The Secret Soldier

CHAPTER 1

“ONE-FORTY-NINE…”

John Wells felt his biceps burn as he reached full extension. He held, held, lowered himself again. Beneath him, the world narrowed to a few square feet. The cigarette burns speckling the dirty green carpet were as large as canyons.

“One-fifty.”

Up Wells went, slow and sure. Outside, a spring breeze rolled off the Caribbean. In here, the air was humid, almost murky. Sweat puddled at the base of his neck, dripped off his bare chest.

The room’s door swung open. Afternoon sunlight flooded in. Wells raised his left hand to shield his eyes and decided to see if he could get away with a one-armed push-up. Down he went, balanced on his right arm. He hadn’t tried one in years. Harder than he remembered. Or he was getting old. He tensed his chest, felt his triceps and biceps quiver, held himself steady.

Brett Gaffan stepped into the room, flipped on the light. “Trying to impress me, John?”

Wells ignored Gaffan, pushed, rose. Stopped. Found himself stuck. Sweat stung his eyes. He slipped sideways—

And with a final convulsive effort forced himself up. Once he passed halfway, he felt the power coming from his biceps rather than his triceps and knew he’d be all right. He stood as soon as he finished, before his arm could give out.

“You look like you’re gonna have a stroke.”

“I could do those all day.” Wells tried to stop panting.

“Uh-huh.” Gaffan tossed Wells a paper bag. Inside, a liter of cold water.

“Thankee.” Wells sucked down half the bottle. As part of his cover, he had to drink. And though he was careful to nurse his Red Stripes, he couldn’t be too careful. He’d gone through five or six last night. He wasn’t used to drinking so much. Or drinking at all. Every morning he woke to a cotton-filled mouth and a shrunken skull.

Until a few months before, Wells had been a CIA operative. He’d had a long and successful career at the agency. A few years before, he’d played a highly public role in stopping a terrorist attack on Times Square. But his missions since then had been kept quiet, and the public’s attention was fickle. He was still a legend among cops and soldiers, but civilians rarely recognized him.

Wells would admit that part of him had loved working for the agency. The CIA and its cousins in the intelligence community could arrange a new identity in a matter of hours, get him anywhere in the world in a day, hear any call, open any e-mail, track any vehicle. But the power came with a price, one Wells could no longer pay. He had always been allergic to the Langley bureaucracy, the way the CIA’s executives put frontline operatives at risk for their own gain. After his last mission, the tension had grown unbearable. Vinny Duto, the agency’s director, had used Wells to win an intra-agency power struggle. Wells felt what was left of his honor boiling away in the cauldron of Duto’s contempt.

He saw no choice but to quit, make a life for himself in New Hampshire, a land whose silent woods mocked Washington’s empty talk. The granite mountains would outlast empires and the men who built them. He rented a cabin in a little town called Berlin. But he and his dog, Tonka, spent a lot of time fifty miles south, in North Conway, with Anne Marshall. Wells had met Anne a few months before, before his last mission. She knew who he was and some of what he’d done, though he kept some details from her. He wasn’t sure yet what their future would be.

NOW WELLS WAS BACK in the field. He had decided to run down a fugitive CIA double agent. Without official approval. Not for the first time on this trip, Wells wondered what he was trying to prove. And to whom.

He dropped the empty water bottle on the floor, where it joined crushed Bud Light cans and the remains of a joint that had rolled under the dresser between the two queen beds. All left here on the unlikely chance that a Jamaican drug dealer decided he needed to check their cover. Gaffan and Wells were sharing the room, which had acquired a funky odor after four days.

“Yo. You have to play that way?”

“Did you really just say ‘yo’?”

“I did.” Gaffan had grown up in northern New Jersey, a rowhouse town called Bergenfield, near New York City. His years in North Carolina and Georgia had coated his Jersey accent with a strange sugar. He seemed to speak fast and slow at the same time. Wells couldn’t explain how.

“Please don’t ever again.”

Wells pulled a dirty T-shirt on with his cargo shorts, slipped black work boots on his sockless feet. He’d owned the boots barely two weeks, but they were as ripe as the room. He tugged a New York Mets cap low on his head and stuffed twenty twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. Wells was a Red Sox fan, but he couldn’t wear the cursive B under these circumstances.

“How do I look?”

“The question is not how you look, it’s how you smell.”

“How do I smell?”

“Like a skeezy pothead dumb enough to think you can buy a few ounces of good shit without getting rolled, mon.”

“Exactly right. Let’s go.”

Gaffan was a former Special Ops soldier who had crossed paths with Wells twice before. They’d stayed in loose touch after the second mission. When Wells realized he would need backup for this trip, he’d called Gaffan, who had quit the army to join a private security firm in North Carolina. Gaffan had happily taken a week of vacation to join him.

At the door, Gaffan stopped. “Peashooters tonight?” Wells’s old Makarov and Gaffan’s new Glock were stowed in plastic bags in the air-conditioning vent in the bathroom — along with two suits, one for Wells and one for Gaffan. For the moment, Wells had insisted they leave the weapons. They were supposed to be small-time dope dealers. Guns would raise questions, and being unarmed didn’t bother him. He’d gone naked on lots of missions. Gaffan obviously didn’t enjoy the feeling. He’d asked Wells to reconsider a couple of times.

“‘Son. Don’t take your guns to town.’”

Gaffan tapped his temple. “Johnny Cash. Like it, yo.”

“Keep this up and there’s trouble ahead.”

“The Dead. Showing your age.”

WELLS AND GAFFAN WERE chasing Keith Robinson, a former CIA officer who had sold secrets to China. After his cover was blown, Robinson fled the United States on a fake passport. For three years, he turned to smoke. Agents never found a credit card or phone connected to him. His name didn’t pop at border crossings. The best guess was that Robinson had altered his appearance and was living in a country that had a mostly cash economy — and enough Americans that he wouldn’t stand out. Selling trinkets in Guatemala. Teaching English in Vietnam. Studying at an ashram in India.

The CIA had promised a five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to Robinson’s arrest. The FBI and CIA websites and U.S. embassies displayed his photo and the reward offer. The agency’s best hope was that a tourist would recognize Robinson or that someone who knew him would betray him for the money. Indeed, tipsters had reported spotting Robinson everywhere from Paris to Beijing to Wrigley Field. But none of the sightings panned out.

The investigation had not been closed. It never would be. Robinson’s crimes were too serious for the agency and the FBI to give up on him. Officially, anyway. But after three years without a lead, only four agents were assigned to the case full-time. They spent most days asking local police forces to chase tips. They no longer monitored the phone calls or mail sent to his ex-wife, Janice.

SO THEY NEVER SAW the postcard that dropped through the slot of Janice’s front door in Vienna, Virginia, a few miles from the agency’s headquarters. On the front, a photo of a six-foot-long marijuana cigarette on a beach towel. And four words: “Getting baked in Jamaica.” On the back, a phone number. No signature, no explanation.

Janice hoped the card wasn’t what she thought it was. Suddenly she was thirsty, an itch in her brain as real as a spider bite. She could almost feel the welt. She didn’t have any booze in the house, of course. But she knew every liquor store in Fairfax County. Didn’t have to be hard alcohol. She could have a glass or two of wine. To relax. A bottle. One bottle wouldn’t kill her.

She raised her shirt, looked down at the scar where the George Washington University surgeons had given her a new liver. She’d lost the old one to cirrhosis before she turned forty. Wouldn’t kill her? She might as well put a gun in her mouth. Be quicker and hurt less. She tore the postcard into pieces so small it looked like she’d run it through a shredder. Her hands ached when she was finished. She threw the pieces into the garbage disposal and went to the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting she could find.

THE SECOND CARD CAME three months later. This one had a photo of Bob Marley above the words “Don’t worry, be happy.” A phone number. Janice couldn’t remember if it was the same one that was on the first card.

This time she didn’t panic. She made herself a pot of coffee and sat on her couch and stared at Bob Marley. She couldn’t pretend now. It was Eddie. At the agency he’d gone by Keith, but his middle name was Edward. She’d called him Eddie, and she’d always think of him as Eddie. Anyway, it was him. Had to be.

She’d hoped he was dead. A couple of the FBI guys had told her, he’s dead. You can’t run like the old days. We post his picture on the Web, everybody in the world sees it. If he were still alive, someone would have told us. She never believed them. Eddie was too much of a snake to die. A cockroach. Didn’t the scientists say that cockroaches would outlast everybody? He’d dragged her down inch by inch, drop by drop, and she’d let him.

No. She wouldn’t blame him. After their son Mark died, she’d stopped caring about anything but her own misery. Every day dawned grayer than the one before until the sun stopped rising and the night was eternal. Eddie seeped away in the darkness like smoke. So she wouldn’t blame him for what she’d done to herself. But she wouldn’t forgive him, either. He was a whoremonger and a spy. He’d betrayed his country. Four men, at least, had died for his sins.

She’d felt so stupid the night she found out. How could she not have known? The early-morning walks. The piles of cash. Poor Eddie. Always frustrated with the agency. Stuck in a dead-end job working ounterintelligence when he wanted so much to be in a foreign post. Always so sure that his talents were wasted.

She had to admit it seemed obvious in retrospect.

After Eddie left, the FBI moved her to a hotel, a Marriott in Alexandria. And they made sure that she had plenty of wine in the room. They weren’t even subtle about it. They brought in Costco bags filled with bottles. For a couple days she was grateful. Then, finally, she realized just how far she’d fallen. The FBI was afraid if she stopped drinking she’d go into withdrawal.

A week later, she quit. She woke up and reached for the bottle on the bedside table and thought, I can’t do this anymore. She wasn’t sure at first whether this meant drinking or living, but then some part of her decided she wasn’t ready to give up yet. In a day, she had the shakes so bad that the agents called 911. She wound up in thirty-day rehab, and to everyone’s surprise, including hers, it took.

A month after it ended, she got another surprise. She woke up vomiting, her eyes a pale yellow. A blood test showed she had hepatitis C, a final going-away present from Eddie. The combination of booze and virus had ruined her liver. The doctors told her that if she didn’t get a transplant in a year, she’d be dead. Not that she needed the warning. Her skin was yellow, curdled like milk left out too long.

She didn’t expect a transplant. She didn’t deserve one. She had done this to herself. But the transplant networks had their own rules, and after eight months her name came up. She never asked about the donor. She couldn’t face another ounce of grief.

The transplant took. The immunosuppressant drugs worked. She went to her AA meetings and stayed sober. The months turned into a year, and another. She divorced Eddie in absentia. She started teaching kindergarten again, something she hadn’t done since her son died. She knew her life would never be smooth. He ex-husband was a traitor. She was no one’s idea of a catch, a forty-year-old woman on her second liver. But she imagined she might make a life for herself. It would be simple and lonely, but it would be hers.

Then the postcards came.

ALMOST FROM THE BEGINNING, the FBI agents had told her that she wasn’t a suspect. For that, she was grateful. As the investigation wound down, they asked only that she inform them if Eddie ever reached out. A call, a letter, an e-mail. Even if you’re not sure it’s him. You start getting hang-ups late at night, let us know.

Now she needed to tell them. But she couldn’t face having Eddie back in her life. She couldn’t face a trial, replaying the humiliations of the last decade. The newspapers would portray her as the pitiful ex-wife of a traitor. And they’d be right.

She needed Eddie gone. Forever.

John Wells.

It wasn’t so much that she remembered Wells. She’d never forgotten him. He and another CIA agent, Jennifer Exley, had discovered what Eddie had done. They’d come to the house the night after Eddie disappeared. She hadn’t seen Wells since then. But he’d taken charge, and part of her, despite her despair, because of her despair, had hoped that he would sweep her up and rock her to sleep. Her knight in bulletproof armor. Maybe he could solve this for her.

Ridiculous. God. Ridiculous didn’t even begin to describe her. But Wells had given her his phone number. And she’d never thrown it away. She’d kept it in her wallet all along. Now she reached for it.

WELLS CAME TO SEE her two days later. He was older than she remembered, flecks of gray in his hair, narrow creases around his eyes like a child’s drawing of rays coming off the sun. But he still had his hair. His chin was still square, and his shoulders, too. She’d bet he could still pick her up with one hand. Anyway, this wasn’t a date. She hadn’t told him about the postcard, but he must have known that her call had to do with Eddie.

He stepped inside, looked around as if he were trying to match the furniture in his head with what he saw in the living room. Most everything was new. She’d thrown out the heavy, smoke-sodden couches and replaced them with bright futons from Ikea.

“I redecorated. It’s probably meant for some college student half my age, but I don’t care. I needed the old stuff gone.” She realized she was chattering and made herself stop. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had visited the house.

“It’s nice.”

“I’d offer you a drink, but there’s nothing in the house—”

“I understand—”

She felt herself redden. Of course he understood. “If you’d like some coffee.”

“Coffee’s fine, sure.”

She came back with two cups of coffee. “Milk? Sugar?”

He shook his head, leaned back, waited. She’d hoped for small talk. She wondered if Wells was still with Exley. She’d been certain back then that they were together. And even as she watched her life collapse, she’d found the energy to be jealous.

But she was afraid to ask Wells about his life. She could see he wasn’t much for casual conversation. So she told him about the postcards, how she’d destroyed one and kept the other. She showed the card to Wells. It was creased at the corners. He looked it over carefully, though there wasn’t much to see, just the phone number and the stamp, canceled with a postmark from Kingston.

“You think it’s Eddie?” she said.

“Any idea why he’d do this now? He knows the risk.”

“I think maybe he’s lonely. And bored. And thinks I won’t tell.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Because he believes I’m weak. And that he can manipulate me. And he’s right.”

“You’re not weak. You’re—” Wells broke off. She could see he couldn’t bring himself to say “strong,” the lie was too obvious. “You’re human. But what I don’t understand is why you came to me on this. The FBI—”

“I don’t want them. I want you.”

“I’m retired.”

“Even better. Because there’s something I can’t ask the FBI.”

Wells shook his head, like he already knew what she was going to say.

“When you catch him. I want you to kill him.”

AGAIN, WELLS THOUGHT. VINNY Duto last year and now Janice Robinson. The director of the CIA and the ex-wife of a double agent. They had nothing in common aside from their shared belief that Wells would kill on command. That he would turn another human being into dust, not in battle but methodically and without remorse. Wells had killed before, more times than he wanted to count, but he wasn’t an assassin.

“Not yet,” he said aloud.

“Not yet what?”

“I’d love to be the one to bring him in. But it’s not my place.”

“You don’t understand.” She told him of the humiliations she feared, the loss of privacy. “Anyway, what he did. Not to me. To the country. He doesn’t deserve a trial. He deserves to disappear. Feed him to the sharks.”

An idea flickered in Wells. “Look. If we’re lucky, and Keith”—Wells couldn’t make himself say “Eddie”—“is in a place where I have leverage, what if I get him to come back to the United States on his own? And plead guilty. No trial.”

“I know what you’re saying. If he plea-bargains, he won’t get the death penalty. But I promise he doesn’t care. Knowing Eddie, he thinks that life in prison, no parole, is just as bad. If you catch him, he’ll want a trial. His moment in the limelight, to tell the world what he thinks. He’ll love it. He’ll drag it out as long as he can.”

“There’s things worse than the death penalty.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I guess you’ll have to trust me.”

FROM HIS SUBARU, WELLS called Ellis Shafer, his old boss at the agency. Shafer was an odd little man, jumpy and brilliant. Sometimes Wells thought that he and Shafer were both too independent to fit inside the CIA’s bureaucracy. Yet the evidence proved him wrong. Shafer had survived almost forty years at Langley. And Shafer had stayed on when Wells had quit, even though Vinny Duto had used Shafer as badly as Wells on their last assignment. Wells supposed he understood. Shafer was more cynical, more used to these games. Still, he hadn’t entirely forgiven Shafer.

“Hello, John.”

“You’ll never guess who I just saw.”

“Bill Gates.”

“What? No—”

“Tiger Woods.”

“Stop naming random celebrities.”

“You asked me to guess.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, you said I’d never guess, which is the same thing—”

“Ellis. Please stop. You win.”

“Who was it, then?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. Which will be in about five minutes.”

“Don’t hurt me. I promise I’ll confess to whatever you like.” Shafer hung up before Wells could reply.

THE FRONT DOOR WAS unlocked. “In the kitchen,” Shafer yelled.

The kitchen smelled of burnt coffee. Coffee grounds blotched Shafer’s jeans, and he was wearing a T-shirt that said “World’s Best Grandpa.” He raised his arms to hug Wells.

“No hug. Please. And congratulations, Ellis. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

Wells nodded at the T-shirt.

“Oh. No. There’s no grandchildren. Lisa, you know, she’s at UVA, and she’s got a boyfriend now. It’s kind of reverse psychology. I figure the shirt is so lame, she’ll be sure to take care when she—”

“You found the shirt for ninety-nine cents, didn’t you? At Sam’s Club or something.”

“Maybe.”

“Ellis, you’re getting weird in your old age.”

“You sound like my wife. But it’s good to see you. What’s going on?”

“Sit.” Shafer sat. Wells recounted Janice Robinson’s story, and what she’d asked. By the time he finished, Shafer was leaning forward across the table, his eyes boring into Wells, all the slack gone out of him.

“You know, I hear this, my first thought is you quit,” Shafer said. “You live up in the sticks with your dog and your new girlfriend.”

“She’s not my new girlfriend—”

“Oh, no, no, no. You are some genius at ops, but you couldn’t be more emotionally stunted. Especially about women. And please don’t tell me we’re the same. I’ve been married thirty years. Thirty years, one woman.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about this.”

“How about this, then? Call the FBI and be done with it.”

“Janice Robinson wants me to handle it.”

“I’m sorry. I missed the section of the criminal code that says the traitor’s ex-wife decides who brings him in. Anyway, she doesn’t want you to handle it. She wants you, period. I remember Jenny telling me, back in the day.”

“I have a plan.” Wells explained.

“You understand that’s not a plan. That’s five long-shot bets. Even if you’re right about where he is, what he’s doing, you have to find him. Then you have to get to him. Then you have to hope he doesn’t want to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“He’s a runner. Not a fighter.”

“Runners fight when they’re cornered. I understand why you’re doing this. But nothing’s going to make up for what happened last time. Let the Feebs”—Shafer’s unfriendly term for the FBI—“do their job.”

“Thanks for the advice.” Wells stood to leave.

“You’re going to be as pigheaded as always, do this on your own.”

Wells nodded.

“Then you want some help?”

Another nod.

“All right. But let me make one thing clear. I’m not doing this because I think I owe you, I should have quit with you, whatever. I’m doing it so you don’t blow it.”

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, JANICE led Wells to her kitchen. The counter was strewn with red horses, purple cows, yellow sheep, a menagerie of construction paper.

“Decorating?”

She laughed, the sound sweeter than Wells expected. “For my kindergarteners.”

“You like teaching?”

“You probably know this, it must be in a file. But Eddie wanted another baby. After our son died. I couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t. Maybe things would have been different if I…” She trailed off.

“Guys like your husband, they find excuses to do what they want. And if they can’t find one, they just make it up.”

Janice shrugged: I don’t believe you, but I won’t argue. “Anyway, the teaching, it’s D.C., Northeast, a charter school. These kids, they don’t have two nickels to rub together. You see it in the winter, their shoes, these cheap sneakers that soak through if there’s any rain. Much less snow. So I’m trying to show them the world cares about them, even a little bit. Maybe it means something to them. Probably not, but maybe. That’s a long way of saying yes, I like it, John. You don’t mind if I call you John?”

“Of course not.” Wells touched Janice’s arm and then realized he shouldn’t have. Her face lit like a winning slot machine. “You understand what I want you to do?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“It’s the only way. Otherwise, I have to tell the FBI.”

“All right.”

“Good. So tomorrow, somebody’s gonna put a tap and trace on your phone. Keith won’t know it’s there.” Shafer had called in a favor he was owed from an engineer who used to work at NSA. “Tomorrow night, you call him. Sooner or later, he’ll call you back. Don’t ask him where he is. Unless he brings up a visit, don’t mention it.”

“Don’t push.”

“Right. You’ll make him nervous. Don’t be too friendly. Don’t forgive him. Don’t let him think you’re giving in too easily. Deep down he knows this call is a bad idea. You’ve got to make him focus on you instead of that.”

Janice turned away from Wells and opened the kitchen faucet all the way but held her glass a foot above the spout, as if somehow the water could defy gravity.

“He loved me,” she whispered to the window, her voice barely audible above the water sloshing down the drain. “It sounds stupid, but it’s true.”

“I believe you.”

“God. I hope you catch him.”

THE NEXT NIGHT, WITH Wells sitting beside her on her couch, Janice made the call, straight to voicemail. “Eddie. Is that you? I got your cards. Call me.”

Wells figured Robinson would wait weeks to call back. If he ever did. But a few minutes later, with Wells still in the house, the phone rang. Janice grabbed it. “Hello.”

Through the receiver, slow, steady breaths.

“Eddie. Is that you?” She waited. “Why did you send the cards, Eddie?”

“Are you okay, Jan?” His voice was raspy and deep.

“I had a liver transplant.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Go to hell, Eddie.” She slammed down the phone before Wells could stop her and slumped into Wells’s chest. They sat silently for a few minutes as Wells wondered why he’d ever trusted Janice.

“He’s never calling back, is he?” Janice finally said.

“I don’t know.” The phone rang again. Janice reached for the phone, but Wells put a hand on the receiver before she could answer.

“Like I said, he’s definitely calling back. Keep cool. Promise?”

She nodded. He let go of the receiver, and she picked up.

“I deserved that.”

“Why are you calling me?” Her southern twang thickened when she talked to Robinson.

“I wanted to talk.”

“That simple. Like you’ve been away on business instead of — I don’t even know how to describe it—”

“I miss you, Jan. It’s hard out here.” He sounded close to tears. Wells hadn’t understood until now that in addition to everything else, Robinson was simply a spoiled brat.

“Are you sick?”

“Been better. But I have a fine doctor taking care of me. Cuban. Viva Fidel. I’m gonna live forever. I’m gonna learn how to fly.”

