Soul of the Assassin

1

An infinitesimal moment of time passed, the space of a spark passing across an electrode. This shell of a moment contained a universe of action and thought, all possibilities to follow. Standing at its rim, Bob Ferguson saw them all — himself, the car, the submachine gun, Rostislawitch.

Ferguson’s impulse was to push Rostislawitch down, to take cover. But that would have been a mistake; that would have been what the shooter wanted. Instead, Ferguson chose the unexpected.

How much of this was actual thought and how much reflex would have been impossible to say. But in the half second that followed, Ferguson twisted around and grabbed Rostislawitch by the arm, hooking his shoulder and arm into his. Then he threw himself not forward or to the ground but upward, in the direction of the passing car.

He landed on the trunk, dragging Rostislawitch with him. Ferguson threw his hand out, gripping the far side of the car as it sped down the road.

As strong as he was, Ferguson could not hold himself on the trunk of the moving vehicle, let alone support the added weight of Rostislawitch. They slid off the car after a few yards, rolling across the street into the gutter. Ferguson pushed Rostislawitch with him, forward, trying to move in the direction the vehicle had been going. He got another three or four yards before an explosion rent the air behind him.

Fire pitched upward from the side of the street where they’d been walking. Ferguson looked back and saw a sheet of red covering the block.

He had only one thought: where was Thera?

Rostislawitch, head spinning, felt himself being dragged back to his feet. He’d closed his eyes when the shooting started, clamped them closed as he flew through the air. Now he struggled to reopen them. He was pulled back, dragged toward heat.

“What are we doing?” he screamed in Russian.

His eyes sprang open and his vision returned; the bum whom he’d met in the station had him over his shoulder, carrying him into the fire.

“No!” he yelled, struggling to break free.

“We have to save someone,” answered Ferguson. “Come on. It’s Thera. Thera.”

Rostislawitch stopped fighting, but he was even more deeply confused. He felt as if he were in a dream, the world spinning so bizarrely that everything he knew was mashed together into the same physical place: Thera; his wife, Olga; Atha; and this bum; the streets of Moscow when he was a young man; Chechnya the inferno; Naples.

The flames receded, funneling back into a basement near where they’d been walking when the car came by. Ferguson pulled Rostislawitch with him.

“Thera!” Ferguson called. “Thera, where are you? Thera!”

The explosion had broken a water main below the street. Water hissed upward, a cloud of vapor rising from the grate next to the building like a geyser. Black smoke from several boxes of garbage and a nearby car that had caught fire curled across the narrow roadway, clawing at the buildings on either side.

Thera Majed rose from behind the car where she’d crouched. She hadn’t realized what was going on until she saw Ferguson throwing himself into space. When the flames erupted she threw herself down, thinking it was too late, not for her but for him. She was sure she’d never see Ferg again, except in pieces, broken on the pavement.

And there he was, coming through the fire, carrying Rostislawitch with him, calling for her. She threw herself at him and he caught her, and for a long moment neither one thought of anything but the other: they wrapped their arms around each other; they held their hearts close against each other’s chest. Then, like all moments, it disintegrated; they were back in the world.

“Are you all right?” Thera asked.

“I’m good.”

“Your sat phone is ringing.”

Ferguson hadn’t realized it. He pulled it from his pocket. Corrigan had called, leaving a message. The sat phone was notifying him of it.

“Kiska Babev is on her way to Naples,” said Corrigan. “She may be there already.”

Thanks, thought Ferguson, sliding the antenna back down. He turned to Rostislawitch, standing only a foot away, not sure whether to believe Thera was really there. “Come on,” Ferguson told the Russian scientist. “We’ll find a place where it’s safe, and explain.”

2

The airport at Misratah was primarily a military base, with its parking areas dominated by fixed-wing Aero L-39 Albatross fighter-trainers. But there was very little in terms of intra-service rapport between the U.S. and Libya. Rankin made a vain attempt at soliciting the base commander’s help, telling him that he was sure that Atha’s aircraft had landed here and that any cooperation would be remembered in the future. But his promise was too nebulous for the commander, who valued tangible and immediate rewards; he recommended that Rankin speak to the men in the control tower but added that personally he doubted there would be anyone there who could help.

Guns worked the opposite direction, walking over to the fixed base operator’s shack and trying to strike up a conversation with the men there. He was wondering about airplanes that might have been fueled recently, he told them, because he was trying to find someone who’d flown out a few hours before. But there was too much of a language barrier — none of the men who fueled or worked on the planes spoke enough English to understand his questions, even with twenty-euro notes as an incentive.

The office manager understood, but claimed there had been no aircraft in or out in several days. She did this with her arms folded and one eye on the television in the corner of her small office inside the hangar. An Italian soap opera was playing on the television, the sound turned down while a translation of the dialogue into Arabic ran across the bottom. Guns turned and watched the program for a few minutes while he tried to think of another tactic.

A short, bald man with a beard pushed a broom into the office. The woman scolded him in Arabic, telling him he was late, but the man paid no attention. He swept the dust into a small pile near the door, then went back out into the hangar area.

“So, uh, who else can I talk to?” Guns asked the office manager when the program went to commercials. “I’m really looking for information and willing to pay.”

The woman shrugged. Guns wrote a local telephone number down for her — untraceable, the number would be answered by Corrigan — and said that if she thought of anything, she could call. He left one of his twenties next to the note and left.

He wondered what Ferguson would do next as he walked toward the hangar door. Maybe see something that he wasn’t seeing. Guns tried absorbing everything in front of him, staring, glancing — if there was something significant here, it just wasn’t registering.

“I know what you’re after,” said the man with the broom, pausing over his work near the doorway.

Guns stopped, surprised not so much by what the man said as the fact that he was speaking perfect English.

“You want information about Ahmed.” The man glanced around. “Flies out of here all the time in his little putt-putt plane.”

“How do you know?”

“Ah, I don’t know nothin’.”

The man went back to sweeping. Before Guns could ask another question, the office manager’s voice rang across the large building, once more scolding the sweeper in Arabic. The man pushed his broom toward a corner.

“He is a retard,” she told Guns, walking toward him. The English pejorative flew from her mouth in three syllables: “ree-tuh-ard.” “Not right in the head. Don’t worry about him.”

“I could see that,” said Guns.

Outside, Guns walked as slowly as he could toward the helicopter, parked a hundred yards away. Rankin had already gotten back.

“They’re probably all on the take,” said Rankin, agitated, standing near the nose of the Seahawk. “Control tower guy lied to my face. He claimed he hadn’t had a plane in or out for days, except for the military patrols. He does that in almost perfect English, then he pretends he doesn’t understand when I ask if knows of any Iranians who fly in and out of here. How about you?”

“I’m not sure,” said Guns. “But there’s a guy in the offices there who might talk to us, if we could figure out a way to get his boss out of the picture. She’s kind of a nasty-edged woman.”

“Ferguson would go make love to her,” said Rankin.

Guns laughed. He probably would — or at least flirt. “Well, that won’t work for us.”

“Are they together?” Rankin asked.

“There’s an office inside. She’s watching a soap opera. He’s cleaning up.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll go talk to her. You come around after me and see what the guy has to say.”

The man with the broom had been watching them from across the cement apron, and Guns didn’t have to do very much to get him to talk.

“They think I’m a dope,” the man told Guns while Rankin went inside. “I’m not right in the head, but I’m not a dope.”

“I’m looking for an Iranian,” said Guns.

“That would be Atha,” said the man. “He is always with Ahmed. Ahmed the pilot and his little plane.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“I can tell you everything. Everything.”

“And what do you want?”

“Get me out of here. I know you’re American and I know you’re a spy. Get me back to America.”

“We could probably do that,” said Guns, in his most casual voice.

“I’ll be in your helicopter in half an hour.”

“What’s your name?”

“Just call me Paul.”

Paul showed up at the Seahawk five minutes after Guns and Rankin climbed in. Rankin thought Paul looked like a burned-out hippie, and the brief story he told of his background more or less confirmed the assessment: he’d wandered through Africa for nearly two decades, for fun and enlightenment.

“Done some good drugs,” he admitted. “Got tossed in jail in Morocco for a while. Not a great place.”

“So tell us about Ahmed,” said Guns.

“You guys are going to get me back to the States?”

Rankin looked at Guns. He hadn’t heard about the deal.

“Yeah, we’ll get you there,” said Guns. “I just have to work it out. But I will.”

“I think I can trust you,” said Paul. He turned to Rankin. “Not you.” He turned back to Guns. “But you’re OK.”

Guns asked again about Ahmed, the pilot Paul had mentioned by the hangar.

“Flies a little Fuji FA-200. Tiny little plane. Putt-putt-putt-putt-putt. Fills up with his av fuel, comes back almost bone-dry. Goes south. Doesn’t take much water.”

“Why would he take a lot of water?” asked Guns.

“That’s the desert, man. The desert. People are dying down there. No water. So he’s going someplace with water. Dig?”

“Are you sure he’s goes south?” said Rankin.

Paul snickered. “You don’t trust me.”

“No,” said Rankin.

“Honesty. Ha. Overrated.”

“How do you know he’s going south?” asked Guns.

“Flight vector,” said Paul. “I watch. Some days with glasses. You don’t waste fuel in the desert. You go somewhere, you go. You know, I could fly that plane if he let me. I don’t have a license, but I can fly. I could fly this plane.”

“This is a helicopter,” said Guns.

“I could still fly it.”

“I think we can find our own pilot,” said Rankin.

“Hey, I can find you pilots. I can get you lots of pilots.”

“Yeah?” said Guns, thinking one might know Ahmed. Paul didn’t seem like the most reliable source.

“Lots of pilots, man,” said Paul. “Say, you got something to drink? Stronger than water, I mean.”

3

The day his wife died, Rostislawitch had walked through town in a state of shock, his body numb with disbelief. He did this even though he had known for a while it was coming — his need for her was so strong that he had denied the reality of her passing until the sheet was drawn over her head. At that moment, confusion was drawn over him, and his soul was plunged into despair, from which he’d only just down awoken.

He felt that way again, sitting in the abandoned factory building several blocks from the train station. He couldn’t believe what the girl, Thera, was telling him.

He could believe some of it, but not all of it, not the part about her being an American spy, a CIA officer, even though the FSB she-wolf had said it, even though he had quizzed Thera surreptitiously about it. She seemed too young, too innocent, to be so deceptive.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Thera told him. “But someone had to get close to you to protect you.”

Rostislawitch thought this might all be an elaborate trick, an operation they would call it, to get him to come over to their side. Maybe things were still the way they were during the Cold War, when Russians and the West were locked in a battle of spy versus spy They’d get medals for bringing him in, and he would get a small flat in Texas didn’t somewhere, never heard of again until the she-wolf Kiska Babev hunted him down and took his carcass back for her own medal.

“Someone is trying to kill you. This is twice Ferg has saved you,” Thera told him.

“When was the first?” Rostislawitch asked.

“In Bologna. The car bomb.”

“That was a terrorist.”

“No, that was an assassin. He likes bombs, and he likes to make his hits look as if they’re the work of other people.”

“No one saved me,” said Rostislawitch, remembering. “Someone flew into me as the bomb exploded.”

Ferguson interrupted, walking over from his lookout post near the door.

“The person that’s trying to kill you is good. Very good,” he said. “He — or she — killed a CIA officer two years ago. That’s why we went to Bologna. Not because of whatever it was you stole, or because we want you to defect or anything like that. Because you’re the target of someone we want. We want to catch him. Or her.”

“Him or her?” asked Rostislawitch.

“We thought it was a he,” Ferguson said. “We seem to have been wrong about that.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re pretty sure it’s Kiska Babev,” said Thera. “The Russian FSB agent who interviewed you.”

Rostislawitch remembered their meeting, the look in her eyes. She was definitely a killer, heartless.

“But now that we’re here,” continued Ferguson, “we can’t help but be interested in what you gave the Iranians.”

“I didn’t give them anything.”

“You weren’t paid?”

“They stole it from my locker. You saw me. You were there. In your disguise.”

Ferguson caught Thera’s eye and signaled with his head for her to go back by the door and keep lookout. He’d posted video bugs, but it would take considerably more than that to make him feel comfortable now.

“Tell me about what they took,” Ferguson asked the scientist in Russian. “How dangerous is it?”

Rostislawitch took a deep breath. He couldn’t decide what to do, whether to trust the Americans or not. He watched Thera walking to the door. He longed to trust her, but how could he, when she had so obviously lied?

“If I drank what they took, would I die?” Ferguson asked.

“You wouldn’t drink it,” said Rostislawitch. “The taste.” He shook his head. “You would never drink it. Or eat it. Not in that form.”

“So how is it spread?”

“If I talk to you, my friends in Russia — they’ll never be left alone.”

“If the material is used by the Iranians, hundreds of people may die,” said Ferguson.

“You’re wrong,” said Rostislawitch. “It could be thousands, even millions. Maybe millions if they know their business.”

“Then talk to me. You don’t want their deaths on your soul.”

Rostislawitch stared at Thera, silent.

“Help us,” she said, looking back into the room. “You’re not a murderer, Artur. Help us.”

Sobbing, Rostislawitch began to explain the different ways the bacteria could be used.

4

This is what came of improvisation.

Hamilton folded his arms, watching as the firemen played their hose on the burned-out building. Augusto Leterri, one of the Naples police lieutenants in charge of the investigation, stood beside him, talking on his cell phone to a superior.

Ferguson was one lucky son of a bitch, Hamilton thought. Always somehow at the right spot at the right time, riding the right twist of fate.

He kicked at a brick from the building, which had partially collapsed about twenty minutes after the explosion. The problem was, there hadn’t been enough time for the gas to fill the basement space. Another half hour, and the explosion would have claimed the entire block. That was the way he liked it: complete and utter obliteration, destruction on a grand scale. One could use a gun — certainly he had — or even a knife or poison, but where was the art in that? Where was the statement of annihilation? Where was the assurance of success?

No, the gas explosion, with the extra diversion of the hired gunner — that was the way it should have happened. And it would have, had they walked down one of the three other blocks where the trap had been set. This just happened to be the last, happened to have a geography that favored luck.

Luck. Always the deciding factor when you improvised.

“I’m sorry for the interruption,” said the detective. “That was my boss. As I was saying, I doubt this was the work of terrorists.”

“Why?” asked Hamilton.

“The inspector has already found part of the gas pipe broken,” said the detective. “If there were a bomb, there would be more residue. We will look more carefully, because you never know. But from the way the witnesses described it, phooosh.”

He made the sound of a fire, raising his hands up from his belly to illustrate.

“But we will look into your theory of terrorists,” added the policeman.

“I would,” said the MI6 agent. There was nothing like an intelligent man, Hamilton thought; he could be so easily fooled.

Of course, it was possible that when they discovered that the gas pipes had been broken in buildings along three other nearby streets, in effect surrounding the train station, they would conclude that it was too much of a coincidence to be accidental. Then they would think of Hamilton’s theory. Or maybe they would find a witness who mentioned the men in the car, and the gun. That would set them in another direction entirely.

Most likely, though, they wouldn’t. The Naples police had a great deal to do.

The detective reached into his pocket for a business card. “You should call me if you get any other tips,” he told Hamilton. “We take terrorism very seriously. We are glad to cooperate.”

“I will,” said Hamilton. “If you’ll excuse me, I should go and check in with my embassy, just to let them know that I’ve done my job.”

5

Thomas Parnelles slid the yellow pencil between his fingers, then turned it around, spinning it across his hand as if he were a magician and it was his wand. Quick fingers and sleight of hand were great assets in the spy game, he’d been told as a young man, though as far as he could remember he’d never actually used either of those skills in the field.

Magic — now that was something altogether different. That he had used many times. Or at least attempted to.

The pencil fell from Parnelles’s hand and skittered across the desk, toward the tiny digital recorder that was replaying what the Russian scientist had told Ferguson less than a half hour before.

Corrine Alston grabbed the pencil as it fell off the side of the desk.

The player stopped.

“That’s it?” she asked Dan Slott. The CIAs Deputy Director of Operations looked at Jack Corrigan, the First Team’s deskman. He nodded.

“Atha may be back in Iran by now,” said Corrine.

“He wouldn’t have gotten there yet,” said Corrigan. “The plane that Rankin says he took has only about an eight-hundred-mile radius. They’d have to stop and refuel.”

“The part about him going south bothers me,” said Parnelles. “Iran has spread money around for camps in the Darfur area, allegedly for relief. It might be a cover for a base.”

“If this material is as dangerous as it seems, they might not want to work on in it in Iran,” said Slott. “We are looking at the satellite data, and we’ve got a Global Hawk unmanned spy plane en route.”

“A laboratory hidden in a relief camp will be difficult to detect by satellite,” said Parnelles.

“Colonel Van Buren and the 777th Special Forces Group is being positioned to respond if necessary,” said Slott.

“I think it’s premature to consider an assault,” said Corrine.

