“The beginning,” said Gabriel. “It tends to put things in proper perspective.”

“You’re just like Shamron.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

The Egyptian’s gaze wandered over the bag again. “There’s fifty thousand, right?”

“You can count it if you like.”

“That won’t be necessary. Do you want me to sign a receipt?”

“You sign the receipt when you get your money,” Gabriel said. “And you get your money after I hear the information.”

“Shimon always gave me the money first.”

“I’m not Shimon.”

The Egyptian swallowed the rest of his whisky. Gabriel refilled his glass and told him to start talking.

The beginning, the Egyptian said, was the day in September 1970 when Nasser died and his vice president, Anwar Sadat, came to power in Egypt. Nasser had regarded Egypt’s Islamic radicals, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, as a grave threat to his regime and had used mass arrests, executions, and torture to keep them in their place. Sadat had tried a different approach.

“Sadat had none of Nasser’s charisma and no popular base of support,” al-Zayyat said. “He was also a rather religious man. He was more afraid of the Communists and the Nasserites than the Brothers, and so he made what would turn out to be a fatal reversal of Egypt’s approach to Islamic extremism. He branded the Communists and the Nasserites as enemies of his new regime and let the Brothers out of jail.”

And then he compounded the mistake, al-Zayyat explained. He allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to operate openly and encouraged them to spread their fiery brand of Islam abroad, especially into the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also encouraged and funded the creation of groups that were even more radical than the Brotherhood. One was al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, or the Islamic Group. Another was al-Jihad. In October 1981, al-Jihad turned on the man who had helped bring it into existence, assassinating Sadat as he stood on a military reviewing stand outside Cairo. In the eyes of the Islamists, Sadat’s sins were many, but none so egregious as his peace treaty with Israel. Before opening fire, Sadat’s assassin, Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli, screamed: “I have killed Pharaoh, and I do not fear death.”

“The Gama’a and al-Jihad, of course, are with us still,” al-Zayyat said. “Their goal is to destroy the Mubarak regime, replace it with an Islamic republic, and then use Egypt as a base of operations to wage a global jihad against the West and Israel. Both groups are signatories of al-Qaeda’s declaration of war against the Crusaders and the Jews, and both are formally under the umbrella of Osama bin Laden’s command structure. Egyptians make up more than half of al-Qaeda’s core personnel, and they hold five of the nine positions in the ruling Shura Council. And, of course, Osama’s right-hand man is Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Jihad.”