Lethal Code

CHAPTER 12

Holmes took more than an hour to outline his proposal to Ruhi. Agent Candace Anders sat next to the deputy director the entire time. The large, white-haired man made a persuasive presentation, and as he seemed to be reaching his conclusion, Holmes leaned forward to look Ruhi straight in the eye. It startled Ruhi to realize that no more than ninety minutes ago a large attack dog had loomed even closer, and that the distinguished-looking man talking calmly to him undoubtedly had played a role in generating the excruciating fear that he’d experienced in the bowels of that building.

“I’m not going to pull any punches, Ruhi. What we’re asking you to do is dangerous, potentially brutal, and will demand considerable courage. Time is extremely tight. Only this morning I was informed that CIA analysts found evidence of ‘trapdoors’ in nuclear missiles, nuclear power plants, and in nuclear-armed submarines.”

“Hold on,” Ruhi said. “What’s a trapdoor?”

“Bugs that will let whoever hacked the missiles, power plants, and submarines get right back into them whenever they want, maybe even take control of them.”

“Nuclear missiles?” Ruhi could scarcely accept that the nation’s most powerful weapons were vulnerable to outside programmers. But before the cyberattack, who would have believed unseen and unknown enemies could have been crippled the U.S. so easily? Only the experts who had warned the president repeatedly, but Ruhi knew nothing about those top-secret briefings.

“Yes, nuclear missiles,” Holmes replied. “We’re dealing with the most extreme elements out there. By inserting those trapdoors, they might as well have announced that they’re not taking any prisoners. We need your help.”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m not a computer expert, clearly, or you wouldn’t have to tell me what the hell a trapdoor is. And I’m not exactly buddy-buddy with Al Qaeda, no matter what you think.”

“But you do have a cousin who is, and please don’t waste our time or yours by trying to deny it.”

Ruhi shook his head, because he now knew the real reason he’d had to endure all of this “attention.” Ahmed Mancur, bearded, tall, and lean, bore such a physical likeness to bin Laden that it could only have been a badge of honor among the terrorists with whom he’d collaborated. The son of a bitch had trained in Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier. And, yes, Ruhi had been in Ahmed’s odious presence at times over the past decade. His cousin had an uncanny ability to sneak into family functions in Riyadh, make his worthless pronouncements on the state of Islam and the world, and slip out. To say Ruhi loathed him would be an understatement — and that was before he understood that Ahmed, while never convincing him to join the ranks of jihad, had certainly forced Ruhi into the arms of its sworn enemies.

“Yes, I know about Ahmed,” Ruhi allowed. “And I hate his guts.”

“We’re not fans, either,” Holmes replied. “We think he’s had a hand in the attacks. I can’t tell you why, and it’s not important to know the source, but it appears to be true. If you can contact him and basically say, ‘Cousin, you were right,’ he might find your desire for revenge believable and welcome you to his flock.”

“That’s a long shot,” Ruhi said.

“It is, and we’re taking lots of long shots. You’re not the only one. But you could be the most critical.”

“I’ll bet you tell that to all your recruits.”

Holmes shook his head. “No, I don’t. I am a straight shooter, for better or worse.”

Candace was nodding, Ruhi noticed.

Given the threat to the nukes, Ruhi realized that taking time to think about Holmes’s proposal was a luxury that no U.S. citizen could afford to take. In truth, his consideration of the mission was driven by concern both for his adopted country and his own self-interest. If he didn’t work for Holmes, Ruhi felt that he’d never live safely in America again. Nor would he likely succeed in leaving. But Ruhi also recognized that the U.S. was struggling for its very survival, and that another cyberattack — one that shut down the grid for good — could bury it forever. Worse, if that was even conceivable, it now looked like the next attack could incinerate America with its own nuclear arsenal.

“I’ll do it,” he said simply.

“Thank you,” Holmes said.

“If they’re finding trapdoors in nuclear missiles, it makes you wonder what the analysts haven’t found,” Ruhi replied.

Holmes nodded. “We have no time to spare. We feel like our backs are against a brick wall, and that if these crazies aren’t found and stopped, they’ll bomb us into caves. We’ll be living like animals. Some of us,” he added with a rueful shake of his head, “already are.”

Holmes came around the desk to shake Ruhi’s hand. “Welcome aboard,” he said gravely.