“From what we know of the bacteria, it can be prepared to be used relatively easily,” said Parnelles. “They could launch an attack in a relatively short time.”

“They’d be inviting massive retaliation,” said Corrine. “A full-scale invasion.”

“If we could figure out what was going on,” said Slott.

“It would reverse the entire course of their foreign policy over the past year and a half,” answered Corrine. “Everything they’ve been aiming to do — they’ve made major concessions on funding Hezbollah. Even without the nuclear treaty. This doesn’t fit in.”

“It does if you’re Parsa Moshen and your power is slipping,” said Parnelles. “The best thing that could happen would be an attack by the U.S. The Revolutionary Guard would become the most important force in the country once more. Even if you were invaded. You look at A1 Qaeda in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and you say, ‘If they could do it, we can do it.’“

“That’s dangerous thinking,” said Corrine.

“Exactly,” said the CIA Director, slipping back in his chair.

6

The pilots Paul told Guns and Rankin about could generally be found in a hotel overlooking the sea in Qasar Ahmed, the town next to Misratah on the Mediterranean; it was a Western-style hotel, which meant it had a bar and served alcohol.

“Very early,” Paul told them as they rode the elevator up to the bar, which was located on the roof. “We may not find anyone.”

“We have time,” said Guns.

The bar consisted of a small, air-conditioned room and a much larger open patio, shielded from the sun by a large piece of striped canvas. The material flapped in the breeze, pulling hard against the ropes that held it down against the metal poles. Rankin and Guns followed as Paul led them to the far corner, commandeering a table that had an unrestricted view of the sea.

“Be back,” said Paul, jumping up a moment after sitting.

“What do you think?” Rankin asked. “You think he’s completely nuts?”

“I don’t know,” said Guns. “He definitely lost a few brain cells along the way.”

“I hate hippies.”

“My mom was kind of a hippy. For a while. When she was young.”

“She doesn’t count.”

A waiter appeared. “You want?” he asked, his accent and tone making it clear that while he knew some English, he was far from fluent.

Then again, his English was miles ahead of their Arabic.

“Juice,” said Rankin. “Apple juice.”

“That’d be good,” said Guns.

The waiter didn’t understand him.

“Apple juice,” said Guns. “Yes.”

“OK. Juice. OK,” said the waiter.

Rankin stared at the light green water rippling toward the horizon. There were dozens and dozens of ships and countless boats bobbing on it.

“Atha could go in any of those boats; we’ll never find him,” he told Guns.

“Why are you always so grouchy?”

“What do you mean, grouchy?”

“Yeah, you’re always like, why are we doing this, or this won’t work, or whatever.”

“I’ll try to be more cheerful for you.”

“Be cheerful for yourself. Think positive.”

Guns looked up and saw Paul coming through the door from the enclosed bar area. Another man, gray hair tied in a ponytail at the back of his head, followed him. He wore aviator frame sunglasses and a thick leather jacket despite the heat.

“This is George Burns,” said Paul, introducing the man with a wink to let them know it wasn’t the pilot’s real name. “George, my friends Guns and Rankin.”

“Hey.” George Burns sat down. He was Caucasian, though deeply tanned, and wore American-style work boots and Levi’s. But his shirt was the sort a native Libyan might wear, a loosely fitting tunic that fell below his waist. He reeked of alcohol.

“These are the spies,” Paul told him. “They’re looking for Ahmed and Anghuyu Jahan — Atha.”

“I know where Atha is,” said George Burns.

“Where?” asked Rankin.

“I’ll take you there. But it’ll cost you.”

“You’re lying,” said Rankin.

“No more than you.”

“How much do you want?” asked Guns.

“Fifty grand. American. Small bills.”

“You’re out of your fuckin’ mind,” said Rankin, getting up.

“A thousand,” said Guns, tapping his partner.

“What is this, good cop, bad cop?” George Burns leaned back. “A thousand won’t even pay for my fuel. Fifty grand is a good price.”

Still standing, Rankin pushed his chair back with his leg and folded his arms. The guy seemed like all bluff. “Five thousand,” he told him.

“No way. You guys don’t realize what you’re getting into.”

“Tell us,” said Rankin.

“I ain’t worried about you.”

The waiter came over with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and four glasses.

“Where’s our apple juice?” Rankin asked.

“They don’t serve juice,” said Paul.

“Get us water then. Water?”

George Burns smiled. He took the bottle and poured himself four fingers’ worth of the sour mash Tennessee whiskey into his tumbler. Paul asked for the water in Arabic, then put about a shot’s worth of Jack into his own glass.

“Used to be this stuff was potent,” said George Burns, holding up the glass so he could gaze at the liquid. “Now it’s only eighty proof. Iced tea. Everything fades.”

He drank the glass in a gulp.

“We can get you ten thousand,” said Rankin.

“Fifty. Before I fly.”

“Can’t do it.”

“Oh, well.” George Burns picked the bottle back up and poured another four fingers’ worth into his glass.

“Maybe we could get you twenty-five,” said Guns. “But it would have to go into a bank account. We don’t carry cash.”

“We could figure out a bank account,” said George Burns. “That we could do. But it would have to be fifty.”

“You have no idea where he went,” said Rankin.

George Burns turned toward him, stared for thirty seconds without saying anything, then looked back at Guns. “Put the money in my account, and we take off.”

“You’re going to fly?” said Rankin.

“I’m not walking. That’s a real desert out there, Jack. A real desert.”

“You don’t have to fly us,” said Guns. “Just tell us where it is.”

“No. I take you there. I don’t want any fighters on my tail, either. No paratroopers, nobody but you.”

“My partner comes with me.”

George Burns made a face, but didn’t object. “We fly over their place once, come back. You mark the location with a GPS or whatever you want. Nothing else happens until I’m back, safe on the ground. Capisce?”

“Just tell us where it is,” said Rankin.

“I take you there or no deal.”

“You don’t know where it is, do you?” said Rankin.

“You’d better tell your friend his attitude is about to bump the price another ten grand.”

“We’re not doing fifty,” said Rankin. “Not even if you really do know where it is.”

Guns got up and walked away from the table. Frowning, Rankin went with him.

“I think we gotta take a shot,” said Guns.

“No effin’ way,” said Rankin.

“A flight of the Global Hawk probably costs twice that.”

“I don’t think he really knows,” said Rankin. “He’s a drunk.”

“Corrigan can figure out some way to put the money in an account and then get it back if it’s a bust, don’t you think?”

“How do they get us back?”

“I trust him for that. Ferg would do it.”

Rankin looked across the patio. George Burns had just downed his second glass of whiskey.

“Talk to Corrigan,” Rankin told Guns. “Let me stop this guy from drinking anything else before he gets too loaded to talk, let alone fly.”

7

Ferguson watched from the doorway as the three Fiats drove slowly up the street and stopped near the entrance to the factory. Two men got out of the first car and walked forward, scanning the area.

Ferguson waited until they had passed, then slipped out the door, his Glock pistol in hand.

“You find anything, let me know,” he said to them.

The man sitting in the passenger seat of the second car rolled down his window.

“You Ferguson?”

“Captain Heifers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know where the Ramada is?”

“No, sir, but the cars have Magellan units.”

“Program it in. Once we go, we don’t stop. All right? Nobody stops. Tell them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ferguson went back into the building. Rostislawitch was still sitting on the cement floor, legs folded yoga-style.

“Come on, Rosty, time to hit the road,” Ferguson told him.

The scientist didn’t move. He was very tired, and still in shock.

“We have to go in case our friends come back,” said Ferguson. “We’re only a couple of blocks away. This isn’t safe.”

Ferguson slipped the gun into the front of his belt. “Thing is, Rosty, T Rex has taken two shots at you and missed both times. I’m sure he’s missed opportunities before, but I don’t know what the odds would be on your surviving shot number three.”

“Artur, it’s the only way,” said Thera, kneeling next to him. “Come with us now. At least you’ll be safe.”

Rostislawitch turned his head and looked into her eyes. It was possible, still possible, that they had staged everything for his benefit.

“I know it’s hard to trust us,” said Thera, putting her hand on his shoulder. “But come with us now. We can get you cleaned up, get you something to eat. Then you can decide.”

Rostislawitch rose. He’d already decided. He had to trust them. He just had to. Whatever doubts remained.

Ferguson was already out the door. The civilian-clothed Marines were now at either end of the block, scanning up and down. He opened the door to Captain Helfers’s sedan, then waited as Rostislawitch and Thera emerged from the building.

“You’re in the middle,” Ferguson told the scientist as Thera ran around the other side. After Rostislawitch was inside the car, Ferguson took a last look down the block, then got in and slammed the door. “Go; let’s go,” he said. “Just go.”

“I’m not supposed to ask any questions,” said Heifers as the cars sped down the block and turned toward the highway.

“Which is good because I’m not going to give any answers,” said Ferguson.

“But I just—”

“No buts. You ask me no questions, I tell you no lies.” He patted the Marine captain on the shoulder. “Tell the car behind us to get out in front at the next turn.”

“You sure?”

Ferguson just laughed. Heifers, who was in touch with the others via radio, passed along the instruction.

They’d gone two miles on the highway when Ferguson leaned forward again. “Take a right and get down that exit,” he told the driver. “Wait until the last second.”

“But you said—”

“Right here. Don’t tell the other cars.”

Heifers started to protest.

“Relax, Captain. I’ve done this before.” Ferguson turned and watched the road, making sure they weren’t being followed.

“Looks clear, Ferg,” said Thera, who’d been watching herself.

“Yeah. But that street looked clear when they tried shooting us up, too.” Ferguson leaned into the front. “Straight. Then two more blocks, you take a left. We’re not going to the hotel.”

“Where then?” asked Heifers.

Ferguson shook his head. “When we get there, I’ll let you know.”

Ferguson’s directions took them out of the city and down along the coastline five miles, to a small motel overlooking the sea. He’d considered taking Rostislawitch to the American air base, where he could provide much better security, but decided it might spook him worse. The scientist was still unsure whether he was doing the right thing or not.

Ferguson jumped out of the car as soon as they pulled up. He went inside and rented two rooms, checking and scanning them himself before letting Thera, Rostislawitch, and the two Marines in.

“Actually, we should get back to the base,” said Heifers.

“Sorry, Captain, you’re with us for a while.”

“Can we call our men at least and tell them we’re OK?”

“Corrigan will take care of that,” Ferguson told him. “Don’t worry. No one’s going to accuse you of going AWOL. Park the cars over there,” he added, pointing across the lot. “Away from our rooms, but where we can see them.”

The two rooms Ferguson had taken were on the top floor of the two-story motel. Built in the 1970s, the hotel was similar to many American motels, with the rooms opening directly onto an exterior balcony or walkway. They had a good view of the highway and surrounding area, and while there was only one entrance from the road, there were trails down the hillside that would make it easy to escape by foot.

The motel did not, however, have room service, and Ferguson was still not comfortable enough to let anyone go for food, even though there was a place just down the highway. The truth was, the attack on the street had caught him off-guard. If Kiska had orchestrated it — and Corrigan’s belated warning that she was in town certainly made that seem likely — then Ferguson not only had been wrong about her but had everything lined up in his head out of whack.

The two men in the car who had fired at them looked to be local street thugs, not very good with guns, or maybe not paid enough to make sure they hit what they were theoretically aiming at. But turning on the gas in the building beforehand — he realized now that he had smelled it, which perhaps accounted for the split second of alertness that he did manage — that was a T Rex move. The assassin must have known that they were in Naples, and at the train station. He — or she — had then calculated that they would go somewhere nearby. The plan had to have been made at least a half hour before they were actually on the street, and the order to go must have been given by someone watching them. Someone Ferguson hadn’t seen.

Ferguson knew he wasn’t omniscient. Even the best ops got blindsided occasionally; his father had. In truth, Ferguson knew he’d probably been caught off-guard like this dozens and dozens of times on every mission.

He still didn’t like it.

Then again, the master assassin was slipping, as well. Was the legend overblown, as most legends were, or was Rostislawitch merely very lucky?

Maybe a little of both.

Thera had Rostislawitch sit in the chair near the desk. She pulled up his pant leg and examined the line of cuts on his shin. They weren’t serious. She went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth to clean them.

“Artur, how are you feeling?” Ferguson asked Rostislawitch in Russian.

“Fine.”

“She doesn’t speak Russian very well,” Ferguson said. “Would you mind if we used English?”

“She’s a beautiful woman,” said Rostislawitch, still using Russian.

“Yeah, she is,” said Ferguson.

“Is she your lover?”

“I wish.” Ferguson smiled. “English?”

Rostislawitch nodded.

“We have some people tracking Atha, but to be honest, he’s pretty clever,” said Ferguson. “If you help us, I have a way that we might be able to find him. If we do that, we can get the bacteria back before it does any harm.”

“How?”

“From what I’ve seen of Atha’s background, he’s not an expert on biological warfare.”

“He knows nothing.”

“What if we told him that what he took is missing a key ingredient? Then we offer to supply it to him.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” said Rostislawitch. “The bacteria — it makes an infection, like any disease; once it’s in your system, it is the same as having food poisoning.”

“That’s not my point,” said Ferguson. He looked out the window, watching the parking lot. Heifers and the other Marine were watching from the other room.

“There has to be something you could tell him,” said Thera. “What if you planned to modify the bacteria in some way before they were used?”

“A specialist would know.”

“Atha is not a specialist,” said Thera.

“He’ll have specialists with him. He is working with scientists, at least one. They had questions only a scientist would know to ask.”

“Well, you have to try something,” said Thera. She rose abruptly, angry with him: not because he had been planning to sell the bacteria to Atha or even because he had been foolish enough to let the Iranian take it, but because he was giving up.

“She’s prettier when she’s mad,” said Ferguson in Russian.

“I know this is part of an act,” answered Rostislawitch.

“It’s no act,” said Ferguson.

“What are you saying?” asked Thera. “I don’t speak Russian. Use English.”

“I told your friend you’re both acting.”

“I’m not acting, Artur. You said yourself, a lot of people could die.” She tossed the washcloth into the bathroom, then turned to Ferguson. “I need air.”

He didn’t want to let her go outside, but the look on her face made it clear she was determined. If it was an act it was a good one, because it fooled him, too.

“Be real careful,” Ferguson told her. “Here, swap guns.”

His fingers lingered on hers for a moment as he took the small Czech hideaway. But that was the only luxury he allowed himself, and Thera quickly left.

“A game,” said Rostislawitch in Russian. “Good cop, bad cop.”

“No. She’s the good cop. I’m just a prick.”

Rostislawitch looked at the younger man’s grin. He’d saved Rostislawitch’s life, so at least as far as he was concerned, Ferguson wasn’t a prick.

“You were the one on the motorcycle, yes?”

“The red Ducati,” said Ferguson. “Nice bike.”

Rostislawitch saw it again, the man hurtling at him. The explosion had come a few seconds later.

Twice Ferguson had saved his life. Once might be a coincidence or perhaps staged, but twice was not.

And given these second chances to live, what should he do with them? Let Atha go, let him kill untold others?

“Maybe I could tell them something that an expert would find believable. It would depend on how far they’ve gotten. But I don’t know if I can get to Atha. He didn’t always respond right away.”

“He will if he thinks he has to.”

“He’s very clever. He may realize it is a lie.”

“Got to give it a shot, no?”

Artur nodded. “Let us try.”

8

The area around the Naples train station was filled with police and emergency vehicles by the time Kiska Babev arrived. She joined the line of commuters going into the station. She spoke almost no Italian, and the local Neapolitan dialect was lost to her, but through English she managed to puzzle out that there had been some sort of gas explosion nearby. But that explanation didn’t quite fit with the increased security at the train station, where a policeman insisted on going through Kiska’s purse and briefcase before allowing her inside. She asked him what was going on, but he pretended not to understand English and then shooed her inside.

The Russian FSB agent had put a watch on Rostislawitch’s bank accounts and was alerted to both of his cash withdrawals within a few minutes of their being made. While the first one had alerted her to the fact that he was here, it was the second one that troubled her. The cash would be enough to buy a train or airplane ticket to dozens of places, and while he’d have to show ID to get out of the country, the cash would allow him to avoid using his credit card, which they were also monitoring.

She’d searched the airport without finding him, but had to wait until a backup officer arrived from Rome to take her place before coming here. There had been two dozen flights between the time the second withdrawal was made and when she had arrived; the number of trains was three times that. There were simply too many places for them to check.

The delay between the withdrawals suggested a change in plans following a meeting of some sort. Maybe he’d decided to go to Iran. If so, she might never find him.

Few, if any, of the travelers in the station seemed bothered by the extra security outside. Kiska walked through the concourse swiftly, wanting a feel for the layout of the place before actually searching more carefully. She walked over to the platform area, scanning the knots of waiting people. Once or twice she thought she saw the scientist, but closer examination proved she was wrong. She made her way to waiting areas, then began drifting through the shops when her pager buzzed.

