since the departure of the FBI Cessna. There were two vehicles instead of three. Mikhail started down the slope of the hill, Gabriel a step behind.
After Saladin’s abrupt departure, the preparations for Natalie’s execution began in earnest. The white sheet was removed from her head, her hands were bound behind her back. A brief argument ensued among the four men over who would have the honor of removing her head. The tallest of the four prevailed. By his accent, Natalie could tell that he was a Yemeni. Something about his demeanor was vaguely familiar. All at once she realized that she and the Yemeni had been at the camp in Palmyra at the same time. He had worn his hair and beard long then. Now he was clean-shaven and neatly groomed. Were it not for his black tactical suit, he might have been mistaken for a sales associate at the Apple store.
The four men covered their faces, leaving only their pitiless eyes exposed. They made no attempt to alter the striking Americana of the setting—indeed, they seemed to revel in it. Natalie was made to kneel before the camera, which was held by the woman she knew as Megan. It was a real camera, not a cell phone; ISIS was second to none when it came to production value. They ordered Natalie to stare directly into the lens, but she refused, even after the Yemeni struck her viciously across the face. She stared straight ahead, toward the window over the woman’s right shoulder, and tried to think of something, anything, other than the steel blade of the hunting knife in the Yemeni’s right hand.
He stood directly behind her, with the other three men arrayed to his right, and read from a prepared statement, first in Arabic, then in a language that Natalie, after a moment, realized was broken English. It was no matter; the team at ISIS media productions would surely add subtitles. Natalie tried not to listen, focusing her attention instead on the window. Because it was dark outside, the glass was acting as a mirror. She could see the tableau of her execution roughly as it was being framed by the camera—one helpless woman kneeling, three masked men cradling automatic rifles, a Yemeni with a knife speaking no known language. But there was something else in the window, something less distinct than the reflection of Natalie and her four murderers. It was a face. Instantly, she realized it was Mikhail’s. It was odd, she thought. Of all the faces she might conjure from her memory in the moments before her death, his was not the one she had expected.
The Yemeni’s voice rose with an oratorical flourish as he concluded his statement. Natalie took one last look at her reflection in the window, and at the face of the man she might have loved. Are you watching? she thought. What are you waiting for?
She became aware of a silence. It lasted a second or two, it lasted an hour or more—she could not tell. Then the Yemeni set upon her like a wild animal and she toppled sideways. When his hand seized her throat, she prepared herself for the pain of the knife’s first bite. Relax, she told herself. It would hurt less if her muscles and tendons were not constricted. But then there was a sharp crack, which she mistook for the severing of her own neck, and the Yemeni fell beside her. The other three jihadists fell next, one by one, like targets in a shooting gallery. The woman was the last to die. Shot through the head, she collapsed as if a trapdoor had opened beneath her. The camera slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor. Benevolently, the lens averted its gaze from Natalie’s face. She was beautiful, thought Gabriel, as he cut the binds from her wrists. Even when she was screaming.
PART FOUR
THE ONE IN CHARGE
75
WASHINGTON—JERUSALEM
THE RECRIMINATIONS BEGAN EVEN BEFORE the sun had risen. One party blamed the president for the calamity that had befallen America, the other blamed his predecessor. That was the only thing Washington was good at these days—recriminations and apportionment of blame. There was once a time, during the darkest days of the Cold War, when American foreign policy was characterized by consensus and steadfastness. Now the two parties could not agree on what to call the enemy, let alone how to combat him. It was little wonder, then, that an attack on the nation’s capital was yet another occasion for partisan bickering.