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arriving. The time for long speeches was past.
    “This man was an instrument of our enemies in the West,” Haaris shouted in Punjabi, the language that nearly 50 percent of the people spoke.
    “But we have friends with us now. The Students.” He used the Pashto word for “students” which was taliban. “Our only way to liberation is with them. They will help guide us when the Americans attack, which they will very soon, possibly even before dawn. But we will not allow another Abbottabad. The shame will not be ours to bear.”
    The crowd reacted with a low, ugly roar that slowly rose to cheers.
    “I have come here to guide you. I am not a Student, but follow me, I will show you the way.”
    His image was on the huge Jumbotron, the head in grisly color, his altered voice amplified so that it rolled over the mob, seeming to fill every molecule of air on Constitution Avenue.
    “Pakistan’s leaders have been nothing more than puppets of the American regime. They in Washington are friends of New Delhi. It must not continue this way. Pakistan needs at long last to declare its independence. We are a sovereign nation, we are a sovereign people.”
    The mob roared but without anger. They were hearing something they needed to hear, something they had yearned to hear for years, but especially since the SEAL team raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.
    The unmarked helicopter, showing no lights, passed to the west of the Presidential Palace, but few people in the crowd seemed to notice.
    “I have come with a message for you. A message that I was given by Allah in a waking dream.”
    The mob released a collective sigh.
    “We do not have to wait for Paradise because it is here now, within all of us. We need only strength: strong arms to do what is needed, strong resolve to stay the course, strong hearts and strong love to know for certain that what we do is right and just.”
    Someone close to the front of the crowd shouted, “Messiah!”
    At first it seemed like no one had heard, but then someone farther back in the mob repeated it: “Messiah!”
    Then a woman screamed, her voice shrill, “My Messiah!”
    “Look to each other for strength.”
    The chant , Messiah! grew.
    “Look to your families, your friends, your neighbors for strength.”
    “Messiah!”
    “Look to strangers for strength.”
    “Messiah!”
    “Look to me, for I will be your right arm of justice,” Haaris told them.
    The helicopter came from the north, very low, flared suddenly just high enough to set down on the roof behind and eight meters above the balcony.
    “I will leave you now in person but not in spirit,” Haaris shouted. “Love Pakistan, love your neighbors, have strength. There will be more messages from me.”
    The mob was momentarily subdued.
    “Allah be with you. Allah be with us. Allah be with Pakistan!”
    He threw the head over the edge of the balcony at the same moment the Semtex charge on the corridor door exploded with a sharp bang.

 
    NINE
    President Miller watched in stunned disbelief as the man the mob on Constitution Avenue was calling “Messiah” tossed the severed head off the balcony. Moments later the image they were intercepting from the Jumbotron broadcast went blank.
    “My God, who was that?” she asked.
    “If you mean the head, I’m pretty sure it was Barazani’s,” Secretary of State Fay said. “I met him twice last year. But if you mean the one who tossed it, I haven’t the faintest.”
    Miller called Page, who was still at the Watch. His image came up on one of the big monitors. “Do we have a positive ID on whose head that was?” she demanded.
    “Photo interp gives it a ninety-eight-percent match, plus or minus nothing, Madam President. It’s Barazani.”
    “What about the man who tossed it?”
    “Taliban, probably. We’re getting a lot of signals out of ISI and they’re just as surprised as we were. But I do have a bit of good news. We think that Dave Haaris may have escaped. The ISI is