The flight was full. In the exit row in coach Hashim settled into the middle seat, the two undercover agents flanked him. They secured their seat belts, as the announcement came over the speakers that this flight was headed to Dulles airport in Washington, D.C., and if that wasn’t anyone’s destination to please let one of the flight attendants know so that they may leave the plane.

Hashim smiled at the thought someone might be on the wrong flight.

But as the plane rose in the sky, Hashim’s thoughts descended into the truth that had gripped him—he was the abhorrent darkness he had longed to destroy. He had refused to see the underbelly of those that had carved his hate—hate he had made his own. He had lived deep inside that world, and knew this would be his legacy. The paradox was that this darkness might be the door through which salvation came.

98

98

Wednesday, October 28

In the back room of a computer tech shop, in a mini-mall under construction, Dominique, Nazir, the imam, and Hashim sat around a rectangular Formica table.

Dominique had no idea where the meeting would take place until an hour before when Catherine remote viewed the unique storefront signage of the tech shop. Dominique also knew there would be undercover agents posing as construction workers in the empty storefront a few doors away.

If the imam was suspicious, so was Dominique, who said as much, revealing her fear this might be a trap. The transparency made the imam smile. He assured her she was not in danger, at least from him. He was risking his life as much as she.

The imam spoke of his brother and the sequence of events that led him to secure Issa’s safety inside the hospital. He spoke of how terrorism rose from pain and loss, from a world falling apart, and how this had cultivated the belief for purification, and led him and many others to turn spiritual longing into violence intended to cleanse the world and create a transcendent state.

“We intoxicated them with love and spirituality for a dark purpose,” Hashim said.

Nazir’s jaw clenched.

Dominique knew this was a deeper level of experience for Nazir—for him having been indoctrinated by these men who’d preached hate, and now risked their lives for a chance at the opposite. She could feel the sting of his shame for having followed that dark path.

Of all the places she’d been in the world, of all the conflicts she’d reported on, all the violence and killing she’d witnessed, Dominique was more terrified in this place than she’d been halfway across the world in war zones. Terrified it would come to nothing.