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Binalshibh arrived with the now familiar message. Bin Laden wanted the attacks to go forward as rapidly as possible, and this time not merely because he was impatient. With so many operatives now in holding positions in the United States, he had become understandably anxious about security. Binalshibh also came with a reaffirmation of the preferred targets. All were to be “symbols of America,” the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Capitol, and hopefully the White House. Given the option, bin Laden “preferred the White House over the Capitol.”

Atta thought the White House might be too tough a target—he was waiting for an assessment from Hani Hanjour. Were he and Shehhi not able to hit the World Trade Center, he said, they would crash the planes they had hijacked into the streets of Manhattan. Final decisions on targeting, KSM has said since, were left “in the hands of the pilots.”

At Atta’s request, Binalshibh had brought necklaces and bracelets from Southeast Asia. Atta hoped that by wearing them on the day, the hijackers would pass as wealthy Saudis and avoid notice. Binalshibh returned to Germany once their business was done. Once there, as agreed, he organized himself for the communications that would be necessary in the weeks to come.

He obtained two new phones, one for contacts with Atta and the second for liaison with KSM. The evidence would suggest they had agreed on using simple codes for security purposes.

Atta, meanwhile, flew back to the United States, to be admitted yet again without difficulty—in spite of the fact that, given his travel record, he should have faced probing questions.

He returned to what appeared to him to be a crisis in the making. There had been growing tension between himself, the single-minded authoritarian, and Ziad Jarrah. Atta found his fellow pilot’s repeated trips out of the country disquieting. Was a key member of the team about to drop out?

Jarrah may indeed have been wavering between devotion to the cause and the love of a woman. He telephoned Aysel Sengün more than fifty times during the early part of July, then decided to take off for Germany to see her again—without making a return reservation.

Binalshibh, whom Atta had told of his concern during the meeting in Spain, had in turn mentioned it to KSM. KSM responded with alarm. A “divorce,” he said, apparently referring to the difficulties between Atta and Jarrah, would “cost a lot of money.” As though keeping a close eye on him, Atta went to the airport to see Jarrah off when he left for Europe. Binalshibh met him on arrival at Düsseldorf.

During an “emotional” exchange, Binalshibh urged Jarrah not to abandon the mission. Jarrah’s priority, however, appeared to be to get to Aysel as rapidly as possible. The lovers, she would remember, spent almost two weeks with each other. “We spent the entire time together,” she recalled. “I did not study, but spent all the time alone with him.”

In the end, Jarrah’s commitment to the mission proved more potent than the pull of Aysel’s love for him. On August 5, he flew back to Florida and the apartment that he was renting all summer. Outside the house, on a quiet street in Fort Lauderdale, hung a wind chime with the message “This House Is Full of Love.”

Jarrah made an out-of-the-blue call to his former landlady in Germany that month, and surprised her by saying that he was in America learning to fly “big planes.” So he was. Purchases he made included a GPS system, cockpit instrument diagrams for a Boeing 757, and a poster of a 757 cockpit.

In an ideal world, had the law enforcement and intelligence system functioned to perfection, the 9/11 operation might by now have run into problems—for the most mundane of reasons. Mohamed Atta and his second-in-command, Nawaf al-Hazmi, had been noticed, or should have been noticed, or had actually been stopped by the police, many times that year.

It had been routine, when Atta was pulled over for speeding in Florida in July, for the officer who stopped him