“You need to turn yourself in.”

A hollow laugh from the other end. “Not a good idea.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk. To somebody who knows me.”

“I don’t know you. The day they came to the house, I realized that.”

Beside Janice, Wells twisted his hands: Steer the conversation if you can. “I hope you’re doing something good now, Eddie. Making up for what you did.”

Another laugh. “Could say I’m doing a little community service. Helping youngsters in need. I’ve got to go, okay?”

“Tell me how to get hold of you.”

“I’ll get hold of you.”

“Eddie. Are you still in Jamaica? Kingston?” Wells shook his head no, but he was too late.

“Are they there? On the call?”

“No, it’s just me. I swear.”

“Swear on Mark’s grave.”

She looked at Wells. He nodded.

“Don’t make me do that.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Wells wasn’t sure whether she was talking to him or to Robinson.

“Do it.”

“God, Eddie. I swear. It’s just me.” Tears peeped from under her eyelids.

“Yes. I’m in Jamaica. Montego Bay. I’ll call you again.” Click.

Janice swung at Wells, her fist glancing off his chest.

“You shouldn’t have made me say that.”

Wells was all out of compassion. Her husband was about the most miserable human being alive. She’d just had to lie on her dead son’s grave. He was sorry for her. But that didn’t mean he was responsible for her.

“You wanted him? We’ll catch him now. Between the trace and what he told you, we’ll have enough. If he reaches out again, let me know.”

She shrank against the couch. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please don’t go.”

Wells walked out. He wanted to find a fight, make someone bleed. Instead he got into his Subaru and peeled away, promising himself that Keith Edward Robinson would regret sending those postcards.

SEVEN HOURS AND FIVE hundred thirty miles later, Wells turned off I-91 at Boltonville, Vermont. He had sped through the night Cannonball Run—style. Normally, driving soothed his anger, but tonight he gained no relief from the empty asphalt.

Long ago, in Afghanistan, Wells had converted to Islam. But his faith came and went, pulling away just when he thought he’d mastered it. Of course, no one could master faith. God always hovered around the next curve, the next, the next. The quest to find Him had to be its own reward. Wells understood that much, if nothing more. But tonight the search felt lonelier than ever. He hadn’t seen another vehicle for more than half an hour. As though he were the last man alive.

He swung right onto Route 302, drove through a little town called Wells River — no relation. Past a shuttered gas station and an empty general store and over a low bridge into New Hampshire. Then Woodsville, a metropolis by the standards of the North Country, with a hospital and a bank and a thousand people clustered in steep-sided wooden houses against the winters. Wells gunned the engine to leave the town behind.

A few miles on, he swung right, southeast on Route 112, the Kancamagus Highway, impassible in the winter. He was exhausted and driving too fast now, through old forests of fir and pine, the Subaru a blur in the night, sticking low to the road. The next curve, and the next. Wells felt his eyelids slipping. In the dark now, in the night, he began to murmur through pursed lips the shahada, the essential Muslim creed: There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger. Finally he emerged into the open plain of Conway, a town too quaint for its own good, and turned left toward North Conway.

Anne lived in a farmhouse at the edge of town, run-down and sweet, with maple plank floors and an iron stove in the kitchen. Wells was helping her restore it, painting, sanding the floors, even putting in new sinks — a job that had almost gone disastrously wrong. The place needed new wiring and a new roof, and she couldn’t afford the fixes on a cop’s pay. Wells’s salary had piled up during his years undercover. He wasn’t sure whether he should offer to pay, if he’d be presuming too much.

He slipped the Subaru into the garage beside the house and padded into the kitchen through the unlocked back door. Tonka, his dog, a German shepherd mutt, trotted up to greet him, her big tail wagging wildly. She put her paws on him, buried her head in his chest. He’d bought jerky at the gas station, and he fed it to her strip by strip.

“John?”

Anne’s bedroom was upstairs. She slept sideways across the bed, stretched like a cat under a down comforter. He slipped under the blankets and hugged her warm, sleepy body and kissed her slowly.

“Flannel pajamas. Sexy.” He tried to reach under them, but she twisted away. “You stink of the road. Brush your teeth and come back. I’m not going anywhere.”

And she wasn’t.

An hour later, she lay beside him, touching the scar on his upper arm, a knuckle-sized knot from a bullet he’d taken long before. She rolled the dead flesh between her fingers like a marble. “Does it ache?”

“No.”

She pinched it. “Does it now?”

“I thought we were supposed to be relaxing.”

“You never struck me as the cuddling type.”

He closed his eyes, and she rubbed his face, tracing slow circles over his cheeks. In seconds he fell into a doze, imagining an endless narrow highway. But he woke to find her hand sliding down his stomach.

“Really? Again?”

“If you can handle it.”

“Easy for you to say. I do all the work and you get all the credit.”

“Is that so?” She lifted her hand, tweaked the tip of his nose.

Wells turned sideways so they were face-to-face. “Maybe not always.”

Again she dropped her arm. He was eight inches taller than she was, and she had to scoot halfway under the blanket to follow her hand. “I’m looking for something.” Her hand was on his stomach now.

“You found it.”

“That’s your belly button.”

He leaned down, and their mouths met.

“There it is.” She paused. “You’re worn out. But I can fix that.”

“We’ll see. Maybe… Yes. Yes, you can.”

LATER SHE NESTLED AGAINST him, her breathing soft and steady.

“You’ve got a mission coming. An operation. Whatever you call it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I saw it when you came in. In your shoulders. Want to tell me?”

“It’s old business.” He waited. “Are you mad I can’t tell you?”

“John. Please. Do you want me to say I am, so you have an excuse to leave? You don’t need an excuse.”

He was silent. Then, finally: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s like you want to reinvent yourself but you know there’s no point in trying, because you know that you can only be who you already are.”

“Isn’t that the same for everyone?”

“Most of us have some give. You’re cut from rock.”

“Let’s go to sleep.”

“You want to spend your life with me here, you will. If not, you won’t. Just don’t ask me to fall in love with you while you’re deciding. I have to protect myself, too.”

He closed his eyes. He felt that somehow she was accusing him, though he wasn’t sure of what. Anyway, everything she said was true.

He slept heavily and without dreams. When he woke, she was gone. She worked the afternoon shift. He padded downstairs to find that she’d left coffee and a tray of freshly baked biscuits. He always wound up with women kinder than he deserved.

Wells drank the coffee as he considered his next move. He was guessing that Robinson dealt drugs small-time. He’d be handy to the local dealers. As a white face, he’d be less likely to frighten tourists who wanted to score.

Wells wondered how long Robinson had been playing this game, and why. Maybe he’d drunk or smoked though his cash and was supporting his habits by dealing. Maybe he had the insane idea that if he put together a big enough nut, he could get back to the United States. Maybe he was hoping to relive the thrills he’d had as a mole. Even he might not know the answer. Guys who listed pros and cons on a yellow pad didn’t wind up as double agents.

Now that Robinson had given up his best defense, his invisibility, Wells figured that finding him shouldn’t be too difficult. Montego Bay was only so large. Still, Wells wanted backup for the mission, a face that Robinson wouldn’t recognize. He thumbed through his phone, found Gaffan’s number.

MONTEGO BAY WAS JAMAICA’S second-largest city, the hub of the tourist trade. From November to April, cruise ships disgorged clumps of sunburned Americans to buy T-shirts and rum at a heavily policed mall near the port. They were back on board by nightfall to head to the Bahamas or Puerto Rico.

Montego also had a busy international airport. Many wealthier visitors saw the city only on their way to the fancy all-inclusive resorts outside of town. But younger tourists on tighter budgets often stayed in Montego itself, in an area south of the airport called the Hip Strip, a name that immediately proclaimed a trying-too-hard uncoolness. Centered around Gloucester Avenue, the Hip Strip mixed hotels and clubs with shops selling overpriced bongs and bead necklaces. The hotel rooms facing Gloucester were useful for heavy partiers or heavy sleepers only. Until early morning, reggae and rap boomed from beat-up Chevy Caprices, the old square ones, and Toyota RAV4s with tinted windows. Outside the clubs, barkers promised drink specials and Bob Marley cover bands. Wells and Gaffan had rented a room just off Gloucester. Wells figured they would cruise the clubs until they ran across Robinson.

But catching Robinson had proven more difficult than Wells had hoped. Until he arrived, he hadn’t understood the scope of the drug trade in Jamaica. Pot and other drugs were technically illegal on the island, but at every corner on Gloucester, dreadlocked men cooed, “Smoke. Spliff. Ganja, man. Purple Haze.” After a while, the words blended into background noise. “Spliffsmokeganjaman.” The Jamaican national anthem.

The Montego Bay cops were around, too, walking the avenue. As far as Wells could tell, they weren’t trying to stop the trade. Their presence was intentionally obvious, giving the dealers plenty of warning. The only people they caught were tourists too stupid or high to hide their smoking. Wells had seen an arrest, a barely disguised shakedown. A young woman — mid-twenties, maybe — passed a tiny joint to her husband when the cops approached. “Come here,” one of the cops said. The couple wore narrow wedding rings of bright, cheap gold. “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to disrespect your country.”

The lead cop pulled the man into an alley. The other cops stood in the street around the woman. “You know, it’s the first time I ever smoked pot,” she mumbled. “I don’t even feel anything. Just thirsty.”

Wells watched from a shop across the street, riffling through T-shirts that read “Life’s a Beach in Jamaica” and “No Shirt. No Shoes. No Problem.” A couple minutes later, the guy emerged from the alley, an unhappy smile plastered on his face.

The cop in charge seemed satisfied. He patted the husband. “Enjoy your trip, mon. And be careful.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll do that.” The cops disappeared. The husband pulled out his wallet, cheap black Velcro, and opened it wide. Empty. “Two hundred dollars. Assholes,” he said.

“You said it would be okay,” his wife said.

“It could have been worse.”

A philosophy of sorts, Wells figured. Then the couple disappeared, poorer and wiser. The shakedown had happened the second day, when Wells still hoped to find Robinson on the street. But Robinson was no doubt working carefully, popping up for a few days and then retreating. And the sheer volume of the drug trade meant that Wells and Gaffan couldn’t simply hope to bump into him. They would have to search him out, a more dangerous proposition.

NOW WELLS TUCKED HIS wallet, thick with twenties, into his shorts and followed Gaffan out of their hotel room. “Where do we start tonight?”

“Margaritaville.” Part of Jimmy Buffett’s empire, which stretched over Florida and the Caribbean like an oversized beach umbrella. The Montego Bay outpost featured water trampolines and a one-hundredtwenty-foot waterslide that dropped riders into the Caribbean. Each night it filled with tourists who would prefer to visit another country without seeing anything outside their comfort zone, exactly the type of unimaginative dopers who wanted to score from white dealers.

The night before at Margaritaville, Wells had watched a guy in a tropical shirt work the room. He sat with a table of frat boys for ten minutes before he and one of the guys got up. They came back five minutes later, the frat boy rubbing his nose, his face flushed. The coke must have been pretty good. An hour or so later, the dealer pulled the same trick with another table. But the dealer couldn’t have been Robinson. He had blond hair and was a decade too young.

Margaritaville was on the southern end of Gloucester Avenue, separated from the street by high walls. Wells and Gaffan paid their cover and walked past three bouncers, each bigger than the next. They gave Wells a not-very-friendly look, letting him know that his shorts and especially his boots barely passed muster.

“Welcome to the islands,” Gaffan said. “Nicest people on earth. Want a beer?”

“Red Stripe.”

The inside of the bar was empty. The drinkers had migrated to the decks over the bay, getting ready for another subtropical sunset. The sun had turned the sky a perfect Crayola red, and a satisfied hum ran though the crowd, as though the world had been created solely for its amusement. The dealer stood in the corner, in a different tropical shirt today, his hair pulled into a neat ponytail. Wells edged next to him.

“Nice day,” Wells said.

“They all are this time of year.”

“Peak season. Business must be good.”

The dealer shook his head.

“I saw you last night.”

“Looking for something?”

“I might be.”

“I’m not a mind reader. Ask away.”

“It’s more a someone than a something.”

“That’s gonna be impossible. Something, difficult. Someone, impossible.”

“You don’t even know who.”

The dealer pulled away from the rail, turned to face Wells. He looked like a surfer, tall and lanky, with a craggy, suntanned face. He lifted his sunglasses to reveal striking blue eyes.

“What I know is that you and your bud, you couldn’t look more like cops if you tried. Him especially.”

Gaffan walked toward them, holding two Red Stripes. Wells raised a hand to stop him. “We’re not cops.”

“You don’t fit, see. There’s several kinds of doper tourists. The frat boys, bachelor-party types, they just wanna buy some weed, coke, not get ripped off too badly. You’re too old to be frat boys. The old heads, retired hippie dippers, they were in Jamaica back in the day, man, back in the day. Probably once for about a week, but they still talk about it. Now they have kids and they came on a cruise, but they want to get high for old times’ sake. That definitely is not you.”

“True.”

“Then you have the true potheads, the guys who subscribe to High Times and argue on message boards about Purple Skunk versus Northern Lights. Amateur scientists. At least they would be if they weren’t so damned high all the time. They come down here two or three at a time. Mostly they don’t look like you, they’re fatter and their eyes are half closed. But let’s say you two have kept yourself up better than most. Except they don’t hang out here. They go straight to Orange Hill, like wine connoisseurs in Napa doing taste tests. And believe me, they’re equally annoying. So what are you, then? You look like cops. Or DEA, but why the hell would the DEA be buying ounces on the Hip Strip?”

“We’re not DEA. We’re not cops. We’re looking for someone. Nobody fancy. Nobody like Dudus”—Christopher Coke, a dealer who had run an infamous gang with the unlikely name of the Shower Posse.

“That’s good. Seeing as he’s in Kingston”—the Jamaican capital. “And seeing as you wouldn’t get within a mile of him. Let me tell you about Jamaica. Seventeen hundred murders reported last year, not counting a couple hundred bodies that never turn up. Dumped in de sea to feed de fishees, mon. Four times as many murders as New York City, and New York has three times as many people as Jamaica.”

The dealer stopped talking as a woman splashed down the waterslide and into the bay with a pleased scream. “Watch this. Her top’s going to come off. Yep.”

Shouts of “Tits!” erupted from the deck. “Tits! Tits! Tits!” The woman happily raised her polka-dotted bikini in the air as the crowd cheered.

“The whole country is a warehouse for coke and pot. From here you go west to New Orleans, east to the Bahamas and Florida. The politicians are owned by the gangs lock, stock, and barrel. They don’t even try to hide it. The cops just play along. Don’t let the dreads and the Marley songs fool you. This place is Haiti with better beaches.”

“So how do you get by?” Wells found himself intrigued.

“These frat boys? They’d pay by credit card if they could. They like a friendly face. And by friendly I mean white.”

“And you keep the locals happy.”

“I take care of the people who take care of me. In and out of this bar. I understand my place in the ecosystem. I don’t have aspirations. And understand, please, that whether it’s white or green, it’s so pure that I can step on it two, three times and still make my customers happy. In fact, I have to, or they’d wind up OD’ing. And trust me, you don’t want to see the inside of a Jamaican hospital, any more than a Jamaican jail.”

Around them the deck was filling up.

“It’s getting busy,” the dealer said. “I appreciate the chance to chat, but I gotta go.”

“How do we prove we’re not cops? Get high with you?”

“I believe you. You’re not cops. But you’re trouble. Whatever you want, it’s trouble.”

The sun touched the edge of the horizon. A long collective sigh went up from the crowd beside them.

“Gonna be a beautiful night,” the dealer said. “Do me a favor. Get lost. I see you and your boy hanging around, I’m gonna talk to my friends. You don’t want that. These dudes, they won’t care even if you do have a badge. They do sick stuff when they’re stoned. Most people get relaxed when they smoke, but these guys, they just dissociate. They won’t even hear you screaming.”

“We’ll be going, then.”

The dealer nodded. Two minutes later, Wells and Gaffan were on the street.

“So? He know where Robinson is?”

“He didn’t say, but I have a feeling he might.”

“And he’ll help us?”

“He doesn’t think so. But we’re gonna change his mind.”

CHAPTER 2

THE SIRENS FROM THE STREET COULDN’T HIDE THE WOMEN SCREAMing from inside the bar, their high voices begging in a language Omar couldn’t understand. What had he done? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He was in a tunnel with death on both ends, and the only way out was the rifle in his hand.

Fakir peeked through the front door, stepped inside, fired a blind burst to keep the troublemakers down. He hefted a grenade, pulled its pin, flipped the handle. “Wahid, ithnain—” he said. One, two—

He tossed the grenade high and deep, aiming at the back edge of the bar. It spun end over end and disappeared. The explosion came a half-second later, and the screams a half-second after that, not even words, pure animal keening. Another wave of shooting began outside, the quick snap of pistols against the rattle of AKs. Amir and Hamoud defending their posts. “Time to go in,” Fakir said. “Finish this.”

Omar’s watch read 12:16. They’d walked into the corridor at 12:13. All this had taken just three minutes.

ROBBY PEEKED DOWN FROM the balcony. He could hear again, a little. Outside, an amplified voice shouted in Arabic. The police telling the jihadis to surrender, Robby figured. Good luck with that. The AKs outside were still firing, three-shot bursts, the SOBs conserving their ammo while the ones in here killed everyone who was left. In London the police wouldn’t have wasted any time; they would have mounted up and attacked. But these Bahraini cops would take ten or fifteen minutes. Too long.

Two men stepped into the bar, holding AKs. They were young, as young as he had been when he joined the squaddies. But old enough to step in here and kill. The one who’d come in first was bigger and seemed to be in charge. He stepped behind the bar, fired a burst.

Robby squirmed back, pushed himself to his knees. The two men who’d helped him in sat with their backs to the wall, their feet pressed against the table that was barricading the stairs. “They’re going to kill everyone down there,” Robby said.

“The police are here,” the man closer to Robby said. He had a faint French accent. “We should wait. The ones down there don’t notice us.”

Shouts came from downstairs as the jihadis herded people toward the bar’s back corner, almost directly below the balcony. Robby didn’t know why no one downstairs was fighting back. He supposed people would do anything for a few extra seconds.

“They’re going to put them in the corner, shoot them all,” Robby said. “Then come up here. We’re gonna die, let’s die fighting.”

“You have an idea?” the Frenchman said.

Robby explained.

“Merde. Not much of a plan.”

“It’s a start.”

BODIES WERE SLUMPED UNDER chairs, against walls, huddled together behind the bar. At least thirty people were dead. The others couldn’t possibly think Fakir had something different in store for them. Still, they obeyed.

Fakir grabbed a wounded woman by the leg, pulled her from under a table. “Move!” he yelled. She crawled for the corner. Omar could almost smell his bloodlust. Fakir was an animal now, not even an animal. And what am I, then?

“Enough, brother. It’s enough.”

“No. All of them.”

Outside, an amplified voice shouted: “Drop your weapons. You are surrounded by the Bahrain Civil Defence Force. Drop your weapons. This is your final warning.”

A few AK shots stuttered from the street outside. Then a single rifle shot, close and loud, cracked the night. The AK stopped.

“Let us out,” a man in the corner shouted. “It’s over.”

“Quiet—” Fakir yelled.

THE TABLE SMASHED HIS skull wide open.

Omar saw it a quarter-second before it hit, a blocky blur of heavy, round wood, its legs facing up. It caught Fakir’s head with a sick crunch. His neck snapped forward and he collapsed, his bulky body falling sideways like a curtain.

For a moment, the people huddled in the corner didn’t move, as though they, like Omar, did not believe their own eyes. Then a man shouted something in English and ran for the door. And somehow despite his doubts, Omar didn’t hesitate. He turned toward the men and women in the corner and tugged at the AK’s trigger—

Just as Robby Duke, all two hundred pounds of him, landed on him, Robby jumping from the balcony with his arms spread wide, berserk from shrapnel and blood loss and everything he’d seen. He crashed into Omar, smashing him onto the bar’s wooden floor. The AK came loose from Omar’s hand and bounced sideways, firing two shots into the ceiling before the trigger came loose. Omar frothed at the mouth, concussed and barely conscious.

Robby pushed himself to all fours and then his feet and looked over at what was left of Josephine the flight attendant. He very carefully put his boot on Omar’s neck, feeling the bones of Omar’s larynx under his heel. “We’re not all the same,” Josephine had said, and sure as death she’d been right. Omar mumbled something Robby didn’t understand and wrapped a weak hand around Robby’s ankle, and a woman yelled “Don’t,” and Robby smiled and put all his weight into his heel. Omar kicked against the floor and a terrible wet half-gasp slipped out of his mouth as he tried to breathe through the useless blocked straw of his crushed windpipe, until he finally gave up and died.

Then Robby found a chair and sat and wiped the spit off the side of his boot. Most of the televisions had been destroyed in the attack, but a couple still played, and Robby tilted his head to watch Man City and the Spurs until the cops finally showed. He knew he shouldn’t have killed the Arab, but he didn’t have the strength to care. He wondered vaguely if he’d go to jail.

But of course the world didn’t see it that way. He was a hero, Robby Duke. He’d saved at least twenty lives and killed a terrorist. In the days to come, the BBC and The Sun and everyone else would call him a hero. And as soon as the doctors let him out of the hospital, he said no to all the interview requests and the free trips to London and went straight back to work. Robby didn’t thank God for much anymore, but he was grateful to be able to work with kids who had no idea who he was or what he’d done.

YET EVEN WITH ROBBY’S last-minute valor, Omar and his team did terrible damage. The Bahraini police found the bar so covered in blood and brains that they asked the Fifth Fleet to send a hazardousmaterials response team to sterilize it. Forty-one people were killed that night, not counting the four attackers. Six more died over the next two weeks. And the attack on JJ’s wasn’t even the deadliest terrorist attack on the Arabian peninsula that night. In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, a car bomb tore off the front of the Hotel Al Khozama, killing forty-nine people. And just off Qatar, fifty miles east of Bahrain, a speedboat filled with explosives blew itself up beside a supertanker loaded with millions of barrels of Saudi crude. Fortunately, the attack failed to ignite the oil. But it killed four sailors, breached the tanker’s double hull, and spilled one hundred fifty thousand barrels of crude into the Gulf.

