By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

The man with the braided hair nodded.

“Where was Muhammad born, for example? When?”

“In 570, into the Quraysh tribe, in Mecca.”

“And the Qur’an? Where did that come from?”

“The Angel Gabriel gave it to him—the first part of it— in a cave on Mount Hira in 610. Then he started playing prophet.”

“Something like Joseph Smith, the Angel Moroni, and the Mormons, right?” Britton asked, smiling.

“I thought about that,” Miller said, smiling back.

“What’s the definition of ‘Islam’?” " ’Submission to God,’ ” Miller said. “A Muslim is someone who’s done that.”

“Like a born-again Baptist, right? You a born-again Christian, Miller?”

“I’m Presbyterian.”

“Pity. If you were a born-again Christian, it might help you understand something about how some guy raised in North Philadelphia, in a house like the one where we met, who converted to Muslim from, say, the Holy Ghost First Church of Christ, African, feels about Islam.”

Miller didn’t reply.

“What’s the first and great commandment for a Muslim?” Britton asked.

“ ‘There is no god but God . . . Allah . . . and Muhammad is His Prophet.’ ”

“And the ‘Pillars of Faith’?”

“There’s five,” Miller said. “One is reciting the creed—‘There is no god but God, etcetera.’ The second is daily prayers—formal prayers, with the forehead touching the ground. Third is fasting during Ramadan . . .”

“What’s Ramadan?” Britton interrupted.

“The ninth month of the Muslim calendar. Last year— 2004—it started in October. The fifth of October, I think.”

Britton made a “Give me more” gesture.

“It lasts a lunar month,” Miller went on. “No eating, drinking, smoking, or sex during the day. It starts when you can tell a white thread from a black thread by daylight and ends at nightfall with a prayer and a meal called iftar, and then starts up again the next morning.”

Britton nodded at him. “And the Fourth Pillar?” he asked.

“Almsgiving. The Fifth is making a pilgrimage to Mecca.”

Britton nodded again. “Tell me about jihad,” he said.

“Holy war,” Miller said. “To take over territories, countries, which are ruled by non-Muslims.”

“This is new, right, something dreamed up recently by belligerent rag-heads? And having really nothing to do with the gentle teachings of the Prophet himself?”

“No. It goes all the way back to Muhammad. By the time he died, in 632, jihad saw the Muslims in control of the Arabian Peninsula. In the next hundred years, jihad had taken Islam all over the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Spain.”

“Okay,” Britton said. “The pop quiz is over. You’re not exactly an Islamic scholar, but neither are you wholly ignorant of who you’re dealing with like most people I’ve met in your line of work.”

“My line of work? The Army, you mean?”

“No. Intelligence, counterterrorism. You may be a soldier, but you’re not here to line your troops up and march down Broad Street.”

“I’m here—as I told you in that house off Broad Street— because we have reason to believe that a group of Somalian terrorists have stolen a 727 with the intention of crashing it into the Liberty Bell, and, further, we have reason to believe that there may be a connection with some—how do I say this?—native Philadelphian Muslims. Can we get to that? You said you knew something.”