She walked over to the far side of the station, making sure she had no one around her, and called her Moscow office.

“This is Colonel Babev. Antov?”

“Colonel, the scientist has just sent a text message using his private account.”

“From where?”

“We’re trying to trace it now. I have the message for you.”

“Tell me.”

“It is in English, addressed to the same account as the one last week saying he would be in Bologna. But this is very explicit: ‘You have taken the suitcase. I was afraid you were not honest. As a precaution, I kept the phalange virus necessary to convert the DNA. The price is now twice, and two European Union passports, clean. I will be in Tripoli at the Alfonse Hotel this evening. I estimate that the virus will survive for another twenty-four hours. For technical references, check these sites.’ And then there is a list of Web sites. Our consultants have not yet gone through them. They involve DNA in some way.”

“The phalange is a type of virus that is used to introduce specific mutations,” she told her lieutenant. “Get me a reservation at that hotel. Get me people — I want Stefan in Tripoli. Have him bring a team, Petra or — who was the girl from St. Petersburg?”

“Neda — on such short notice, Colonel, I think it would be impossible to get her. She’s working with Demidas.”

“Then tell Stefan to put together the best people he can find. In Libya, things are much more open. And ample weapons.”

“I understand, Colonel.”

“Get me a flight there. A ticket for Kiril as well. He’s at the Naples airport now. Make them separate flights if possible. How long will it take you to trace the computer?”

“Another hour, maybe longer.”

“Was it in Naples?”

“We’re not sure.”

It would be easier to take him in Tripoli, Kiska thought. But he might be prepared as well. Surprise him here and be done with it.

“Call me directly when you find it,” she said.

“Yes, Colonel. I will.”

9

Atha, tired from his travel, slept late. He rose just in time for the noonday prayers, then took a long walk around the camp. The buses and trucks he had hired were arriving from the Sudan. By nightfall, there would be seventy-three, enough to transport five thousand people. The buses would then drive three, four, five hundred miles, to A1 Jaw in Libya; Dunquiah in Sudan; Aswan, Abu Simbel, Al Kharijab, in Egypt; to Chad and Darfur. From there, their passengers would fly to France, Italy, Denmark, Egypt, Great Britain, the U.S. Within a week, many would be in hospitals, a few in the grave.

The West would be at the start of an epidemic of a sort unseen since the Black Plague of Medieval times.

It was a beautiful thought.

And he would be rich, and finally truly powerful. An even more beautiful thought.

Most of the refugees in the camp were busy bidding one another good-bye and getting their things together for the journey. Atha nodded at the families as he passed. They smiled at him; a few even lowered their heads in silent tribute to his status as their savior.

When he returned from his walk, Atha found Dr. Hamid was squatting on the floor of the lab in front of a sealed glass work area. He was wearing gloves and a special protective suit, though not a hood.

“Doctor?”

“Please stay near the door. Do not touch anything,” said Hamid. “I will be with you in a moment.”

The bacterial colonies that Rostislawitch had provided had bloomed and then crashed before their arrival; only a few thousand had survived the transport. Had these been ordinary bacteria and the conditions here perfect, those few thousand would have been more than enough to seed thousands of new colonies. But the hybridization of the bacteria and Dr. Hamid’s relatively primitive lab complicated matters. The colonies were growing only about half as fast as his models suggested they would.

“It is slower than we hoped,” said the scientist finally. “But it will do.”

He turned around and faced Atha. “I should be ready to give the first doses this evening. We’ll have to start slower than planned — just four hundred people. By tomorrow evening, we will be ready for the rest.”

Atha nodded. The delay meant that some of the transports would sit here overnight, but otherwise it was a trivial matter, not worth bothering the minister about. In all but a few cases, the airplanes waiting for them were chartered, and would wait indefinitely. For the others, new tickets would not be a problem. The travel documents, visas, medical certificates, had been prepared weeks ago.

“From now on, you should take proper precautions in here,” said Dr. Hamid. “A full suit. You must decontaminate carefully, wash very thoroughly. Remember, the material is very dangerous.”

“I thought you said as long as I wash I am all right.”

“If the bacteria gets into your mouth, it will enter your digestive tract. From that point, there is no stopping it.”

“I will be careful,” said Atha, deciding that he would simply not visit the laboratory again.

“Once we are ready, I would advise you not to eat or drink anything, either. Bottled water that you yourself handle, nothing else. The juice should be an incredible medium for the bacteria to grow, and I do not doubt that infection will be very easy. Remember, it is more potent than common E. coli. There waste is the main means of transmission. Here any fluid, even sweat, may make the transmission. A swimming pool, food, a washcloth, can become a medium of transfer. The bacteria is extremely virile. The professor was quite a genius.”

“I have no doubt,” said Atha.

“We should leave as soon as the distribution is complete,” said the scientist. “The longer we stay, the greater the risk of infection.”

Atha nodded. The final phase of the plan called for them to travel to northern Iran, where Navid would prepare additional cultures for storage and possible future use. Atha would look after his financial affairs, and take a vacation, assuming the minister did not have other plans.

The Revolutionary Guards were not universally appreciated in Iran, and Atha realized that the minister’s overt power play might elict a strong response. Atha was unsure exactly what the minister was planning, whether it would be a real coup or simply a putsch behind the scenes. Either way, Atha would be prepared, with money in several overseas accounts as well as Iranian banks.

Assuming the minister paid. Like anyone with power, he was not entirely to be trusted.

Atha took his leave of Dr. Hamid and went back to the hut that served as his quarters. He turned on his laptop computer to see that the minister had forwarded the payment to his accounts.

The money had not yet gone through.

Atha rose from his desk. He tried not to jump to conclusions — there must be an explanation.

And if there wasn’t?

Then he would send his hordes to Tehran rather than Europe and America. There the devastation would be considerably greater, as the sanitary conditions in the poorest areas were terrible.

Atha sat back down, calming himself. It must be an error, he decided. He considered whether it would be wiser to talk to the minister by phone or to send him an instant message. Messaging him had the advantage of letting Atha craft what he would say. But the phone would bring an instant response.

Could he hold his temper on the phone? Perhaps not.

Still debating, Atha signed into the message service. There were several unread messages — including one that claimed to be from Dark Bear: Rostislawitch’s code name.

An old one, Atha thought, scrolling through the others in queue. But then he realized that it had been sent only a few minutes before.

Most likely he’s wondering what happened to me, thought Atha, selecting it to read:

You have taken the suitcse. I was afraid you were not honest. As a precaution, I kept the phalange vrs necessary to convert DNA. The price is now twice, and two EU psprts. In Tripoli at the Alfonse Hotel this evening. I est virus will survive for another 24 hs…

The message was so long it spilled into two screens. A second text message added Web sites explaining the science.

Atha jumped out of his chair to get Dr. Hamid.

10

As soon as the text message was sent, Ferguson had Corrigan send two more cars of Marines to the computer café.

“Go to the navy base. Get over to Tripoli,” Ferguson told Thera as he pushed her into the car after Rostislawitch. “Wait for me.”

“What about you?”

“I have an errand to run here.”

“Ferg—”

“I’ll see you in Tripoli.” He hesitated, then leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Then he banged on the top of the car. “Get going; go,” he said, backing away.

The narrow street went straight up the side of a hill so steep that much of the sidewalk had been laid as steps. A worn metal pipe rail protected the street side. A good number of the storefronts had been converted into cheap apartments; the rest sold mostly secondhand items: books, clothing, even used plumbing. Above the stores were more apartments, their inhabitants a mixture of poor immigrants and young people who styled themselves bohemians and frequented the basement cafés that lined the block and the nearby avenue.

Ferguson crossed the street and forced the door on one of the buildings, trotting upstairs to the top floor. Seeing that there was no door up to the roof, he opened the window on the landing and found a fire escape ladder; it ran up as well as down. In a few seconds, he was walking across the roof’s sticky tar to the front of the building, where he had a good view of most of the block.

Someone had brought a beach chair up. It was weather-beaten, but it was better than sitting on the tar. Ferguson carried it to the edge of the roof and sat down, feeling a little like he was at a baseball game.

Not the Sox. No one ever got a quiet seat like this at Fenway.

He peered over the side, watching the street. He shouldn’t have kissed Thera, he thought. It was a distraction and a mistake.

But now that he had, what was he going to do next? What was he going to tell her? That he loved her?

The truth was, he played the rogue so much that being honest felt strange. He wasn’t even sure how to phrase it.

I love you.

He didn’t need anything else.

What he couldn’t say was, I have cancer. Maybe I’m going to die.

Maybe not. The doctor seems pretty positive. Most people with thyroid cancer live.

Of course, usually it was caught a bit sooner. Usually it didn’t come back. You could read the statistics any way you wanted.

Ferguson remembered he’d forgotten to take his pills that morning.

He reached into his pocket for his pillbox. A cab was just driving up the street. He slipped down near the edge of the roof, lying flat. A woman got out of the taxi, a blonde.

Kiska.

Ferguson rose and began trotting back to the fire escape.

Kiska brushed past the attendant and walked through the long, narrow room, surveying the patrons at the computers lined against both walls. Rostislawitch wasn’t among them.

An alcove sat at the very end of the room. Kiska leaned forward, poking her head across its threshold and spotting a staircase. The steps were blocked off by a folding gate, the kind used to protect toddlers and infants from a fall.

She walked to it and pulled it out of her way.

“Signora! Scusi,” said the attendant. “Ma’am, excuse me. You cannot go up there.”

Kiska was already on the stairs, which turned after five steps. She heard something scraping above, then a yap — a little dog appeared at the top when Kiska turned the corner. It was kept there by a gate similar to the one below. The room was a kitchen — one that didn’t appear to have been cleaned in months.

“Nice puppy,” she said, looking around.

“Signora!” The attendant had followed her up the stairs. “There are no computers up there. It is my apartment. Please.”

The attendant was a young man in his early twenties who looked the perfect computer geek; Kiska sized him up in an instant and decided she would have no trouble tossing him down the steps.

“I’m looking for someone,” she said, and she pushed aside the fence holding the dog in. Freed, the animal scampered past her, and past the swooping grab of its master.

“Madonna,” said the man, adding more serious curses as he followed the dog.

Kiska walked into the kitchen, turned the corner, and surveyed the apartment’s two rooms. Clearly Rostislawitch wasn’t here.

By this time, Ferguson had come down from the roof and crossed the street. He was just opening the door to the Internet café when he was met by a speeding ball of fur, which propelled itself through the open space and out into the street. The attendant, cursing at him for letting the animal escape, tried to pass as well. But the store was so narrow that there was room in the aisle for only one person at a time; he bounced into Ferguson, who threw him out of his way.

“Kiska!” yelled Ferguson. “We have to talk.”

He drew the Clock from his belt, holding it behind his back.

“Jesus!” yelled the attendant, scrambling to his feet and running outside. One of the three people in the café using the computers threw himself to the floor; the other two, not entirely sure what was going on, stared at Ferguson as he walked past.

Upstairs, Kiska heard Ferguson yelling. As much as she liked the American, his interference tended to be annoying, and she didn’t care to discuss anything with him right now.

“Kiska!” Ferguson yelled as he reached the archway. He glanced back at the people in the store, staring at him in unbelief. “Good time to run,” he told them. “Remember to save your work.”

He waited until they were in the street, then put two hands on the Glock and threw himself across the space in front to the stairs, rolling over and expecting to be ambushed.

Nothing.

Jumping to his feet, Ferguson yelled for Kiska again, then took the steps two at a time, right shoulder against the wall, gun ready to fire.

“Kiska, we really have to talk,” he said in Russian. “Tell me what you know about dinosaurs. T Rex, in particular.”

The landing was clear. He started up, knowing she had to be close.

“T Rex, Kiska. How familiar are you with T Rex?”

Ferguson paused at the entrance to the kitchen. He couldn’t hear anything, but from the layout he gathered that the rest of the apartment was around the bend in the wall. He tiptoed toward it, then saw a small metal toaster on the counter back near the door. Retreating, he grabbed the toaster, holding the gun toward the passage to the rest of the apartment.

“I have some questions about where you were at certain times. One of those has to do with a CIA officer named Dalton. If it weren’t for him, honestly, I could blow this all off. You know, bigger fish to fry.”

He put the toaster down and slid it across the floor. The other rooms were reflected on its side.

“Kiska? Would it be easier if I spoke English?”

He saw something moving in the reflection. Ferguson threw himself on the floor, rolling across the space, gun up, ready — and aimed right at a curtain at the far side of the apartment, fluttering in the breeze.

He ran to it and looked down. There was a fire escape that led to an alley, no trace of Kiska.

Ferguson climbed out, then jumped down into the alley. It took a second before he saw the low fence that led to the street behind the building. He ran to it and hopped over, just in time to see a blonde getting into a cab a block and a half away.

It was too far to tell for sure if it was Kiska, but Ferguson had no doubt it was. He watched as the car drove off.

“Just as well,” he muttered to himself. “Just as well.”

11

“I’m just not sure,” said Dr. Hamid, looking up from the computer. “These Web pages Rostislawitch referred you to give the general procedure for using a type of virus to modify bacteria. The procedure is common, but that’s not a guarantee. It may be a bluff. It may not. He doesn’t give real information about the virus or the bacteria. I have no way of telling.”

“Examine the bacteria then,” said Atha. “See if they are dangerous.”

“They are a type of E. coli. It is in the family that he was working on, according to the papers that we have. But to know whether it is specifically the type that he developed as a weapon — I would need much more information. It’s very active, and its genetic structure is unique. But the only way for me to really tell would be to infect someone and see what happens. And that could take several days.”

“If he does have a virus, will we be able to change these germs?” Atha suddenly saw his fortune evaporating.

And then his life.

The minister still had not answered his query. Another problem. But this had precedence.

“I think we can follow the procedure, if it is straightforward,” said Dr. Hamid. “But we were set up here to replicate the bacteria, which is relatively easy. Beyond that—”

“Yes, I know. No guarantees.”

Atha needed to think. He stepped outside of the hut, wanting to walk, to move. Some of the refugees, anxious to be moving on, had gathered nearby. They saw him, and began cheering.

Atha put up his hand in acknowledgement. If he didn’t let them leave soon, they’d probably riot.

It might very well be just a bluff. Rostislawitch was probably angry that he had been cheated and was fighting back.

He couldn’t afford to take a chance, though, could he? Traveling to Tripoli, as annoying as it might be, was possible — Ahmed had the plane fueled and ready to go.

Dr. Hamid had turned off the computer and stepped outside the cottage. He was looking forward to the end of this. He’d been in the Sudan for nearly three months getting ready.

“I will go to Tripoli,” said Atha. “Prepare some of the drinks with the bacteria, and get people ready to leave. Because it may just be a trick.”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“Good. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

12

As far as Rankin could tell, George Burns had only one thing in common with his namesake — he liked to smoke big, thick cigars. And he liked to smoke them in his plane, which stank up the entire aircraft.

Which was saying something, because the airplane was comparatively large- a 1960s-vintage two-engine Hawker Siddely 748 that in its prime regularly carried forty-eight passengers. The plane had seen use as both a passenger and a cargo aircraft, ferrying people first around India and then around Africa. George Burns had bought it from a somewhat shady government official in Senegal, overhauled the engines, replaced the avionics, and given it a fresh coat of paint.

Rankin sat in the copilot’s seat. Guns made do with a jump seat immediately behind the pilot.

“Not much of a view,” said Rankin as they flew over the desert.

George Burns didn’t answer. He occasionally reached for the throttle lever between the seats, and every so often would glance at his global positioning map. But otherwise he stared straight ahead at the mountains that marked the edge of the desert.

“You don’t really know where it is, do you?” asked Rankin. “You just have a general idea.”

George Burns took his cigar out of his mouth, examined the ash — two inches long — then put it back.

Rankin saw a shadow on the desert floor to the west. It was from an airplane, and for a moment he thought it was their shadow, cast in an odd direction. Then he realized that it was too small, and shaped wrong. He spotted the plane a few feet above the shadow, moving across the earth as if it were part of a toy display

“Hey, another airplane,” he said, pointing.

George Burns turned and looked, staring as the aircraft moved past. It was no more than a mile and a half away.

“We’re getting closer,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything else.

13

Col. Charles Van Buren jogged up the ladder into the command center of the 777th’s MC.-17, a Globemaster III combat cargo aircraft specially equipped to support the Special Forces Group. Van Buren and his men had just arrived from Aviano, Italy, relocating here so they could strike into Africa if needed. Additional support units, including tankers, C-130s, and Osprey aircraft, were being scrambled to assist.

“Mr. Ferguson for you, sir,” said the communications specialist, holding up the phone.

Van Buren took the phone and sat down at the console. “Ferg, what’s going?”

“Hey, Van. Corrigan give you the background yet?”

“We’re looking for an Iranian with Russian biological warfare material. Maybe he’s in Libya, maybe the Sudan. They’re looking. That’s what I know.”