Even before the sun rose on Saudi Arabia the next morning, a claim of responsibility arrived at Al Jazeera and CNN from a previously unknown group — the Ansar al-Islam, the Army of Islam. The group’s spokesman wore a mask and gloves, and stood before a black flag painted with the Islamic creed.

“Our warriors protest the endless corruption of King Abdullah,” he said in Arabic. “He and his supporters live as infidels. They steal the treasure that Allah has given all Muslims. They desecrate the Holy Kaaba”—the cube-shaped building inside the Grand Mosque in Mecca that served as the center for Muslim prayer. “We reject them. And make no mistake. We will never stop fighting until we drive them from these sacred lands.”

CHAPTER 3

WELLS AND GAFFAN SPENT TWO DAYS TRAILING THE DEALER FROM Margaritaville. They didn’t know his name, so they were calling him Marley. He drove a black Audi A4 with tinted windows and a roof rack for surfboards. He lived in a gated community in the hills east of Montego, near the Ritz-Carlton and other four-hundred-dollar-a-night resorts. The development, called Paradise East, was still under construction, half its lots empty. An eight-foot brick wall, landscaped with ivy and topped with razor wire, surrounded the property. Two security guards patrolled around the clock with German shepherds.

Given his line of work, Marley had a remarkably stable life. He followed the same routine both days. He surfed in the mornings, had lunch at home. At around three p.m., he drove to Margaritaville and disappeared into the club, emerging at about two a.m. Going home, he headed east on the A1. After about twenty miles, he turned right onto an unmarked road that led up a hill to the gatehouse for Paradise East.

Like the development, the road was unfinished. The first quarter and the last quarter were graded and paved. But the middle stretch was a mix of gravel and red clay. Trees hemmed it in on both sides, leaving it barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was a carjacker’s dream.

Wells intended to take advantage.

WELLS HAD OUTLINED HIS plan in their hotel room that afternoon. When he finished, Gaffan shook his head. “What if somebody else comes up the road?”

“Hasn’t been a problem the last two nights.” The fancy neighborhoods outside Montego shut down after midnight. “And it won’t get loud if we do it right.”

“We don’t know if this guy knows Robinson.”

“He does. He’s smart, and he’s been around awhile.”

“We don’t even know his real name.”

“Obviously you’re not sold. It’s all right. I can do it myself.”

“I’m thinking out loud, is all.”

“We can’t touch him in Margaritaville. His house could work, but if something goes wrong we’re stuck inside the compound.”

“What about the other thing? The badges.”

“I’d rather keep that in reserve. It’s high-profile, and we can only do it once.”

“We could keep working the town, find Robinson ourselves.”

Wells felt his temper surge. Gaffan was younger than he was, less experienced. Gaffan had no right to question his judgment. Was this a glimpse of the future? These ops were a young man’s game, and Wells was more middle-aged than young. He wasn’t old, not yet, and he was in great shape, but the Gaffans of the world would keep coming. Their suggestions would get louder, until they turned into orders. And eventually he would lose the fight. An old lion forced to give up his territory. The young had no idea how relentless they were.

“How old are you, Brett?”

“Thirty-three. I know you have about a thousand times as much experience as I do. I’m trying to help, John. Work through the options. Didn’t mean to piss you off.”

Wells was embarrassed. He was fighting with himself, not with Gaffan. He hoped Gaffan didn’t know why he had overreacted. “I’m used to making my own mistakes, is all,” he said. “And yeah, we can keep cruising the bars, looking for Robinson. But now this dealer has us made. Sooner or later, he’s going to see us. I’m always in favor of moving, holding the initiative. Not saying it’s my way or the highway—”

“Yeah, you are—”

Wells smiled. “Maybe I am.”

“We could always call the FBI in.”

Wells didn’t feel like explaining what had happened in the 673 case, how Vinny Duto had made a fool of him for his puny efforts to follow the rules. “No.”

“Then I’m done arguing. Let’s go get us a couple of cars. And whatever else we need.”

AT 2:15 A.M., WITH a light rain falling, Marley’s Audi rolled past the Esso station on the A1. Wells was hidden in a rented Econoline van with tinted windows. He pulled onto the road and called Gaffan, who was five miles ahead, on a disposable phone.

“I got him. He’s alone. Giving him plenty of leash.”

Ahead, the Audi pulled away, its red taillights disappearing into the mist. Wells stayed back. No reason to make Marley nervous, especially since Wells had slapped a GPS tracker with a radio transmitter on the Audi four hours before.

HALFWAY UP THE NAMELESS road that led to the Paradise East guardhouse, Gaffan sat in a dented Daewoo minibus that he’d stolen from a McDonald’s parking lot four hours before. The Daewoo had seen better days. Its odometer read 243,538, and even in kilometers, that was a long way on Jamaican roads. It was high-sided and square, and had a gash along the left side painted over in beige paint that didn’t match the original. It had a manual transmission whose handle was covered with a worn tennis ball. It reeked of stale pot even with the windows open.

Gaffan still didn’t understand why Wells was insisting on catching Keith Robinson without help. He didn’t understand much about Wells, what drove him. But he trusted Wells. Wells had been everywhere and done everything. Gaffan had been with him the night he’d found the nuke.

Between the two of them, they should be able to handle this guy.

Gaffan saw the Audi’s lights moving up the side of the hill, a Cheshire cat smiling in the dark. The sedan itself remained invisible, its black bulk hidden under the trees. Gaffan put the bus in gear, rolled slowly down the hill, the rosewood and mahoe arching overhead. The Audi came up at him. Behind them, Gaffan saw Wells turning off the A1, maybe thirty seconds behind.

Gaffan heard the Audi grinding up dirt and rock from the unfinished road. Then, at last, he saw the car. The Audi blasted its brights at him, honked, slowed but didn’t stop. It swung left, away from the centerline, to make room to pass. In Jamaica, like Britain, cars drove on the left.

Gaffan flipped on his own brights, swung left, but not enough to allow the Audi by, trying to buy enough time for Wells to close the trap on Marley. He didn’t want to be too obvious about what he was doing, not yet. Gaffan was wearing a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. He raised a hand as if he were shielding his eyes from the Audi’s brights. In reality, he was hiding his face to keep Marley from recognizing him.

The Audi stopped, honked again. Gaffan put the Daewoo in reverse, backed up, as if trying to make more room. Marley edged forward.

Then Gaffan saw Marley’s eyes open wide in surprise and recognition. Marley reached under his seat. Going for a pistol, Gaffan figured. Gaffan put the bus into gear, floored the gas, steamed downhill. The Daewoo jumped ahead, smashed into the Audi, obliterating the interlocking rings on the front of the grille. The whine of tearing metal and the high clink of breaking glass echoed through the rain. Birds poured out of the oaks beside the road and disappeared into the night. Gaffan was thrown against his seat belt. In the Audi, a half-dozen airbags exploded, the white balloons filling the sedan, bouncing Marley harder than the collision had. The steering wheel airbag covered his face like a man-eating pillow. He wrenched back his head to free himself.

Gaffan floored the minibus’s engine. The bus ground into the Audi, pushing it backward down the hill. The steering wheel’s airbag deflated. Again Marley reached down below his seat. Gaffan laid off the gas, slammed the bus into reverse. Metal shrieked, tore, as the minibus and the Audi separated. Gaffan tapped the gas, backing up as Marley came up with a pistol. Gaffan ducked low as Marley fired blindly through his windshield, the shots high and wild, echoing in the night, scaring up more birds. One flew directly at Gaffan, its breast a shocking iridescent green. A foot from the windshield, it pulled up and disappeared over the minibus. Gaffan raised his head and chanced a peek at the Audi and saw that Marley was scrambling for his seat belt, which seemed to be stuck.

And Wells’s van appeared.

WELLS HAD HEARD THE crash not long after he turned off the A1. So had half of Jamaica, probably. Gaffan was supposed to block Marley from getting by for long enough to let Wells get behind him. But Marley had spotted the trap too soon. Wells bounced up the hill, the Econoline sliding sideways on the mud. He took a right too fast and nearly cracked a tree but feathered the gas and the brake at the same time and kept the van on the road.

Now Wells saw the Daewoo’s headlights. He was one turn away when the shots started, four in a row, a medium-sized pistol. Finally, too late, Wells skidded around a corner and saw the Audi stopped in the middle of the road, its driver’s door opening. The sedan’s hood was crumpled, and the minibus looked worse. Daewoos were not exactly built to military specs.

Twenty feet away now. Wells stopped the van, jumped out, ran for the car. Marley pushed open his door and stumbled out, nearly falling. Red dirt smeared his Hawaiian shirt. He focused on the minibus and didn’t see Wells. He raised the pistol in his right hand, taking careful aim at the Daewoo’s windshield—

Wells tackled him, a linebacker drilling a quarterback from the blindside, a clean shoulder-to-shoulder hit that arched Marley’s spine. The gun clattered from his hand and skittered into the drainage ditch. Wells kept coming, driving his legs, finishing the hit, pushing Marley face-first into the mud of the road. Marley grunted and then cursed wildly, shouting into the night. Wells grabbed a hank of his long blond hair and jammed his face into the road to choke the fight out of him.

Gaffan jumped out of the bus and piled on, putting a knee in Marley’s back. Together they cuffed his arms and his legs. They turned him over, and Wells slapped a piece of duct tape on his mouth. They picked him up and ignored his wriggling and tossed him in the Econoline’s cargo area and slammed the doors.

“What about the van?”

“Let the cops figure it out.”

Wells reversed down the hill until the road widened enough for him to make a U-turn. He didn’t hear sirens. The incompetence of the Jamaican police might save them yet.

AT THE BOTTOM OF the hill, Wells turned right, east, away from Montego. After Rock Brae, the next town, the road opened into low green fields. A billboard promised they were looking at the future home of the Marriott White Bay. Wells pulled over and grabbed a baton and leather gloves from his kit. He nodded for Gaffan to drive and slipped into the back. When they were moving again, he tore the duct tape off Marley’s mouth, taking a piece of Marley’s lips with it.

“What’s your name?”

“You assholes are dead,” Marley said. “You have no idea. I’ll kill you.”

“No one’s killing anyone.”

“Slice you up.”

“We want to have a conversation, that’s all.”

“You think you’re hitting a coke house? Snap off a couple hundred keys and no one’s going to notice? You are as stupid as they come.”

Wells didn’t enjoy beating prisoners, but he had to take some of the fight out of this one. He smashed an elbow into the side of Marley’s skull, the soft spot high on the temple. The force of the contact ran up Wells’s arm into his shoulder. Marley’s head snapped sideways. But when he opened his eyes, Wells saw that he hadn’t given up.

“Your name.”

“Ridge. Real name’s Bruce. But everyone calls me Ridge. Since high school. Ask me what you need to ask. I can answer without getting myself killed, I will.”

Wells sat Ridge against the side of the van and offered him three photos of Keith Robinson. The first was a blown-up version of Robinson’s CIA badge. The second and third were computer-generated versions, predictions of what Robinson might look like now with long hair — or no hair.

“Mind if I ask why you want him?”

“Yeah,” Gaffan said from the front of the van. “We do.”

“Robin speaks,” Ridge said.

“Focus,” Wells said. “He might have different hair. Put on weight.”

“Lemme see the third one.” Ridge looked for a while. “There’s one guy, it might be him. He’s maybe fifty pounds heavier.”

“He’s in your business?”

“Works a couple places on the east side. Nowhere too fancy. We buy from some of the same people. He’s got a kid who helps him. I’m not saying it’s him. Just that it could be.”

“He have a name?”

“He goes by Mark. I think.”

Mark. Keith Robinson’s dead son. Robinson’s life had gone off the rails when his son died. Would he be crazy enough to have taken his son’s name as an alias? Wells suspected the answer was yes.

“Is he American?”

“I think so.”

“Where can we find him?”

“I’m telling you I’ve met him, like, twice.”

“I need you to find out where he lives.”

“He’s connected, just like me. Come after him, you piss off some nasty boys. I help you, they may take it out on me. Nothing more I can tell you. And if you’re smart, you’ll catch the first plane out tomorrow and hope the boys don’t chase you back to whatever hole you’re from.”

Wells grabbed Ridge’s handcuffed wrists and twisted them back and up until he felt Ridge’s shoulders come loose from their sockets. Ridge let out a low moan.

“You think we’re negotiating? Get this guy to meet you. Tell him whatever you want. Tell him there’s a gang war coming and you’ve got to talk to him.”

“If he’s even the guy you want.”

“Get him to us. Let us worry about what happens next.”

“Then you’ll let me go?”

“We’re not after you.”

“All right. Let me call somebody.”

The quick turnaround bothered Wells. But maybe the guy had taken enough of a beating for one night. Wells uncuffed Ridge’s wrists, recuffed his right hand to the base of the passenger seat. He put a disposable phone in Ridge’s left hand and sat him up against the side of the van. “Do it, then. Whoever you have to call.”

“I need my phone,” Ridge said. “The people I’m gonna ask, they’ll want to see it’s my phone on the caller ID.”

Wells dug through Ridge’s pockets, found a book of rolling papers, a baggie of dark green weed, and an iPhone.

“What kind of phone?” Gaffan said.

“iPhone.”

“Don’t let him touch it. He could have tracking software on there, some app that signals he’s in trouble.”

Wells felt his anger boil over. All the frustration of his last failed mission. No more sass from this drug dealer. He reached for his studded baton and lifted it high and watched Ridge’s eyes open wide. He swung it in a long whipping arc, getting his shoulder into it, and cracked Ridge just over the left ear. The van echoed with a hollow metal ping. Ridge’s skull snapped sideways, and he slumped against the wall and slid to the floor. He gasped and wriggled against the side of the van, trying to put as much distance between himself and Wells as he could.

“Who are you?”

Wells met Gaffan’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Gaffan didn’t speak, just raised his eyebrows, the question obvious. Wells ignored it. He grabbed Ridge and stretched him on his back and straddled Ridge’s chest and laid the baton across his neck. Ridge turned his head furiously, tried to rock his shoulders, swiped at Wells with his free left hand. But Wells was two hundred and ten pounds of muscle. Ridge stayed pinned. Wells held the baton in both hands, let Ridge feel the metal against his skin.

“I swear I wasn’t going to double-cross you.”

“I want you to live, but you’re making it hard. For the last time, you are going to help us get this guy.” Wells sat back. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry. This violence came much too easily to him. He could bow his head and pray for peace five times a day, but part of him would always want to pound skulls. Might as well admit the truth. To himself, if no one else.

“You ready to be a team player?”

Ridge nodded.

“Tell me the number.”

Ridge did. Wells unlocked the iPhone, dialed, held the phone to Ridge’s face.

“Sugah. It Ridge, mon. Need your help. I looking for dis jake snakes at Sandals.” Ridge suddenly sounded like a native Rasta to Wells. “Axing on me. Gonna tell him, ease up.” A long pause. “No, mon. Do it mi own self. Aright.”

Wells hung up. “So?”

“Sugar said yeah, the guy buys from him sometimes. Doesn’t have a phone number for him. But he thinks the guy lives on the other side of Montego, this place called Unity Hall. Up in the hills, another gated neighborhood. If I’m thinking about the right area, it’s big, like four hundred houses. But Sugar said this guy drives a Toyota Celica with a spoiler. The Jamaicans call them swoops.”

Like the name Mark, the Toyota sounded right to Wells. Robinson was car-crazy. The FBI had traced a half-dozen antique cars to him, at a house in Miami that no one at the agency had known about.

“If you can find him, we’re even, right?” Ridge’s tone was low and wheedling, the whine of a dog exposing his belly to a more dangerous member of the pack to prove that he wasn’t a threat.

“Something like that.”

“How you gonna find him?”

“We got to you, didn’t we?”

Ridge closed his eyes.

GAFFAN TOPPED OFF THE van’s tank at a twenty-four-hour gas station while Wells bought a gallon of water from the clerk behind the bulletproof counter. Back in the van, he tried to clean Ridge’s wounds, but Ridge shrank from him.

They rolled off. A few minutes later, Ridge coughed uncontrollably. He was breathing shallowly, almost panting, his forehead slick with sweat. “I’m not playing, man. I think my skull’s fractured. You gotta stop.” Wells touched Ridge’s scalp. Ridge yelped, and Wells felt the break under the skin. His fingers came back red and sticky.

“Get through this village,” Gaffan said. Five minutes later, he pulled over. The van was on a hillside, the nearest building a concrete church a half-mile away. The sweet, heavy stink of marijuana wafted from the fields across the road. Wells helped Ridge out of the van. Ridge leaned over and vomited, a thin stream. “I need a hospital.”

“When we’re done. You’ll live.” Wells gave him some water and a washcloth to clean his face, and bundled him back in the van.

THEY ARRIVED IN MONTEGO as the sun rose. “What now?” Gaffan said.

“We can’t leave him, and we don’t have much time. We’re going in the front door.”

“The badges.”

At the hotel, Wells waited in the van while Gaffan showered and shaved. When Gaffan was done, they switched places. Wells stank fiercely, his sweat mixed with Ridge’s fear. He rinsed himself under the lukewarm shower, and with the help of Visine and a shave, he looked halfway human. Though Ridge might have called that assessment generous.

Wells pulled on the suit that he’d hidden in the bathroom vent. It was lightweight and blue and slightly tight around his shoulders. And it came with a DEA badge and identification card. The DEA operated fairly freely in Jamaica — at least when it was chasing traffickers who didn’t have government protection.

Wells looked around for anything that could identify him. He was on a fake passport and had prepaid for the room. Most likely, the hotel wouldn’t even notice he and Gaffan were gone for at least a day. Wells tucked his pistol into his shoulder holster, put a do-not-disturb tag on the doorknob, left the room behind.

As Gaffan drove them toward Unity Hall, Wells knelt beside Ridge, lifted the duct tape. “Another couple hours and you’re done.”

“I don’t get it.” Ridge’s mouth was dry, and Wells could hardly hear him. “You guys aren’t DEA. DEA doesn’t play like this.”

“We’re not DEA.”

“You gonna kill this guy?”

“That’s up to him.”

“Either way, I’m dead, man.”

“We’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Not what I mean. Soon as I get out, Sugar will put this mess on me.”

“You want to get back to the States, I can help. But I’ll have to make sure that the DEA knows who you are when we get back to Miami.”

Ridge shook his head. Then winced.

“Then you’re going to have to handle it yourself.”

“I don’t need any morality lessons from you,” Ridge said. “I sell people a good time. Nothing more or less. Pot, coke, they’re just like booze. Safer, probably. I don’t force my stuff on anybody, and I don’t hurt anybody. Unlike you.”

Wells didn’t argue, just slapped the duct tape back on Ridge’s mouth. Though maybe the guy had a point. In his years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Wells had seen a dozen men executed for dealing or using drugs. Mostly heroin, occasionally hashish. The youngest was a boy, no more than fourteen, only the slightest peach fuzz on his chin. He’d been caught smoking heroin by the Talib religious police. His family lacked the money to buy his freedom or his life.

The incident had happened a decade ago, but it was etched into Wells’s mind as deeply as the first man he’d killed. The central square in Ghazni, a town southwest of Kabul. The boy’s father waited silently as the Talibs tied the boy to a wooden stake, pulling his arms tight to his body. Hundreds of men waited in a loose cluster. Wells stood on the fringes. The binding seemed to last hours, though it couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. The kid didn’t say a word. Maybe he was still high. Wells hoped so.

He wanted to step in, raise a hand to stop the slaughter. The penalty might be legal under sharia, Muslim law, but Wells couldn’t believe that Allah or the Prophet would smile on this scene. But he stayed silent. He had spent years building his bonafides with the men around him, even fighting beside them in Chechnya, an ugly, brutal war where both sides committed atrocities every day. He couldn’t risk his mission to save a heroin addict. And he’d be ignored in any case. He held his tongue.

The Talibs finished their binding. The leader of the religious police, a fat man with a beard that jutted off his chin, spoke to the boy too quietly for Wells to hear. A pickup truck drove up. The fat Talib opened the liftgate and stood aside as dozens of stones, baseballsized and larger, rolled out.

The crowd moved forward, men pushing at one another, reaching down to grab the rocks. Wells had a vision of the last time he’d been bowling, in Missoula with friends on his sixteenth birthday, picking up a ball and squaring to toss it.

Finally the boy seemed to understand what was happening. He pulled at the stake, but it held him fast. “Father, please,” he said. “Please, father. I won’t do it again. I promise—”

The big Talib raised his arm and fired a long, flat stone at the boy, catching him in the side of the head. The boy screamed, and suddenly it seemed as if the air was full of rocks. The screaming grew louder, and then ended as a softball-sized stone smashed open the boy’s skull. His face went slack, and he collapsed against the stake.

That was the Taliban policy on drugs. Zero tolerance. Yet heroin and hashish were everywhere. Men staggered glassy-eyed through Kabul, their mouths open, smiling to themselves even on the coldest days of winter. Once, in a hailstorm on the Shamali plain, north of Kabul, Wells had stepped inside an abandoned hut for shelter and found a half-dozen men huddled in a semicircle around a low flame, cooking a fat ball of opium. They turned and growled at him like hyenas at a kill. He raised his hands and backed away. Even at the time he’d thought, If the death penalty doesn’t stop this stuff, what will?

NOW HE LOOKED DOWN to Ridge, who was pale, eyes closed, an unhealthy shine on his cheeks. “Ridge.”

“What now?”

“You want out, I’ll get you home. Get-out-of-jail-free card. No DEA or anything.”

“You can do that?”

Wells nodded.

“Man,” Ridge said for the second time. “Who are you?”

“I have friends.”

“The original original gangster.”

“You want it or not?”

“Maybe.” He looked Wells over. “What, I’m supposed to say thanks? After you kidnapped me, bashed my head in? You’re a real humanitarian.” Ridge closed his eyes. Wells decided to do the same.

