“Good evening, Mr. Fawaz. My name is Catherine Blanchard, and I am an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. One mile from here, there is a plane fueled and waiting to take you to Cairo. If you have any further questions, I’ll be right outside the door.”

Sarah left the room and closed the doors behind her. Ibrahim glared at Gabriel in anger.

“How dare you let that woman see me like this?”

“Next time you won’t doubt my word.”

The Egyptian looked down at the file. “What does it say about me?”

“It says you were one of the original members of the first Sword of Allah cell in Minya. It says you were a close associate of Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq and his brother, Sheikh Abdullah. It says you organized a terrorist cell at the University of Minya and recruited a number of young students to the radical Islamist cause. It says you wanted to bring down the regime and replace it with an Islamic state.”

“Guilty on all counts,” said Ibrahim. “All but one very important count. There was indeed a Sword cell at the university, but it had nothing to do with terrorism. The Sword of Allah turned to terror only after Sadat’s assassination, not before.” He looked down at the file again. “What else does it say?”

“It says you were arrested the night of Sadat’s murder.”

“And?”

“That’s the last entry.”

“That’s hardly surprising. What happened after my arrest is not something they would want to put down on paper.” Ibrahim looked up from the file. “Would you like to know what happened to me that night? Would you like me to fill in the missing pages of that file you wave in front of me as though it were proof of my guilt?”

“You have thirty minutes to tell me the truth, Ibrahim. You may use them any way you wish.”

“I wish to tell you a story, my friend—the story of a man who lost everything because of his beliefs.”

“I’m listening.”

“May I have some coffee?”

“No.”

“Will you at least remove the handcuffs?”

“No.”

“My arms hurt terribly.”

“Too bad.”

He had been a professor once and spoke like one now. He started his account not with the story of a man but with the struggle of a generation, a generation that had been raised to believe in secular isms—Nasserism, Baathism, Communism, Pan-Arabism, Arab Socialism—only to learn, in June 1967, that all the isms were merely a mask for Arab weakness and decay.