“Rankin and Guns have a lead on a possible camp. They hired a pilot to take them out there. He’s real paranoid, so he may be right. If they find something, I say you hit it. But if Atha were smart, he’d be already back in Iran.”

“Are you going to follow him?”

“Actually, I’m trying to get him to come to me,” Ferguson said. He explained that he had convinced the Russian scientist to set a trap in Tripoli. “I could use some muscle there, three or four guys who can blend in.”

They worked out the details.

“You doing all right, Ferg? You sound a little tired,” said Van Buren when they were done.

“Yeah, I’m cool. Listen, be ready for anything on this. The professor says this stuff will tear your insides out and make you happy to die. You guys go in, you wear space suits, all right? MOPP NBCs, no fooling around.”

“My guys are checking them out right now, Ferg. Talk to you later.”

14

When Dr. Hamid first heard the airplane in the distance, he thought Atha had turned back for some reason. But after listening for a few more moments, Hamid realized the drone was of something larger. His first thought was that it was a relief plane, though they rarely passed this way. Then he thought it might be a flight from Chad, which had propeller-driven SF 260 trainers converted to attack craft, which its air force used against “insurgents” — which in actual practice meant defenseless civilians in camps like theirs.

“Be ready with the missiles,” he told the Palestinian. Then Hamid went and put the bacteria into a safe where it would survive a bombing attack.

The Palestinian had already assembled his missile teams by the time the aircraft appeared. It was a two-engine plane that he did not recognize — not a fighter, he thought, but not a relief craft, either. It flew at about a thousand feet over the jagged ridge to the west; in his experience, no plane would fly that low unless it meant to land or strafe.

“Observe,” he told the men over the radio. There were two teams, each with an American-made Stinger heat-seeking missile. Shoulder-launched, the weapons had been given nearly two decades before to freedom fighters in Afghanistan, then sold after the war on the black market. Though old, they were nonetheless potent; a low-flying, slow plane like this was an easy target.

The airplane passed overhead without turning to land. Just as the Palestinian was going to order the group on the east to fire, it turned back.

“Observe,” he told his men again. “Be ready.”

15

Rankin used binoculars to get a look at the camp. There was a landing strip, but no plane. The puzzling thing was the buses — it looked as if it were a school parking lot.

“Looks more like a camping ground than a refugee camp,” said Rankin as George Burns circled back. “You sure that’s it?”

George Burns didn’t say anything. His cigar had burned down to a nub, the ash nearly at his lips, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

Guns leaned close to the window over Rankin’s shoulder, taking pictures with his small digital camera.

“What’s with the buses?” Guns asked George Burns.

“Don’t know.” The pilot spoke in short bursts, keeping the cigar riveted to his lips. “Never saw them before. Only been over twice.”

Burns pulled back on the wheel. He’d come down low so they could take pictures, but now he wasn’t feeling too good about it. Even for fifty thousand dollars, there was only so much risk he was willing to take.

“There’s no lab or anything down there,” said Rankin. “If the Iranian came here, he didn’t stay. Where can you go from here?”

“Shit!” yelled George Burns, spitting the cigar from his mouth.

Rankin thought he’d burned himself, then saw there was a red light flashing at the left side of the pilot’s panel. He heard something like a waterfall behind him.

Protective flares. Someone had fired a missile.

“Fuck,” said George Burns again, and a sharp shudder gripped the plane.

The missile hit the right engine, blowing it apart and starting a fire in the wing. If it weren’t for the fire, George Burns would have been able to save the plane; the Siddely was a durable aircraft, and he’d flown it on one engine more than a half-dozen times. But the fire spread through the wing, and within seconds he began losing control.

“Buckle yourselves in,” he said, searching for someplace to land. The camp was located on the far side of a narrow range of low mountains; beyond them to the northeast was open desert. George Burns held the plane up as long as he could, trying to get past the ridge to a point where he could glide into the sand.

His right wing began tipping upward; he struggled to hold it, then felt the controls start to give way — the lines that worked the controls had broken and he was losing the hydraulic fluid. Cursing, he jabbed at the pedals and tried pulling back on the control column, desperately trying to position the body of the plane to take most of the shock when it hit the ground. They were low — two hundred feet — but going too fast to land comfortably, even if they’d had a strip beneath them. He struggled to stay airborne as long as possible, let more speed bleed off, get his wings back level — he needed them level so they wouldn’t tip, would just slide in, skim across the desert as he’d done twice before; third time was the charm, they said…

The tip of the left wing hit the ground, jerking the right side of the plane forward as the belly slammed into the sand. The plane skidded sideways, sliding down a rough hill and then tobogganing up and across into a flatter plain of sand. Dirt and smoke flew everywhere; parts of the plane fell off and others disintegrated; the spine of the aircraft snapped in two.

But as crash landings went, it wasn’t that bad. The plane remained relatively intact, and most of the heavy impact — and damage — was behind the flight deck. All things considered, George Burns had done an admirable job landing.

Unfortunately, Burns was not in a position to appreciate it. Thrown forward, his head had hit the dash; he died of a cerebral hemorrhage before Rankin and Guns managed to undo their seat belts.

“You all right?” Guns asked.

“I think I busted my arm.”

Rankin blinked his eyes. He saw two of everything in front of him.

“I think we’re on fire,” said Guns. He stood, unsteadily, and turned to go out the door immediately behind the flight deck. But there was black smoke everywhere.

“This way,” said Rankin, crawling through the windshield, which had blown out during the landing. Guns, coughing, stopped to unhook George Burns, then pulled him out behind him.

Rankin groaned as he fell onto the dirt. He was still seeing double. Stunned, he tried to pull his sat phone out of his pocket to tell the Cube where they were, but his arm wouldn’t move. He stood up, dazed, blinking his eyes to get his vision back to normal.

Pushed out by Guns, George Burns rolled onto the dirt near him. Rankin could tell by the way he landed that George Burns was dead. He got to his feet as Guns jumped down.

“You all right?” Rankin asked.

“More or less. How’s your arm?”

“Hurts.” Rankin’s eyes focused as he looked at his forearm. It was black and slightly swollen. He’d broken bones before and this had that kind of feel, though a little more intense. Inside, the bone had been displaced slightly — not enough for a compound fracture that would pierce the skin, but more than enough to cause a great deal of pain.

“Whoever shot at us will probably come looking for us,” said Guns.

“Yeah. Pull the phone out of my pocket. Tell Corrigan we’re OK. He probably started having a cow as soon as the GPS locator stopped moving,” said Rankin, looking around to see if there was any cover.

16

Thomas Parnelles looked at the blinking red light on his phone console, hesitating before picking it up.

“Parnelles,” he said, pushing down the button.

“MI6 is going ballistic,” Slott said, without any other introduction or greeting. “Everyone but the janitor has called me. Their field guy is raising a major stink.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“I need their help in Indonesia. I can’t afford to just blow them off.”

“Give them the usual company line,” said Parnelles.

“That’s not working. I need to throw them a bone.”

“What bone do we have?”

“Bring them in on the operation. It was theirs to begin with. We should have cooperated with them from the start. Anyone other than Ferg would have done so as a matter of course.”

Parnelles leaned back in his seat, gazing at one of the photographs on the wall, which showed him and Ferguson’s father in their salad days. Slott was probably right when he said that anyone else would have opted to work with the MI6 agent, regardless of personal differences, but on the other hand, second-guessing the judgment of the man on the scene was not good policy. Especially when it was someone like Ferguson.

Parnelles had been guilty of it himself, urging Ferguson to concentrate on T-Rex rather than the Iranian, and he’d been wrong. Very wrong.

He should not have gotten involved. He should have stayed aloof, as he normally did. Even if it was an important mission, even if he did know Robert, even if Robert was so close to him he felt like a son — he should not have gotten involved.

And he shouldn’t now.

“I see no reason to get MI6 involved in this. There’s no room for them,” Parnelles told Slott.

“It was their operation.”

“Was being the operative word. Didn’t Hamilton screw them up in the first place? Wouldn’t they have been able to grab Atha?”

“That may be a matter of opinion,” said Slott. “MI6’s perspective is that they didn’t know there was a possibility that material was missing. We didn’t know, either — Ferg only found out after Atha got away.”

While Parnelles thought Slott was playing devil’s advocate a little too strenuously, it was also true that grabbing Atha could have caused problems as well. Had they done so, this phone call could easily have been about the diplomatic repercussions. Given the circumstances as they now seemed, he’d have preferred that — but would he have said that earlier?

“Can’t you just tell Ferguson to take Hamilton along for the ride?” said Slott.

“Why should I tell him that? He works for you.”

“Let’s face it, Tom, he only listens to you.”

“I’m not sure he listens to anyone,” said Parnelles.

“If MI6 doesn’t cooperate, then the Indonesia operation falls apart. We’re back to square one. The rebels will overthrow the government within six months, and A1 Qaeda moves in the next day,” said Slott. “All Ferguson has to do is let Hamilton sit in a hotel room in Tripoli so the British can take some credit, for cryin’ out loud. That’s not much.”

“We’re assuming his plan is going to work.”

“And if it doesn’t, what’s the harm with having this Brit there? Hell, MI6 can even share the blame.”

Indonesia was important; the Agency was trying to thwart a coup there.

Parnelles looked at the photo again.

This was exactly the sort of thing he hated when he was in the field — being told what to do because of politics.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Parnelles told Slott, hanging up.

17

Guns spotted the truck coming down off the ridge when it was only a mile away. The rocks he and Rankin were hiding in were a half mile southwest of the aircraft; there were just enough to keep them from being seen.

Their first plan was to wait and watch. They’d left George Burns near the plane, facedown, then dragged the dirt so that it looked as if he’d crawled out on his own before dying. It was possible whoever was checking them out would think he was the only one in the plane and leave. If not, Guns and Rankin could wait in the rocks and ambush them up close. Both men had their pistols and several replacement magazines of ammo.

The plan itself was a good one — but too passive for either Guns or Rankin to stick with for very long

“There’s only four of them,” said Guns, peering from the side of the rocks as the truck circled around the plane. “I only see two rifles.”

“Gotta figure the others have weapons of some kind,” said Rankin.

“Yeah. They go in the plane, we got ‘em. Come up from behind.”

“Maybe,” said Rankin. “Depends where they park the truck. If they leave it on the side, it’ll be shorter.”

“You OK with your arm?”

“It’s my left arm. I’m fine.”

He’d rigged a simple sling to help keep his arm against his body If he didn’t think about it too much — or look at it — the pain was bearable. Rankin checked his Beretta. Even with one hand, he’d have preferred his Uzi, but it was back in Bologna.

The truck stopped near George Burns’s body. Rankin waited until two of the men began poking around the nose of the plane.

“Crawl until we’re ten yards from the plane, or until they see us,” he said. “I’ll yell.”

Neither man actually crawled; it was more like a three- and four-point scamper across the hot sand. When they were about forty yards from the plane, one of the men walked toward the tail section, looking in their direction. Rankin raised his gun to fire, but Guns beat him; the man fell as the shot cracked the air. Guns dropped to his knee, training his pistol on the left side of the plane. Rankin kept running, trying to cut down the distance between him and the men with the truck.

A man jumped from the cab and fired a pistol at him; Rankin fired back, but missed badly. Rankin started to sprawl in the sand to avoid the return fire; as he threw himself down he remembered his broken arm and tried to land on his shoulder to deflect some of the impact. But it was too late. The shock ran through his entire body, as if his bones had been pierced by hot steel nails.

Guns didn’t have an angle on the man behind the truck. He moved to his right, starting to flank the aircraft, when he spotted one of the other men coming out from behind the left engine and wing. The man saw him at almost the exact same moment, but Guns was faster with the pistol than he was with the rifle, and a pair of bullets in his stomach laid him down.

Rankin’s pain was so intense that he couldn’t see or hear the bullets flying around him. He felt as if someone were squeezing his entire upper body; the pain radiated so fiercely that he couldn’t even have said where he was injured.

When it finally lifted, it was as if he’d caught his breath. He saw the man huddled behind the truck, shooting at Guns. Rankin fired a shot just close enough to get him to duck back.

“Guns, you OK?” Rankin yelled.

“Yeah.”

“Can you sweep around and get behind this guy?”

“I’ll try,” shouted Guns. “There’s another one somewhere. Watch out for him.”

“Yeah,” said Rankin. He saw the shooter moving behind the truck and fired, this time hitting the vehicle close to the man’s head. The man threw himself to the ground.

Guns, meanwhile, ran to the man who’d fallen near the tail of the airplane and grabbed the AK-47 he’d dropped. He was starting to move around the wing when he heard a loud cracking noise; he dove into the sand as the fourth man began shooting from inside the burned-out plane through a passenger window.

By the time Guns got himself turned back around and in a position to fire, the man had pulled back from the window. The Marine tucked the Beretta into his belt, and with the AK-47 ready he crawled toward the nose of the plane, expecting that the man would try to get out. Then Guns got a better idea — he jumped up and dashed to the side of the aircraft, flattening his body hard against it. He felt the fuselage shake and heard someone moving around, pulling himself through the windshield as Guns and Rankin had earlier.

A barrel appeared near the edge of the aircraft; Guns waited until he saw flesh and then fired, almost point-blank, into the cheek of the gunman. The bullets shattered the man’s cheekbone with enough force to throw his turban headgear into the air; he fell to the side and Guns jumped forward, firing into the pulp that had been the man’s face.

Rankin was having a harder time with his gunman. They were less than thirty yards from each other, and together had fired a dozen shots, but so far neither had hit the other. The pain of Rankin’s broken arm kept him off-balance, his world tilting hard left. His right arm couldn’t seem to keep the pistol’s recoil from raising the barrel. Finally he stretched down on the ground, trying to regain his breath and clear his head.

His opponent, meanwhile, had his own problems. One of Rankin’s first shots had broken the back windshield on the truck and sent bits of glass into his opponent’s face. None had gotten into his eyes, but the blood streaming down his forehead made it hard to see. Unlike the others, the man was an ethnic African with no particular wish to die in jihad. Nearly out of bullets, he decided his best bet was to try to run away. He backed away from the truck, then saw something moving near the nose of the airplane.

Rankin, holding his gun out in front of him, saw the man raise his arm to fire.

“Guns!” Rankin yelled, squeezing off three, four, five shots.

The African fell. Rankin collapsed.

“Where’d he get you?” Guns asked a few minutes later.

“Didn’t,” said Rankin. “I don’t think. But man, this arm is killing me.”

Guns found a first-aid kit in the plane. They fashioned a splint to keep the arm and bone inside straight, lessening the chance of the break worsening. The strongest thing for pain in the kit was a bottle of aspirin.

“Not even worth it,” said Rankin. But he took four anyway.

“Try this,” said Guns, emerging from the aircraft with a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s. George Burns had stashed it beneath his seat in the cockpit.

Rankin refused at first, then decided he might as well. He took a strong pull, then winced.

“This stuff’ll kill me if the fracture doesn’t,” he said, before taking another swig.

18

Corrine Alston was working on a new draft of the finding authorizing action against Iran when her encrypted phone buzzed with a call from Parnelles. She picked it up, hoping to hear that she didn’t have to bother finishing the finding.

“Corrine, this is Thomas Parnelles. I need a favor.”

“What kind?”

“MI6 is giving us hell, and I’d like Ferguson to make nice to their agent, Hamilton. He doesn’t have to kiss him, just answer one or two of his phone calls.”

“Why aren’t you going to tell him yourself?”

“Ordinarily, I don’t talk to Robert in the middle of an operation,” said Parnelles coldly. “That would be your job.”

Corrine knew that Parnelles could easily talk to Ferguson himself if he wanted to; she was fairly certain that he had on other missions. Of course, a call from her had a different weight than a call from him.

It also meant he would not be connected to an order that Ferguson was bound not to like.

“If I talk to him,” she told Parnelles, “I’ll tell him this was your idea.”

“You can tell him what you want. If you do mention me, say that I told you I owe him an apology.”

19

Thera handed Rostislawitch the folded surgical pants and shirt when the navy C-2A Greyhound transport aircraft was fifteen minutes from the airport.

“You can put them on over your clothes if they fit,” she told him. “We have to be ready when we land.”

The scientist nodded.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she told him. “We’ll fly you to the States. You’ll be safe.”

Ferguson had told Rostislawitch the same thing. But he knew that Atha was more likely to fall for the plan if he was there. He was the bait in the trap — the peanut butter his mother used to put on the spring so they could catch the mouse eating their larder.

Thera helped him pull the green pants over his shoes. An ambulance would meet them at the airport and they would pretend to transport a sick patient into the city. Just in case the Iranian had spies at the airport, they planned to actually go to the hospital, where a car would meet them to take them to the hotel — not the Alfonse, where the message had directed Atha to meet him, but the Americano, two blocks away. The Marines would go straight there, and be waiting when they arrived.

Thera pulled a blue pair of hospital clothes over her jeans and blouse, then tied her hair at the back with a rubber band. The navy had loaned her a pair of handguns; she wore one in a holster beneath her top, and would keep the other in the stretcher with their “patient,” one of the Greyhound’s crewmen.