“JOHN,” GAFFAN SAID. “READY?”

Wells scrambled up beside Gaffan. “Where are we?”

“About three minutes from Unity Hall. So how do I play this?”

“Show them your ID and tell them as little as possible. Tell them to call the embassy if you have to, the JCF”—Jamaica Constabulary Force. “They won’t want to.”

“If they ask where we’re going?”

“Tell them you can’t say.”

At the gatehouse, the guard was a small dark-skinned man who wore a blue shirt with a seven-pointed star. “Yes?”

Gaffan flashed his badge.

“Let me see that,” the guard said. Gaffan handed his badge and ID over. Wells followed.

“This is Jamaica. Not America.”

“The man we want, he’s a U.S. citizen.”

“What’s his name?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“No name, no pass.”

“Call our embassy.”

“Tell me his name or I call the constables myself—”

Wells leaned across the seat. “His name’s Mark Edward. Drives a Toyota with a big spoiler on the back. Celica.”

The guard nodded. “That one a cheap bastard. Gwaan, then. You know where to find him?”

“End of the second row on the left.”

“Exactly wrong. Right and then left. House one-forty-three.”

The barrier rose, and they rolled ahead. “His son’s first name and his middle name,” Gaffan said. “Nice guess.”

“Looks like he should have tipped the guards better at Christmas.”

THE HOUSES AT UNITY Hall were a mix of brick mansions on narrow lots and semi-attached town houses. Robinson’s was one of the latter. His Celica sat in the driveway in front, black, a spoiler jutting off the back deck. A pink flamingo and three dwarfs in Rasta hats graced the concrete front landing. Gaffan drove past, dropped Wells in front of the house. He walked ahead and rang the doorbell. A chime inside boomed.

“Who is it?”

Wells rang again, heard a man stepping slowly down the stairs in the front hall. He unholstered his pistol, held it low by his side.

“Yes? Who’s there?” The voice was raspy and low. He’d heard it a few days before, on the phone in Janice’s house in Vienna. But not in person. Until now, Wells and Keith Robinson had never met.

“Keith.”

“You have the wrong address.”

“Keith. It’s John Wells. It’s over.”

CHAPTER 4

THE AMERICAN EMBASSY COMPOUND IN SAUDI ARABIA WAS A FOR tress within a fortress, the most heavily guarded building in Riyadh’s high-walled Diplomatic Quarter. The Saudi government had built the zone in the 1980s, on a low mesa on the western edge of Riyadh. Unsmiling Saudi soldiers in armored personnel carriers guarded its gates, subjecting vehicles to inspection by explosives-sniffing dogs. Trucks and SUVs faced undercarriage examinations with long-handled mirrors, the bomb-squad version of the reflectors that dentists used to see inside their patients’ mouths. Drivers who grumbled about the searches found themselves forced to turn off their engines — and their air-conditioning. With summer afternoons in Riyadh topping one hundred twenty degrees, complaints were rare.

Behind the walls, the quarter stretched three square miles. It should have been a pleasant place, especially compared to the rest of Riyadh. The Saudi government had spent a billion dollars on the district, hoping it would attract executives at multinational companies, and even wealthy Saudis. The quarter was subject to the same strict Islamic laws as the rest of the Kingdom, but it had coffee shops, parks, even a riding club. Date palms lined its boulevards. Its central square had won an award for fusing traditional Islamic architecture with modern design. In 1988, a local magazine had bragged that with its picnics and bicycling children, the zone could be mistaken for Geneva or Washington.

No more. The hassles at the checkpoints had driven Saudis out of the zone, but they hadn’t reassured Americans and Europeans. Following attacks on other Western compounds, multinational companies had shrunk their staffs in the Kingdom to a minimum. The quarter felt besieged, its avenues empty, gardens run-down. It had turned into Paris in 1940, with the Wehrmacht approaching. Anyone with a choice had left. The remaining expats huddled in houses with thick steel doors and barred windows, in case a band of suicide attackers penetrated the checkpoints.

The American embassy was the ultimate target, of course. The embassy occupied six acres near the quarter’s western edge, on the oddly named Collector Road M — though its location was no longer disclosed on the State Department’s website, as though that omission might stop terrorists from finding it. It had opened in 1986, at a ceremony presided over by then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush.

At the time, Osama bin Laden was just another young Saudi heading to Afghanistan to fight jihad. Still, the attacks on American embassies in Pakistan and Iran in 1979 had made the State Department aware of the Islamic terror threat. The new embassy in Riyadh had been built to withstand a sustained attack. Its concrete exterior walls were a foot thick. The embassy itself was a modern castle, built around a courtyard, with few exterior windows.

Security had been tightened further since September 11. Today, visitors parked outside the compound and then passed through explosive detectors at a marine-staffed checkpoint. Besides M-4 carbines, the marine guards toted shotguns, their fat barrels projecting immediate menace. Without exception, the guards had seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were ready for war.

AMBASSADOR GRAHAM KURLAND HOPED they’d never have to use their skills.

Kurland and his wife, Barbara, lived inside the embassy compound in a mansion formally called Quincy House. The name referred to the USS Quincy, the cruiser where Franklin Delano Roosevelt had met Abdul-Aziz, the first Saudi king, in February 1945.

The king had never seen a wheelchair until he met Roosevelt, who used one because of his polio-damaged legs. Abdul-Aziz, who was severely overweight, found the contraption fascinating. Roosevelt gave the king his spare chair, cementing the partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia. That was the legend, anyway.

In fact, chair or no chair, the two countries had good reason to ally as World War II ended. By 1945, vast oil deposits had been found under the sands of the Kingdom’s Eastern Province. Having seen oil’s strategic importance during the war, neither Roosevelt nor the king wanted the oil to fall into Soviet paws. And the Saudis were predisposed to trust the United States, which had avoided the Middle East empire-building of France and Britain.

To commemorate the fateful meeting, a model of the Quincy sat in the lobby of the ambassador’s residence. And the United States and Saudi Arabia had stuck to their bargain. Even after the formation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Saudis tried to keep oil cheap. In return, the United States made sure that Iran and Iraq never seriously threatened the Kingdom.

But recently the partnership had frayed. Blaming bin Laden for the problems was the easy answer, Ambassador Kurland thought. But bin Laden spoke for millions of Saudis who felt they were living under a dictatorship disguised as a monarchy.

Now the terrorists had struck again. The dead in the Khozama bombing included an American, David Landie, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The day before the bombing, Landie had interviewed Kurland at Quincy House. The embassy’s public-relations officer had warned Kurland to stick to his talking points. Even so, Kurland was happy to talk to an American journalist. Few visited Riyadh anymore, aside from a couple stalwarts from The New York Times.

Landie was researching an article about the success, or lack thereof, of the camps where the Saudis “re-educated” former Guantánamo detainees. The camps had gained a reputation as a joke, since so many ex-Gitmo prisoners had returned to terrorism. Now, instead of waiting to see whether Landie quoted him accurately, Kurland had the grim task of helping repatriate what was left of his body. Kurland wondered if the Khozama bombers included any ex-prisoners. He suspected that Landie’s family would not appreciate the irony.

THE PHONE ON THE bedside table trilled. “Yes.”

“Mr. Ambassador.” The voice belonged to Clint Rana, the career foreign service officer who served as Kurland’s personal aide and translator. “Dwayne Maggs would like to meet this morning. Says it’s urgent.” Maggs was deputy chief of the CIA station in Saudi Arabia, as cool as they came. Kurland couldn’t remember Maggs using the word urgent before. He checked his Rolex: 8:15.

“Tell him nine. Thank you, Clint.”

Kurland looked through his bedroom’s bulletproof windows to the embassy’s tennis court. His wife was practicing forehands with Roberto, a cook who doubled as her trainer. Roberto favored 70s-style headbands that showed off his long hair, and tight white shorts that showed off his other good qualities. Kurland wasn’t worried. He and Barbara had been married longer than Roberto had been alive. As he watched, Barbara banged a line drive into the net and grunted, “Gosh dang.”

Kurland couldn’t hear the words, but after thirty-six years, he knew. He gingerly made his way down the back staircase, wincing with each step. He’d torn his left ACL skiing five years before. The knee had never fully recovered. Now the first slivers of arthritis had come to his hips, scouts of what would no doubt be an occupying army. Getting old stank. The poets could dress it up all they liked, but the reality was simple: Getting old stank. Though it came with a few compensations, Kurland thought, like knowing what your wife would murmur when she shanked a forehand.

And here she was, in a blue skirt and white top, tall and longlimbed. She still looked exactly like the sophomore he’d seen at his spring formal at the University of Illinois. Well, not exactly. But close.

“Morning, darling.”

“Morning, dear.”

“You looked great.”

“Not how I felt.” She mimed a couple of forehands. “Practice, practice.”

“Well, you looked great.”

“Roberto looked great. As he always does.”

“Quién es más macho,” Kurland murmured.

“Are we finished for the morning, Mrs. Kurland?” Roberto shouted.

“Indeed we are, Roberto.”

“May I?” Kurland took her racket. “Make sure to tell him to wear tighter shorts tomorrow.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Do you think he gets the joke?”

“I think. I’m not sure.”

They walked side by side to the white wicker table at the edge of the court. A jug of ice water and a pot of steaming coffee awaited. Kurland pulled back a chair for his wife and poured water for her and coffee for himself. From the table he could just see the gun emplacements atop the walls around the court. At the moment, they were unmanned.

“Another day in paradise.”

“Amen to that.” She raised her water glass in a mock toast. “Anything new?”

“They broke up another cell last night.” In the wake of the attacks, the classified cables had been even more disturbing than usual. Saudi police had arrested a four-person cell planning an assault on an Aramco compound in Dhahran, home to the foreign engineers who maintained the Saudi oil fields.

“Isn’t that good news?”

“Barbara. There’s something we need to talk about.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“I don’t want you to leave. I want you to consider leaving.”

“Is there a difference?”

He sipped his coffee. He’d known she would say no, but he had to keep trying. “It’s for your safety.”

“I’ve never felt safer. Every time I turn around, I see a marine. And Joshua himself couldn’t bring down these walls.”

“It seems like overkill, but it’s not. Trust me.”

“When my book’s done, I’ll think about it.” His wife was writing a novel set in Riyadh and centered on the lives of rich Saudi women. Her second book. “These ladies, the chance to talk to them, it’s once in a lifetime.” A couple times a month, a black-clad ghost arrived at Quincy House to chat with Barbara. Once the women were inside, their burqas came off, revealing the fanciest designer clothes Kurland had ever seen. He wondered if they intentionally wasted money on Chanel skirts and Dior jackets to spite the regime that made them cover themselves.

“That’s at least a year away.”

“Problem solved, then.” She drained her water glass and stood. “I’ve got to wash before I start to smell like one of those camels.” Months before, Kurland and Barbara had visited a ranch where King Abdullah kept hundreds of prize camels. At the king’s urging, Kurland had sat on one. He’d encouraged his wife to do the same. She still hadn’t forgiven him.

She kissed his bald head and walked off. He watched her go, amazed, as always, that he still loved her so much after so many years.

HIS GOOD FEELING LASTED only until he arrived in his office on the embassy’s top floor, where Dwayne Maggs waited. Maggs, who didn’t speak Arabic, had gotten the job after an extraordinary tour as a CIA security officer in Pakistan. Kurland didn’t know exactly what Maggs had done, and Maggs wouldn’t say. But it had turned him into a legend. Maggs and his team were half the reason that Kurland hadn’t insisted that Barbara leave. The other half being that he hated fighting with her.

“This came in this morning,” Maggs said, handing over a flashcoded cable.

Beneath the usual security warnings, the cable explained that the National Security Agency had intercepted calls and e-mails between Al Qaeda’s lieutenants in Pakistan — now called AQM, short for Al Qaeda Main — and the group’s cells in Saudi Arabia, called AQAP, for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. An attachment detailed the messages, leaving Kurland wishing for a dictionary that translated NSA and CIA lingo to English.

And so on, for three more pages. Kurland read the attachment twice, didn’t get it. These crazy kids, with their IMs and their TMs and their suicide bombs. “Explain,” he said to Maggs.

“TM, that’s text message. IM, that’s instant message. The bracketed information is the location of the phone or computer where the messages were sent. NSA redacts the precise location, if we have it, and the exact phone number or e-mail address, for OPSEC.”

“Operational security,” Kurland said, glad to be able to play along at last. “Dwayne, I spent the last thirty years building houses for hicks.” In fact, Kurland had run one of the largest residential construction companies in the Midwest. “Help me out here. Isn’t there always traffic like this before these attacks?”

“Yes, sir. But the timing, these e-mails, they’re all after the attacks. Not before. These guys, what you have to remember about them, sir, the dumb ones are dead. We’ve killed them. The weak ones, they’ve surrendered. The ones who are left, they’re tough. And smart. They’re hiding up there in the mountains, and they know the risk they run every time they pick up a phone. They know we’re on them, and they don’t make these calls lightly. And look, they’re not taking credit or congratulating each other. They’re asking what happened. It looks like AQM—”

“Al Qaeda Main—”

“Right. The guys closest to bin Laden. I’ll try to keep the acronyms to a minimum, sir. Bottom line, looks like they didn’t have a clue this was coming. And the ones here, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, they didn’t know, either. One message, they say they didn’t. The other, they keep their options open, like they’re waiting to see if maybe they can get credit even though they didn’t do it.”

“Is it possible they would hide their involvement? Make these calls to trick us?”

“Possible. But that hasn’t been their style the last few years. And given the risk of making these calls, they’d need a good reason to play that game.”

“I see.”

“There’s something else. As you can see from these intercepts, we have these guys pinned tight. If they do manage to get an op going, we usually hear about it pretty damn quick. We don’t always have enough intel to stop it, but we at least know it’s coming. This time, nothing.”

“So add it all up; you’re telling me this wasn’t Al Qaeda.”

“I had to bet, I’d say no.”

“Who was it, then?”

“I wouldn’t even venture to guess. When I get any intel, you’ll be the first to know. But right now we don’t have anything.”

“I understand,” Kurland said. Though he didn’t, not entirely. The United States spent fifty billion dollars a year on intelligence. He didn’t expect all his questions to be answered right away, but he would have liked some idea what was happening.

Maggs seemed to sense his dissatisfaction. “Sir. I promise you there are literally a thousand people in Langley and Fort Meade, and here, too, working on getting the answer. In Qatar, the FBI can examine the tanker, and in Bahrain the FBI will have access to the bar. But from what I hear, it’s a real mess, and it’s going to take time to sort out. Here, we’ll have to depend on the Saudis. They should be able to trace the car that hit the Khozama. If it wasn’t stolen.”

“And can we expect them to cooperate? Since an American citizen was killed.”

“One American, three British, eight Kuwaitis, twelve Japanese, and twenty-five Saudis, sir. I think we can expect that they’ll give us what they choose when they choose.”

“What about the cell they broke up last night? That should help.”

“I’ve only heard bits and pieces, but I think that’s unlikely. Typically, something like this happens, the mukhabarat arrest whoever’s on their lists, try to prove they’re on top of things.”

Kurland had already left a condolence message for King Abdullah. He wondered if he ought to call Abdullah again. Or Saeed, the defense minister. Or even Nayef, the interior minister. But he decided to wait. He didn’t have anything concrete to offer, and Abdullah was difficult to reach. He was spending a lot of time in his palace in Jeddah, the Kingdom’s second city. Which didn’t make sense to Kurland. Shouldn’t the king be here, in Riyadh? Kurland had started to wonder if the king, now nearly ninety, was turning senile. Or worse.

Saeed, the second most powerful man in the Kingdom, still seemed sound enough mentally, but Kurland didn’t trust him. He was more conservative than Abdullah, and Kurland sometimes wondered what would happen if Saeed became king.

Another question occurred to Kurland. He hesitated, wondering whether he would sound dumb for asking, then decided that he needed an answer. “Dwayne. This kind of operation, is it hard to pull off?”

“Harder than it looks, sir. Three operations, at least twelve guys, timed to cause maximum damage, in two countries and on the Gulf. That requires planning and operational support we haven’t seen since — well, since September eleventh. And these came out of nowhere.”

“I asked Barbara this morning if she’d go home,” Kurland said. Immediately, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. His conversations with his wife were his own business. But what Maggs had told him weighed heavy. He’d known living here wouldn’t be easy, but he hadn’t expected the strain to reach this level.

“Sir?”

“My wife. Barbara. She said no.” Kurland felt almost as though he’d betrayed some elemental weakness, confessed his own desire to leave.

“I understand your concern, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Please. Call me Graham.”

“Graham. But trust me, she’s safe. With our marines, these defenses, it would take an army to get inside this place. I mean that literally. An army.”

“We just have to worry about the rest of the country, then.”

“Yessir. Got that right.”

CHAPTER 5

CONSERVATIVE MUSLIMS BELIEVE THAT MAKING IMAGES OF THE world or the people in it is disrespectful to Allah. They don’t like having their photographs taken. The only art on their walls is calligraphy of Quranic verses. The billboards on Saudi Arabian expressways don’t show people. Clothing brands — including Victoria’s Secret, which has stores in the Kingdom — advertise themselves with scarves and bottles of perfume rather than models. Even the happy families eating pizza on Sbarro signs have their eyes pixelated out.

But the prohibition against human images doesn’t apply to everyone. The face of the Saudi monarch, Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, looms on billboards, posters, even on the Kingdom’s pastel-colored currency. Everywhere, Abdullah smiles under his ghutra, his white head scarf. His portraitists have been gentle. He is a big man with a heavy black goatee and wide, kind eyes. He is everyone’s favorite uncle.

Once, maybe, Abdullah was the man the billboards depicted.

THE KING SAT ALONE in his third-floor study in his palace in Jeddah, the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia. The palace compound occupied a mile of Red Sea beachfront. A twenty-foot concrete wall separated it from the city. Signs along the wall warned drivers against stopping or taking pictures.

A few months before, a French doctor visiting Jeddah for a conference had made the mistake of ignoring the warnings. In search of a souvenir of his trip to the Kingdom, he snapped photos of the wall and its entrance. Before he got back in his car, a half-dozen unmarked cars and Jeeps screamed out of the palace to surround him and his driver. Only the immediate intercession of the French consulate and the doctor’s abject apologies had saved him from a nasty run-in with the Saudi judicial system.

Behind the wall, the compound included dormitory quarters for maids, police, and drivers, a garage with a dozen armored limousines, even a firehouse and helipad. The palace itself contained more than one hundred rooms. From the outside, it appeared squat and thick-walled, like the mud forts that had once protected Riyadh. The exterior was an illusion. Inside, the palace was a modern Versailles, a maze of long rooms with fifteen-foot ceilings, filled with gold saucers, antique wool carpets, and crystal chandeliers. It had four elevators, one capable of lifting a car to the third floor, so the king could come and go without having to step outside. At full blast, its cooling system could chill the entire building to fifty degrees Fahrenheit, even in July and August, when the air outside was seventy degrees warmer.

Abdullah’s quarters occupied the third floor of the palace. The royal bedroom took up the entire south end. Besides the obligatory marble-and-Jacuzzi bathroom, it included a separate sauna and a massage room. On the north end of the palace was his study, which included a balcony overlooking the Red Sea, which divided Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In happier days, Abdullah had sat safely behind a bulletproof partition on the balcony and sipped pomegranate juice and watched boats putter along the water. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been outside.

Abdullah was tired. Beyond tired. Weariness had crept into his bones, joints, even his skin. He didn’t understand how skin could be tired. But his was, papery and dusky. His veins tunneled through it. At the mirror, he didn’t recognize himself, the puffy bags that had grown under his eyes, the deep cave of his mouth. Once he had been the hardiest of his brothers, a true Bedouin. He loved the desert. In 1953, after his father died, he took servants and camels and made his way south into the Empty Quarter, the Rub al-Khali, where hundreds of miles separated the oases and even the scorpions barely survived.

His father and sixty warriors had lived in the Empty Quarter in the winter of 1902, before Abdul-Aziz led the attack on Riyadh that was the first step in creating modern Saudi Arabia. To honor his father’s memory, to prove he could survive the desert, Abdullah had lived in the Quarter for a month. Now he could hardly walk. With every step, he felt his legs quiver under his big body. He forced himself to push on, though he wanted to sit and sleep for days. When had this happened to him? When had his flesh lost its vigor?

He didn’t tell his doctors, but the world was turning monochromatic, the white desert light fading to gray. Dates tasted like they were wrapped in plastic, their sticky ooze only faintly sweet. He knew what was happening to him. He had all the money in the world, the very best doctors. And nothing could stop it.

If Allah wanted to take him, he would have to succumb. All men did. The dead are children of the dead, the preachers said. But while he was alive, no one would steal his kingdom. He imagined the attack on the hotel in Riyadh, his own people killed in their beds, and a fresh fury coursed through his veins. He would raise his sword over the heads of these terrorists and—

A KNOCK STARTLED HIM. Had he been sleeping? He napped more and more. He wiped his mouth, looked at the gold Patek Philippe clock he’d installed on his desk a month before when he realized that he could no longer read his watch. A quarter past eleven. “Yes.”

“It’s Miteb. With Mansour.”

“Come in, then.” Abdullah pressed a button under the desk to alert his steward that he wanted coffee. Miteb, Abdullah’s half-brother, stepped in. Miteb was Abdullah’s closest adviser and dearest friend, the only man he could truly say he trusted. But Miteb was nearly as old as Abdullah. In the last five years, he’d had two heart attacks. He could barely walk.

Mansour, the director of the Saudi mukhabarat—the country’s secret police — followed. Mansour was the son of Saeed, another of Abdullah’s many half-brothers, and thus was Abdullah’s half-nephew. His mother was a legendary beauty, and Mansour had inherited her round face and light skin. He was nearly fifty, but his eyes were unlined and his robes flowed smoothly over his flat stomach. In truth, Mansour was unmanly, Abdullah thought. He had never understood the desert. He limped slightly, the result of a motorcycle accident two decades earlier.

“You’re late.”

Mansour knelt, kissed Abdullah’s hand. “I apologize, Your Highness.”