Candace congratulated him with a handshake of her own, which sent a rousing current up his arm. Even here, even now — even after the extreme duress he’d suffered and the ghastly news that he just heard — he relished her warmth and affection. Her eyes peered into his. She seemed both searching and open, strong yet sensitive.

He didn’t believe that she was putting on a show. They’d moved well beyond that. When she’d said, “I get polygraphed, too,” she only confirmed what he had come to feel.

“We’re going to drive you to the Farm right away,” Holmes told him.

Before Ruhi could ask what the devil the Farm was, Holmes explained: “Its official name is the Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity, but everyone in the defense community knows it as the ‘Farm.’”

“I’ve heard of it. It’s down near Williamsburg. I think there was even a film with Colin Farrell set there, right?”

“A facsimile thereof, yes. Although the face I remember most from that movie was Al Pacino’s. My generation,” Holmes added with a smile.

Ruhi felt a spell of light-headedness. He steadied himself against the desk.

“You okay?” Holmes asked.

“I didn’t get any lunch today. I think I’ve been burning up a few too many calories.”

“Sorry about that. We’ll have lunch ready for you in the vehicle that will take you down there. Look, Ruhi, before I send you two off on this mission I want you to remember, no matter what, that you’re damn tough. Probably a lot tougher than you think. I’ve had veteran CIA agents and hardcore terrorists who couldn’t take as much as you did downstairs without falling apart. I want you to remember that if things go bad over there.”

“Over there?”

Holmes grinned. “One step at a time.”

“We’ll begin by taking a few steps this way,” Candace said with her inimitable lilt.

She led him through the well-concealed door that she had used to enter the room. It took him into a hidden hallway system, prompting his suspicion that Holmes wanted him completely protected — even from the eyes of men and women with the country’s highest security clearances.

Each corridor appeared seamless at a glance; so did an elevator that was also unmarked, except for a narrow vertical line in the wall.

The doors opened to a steel car that dropped many floors.

“How far does it go?” he asked Candace. “We’re already way below headquarters.”

“I can’t say,” she replied. “Sorry.”

Yet they descended for another fifteen seconds — it felt much longer — before the doors parted and they entered a garage where a man as large as Tire Iron held open a door of a huge SUV. At any other time in his life, Ruhi would have groused about traveling in a monstrosity that could not possibly get more than single-digit mileage. But right now desiring anything less than short-term survival felt like an indulgence, even to the greenest side of him, which was very green, indeed.

“Bulletproof,” Candace said, tapping her knuckle against the glass. “Doors, too.”

“How long a drive?” he asked.

“With these guys running the show and emergency lights if we need them, maybe ninety minutes. Mere mortals? Much longer.”

Ruhi hadn’t been outside for two days, and he longed to see daylight. But after driving for several minutes they still hadn’t escaped the underground warren of tunnels and parking areas. A few more minutes passed before he saw the sun. He checked his watch, which had been returned to him along with his other possessions. Five o’clock. Plenty of light left.

A lot of smoke, too. He couldn’t smell it in the vehicle, but columns of it rose in the distance. It reminded him of so many pictures of devastated Middle Eastern cities that he had seen on television growing up.

“It’s happening across the country,” Candace said, pointing to a fire in a gated community. “People are angry.” She touched the back of his hand, which was resting on the open seat between them.

He looped his fingers through hers, but she withdrew after a reassuring squeeze. Then she glanced at the security detail in the front seat, the men’s shoulders so broad that they almost bridged the space above the console.

“Mr. Mancur,” the guard in the passenger seat said, “I understand that you did not have lunch today. I’ve got some stuff we picked up for you. And orange juice and coffee. If you’re hungry.”

“I’m starving.”

The man handed back a bag, along with the drinks. Ruhi found one of his favorite lunches, Asiago cheese bagels with turkey and lettuce. He almost asked how they knew, but then didn’t bother. The coffee, as he could have predicted at this point, was also as he preferred it — strong, with a splash of cream.

He offered Candace one of the sandwiches. She declined.

“You eat. When we get to the Farm, we’re going to start with small-arms training. Sounds easy, but it’s not. You’ll need your energy.”

“Handguns?”

“Right,” she said.

“Doesn’t sound too arduous.”

