seem to notice the man with the backpack and the oversize coat.
The monument, built in the form of a Greek Doric temple, was aglow with a warm golden light that seemed to radiate from within. The man with the backpack paused for several seconds on the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King had delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, then proceeded up the final steps, into the memorial’s central chamber. About twenty tourists were gathered before the nineteen-foot statue of a seated Lincoln. Equal numbers were in the two side chambers, before the towering engravings of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. The man with the oversize coat placed his backpack near the base of one of the ionic columns and, drawing a mobile phone from his pocket, began taking photographs of the statue. Curiously, his lips were moving.
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful . . .
A young couple, in broken English, asked the man whether he would take their photograph in front of the statue. He declined and, turning abruptly, hurried down the steps toward the Reflecting Pool. Too late, a female Park Police officer, twenty-eight years old, a mother of two, noticed the unattended bag and ordered the tourists to evacuate the memorial. An instant later the policewoman was decapitated by the circular saw of ball bearings that flew from the bag at detonation, as were the man and woman who had asked to have their photo taken. The bomber was blown from his feet by the force of the explosion. A tourist from Oklahoma, sixty-nine years old, a Vietnam veteran, unwittingly helped the murderer to his feet, and for this benevolent act was shot through the heart with the Glock 19 pistol that the man pulled from beneath his coat. The man managed to kill six more people before being shot by the Park Police officers at the base of the steps. In all, twenty-eight would die.
By the time the bomb exploded, the Honda Pilot was braking to a stop outside the main entrance of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. One man climbed out and entered the Hall of States. His coat was identical to the one worn by the man who attacked the Lincoln Memorial, though he carried no backpack; his bomb was strapped to his body. He made his way past the visitor center to the main box office, where he detonated his device. Three more men then emerged from the Honda, including the driver. All were armed with AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifles. They slaughtered the wounded and the dying in the Hall of States and then moved methodically from the Eisenhower Theater to the Opera House to the Concert Hall, killing indiscriminately. In all, more than three hundred would die.
By the time the first units of the Metropolitan Police had arrived, the three surviving terrorists had crossed the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway on foot and were entering Washington Harbor. There they moved from restaurant to restaurant, killing without mercy. Fiola Mare, Nick’s Riverside Grill, Sequoia: all were raked with gunfire. Once again, they encountered no resistance from the Metropolitan Police; the Americans, it seemed, had been caught flat-footed. Or perhaps, thought the leader of the attack cell, Saladin had deceived them. The three men reloaded their weapons and headed into the heart of Georgetown in search of other prey.
It was into this chaos that the two women—one dark-haired, the other blond: subjects one and two, as they were known—entered the rear parking garage of the Key Bridge Marriott. A second car, a rented Toyota Corolla, was waiting. Much later, it would be established that the car had been left in the garage earlier that day by the same man who had delivered the suicide vests at Tysons Corner Center.
Usually, it was subject one, the Israeli agent, who handled the driving, but this time subject two, the Frenchwoman, slid behind the wheel. Leaving the garage, she careened past the little blockhouse of the parking attendant, smashing the barrier gate in the process, and headed for the hotel’s Lee Highway exit. The undercover SWAT teams stationed in the surface parking lot did not deploy lethal force against subject one, the Frenchwoman, because they had received no authorization from the president or the director of the FBI. Even the FBI surveillance teams were momentarily paralyzed because they were receiving no guidance from the NCTC. A moment earlier the watchers had heard something over their