“Sit, then. Hamoud is bringing coffee.” Abdullah pulled himself up from his desk and shuffled over to his favorite leather chair, a gift from the first President Bush. Miteb sat across from him on a yellow eighteenth-century French couch that had cost the Kingdom a few thousand barrels of oil. And Mansour took a low wooden stool beside Abdullah’s chair.

A faint knock. “Come, Hamoud.”

Hamoud arranged the coffee, keeping his eyes down. In thirty years as Abdullah’s steward, he had looked directly at his master only a handful of times. “Anything else, Your Highness?”

“No. Go on.” Hamoud left. “Was your flight smooth?” Mansour had flown in this morning from Riyadh, the capital, five hundred miles east.

“Yes, Your Highness, hamdulillah”—thanks be to God.

“Good. Tell me you’ve found these devils.”

Mansour shook his head.

“Tell me you’ve found them, Mansour.”

“We will find them. In the meantime, may I report what we have discovered so far?” He didn’t wait for an answer but pushed ahead. “We’ve discovered the identities of eight of the bombers. I regret to tell you that they are all Saudi. The four who attacked the drinking establishment in Bahrain, they were from the Najd”—the high Saudi desert in the center of the Arabian Peninsula. “They disappeared a few months ago. We’re speaking with their fathers to determine where they might have trained. So far, all the fathers insist that they had no idea what the boys were planning. The local clerics say the same. It’s disappointing that they aren’t being more honest. If we must, we’ll bring them in for interviews in Riyadh”—a reference to the mukhabarat headquarters.

“And the other four?”

“All from Taif”—a town in western Saudi Arabia, not far from Jeddah. “The same situation. None on our watch lists.”

“You have found nothing.”

“Whoever’s training these men is canny. These attacks were months in the making. Years. It will take time to unravel this.”

“Why do you waste my time if you have found nothing?”

“You asked me to come here from Riyadh, Your Highness.” A hint of ice crept into Mansour’s voice. “I assure you that all of us are frustrated. We won’t let these criminals attack your name. You are the state, Abdullah. We live and die with you—”

“Spare me this recital.” Abdullah was fully awake now, his anger quickening him. “If you live and die with me, you won’t live much longer—”

“Then let me say. We all want these terrorists caught.”

“I wish I were certain of that.”

“What are you implying, Abdullah?”

“I am your king, Mansour.” Abdullah knew he needed to control himself, hide his anger and distrust from his nephew. But he couldn’t. His weakness rubbed him raw. He upended the silver coffeepot, sent a gusher of black liquid onto the antique Persian rug that stretched across the study. “Never again shall you take that tone with me.”

Mansour looked sidelong at Miteb and shook his head. Abdullah pushed on, compounding his mistake. Someday you’ll be old, he thought. Someday you’ll know.

“I am your king. Say it.”

“You are my king.”

“Go back to Riyadh, then, and find these men. Whoever they are. Foreign or Saudi. We will cut off their heads and let the world know that we don’t stand for this. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

MITEB LEFT WITH MANSOUR but promised to return in a few minutes. In the meantime, Abdullah’s steward cleared away the coffeepot and wiped up the stain. Abdullah ignored him until he finished.

“Shall I bring another pot, Your Highness?”

“No.”

“Something else?”

“Leave me, Hamoud. Now.” Hamoud left. Abdullah sat alone in his study. He wanted to call Saeed, Mansour’s father, and scream at him about his son. But he knew losing his temper again would further weaken his position. He would have to go back to Riyadh. He couldn’t stay here. He needed to talk to the other senior princes. The conversations would be unpleasant. They’d burn a hole in his stomach. He shouldn’t need to beg for support.

But in his heart he knew he’d brought this disaster on himself.

The door opened. Miteb returned. “You mustn’t do that, Abdullah,” he said without preamble.

“These jihadis, they call us apostates, brother. The world is upside down when these men say they speak for our religion. They won’t frighten me. Not in this world or the next. They think the Prophet, peace be upon Him, wants them to attack their own people? I’ll pluck out their eyes and pour salt down their throats—”

“My brother. Everything you say, it’s true. But we have something else to talk about.”

“Don’t bother me with this.”

“These matters can’t wait anymore.”

“You dare to tell me what waits?”

“Abdullah. Listen now. Yes, you to me. You can’t treat your nephew this way. He was furious. He told me, ‘I am forty-eight years old. I have my own sons and grandsons, and that man insults me like a child. No more, Miteb.’ He wouldn’t even use your name, Abdullah. ‘That man’ was all he’d say. And do you know that I was actually glad to hear his anger? Because if he’s still willing to complain, it means that he may still be loyal. If he held his tongue to me, it would mean he’d given up on you and was nursing his anger in private.”

“You think Mansour is loyal? You’re a fool. It’s exactly the opposite. He speaks that way only because he knows that if he didn’t complain, you’d suspect him.”

“If you don’t think he’s loyal, why do you bring him here?”

“I bring him here because he expects it of me. Just as I know he’ll lie to me.”

“And I suppose losing your temper is part of your act, too. Come on, my brother. I saw your face when he told you that they hadn’t found anything. It wasn’t an act.”

“Let Mansour complain. Mansour is nothing.”

“Mansour is something. And Saeed is more than something.”

“I treat Mansour like a child because he is a child. He thinks I don’t see that he’s mocking me. I should have rid myself of him years ago.”

Miteb reached out and squeezed the king’s hand. “Abdullah — you can no more rid yourself of Mansour than of these walls.”

“They wait for me to die. My brothers and my nephews. So be it. When Allah calls me, put my corpse on the pyre and light the flames and let my ashes join the desert. It makes no difference. Mansour, Saeed, they can say whatever they like. Khalid”—Abdullah’s eldest son—“will be king.”

“He is your son, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be king.”

“He will be king.”

“Say it as many times as you like, but words alone won’t make it so. You’ve stirred the scorpions with this. You know our brothers don’t agree. They say the system has worked and why change it?”

THE FULL NAME OF the first Saudi king was Abdul-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Faisal al-Saud. Abdul-Aziz, son of Abd, son of Rahman, son of Faisal, son of Saud. In its length, the name highlighted the importance that Arabs placed on their lineage. Abdul-Aziz had died in 1953, twenty-one years after uniting the Arabian peninsula. He had named the new nation after his own family: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Today, Saudi Arabia was the only nation still named after a single family. Its Basic Law decreed that “the rulers of the country shall be from among the sons of the founder, King Abdul-Aziz… and their descendants.” For almost sixty years, Abdul-Aziz’s own sons had been the only rulers the Kingdom had known. Under the system, which had been formalized after Abdul-Aziz’s death, the crown passed from half-brother to half-brother, usually following birth order. Because Abdul-Aziz had sired at least forty-three boys by more than a dozen wives between 1900 and 1947, the Kingdom had no shortage of potential rulers. As head of the Defense Ministry, Saeed was generally considered the most likely candidate to succeed Abdullah.

But a year before, Abdullah had secretly told his brothers that after his death, he expected his own son Khalid to be named the next king. So far, the brothers had resisted that demand. For now, Abdullah’s successor remained unchosen.

“KHALID IS READY, ” ABDULLAH said now.

“More ready than Mansour? Or the rest of his cousins?”

“You compare Mansour to my son?”

“It’s not only Mansour. Saeed has waited his turn. And our other brothers. And after that, a whole new generation.”

“Stand up, my brother.”

Miteb pushed himself off the couch, wheezing, his breath unsteady.

“You want to be king? Is that what this is? Then go ahead. Slake your thirst. Take my crown.”

“My brother, don’t slander me.” Miteb sat down heavily on the couch, which creaked under his bulk. “I know my age. Unlike you. I tell anyone who asks, I don’t want the crown.”

“Then help me. Tell our brothers. Khalid is ready.”

“Abdullah, you don’t know how alone you are.”

“I listen to my brothers—”

“Your brothers beg you to stop. And you refuse. Saeed wants you gone, yes. But the others don’t want to oppose you. Because they love you.”

“And don’t love Saeed.”

“Because you’ve ruled wisely. Until this foolishness. But Khalid is only fifty. You’re asking Mansour and all our sons to give up any chance at the throne.”

“Only Khalid is strong enough to move against these rejectionists who set off these bombs. These men who want girls to marry their uncles.”

“Let me ask you, Abdullah. Has Khalid ever told you he wants this?”

“Of course.” Though Abdullah was lying. The only time he’d ever discussed his plans with Khalid, Khalid had said something like, If that’s what you want, father. An answer that had been enough for Abdullah. He’d never asked again.

“Admit the truth, Abdullah. To yourself, if not me. Khalid may be a good king, and he may not. None of us know. Khalid is the flesh of your flesh, and that’s why you want him to rule. Drop this plan or you’ll return us to the days of Ali and Uthman”—seventh-century Muslim leaders who engaged in bloody power struggles after the death of Muhammad.

“Not as long as he has the National Guard.”

In Saudi Arabia the force known as the National Guard functioned almost as a second army. The Guard trained and ran separately from the regular Saudi military and existed mainly to protect the royal family from the threat of a coup. Its soldiers were mostly Bedouins whose tribes were considered loyal to the family. Abdullah had controlled the Guard for forty years, long before he became king. A few months before, he had turned the force over to his son.

“You think that giving him the Guard makes him safe, Abdullah. But it’s the opposite. It makes the other princes think they have to take power by force.” Miteb pulled himself off the couch, sat on the ottoman beside Abdullah.

“Say what you mean, Miteb. You think that our family is working with these terrorists. Against me. And my son. You wish that I reward them for that? For betraying me? Attacking Riyadh? Never, Miteb. The snakes in my court, I’ll cast them out. It’s time. Time and past time.”

“Who, Abdullah? Who are the snakes? You don’t even know.”

“How can I know? They come to me with their fine words and their smiles, and promise me their love.”

“Because you’ve isolated yourself. Staying in this palace alone. Making the rest of us fly from Riyadh to see you. The ones who love you and believe that you’re right, the system must change, they’re frightened. Those that oppose you, they’re growing more bold. I don’t know if you can stop them anymore. You surely can’t trust the mukhabarat.”

“There’s always the Guard.”

“Promise me you and Khalid won’t use the Guard. If you try, then the army will interfere and there will be war.”

“I promise you only this, Miteb. My son will be king. Leave me if you wish.”

THE TWO MEN SAT in silence for a minute that stretched to five and ten. Finally Miteb knelt at his brother’s feet, his joints popping audibly. He lifted Abdullah’s hand and kissed it. “You’re a fat old fool. But I can’t leave you now.”

“Because you know Khalid should be king.”

“Enough of Khalid. I’m your brother, and I’ve always done what you asked, and we’re both too old to change. If this is what you want, I’ll help. Maybe somehow I can convince the others. But we’ve got to keep the Guard out of it.”

Abdullah stood and pulled Miteb up, and the two old men hugged and swayed back and forth, each braced against the other’s bulk, aged sumo wrestlers in long white cloaks.

“Miteb, my friend.” But even so, Abdullah felt the darkness creeping close. For the briefest moment, he wondered whether he ought to give up, let Saeed have the crown. And after Saeed, the next generation of al-Sauds could fight among themselves. But he shook his head—No, no—and opened his eyes. He wouldn’t let the darkness have him yet.

CHAPTER 6

“WHAT HAPPENED THEN?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning.”

Anne arranged herself around Wells, her breasts touching his back, her nose in the crook of his shoulder. “Come on, out with it.” She tugged his ear.

“Then… then he took off. Sprinted all the way to Montego, jumped on a cruise ship. He’s probably having cocktails with some honeymooners as we speak.”

“Idiot.”

“I told him who I was. He’d never seen me before. He looked me up and down, didn’t say anything. I should have worried he was going for a weapon, but I didn’t. He walked up the stairs to his bedroom. I followed him. He wasn’t running, and neither was I. He reached under his bed, and then I did start to wonder, but he came up with a suitcase. Unzipped it and started packing. Like he was going on vacation.”

“What I want to know is how he looked. What he said.”

Around them, the old house settled, timbers creaking like a sailboat on the open ocean. Tonka roused herself from the rug at the foot of Anne’s bed, looked around, sighed, and lay down again.

“He asked me if Janice told me where he was. I didn’t answer. Then he got mad. He seemed angrier that she’d broken the vow she’d made on their son’s grave than anything else. He started ranting about her. I cooled him off.”

“How’d you do that, John?”

“I expressed my dismay. I’m very persuasive, you know.” In fact, Wells had given Keith “Eddie” Robinson what kids in junior high called a swirly. Picked him up, dunked his head in the toilet. Lucky for Robinson, the water was clean. “After he was calm, I sat him down and told him he would have to confess to everything, no trial. I told him he owed that much to Janice.”

“And what would you have done if he said no?”

“He didn’t say no.”

“But if he did?”

“Then I would have threatened to tell the dealers he was buying from that he was working for the DEA.”

He knew that she wanted to ask him if he would have followed through on the threat. The answer was probably. Robinson was overdue for a reckoning. But she stayed quiet, and after a few seconds Wells went on.

“How he looked? He looked relieved. Maybe not relieved but tired. Like he had been getting ready for somebody to knock on his door. I asked him why he called Janice, and he said he was lonely. He showed me in his closet he had cash, maybe twenty-five thousand dollars in hundreds and twenties. He had another passport, too, a Mexican one that said his name was Eduardo Márquez. He said it was real, that he’d paid somebody at the Mexican embassy in Kingston.”

“But he didn’t want to go anywhere else.”

“I guess not. He said he could have stayed hidden a lot longer. With that passport, he could have gone to Cuba or somewhere in Southeast Asia where there are enough white people that he wouldn’t get noticed. But he said it was wearing on him, being alone, never telling anyone who he really was. He said he was scared to death of prison, but that living this way was prison, too. I think there’s something else. I think he might be sick. He had all kinds of pill bottles in his bathroom. But when I asked him, he denied it. And choked up. Which was weird, because aside from that, he wouldn’t stop talking. But all the things he said, he certainly didn’t say he was sorry.”

“Did you think he would?”

“I hoped he would.”

“You know, I’ve arrested I don’t know how many. Eight years — say, one a week — that’s, ah, eight times fifty. Four hundred, give or take. Of course nothing like this. But serious stuff. Domestic violence, assault. Rape. Two murders. And I’ve never heard a genuine apology. Ever. It’s not in these guys.” She let go of him, pushed herself away. “I have to say, I don’t like what you did, John.”

He turned toward her. Her eyes were intense on his. “Say again?”

“You should have just called the FBI. Done it the right way. You almost killed somebody down there.”

“He was a coke dealer.”

“It’s a matter of time before you hurt somebody who’s completely innocent—”

“You wanted the story. You got the story. I’m going to sleep.”

“God forbid anyone question your judgment.”

“I hate to tell you, Anne, but Keith Robinson isn’t some DUI you Breathalyze on Main Street.”

“And I hate to tell you, John, but you’re a grade-A asshole.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You believe it, though. Push comes to shove, you think I have no right to express any opinion on this.”

Wells knew he should apologize, tell Anne the truth. He’d blown up because he was worried she was right. He had refused to involve the FBI for no better reason than his anger at the CIA and Duto. Over the years, he’d lost his moorings one by one. His wife and child. His parents. Then Jennifer Exley, his lover. Then his faith. He still believed in Islam, but how could he claim to be part of the umma, the community of believers? He prayed sometimes, but almost always in private, rarely in mosques. Faith was hard to sustain that way. Only his identity as a CIA agent had remained. But now he’d quit.

He believed he’d made the right choice in leaving. Even so. He’d severed his last connection. He was completely alone. An amnesiac without the consolation of forgetfulness. He knew who he was, what he’d done. After so much violence, killing came to him naturally. He’d always imagined that he could take off the killer’s mask as he wished. But he feared the mask had become his face.

He could have said some of this to Anne. Or all of it. Could have and should have. Instead he closed his eyes. “You’ve got every right to express your opinion,” he said. He hated the words even as he spoke them. He sounded like a lawyer. A lousy one.

“I can’t even start to imagine what you’re thinking,” she said. “Are you angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“Are you happy I’m challenging you, then?” He was silent. “Do you have any emotions at all, John?”

“I’ll leave tomorrow if you want.”

She put her arms around him. “I don’t want you to leave. I just want to understand you a tiny bit. It’s like the longer you stay here, the less I understand you. And that’s awful.”

He heard her breathing quicken and opened his eyes. She was sitting up, her back to him. Women. She left the room and walked downstairs. A few minutes later, he heard the teakettle squealing. She came back holding a cup and lay beside him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“This is why the others left, isn’t it? Your wife and the one from the CIA.”

“Maybe. My wife, we got divorced because I went undercover. And Exley, my fiancée, someone hurt her and I wanted to find out who did it and she didn’t want me to.”

“You wanted revenge. She asked you to stay away. And you ignored her.”

They lay in the dark and the minutes unrolled, a black carpet stretching to infinity. At this hour, North Conway was as still as a chimney with no fire. He put his arms around her, and she didn’t fight him.

“I meant it. If you want, I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Please. Have you looked at the quote-unquote eligible bachelors in North Conway? Slim pickings. Anyway, I see hope for you yet. You wonder if all this violence has destroyed your core. And I’m telling you that it hasn’t.”

“I hope so.”

Her laugh was music. “There you go. ‘I hope so.’ On the John Wells scale, that counts as a soul-opening revelation. You’re gonna be okay, John.”

He fell asleep feeling something close to peace.

HE WOKE ALONE, HIS cell phone ringing. A blocked number.

“John Wells.” The voice was soft, cultured, European. Immaculate as marble. The past was tugging him again. First Keith Robinson. Now Pierre Kowalski. Kowalski was a Swiss arms dealer, a gleefully amoral man who had made a fortune off miserable little wars that no one cared about.

“Pierre.”

“I hear you’re at liberty. I might have something for you. To supplement that government pension of yours. Nadia, you know, she still mentions you.” Nadia was Kowalski’s lover, a model, tall and blueeyed, the most beautiful woman Wells had ever seen. “She’s waiting for you to make your fortune.”

“Who told you I quit?”

“Word gets around. But I hear also that you’re having a hard time staying away.”

The intimacy in Kowalski’s voice infuriated Wells. As did the fact that Kowalski still had sources at Langley. He shouldn’t have known that Wells had left, and he definitely shouldn’t have known about Keith Robinson. “Do you think we’re friends, Pierre?”

“I would never make that mistake. Your friends have a short life expectancy.”

“Soon I’ll have no one at all to counsel me. Then I’ll decide to settle old scores.”

Kowalski sighed. “Please let me know when that day comes so I can hire more bodyguards. In any case. A friend asked me for a recommendation. Someone who operates with absolute discretion and certainty. Someone not connected to any national organization. Someone who speaks Arabic. I thought of you.”

“I have to tell you, if you want an assassination, I’m going to be seriously upset. People keep asking me to kill other people.”

“I see. And that makes you angry.”

“So angry I could kill somebody, yes.”

“Now you are being ironic, Monsieur Wells. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Do you know what I’m thinking right now? How much I’d like to make you strip naked and pull an oxcart in the middle of Zurich. Give kids rides.”

“That wouldn’t be much fun. For me or the kinder. But all this is a digression, and these international calls are expensive. So let me tell you, this job, it’s not an assassination. Undercover work.”

“Be specific.”

“It’s connected to recent events.”

The terrorist attacks in the Gulf, Wells guessed. “Who am I working for? And what do they want from me?”

Kowalski was silent. Then: “As for the first question, the answer is complicated. As for the second, I truly don’t know.”

“Then forget it.”

“These people, they will pay you one million dollars just to meet. Say the word and they’ll send a plane for you.”

That’s insane, Wells thought. And then said aloud: “That’s insane. Tell me, Pierre. Are they paying you for this introduction?”

“No. But the person who asked for help, I’ve known him a long time. And — you know I don’t care much about these things — but he’s on what you would call the right side.”

“You know what people say about things that sound too good to be true. One million dollars. To work for the right side.”

Kowalski was silent, letting the hook dangle. Wells could truly say he didn’t care about money. Yet the thought of being paid a million dollars for a day’s work was hard to resist. “All right,” he said. “Tell your friends I’m in.”

“Oui.”

“But I want the money first.”

“Spoken like a true mercenary. I approve.”

THAT NIGHT WELLS TOLD Anne about the offer.

“And who is this guy, Kowalski?”

“Swiss. Lives in Zurich. An arms dealer.”

“You’re friends?”

Wells shook his head.

“But you trust him.”

“Betraying me isn’t in his interest.”

“Why do it? If the money doesn’t matter.”

“For someone who doesn’t understand me, you understand me pretty well.”

“I know what doesn’t drive you. And I know you’re going over there. I can almost feel the energy coming off you. You were like this before you went to Jamaica. You can’t wait.”

It’s the only time I feel really alive, Wells thought. Even unspoken, the words felt like a betrayal. She took his face in her hands, kissed him lightly, her lips just touching his. “I’m not going to say anything dumb, like ‘Stay alive,’ but stay alive, please.”

Wells put his arms around her, pulled her close, kissed her until her mouth opened to him. And without another word he picked her up and carried her to her — their — bed.

CHAPTER 7

AT KENNEDY AIRPORT, THE LIMOUSINE TURNED OFF THE ACCESS road short of the main terminals and stopped at a gatehouse whose black-painted sign announced “General Aviation.” The driver passed over his license and the gate rose. The limo swung right along a cyclone fence and stopped at an unmarked concrete building.

Wells stepped out of the limo, blinking in the sunlight and wishing for sunglasses. A tall man with close-cropped gray hair emerged from the building, walked toward Wells, extended his hand. “Captain Smith. You must be Mr. Wells. Pleasure to meet you, sir.” His accent was English, surprising Wells, who had somehow expected an ex-flyboy.

“Captain Smith. Not Captain Jones.”

“Yes, sir. Smith, not Jones. Sorry to disturb you, but I must ask. Are you armed?”

“No.” Kowalski had specified no weapons.

“Your passport, please.”

