The street appeared quiet and peaceful through the glass doors ahead. No traffic. No bellman. No taxis awaiting fares or cars idling at the curb.

An innocent summer afternoon. Bin-Hezam laid his hand upon the cool glass door, pushing it open.

Chapter 44

Fisk had made Bin-Hezam instantly. It took everything he had to suppress his astonishment at seeing the Saudi walk directly into his path.

Had he not seen the helicopter? Bin-Hezam did not run. Nor did he hesitate.

Fisk did not like the bag of imitation leather across his back. No disguise, nothing in his hands.

Fisk had made a split-second decision to turn back to the desk. He allowed the Saudi to pass. He wanted him outside the hotel. The arrest team was in position outside, the street was sealed. The desk clerk and the hipster guest behind him were directly in the line of fire if something happened inside the hotel.

Fisk stared at the clerk, fearing he would look up at the exiting guest and point him out to Fisk as the man from the scanned photograph in front of him. The moments moved in slow motion, Fisk listening to the terrorist’s footsteps crossing the lobby behind him.

Once the Saudi was past, Fisk glanced over his shoulder. He focused on the bag across the man’s back. Could be anything in there, starting with the handgun he had acquired from the murdered Senegalese. Bin-Hezam wore a jacket as well, enough to conceal a weapon.

Fisk slid his phone out of his belt.

The subject pushed open the door to the sidewalk.

The door eased shut behind him, and Bin-Hezam was out on the sidewalk of the oddly quiet street.

“This is him exiting,” said Fisk. “I repeat—mark is exiting.”

The clerk looked up at him, puzzled. “Excuse me . . . ?”

“Get down on the floor now!” said Fisk. He turned and grabbed the hipster’s shoulder, throwing him down to the floor. “Down!”

The hipster’s phone never left his ear as he looked up at Fisk with great offense. Into his phone he said, “Some asshole just shoved me to the floor.”

“Stay down!” said Fisk, already rushing to the door.

Chapter 45

Baada Bin-Hezam walked out of the Hotel Indigo into late-day heat. He noticed instantly how quiet the canyon of West Twenty-eighth Street was.

Silence in the valley. He savored it.

All for him.

Racked plants and flowers stood along on the sidewalks, but the vendors were all gone. Hose water trickled into the gutter.

Bin-Hezam muttered a prayer of gratitude at that moment, only his lips moving.

Then he sensed another body moving through the glass door behind him.

“Bin-Hezam!”

They knew his name. The voice behind him—surprisingly, given what Bin-Hezam had seen of his face inside the hotel lobby—yelled at him in Arabic, ordering him to lie facedown upon the burning sidewalk.

Joy flowered in Bin-Hezam. He stepped off the curb and stopped.

There, across the street to his left, in an alcove in the front of one of the shops, appeared two men in black jackets and helmets. And from behind a parked car to his right. Rising like spirits, greeting him.

He heard the policeman’s voice again behind him, instructing him to lie down before them. Yelling at him now. Commanding him.

Bin-Hezam raised both of his arms in the universal gesture of surrender.

The man behind the car straightened, aiming a large automatic weapon at Bin-Hezam. The two from the alcove slowly advanced.

Bin-Hezam recited his prayer. He knew he would be forgiven for standing.

Chapter 46

Fisk saw Bin-Hezam’s arms go high, the messenger bag shrugging up his back. He had stopped and surrendered, but he had not begun to lie down.

“There is no god but Allah,” said Bin-Hezam. Not a yell, just a statement. An assertion.

Fisk repeated his orders. The crouching black-armored tac team cops moved a few more shuffle steps toward the opposite curb, their footsteps like drumbeats on the pavement.

“Get down!” Fisk yelled, this time in English.

“Mohammed is His prophet!” called Bin-Hezam, now yelling in reply. Fisk didn’t like this.

Bin-Hezam was lowering his hands. Fisk instinctively started toward him from behind.

In a single motion, Bin-Hezam lifted the messenger bag off his shoulder and reached across his chest. He drew something from within his jacket under his left arm. Fisk saw it was shiny, nickel-plated.

Fisk yelled, “No!”—both at Bin-Hezam and the tac cops.

Bin-Hezam pointed the weapon first at the cop coming from behind the car. He squeezed the trigger, the handgun leaping in his hand.

He barely got off a second shot before a single 7.62 full-metal-jacket, boat-tail sniper bullet exploded in his brain.

Concurrently, the other tac cop had opened up on the Saudi. The twin impacts drove Bin-Hezam back and down against the sidewalk, collapsing him in a quivering heap. He resembled a pile of rags more than a human being.

What was left of Bin-Hezam’s life flowed from the gaping wound in the back of his head, his blood joining the water trickling in the gutter, turning it crimson.

The messenger bag, having jumped from his hand, lay a few feet away.

Fisk stood stunned. Only later did it occur to him that he had unwisely been standing opposite the tac teams’ lines of fire. Had they missed Bin-Hezam by just a few inches to the right—unlikely at close range, but possible—Fisk too would have gone down on the pavement in a bloody heap.

As it was, Fisk walked to Bin-Hezam, standing over the dead terrorist. They would get no further information from him. Bin-Hezam had wanted to die. The only consolation was that he never would have consented to be taken alive.

The helicopter reappeared overhead. The tac agents joined Fisk at the curb. They looked down at the Saudi, whose eyes were beyond seeing.

Part 7

Double-Speak

Chapter 47

The cab crawled uptown on Sixth Avenue in the thick of early evening traffic.

It hit every light because of the snarl of pedestrians crossing against them on this late Saturday afternoon. The driver had the radio on, 1010 WINS New York. All talk. Traffic on the ones.

The announcer cut in with breaking news. A police barricade in Chelsea had resulted in a shooting. Early reports indicated that it was an antiterrorist operation, but it was unclear at that time whether they were reacting to a confirmed threat or the actions of an unbalanced individual. The announcer issued a traffic alert for the area around Twenty-eighth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

“This heat make people crazy,” mumbled the driver.

In the backseat, Aminah bint Mohammed felt herself regressing into Kathleen Burnett. As completely as she had pledged her word and life to Allah, her meager training had not prepared her for this.

The man she had met that afternoon had died. He had been martyred on the field of battle—this she knew. Baada Bin-Hezam had known he was walking into death. She realized that now. He went bravely. He went unquestioningly.

As she must now.

This was how she had come to work in the emergency room. Nursing the sick and dying. So much like what she was doing now: saving the world from godlessness and the torture of innocents.

For some time, she had passionately tended her secret life as an Islamic jihadist. That had been enough to soothe her insecurities and fears. But the bottle in which she contained herself cracked now as she understood that she had left a man to walk to his death.

She was his last human contact. She carried the things he provided in the bag he had given her. She was acting for him now.