“Oh,” Juba nodded toward one of the men, “and keep that one away from me. He makes me nervous.”

“You mean La Culebra?”

“No, he’s all right. I mean Jorge, the talker. He makes me jittery.”

As he changed from Arabic to Spanish, Jorge acquired an ashen look. He swallowed, smiled awkwardly, licked his lips.

“I understand,” said Menendez, and nodded to La Culebra.

La Culebra cut Jorge’s throat in one second, and Jorge died in seven.

39

McConnell Air Force Base, outside Wichita, Kansas

For the record, this is Special Agent Jean Chandler, FBI, about to commence interrogation of Jared Akim, suspect in re triple homicide in Detroit, Michigan, affidavits on file, other charges also listed in affidavit. Also present is Agent Gershon Gold, of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, a contract advisor on terrorist matters by formal arrangement, documents also on file. Mr. Akim is without legal representation as per his signed agreement with the Drug Enforcement Agency, on file, reference C445-002. The session is being witnessed and videotaped.”

They were in a safe house DEA ran on the well-protected grounds of McConnell, four miles outside downtown Wichita. Now and then, F-18s howled into the air, and the place vibrated like a tuning fork. Bob and Nick and Neill watched the proceedings from behind a rather obvious one-way mirror into the squalid interrogation room. Outside, various DEA officials muttered and stewed, having lost sole custody of their prize, having lost the administrative war with the FBI, and having once again had their noses rubbed in their low status in the federal law enforcement pyramid.

The boy sat in orange scrubs, his head still bandaged. But he did not look groggy. Quite the contrary, his eyes glittered with wit and intelligence, and he seemed relaxed, even happy. He got that they were playing head games with him by putting a beautiful young woman in front of him—in real life, she’d never date him!—and a portly, scholarly Jew. They were supposedly the bête noirs of his fevered jihadi imagination, but he merely thought it was kind of funny. He liked pretty girls, and, actually—don’t tell anybody—he liked Jews. So the idea that a Jew and a babe would shake him was patently absurd! What, they thought he was an idiot?

“Mr. Akim, how do you feel today?” Chandler asked.

“I’m fine.”

“The head?”

“It hurts, even ten ibuprofens in, but if it hurts, that means I’m still breathing, which is good news.”

“You’re out of concussion protocols?”

“Yeah, but I still hear the sound of bad music.”

They spent a few minutes running through the mundane facts of Jared’s existence: age, place of birth, education, disposition, parents, family, intellectual journey into radicalism, anger at white girls, so on and so forth.

“For the record, please describe your current circumstances.”

“Okay, you don’t want the Marcel Proust version, you want the action-movie version?”