I Am Pilgrim

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Part 4, Chapters 1-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4, Chapters 1-13 Summary

Murdoch boards a commercial flight to Lebanon to begin preparations for his Saudi Arabia trip. He calls Battleboi, who tells him the family is from Jeddah. Murdoch agrees to help the hacker avoid his prison sentence and reunite with his partner.

In Frankfurt, al-Nassouri continues his final preparations, overjoyed to learn that cold weather is arriving early in North America, since infected people will be more likely to gather indoors.

On the flight to Jeddah, Murdoch has the vision of sailing on a boat again, feeling as though his doom is “drawing closer” (477). Upon arrival, Murdoch is careful to praise all his Saudi colleagues in effusive terms, noticing that several are connected to the ruling family. Murdoch gives the agency’s research teams the information he has on the al-Nassouri family and the only son, Zakaria. After some hours, the director reveals that al-Nassouri’s father was a specialist in clownfish, and Murdoch finally understands the papers he found in Cumali’s home. He is stunned to learn of the family tragedy and finds it distasteful that intelligence officers speak casually and cruelly of the mother’s decision to work. Murdoch discovers that al-Nassouri faked his own death and must have adopted a new identity. After hours of desperate searching, the only lead reveals an anonymous Saudi man, injured in a Palestinian hospital, describing his wife’s death, his fears for his child with a disability, and his father’s execution. There is no record of his current passport or name—Murdoch privately despairs but thanks the Saudis for their diligence.

Murdoch calls the president and Whisperer with his bleak news. They decide to arrest Cumali and begin closing the international borders. Grosvenor thanks him for his service and prepares to address the nation about the threat. Murdoch tells them he will go to Gaza to continue the search—he reflects privately that at least there he will not sail to his death.

In Germany, Zakaria al-Nassouri watches his deadly virus leave on trucks for foreign ports, overjoyed to have his work finished. He leaves Germany for Bodrum, eager to be with his son before his virus shuts down international travel and causes mass death.

Midflight to Gaza, Murdoch is in despair, wondering if al-Nassouri is “too far ahead to ever be caught” (498). After deep thought, he decides al-Nassouri cannot be tracked but that he would go anywhere to rescue his child. Recalling the case of the banker in Geneva, Murdoch tells himself again, “[L]ove wasn’t weak. Love was strong.” He receives presidential approval for his new plan. Murdoch calls Ben Bradley, telling him to come to Turkey with the arrest of Ingrid Kohl as his cover story. Next, Hayes switches to third-person omniscient and describes a phone call for which Murdoch not present: Leyla Cumali’s conversation with Whisperer’s contact, the deputy director of Turkey’s intelligence service. He explains to her that “Brodie Wilson,” Murdoch’s cover alias, is an antiterrorism expert. Murdoch is hoping that Cumali will, based on this false information, decide to search his room to protect herself and her family.

Part 4, Chapters 1-13 Analysis

Murdoch’s trip to Saudi Arabia is interspersed with al-Nassouri’s final days in Germany. The latter is soon to be revealed under his true name of Zakaria al-Nassouri, and the effect of the juxtapositions underlines that the lost boy has become a truly dangerous man, consumed by a vision of morality where destruction is key to righteousness. Al-Nassouri celebrates the prospect of faster viral spread, and willingly entertains his own death and that of his child, all in the name of his higher cause of destroying the House of Saudi and its key ally. He is, however, partly driven by sentiment: He will not leave his son to die alone, indicating that family bonds endure even in this moment of preoccupation with a near apocalypse.

To uncover his adversary’s history, Murdoch finds that he must collaborate with Saudi intelligence. He finds the men, and their attitudes, personally distasteful, and he is struck by the al-Nassouri family’s tragic experiences in their home country. Murdoch, then, emerges as the character who can extend compassion to his adversaries, perhaps because of his more sheltered life. The approval of his father figure, Whisperer, soon gives way to an atmosphere of despair and gloom. Murdoch turns back to his central preoccupation: the nature of Loyalty and Family and love. He soon realizes that this is his last hope. Zakaria al-Nassouri, to him, is not merely a committed ideologue capable of great harm but also a father—a man like the Swiss banker who might do anything to save his child. Leyla Cumali, too, is devoted to her nephew and brother, and Murdoch counts on her unwitting preoccupation in his coming ruse. Murdoch’s calculation here is, in its way, just as monstrous as al-Nassouri’s willingness to risk his son’s infection with his deadly plague. In this moment, Hayes’s two main characters converge in purpose, just as they will soon meet face-to-face.