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as it always does when journalists confront trouble: a moment of dread, yes, and then you get used to it, your reflexes return, you completely forget the danger. I am sure that he quickly came to his senses and that even in the shack where he had to sleep on a pallet, eat out of a mess tin, and put up with the cold, he never lost that devouring curiosity that now he had the opportunity to satisfy: Aren’t these the very jihadists he’s been trying to find since he arrived from Bombay? Isn’t he observing them living their lives, going about their business, arguing, reacting to the news, praying? Doesn’t he have entire days and nights to not only observe them but to question them, get them to confide in him, and understand them? Even better: What if he succeeded in solving the mystery of the notorious Gilani, the man he wanted to interview, and as we shall see, was obsessed by? What if that was the meaning of the raised arm in the last photo?
    Something happened at that moment.
    Something happened that made the kidnappers change their minds and send for three Yemenis, professionals in this kind of crime, with orders to execute him.
    The question is, what? What exactly happened? At what exact moment during his captivity?
    Did Omar Sheikh’s men have a change of mood?
    Was it—as Omar himself kept repeating with peculiar insistence from the very first day of his trial—that they could not, after thinking it over, forgive him his attempt to escape the day before?
    Was there deliberation? A trial?
    Was there an external event that turned things awry?
    An accident?
    An order from above, and why?
    An interference, but what?
    A collision of convictions, of which he became the victim?
    That is the subject of this book.
    It is the mystery that must be solved—its framework, the threads of its plot.

CHAPTER 4 MISE À MORT
    What time is it?
    Night?
    Day?
    The video doesn’t say.
    It doesn’t appear on the Pakistani police report.
    So, let’s say it is at the end of the night.
    Or, to be precise, daybreak, five A.M., just before the cock crows.
    Karim, the caretaker of the farm who has been keeping a close watch over him for the past week, comes to wake him up.
    He gets along well with Karim. He has gotten used to their long conversations in the evening, after the lamps have been put out and the others have gone to bed. In his poor English, the Pakistani tells him about his five children, his little house in Rahim Yar Khan, his problems. And he, in turn, asks over and over the same questions: What do you have against us? Why do you hate us so? What crime has America committed that deserves such terrible reprobation, and what can we do, or be, to earn back the trust of your people, of all poor people?
    But this time, something is wrong.
    Even groggy with sleep, he senses this is not the same Karim. He is stony, closed. He can tell from the way Karim tears off the covers and orders him to get dressed that he is no longer the companion of yesterday who gave him his daily lesson of Urdu. And then, when he fumbles at his shoe laces with stiff, clumsy fingers, the Pakistani speaks with a tone he’s never used before and it sends a chill through his body.
    â€œDon’t bother with that. Where you’re going, you won’t need laces,” he says, tight-lipped, without looking at him.
    And with that, with these words, and especially with the way he says them, he understands that something has transpired during the night, that they have made a decision, and the decision is not to set him free.
    Suddenly, he feels fear.
    He feels a glacial rush flow through his body—and for the first time since he has been here, he feels fear.
    And yet, at the same time, he cannot believe it.
    No, again, he does not believe it—he cannot believe that, in the space of one night, the situation could have deteriorated to this extent.
    To begin with, he is their ally. Their a-l-l-y. A hundred times