The pilot announced that they were about to begin their final approach. Thera strapped herself in. Rostislawitch sat next to her.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the scientist told her. “But I don’t like airplanes when they land.”

“They have to land sometime.”

“True,” he said. Then he closed his eyes and gripped her hand.

It was cold and wet, and made Thera worry even more that he might not be able to stand the stress of meeting with Atha.

The sound of the plane grew as they pulled down onto the runway. They bounced slightly; Rostislawitch tightened his grip. Then the ride smoothed out and the brakes caught.

“We have a long way to taxi,” warned the pilot from the front.

Thera took out her phone to call Corrigan and tell him they were on the ground in Libya. She could tell something was wrong from his voice. For a moment, she thought it was Ferg. He’d gone to the airport to take a commercial flight, wanting to check out Tripoli on his own.

At least that was what he told her. Ferguson was never good at sharing mission details, and hadn’t entirely explained why he was going alone. Thera suspected it had something to do with T Rex.

Please, God, don’t let him, be dead.

“Rankin and Guns crashed not too far from the Libya-Sudan border,” Corrigan told her. “They’re OK. Van’s setting up a mission to get them. They found a camp nearby — we think it’s Atha’s base. They’re going to raid it at the same time.”

“They’re all right?”

“Yeah, they’re OK.”

“Where’s Ferg?”

“His flight left Naples on time. He should get in about an hour or so after you get to the hotel.”

“All right.”

“Stay in touch, right?”

“You sound like my dad, Corrigan,” she told him, hanging up.

20

Technically, one wasn’t supposed to use a satellite phone while on board an airliner. But that was exactly the sort of rule Ferguson believed in observing in the breach. He slipped his right earbud in, then angled himself against the side of the plane. His neighbor in the seat next to Ferguson could only hear his side of the conversation; so long as he was careful about what he said, there’d be no problem.

“Ferg,” he said, pressing the send button in his pocket.

“This is Van. You get the information from Corrigan?”

“Yeah. You see where they went down?”

“I have GPS coordinates,” said Colonel Van Buren. “Thing is, Ferg, they’re too close to the camp to get them without someone there noticing. We have to hit the camp at the same time.”

“When’s that?”

“We’re looking at nine your time in Tripoli,” said Van Buren. “We may be able to push it up. We’re waiting to hear on a tanker. It’s a little more than four hours from here to where the camp is. We’ll be ready to take off shortly. The problem is really on the other side, picking us up.”

It wasn’t clear from satellite photos whether the landing strip would support the weight of a C-130. Staging helicopters in for a pickup would take considerably longer, because of not only their speed but also the need to refuel. Van Buren was working on a plan that would have C-130s and helicopters as backups, so he could switch if necessary. But that involved bringing the helos in from Egypt. They were still trying to finish the arrangements.

“When are you meeting Atha?” Van Buren asked.

“It’s his call. I won’t grab him until I know you’re close. Just in case he has some way of warning them.”

“Thanks, Ferg.”

Of course, that would work both ways — if Ferguson waited too long, the camp might warn Atha. But it was a risk he’d have to take.

Ferguson tapped his phone to kill the transmission. He turned to the woman in the seat next to him. She smiled.

“You’re using a phone, right?” she asked.

“That or I’m talking to myself.”

“I do both on planes all the time,” she told him.

Even so, Ferguson waited for his seatmate to go to the bathroom before calling Guns and Rankin. Guns answered.

“Ferg?”

“What are you doing getting shot down without me?”

“Sorry, Ferg.” Guns explained the situation; they were about ten miles from the camp, on the other side of a ridge that separated it from the desert.

“Can you guys wait until about ten or so to get picked up?” Ferguson asked. “Be better for this side of the operation.”

“No sweat.”

“Be square with me, Marine.” Ferguson made his voice very serious. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“All right. They’ll call you when they’re close. If things go to shit, holler. Otherwise stay under the rocks until they land.”

The phone rang a few seconds later. Ferguson slid it out of his pocket far enough to see who it was.

“Hey, Madame Butterfly,” Ferg told Corrine Alston. “What’s going on?”

“That’s my question for you.”

“I’m about an hour out of Tripoli. You hear about Rankin and Guns?”

“Corrigan told me. They say they’re OK.”

“Rankin’s not that good a liar, so maybe it’s true.”

“You have a rescue operation lined up to coincide with your grabbing Atha?”

“Yup.”

“OK. Good.” She paused for a moment, long enough for Ferguson to guess what was coming.

“I have another request,” she said finally. “MI6 wants in.”

“I don’t know that song. Is it Irish?”

“Mr. Parnelles called and asked that you play nice with them.”

“Yeah, see, it’s not Irish. I only do Irish folk songs. I can give you a very good ‘Finnegan’s Wake.’“

“It’s your call, Bob. And Mr. Parnelles says he owes you an apology.”

“It’s a really funny song. This guy dies, and they give him an Irish wake. Whiskey brings him back to life. A lot of puns, see, through the whole song. I’ll sing it for you sometime.”

“Thanks for the update, Ferg.”

Ferguson checked his watch. It was a little past three, Tripoli time. He pressed the quick-dial for the Cube.

“Corrigan.”

“No shit. Call that number I gave you the other day for Hamilton. Tell him to be on the five-thirty flight out of Naples for Tripoli.”

“You sure, Ferg?” Only an hour before, Ferguson had told Corrigan that if he even mentioned Hamilton again he’d stuff a dozen stale British scones down his throat when he got back to the States.

“There are only two more flights today, Jack. He either gets that one or waits until midnight.”

“Slott’ll be happy.”

“Yeah, well, make the call anyway.” Ferg saw his seatmate returning, and pushed the button to hang up.

21

“How long you figure before they send somebody else out to look for these guys?” Guns asked Rankin after he had finished dragging the last body into the plane.

“Hour, maybe two. We got the radio. We listen for them.”

“Radio transmissions won’t get through the hills. We had better radios than this in Afghanistan and it was always a problem,” said Guns. “By the time we hear them, they’ll be pretty close.”

“Yeah.” Rankin looked around the desert.

“We got two choices — we drive out further so they can’t find us, or we go up into the hills,” said Guns.

“Then there’s door number three,” said Rankin. “We scout the place for the landing team.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“We scout the place, figure out where the defenses are. We’re just sitting here, Guns. We might as well do something that’ll make a difference. Shit, we’ll be sitting on our butts until what? Nine, if we’re lucky. By the time they’re wrapped up and come looking for us, it’ll be dawn.”

Guns looked Rankin up and down, trying to decide whether he was really up to moving around or whether it was just the sedative — aka Jack Daniel’s — talking.

Maybe a little of both.

“I’m OK,” insisted Rankin. “Let’s finish getting the bodies in the plane and go. We’re sitting ducks out here anyway. Our best bet is to get closer to the camp.”

“I’m not sure about this,” said Guns.

“Come on, Marine. Don’t be chicken.”

Guns laughed. A blanket hugger calling a Marine chicken. Some things were just too funny for words.

Rankin got up. His head felt light, because of either the Jack Daniel’s or the fracture.

“I’m just bustin’ on ya,” he told Guns. “We’d better get into the hills before they come for us, right? We don’t know if it’s one road or two roads or what.”

“OK,” said Guns.

“You’re all right for a Marine,” said Rankin.

“And you’re all right for a jerk.”

Rankin cracked up.

Definitely the whiskey, thought Guns.

22

Fresh off the airplane at the Tripoli airport, Ferguson strolled to the nearest bank machine, Rostislawitch’s ATM card in his hand. He angled his head so the machine’s camera couldn’t get a clear shot of his face, then fed the card into the slot and punched the PIN code. He tried to withdraw a hundred dollars’ worth of Libyan money — which didn’t work, since the account was down to five rubles. He checked his balance, took the card, and slid away to the left, again being careful not to let his face be seen.

“It’s so easy to put your money in, so hard to get it out,” he said to an Egyptian woman waiting in line. She nodded in sympathy, even though she didn’t understand all his words.

Outside, Ferguson got a taxi to the Alfonse Hotel. He handed over Rostislawitch’s credit card to the clerk, reserving the room.

“Send some coffee up for me, would you?” Ferguson asked in Arabic.

“There are coffeemakers in the rooms,” said the clerk, trying to sound helpful.

“Oh, I’m not going to drink that. You do have room service, right?”

“We do. Your accent — you’re from Egypt?”

“Moscow. I spent time in Cairo as a boy.”

“Ah. Very good,” said the man, handing over Ferguson’s card key.

The room was on the large size, with a thick gold bedspread ornate enough for Gadhafi to have worn as a robe, and plush velour-covered chairs. Ferguson scanned for bugs, then unhooked the cable from the television and hooked a receiver up so he could use it to monitor the two he’d left in the lobby and hallway. Before he was finished setting up, there was a knock at the door.

“Room service.”

Ferguson went to the door, opened it a crack, and saw a waiter in the hall. His uniform made him look part Arab, part African; he had a long shirt with wooden beads around his neck, and an ornate, red tasseled cap on his head.

Ferguson unlatched the chain and stood back. As the waiter wheeled the cart across the threshold, Ferguson dropped a twenty on the floor.

The server glanced at it; the next thing he knew, he was facedown on the floor, Ferguson’s knee in his back.

“Don’t move.” Ferguson reached under the man’s tunic and pulled out the waiter’s gun, a Walther P88 Compact.

“Nice weapon. I prefer Glocks myself, but you can’t go wrong with a German gun,” said Ferguson, getting up.

“Jeez, Ferg, quit horsin’ around, huh?”

“You think anybody’s buying that disguise, Ferrone? You don’t look any more local than I do.”

“What do you want? That’s how the room service people dress. Take it up with the management.”

“The hat’s pretty cool,” added Ferguson, helping Jimmy Ferrone up. Ferrone was the CIA’s Libyan station chief. “I like the tassel.”

“Long time no see,” said Ferrone. “How are you?”

He held his hand out, but Ferguson was ready — when Ferrone tried to throw him, he reversed the move and spun him onto the floor.

“All right, you win,” said Ferrone from his back. “I’m getting too old for this.”

Ferguson snorted, then ducked down to the bottom of the cart Ferrone had wheeled in. There was another Walther P88, along with an MP5 submachine gun and enough ammunition for a small siege.

“What happened to the smoke grenades?” asked Ferguson.

“In the ice bucket.” Ferrone stood up and straightened his clothes. He was about Ferguson’s height and weight, and it seemed to him that he had kicked the younger man’s butt not too long ago, or at least fought him to a draw. “You tapping into the security system?”

“No. I got bugs out quicker.”

“Yeah? Something we can use?”

“You’re not important enough.” Ferguson checked and then loaded the pistol.

“Screw yourself, Ferg. What are you working on?”

Ferguson grinned.

“Yeah, all right,” said Ferrone. “If you need more help, let me know.”

“I’m good, Jimmy. Thanks.”

Ferrone stuck out his hand. Ferguson shook his head. “I’m not shaking hands with you.”

Ferrone turned to go.

“Hey, you forgot your tip,” said Ferguson, pointing to the twenty.

“That’s all right. Your coffee’s cold.”

23

Kiska Babev’s assistant called her just as the plane was about to board.

“Rostislawitch is at the hotel in Tripoli. He just checked in. Tried to get some money out when he landed. There wasn’t enough in his account.”

“Very good. Were you able to get a boarding list for the earlier flight?”

“Yes, and Ferguson wasn’t on it. That doesn’t mean he’s not on his way.”

“Antov, haven’t I taught you never to state the obvious?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Kiska was just about to tell him that she wasn’t angry when she saw a man walking into the gate area who looked familiar. He had sandy hair, a thin face, and dressed like a British college student gone to seed.

Familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him.

Had she seen him in Bologna? Or before that, much before that?

British? Or German? Not American, a little too priggish with his clothes.

“Antov, what are the names of the British and German intelligence officers assigned to Italy?” she asked.

“Hold on, Colonel.”

She watched the man, trying to remember. She’d been shown faces of various foreign agents before traveling, but that wasn’t why he was familiar. It was further back than that.

“There are several dozen. You want me to read the names?”

“No. It’s someone who was in Chechnya a year ago. A British agent, I think.”

“Are you sure about Chechnya?”

“I’m not,” she admitted. “Have someone at the airport take his picture when we land. Then follow him.”

“You’re stretched thin, Colonel.” Her assistant began telling her about the problems he had encountered getting personnel into Libya; most of the people she wanted wouldn’t be there until the next day.

“Just have the photo taken then,” Kiska told him. “Get an identification. We’ll see who he is.”

“Yes, Colonel. It will be done.”

A half hour into the flight, his gin and tonic finished — aircrew could never be trusted with martinis — Nathaniel Hamilton went to the lavatory and sat on the toilet. He took out his cell phone and broke it open, then reached into his pocket for what looked like a metal pen. He put the tip in his mouth and twisted, loosening it after considerable effort. Once the tip was gone, he pushed the plunger at the opposite end and pulled out what, in a real pen, would have been the ink cartridge. In this case, it was a collection of 25mm bullets, molded together so that they would appear harmless under an X-ray, especially to a harried security examiner. Hamilton extracted the bullets and placed each one in the cell phone, filling it up. Then he flushed the toilet, thoroughly washed his hands, and went back to his seat, apologizing to the rotund woman on the aisle and the man who looked like a dachshund in the center seat.

Hamilton stuffed a pillow behind his head, then took out his Tripoli guidebook and studied the city map. Ferguson’s man had not told him where Ferguson, or Rostislawitch for that matter, was going to be. Even though Hamilton had a relatively clear idea of what would happen — obviously Ferguson had arranged for some sort of meeting between the scientist and Atha — Ferguson’s lackey had neglected to say in his message where it was going to happen.

Hard to tell with the Americans whether that was on purpose or not, but given that he had failed to answer Hamilton’s two requests for the information, it certainly appeared purposeful.

There were hundreds of hotels and restaurants in Tripoli, and the possible locations for clandestine meetings in the more usual suspects like back alleys and docks approached infinity.

Generally an operative like Ferguson would stick to a place he was already familiar with, especially if he didn’t have time to set up beforehand. The problem was, Hamilton had no idea whether Ferguson had even been to Tripoli before, let alone where he might have worked there. Once again Hamilton was flying blind, and he didn’t like it.

Hamilton paged through the book, refreshing his mental map of the city. More than likely, the meet would be a neutral place, public so that the Iranian would feel relatively safe. Ferguson had used hotels and restaurants in Bologna; since that was his modus operandi, Hamilton flipped to the restaurant listings and began looking at the entries.

The Tripoli Restaurant, owned by the Gadhafi family?

No. A connection with the government might be messy.

The Safari, featuring live animals as entertainment?

Too many distractions.

Ile de France? Ferguson hated French restaurants.

Hamilton flipped over to the hotel section. The Libyan Renaissance? Very high-class, very chic, the place to see and be seen for the restless, wealthy set.

No. Too much of a chance of a Paris Hilton type getting in the way of the action.

The Alfonse — once reputed to be owned by gangsters. Now that was the sort of place Ferguson would like.

Hamilton marked the page and continued down the list.

24

Atha was so anxious when they finally landed at the Tripoli airport that he left Ahmed and went straight to the Alfonse, the hotel where Rostislawitch had said to look for him.

The Alfonse’s lobby was a pleasantly large space, with couches and chairs parked in different groupings to give a show of intimacy. There was a piano, some very thick rugs, and thin side tables. A wide staircase led to reception rooms on the second floor. The check-in counter was opposite the front doors, albeit separated by a good eighty feet.

Atha went to the desk and asked if Rostislawitch had checked in; the clerk said he had but would not reveal his room number. Atha started to argue, but before he could say anything the man picked up a phone and held it out to him.

“Call his room. The operator will connect you.”

Atha looked around, trying to see where the operator was, but couldn’t. He got a computerized voice telling him the guest he had called was unavailable, but he could leave a message.

“This is Atha. I’m in the lobby,” he said, then hung up.

Atha went over to the Steinway piano and sat on a sideless couch next to it, which gave him a good view of the hallway leading to the elevator. Arms crossed, he tried to lean back on the couch, telling himself to relax though he knew it was hopeless.

Upstairs, Ferguson opened his suitcase and took out the hair coloring kit, adding some gray highlights to his temples and sideburns — just a touch, the way he remembered his father when they first moved to Cairo. Then he took a fake moustache, fiddled with it a bit, put it back, selected a beard.

Too much.

The Fu Manchu looked good, but that wasn’t particularly Russian.

He went back to the beard. Ferguson didn’t mind if Atha thought it was a disguise; he just didn’t want him to connect the man wearing it to any glimpse he’d had in Bologna.

A pair of thick-rimmed glasses, his hair slicked back, a thick wool sweater — the overall effect was Russian, with a slight nod toward Berlin in the sixties.

