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to steady my nerves.
    “May I help you?” a woman asked at the other end of the scratchy line.
    “Operator, I need to make a call to the United States,” I said as calmly as I could. “Can you help me with that?”
    “Yes, sir, I can,” she replied.
    I gave her the number and waited for the call to be put through. Finally I was connected to a young woman at the assignment desk in New York. Unwilling to entrust this breaking news to whatever fresh-faced college grad had just answered the phone, I demanded to speak to the international editor, a longtime personal friend, and said it was an emergency.
    The woman, however, replied that he was not in, and asked to take a message. Not in? I thought. Why the blast not? Then I glanced at my pocket watch, and it dawned on me that it was only 12:25 p.m. local time, which meant it was not yet 5:30 in the morning in New York.
    “Who’s the editor on duty?” I asked.
    “Mr. Briggs, sir,” the young lady replied.
    “Roger Briggs?” I asked, the strain on me beginning to show itself in my speech.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Well, I need him immediately. Tell him I’m calling from Jerusalem with an urgent exclusive, but it won’t hold long.”
    The wait that followed seemed like an eternity, and the longer it took, the more terrified I became that UPI or the New York Times or the Jerusalem Post or some Arab paper would scoop me. Surely many had heard the gunshots, and now everyone in Jerusalem was hearing the sirens coming from all directions. I had no idea who was out there in that group of well-wishers. Maybe there had been another reporter. Maybe there had been more than one.
    “This is Briggs. Who’s this, and what’s all the hubbub about? For heaven’s sakes, man, you know what time it is?”
    “Roger, this is A. B. Collins in Jerusalem.”
    “A. B., is that really you?”
    We had known each other for years.
    “Yes, yes, now take this down immediately.”
    “What did you say?” Briggs asked. The line crackled with static. “Repeat. Say again.”
    “I said this is A. B. Collins in Jerusalem. Take this down. ‘King Abdullah bin al-Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan . . . is dead.’”



6

    INTERNATIONAL AIRSPACE, APPROACHING LEBANON
    I had done a lot of crazy things in my life, but nothing as stupid as this.
    As I stared out over the roiling waves and countless whitecaps of the Mediterranean below, I couldn’t help but think about my grandfather. A. B. Collins was once the Beirut bureau chief for the Associated Press. Long before I was born, he flew this exact route as an American foreign correspondent in the war-torn Middle East. His career was legendary. As a young boy I dreamed of following in his footsteps. As a teenager, I read all his journals. In college I spent hours in the library reading his old dispatches on microfiche. Now here I was, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times , wondering if, given all the risks my grandfather had taken, he’d ever done anything quite this foolhardy.
    There was still a way out, of course. I could still change my plans. But the truth was I didn’t want to. I may never have interviewed a king or witnessed the assassination of a monarch. But I was just as committed to my craft, and I was going in, come what may. That’s all there was to it. In six minutes, my Air France flight would touchdown in the Lebanese capital. In nineteen minutes, I’d link up with my colleagues. Together we’d drive ninety miles to the border of Syria. And if all went well, by nightfall we’d slip across the border unnoticed and eventually locate one of the world’s most feared jihadi commanders.
    Jack Vaughn, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had personally warned me not to do this. So had the head of the Mossad and the chief of Jordanian intelligence, not to mention my mother. My editor, Allen MacDonald, had expressly forbidden me to go. Their rationale was as simple as it was compelling: Jamal Ramzy was a