Free The Devil's Light by Richard North Patterson

told the others, “is whether al Qaeda could motivate LET and the Taliban to help. I don’t know how much al Qaeda would tell them. But a proposal that empowered jihadists, toppled the civilian government in Islamabad, and got us out of Pakistan and Afghanistan might be too seductive for its brethren to resist. As for using nuclear weapons, people with countries fear retaliation. But men in caves call them ‘war winners.’”
    Wertheimer, Brooke saw, listened with new intensity. “So what’s al Qaeda’s plan?” he asked.
    â€œNuclear disaster,” Grey answered crisply. “After 9/11, al Qaeda announced its intention to kill four million Americans to balance the Muslim deaths they attribute to the U.S. and Israel. Then Bin Laden issued a fatwa openly calling for the use of nuclear weapons against the West. A Pakistani bomb would destroy an entire city. That would cause widespread death and devastation, stagger the world economy, unleash a wave of fear that could curtail our civil liberties, and create mass sentiment for withdrawal from the Middle East.” Facing Brustein, Grey concluded, “In al Qaeda’s mind, such an act would command deep admiration throughout the Muslim world. With America gone, there’d be nothing but a few enfeebled Arab states between al Qaeda and Bin Laden’s dream of an Islamic caliphate.”
    Brustein rested his chin on steepled fingers, then faced Sweder. “Assuming that al Qaeda has its weapon, where do they plan to set it off? Your people ponder that question night and day.”
    â€œAnd weekends,” Sweder answered tersely. “Our very long list starts with Washington and New York.”
    A flash of doubt pierced Brooke’s consciousness. But he could not yet work out why.

TWO
    O n entering his office, Brooke took out a map of the Middle East, well thumbed from his service in the region. Perhaps inevitably, his thoughts turned to the woman who had returned there, to Israel, and the year that followed their first encounter, its final day the fault line that divided him from the man he had been before.
    They had met on a warm fall night in Greenwich Village. It was September 2000; Brooke was twenty-five then, headed for a master’s degree from NYU in Near Eastern Studies. School came easily, and it was early in the semester. So Brooke decided to meet Ben Glazer, his closest friend since Yale, for dinner at Trattoria Spaghetto, consuming pasta and Chianti at an outdoor table while observing the usual array of eccentrics.
    â€œAfter this,” Brooke informed Ben, “there’s a student forum on Israel and the peace process. I thought you might be interested.”
    Ben raised his eyebrows, feigning bemusement as a means of tweaking his friend. On the surface the two were opposites. Blond and athletic, Brooke carried himself with a careless ease—the legacy, Ben insisted, of “six generations of WASPs whose only tragedy was inbreeding.” By his own admission, Ben was the antithesis of aristocratic panache—short, round, bearded, and Jewish, a would-be master of the universe at an investment banking firm. But the bluff kindness at Ben’s core served a humor and directness that drew men and women alike. It was Ben, not Brooke, who had the smart and beautiful fiancée. And Brooke savored his friend’s impatience with euphemism and evasion, his gift for speakinghard truths that sometimes made his listeners squirm. The fact that Brooke was unoffendable did not dishearten Ben at all.
    â€œA disenchanted evening in the Middle East?” Ben asked in disbelief. “Why? They’re crazy, all of them—Hezbollah, Hamas, the Orthodox Jewish settlers, the Arab terrorists in caves. By now you must have noticed how much these God-bit visionaries relish killing each other’s kids. But sooner or later they’ll start killing ours. Fanaticism has no respect for borders.”
    Brooke