Wells handed it over. His real passport. His real name. He wasn’t used to traveling under his real name, wasn’t used to being a civilian. Smith flipped through it, handed it back. “Do you have any electronic gear with you? Laptop, BlackBerry, phone?”

“Just my phone.”

“I’d like to keep it, sir. Only for the duration of the flight.”

Wells handed over his phone, a cheap silver Samsung. “This way, please.” Smith led Wells to a giant twin-engine passenger jet.

“That’s my ride?”

“Correct, sir.”

“Please stop calling me sir. Is anyone else coming?”

“No, sir.”

The jet was a Boeing 777. Normally it would hold about three hundred passengers. “Where are we going, captain?”

“I’m not meant to give you that information until we’re airborne, sir.”

Three flight attendants waited at the top of the jetway. All women. They wore demure jackets and knee-length skirts, but all three could have modeled on their days off. Wells supposed that anyone who could afford this jet could afford whatever crew he wanted.

“Mr. Wells,” the prettiest attendant said. “I’m Joanna. Please come this way.”

At the center of the jet, four leather chairs were arranged before a fifty-inch television and a fully stocked bar. Despite its opulence, the interior was studiously anonymous. No books or flags gave away the name or nationality of the owner. The exit signs were in English. The jet seemed to be part of a fleet. In that case, the pool of possible owners shrank even further. The Russian and Chinese governments were the most obvious suspects. But Wells’s recent adventures hadn’t made him friends in Moscow or Beijing. The Saudi or Kuwaiti royal families. Maybe the French, though in that case this jet ought to be an Airbus. Maybe an oil company.

Nobody very nice. The short answer was that nobody very nice owned a plane like this.

“Mr. Wells,” the attendant said, “we have a video-on-demand library with six thousand movies. There’s also a live satellite feed. Whatever you’d like to watch.” She gave Wells a smile that could be described only as saucy. “If you’d rather sleep, the bedrooms are this way.” She nodded toward the front of the cabin.

“And we’ll be in the air about ten hours?”

“Less than eight, sir.”

Information, of a sort. Eight hours meant Western Europe or South America. “Thank you.”

The jet took off fifteen minutes later. An hour after that, Captain Smith walked into the cabin. “Sir. You asked our destination. It’s Nice.” As in France. “We get in around eight in the morning local time.”

“Who’s waiting for me?”

“I don’t know. Truly.”

“When a man feels the need to say truly, he’s usually lying. And I told you about calling me sir.”

“Yes, Mr. Wells. In any case. We’re expecting a smooth flight. But if you need medicine to sleep, Joanna can help.”

The bedroom was as pointlessly luxurious as the rest of the jet. Wells lay on the white cotton sheets and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep. He found himself thinking of Evan, his son. He wondered how he could be so strong and so weak at the same time. Death hardly scared him, but the idea of picking up a telephone and calling his own blood had paralyzed him for years. Evan was a teenager now, old enough to decide for himself whether to allow Wells in his life. Wells supposed he feared that Evan would reject him, leaving him even more alone. But he had to take that chance. He needed to drop his guard and tell the boy that he’d never forgotten him, not in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

Just as soon as this mission was over. How many times had he made that promise to himself? Too many. He closed his eyes and lay in the dark as the jet crossed the sea.

IN THE MORNING, THE coffee was strong and black, and the landing was smooth. The jet banked low over the Mediterranean before swinging into the airport at Nice, offering a priceless view of the waves crashing into the Côte d’Azur. Priceless, indeed. In 2008, a villa near here had sold for five hundred million euros, close to one billion dollars. Wells had entered a land of wealth beyond comprehension. He wondered again who had summoned him, and why. As he left the plane, Captain Smith gave him a perfectly correct smile, neither too large nor too small, neither familiar nor dismissive. “Beats coach,” Wells said.

“My pleasure,” the captain said. Wells supposed that the crew never broke character, never acknowledged that they and the passengers they served were members of the same species.

Outside, a breeze whipped off the Mediterranean. A French immigration agent stood on the runway beside a white Renault minivan. Beside him, a second man wore a blue sport coat that flapped open to reveal a shoulder holster. Neither looked happy to see Wells. Their hostility was a relief after the paid-for, painted-on smiles of the plane’s crew.

The agent waved Wells into the Renault, and they sped to the main terminal building. In a windowless office, the agent scanned Wells’s passport. “Are you carrying any weapons, Mr. Wells?” That question again. Wells shook his head. “Raise your arms,” the man in the blue sport coat said. Wells did and was rewarded with a thorough pat-down before the agent handed him back his passport. “Welcome to France, then. Jean will show you to your car.”

Jean, the man in the sport coat, led Wells in silence through the airport’s back halls, windowless corridors lined with banged-up baggage carts. Two men in brown uniforms smoked under a poster that warned, “Défense de fumer.” They reached a door with a simple pushbutton combination lock. Jean keyed in the code, pulled it open, waved Wells through. They were near the front entrance of the arrivals level. A black BMW 760 waited at the curb, two men inside. Wells admired the precision of the handoff. Even if he had known he was being taken to Nice, even if he had somehow arranged for a weapon at the airport, he couldn’t have picked it up. He hadn’t been alone since Kennedy. And whoever was on the other side had plenty of juice with the French government.

Wells slipped into the rear seat of the 760, leaned against the cushioned leather. No point in asking. He’d have answers soon enough.

THEY DROVE ALONG THE A8, the highway called La Provençale, which tracked the coast to the Italian border. The BMW’s driver sliced through the heavy morning traffic as if he were playing a video game in which the only penalty for an accident was the loss of a turn. Wells loved to speed, but this man was at a different level. “You ever race F1?” he said. He didn’t expect an answer.

“He never made F1,” the man in the front passenger seat said. “Only F2.”

“Where are we going?”

No answer. Wells tried to turn on his phone but found the battery had been drained. Nice touch. West of Nice, the sedan swung onto the coast road, two narrow lanes that rose and fell along the hills. They turned back toward Nice. The precautions seemed pointless to Wells. He had no phone, no gun, not even a change of clothes. The tactician in him admired the way these men had cut him off from any possible support.

Outside Nice, they turned back onto the A8, running east this time, and fast, the driver’s hands high and relaxed on the wheel. Another racing clinic. Wells would have liked to ask for tips. On an overpass ten miles east of Nice, the sedan pulled over.

“Get out.”

Wells didn’t argue, just stepped out and watched the BMW pull away. He didn’t bother getting the plate number. The last twelve hours had left him sick of tradecraft. He wouldn’t have long to wait, he guessed. After going to so much trouble to make sure he was sterile, they’d be foolish to leave him alone for long.

Sure enough, a stretch Mercedes Maybach pulled up almost before he finished the thought. Black? Check. Tinted windows? Check. Runflat tires and armored doors? Check and double-check. Wells raised a thumb, leaned toward the window. “Anywhere east, I’ll take it. I can chip in for gas. Cool?”

The door swung open.

THE MAN IN THE backseat had a heavy square face and wore a white ghutra low on his forehead. A neatly trimmed goatee covered his jutting chin like black-dyed moss. From a distance, he might have passed for sixty-five. Up close, his face betrayed his age. His skin was as creased as month-old newspaper. Under his thick black glasses his eyes were rheumy and yellow. Wells didn’t recognize him.

Then he did. Abdullah, the king of Saudi Arabia. The richest man in the world. Everything made sense. The overwhelming security. The one-million-dollar fee. The ridiculous opulence of the plane. Everything except the question of why he was here.

“Salaam aleikum,” the man in the front passenger seat said. He turned to face Wells. He was almost as old as Abdullah, with swollen cheeks and a quiet, wheezy voice. Wells guessed he had heart trouble.

“Aleikum salaam.”

“You are John Wells.”

“Nam.”

“I am Miteb bin Abdul-Aziz. This is my brother, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”—the official title of the Saudi kings.

“Prince Miteb. King Abdullah. I’m honored to meet you.”

“Please excuse our precautions. They’re for our protection, and yours, too.” Miteb’s Arabic was the most perfect that Wells had ever heard, a smooth stream. Wells’s own Arabic was rough and visceral.

“I understand.” Though Wells didn’t. The king’s security team should have been Saudi, not European. And this meeting should have happened at the Saudi embassy in Paris, or in Riyadh. Did the king mistrust his own security detail?

“You speak Arabic,” Abdullah said, his first words to Wells. He looked Wells over, a cool appraisal, then broke off, coughed into his hand, a wet, soft murmur. He wiped his mouth with a white handkerchief embroidered with gold thread. When Abdullah put the kerchief away, Wells thought he saw flecks of blood on the fabric. Wells wondered how long Abdullah had left.

“Yes. But I’m American.”

“And a spy.”

“A retired spy.”

“Do spies ever retire?”

“Do kings?”

“My brother Saud, he retired. Because he was weak. From whiskey. It fogged his eyes and his mind. Made him too weak to rule. And too weak to fight when we told him he wasn’t our king anymore. That we could no longer trust him with our fate.” The king looked at the front seat, as if waiting for his brother to explain further. But Miteb stayed silent, and Abdullah returned his focus to Wells.

“The fate of the king is the fate of the people. You don’t understand this. No American can. We told Saud to leave our land. Go wherever he wanted. Here. Switzerland. We sent him into exile, and he accepted our decision like a child. Oh, he whined, but he never once raised a hand to save himself. He knew he was weak. Do I look weak to you? Answer me, Ameriki.”

“If you weren’t weak, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You don’t lie? Not even to a king?”

“Especially not to a king.”

The Maybach turned up a narrow road hemmed by walled villas on both sides. Abdullah closed his eyes. He seemed too old for this, whatever this was. “Some of my family is against me,” he said, his eyes still closed, his voice low. “I look into their hearts. They have turned.” He coughed. His voice vibrated. “They’re feckless. Spoiled. All of us are to blame. We drown in our own luxuries. We thought that it was Allah who left us the oil, but I know better now—”

“Abdullah—” Miteb said.

“Hush, brother. My nephews, they’ll agree to anything the clerics say to keep their power.” Abdullah opened his eyes, waved at the hills around them. “All Gaul is divided into three parts—”

“Caesar—” Wells said.

“Of course Caesar.” He dug his fingers into Wells’s arm, surprising Wells with his strength. “You think I never learned about Caesar? You think I’m too old to remember? The kingdom is mine, and it will be my son’s. No one but his. Do you understand?”

Had old age destroyed Abdullah’s reason? Wells wasn’t sure. Everything he’d said made a sort of sense, though not as much as Wells would have liked. It will be my son’s. No one but his. Wells understood that much, anyway.

Abdullah leaned toward Wells. He exuded a bitter mix of coffee and stomach bile. He smelled like a rusty V-8 burning oil from a leaky cylinder. He smelled like an old man who’d scare the grandkids if they got too close. He grabbed Wells’s cheek and looked Wells over like an angry lover.

“Ameriki.” Abdullah relaxed his grip. He leaned back and grunted as though a stone had fallen on his chest. After a few moments, his breathing slowed. His eyes opened. He touched his goatee as if seeing Wells for the first time. “You’ve come a long way to see us.” His voice was smooth and low, all trace of his madness gone. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“I assume it’s related to what happened last week, the attacks.”

“Yes and no. I don’t have long to live, Mr. Wells.” Abdullah spoke with an authority Wells wouldn’t have expected from a man who’d seemed so unhinged a minute before. “I’ve lived my life. My bones grind like beetles. The doctors say they can fix me, but they’re lying. One day you’ll be old, and you’ll cough as if your soul means to escape through your mouth, and you’ll understand. But for now I still breathe. And before I die, I want to lay my kingdom on its foundation. Do you see?”

“I see you want me to help your son become the next king.”

The king waved at Miteb and settled back in his seat, as if this portion of the conversation was beneath him.

“We need someone from the outside to help us,” Miteb said. “Someone unconnected with our security forces. A private citizen. Someone Muslim. Someone who can handle the most difficult situations.”

“Your enemies are within your family?”

“Yes, but not only. We should never have let the radicals and the clerics get so powerful,” Miteb said. “We thought we would give them a few tokens, let them send men to Afghanistan, they’d be satisfied. But these men, once you give them power, you never get it back, not without war.”

“Your brothers don’t agree.”

“Our brothers, our nephews. Some believe what the Wahhabis preach. They want jihad. But the middle, most of them, they just want the oil to flow. Or to gain power. To become ministers, have planes and palaces.”

“Their blood is thin,” Abdullah said. “When I was a child, there was only desert. To both ends of the sky. We were proud to be Bedouin. We knew we lived where no one else could. In all of Arabia, there were a few hundred thousand of us. Now Riyadh has five millions all by itself. We’ve forgotten the desert. And it’s forgotten us. It won’t have us anymore.”

“Abdullah—” Miteb said, apparently nervous that his brother would erupt again.

“Some of my brothers, nephews, they don’t care about their people. They have their accounts in Swiss banks. Whatever side wins, they’ll give their loyalty.”

“But I don’t understand. Who’s on the other side?” Wells was genuinely confused. “These terrorists, it’s not like they can be king.”

“No. But if Khalid isn’t king, it will probably be Saeed. And Saeed will give the jihadis what they want, as long as they don’t interfere with him or try to take the oil. He doesn’t care if women have to stay covered, if the Shia have no rights. I think he’s working with them already.”

“Why don’t you arrest him, then? You’re still king. You have the mukhabarat”—the secret police.

“No. Mansour, Saeed’s son, is the head of the muk. They belong to him.”

“If we trusted them, we wouldn’t be in this car,” Miteb said.

“On the Côte d’Azur.” Wells was tired. And not from jet lag. When he looked at Miteb and Abdullah, he saw Vinny Duto and the spy chiefs at the top of the Washington bureaucracy. Using Wells to fight battles that only they could win. “You talk about clerics and jihadis. But this, it’s about power. Nothing else. Abdullah, sooner or later he’s going to die. Probably sooner.”

“You dare speak to me this way?”

“Every king needs his fool, and I guess that’s me. So let’s call it like it is. The king is dead, long live the king. When that sad day comes, you want Junior to take over. But your brothers don’t agree. Especially Saeed.” Wells wondered if anyone had ever lectured Abdullah this way. Probably not. So be it. He would fly commercial home.

“Only Khalid has the strength to fight the clerics,” Miteb said.

“With you as his closest adviser, no doubt.”

The king twisted toward Wells. “You think I want to waste my last days spitting clever words with you? You Americans are all the same. Too cynical and not cynical enough. The poison in my land, it’s real.”

Wells almost laughed. These two old men, asking him to help them save their people from religious repression. As if their family hadn’t ruled Saudi Arabia for eighty years. Abdullah, sitting in a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car and complaining that luxury had poisoned his family. “No wonder you couldn’t meet me in Riyadh,” Wells said.

“Saeed will set our country back a generation,” Miteb said.

“Saeed has a thousand eyes, and they all watch me,” Abdullah said.

“I’ll bet he’s got sons, too.”

“His sons are nothing. They scuttle through my kingdom like crabs.”

“Your kingdom. I suspect our ambassador is too polite to tell you so, but Americans don’t like kings much, Abdullah. Not for two hundred years.”

“You don’t even know what we’d like,” Miteb said. “Or what we’re willing to pay. I promise, it’s more than you can imagine.”

Wells was angry now. He should have guessed they would eventually dangle a fortune. “First you appeal to my better instincts. Then you offer cash. Next you’ll promise me a woman. The oldest game there is. At Langley, they call it MICE. Money, ideology, compromise, ego. Will you drop me at the airport, or do I have to catch a cab?”

Abdullah leaned toward the driver. “Take him to the airport, be done with it.”

“Please,” Miteb said. The word seemed directed at both Abdullah and Wells. “We have a villa for you. At the Eden-Roc. Relax this afternoon, and we’ll talk tomorrow morning. If we can’t reach agreement, you can fly home as you like.”

The Maybach crested a hill, giving Wells a view of the smooth, blue waters of the Mediterranean. He hadn’t heard of the Eden-Roc, but he guessed its villa would have the same view, or better. And truth be told, his curiosity was piqued. He still had no idea what these two octogenarians wanted from him. He could do worse than spend the night.

CHAPTER 8

HEZBOLLAH, PARTY OF GOD.

Hashish, god of partiers.

The Bekaa Valley has both.

A rocky, hilly plateau that lies between Lebanon’s coastal mountains and a lower range on the Syrian border, the Bekaa has had a fierce reputation for centuries. Like Napa Valley, its hot, dry summers and cool winters make it ideal for growing grapes. Unlike Napa Valley, it is controlled by Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Muslim group that aims to destroy Israel.

AHMAD BAKR HATED ISRAEL as much as Hezbollah did. Even so, Bakr did not enjoy coming to the Bekaa. Bakr was Saudi, and like most Saudis, he was a Sunni Muslim. Hezbollah’s members were Shia, followers of the other major branch of Islam.

Both types of Muslims agreed that the Quran was the word of Allah. But unlike the Sunni, the Shia revered early Muslim rulers as “imams,” nearly godlike figures. They eagerly awaited the return of the twelfth imam, whose arrival would herald the End of Days. To conservative Sunnis like Bakr, the Shia belief in the twelfth imam amounted to idol worship — a serious offense against Islam.

But when he was in Lebanon, Bakr kept his views to himself. He was simply being practical. In the Bekaa, Hezbollah served as judge, jury, and executioner. And Bakr ran a jihadi training camp in the Bekaa that needed the group’s approval to exist.

To get that approval, Bakr had met nine months earlier with a Hezbollah general at a farm near Baalbek, the dusty town that served as the group’s headquarters. A friendly Saudi intelligence agent arranged the meeting. “I can guarantee you safe passage,” the agent said. “After that, it’s up to you.”

The next day, Bakr flew to Beirut. As he’d been instructed, he rented a car and attached a red strip of tape to the trunk. He drove to Baalbek and parked in the lot beside the Roman ruins that loomed over the town. The site included the remnants of the Temple of Jupiter, a giant Roman shrine. The temple’s columns stood seventy feet tall and were mounted on one-thousand-ton stone blocks. But the ruins left Bakr cold. To him, they were just another site for idol worship, like the golden-domed shrines in Iraq where the Shia buried their martyrs. He would have been happier if they were all blown to rubble.

A few minutes after he parked, a black Toyota 4Runner stopped beside him. A man in a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants knocked on his window. The man frisked him and waved him into the 4Runner. Bakr wondered if he’d be blindfolded, but no one seemed overly concerned. These men didn’t need to protect themselves, not here. Attacking Hezbollah in the Bekaa was a fool’s errand. The Israelis had tried in 2006. Even with their planes and missiles, they hadn’t touched the group’s leaders. Hezbollah had come away from that war stronger than ever.

The Toyota headed north. A few minutes later, it turned east onto a rough dirt road with vineyards on both sides. The road dead-ended at a concrete wall that protected a massive beige house, three stories high, with balconies and turrets and a green Hezbollah flag flapping from a pole. A golden-domed mosque, a miniature version of the shrines in Iraq, stood beside the building. The 4Runner stopped at a black gate guarded by two militiamen. They saluted as the gate swung open.

THE HEZBOLLAH GENERAL WAS a small man with deep-set brown eyes. In his cream-colored shirt and gray slacks, he could have passed for a Beirut businessman, except for the long white scar that hooked around his neck. He had nearly died in a 1996 car bombing that had been blamed on both the Israelis and the Syrians. He sat on the house’s back balcony, looking out over the garden, where an old man tended to scraggly tomato plants and a half-dozen lemon trees. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

The general poured them both cups. The sun had disappeared, and the balcony was pleasantly warm. Aside from the scrape of the gardener’s shovel on the soil, the house was silent.

“You’ve come a long way,” the general said.

“Not so far. Thank you for seeing me.” For the next few minutes, Bakr explained what he wanted. When he was finished, the general put a hand on Bakr’s shoulder.

“Where will these men operate?”

“Not Iran or Lebanon.”

“Of course not. And not Israel, either. Any action against Israel comes on our own terms.”

“Not Israel. Iraq.” By the time Hezbollah found out he had lied, it wouldn’t matter. “We have the same enemy there.”

“Yes. Still, what you want, it’s very expensive.”

“Tell me.”

“Two hundred thousand dollars.”

Bakr had expected a much higher price. “That’s fine.”

“Every month.”

These Shia thieves, Bakr thought. Two hundred thousand dollars a month for a broken-down farmhouse and land too rocky even to grow hashish? But he didn’t have a choice. He planned to house as many as forty men, and he wanted room for practice with small arms and explosives, and maybe even more important, the high-powered rocket-propelled grenades that could defeat armored vehicles. In all, he figured he had to have at least two thousand acres with an absolute guarantee that he wouldn’t be disturbed, which meant he needed government or quasi-government protection. The only other options were the Sudan or maybe the Algerian desert. Lonely, inhospitable places. The Bekaa would serve him far better, and Lebanon and the Kingdom were connected by highways and nonstop flights.

“I can’t afford that.”

“How much, then?”

“A hundred thousand.”

They compromised on one hundred fifty thousand dollars, and both sides kept the bargain. Bakr transferred the money faithfully each month, one numbered Swiss account to another. In turn, the militia never bothered his men and ensured that the handful of Lebanese police and army units in the Bekaa also stayed away.

The camp had taken three months to build. It included a one-story concrete barracks and dirt-covered berms where Bakr’s men could practice wiring and blowing bombs without disturbing the neighbors. It lay in the barren northern end of the valley, on the western side, in the foothills of the Qornet as-Sawda, the highest mountain in Lebanon, more than ten thousand feet. At first glance, it didn’t look like much, a couple buildings, a couple trailers. But with Al Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan long since obliterated, it was the largest and most sophisticated training center for jihad anywhere in the world.

AHMAD BAKR STOOD AN inch short of six feet. Serving in the National Guard for eight years had given him a soldier’s broad shoulders. He was relatively dark for a Saudi, more brown than tan. He’d grown up in Tathlith, a speck of a town in southwestern Saudi Arabia. Even within the Kingdom, the area was known for its religious fervor. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on September 11 were Saudi. Of those, eleven had come from the southwestern corner of the Kingdom.