But about ninety minutes later he found that it was nerve-wracking. Ruhi was “shot” in the head five times in the first two minutes of training at the facility, which looked much like a real farm with broad pastures, split-rail fencing, dirt two-tracks lined with shade trees, and a huge pond. What it did not look like was a hardcore training ground for a citizen now taking a crash course in becoming a spy.

He was supposed to enter a room with an air gun drawn, ready to shoot. The weapon was an exact replica of a Glock 17. That much he could handle. The challenge came when human figures popped up that he was ordered to “take out.” They were taking him out until the instructor said it was time for the “step-by-step.”

He meant that literally, as it turned out. With Candace sitting up above the unroofed area, the short man showed Ruhi precisely how to scope out the threats upon entry and move his feet efficiently, “So you don’t trip.”

“I’m not even sure how to shoot or hold this thing,” he said, eyeing the air gun.

“Understood, Mancur,” the instructor replied, “and we’ll have you on the range soon enough, but given our extremely tight schedule, we want you to know the basics of self-defense and combat in close quarters with natural light. The fact that it’s getting dark is perfect, but it does make it more difficult to see the ‘enemy.’”

Ruhi accepted the reasoning, followed the man’s brusque instructions, and burst through a door into another room, this time firing at a figure to his right before pivoting quickly to his left to “kill” another one. The instructor nodded approvingly.

I’m enjoying this. Ruhi recognized that a primitive desire to prevail in combat was stirring the juices of his reptilian brain for the first time.

With each entry that followed, the instructor worked on the “choreography” until he said he was reasonably confident that Ruhi would not shoot his partner in actual combat.

“You have pretty decent hand-eye coordination, from what I can see,” the man told him. “Bodes well for the gun range.”

That was where they headed as night fell in earnest. Candace was by his side as they piled back into the large SUV.

“So what did you think?” he asked her, with a glance back at the unroofed rooms he’d just “cleared.”

“Pretty good. There’s hope for you yet,” she joked.

The same security team drove them to the gun range. Ruhi figured the men were tasked with keeping them safe and on schedule.

The indoor range was well lit. Life-size paper targets of a man’s upper body hung from clips along the entire width of the room.

A new instructor, a woman about Candace’s age, with a blond ponytail and clear safety glasses, told him that he was going to get “stripped-down training” on everything from gun safety to shooting to kill.

“First, I want you to point to the target.”

“Don’t I need a gun?” Ruhi asked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Candace cringe.

“Not yet. Point to it,” the instructor said in a noticeably less restrained voice.

Ruhi pointed.

“Okay, mission accomplished. Now hold your arm right there.” It started to feel heavy immediately. Ruhi realized that he was exhausted. “You see the slight bend in your elbow? How it’s not locked out?”

Ruhi nodded.

“Helps if you answer verbally, Mancur. Then I don’t have to look away from the subject at hand.”

“Yes. Got it.”

“Okay, now point with your left.”

He repeated the exercise, wondering if there was something wrong with his execution, some bad habit that he would have to break.

“Again, you have the same bend in your elbow, correct?”

“Yes, is that—”

“That’s good. When I hand you a pistol, which I will do momentarily, I want you to point, keeping your elbows bent in about the same position. That natural bend is important.”

She handed him a real Glock 17. He realized why he had drilled with a replica; right away, the actual weapon felt less foreign. Its thumb rest and grip accommodated his fingers so readily that it was as if he’d been born with it in his hand.

“That gun is not loaded. But always check. Always know what you’re handling.”

She demonstrated how to pop the clip to check the “load,” and then slide it back in.

“What’s this?” she asked rhetorically as she racked the slide that rode above the barrel. “That’s how you get this semiautomatic ready to rock.”

Then she showed him how to hold the gun with his right hand and support it with his left. She tapped both elbows. “See?”

Indeed, he did. Those bent elbows looked like the arms’ own shock absorbers.

“About seventy percent of your strength in holding your handgun comes from your dominant hand, which in your case is your right. About thirty percent with your left. It’s in the support role. You create isometric pressure to steady your aim.”

She went on to explain that he should not hunch over to shoot, “unless you’re ducking bullets. Otherwise, stay upright, and raise the weapon before your eyes. You don’t want your body and arms all moving at once, no matter what garbage you’ve seen on TV or in the movies.”

