They came to the house. It was a small cinderblock home, painted pale blue. The paint was faded and chipped. The plants in the front yard were dried out and dead. Much about the house seemed shabby and rundown, as if the people inside of it had given up. A rusty metal chair sat near the front door. An old man had just risen from it.

The man was small and bald. He was thin, and probably only in his fifties, but something about him seemed ancient, and heavy. His skin was dark. He wore a light gray jacket over what looked like a T-shirt, and some kind of thick bandaging. He moved his upper body gingerly, as though his back had been injured and he was in terrible pain.

Down below, his right pant leg was cut off above the knee. A very basic metal prosthetic device was attached with leather straps at his knee and thigh. He leaned on a wooden crutch. His right leg was gone from the knee down.

He waited for them to walk up the path.

“Abbas Antar?” Greg Welch said.

The man nodded and waved his hand toward the open door.

“Come in,” he said. “Come in.”

* * *

“The drinks are sweet hot tea,” Greg Welch said. “The pastries have almonds and honey. Very nice, very traditional Syrian hospitality.”

Luke and Ed sat in the small living room of the modest house where Hashan Antar—the man now known across the world as Ahmet—had grown up. The furnishings included an upholstered love seat with two matching chairs. An intricate red and gold rug hung on one wall. On the other walls were family photographs. Luke noticed with a twinge the framed photos of two young teenagers, a boy and a girl, featured prominently.

Just before Luke sat down, his eyes scanned a shelf of porcelain and ceramic figurines, cups, and jewelry boxes. It was a high shelf, one of two. The one below it had numerous hardcover and paperback books on it, all with titles in the Arabic alphabet. The upper shelf was better. Among the various knickknacks and paddywhacks up there, things that normally wouldn’t catch Luke’s interest, was something unusual. Lying on its back, screen upward, was a flat, dark blue mobile telephone in a plastic casing.

If Luke had to guess, he would say that it was a satellite phone. He would like very much to pick up that phone and scroll through the recent incoming and outgoing calls.

Abbas Antar’s wife, a heavyset woman in a black headscarf who they knew to be Eva Antar, but who Abbas had not introduced by name, had brought out a folding table and placed a ceramic teapot and tiny tea cups upon it. A moment later, she had returned with a plate of small, flaky pastries. Then she went out again. She did not smile, make eye contact, or speak at any point.