Read the Prologue

Matt couldn’t shake the image of that old envelope. It had been hidden deep in Omar’s library, tucked away in a bottom drawer as if meant to be forgotten. During the search, when Omar was conveniently out, Matt and his team had been meticulous, knowing they had little time before Omar’s return.

He remembered the crinkle of the yellowed paper in his hands when he pulled it out, “America” scrawled in bold Arabic across the front. Inside, a single 7.62 x 51mm NATO round—used, its casing dented and tarnished. A relic from decades past. Why had Omar kept it, and why hide it so carefully? It felt like a remnant of a grudge that hadn’t quite died.

Matt had to suppress the urge to take it with him for analysis. But he knew better. He carefully placed it back in the envelope and returned it to its hiding spot. They couldn’t afford to tip off Omar that they had been there, not yet.

Now, as he stared at his own reflection, the weight of the day’s events pressed down on him. Matt gazed at his tired face in the mirror and decided not to shave. Why bother? For a moment, he thought of his father. His mother often reminded him of how much he resembled Ambrozy, especially now that he was the same age his father had been in those last photos before his untimely death—thirty-eight. The thought stirred something deep in him—a mix of pride and the shadow of unfulfilled conversations.

He’d changed so much, he hardly recognized himself. Staggering over to the bedroom, he collapsed on the cot in exhaustion. Even with his service revolver tucked under the pillow, Matt doubted he’d be able to sleep. This was a CIA safe house. But was it actually safe? How could he be sure he hadn’t been seen? After observing the funeral from afar through binoculars, Matt had followed the playbook to a tee, doubling back twice through El-Manshia’s old streets and the winding alleys of Zanket El-Setat market, changing clothes in the alley, and waiting until nightfall; and yet still there were risks. Danger lurked everywhere in this part of the world. That’s why Matt had told Stephanie he was in London.

Matt had lied so many times to his wife at this point, he could hardly remember that initial pang of guilt the first time he’d done it. He could never have imagined as a West Point cadet that his personal moral code would be dispersed so easily into competing silos—patriotism, the greater good, family. They had once been in the same cauldron.

Matt didn’t even grieve the loss anymore. He’d fully accepted the new paradigm. The potential of saving thousands of lives far outweighed his vow to be truthful to his wife, despite the fact that he’d stated it out loud in front of 240 people at their Arlington wedding. Matt’s geographical whereabouts were on a need-to-know basis at this point, especially when leaked information could endanger his family. He never lied about the important stuff. He had never cheated on Stephanie. His love for her was as strong as ever. Family was everything to Matt—one of the reasons he’d gone out of his way to help Risa, Stephanie’s cousin, who happened to have married a close friend of their person of interest. Nasser, too, appeared to have been driven by principles that were sacrosanct, such as loyalty to his closest friends, which was why he had saved Risa’s life—an act of valor to which Matt could relate.

After his intensive language training following 9/11, Matt had picked up rudimentary Arabic, which allowed him to understand parts of Nasser’s writing without relying on the official CIA translators. He’d combed through the journal so many times, Matt felt he knew Nasser—at the very least, he knew the workings of his mind. The line that had given him goosebumps was:

At the time, Matt had also been working on geolocation algorithms for his West Point engineering thesis. He’d started his project on a whim, a clever hack to give an advantage to the high school robotics team he volunteered to coach. Under Matt’s direction, the boys installed echolocation towers in three corners of the room that their android could ping to orient itself during the competition. The opposing coach cried foul, but nothing in the rulebook prohibited external support equipment beyond the arena, as long as a signal wasn’t being sent from outside to the robot. The algorithm Matt had created ran within the robot’s own CPU, sending an outbound frequency pulse that reflected off the towers they’d installed, which provided echolocation data to help the robot navigate to victory.

While that technology would soon become ubiquitous on smartphones everywhere, it had been a novel idea in 2000—the focus of only a handful of engineers, including this pair of ambitious undergraduates, who, despite being worlds apart, appeared to have similar minds, both of them having also been raised by professors of history. And one of these professors was now the essential link to potentially cracking the biggest terrorist plot since 9/11.

It frustrated Matt that he couldn’t decode the journal on his own—that he was reliant on an old man whose allegiance was surely split. A number of Matt’s CIA colleagues had questions about Nasser’s true motives—why would he bury the secret in rambling words that only his father could untangle? There was too much at stake for ambiguity. Would they find the answers before it was too late?

And now, this envelope with its hidden bullet—another secret in a family where secrecy seemed to be a legacy. Like his son, Omar was full of mysteries, and Matt couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to uncover, more that Omar was hiding, the truth just out of reach.

It was in God’s hands. Inshallah. That’s how they said it in Arabic.

Matt needed sleep. Without sleep he was worthless. He shut his eyes and prayed.

God help me. God help us all . . .