Code of Honor

Watching the video together, Hagan and Kamran notice the same tapped codes on Darius’s leg, the same signs they had seen before. There doesn't appear to be anything new. Suddenly, Kamran asks Hagan to stop the video. He points to a silhouette of the mountain behind Darius: “‘Superstition Mountain!’ I said. ‘That's Superstition Mountain, outside Phoenix!’” (97). Kamran also identifies some of the grass as a specific native Arizona plant, only confirming more of his suspicions. Hagan remains skeptical, telling Kamran the video is too poor quality and the mountain too faint for him to tell for sure. Hagan tells Kamran that looking for signs can cause one to see things where they normally wouldn't. Kamran, however, remains adamant. Though Hagan walks him through how impossible it would be for Darius to be captured in Afghanistan and smuggled into the United States, Kamran believes it to be true. 

Kamran spends New Year’s Eve in his cell, playing over his memories of Superstition Mountain and trying to prove himself right. He wonders how Darius could not know he was in Arizona, given his own experience in the desert. He wonders, with a shiver, if Darius was playing them all along—that he has been in Arizona the whole time, and is deliberately misleading even Kamran with his codes. Perhaps, despite Hagan's attempts to convince him otherwise, Darius really is behind all this.

Hagan comes in, looking unhappy. He confirms that Kamran was wrong: analysts inspected the scene and did a fly-over, and everything points to Afghanistan. Nothing was found in the Sonoran Desert. Kamran says the terrorists could be hiding in caves, but Hagan shuts him down. Kamran gets angry, kicking the bed and causing the guard to come in, hand on his gun. Hagan reminds Kamran to keep his temper in check, then tells him a bit of good news—the intel they got from the latest video of Darius has foiled the terrorists’ plot. 

Hagan explains that a group of terrorists were intercepted in a town on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, with a blueprint of the stadium in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the World Cup would be held. They had a huge amount of explosives, “enough […] to flatten” the stadium (103). The terrorists were stopped; however, both Darius and the man authorities expect is behind the scheme, Hayden Ansari, were not located. To Kamran, this means that Darius could very well be in Arizona, but Hagan shuts him down again, telling Kamran that even if he did believe him, nobody else in intelligence would.

Kamran tells Hagan to try harder—to bring this information to someone higher up on the totem pole, someone who can really investigate. But Hagan stops him, telling Kamran that all he'd ever be was a second-guessing, half-rate spy who didn't even know his own brother was a terrorist. He has no authority, really. Kamran encourages him to think otherwise, but Hagan rebuffs him, then leaves Kamran alone in his cell.

Hagan doesn't return for a week, and neither does Agent Tomaszewski, or any of the others. Left alone, and clueless about what to do next, Kamran paces his cell, refusing to eat and fuming. He believes that Hagan has abandoned him the moment things became difficult, just as Kamran’s friends at school had. Hagan played the good cop, got the information he wanted, benefited from it himself, and then abandoned ship. Kamran realizes that the only person he can truly be loyal to is Darius. He doubts himself for a moment, and then is more certain: “I wouldn't give up. I wouldn't let go of the truth” (108).

Kamran continues to ponder what to do, now that his only ally in the CIA has left him in the dust. Kamran believes that Darius is in the US and preparing for a suicide bomb attack that will result not only in his own death, but the death of hundreds or thousands of others; “I had to do something,” Kamran thinks, and then realizes the only answer: “I had to escape” (108).