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by picket fences. Large old trees with heaving branches cantilevered above the road.
    On a particularly dark stretch of Daniel Road, a white van was parked beneath the overhanging branches of a large maple tree. The van looked abandoned. The front seat was empty. A layer of pollen and bug guts was thick on the windshield.
    Five individuals were crowded into the back of the van. The air was fetid with sweat. A man named Sirhan was nearest to the front. He was in charge. He sat on the floor with his back against the door. On his lap was a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun. Next to him were two more men of similar appearance. Ali and Tariq. Both were Middle Eastern, Arabs, in their early twenties. Ali was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. Tariq had on a light blue button-down shirt with patches on the chest and arms, his uniform for his job as a security guard, though at the moment he was off duty.
    â€œIs it time?” asked Tariq, seated behind the driver’s seat. He was slouched down in case anyone walked by.
    There was enough light from a distant lamppost to cast soft glow through the back window. The light allowed Sirhan to stare at the two other people in the van. One was a middle-aged woman with short dirty-blond hair, dressed in a red bathrobe and an untied tennis sneaker on one foot. She lay on her side on the steel floor, near the back, contorted awkwardly. Her arms and legs were bound by rope. A leather belt was cinched around her head and across her open mouth, pulled tight so that she couldn’t close her mouth or speak. From a gash above her left eye, blood trickled down her forehead and beneath her ear. Her hair, face, and clothing were drenched in sweat. She was breathing rapidly.
    Next to her lay a teenage girl with long hair. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. She too was bound and gagged. Blood oozed from her nostrils. She was soaked in perspiration.
    â€œNo,” said Sirhan. “Not yet.”
    *   *   *
    Inside the home on Daniel Road, Mark Raditz was seated on a large, deep, light-tan leather couch. To his left, on a cushion, was a thick stack of briefing papers, which he’d yet to read. To his right was a similar stack of papers, those he’d already been through.
    The low din coming from voices on the TV was the only sound in the room. An Orioles game was on. Raditz, the deputy secretary of the Department of Defense, loved baseball, though he wasn’t paying attention.
    On Raditz’s knees was a laptop computer. He watched the video for the fourth time. It showed a man and a woman being burned alive.
    ISIS was growing stronger. Raditz and every other high-ranking Pentagon official were spending all their time trying to stop its spread across Syria and Iraq. That day, Raditz had been to the White House to meet twice with the president.
    â€œWhat are we doing to stop them?” the president had asked, again and again. “Why haven’t we found Nazir? What sort of animal would behead innocent people?”
    Raditz had answered each question in the same frustrated tone.
    â€œWe’re doing everything we can, Mr. President. Nazir is a ghost; he moves anonymously, from town to town, like a drifter, a common citizen; like the wind. What kind of animal, sir? I don’t know.”
    But Raditz did know. He was the one who’d created the monster.
    With every town and village ISIS took, with every church destroyed and innocent person killed, that knowledge—of his own complicity—ripped away at Raditz’s mind, overwhelming him. Raditz knew the guilt would soon destroy him—unless he was somehow caught—in which case it would be his own government that did it. They’d call it treason, even though it had been precisely the opposite that drove him to do what he’d done.
    If only he could find Nazir before they found out the truth …
    It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. How could you know? Your motives