The video feed showed Atha was still sitting alone in the lobby, rocking back and forth impatiently. Ferguson decided that he couldn’t keep the Iranian waiting much longer. He stuck the Walther under his sweater, tucked a magazine of bullets in his left boot and a smoke grenade in his right, then went down to play Let’s Make a Deal.

25

Thomas Ciello had used the scripts Fibber had given him to map out Kiska Babev’s travels based on her credit card expenditures. That had allowed Ciello to find possible connections between two of the T Rex assassinations, one in Seoul, Korea, where she had visited a week before a murder, and one in Turkey, when she had been in Romania a day later.

The fact that the connections were tangential didn’t bother Ciello; any experienced intelligence agent would be careful about leaving a trail that directly matched with a murder he or she committed, and an assassin with a reputation and track record like T Rex’s would be even more thorough.

But what did bother Ciello was the sheer paucity of records, tangential or otherwise.

He loved that word, paucity; it reminded him of the 1953 Pawtucket UFO incident, where the lack of information about a scheduled aircraft flight that disappeared from radar scopes for three minutes and thirteen seconds could only be explained as an alien abduction incidence, a fact proven by the lack of information about the incident.

In this case, the lack of information suggested not that he was dealing with a UFO incident — Ciello knew he could not be so lucky — but rather that he was missing a great number of accounts. Clearly, Kiska had other credit cards that he was not yet aware of. If he found them, he reasoned, he would undoubtedly find more definitive proof that she was T Rex.

And when he found it, he would be able to expunge — another of his favorite words, though not linked to a UFO case — the dark cloud hanging over him for his alleged misidentification of the nature of the Bologna attack.

Corrigan, of course, thought that two connections, along with the air trip to France, were proof enough. He had sidetracked Ciello with other assignments, telling him to dig up information about Iran’s biological research labs and Libyan hotels. But finally, scut work done, Ciello began trying to puzzle out how to find the accounts.

Comparative searches — looking for similar expenses — were useless in this case, because the accounts were used so sporadically that the pattern they established matched three-quarters of the bank’s accounts. He had to work the other way — he needed to know Kiska’s other aliases.

Ciello couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t already in her file. It was fairly easy to forge documents in Russia, so Kiska could be literally anyone. The problem for most people when they adopted a phony identity, however, was that they needed some way to keep track of it. That was why many agents who used different names to cloud their identity kept their first name or some variation; it was much easier to remember.

Kiska’s cousin in the mental institution had six different accounts, all apparently used by Kiska. Her parents, who lived nearby, had one — which was clearly not used by Kiska, since the charges were all made within a fifty-mile radius of their home.

Ciello felt his back tightening up again and decided he had best take a break. He got up from his computer and stretched gently. Then he lay down on the floor, arms over his head, legs straight out. He closed his eyes.

The harsh overhead lights of his office shone through his eyelids. The white spots hovered together, like a fleet of spaceships spinning together.

Friends.

Or rather, other patients.

Ciello jumped up and began entering the address of the nursing home into one of the search scripts for the bank companies.

26

Ferguson walked out of the elevator and turned right past the back of the grand staircase. He swung around past the restaurant, avoided the maid cleaning the carpet with a vacuum that looked fifty years old, and headed toward the Steinway piano. He pointed his gaze straight ahead, oblivious to everything around him. He passed Atha, then spun around quickly, pointing at the Iranian’s face.

“Anghuyu Jahan, you are here to see Dr. Rostislawitch,” he said in Russian.

Atha said in Farsi that he didn’t speak Russian. Ferguson pointed at Atha, turned his head left and right to look around, then sat down in the chair across from him.

“Do you speak English?” said Atha.

“I can speak English,” said Ferguson, injecting a heavy Russian accent into his voice. “You are here for Dr. Rostislawitch. Your name is Anghuyu Jahan. You have people call you Atha. You are not to be trusted.”

“Wait just a second.”

Ferguson leaned forward. “No, Mr. Atha, as you call yourself, you wait. Who do you think you are dealing with? Just a professor from a laboratory? What do you think?”

Atha was not about to be bullied. “Tell Dr. Rostislawitch when he is ready to talk with me, he can communicate in the usual manner,” he said, rising.

“I suggest you sit down, Mr. Atha,” said Ferguson, showing his drawn pistol.

The Iranian frowned. “What is this?”

“This is a discussion to see if it is worth Dr. Rostislawitch’s trouble to meet with you.”

“Why did he want me to come to Tripoli?”

“Because someone tried to kill him in Naples,” said Ferguson.

“Who would want to kill him?” said Atha sharply.

“Perhaps you can tell me.”

“I don’t deal with the mafiya. It’s bad for business.”

“What is the mafiya? What is it?” said Ferguson, his voice just a notch too loud. “A figment of a newswriter’s imagination. I am just a business consultant.” Ferguson slipped his gun back in his belt and modulated his voice. “A friend.”

“How do I know you’re not FSB?”

“Perhaps I am.”

Atha scowled, but behind the mask he presented to the Russian he began to relax. This was a businessman with whom he could make a deal. The arrangements made more sense now — the scientist wouldn’t have thought about holding back an essential ingredient on his own, but a man like this, probably fronting for other men, a network, would. And he would have wanted the meeting to take place here, in Tripoli, where the authorities could be counted on if necessary. Italy would be too problematic.

It also explained what had happened on the dock in Naples. Of course. He should have realized that a man like Rostislawitch, all brain, would need some brawn to complete a transaction. More than likely he was part of some sort of network; very possibly they had made these sorts of deals before.

The only question was how to make sure he wasn’t cheated. He’d dealt with the type he saw across from him before; you couldn’t show weakness, but on the other hand, if you were too antagonistic they became irrationally angry.

“Maybe, if Dr. Rostislawitch is willing, we can make an arrangement to our mutual benefit,” said Atha. “But I have to talk to him.”

“That can be arranged. If it is worthwhile.”

Ferguson looked over and saw a blond-haired woman coming through the door — Kiska Babev.

Impeccable timing.

“What?” said Atha, immediately sensing something was wrong.

“The Russian FSB. Very inconvenient.”

Before Atha could say anything, Ferguson jumped up and jerked Atha with him to the right. A loud pop echoed under the piano. Its strings vibrated loudly, and suddenly smoke began to fill the lobby.

“Fire!” yelled Ferguson in English as he pushed Atha toward the hall. “Fire!”

A woman who had just come down the steps began to scream. At the desk, Kiska turned and caught a glimpse of someone running away, but the smoke was so thick she couldn’t make out if they were man or woman. Kiska began to choke.

“The blue car across the street,” Ferguson told Atha as they reached the side hall.

Atha, unsure whether this was real or a performance, tried to slow his pace, but Ferguson wouldn’t let him.

“The car. Now. Quickly,” Ferguson said, pushing Atha through the door. He switched to Russian, calling the Iranian a fat toad who was going to get them killed.

The car was parked across the street where Ferrone had left it earlier. Ferguson opened the doors with the remote key and slid in, bumping his legs on the bottom of the dashboard because the CIA station chief liked to drive right on top of the wheel and had left the seat that way. Ferguson cursed — in Russian, and in character — and started the engine. As soon as Atha closed the door, he peeled out.

“I don’t believe any of this,” said Atha.

Ferguson yanked the wheel hard, turning down a narrow side street. He mashed the accelerator, then slammed the brakes and took another turn.

Atha’s fingers fumbled to connect his seat belt. By the time he had gotten it buckled, Ferguson had turned back onto the street in front of the hotel. He drove to the corner, then pulled over. A pair of black Mercedes had driven up in front of the hotel; large men, obviously concealing weapons beneath their coats, were waiting near the door. The blonde Atha had just seen inside — Kiska, though he didn’t know her name — came out coughing with another woman and a man. They got into the cars and sped off.

Ferguson pulled out from his spot, running the light as he hit the gas.

“What are you doing?” asked Atha.

“Following to see if they go to the Russian embassy. You want proof that they are FSB.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Atha. “Let’s go somewhere and discuss our business.”

27

“The truck has not returned yet. If the plane was shot down, they should have found it. If not, they should be back.”

Dr. Navid Hamid looked up from his computer. It took considerable effort to comprehend the Palestinian’s words, not because they were spoken in a foreign language — Dr. Hamid had learned Arabic as a child — but because he was absorbed in the scientific language of bacteria and DNA. He had been studying information published by one of Rostislawitch’s associates on the techniques they had used to manipulate the genes in E. coli. Understanding the papers was difficult, even for Hamid, though it was written in French, which he was fluent in.

“The airplane that flew over the camp was not shot down?” Hamid asked.

“It was hit. We saw smoke. But what happened we do not know for sure. The men we sent out to look for it have not returned. It was three hours.”

“Why did you wait so long to tell me?”

The Palestinian did not like to be berated, especially by a man who spent his days inside and did not understand the difficult strain of running the camp.

“There was much else going on, and you said you should not be disturbed.”

“They don’t have radios?”

“The radios don’t work over the ridge.”

Dr. Hamid rubbed his eyes. “Send someone.”

“As you wish,” said the Palestinian, starting to leave.

“Wait. Tell Muhammed we are ready to prepare the buses. We will be leaving this evening.”

“I thought Atha said to wait until morning.”

“No.” Hamid rose. As he read the papers, there was no way to alter the bacteria strain in the way that Rostislawitch had claimed he’d done; introducing a second virus mutation consistently failed. It had to be a bluff. “We’ll move as originally planned: the first bus leaves at nine.”

28

Thera couldn’t quite understand Ferguson’s Russian. She covered the phone and waved across the hotel room to Rostislawitch, who was sitting glumly in a chair, watching the audioless television.

“Come here,” she said in a stage whisper. “It’s Ferg. Talk to him in Russian.”

“Zdrástvuitye,” said Rostislawitch, picking up the phone. “Hello.”

“Professor, the meeting is on. One hour. At Laxy’s.”

Rostislawitch looked at Thera. “Laxy’s?”

She nodded.

“We’ll be there,” said the scientist.

Thera took the phone and hung up. Laxy’s was an exclusive club on the waterfront that had been used as a meeting place by gunrunners and similar businessmen since it had opened in the late 1990s. Libya’s rapprochement with the West had cost it some of its sparkle, but its reputation was still sufficiently tattered to draw a large and disreputable crowd.

It was also one of several places in the city the CIA had bugged. Ferguson had worked there before, so he was familiar with the layout.

“You have to wear the bulletproof vest,” Thera told Rostislawitch. “The sport coat and shirt will be brought from the embassy in a few minutes. They’ll go right over it.”

Thera helped him put on the vest. Her touch felt good against his arms and sides, reassuring, as if she were taking care of him.

“Atha will shoot me?” he asked as she stepped away. It was funny — he didn’t actually feel afraid. If he was shot, then it was only justice.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Artur. Atha will probably threaten you. Don’t worry. You tell him that your associate has the virus and will handle the business from now on. Answer whatever technical questions you have to, then leave to let Ferguson handle the arrangements.”

“All right.”

“When the meeting’s over, we’re going to go to the embassy, OK? It’s the safest place for you. Then you can decide what to do.”

“I want to go home.”

“That might not be wise.”

“What else can I do?”

He meant it as a rhetorical question — Rostislawitch was resigned to his fate; whatever happened to him, including death, was simply his penance for taking the material, for being willing to let so many innocent people die. But Thera interpreted the question literally, and told him that he was bound to be in demand with drug companies and large food concerns, or he could get a job teaching at a university. The CIA could help.

“A man like you has so much knowledge,” she said. “There will be many offers.”

She was such a good girl, he thought. So optimistic.

“I think I would rather go home,” he told her.

“It’ll be up to you,” said Thera, disappointed. She picked up her sat phone to call the embassy “Let’s get through this first.”

29

The pilot of the MC-17 laid out a course that would get them over the southern Libyan desert without their being detected by the Libyan radars; they weren’t worried about being shot at, but wanted to avoid any possibility that Atha might be on the lookout for an American combat transport. To get around the radars, the big plane flew at tree-top level for about a hundred miles, executing a number of tight turns along the way. Finally, as the sun was just going down, the pilot began climbing to a higher altitude. Colonel Van Buren looked out the window on the flight deck and watched the sunset; from where they were, it looked as if they had flown over it.

With the possibility of a long night ahead of them, Van Buren decided to go down and talk to his men. The bio/chem protective suits weren’t particularly comfortable to sit around in, and the colonel decided it was important to emphasize to each man how important the suits were to avoid contamination. The officers and squad leaders had gone over this, of course, but Van Buren sensed that a personal word from him might carry a little more weight, and possibly prevent unnecessary casualties. He made sure his own suit was zipped tight except for the headpiece, then went down and began talking to the elite teams sitting in the hold of the plane.

Van Buren was about a third of the way through when he was called back upstairs to the command center. Corrigan was on the line.

“Ferg says go as soon as you can,” said Corrigan.

“We’re on our way. Should be a little over two hours.”

“Godspeed.”

30

After an hour of driving around Tripoli, Hamilton realized he was unlikely to find Ferguson this way. There were simply too many choices, and Hamilton didn’t know the city well enough, let alone Ferguson, to narrow them down. Finally he pulled into a parking lot near the water and tried to come up with another plan. He called Ferguson’s number and got his unctuous assistant, who assured him that Ferguson would contact him “when the time is right.”

“Is there a special hotel I should stay at?” Hamilton hinted. “Or one to avoid?”

“Up to you.”

“Oh, quite,” said Hamilton, hanging up. Then he realized that ignorance was often a very valuable weapon.

And where did one find ignorance, if not in the intelligence community?

“I say, this is Nathaniel Hamilton. I’m in town on some company business,” he told MI6’s top resident Tripoli officer over the phone a short time later. “Looks like I may have to deal with some Americans. What is their favorite hotel?”

“The Hilton, Libya Regal, the Marriott. Not in any order. Any place with a good bar,” added the resident. He offered to drop around for a few drinks and give Hamilton a backgrounder on the city if he wanted, but he didn’t have time for that.

“I’ve been doing a good deal of traveling, so I’m going to check in and tuck myself in for an early night,” he said. “But maybe tomorrow. I’ll come round the embassy at noon or so. We’ll have lunch.”

“Very good.”

“While I’m thinking about it, are there any other places that the Americans like to, uh, do business at? I’d like to scope them out beforehand.”

“What sort of business?”

The resident had committed a faux pas, asking the sort of question one never asked of another officer on assignment, since of course it could not be answered truthfully. Hamilton ignored it, commenting instead on how difficult it could be to work with the Americans.

Realizing his mistake, the resident told Hamilton that he’d personally seen the Yanks use a number of places, including a club named Laxy’s that was a hangout for the gunrunning crowd, and a small hotel lounge on the south side of the city called the Oasis.

“Very good,” said Hamilton. “Well, then, I’ll just be ringing off. Make sure to keep lunch open tomorrow. It’ll be on my expense account, not yours.”

“Very good.”

“Oh, one more thing — I would like to pick up a weapon if possible. I feel rather naked without one.”

“Do you really feel that’s necessary?”

“One never knows.”

“I don’t suppose it will be a problem. Would you like me to bring it tomorrow?”

“I’ll just pop around and pick it up. Then it’s off to bed. Remember — lunch tomorrow.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Obviously a man who had been out in the boonies too long, Hamilton thought as he hung up the phone.

31

Rankin tightened his right hand on the truck’s steering wheel to fight off the pain as he drove up the trail. It came and went in odd bursts — his arm would feel numb for a while, then all of a sudden, without even being jostled or smacked, the pain seemed to explode.

“Truck coming,” said Guns.

“They’ll think we’re their friends,” said Rankin. “Until we’re close.”

Guns checked the AK-47, making sure he was ready to fire. Rankin took a deep breath as the other truck got closer. The winding path through the mountains was too narrow for both trucks to pass.

“Let’s do it,” said Rankin. He turned the wheel hard, throwing the truck into a slide perpendicular across the roadway. Guns brought the rifle up and blasted out the front of the guards’ pickup. Then he threw himself backward over the seat, following Rankin out the other side.

Both men crouched behind the pickup, waiting for more gunfire. When there was none, Guns started around the back end of the truck, while Rankin crouched near the front. He held the AK-47 in his right hand, cradling it against his hip, as he cautiously looked around the front of the truck.

“Damn!” yelled Guns from the rear, jumping up as he saw a dark figure running up the hillside. Guns fired a burst and then started to follow, but the man had too much of a lead.

Rankin checked the truck. Two men lay dead in the cab, their torsos riddled with Guns’ bullets.

“You are a pretty good shot,” Rankin said after Guns gave up the chase. “For a Marine.”

“You think we oughta try and catch him?” asked Guns.

“I don’t know. Took us damn long to get this far.” He glanced at his watch. It was past seven. “I think we let him go and keep trying to find the camp. Give Van the heads-up.”

“Call in.”

“I’m not calling Corrigan every five minutes,” said Rankin.

