The afternoon before, Abdal had followed one of the blind fools who worked there to an apartment near Fisherman’s Wharf-an elderly woman who wore the beleaguered look of a capitalist slave. Breaking into her car had taken him no time at all, and he’d found her electronic key card tucked into a pocket of the visor above the driver’s seat. Stupid, trusting, and careless. It’s a miracle the nation functioned at all.

In a way, this theft was an act of mercy. If she could not gain access to the parking lot the following day, her life might be spared.

Of course, in the end they were all spared, weren’t they?

The black with the gun had seen to that.

Abdal cursed himself for allowing such an insignificant piece of trash to so easily take control of him. Finding the muzzle of a gun in his face as he waited for the light to change had been so unexpected that reason had fled. Ironically, his training had taken hold then: blend in. Don’t create a scene. It took time for him to get to the rooftop of an unguarded building within a thousand feet of the target, to obtain an unobstructed transmit line from his phone to the one strapped to the primer bomb.

Allah had spared him, and for that he was grateful, but he had to wonder why. He’d never had any interest in martyrdom, but the shame he felt for this failure was worse than any form of death. He knew that those he worked for, those who at this very moment were probably shocked by his impulsiveness, his impatience-his foolishness -would kill him. The methods were still too horrible to contemplate. Yet he resisted the impulse to disappear. He also resisted the urge to rally his wits, to take his own life in an improvised act of terror. Allah did not smile upon cowards, and willful suicide with a tacked-on purpose was still first and foremost a means to escape punishment.