She took the weapon back from him. “I’m sliding in a full clip. Seventeen rounds. I’m going to hand it over to you like this.” She showed him proper handgun handover. “Now I want you to aim at the center of the figure and shoot until you empty the clip. Take whatever time you feel you need between shots. This is the fastest training program — and you can put quotes around ‘training program’—that I’ve ever been part of, but that doesn’t mean you have to fire fast. Just do your best and pay strict attention.”

Ruhi turned to the target, trying to remember everything she’d told him.

The sketch of the man’s upper body suddenly looked about a mile away. But what really shocked Ruhi was that fourteen of his first seventeen shots hit the target. Only six were definite “kill” shots. The rest just winged the figure. But he figured that hitting an arm or leg with a 9-millimeter round would ruin just about anybody’s day.

“That’s good shooting for someone who says he’s never shot before.”

“I haven’t, really.”

“I didn’t mean to imply differently,” she said.

Sure you did. You probably think it was at some terrorist training camp.

He shot five full clips. Out of eighty-five rounds, he missed the target entirely only nineteen times. He felt certain that he would have done better if fatigue hadn’t made him so shaky. He mentioned that to the instructor.

“Don’t console yourself with that excuse, because in real combat you’ll be shaky with adrenaline, and that uses up so much of your energy so fast that we’d like you to be able to do this half asleep. That’s clearly not on the agenda in your case. But then again, I’m surprised that you can hit the target at all. What sports did you play in high school and college?”

“I’ll bet you already know,” he said, smiling.

“You mean your high school basketball career?” She smiled for the first time. “Sixteen point five points per game, along with twelve rebounds and six assists. Yes, we know. Like I said, you have good hand-eye.”

After she finished with the care and maintenance of the weapon, she told him that he’d be issued his own Glock 17 when he “touched down.”

“Where?”

“Not for me to say, Mancur.”

He looked at Candace.

“Me, neither,” she said. “But it won’t be long till you find out. You only have thirty hours of training left before we leave. You’re going to need some sleep now.”

He and Candace were fed, and he was escorted by the security detail to a private room. Small, but military neat. A new pair of guards took control of the door for the night shift. There were no windows in his room. He could tell by the guards’ respectful treatment of him that they thought he was an important asset. That scared him for reasons he couldn’t immediately put his finger on.

Though physically and emotionally depleted, he lay in bed wondering if the big cyberattack had come. After all, he was in a super-secret installation that could surely run on generators for the foreseeable future. Were planes falling from the sky? Nuclear missiles launching from underground silos, targeting the great masses of Americans?

He slept fitfully, awakening for good at dawn for a breakfast heavy on protein. Then he was whisked over to a martial arts training center. He had yet to see Candace this morning. The day began with jujitsu and Krav Maga on a thick mat, for which he was grateful.

Krav Maga was borrowed from the Israeli Special Forces. The instructor, a swarthy man who looked as tough as buffalo hide, was openly dubious of the value of trying to teach a “recruit,” as he called him, much of anything in such a short time period. After three arduous hours the man’s opinion didn’t appear to have changed much; he offered Ruhi only a “Good luck” when the session ended.

What did I learn? he wondered. Not much more than how to isolate an opponent’s most vulnerable body parts — and to expect to be beaten nearly senseless while he tried to attack eyes, gonads, fingers, or ribs. The instructor had him repeat those moves over and over.

Ruhi was brought into a large office, where Candace waited for him alongside a Middle East intelligence chief who told him that he’d be going to Riyadh. The bullet-headed man looked like he was in his late fifties. He squinted as he talked, as if he’d spent too many years in the desert sun. The lines radiating from the corners of his eyes were deep, dark, and reached almost to his temples.

“You have family in Saudi Arabia, correct?”

Ruhi answered affirmatively, though his faith in the intelligence services would have been shaken to dust if they hadn’t already confirmed that fact.

“Here’s your cover story. We want you to tell them that you’re repatriating to Saudi Arabia. That after your miserable treatment by the U.S., you knew you’d never be accepted by your adopted land again. You must not only feel free to criticize the U.S., you must let your genuine disgust over what you’ve been through be known.

“Think about it, Mr. Mancur,” the bald briefer went on. “Your fellow Muslims have been slaughtered since the cyberattack. Hung from street poles. It’s like the Jews after Kristallnacht. Does that mean anything to you?”

He nodded. The Night of Broken Glass. Beatings, burnings, murders, and the arrests of tens of thousands of German Jews — and a mere prelude to the Holocaust that followed.