The eldest son of a tribal chief, Bakr had been known for his religious fervor, even as a child. He had memorized the entire Quran before he turned twelve. He woke at dawn to pray and fasted each Ramadan without complaint.

The incident that sealed his belief came just before his seventeenth birthday. A few months before, his father had given him a Toyota Land Cruiser, a monstrous old beast with twenty-inch wheels and a raised chassis. He spent his days rumbling through the desert northeast of Tathlith. Nuri, his cousin and best friend, trailed behind him in a pickup. Bakr raced up the dunes, his wide tires kicking up clouds of sand, the Land Cruiser’s engine growling. As he grew more experienced, he changed the Land Cruiser’s gearing so he’d have even more torque at low speeds. He sought out the steepest dunes, ones that other boys avoided.

And then, in empty desert one hundred fifty kilometers from Tathlith, Bakr came upon the biggest dune he had ever seen, more than one hundred meters high. It soared out of the desert, its sand glistening. It changed color as Bakr rolled closer, darkening from neon white to a cooler clay. Bakr gunned his engine and rolled up the sandy ridge that formed the side of the dune. Halfway up, he stopped. Beyond this point, the ridge turned too steep to attack directly. To reach the top he would need to cut across the center of the dune, zigzagging across its face. Nuri pulled up beside him, jumped out of the pickup.

“It’s too steep, cousin. And too soft. You’ll get stuck.”

“Then you’ll drag me out.”

“Don’t—”

Bakr gunned the engine, ignoring his cousin’s pleas, and plunged across the dune.

He’d gone less than one hundred meters when he realized that Nuri was right. The dune was too tall and steep, its sand too fine. Even with the Land Cruiser’s massive tires, he lost his grip. The truck slowed, kicking up clouds of dust. Bakr downshifted into second, floored the engine. His tires caught, and the Toyota lurched forward. Bakr feathered the steering wheel, turned right, cutting across the dune to regain speed. Then he hit another soft patch and sank into the sand and came almost to a halt.

On the dunes, momentum was the only way to survive. On a slope this steep, the sand under Bakr’s downhill tires would cave as soon as he stopped moving. In seconds, he would be rolling sideways. He wouldn’t stop until he hit the bowl at the base of the dune. By then the Toyota would be a steel pancake, with him as filling. Worst case, he would trigger a sandslide that would envelop him. Neither he nor the truck would ever be found.

The engine knocked. Bakr downshifted again. He was in first now, no more gears left. With no alternative, he slammed the truck into reverse, floored the gas, and spun the steering wheel hard left. His best chance was to point the truck downward and then race down the dune. He’d be stuck in the soft sand at the bottom, for sure. The Land Cruiser would be a loss. No way could Nuri winch it out. But he had no choice.

The engine roared. His tires gripped the sand. The nose of the Land Cruiser pulled right, giving Bakr an extraordinary view down the face of the dune. Rivulets poured down from his tires. Bakr feathered the gas and rode backward up the dune as if Allah himself were tugging him free. Save me now and I am your servant for eternity, he thought—

He popped the clutch, grabbed the gearstick, and slammed the truck into first—

But as he did, a slab of sand broke under his front tires and the Land Cruiser’s front end lurched down. The back wheels came off the ground—

And even before Bakr registered what was happening, the Land Cruiser began to flip, tail over nose over tail, eight loops in all, before coming to rest right side up.

The back of the truck was crushed. Yet the front somehow survived. The windshield pillars were intact, though the glass itself had popped out halfway up the dune. Sand filled half of the passenger compartment, covering Bakr to his waist. But his only real injury was the broken nose he had suffered when his face slammed into the steering wheel.

Bakr unbuckled his belt and drove his shoulder into the door to pop it open. Sand plunged out of the Toyota and rejoined the desert. Bakr stepped down, took one shaky step, another. Then he began to run, his legs pumping, slipping, kicking up sand, blood streaming over his chin. He looked up at the unbroken blue sky. Still alive. Hamdulillah. Thanks be to God.

For the rest of his life, Bakr would remember that moment as “the calling.” He knew he wasn’t a prophet. Muhammad was the last prophet, and only an infidel would think otherwise. But he had no doubt that Allah had saved him that day in the desert. Allah had heard his prayer. Bakr would never forget the vow he’d taken. Save me now and I am your servant for eternity.

A PROMISE THAT LEFT the question of what exactly Bakr had been called to do. But he didn’t need long to figure out the answer. In August 1990, five years before “the calling,” Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. The little sheikhdom was Iraq’s nineteenth province, Saddam said. He was putting it in its rightful place. Kuwait had even more oil per capita than did Saudi Arabia, and as a rule, Kuwaitis didn’t enjoy manual labor, including the labor of defending their borders. They fled even before Saddam’s tanks arrived.

The Iraqi attack terrified the House of Saud, too. The Kingdom’s army was hardly more capable than its Kuwaiti counterpart. If Saddam decided that eastern Saudi Arabia was actually Iraq’s twentieth province, the Kingdom couldn’t stop him.

But the United States could. And the United States preferred the Saud family to Saddam. A half-million American troops headed to the Saudi desert. As he would twelve years later, Saddam dared the United States to attack. The result was a butt-whupping that brought to mind nothing so much as a one-round Mike Tyson knockout. The ground war to force Iraq out of Kuwait began in January 1991. It also ended in January 1991. The hostilities lasted four days before Saddam’s supposedly mighty armies fled.

The United States didn’t bother to chase them. America would later regret that decision. But at the time it seemed like the safest course. With the war over, oil prices dropped. The Kuwaitis came home from the exile they’d endured at five-star hotels in London. New York City threw a ticker-tape parade. Then everyone more or less forgot that the Gulf War had ever happened. Except for Saddam. And a few million Saudis.

MUHAMMAD DIED IN THE Arabian town of Medina on June 8, 632 A.D., two decades after bringing Islam to the world. In the years that followed, the men who had prayed with him wrote down everything he had said for posterity. His words were collected in books of hadith, or narrations. The hadith are not part of the Quran, which Muslims consider the actual word of God. But they are vital nonetheless. One of the most important came on Muhammad’s deathbed, when he decreed that “two religions should not exist together in the peninsula of the Arabs.”

In practice, the hadith has never been strictly enforced. Tens of thousands of Christians work in Saudi Arabia, although they are not supposed to pray inside the Kingdom. But the flood of American soldiers onto Saudi soil in 1990 was an incitement that conservative Muslims could not ignore. The presence of hundreds of thousands of infidels, including many women, ran against the express wishes of the prophet. Clerics all over Saudi Arabia turned their anger against the United States. When some soldiers remained in the Kingdom even after the Gulf War ended, the clerics grew even more infuriated.

Tathlith lay almost a thousand miles from the American bases. But at Bakr’s mosque, the local cleric — a man named Farouk, one of Bakr’s eleven uncles — preached about the threat the Americans posed as if their tanks were just over the horizon. Every Friday at noon, he explained that the United States always sided with the Jews against Islam. American weapons enabled the Israelis to control the Palestinians and occupy land that belonged to Muslims. In fact, the Jews ran the United States. Because of them, America had a hundred nuclear missiles pointed at Mecca. Only Allah’s divine strength stopped them from vaporizing the Grand Mosque and Kaaba.

Farouk didn’t limit his criticism to the United States. Clerics in the Kingdom were not supposed to attack the royal family, which spent billions of dollars supporting mosques and religious schools. To make sure that the clerics were staying in line, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs sent monitors to the Friday sermons. But like many clerics, Farouk had tired of princes who gambled and whored and drank their way across Europe. During sermons, he avoided talking about the royal family. But afterward, in the mosque’s back offices, he made sure his followers knew his opinion. The House of Saud failed to follow Islamic law. To preserve their power, the princes had violated Muhammad’s hadith and had accepted Crusaders on sacred Arabian soil.

Under these circumstances, jihad to restore Islam to its rightful place was not merely a choice but an obligation. The Saud family, the puppets of the United States, could not be allowed to rule Mecca and Medina forever.

Bakr had heard these sermons for years before his near-death experience on the dune. He never questioned them. Why would he? Aside from a few trips to Mecca and Medina, he rarely left Tathlith. Nearly all his closest friends were also blood relatives. He had been raised to accept the word of his father without question, and to venerate Farouk for his knowledge of the Quran.

The Friday after Allah saved him, Bakr visited his uncle and explained what had happened in the desert. The bridge of his broken nose throbbed as he told the story.

“And you say the car flipped eight times.”

“I don’t count them, but that’s what Nuri said, yes. Is it a sign, uncle?”

“Have you had any dreams since then?” Observant Muslims took dreams seriously as potential signals from Allah. In this, they followed the example of Muhammad, who was often guided by dreams.

“Yes, uncle.”

“Tell me, then.”

“In one, I’m riding a horse over the desert. I want the horse to turn, but it won’t. It rides faster than any horse ever has. Then it throws me. But I’m not hurt. I land on the sand. I’m lost, but I’m not afraid. I see a flock of sheep and follow them. Then the desert turns into a highway. In the distance I see a stone, black like the Kaaba. The sheep run ahead, but a truck smashes them. The driver is made of glass. Beside him is a demon with yellow eyes. The truck bears down on me. And then — well, then I woke.”

“You’re trying to reach the Kaaba. But the corruption of our rulers stops you. It makes perfect sense.”

“So everything that’s happened, it’s part of a plan?”

“You’ve been chosen. There’s no other explanation.”

You’ve been chosen. The words everyone one day hopes to hear. For a Muslim boy living almost in the shadow of Mecca, to be chosen by Allah was a blessing too rich to bear. Bakr’s blood avalanched through him.

“Then what’s my next step, uncle?” Bakr expected to be told that he should go to Afghanistan, join the jihad there.

Instead, his uncle sketched out a very different path.

AT TWENTY, BAKR JOINED the National Guard — the one-hundred-thousand-man militia that served as the Saud family’s private fighting force. For the next eight years, he served ably, getting the military training he knew he would need. He kept his fundamentalist views concealed. To his superiors, he was a devout Muslim but a loyal Saudi.

Meantime, he quietly looked for men who might one day prove useful in his quest. The mukhabarat closely watched the National Guard. Bakr knew that being identified as hostile to the regime would land him in prison for decades. Nonetheless, he connected with soldiers and officers who shared his views.

Eight years passed. Then, on a spring morning, as Bakr napped in his two-room apartment in the National Guard barracks outside Mecca, a knock woke him. He opened the door to see two military police officers. “Captain Bakr? Please come with us. And leave your sidearm.”

“What’s this about?”

But they wouldn’t answer. And somehow he knew. The mukhabarat or the internal Guard police had gotten to one of his men. Lieutenant Gamal, maybe. Gamal was fervent but weak. Bakr didn’t doubt he would break. Without another word, he followed the MPs to a Jeep.

They drove along the edge of the base, which stretched over thousands of acres and housed an entire battalion, two thousand five hundred soldiers, plus air support. The Saudi government had built it after the 1979 fundamentalist attack on the Grand Mosque. If terrorists ever again tried to seize the mosque, the battalion’s soldiers could reach it in fifteen minutes.

A windowless two-story concrete building squatted near the southwest corner of the base. It housed the battalion’s internal security unit. Bakr knew he should be frightened. Yet he wasn’t. Whatever was about to happen would be Allah’s work. And Allah had guided him since that moment in the desert.

They drove past the security headquarters and parked at a warehouse two hundred meters on. The warehouse had once housed spare parts for the vehicles in the battalion but had been abandoned because of its inconvenient location. Now its front door was open. “Go on,” the military police sergeant said.

The warehouse was hot and stank of epoxy. Inside, the overhead lights illuminated a concrete floor. Broken pallets lay at the far end of the building. A man in an officer’s crisp olive uniform stood near them. As Bakr approached, he saw crossed swords and three stars on the officer’s shoulderboards. Not merely an officer. An amid—a brigadier general. Bakr stopped a few feet away, offered his crispest salute.

“At ease, Captain Bakr. Do you know who I am?”

“No, sir.”

“General Ibrahim.”

Bakr hadn’t recognized the face, but he knew the name. Though not a royal, Walid Ibrahim was a cousin of a low-ranking prince. He was also head of internal security for the western brigades of the National Guard. He was rarely seen and much feared. His men handled “political problems”—as they were euphemistically known — with a brutality that would have pleased a commissar for Stalin.

The general stood toe-to-toe with Bakr. He was light-skinned, taller than Bakr, with pockmarked skin and a neatly trimmed goatee. His breath stank of coffee and cardamom. “One of your men has confessed, Captain Bakr.”

“Sir?”

Ibrahim slapped Bakr, catching his cheek with all five fingers. “Must I repeat myself? A man in your cell has confessed. Step back. Three steps. And go to your knees.”

The concrete was warm through Bakr’s khakis. He wondered whether Allah would save him again. Perhaps he didn’t deserve to be saved, not after being so stupid as to trust Gamal.

Ibrahim unholstered his pistol. “Lieutenant Gamal al-Aziz has told us that you’ve recruited a cell of traitors”—Ibrahim spat on the concrete floor, the sound echoing softly—“and you plan to steal weapons from this base.”

“He’s mistaken, sir.”

Bakr found himself looking at the pistol’s dark eye. It didn’t shake, not even a fraction. He didn’t doubt that Ibrahim would pull the trigger. “Hands behind your back, captain. And don’t move your head, no matter what I do.”

Bakr intertwined his fingers behind his back. Ibrahim disappeared behind him, his clipped steps echoing on the concrete. Now he was just a voice. “It’s my business to evaluate men like this. And he’s telling the truth. He came to us of his own accord. Says he had an attack of conscience. Probably he got scared. He’s hoping for clemency. You made a mistake with him.”

Sweat ran down Bakr’s chest. He promised himself that whatever happened, he wouldn’t betray the men he’d recruited.

“But here’s the thing, captain. He only has four names. He says there’s more, but he doesn’t know them.”

“There is no cell.”

Crack! Half the sun poured into Bakr’s eyes. For a moment, ecstasy filled him, and then the pain came. Pistol-whipped. Still he stayed upright, kept his hands laced.

“Tell me the truth. Or I’ll put a bullet through your neck. If you’re lucky, you’ll die right away. If not, you’ll wind up paralyzed for a few miserable years. Then you’ll die.”

“Sir. Lieutenant Gamal is mistaken—”

“Three seconds. Two—” Bakr bit his tongue so he couldn’t speak. “One—” The pistol touched the nape of his neck, settled in. Bakr closed his eyes.

The pistol pulled back. The shot echoed in Bakr’s ears — and nothing changed. He felt the concrete against his legs. He opened his eyes. He was still in the warehouse.

“Last chance,” Ibrahim said. Another endless pause—

“Stand up and face me.” Ibrahim holstered his pistol. “I know that lieutenant is telling the truth. But I’ve been looking for a man like you. I’m sick of the corruption, too. We’re on the same side. I’m going to give you a chance. I’ve sent Gamal to his barracks. Take care of him and we’ll talk.”

Bakr didn’t trust himself to speak.

“You won’t be suspected, captain. For now, I’m the only one who knows what he’s said. My men brought him directly to me.”

“Sir—”

“You have forty-eight hours. If you don’t solve this problem by then, my men will be back for you.” Ibrahim handed a handkerchief to Bakr. “And clean yourself up. You’re bleeding.”

BAKR MOPPED AT THE blood dribbling from his skull as he stumbled to his barracks. The day had turned scorching, forty-eight degrees Celsius — one hundred eighteen degrees Fahrenheit. The devils in his head danced. In his quarters, he pulled the shades and draped a wet towel over his skull and tried to think through what had happened. Maybe Ibrahim was trapping him, hoping to make him incriminate himself. Gamal had confessed, but Ibrahim didn’t have enough evidence to bring a case.

Then why not just arrest him and the others, and shake out the truth? Ibrahim had brought him to the warehouse to test him. Oneon-one, without witnesses.

A trap, or a lifeline? Perhaps he should ask Gamal directly, let the man defend himself. Bakr lay on his bed and closed his eyes. His head ached terribly, and he squeezed his eyes tight. Then, suddenly, the headache passed and he knew what to do.

It was six p.m., the dinner hour. The barracks were nearly empty. Bakr scribbled a note—The warehouse for spare parts. 11 p.m. Bring this. Tell no one. I. He took the fire stairs to the fourth floor, where Gamal lived. He checked to make sure he was alone and then slipped the note under Gamal’s door.

AT 10:55, THE WAREHOUSE door creaked open. “General? Hello?”

Even before he saw Gamal, Bakr knew his reedy voice. Bakr stepped forward from the wall where he’d hidden himself. He dropped the garrote over Gamal’s neck and pulled tight. Gamal tried to scream but managed only a wet whisper. His hands came up and tugged at the wire as he desperately tried to take the killing pressure off his carotid artery.

But Bakr was stronger, and had the surprise and the leverage. With every second, Gamal weakened. Bakr tugged on Gamal’s neck until Gamal’s hands fell away and his feet drummed a death rattle against the floor.

“Traitor,” Bakr whispered. “Infidel. Apostate.” Let those be the last words that Gamal heard before the next world. Let him know that he would face an eternity of torment. Finally Gamal’s feet stopped their useless clacking and his body slumped. Bakr put him on the floor and flicked on the lights. Gamal’s face was mottled, his eyes bulging. The garrote had seared his neck. Bakr leaned close to Gamal’s mouth. Nothing. Not a breath.

Gamal still clenched the note in his fist. Bakr slipped it into his pocket, reminding himself to flush it away at the barracks. He had a sudden urge to mutilate the corpse, put Gamal’s pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. Punish the traitor properly. But Gamal was already in hell, and that was punishment enough. Bakr flicked off the lights and left.

Fifteen minutes later, he lay in his bed, reading his Quran. He slept easily that night, and in the days that followed he hardly thought about what he’d done. Gamal had needed to die, and so Gamal had died.

THE CORPSE WAS FOUND a week later. Rumors blew through the base. A Star of David had been carved into Gamal’s chest, his eyes gouged out. His corpse had decomposed so badly that he could be identified only by the name on his uniform. Bakr waited for the police to take him away. But no one came, and Bakr saw that Ibrahim’s offer had been genuine.

Two weeks later, Bakr was ordered to report to the National Guard base at Jeddah, the headquarters of the western region. When he arrived, a sergeant escorted him to an unmarked black SUV. They drove north along the seaside road, past a gleaming white mosque that seemed to rise out of the Red Sea. The sergeant left him in a parking lot that looked out over a narrow inlet, told him to wait, and disappeared.

Bakr settled himself on a concrete bench. Nearby, a handful of families played on a public beach a few meters long. Even here the women wore long black abayas and burqas, as Saudi law required. Still, the children were having fun, squealing and running and dumping sand on one another. Public spaces such as the beach were rare in Saudi Arabia, and a great treat. Bakr didn’t object to the beach, as long as unmarried women didn’t pollute it with their presence and married ones stayed covered. As Allah had intended.

Ibrahim arrived a few minutes later. Today he wore traditional Saudi clothing, a thobe and ghutra. Bakr stood to salute, but Ibrahim shook his head and sat beside him. “Captain. It’s terrible what happened on your base.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It looks like the killer will never be found.”

“Then that’s Allah’s will, sir.”

“Lieutenant Gamal was deprived of a proper funeral,” Ibrahim said. Under Muslim law, corpses were supposed to be buried or cremated as soon as possible, never more than two days after death.

“Perhaps that’s as it should be. If the lieutenant betrayed our faith.”

“How long have you been putting your cell together, captain?”

“Sir?”

“Listen now. No more games. If I’d wanted to arrest you, I would have already.”

Bakr saw himself tumbling down the dune. Everything had led to this moment. “Three years.”

“How many men do you have?”

“Nine. Eight now, I suppose.”

“You’ve done well, captain. No one has ever hidden so much from me. So what is it you want?”

“For the land to be pure, sir. For us to live as Allah intended.”

“And you think King Abdullah is failing us.”

Bakr was silent.

“You don’t have to answer, captain. Every true Muslim knows it’s so.”

For a general to speak this way… Allah had rewarded his faith. For the second time in his life, he asked, “So what’s our next step?”

“Nothing can happen now, captain. Abdullah is too strong. But the moment will come when he’s weak. When he overreaches. It’s then that we’ll strike.”

BAKR QUIT THE NATIONAL Guard a year later. His superior officers were surprised, since he’d just received a promotion to major. One by one, his men followed him out. With them as trainers, he built his organization. To find recruits, he relied on a dozen deeply conservative clerics. He wanted a small, elite force. Let other groups make grand pronouncements. His men would strike on their own timetable and cause maximum damage. He saw Ibrahim once every few months. They both knew that meeting more frequently would be dangerous. Ibrahim provided tactical advice — and money. On a day-today basis, he let Bakr work without interference.

A year ago, Ibrahim had told Bakr that the time for action was coming. Abdullah had secretly told other princes that he wanted to install his son Khalid as the next king. Khalid was even more liberal than Abdullah, Ibrahim said. He would lead the nation astray, allowing women to drive and to vote, letting Christians and Jews into the Grand Mosque. He had even spoken of making peace with Israel. “Everything we believe in, Khalid hates,” Ibrahim said.

But Bakr and his men could stop Abdullah, Ibrahim said. Their attacks would reveal the opposition to Abdullah and Khalid. Many princes didn’t want Khalid to be king. The attacks would show them that the future of the House of Saud was at risk. They would force Khalid into exile and make Abdullah step down. A true guardian of the faith would take over.

“Can that really happen?” Bakr said.

“We’ll take control. And establish a new caliphate.”

WITH IBRAHIM’S MONEY, BAKR had built the most powerful jihadi group since the early days of Al Qaeda, before the American response to September 11 forced Osama and his men into hiding. Besides the suicide bombers who had gone through his camp in Saudi Arabia, Bakr had trained almost fifty men in close combat at his base in Lebanon. These were soldiers, ready to attack a well-guarded palace or oil refinery. With surprise on their side, and the willingness to martyr themselves, they had a good chance of overcoming a defensive force three times as large.

His first attacks had proved as successful as could have been hoped. With a dozen men, he’d killed almost one hundred people and disrupted crude oil shipments all over the Gulf. Bakr should have been ecstatic, especially with another attack coming.

