Nazir knew suicide bombers back in Mosul. Young men who’d offered themselves to jihad. They rarely talked of their fear, they’d been so indoctrinated into the cause and reward there was little space in their fevered brains for fear. But the ones who managed to be honest, even if for a moment, spoke of their doubt, questioning the reasons for the vests they wore. Questioning the truth of the virgins that waited as reward. But they couldn’t let that deter them from the job at hand. Families depended on their choice. Poverty, hopelessness, and coercion were the coins of this realm. That certain fear crept up Nazir’s legs as he steadied himself, standing across from this man, this stranger—one of his own people, at least until what had happened in the desert changed his purpose. But it didn’t mitigate him feeling like those young men, for the vest he wore now was deception, and would mean death if he failed to convince the imam he was still on their side.

The imam motioned for Nazir to sit across from him.

Pashtar moved back, giving the men privacy.

Nazir’s lie began.

He told the imam that Hashim was in hiding somewhere far from here. The information about Sayyid Sarif at the farmhouse had come from the undercover agent, Taliq—whom Nazir had killed—not from Hashim as had been rumored.

The imam pressed for details of what happened.

Nazir spun the lie that Hashim had been captured, and after the trial escaped with the help of someone from a renegade cell who had been embedded within the FBI, and was killed protecting him. The FBI and CIA were willing to look like fools in Hashim’s escape, because they realized they could use what had happened, and spin a scenario that Hashim had surrendered, and that would create chaos within all the cells, who would believe he was a traitor. They banked on a fatwa to take him out, when they couldn’t. That’s why Hashim was in hiding.

“It was a deception?” the imam said, his voice filled with doubt.

“Yes,” Nazir answered, his voice composed and self-assured.

“And how do you know this?”

“From the one who died protecting Hashim.”

The answer came as if it were the truth—it came from another source—the same source that allowed him to remain calm, as he saw the imam calculating what he had laid out.

Nazir waited for the imam to make the next move. It would be with more questions or his death.

In the space of this keen awareness, Nazir’s body pulsated—and the air around him filled with the scent of roses. Did the imam, and Pashtar, smell the fragrance, too? He couldn’t tell. He embraced the disquiet and the question as he sensed Pashtar’s body tense in the corner of the room.