“Your friends and relatives are going to want to know how you got out of the U.S. ‘Weren’t you restricted from traveling?’ That sort of thing. You’ll tell them that you were innocent, that after torture and tests — and please feel free to describe all of that to them — we believed you. Say that we cut a deal with you. That you could go back to your homeland, but only if you kept your criticisms to yourself. No public statements about what you went through. Tell them that we said we’d kill you if you spoke out. Then tell them that you’re going to talk publicly anyway about the humiliation and murder of Muslims in the U.S., that you’ll tell the whole world what happened to you. Say you don’t give a damn about any deal, that you’re ready to join the jihad. Show real anger, Ruhi. Use the rage that you had to be feeling back in the basement at Fort Meade. They must believe you. Praise the cyberattackers. Praise jihad. Talk to your cousin.”

“So you know about him, too?”

“Of course.”

“I doubt the Saudi secret service even knows about Ahmed.”

“We’re not sure they do,” the Middle East expert told him. “We never shared that with them. We’re not going to now. We want you to get to Ahmed. Not them. The only thing we’ve shared with the Saudi agents is that we understand that you are heading there and that you agreed not to speak out against the U.S.”

“They don’t know that I’m playing ball with you, do they?”

“No way. So they might try to shut you up when you start criticizing us. It depends. Our reading of the Saudis right now is that they play to strength, and the U.S. is not strong, so we’re hearing more militantly anti-U.S. voices on the street there. But they still might try to muzzle you.”

“And if they arrest and torture me?”

“Hang in there. It’ll give you a lot of credibility when you get out.”

“Thanks! If I get out.”

“If it comes to that, you’ll get out. But not right away.”

“Oh, shit.”

“We don’t think you’re going to have any problems, Ruhi. Not with them. You might have problems with Ahmed. What’s your relationship?”

“Not much. Lots of arguments for years now. I didn’t even see him the last couple of times I visited my family. He was gone once. Another time he refused to meet with me, which was fine with me. All we ever did was argue.”

“Then tell him, however you have to, that the U.S. really is the Great Satan. People love to win arguments, and the longer they’ve gone on, the sweeter the victory. So tell him everything that happened to you. Show him the dog bite.”

“What dog bite?”

“The one that we’re going to surgically implant in your thigh.”

“Nobody said anything—”

“We don’t have time for this. Trust me, Ruhi, we’re not siccing a dog on you. But we will painlessly create the bite of a German shepherd. We’ll also create burn marks on your genitals from electrodes. You’ll want them, Ruhi. I’m telling you, they could be your ticket into that world.”

“But it’s only one of many investigations. Holmes told me that himself. Why do I have to go—”

“Through all of this? So you don’t die. And, yes, we have more than a hundred major investigations going on, but this one is the hottest lead we have right now. Your cousin Ahmed is well connected.”

“I know. And I also know he’s the reason I’m here and why you”—he turned to Candace—“were put into my fourplex.”

“I cannot comment on that,” the briefer said, “and neither can she.”

Ruhi shrugged. Strangely, a growing part of him was glad to be there. It was as if he’d never really lived before. This was blood. This was real. This was life.

Until you die.

“Learn to love Ahmed, Ruhi. He’s your cousin, and now we want him to be your brother-in-arms. Everybody loves the prodigal son, especially if he comes back ready for jihad.”

“Then what?”

“Then let’s see where that takes you. You’re a great propaganda coup. We think we’ll be seeing you on YouTube very quickly.”

“With or without my head?”

His briefer laughed. “With it.”

Ruhi was hustled off to two more trainers, a man and woman about his age. The guy, so glassy-eyed that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, reviewed basic means of avoiding detection. Because it included no training outside the tight office in which Ruhi now found himself, he felt that the briefing had questionable value.

Then he was handed over to a lithe young woman, who appeared considerably better rested. She laid an Apple MacBook on a table, finger-combing her short red hair as she spoke.

“Go ahead, open it. Start it up.”

It was his own device. He could tell by a telltale scratch on the cover. He was glad to have it back. The arrangement of the desktop on the screen hadn’t been changed.

“So what did you do to it? You did something, right?”

“It’s not yours,” the woman said. “But we’re glad you think it is, Ruhi. It’s been outfitted with a history that makes it look like you were contacting jihadist websites. The Chinese did you a favor when they framed you. They made it plausible for you to assume this role. Gave you a vital history. It includes the email to al-Awlaki. It even includes email back from him.”