“Call in anyway.” Guns went up ahead, scouting the road for signs of the man who’d gotten away. He was somewhere nearby, but Rankin was right — they couldn’t both look for him and find the camp. They’d already lost several hours on the tangle of paths and half paths in the hills.

The road was too narrow to turn around. Guns got in the back of the truck they’d blasted while Rankin drove backward, looking for a safe spot to turn around. They found one about a quarter mile away, a pull-off around a bend — which also gave them a view of the canyon, and the camp at its end.

“There it is,” said Guns. He jumped out and worked his way down and around the ridge, trying to get a better view. By the time Rankin found him, he was lying on his stomach with his field glasses.

“No fixed guns or anything like that,” said Guns. It was getting dark; even with the glasses Guns had a little trouble making out the camp’s layout.

“Hold on; hold on,” said Rankin. He took out the phone and called Corrigan, then began relaying what they saw. Buses and trucks were clustered near a pair of small buildings at the northern end of the camp. People were lined up around a table near them. Torches were being lit, and their shadows flickered across the desert sand.

“What are they doing?” Rankin asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Rankin, are you sure you don’t see any missile posts?” asked Corrigan. “We need to know for Van.”

“There are no launchers around,” Rankin told him. “They got us with a shoulder-launched weapon. You tell them to jump from altitude and they’ll be safe.”

“Van and his people are less than a half hour away. Just hold tight.”

“Hey, Rankin, check this out,” said Guns. “Looks like they’re getting on the buses.”

32

Patrons entered Laxy’s by walking down a wide staircase made of long, flat stones. Water ran down a shallow channel at the center of the staircase, pooling on a landing at the middle where the stairs pitched around to descend into the cavernlike main room. A separate waterfall filled the entire right-hand wall of the stairs. The mist and sound made it seem as if you were entering a secret underground oasis in the middle of the desert.

Inside, the lighting was low and indirect. Couches and tables were located around panels faced with stone veneers, adding to the ambiance as well as privacy. A small orchestra played in the front corner, filling the space with strains of American music from the 1930s and ‘40s, songs that evoked an era of romance. As in most other places in Tripoli that catered to foreigners, liquor was served freely. The servers were all women; they wore low-slung miniskirts beneath sheer tops that teased patrons with a clear view of the fancy embroidery on the women’s bras.

The food, though overpriced, was excellent. It was almost very Western; it was said that one could not find a better filet mignon in all of northern Africa, and the salmon was flown in daily from Scotland.

Atha had been to Laxy’s two or three times before. He wasn’t surprised that the Russian had chosen it; Rostislawitch’s associate would surely think it was out of the way as well as exotic. Russians usually used hotels on the northwestern end of town for business, and with the FSB looking for them it would make very good sense to head to a place more often associated with Westerners.

The Iranian wasn’t as worried about the Russian intelligence service as he was about closing the deal. He was willing to give Rostislawitch what he’d originally been promised, but coming up with more money at this point would mean going to the minister. Worse, it could easily involve a delay of a day, if not more. The minister would like that even less.

But while Atha had every incentive to get the deal closed quickly, he had to project the image of a man who was not in a hurry. He ambled down the steps into the club, going as slowly as he possibly could, glancing around to see if he might recognize someone. He smiled at anyone who came close to making eye contact, throwing his shoulders back and forth as if he owned the place himself.

The act amused Ferguson, who went ahead to the table without him. It was clear Atha was worried about making a deal. As soon as the Iranian sat down, Ferguson began probing him for information.

“And when we complete the arrangements,” Ferguson said, laying his Russian accent over his English, “how do you plan on using our product?”

“That is none of your concern,” snapped Atha.

“Of course not. But one becomes curious.”

“Curiosity is not an admirable trait in our business.”

Ferguson gestured to the waitress, and told her to bring them a bottle of chilled vodka.

“I don’t drink,” said Atha.

“Some tea then?”

“Nothing.”

“Two glasses. He may change his mind.” Ferguson shooed the girl away. “My curiosity is not idle. I am asking because maybe we have an opportunity for other business.”

“Such as?”

“Lab equipment. It may be easier for us to obtain certain things than it is for you. You don’t want to arouse suspicions. Plus, our prices can be very competitive. We can arrange delivery to Tripoli, Tehran, or anywhere, practically. The desert? A seaport? Not a problem.”

Atha’s eyes flickered ever so slightly at the word desert.

“I have no need for equipment now,” he said. “But in the future, if the price were right, I might be in the market for some things.”

“Such as?”

“Often I am looking for spare parts. Items for airplanes. Special ones that can be hard to obtain.”

“I have more sources than you can imagine.”

“Let us see how this goes first. Then, maybe, some more business.”

The drinks arrived. Ferguson turned his glass around, then drained it.

“How far do you have to transport the material?” he asked.

“Not very far.”

“It has to be handled carefully, you know. If you’re taking it by car—”

“I’m well aware of the precautions. Where is the scientist?”

“Scientists are on their own schedule.” Ferguson took the second glass, twisting it on the table once more before downing it.

Atha sensed that the Russian was simply stringing him along. He thought back to the hotel, examining what he remembered, trying to decide whether it had been staged. He didn’t think so, and yet it was certainly possible.

Was the Russian working for the FSB?

It was possible. But in that case he would simply have arrested him at the hotel.

Or kidnapped him. The Russians had no authority here, though that never stopped them.

“I hope he comes soon,” Ferguson told Atha, using the phrase he and Thera had settled on as a signal. “I have some other business to attend to.”

“What sort of business?” asked Atha.

“Personal business,” said Ferguson, refilling his glass.

33

As Rankin and Guns scrambled back toward the truck, another vehicle came up the road toward them from the camp. When he saw the truck, the driver stopped, and another man got out to inspect it.

Guns raised his rifle to fire.

“No,” said Rankin, stopping him. “They’ll hear the gunfire. We won’t make it down to the camp.”

The man who’d gotten out of the truck examined the broken window, then called to the other man. One walked up the road; the other came in their direction.

Crouching by the side of the road, Guns tried to calculate if he could reach the other man before he managed to grab a gun. He was only fifteen yards away, but the rough terrain would slow him down.

“Cover me while I charge him,” Guns told Rankin.

“Listen, that’s not going to work. I’m having a lot of trouble using just one hand to fire,” said Rankin. “I have a better idea. Go back that way and cut up behind him. I’ll moan.”

“What?”

“I’ll pretend like I’m hurt. When he comes down to investigate, jump him.”

“What about the other guy?”

“He’s too far away. It’s dark. Come on. Go.”

Guns slid down a few feet, then began backing around the curve.

Rankin turned around so his face wouldn’t be visible from above, and then began to moan. It took several loud “args” before the man who was on the road heard Rankin and decided to investigate.

“What are you doing?” yelled the man in Arabic. “What happened?”

Rankin continued to moan. Finally the lookout started climbing down to see what had happened.

Guns launched himself at the man, clipping his head and pushing him over. He lost his balance and tumbled into him, and together they slid down the ravine. Rankin, worried that Guns would roll all the way down into the cavern below, dove at them but missed. Jarred, Rankin’s arm shrieked with pain, and he began to groan for real.

Guns got his feet in front of a rock and stopped his slide. He leapt up and hooked the lookout by the back of the neck, hauling him to his feet. The man kicked at Guns but got mostly dirt; he launched a roundhouse that caved in part of the guard’s cheekbone. Then Guns picked him up and threw him back against the rocks, knocking him out.

Guns and Rankin scrambled up to the roadside. The first man was nowhere in sight.

Guns started to walk up the path.

“Forget him. Come on, let’s go,” said Rankin, trying to shake off the pain as he climbed into the truck that had just stopped. “We have to stop the buses and trucks now. Come on. Get the other truck. Come

34

Kiska Babev was huddled with the head of the Russian FSB’s Libyan office when a young clerk knocked on the office door and entered with a folded piece of paper. Impatient at the interruption, Kiska rose from her seat, intending to get herself a cup of tea from the sideboard. As she turned, she found the clerk standing at her side.

“It just arrived for you, Madame Colonel,” said the young woman. “A fax. We’re trying to trace it.”

Puzzled, Kiska unfolded the paper. The message was printed in large block letters:

“Is it important?” the head of the office asked.

Kiska crumbled the paper and threw it into the wastebasket at the corner.

“What is Laxy’s?” she asked.

35

Thera had the driver go around the block twice, making sure that it was clear. When she finally decided they could go in, she took one last look at Rostislawitch, fixing the bulky suit over his frame.

“OK,” she told him, but as he started to get out of the car she pulled him back. “Take this,” she said, passing a small pistol into his hand. “Put it in your pocket. If you need to, use it.”

“I’ve never fired a gun,” said the scientist.

“Use two hands. Hold it like this. There’s a safety catch here. Slide it before you shoot. All right?”

He nodded, staring at the gun. Thera considered moving the catch off for him, but worried that he would accidentally shoot himself when grabbing for the pistol.

“In you go,” Thera said, nudging him from the car. “Walk all the way to the back. Ferguson will be at the far table on the right. Remember the video — he has a beard and glasses now. If there’s a problem, I’ll be very close.”

The scientist nodded.

“Don’t worry,” added Thera. “Ferg has everything under control. He always does.”

Rostislawitch felt the blood rush from his head as he got out of the car. He started walking slowly, gradually gaining speed, though not composure, as he reached the door. He was sweating profusely under the bulletproof vest. He saw the water on the steps next to him as he descended into the restaurant and worried that he was going to slip.

Rostislawitch ignored the man at the maitre d’ lectern, walking toward the back as Thera had directed. His eyes had trouble adjusting to the low light; he saw shadows instead of people. The place was a lot more crowded than he thought it would be; every table seemed to be full. He looked right, and saw a man with a beard and glasses, smiling at him.

“Doctor.” Ferguson rose deferentially, and told him in Russian how good it was to see him. Rostislawitch replied automatically that the pleasure was his.

“We should speak English for our partner,” said Ferguson, gesturing toward Atha as he sat down. Ferguson poured Rostislawitch some vodka, but the scientist didn’t touch it.

“What is this virus?” demanded Atha. “How does it work?”

Rostislawitch’s mind blanked. He couldn’t understand the question.

“Do you need a technical explanation about the virus and how it prepares the bacteria?” asked Ferguson. “Is it important?”

“Why did you sabotage the bacteria?” Atha asked Rostislawitch.

“Why did you take it?” said Rostislawitch. “You did not pay. How did you know where it was?”

“I always intended on paying,” said Atha. “I just needed to hurry things along. I have time constraints. You do not understand this. You scientists think in terms of centuries. I have hours.”

“Do you know how dangerous it is?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Thousands — millions of people could die.”

“If you don’t want to do business—” Atha started to rise. It was only partly a bluff; Rostislawitch’s attitude and tone angered him.

“Now, now, let us relax,” said Ferguson. “Sit, please. Have some vodka. Are you sure you won’t drink?”

Atha scowled, but sat back down.

“You’re doing great, Doc,” Ferguson told Rostislawitch in Russian. “But don’t be so angry. Relax. Just keep him talking.”

“Aren’t you insulting him by insisting he drink?” asked Rostislawitch. “He’s Muslim.”

“You think so?” Ferguson smiled. That was the general idea.

“How is this virus to be used?” asked Atha. “What is its purpose?”

Rostislawitch looked over at Ferguson. When he nodded, Rostislawitch began explaining that the process would be familiar to anyone experienced in modifying bacterial DNA; the virus was custom-designed to make the proper modification. He gave the Iranian a few lines from a graduate lecture in the subject, staying away from the complicated chemistry.

The explanation was sufficient to convince Atha that the scientist wasn’t bluffing.

“When you give it to me, then you will get your payment,” Atha said abruptly, cutting Rostislawitch off in midsentence. “Where is it?”

“It’s available,” said Ferguson. “Let us talk price.”

Nathaniel Hamilton pulled the rental car to the curb near the entrance to Laxy’s. The routine was getting old — go in, have a walk around, fail to spot Ferguson, leave. But the alternative was to simply sit in his hotel room and wait for Ferguson to send for him, as if he were a tart on call.

Oh, it was going to be so lovely to kill the son of a bitch. The money was almost not a consideration.

Almost.

Hamilton took out his satellite phone to call his room and check for messages before going into the club. As he dialed, a pair of black Mercedes drove up in front of him. The cars had plates from the Russian embassy.

A half-dozen people got out of the cars, five bulky men and a tall blonde. They looked up and down the block; then the men formed a wedge around the woman and headed into the building.

Clearly Russian agents, thought Hamilton. Maybe Ferguson was here after all.

Thera slipped the headphones into her ears so she could hear the conversation between Atha and Rostislawitch. She could just barely see the stairs from her table. Green and Griffen, two of the Special Forces soldiers dressed in civilian clothes who were backing them up, were sitting at a booth catty-corner across from her. Another pair of soldiers were farther back in the club, closer to Ferguson.

Thera’s sat phone buzzed with a call. It was the Cube.

“Thera, Ferg’s not answering his phone,” said Corrigan.

“No kidding. Why are you calling him?”

“Ciello just worked it out — Kiska Babev can’t be T Rex. She was in Georgia when Dalton was killed. The stop in Paris was just to set up some sort of alias. Ciello has her credit card charges. She never left the city and was out of town long before Dalton got to France.”

“All right,” said Thera.

She pushed down the phone’s antenna. Before she could figure out a way of telling Ferguson, she saw Kiska Babev and five other Russians walking down the steps at the restaurant entrance.

Two million more, or there is no deal,” Ferguson told Atha.

“American dollars, of course.”

“I can’t do it,” said Atha. “I just can’t.”

“Call whoever it is you’re working for,” said Ferguson. “They’ll pay.”

“I am working on my own.”

Ferguson made a face to show that he didn’t believe Atha. “Well, then you pay. It’s certainly worth it.”

“No.”

“Then you won’t get the virus. The bacteria you have is worthless.”

Atha thought the minister might be willing to provide the extra money, even though he would grumble about it.

The alternative was to call the intelligence people at the Iranian embassy and get them to help him force the Russians to talk. But that might be tricky — too much force and everything would be ruined.

“If it is the office of the President,” said Ferguson, leaning forward, “I have a friend who works there.”

“It is not the President,” said Atha. “How would you have friends in Iran?”

“I have many friends. Even among the Revolutionary Guard. And the Education Ministry.”

Atha felt his breath choking. What if the Russian cut him out of the deal?

No. Impossible. He was the one with the camp.

“Let us say, for a moment, that we agreed on the price,” said Atha. “I would need the material quickly.”

“You’ll have it within twenty-four hours of payment.”

“Far too late,” said Atha, shaking his head.

As Ferguson shrugged, he noticed Kiska Babev heading a pack of FSB officers in his direction.

“What a pleasant surprise,” he said loudly in Russian, rising. “Colonel Babev, what brings you to Tripoli?”

Kiska glared at him.

“Artur Rostislawitch, why are you in Tripoli?” Kiska looked across the table at Atha. “You — who are you?”

“Doesn’t speak Russian,” said Ferguson, still speaking Russian.

“I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing,” she said to Ferguson. “But I don’t like it.”

“I’m not playing a game. I’m conducting a business transaction.”

“What?”

“The education minister of Iran has authorized this man to buy Russian germ warfare material.”

Atha didn’t understand a word they were saying, but he knew it was time for him to leave. He started sliding out.

“Sit down,” Kiska told him in Russian.

“Doesn’t speak Russian, remember?” said Ferguson.

“Sit,” she said in English. She emphasized the point by raising her hand, revealing the pistol she was holding.

Hamilton, at the door, saw the Russians standing around Ferguson’s table. Things looked far too placid for his taste, almost amicable.

He decided to remedy that. He took out his pistol and fired into the air.

The gunshot was like a switch, silencing the gentle buzz that had pervaded the place. For a moment, all of the patrons sat, stunned.

Then someone screamed.

People began running for the door. A man at a table in a corner — a member of Hamas who was meeting a financer — rose and pulled out his gun. He saw someone moving toward him; believing it was a Mossad agent, he shot him dead.

Ferguson pushed Rostislawitch to the ground. Atha tried to get by, but one of the Russian agents threw him down.

A Libyan who’d been hired as a bodyguard for the Hamas member began firing a submachine gun. One of the Russians returned fire; then the rest followed suit. The bullets flashed over the banquette and couches, ricocheting with bright sparks off the stone walls.

Ferguson took hold of Rostislawitch and pulled him with him as he scrambled out into the aisle between the tables. He kicked a smoke grenade behind him to cover their retreat, then pushed Rostislawitch down, low enough to evade the gunfire.

“No, Ferg, you’re not going anywhere,” said Kiska, pointing her gun at his face.

“The Iranian is the one you want,” Ferguson told her. “He stole the bacteria with the help of the mafiya. Your scientist has been helping us get it back.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“That’s why he didn’t go to you in the first place,” Ferguson said. “Because you thought he stole it.”

“You’re lying.”

“Better grab the Iranian before he escapes,” said Ferguson, pointing behind her. “He’s got the material with him.”

Thinking Ferguson was simply trying to divert her, Kiska hesitated before turning around. By the time she did, Atha had nearly disappeared into the smoke.

“Grab him!” she told the others. “Go.”

As soon as Kiska turned, Ferguson pulled the scientist with him back into the smoke billowing from below the table. They crawled past a row of couches into the kitchen. An alarm began to sound over the gunfire and screams outside.

“You with me, Rosty?” Ferg asked, pulling him to his feet near the table used to prep salads.

“What are we going to do?” asked the scientist.

“The back door’s this way,” said Ferguson. He’d used it before. “But get down!”

Ferguson pushed Rostislawitch down as a spray of bullets from an AK-47 ripped through the kitchen door, clanging against the hanging pots and the stove. Flames leapt from a damaged burner, and within seconds the stove and a nearby work counter were on fire.

“We’re going to have to go back out the front,” Ferguson told Rostislawitch. “Sorry. I didn’t think we’d be having this much fun.”

Rostislawitch gripped the pistol in his pocket as Ferguson pulled him back toward the doorway. They hit a thick patch of smoke and he began to cough. Ferguson and Rostislawitch crawled out of the kitchen and down the side of the room near the bar. The gunfire had mostly stopped, but now pieces of the place were exploding or crashing to the floor as the fire gathered force, feeding on the flammable sound insulation used on the ceiling and some of the banquettes.

Ferguson ducked down toward the floor, avoiding the worst of the smoke as he got his bearings. The lights shut off; the flames behind them tinged the darkness red.

A face loomed out of the blackness.

“This way,” said Nathaniel Hamilton, holding a handkerchief to his mouth and nose. “Out the side.”

“I hate going out the servants’ entrance,” said Ferguson.

“Suit yourself,” said Hamilton, raising the pistol in his hand.

36

Rankin put his foot down on the gas, accelerating as the first bus in the convoy started to move. The road was wide enough for two cars to pass; the shoulders were deep with sand. If he could crash into the bus before it got too far from the others, he could jam them up temporarily, slow them down long enough for the soldiers to arrive. But he was a hundred yards away, much farther than he’d hoped. Not only might the lead bus separate from the others, but it would have plenty of time to pick up speed.

Ferg would just plow right into the bus, and somehow walk away. That was Ferg, larger than life, completely invincible. The luckiest SOB on the planet.

Unlike me, thought Rankin. He pushed his head down closer to the wheel. The truck bounced on the hardscrabble road, threatening to jerk out of control. His left arm was worse than useless, throbbing with pain.

The bus driver began to veer to the left, toward the soft dirt at the side of the road. But he was too late — Rankin yanked the wheel hard, spinning the truck into a one-eighty and piling into the front quarter of the bus.

Behind him, Guns spun his truck ninety degrees across the roadway, skidding into the bus immediately behind the one Rankin hit. The bus’s back end fishtailed across the road and tipped down, wedged against the pickup.

Rankin, stunned by the impact, sat dazed in his truck, his whole body now wrapped in pain. I have to get out of here, he thought to himself, but he couldn’t move.

Guns jumped from his truck, the AK-47 in his hand. In the flickering torchlight he saw two men running toward him. Something blinked red from near their midsections. They were shooting at him.

He fired a burst from the gun and both men went down.

Rankin couldn’t move, and couldn’t figure out why. Finally he realized he still had his seat belt on. He pulled it off, then reached for the door. It wouldn’t open.

It would open for Ferguson, wouldn’t it?

Rankin was obsessed with him; they all were. That’s why Rankin was so pissed off at Ferguson — he was lucky and sarcastic but, most of all, good at what he did. Better than Rankin would ever be.

Better.

So what?

Rankin wasn’t used to anyone being better than him, that’s what. The officers he served under — they weren’t better than him, not at what he did.

But Ferguson was better.

He was going to have to live with it.

Rankin pushed at the door again. The only way to get it open was to use his left shoulder. He gritted his teeth together, closed his eyes, and pummel ed against it. The door flew open and he tumbled onto the ground.

Guns kept firing to keep people back, sending short bursts into the ground near them. He didn’t see any other weapons, but couldn’t take too many chances. He backed toward Rankin, who was lying on the ground near the truck, cursing and moaning all in one breath.

Dr. Hamid had just started mixing a new batch of the infected juice when he heard the crash. He secured the bacteria cultures, then ran from the hut. People were pointing toward the buses, crying, wailing.

“What is this?” he said, starting to run past the tables where the juice was being given out. He saw that some of the buses had crashed into each other, and into a truck — two trucks.

There were gunshots.

Hamid looked up, and saw a wedge-shaped shadow in the sky. It was hard to see in the dusk, and at first he didn’t know what it was. Then he saw another, and another.

Parachutes.

He turned and ran toward the lab building.

Watch it!” yelled Rankin, spotting one of the camp guards running toward them with a rifle. Rankin fired his pistol at the man, who threw himself down. Before the guard could bring his rifle around to fire, Rankin fired again. This time he hit the guard square in the head.

About time I hit something, Rankin thought to himself.

“Parachutes!” said Guns. “Van’s here.”

“We should find the lab,” said Rankin, starting forward.

Guns grabbed him. “They’re full of poison, remember? We can’t touch them.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t thinking.”

One of the cottages blew up in a tremendous explosion.

“Trying to destroy the evidence,” said Guns.

“Too late for that,” said Rankin, looking at the people standing forty yards away in the dim light near the wrecked buses.

37

Ferguson threw himself into Nathaniel Hamilton’s midsection as the MI6 agent fired. The two fell backward, rolling against one of the half walls that separated the bar area from the tables. Hamilton, shocked that he had missed, tried to push his gun closer to fire again. But Ferguson was too close to him.

Rostislawitch saw the gun in Hamilton’s hand and froze. Ferguson and the British agent wrestled themselves against the half wall, each man trying to pummel the other as the smoke curled around them. A piece of the ceiling dropped down, burning. It just missed them.

The rocks that lined the club’s wall were not actual rocks, but rather Styrofoam imitations. The fire had reached a point where they began to incinerate. When the flames first touched them, they caught with a fizzle, the painted skin literally boiling. Then the interior of the “stone” would burst with a pop. Finally, the mastic that held them in place caught on fire and blue flames consumed the wooden structure of the wall.

Rostislawitch shook off his shock. He had to do something, he knew, or he and the American would be killed. Rostislawitch saw the gun in Hamilton’s hand and thought he could pull it away. Jumping up, he grabbed the man’s arm, wrestling it away from Ferguson’s body. But the British agent was considerably stronger than the scientist had thought, and continued flailing at Ferguson.

“I hate you, Ferguson, you bastard,” said Hamilton, pushing against him. Hamilton fired the gun again, though something was clamped to his arm.

The gun’s loud report shook Rostislawitch, and once more he froze, petrified, his arm hooked around Hamilton’s forearm.

For Ferguson, the second shot was a catalyst, a call for the last reserves of his strength. He pivoted his right leg down and drove himself harder into Hamilton, pushed his weight against the Brit’s arm. Then Ferguson saw Hamilton’s jaw a few inches from his head. He tried to bring his right arm up to smash it, but Hamilton had it pinned to his side. So Ferguson did the next best thing — he tucked his head down and then butted full force into the not-so-solid English jaw.

Hamilton felt a shock of pain run from his chin through his molars to his tongue and skull. The side of his tongue had gotten caught between his teeth and began bleeding. He tried to fire another shot, but before he could the wall behind him gave way and his whole body felt as if it were on fire. He tried to wriggle from Ferguson’s grip. To Hamilton’s surprise, it worked; he rolled to his stomach to crawl away.

Instead, he felt himself being dragged backward. Ferguson had grabbed him by the legs.

“You bastard,” Hamilton shouted. He twisted to fire at Ferguson, then realized the scientist was still wrapped around his arm.

Ferguson saw Hamilton’s arm starting to move and let go of his legs. He leapt up into the smoke and fire, aiming his heels toward the Brit’s wrist. Ferguson’s left heel missed in the smoke, but his right snapped five bones in the Englishman’s hand. Hamilton’s yowl was louder than the sirens outside.

“Side stairs,” Ferguson told Rostislawitch. He grabbed Hamilton’s feet again. The fumes from the fire were a putrid, toxic mix that took his breath away, and he began coughing so badly his stomach turned.

Rolling on the floor, Rostislawitch saw Ferguson and Hamilton moving toward a small blue square. The scientist started crawling after them, swimming on his hands and knees in the haze. They went through the bar into a service area. A whiff of fresh air revived him, and he began scrambling forward.

Ferguson pulled Hamilton, still shrieking, up the four steps to a small patio area at the side of the building. He let go of the renegade MI6 agent and collapsed against a chain-link fence, gulped the fresh air. He was about to go back inside when Rostislawitch came crawling up the steps.

Writhing in pain, Hamilton cursed Ferguson. “You’re a cool son of a bitch, aren’t you, Ferguson?” he said over and over.

“Who paid you to kill me?” said Ferguson, still trying to clear his head.

“Three million pounds, Bob Ferguson, for screwing the Syrians out of their nuclear material. Three million fuckin’ pounds.”

“I would have thought more,” said Ferguson.

One of the waiters from inside had been trapped by the flames. Ferguson heard him calling for help near the door. He looked at Hamilton, curled into a ball, then leapt back down the stairs. A large piece of the bar, fortunately not on fire, had collapsed on the man’s legs as he tried to crawl out. Ferguson wrenched it away, then picked the man up and took him out over his shoulder. He was so woozy when he hit the stairs that he began to trip. He pirouetted around, managing a semi-soft landing with the man against the chain-link fence surrounding the patio.

Ferguson looked up and saw Hamilton pointing a cell phone at him.

“What are you going to do, quick-dial me to death?” said Ferguson.

“Hardly. You bastard.” Hamilton pulled himself to his feet. He extended the disguised gun toward Ferguson. He was unsteady; he’d have to shoot for the heart.

But it would feel good, very, very good, killing him.

“I’d do this for free,” Hamilton told Ferguson. He looked down at the cell phone’s number pad, moving his thumb to the space button to fire.

Before he could, a bullet from a Baikal MP-445 compact struck him in the side of the temple. Fired at close range, the bullet not only shattered his skull but pushed him over, sending him crashing into the fence next to Ferguson.

Kiska stood behind him. She moved her pistol in Ferguson’s direction.

“I want the scientist, Bobby,” she said.

“He gets to make that decision, Kiska.”

“I can just shoot you and take him.” She pointed her gun at Ferguson’s head.

“You could,” he said.

Rostislawitch, remembering the pistol in his pocket, started to reach for it.

“I can shoot you as well,” she told him, pointing her gun down at him.

“Actually, I don’t think you should shoot anybody,” said Ferguson. He moved his right hand out from behind his back, making the.45 more conspicuous. It was pointed at her head.

“Is it a standoff, Bobby? You kill me and I kill you?”

“Maybe,” said Ferguson. “But I’m going to guess Captain Heifers there is probably faster than both of us.”

Heifers was standing a few feet away, his Beretta trained on Kiska’s head.

“He’s a Russian citizen,” she told Ferguson. “He can’t escape justice.”

“Did you take the Iranian?” Ferguson asked.

“We have him. You want him?”

“No. I think he belongs with you. I think he was your target all along. When the smoke clears, I think it will turn out that the FSB actually set up the entire sting,” said Ferguson. “I think you used the scientist to lure the corrupt Iranian businessman here. I don’t think the CIA was involved at all. Or MI6.”

Kiska frowned, though she had a feeling that what Ferguson was proposing would, ultimately, make a lot of sense. It had in the past.

“Who is he?” she said, pointing to the man she had shot.

“Nathaniel Hamilton. Also known as T Rex. I wish you hadn’t shot him. But e’est la guerre.”

“If I hadn’t shot him, you’d be dead, Bobby.”

Ferguson, who’d had his gun ready, disagreed. But he didn’t like arguing with a lady.

“You’re probably right,” he told her.

“You owe me another one, Bobby,” said Kiska, lowering her weapon. “I expect to collect someday.”

“You know me. I always pay my debts.”

38

Thera felt her heart jump as Ferguson and Rostislawitch emerged from Laxy’s. She shouted to them. Rostislawitch ran to the car; Ferguson strolled behind, as if he had not a care in the world.

“Take us to the hotel,” said Ferguson, getting in the back. “My friend needs a shower.”

Rostislawitch reached into his pocket and took out the pistol to hand it back to Thera.

“Careful where you point that, Doc,” said Ferguson, grabbing it.

“I — thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

“There is something you could do for us,” Ferguson told him. “Tell us everything you know about the Russian germ program.”

“I don’t think I should. No. I don’t think I could.”

“Thing is, Doc, they’re going to assume you did anyway. They probably won’t prosecute you, because we’ll give Kiska the evidence to back up my version of the story, and they wouldn’t want to risk that coming out. Kind of make them look bad. But they won’t let you do anything important, either. They’re not completely stupid.”

“I’ll have to think,” said Rostislawitch.

“Totally up to you,” said Ferguson. “Don’t let the fact that we saved your life enter into your consideration at all. Because it is irrelevant.”

Ferguson started to laugh. The others couldn’t figure out why.

“What happened to Kiska Babev?” Thera asked. “Did you get the message?”

“What message?”

“Corrigan called, Thomas Ciello figured out she wasn’t T Rex.”

“Oh yeah, I knew that.”

“You did?”

“I’ve been telling you that. T Rex wasn’t after Rosty. T Rex wanted me.”

“You?”

“Sure.” He pulled off his coat and began undoing the bulletproof vest he’d been wearing. He hated wearing them, but then, he hated being shot even more. Hamilton’s first bullet had hit him square in the chest, right over his heart — he could still feel the pain. The bruise would be with him a long time, but it was considerably better than the alternative.

“Why was he hired to kill you?”

“I guess the Syrians are a little pissed off about the fact that the nuclear material they bought a few years back never made it to Damascus.”

“So who is T Rex?”

“It was Hamilton,” Ferguson explained. “Unfortunately, Kiska shot him in the head. It wasn’t her fault, though. She didn’t think I had a vest. Or a gun. If it were me, I would have preferred in the kneecaps so we could bring him home. Not going to bother Parnelles, though.” Ferguson pushed his legs out, trying to stretch. He was tired; he needed about twenty-four hours of sleep before he’d feel human again. “I knew Rosty wasn’t the target. Killing him isn’t that hard. He lives alone, lives in Russia. Piece of cake to kill him. No offense, Doc.”

Rostislawitch forced himself to nod.

“T Rex didn’t mind a lot of blood, but he always took the easy way out when he killed someone. He only used car bombs because the victims had bodyguards or were generally on their guard. Rosty was too easy. The trick was to make us think he was the target. That was pretty clever.”

“How long did you know it was Hamilton?”

Actually, Ferguson hadn’t been positive it was Hamilton until he showed up in front of him at the restaurant. He also didn’t know how much of the Iranian plot Hamilton himself had known, and while he suspected that he had purposely set up his preparer to lure Ferguson here, he couldn’t be sure of that, either. But he just shrugged without answering, as if he knew the whole story, and had from the very beginning. Explaining things took away much of the mystery, kind of like a woman without any clothes.

Now that he didn’t need to be on his guard, now that they were done and others could watch out for him, fatigue rolled over Ferguson like a tsunami wave. He closed his eyes, drifting. The song he’d heard in the background of the club played in his head. It was Cole Porter, an old love song. The music swelled and he got up to dance.

Ferguson turned to find a partner, and there was Thera, dressed in a long gown, pearls draped from her neck. He was in a tux.

“Shall we dance?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she said.

He took her hand and swirled her once, then held her close. And in the dreamworld that had suddenly descended on him, everything was perfect.

39

“The site is secure,” Corrine Alston told the President. “The decontamination teams are another two hours away.”

“The bacteria has been contained?”

“We think so. Two of our people were at the edge of the camp. They’re going to be isolated, but we don’t think they were infected.”

“A cure?”

“We hope they weren’t exposed,” said Corrine. “The Russian scientist is cooperating. But the strain is resistant to antibiotics. The people who were exposed may very well die. At a minimum, they’ll be very sick.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said President McCarthy.

“Dan Slott is arranging for medical care to be flown in.”

McCarthy got up from his desk and walked to the small globe at the side of his office, spinning it around slowly until he was looking at Iran. “We’re going to announce the Iran nuclear treaty tonight, Corrine. Very good work.”

She felt a little embarrassed to be thanked, since she had had almost nothing to do with it.

“Ferguson and his people, and Colonel Van Buren, they really did a fantastic job,” she told the President. “And, I should mention, T Rex — the assassin who killed our CIA officer two years ago — he’s dead. He was a renegade MI6 agent.”

“MI6?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sometimes you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, can you, Miss Alston?”

“No, Jonathon, sometimes you can’t.”

McCarthy didn’t say anything else. Corrine, with more work to do, left the President staring at the globe.