“The jihadists will know that I never contacted him.”

“No, they won’t,” she replied. “Al-Awlaki was sloppy with his contacts. He had horrible computer skills. It’s one of the reasons he’s dead. He’s the one guy we could do that to. But he’s still important, because he’s revered. He was a turncoat American citizen, just like you’ll appear.”

“He was a fraud,” Ruhi said.

“You’ll get no arguments here,” the woman said, sitting across from him. “Tomorrow, after lunch, you’ll be meeting with a cybersecurity expert to review deep encryption so once you’re in the Mideast you can stay in contact with Agent Anders and your agent supervisors here. You’re booked out of Dulles on a nine p.m. flight to Riyadh.”

“That’s it? That’s all?”

“No. You’ll have more gun training in the morning. Plus, more hand-to-hand combat. We’re doing what we can,” she added. “Time pressures are enormous. Did you sleep okay last night? Do you need a sleep aid?”

“What?” The question startled him.

“A sleeping pill. Sleep’s critical. You’ll need to absorb a lot tomorrow. Are you too charged up to sleep?”

“No. I’ve been sleep-deprived for the past couple of days.”

She nodded. “If you need anything, let us know.”

“Dinner?”

“You’ll enjoy it.”

“How do you know that?”

She smiled.

Why do I even ask?

It was his favorite meal, lamb rogan josh, served to him and Candace in a private room off the Farm’s main dining hall.

When they were alone — although Ruhi doubted they were unseen or unheard — he had an unsettling flash of uncertainty about Candace.

“I have to ask you, is your interest in me just to make me part of this insane mission?”

“I can understand why you’d wonder. All I can tell you is that I’m really attracted to you, Ruhi, and I honestly find that confusing. I’m sure that if circumstances were different, less pressing, I would feel much more comfortable with my feelings. But to feel this way while being forced to go out on what could be a hellishly difficult mission?” She shook her head. “It’s kind of crazy, I know. We hardly even know each other, but something definitely sparked for me right away. I don’t mean to sound immodest, but I saw that in you, too, the night in your apartment when we sat by the window.”

“You’re not being immodest at all. Of course I felt something. So where does that leave us on the personal side of things during all this?”

“The same place it leaves us on the professional side — just trying to survive. But I should tell you that I’m not a fast mover under any circumstances.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ve never jumped into a relationship with anyone.”

Ruhi was pleased to hear her last comment. His upbringing and Muslim faith, no matter how lapsed, still made him uncomfortable with women who flaunted their sexuality or used it too readily. Candace’s words didn’t strike him as a dodge or a convenient means to keep him at bay. They struck him as the truth.

Dinner ended on that sincere-sounding note. They walked back to the dormitory, escorted by the security team.

Ruhi settled down in his room by himself, wondering if he should have taken a sleep aid. Between his imminent departure and his feelings for Candace, he was as awake as he possibly could be. He lay with his hands on his chest staring into the darkness, head buzzing in the absolute silence of the room.

A moment later — or so it seemed — he awakened to his last day in the States. Maybe ever.

He still called it the “States.” Nobody he’d ever met who was native born used that term, but he did. A small part of him had never fully emigrated from Saudi Arabia, and he was reminded of that in little ways.

My last day.

He sat on the edge of the bed, shocked by the tectonic shifts in his life. His work at NRDC, as important as he had deemed it, now paled. But he guessed that any number of his colleagues probably felt the same way after seeing their country descend into mayhem.

A knock on the door startled him.

“I’m up,” he called out.

“Good enough, Mr. Mancur. You have fifteen minutes to shower.”

His “hosts” had provided a toothbrush, floss, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, conditioner, and a full complement of washcloths and towels. But no razor.

He looked at himself in the mirror. Stubble everywhere. It grew so fast. After only a few days he had the unkempt look of so many jihadists. He understood why his minders would want him bearded, less Westernized. That made sense — but it also itched.

Candace joined him for breakfast. She looked freshly awake and utterly beguiling. If he survived, if she did too, could they possibly make a relationship work? He knew better than to think that there could ever be an easy answer at this point, but he also knew that clinging to that notion could prove to be a critical lifeline.

Breakfast was ample. After a second round of sessions with his firearms and martial arts instructors, he was taken by elevator to a computer laboratory deep below a barnlike structure. It contained large rooms packed with so many devices that he thought they could have constituted the cybernetic stronghold of the country.

A salt-and-pepper-haired NSA official greeted him without using his own name, and then introduced him to a tall, attractive woman with black hair.

“This is Lana Elkins. She’s one of the world’s foremost experts on encryption and, to use the vernacular, hacking.”

Absolutely beautiful, Ruhi could not avoid thinking as Elkins shook his hand firmly. Her clear dark eyes were dazzling. Older than him by almost five years, he guessed, and every bit as striking in her own way as Candace. It made him wonder what it was about the spy trade that seemed to attract such appealing women. He knew that they couldn’t all be so alluring, not any more than all the men could resemble James Bond.

You sure don’t, he told himself.

A moment later Candace joined them as Ruhi’s tutorial began on his new MacBook. Candace had her own laptop and took copious notes. Elkins sent both of them material every few seconds for the first ten minutes.

“I guess it’s got a ton of memory,” Ruhi said to her.

“You’re guessing right,” Elkins replied without looking up. “Agent Anders is your immediate backup,” the computer expert went on, “but I’ll also be based in Riyadh for the time being.”

“Where?”

She shook her head as if he should have known better than to ask.

“You’re going to stand out in my home country,” he said.

“Conveniently enough, I’ll be doing some agency contract work.”

Probably for the Mabahith, he thought. The Saudi secret police. Ruhi wouldn’t want to be grabbed by them. They had a well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness. But they were also reputed to work closely with U.S. intelligence services.

“ ‘Conveniently enough’? What isn’t planned for?” Ruhi asked rhetorically.

“An attack on our country,” Elkins responded flatly.

Both Ruhi and Candace nodded.

While his computer skills were reasonably sophisticated, by the time he finished with Elkins later in the afternoon, he realized that she’d primed him for an entirely new universe of knowledge.

“You’re a quick study,” she complimented him. “But you still might need me in a jam. That’s why I’ll be there.”

“And if I leave?”

“There are all kinds of ways for me to follow you,” she said, letting her long slender fingers drift over her keyboard.

At nine that night, Ruhi sat at a window seat on Saudi Arabian Airlines. Coach. Nothing fancy. Nothing to draw attention to him. Not many people were flying, not with the threat of planes dropping out of the air with the next cyberattack. He made an effort to put that fear aside. Foreign carriers were permitted in and out of a few key points on the Eastern Seaboard. Dulles was a principal hub. The Saudi airline was permitted one flight a day. Ruhi — and no doubt other passengers as well — hoped that the airlines had rejiggered their electronics to prevent penetration by cyberattackers. But who really knew? The lack of an answer probably explained the scores of empty seats.

He wore dark glasses and an oversize ball cap. He also had that dog “bite” in his right thigh. A doctor had dressed and then covered it with a white bandage. Thirteen stitches. Ruhi tried not to be superstitious about the number of sutures.

His testes had also taken a hit — of electricity — and were similarly bandaged. Thankfully they were still anaesthetized. Lying on his back, all Ruhi had seen of the “procedure,” as the doctor put it, were two perturbing tendrils of smoke rising from his crotch. The doc had given him a bottle of Tylenol 3, saying, “It’s not as bad as it looks or smells, and you won’t feel any pain in a couple of days.”

Doctor?

He had his doubts as he looked out the plane’s window. Ruhi had assumed that the white-coated man was a physician, but now realized that he could just as easily have been a veteran torturer. He’d certainly wielded those electrodes with alarming enthusiasm.

Ruhi’s fellow passengers gave no note of his presence. Most appeared studiously preoccupied with their tablets, smartphones, and laptops. He wondered how many of them were CIA agents keeping an eye on him — and other passengers.

Ruhi also wondered if his window seat had also been planned. All he noticed as the wide-bodied jet rose over the Washington area were fires. He quit counting when he reached twenty. Too depressing. One of the more recent ones occurred only this morning when a natural gas pipeline exploded in Alexandria, consuming most of the downtown.

The invasion by the cyberattackers might have been invisible, but it had brought all the brutal signs of real battle fully into view.

Death, fire, rage, and fear. All of them boiled below. But even that grisly toll — horrendous as it was — pale at the realization that control of the country’s own nuclear missiles now lay in the hands of its most vicious enemy ever.