Instead he couldn’t shake his fear that Ibrahim was using him. Over time, Bakr had realized how little he knew about Ibrahim’s plans. Ibrahim refused to tell Bakr which princes were backing them. Nor would he reveal the details of who would ultimately rule. “Too much information is dangerous,” he said. “For both of us.” Bakr wondered whether Ibrahim simply wanted to replace one branch of the royal family with another. Ibrahim’s story about Khalid sounded like palace intrigue, princes conspiring. Bakr didn’t want thieves replacing thieves. He wanted the House of Saud uprooted from its foundations.

As bad as the secrecy was Bakr’s suspicion about Ibrahim’s faith. Certainly the general seemed to believe. When Bakr prayed with him, he spoke his rakat—prayer verses — easily and correctly. Yet he’d told Bakr that he had only once performed the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the five pillars of Islam. The Quran itself said, “Hajj is the duty that mankind owes to Allah.” Certainly, a Muslim was required to conduct hajj only once. But with his wealth and power, Ibrahim could have performed hajj many times. Bakr himself had undertaken the pilgrimage three times. He didn’t understand why Ibrahim wouldn’t have chosen to go more than once.

Of course, Ibrahim was far busier than Bakr. And every Muslim slipped up and broke the ritual laws once in a while. But Ibrahim lacked something deeper. In his heart, Bakr felt the destiny that Allah had chosen for him. He felt Allah’s power. Praying was an honor and a pleasure, not a duty. The thought of God warmed him like the sun. He felt the same spirit in other true believers. But not in Ibrahim. Ibrahim spoke the words, but he never sounded convinced. If Bakr hadn’t believed so fervently, he might not have noticed. But he did. And so he did.

Bakr knew he might be wrong. Only Allah could know Ibrahim’s heart, the ripeness of his faith. But what if he was right? Why then had Ibrahim spared him, instead of arresting him when Gamal betrayed him years earlier? The answer must be that Ibrahim had always planned to use Bakr to seize power. Bakr imagined how Ibrahim saw him. A zealot from the most religious region of the Kingdom. A rabid dog to be unleashed when Ibrahim saw fit. Then tossed aside.

But if that was Ibrahim’s plan, the general had miscalculated, Bakr thought. With Allah’s guidance, Bakr had devised his own plan. He would use the soldiers that he had trained in a way that neither Ibrahim nor the men behind him would ever expect. He would do more than trade one branch of the Kingdom’s ruling family for another. He would free Arabia entirely from the tyranny of the Sauds. And if the strategy worked as Bakr intended — as Allah intended — it would draw the United States onto the Arabian peninsula, provoking a final confrontation between America and Islam.

BEFORE THAT BATTLE COULD take place, Bakr faced a thousand obstacles. But as he sped north through the Bekaa to his camp, he felt confident, almost serene. For as the Prophet Muhammad — peace be upon Him — had said, “Whoever fights so that the Word of Allah is held high, he is in the way of Allah.” Yes, Bakr’s enemies were mighty. But Allah was mightier. And as he had since that day on the dune, Bakr knew beyond doubt that Allah was with him.

CHAPTER 9

THE VILLA WAS AS RIDICULOUS AS WELLS EXPECTED, WITH A PRIVATE pool and a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Wells decided to swim, then realized he didn’t have a bathing suit. Or a change of clothes. He called the concierge.

“Give me your measurements. One of my men will pick up what you need.” Wells did.

“And how much would you like to spend, monsieur?”

“For a shirt and pants and a shaving kit? A hundred euros, I guess.”

A faint throat-clearing told Wells that he had guessed wrong.

“Five hundred?”

More throat clearing.

“Up to you, then. Just put it on the room.” Wells hung up, reached for his cell, remembered that the battery was dead. He picked up the room phone again, called New Hampshire. Long distance at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Another couple barrels of Saudi crude down the drain.

“John?”

“None other.”

“I tried to call. Your phone was off.”

“I didn’t have it for a while.”

“But you’re okay.”

On the slopes below the villa, the cypress trees glowed in the sun like a dream by van Gogh. “Could say that.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“I’m in the south of France. The biggest risk I’m running is that I’ll slip getting into the pool. And I think I just spent two thousand dollars on a shirt and pants.”

“I hope they’re nice. The shirt and pants, I mean.”

“I expect they will be. I’ll take a picture for you.”

“Can you tell me who they are, the people you’re with? Or what they want?”

Wells looked at the phone. Open line. He ought to keep operational security. “Wish I could, but not now. I’m not sure you’d believe it anyway. I’m not sure I do. How are you? How’s Tonka?”

“You put me first. That’s sweet. We’re both fine.”

“Anything happening?”

“I did arrest a couple of drunks on Main Street last night, but I know that doesn’t count for much.”

Wells supposed he had that coming. “Anne. I promise. We’ll come here one day. You’d like it.”

“That would be nice.” Though she didn’t sound convinced. “Be careful in the pool, okay? Those things can be deadly.”

“Noted.”

THE CLOTHES ARRIVED AN hour later, linen pants and a blue silk shirt and pure white swim trunks. They didn’t have labels. But they looked expensive. They felt expensive. They even smelled expensive. Wells tried them on and hardly recognized himself. The man in the mirror looked as sleek and shiny as a peacock looking for a mate.

The trunks were even worse. They fit tighter than boxers. When Wells cinched them, he had the odd sensation that he was molesting himself.

The phone trilled. “Are your clothes pleasing, monsieur?”

“Pleasing? They’re—” Wells wanted to say absurd, but went with “very nice.”

“Can I help you with anything else?”

“Actually, yes. A laptop.”

“I’m sorry, sir. We have an executive center in the hotel, but we don’t keep laptops for guests—”

“Then buy one.” Can’t cost more than the bathing suit, Wells thought.

“Yes, sir. Shall I put that purchase on the room also?”

“You shall.”

The Saudi soldiers Wells had met in Afghanistan were undisciplined and lazy, quick to boast but slow to the front lines. Wells had rarely talked to them, and he realized now how little he knew about Saudi Arabia. Before his next meeting with Abdullah, he wanted to learn. If he were still in the agency, he could have gone to the analysts at the Near East Desk or even called to the frontline operatives in Riyadh. Instead he would be reduced to Googling. Like the civilian that he was.

The laptop arrived just as he finished his swim. It didn’t come with a receipt, and he didn’t ask what it had cost. Heads of state and billionaires must live this way. They never paid for anything. Their accountants settled up later.

Wells booted up, got online. He expected to read for only a couple hours, but the more he learned, the more fascinated he became.

ABDULLAH’S LINEAGE DATED BACK to 1744, when a fundamentalist cleric named Abdul Wahhab allied with a minor Arabian ruler named Muhammad ibn Saud. At the time, Islam had become an almost polytheistic religion. Many Muslims prayed to spirits, a practice that the prophet Muhammad had banned a thousand years before.

Wahhab demanded that Muslims follow the Quran literally and that lawbreakers face harsh penalties. Around 1743, he ordered an adulterous woman stoned to death. Because of his strict views, Wahhab was forced from his hometown of Uyayna. Looking for protection, he asked Saud if he could live in Diriyah, the village that Saud ruled.

Saud agreed to shelter Wahhab to write and preach. Over time, Wahhab’s sermons attracted a growing audience, who called themselves Wahhabis. They pledged allegiance to Saud, forming a potent army. They fought under Saud’s flag: a green cloth with the shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, in its center. Beneath the shahada, a curved white sword. The flag symbolized Saud’s vision, combining the glory of Islam with the might of the state. Wisely, Saud never demanded religious leadership for himself, leaving that role to Wahhab.

With the Wahhabis as his soldiers, Saud conquered the central Arabian peninsula. After he died, his sons followed. By 1810, the Sauds controlled most of Arabia. Then the Turkish army used modern weapons to roll them back. In 1818, the Turks captured Riyadh and brought Abdallah, Saud’s great-grandson, to Istanbul, where he was executed. For the rest of the nineteenth century, the House of Saud remained in oblivion.

Then it roared back.

In 1902, Abdul-Aziz, Saud’s great-great-great-great-grandson, took Riyadh in a surprise attack. At the time, Abdul-Aziz had only a few dozen soldiers. But over the next two decades, he followed the same playbook as his eighteenth-century ancestors, harnessing religious zeal to conquer Arabia. The Ikhwan—Arabic for “brothers”—formed the core of his army. The Ikhwan were Bedouin so religious that they disliked even looking at non-Muslims, and they massacred their enemies without remorse. Abdul-Aziz could barely control them, but their brutal reputation helped him. Opposing cities surrendered to him without fighting on the condition that he keep the Ikhwan away.

In 1924, Abdul-Aziz’s forces took Mecca. The following year, he reached Jeddah and the Red Sea, completing his conquest of the Arabian peninsula. For the second time in two centuries, the House of Saud ruled Arabia. But the Ikhwan were not ready to quit fighting. Their leaders turned against Abdul-Aziz, saying that he had allied with the British and was insufficiently religious. But Abdul-Aziz no longer needed the Ikhwan. He built a new army from more loyal tribes. Using machine guns and cars from the British, he put down the rebellion. And in September 1932, he officially created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Its flag was the same green banner that Sauds had fought under since the eighteenth century.

ABDUL-AZIZ DIED IN 1953. His sons had ruled ever since, inheriting the world’s biggest fortune. As oil prices soared in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia became one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The princes’ wasteful ways became legendary in Europe, but plenty of money stayed inside the Kingdom. A Saudi saying held, “If you didn’t become rich during the days of King Khalid”—who ruled from 1975 to 1982—“you will never be rich.” By 1979, the average income in Saudi Arabia was higher than in the United States.

The windfall didn’t last. In 1982, a glut of oil caused the price of crude to plunge. For most of the next two decades, it stayed below twenty dollars. The Saudi economy cratered. The princes still lived richly, but by 2000 the average Saudi made just one-fifth as much as the average American.

Then another oil boom began, as demand for oil soared in China and India. Prices rose and rose, topping a hundred forty dollars a barrel in 2008. Even after the recession of 2009, a barrel of crude traded around eighty dollars. At that price, Saudi Arabia earned almost a billion dollars a day selling oil. Every two months, the House of Saud raked in as much cash as Bill Gates had earned in his entire life. Of course, most of that money went to keep the government running. All Saudis received free education and health care. Gasoline was heavily subsidized. And the Kingdom had no income taxes.

Even so, at least fifty billion dollars remained every year for the family to divide. Every prince received a stipend. Third- and fourthgeneration princelings got $20,000 to $100,000 a month. Senior princes received millions of dollars a year. At the top, Abdullah and the other sons of Abdul-Aziz had essentially unlimited budgets. Abdullah’s Red Sea palace complex in Jeddah had cost more than a billion dollars.

While the princes prospered, the new boom didn’t help average Saudis as much as the original one had. The Kingdom’s population had quadrupled since 1980 to twenty-five million. The economy had not created enough jobs to keep pace. Even though almost no women worked, millions of Saudi men were unemployed. Making matters worse, Saudi men considered blue-collar work to be beneath them. Despite the chronic unemployment, five million Indians, Egyptians, and other immigrants worked in the Kingdom as drivers, janitors, and laborers, jobs that Saudis wouldn’t take.

The frustration among ordinary Saudis flowed into the only channel that the government allowed — militant Islam. The centuries-old pact between Wahhabi clerics and the House of Saud remained essential to the family’s claim to rule. Saudi kings called themselves Custodians of the Two Holy Mosques because control of Mecca and Medina provided their ultimate legitimacy. Without Islam, Saudi Arabia was just another dictatorship.

To keep religious leaders satisfied, the Sauds spent tens of billions of dollars supporting Islam. The princes rebuilt the giant mosques at Mecca and Medina, subsidized the hajj, and paid for religious schools around the world. But the clerics wanted more than money. They wanted women in burqas, and strict penalties for anyone caught drinking alcohol or having illicit sex. Like Abdul Wahhab, their spiritual father, they wanted to govern Saudi Arabia as though they were still in the seventh century. They were the most fundamental of fundamentalists.

During the 1970s, the Saudi government had moved away from this vision of Islam. Cigarettes were sold openly. Even alcohol was quietly tolerated. State-run television broadcasts featured female newscasters. Girls’ schools were created. Then, in 1979, a Bedouin named Juhayman — Arabic for “the scowler”—led hundreds of rebels in a takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Ironically, the rebels had defied an important Quranic decree that forbade fighting in Mecca. Juhayman believed that he could ignore the decree because he had found the Mahdi, the true successor to Muhammad. Juhayman promised the Mahdi would establish a new Muslim empire and defeat armies of Christians and Jews.

The takeover staggered the Saudi government. Police and National Guard units tried to retake the mosque, but the rebels repelled them. A siege began. The government imposed a news blackout, but it could not prevent reports of the attack from spreading worldwide.

Besides tactical incompetence, the government had a serious problem: the prohibition on fighting near the mosque. Before the army could attack in force, the Sauds needed approval from a council of Wahhabi clerics. To win them all, the princes pledged that they would roll back the liberalizations of the 1970s. Finally, four days after the siege began, the clerics issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, ordering the rebels to surrender. With that approval, the Saudi army attacked with thousands of men. The mosque caught fire during the ensuing battle — the equivalent of open war inside St. Peter’s or at the Wailing Wall. Only the Kaaba, the sacred stone at the center of the shrine, remained undamaged.

The rebels retreated into rooms and corridors beneath the mosque. For a week, soldiers struggled to clear them. On December 3, advised by French special forces soldiers, they dumped potent tear gas into the basement. After a final day of fighting, they captured the last rebels. Two weeks after it began, the siege ended. Witnesses estimated that more than one thousand soldiers, rebels, and civilians died, though an accurate death toll was never released.

Outside of Saudi Arabia, the siege was quickly forgotten. But inside, its effects were profound. The implicit support it had received from senior clerics pushed the House of Saud sharply right. As it had promised, the government restricted women’s education, gave new powers to the religious police, and promoted jihad in Afghanistan.

A GENERATION AFTER THE siege of the Grand Mosque, Saudi Arabia ran like a medium-security prison. Sex outside marriage was forbidden and dangerous. Questioning the monarchy’s right to rule was a crime. Culture and the arts hardly existed. Women couldn’t drive, or even have identity cards, unless their husbands agreed.

Since becoming king in 2005, Abdullah had taken small steps to rein in the religious police. But the changes were mostly cosmetic. Political parties were still outlawed, women still couldn’t drive, and state-funded clerics still preached war against Israel and the West. Saudi Arabia was among the most repressed places on earth. Its main public spaces were malls, mosques — and the squares where drug dealers and murderers were beheaded.

These rules didn’t bother the princes, of course. The Kingdom’s laws applied only loosely to them. As for average Saudis, since they couldn’t legally protest, no one knew if they were happy with the strictures they faced. The satellite dishes that speckled nearly every house suggested otherwise. So did the angry discussions in Internet chat rooms.

On the other hand, nearly half of Saudis married their cousins, closing ranks against outsiders in the most basic way. Many believed devoutly that the Quran was the word of Allah and that non-Muslims would spend eternity in hell. Even now, the loudest protests in the Kingdom came not from reformers but from fundamentalists.

WHEN HE FINISHED READING, Wells could see the Kingdom much more clearly.

But the king remained a mystery. Was he a genuine reformer? Wells couldn’t tell. Still, he was glad he had stayed the night to find out exactly what Abdullah and Miteb wanted. By the time he turned off the laptop, the hotel grounds were nearly silent. Miles out to sea, yachts glimmered. A breeze filled his living room with the scent of cypress and pine. Overhead, the stars glowed. Even without the virgins — and Wells suspected that virgins were tough to come by in the south of France — this place was close to Paradise. Here, eternal life seemed not just possible but actually desirable. Wells lay on his five-thousand-dollar-a-night-bed and closed his eyes and wondered at the world that had somehow come to him.

The Maybach picked him up the next morning. This time Miteb sat in back as classical music played. The king wasn’t in the car. Wells couldn’t help feeling disappointed. He’d wanted to see Abdullah again.

“Good morning, Mr. Wells.”

“Good morning, Prince.”

“My brother sends his apologies. He’s not well this morning.”

“Nothing too serious, inshallah.”

“At our age, everything is serious.” Miteb pushed a button, and the music stopped. “Do you think your friends are tailing you?”

“The agency? I doubt it. Out of sight, out of mind. Anyway, they know enough to leave me alone.”

“You’re used to having your own way.”

“Coming from a prince, I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“Let’s say it’s both. And what about you? Will you report this meeting to the CIA?”

Wells didn’t answer. In truth, he hadn’t decided.

“You’re still loyal to your country.”

Guilty, Wells thought. For better or worse. “If this is a back-channel plea for help from the United States, you’d be better off asking directly,” he said.

“It’s not. We can’t have America involved.”

“Prince, I still don’t know why I’m here. I assume it’s related to the attacks last week, but you haven’t even said that.”

“My brother and I have a mission for you.”

“An entire army reports to you, and you need me.”

“We can’t depend on the army for this. It’s not in our land.”

“Your mukhabarat, then.”

“But as we told you yesterday, that’s precisely the problem. The muk belong to Saeed and Mansour. Do you think this pleases us? To ask an American we don’t know for help?”

“Start at the beginning. Why me?”

“I’ve known Pierre Kowalski many years. He’s supplied the National Guard with weapons. He gave me your name. But he said we’d have to talk in person to convince you.”

“How can you and Abdullah come here without anyone knowing?”

“There’s a physician in Nice who treats Abdullah. Saeed thinks he’s here for medical treatment.”

Wells wasn’t so sure. “But don’t Mansour’s men manage your security?”

“The king chooses his traveling companions. And if he wants to leave his security behind and go for a drive in his Mercedes, he can. Anyway, I think Saeed and his son prefer us outside the country. This way, they can talk to the other princes, campaign against us.”

“Is that what’s happening?”

“Not openly. But yes. It’s complicated and simple at the same time.”

“Tell me.”

“You heard Abdullah yesterday. He wants Khalid on the throne. His eldest son. It’s stuck in his head. He can’t let it go. And it’s creating a big instability.”

“It’s not how the system is supposed to work.”

“Correct. The first generation should have preference. That means Saeed. And if not Saeed, then the princes should come together to make the decision.”

“So how can Abdullah win?”

“Because this problem will come very soon, anyway. Saeed is almost eighty. Even if he takes over from Abdullah, he has only a few years to rule. And once he and Nayef are gone, the first generation will be gone and the country will be just where it is now. The next generation is too large. How can we choose? Two hundred grandsons of Abdul-Aziz can claim the throne.”

“Still. Why not let Saeed take the throne, put off the problem?”

“Because if Saeed is king, he’ll undo all the good that Abdullah has done.”

“You expect me to believe that Abdullah is some great force for democracy.”

For the first time, Miteb seemed irritated. “I want you to understand our society. You know what happened in 1979?”

Wells was glad he had read up. “The Grand Mosque.”

“Yes. Our clerics, they’re very powerful. And most of them, they only read the Quran and the hadith, nothing else. They know everything about Islam, nothing about the rest of the world. Sheikh bin Baz was our most senior cleric until he died in 1999. His most famous fatwa, in 1966, he said that the Quran proves that the earth doesn’t go around the sun. The earth is the center and the sun moves around it, he said.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yes. He only changed his mind in 1985, and do you know why? Prince Sultan was on the space shuttle and came to him and said, ‘Sheikh, I saw it. The earth rotates and the sun is still.’ And that convinced him. This is our society, you see. And Abdullah must move slowly. But Abdullah’s a good king. He’s a good man, and kind, and he wants more openness. The people trust him. He’s moving us in the right direction. Not like Saeed.”

“Tell me about Saeed.”

“So in 2002, in Mecca, a school for girls caught fire. These schools, they’re mainly old apartment buildings, not really schools, because we have so many children and not enough schools. This one, someone was cooking in the kitchen and an electric plate caught fire. It was a small fire, but it spread. There were eight hundred girls inside, more. Not just Saudi, but from Pakistan, Nigeria, everywhere. And there was only one staircase to get out. The girls started to panic. Then the religious police came. You don’t remember this?”

“I was in Pakistan at the time, the North-West Frontier. Didn’t get much news.”

“So the muttawa”—the religious police—“came, and you must imagine, this is Mecca, they are even more conservative there than anywhere else. They blocked the entrance to the school. They wouldn’t let in the firefighters. And they would only let out the girls who were wearing abayas. They made the other girls go back. The firefighters and the civil defence said, ‘This is not the time to enforce these laws.’ But while they argued, the school was burning. The girls were stuck inside. Screaming, ‘Let us out! Let us out!’ They started to jump out the windows. By the time the firefighters got inside, fifteen of them died and fifty were terribly hurt. Little girls. A tragedy. And the newspapers wrote about it. Saudi newspapers criticizing the religious police and calling for an investigation of the school. It had never happened before. And Abdullah and I, you understand, we welcomed this.”

“But not Saeed.”

“Not Saeed. Not Nayef, the interior minister, either. After a few days, Nayef called all the newspaper editors in. He told them it was time for the investigations to end. And once the interior minister tells you to stop investigating, you stop, or you go to jail. And he said that the muttawa had not blocked the gate and that they had behaved properly. He said they were there to make sure that the girls didn’t face ‘mistreatment’ outside the building. And Saeed — Saeed went even further. He called the muttawa ‘heroes.’ ”

“Abdullah couldn’t get involved?”

“At the time, he wasn’t the king. And the religious police, the clerics, they don’t think this fire is a tragedy. Because to them, the girls shouldn’t be in school at all. So the fire is Allah punishing them. And Saeed and Nayef, I’m not sure whether they believe that, but they know the clerics do.”

“They sound like sweeties.”

“Then, a few months later, Nayef said that the Saudis weren’t the ones who hijacked the planes on September 11. The Americans shouted so much that he took it back. But Saeed not only repeated it — he made a big speech about it. He doesn’t trust the United States, and he never will. He thinks the clerics are right, that there’s only room for one religion. And Saeed, when he dies, he’ll be no different than Abdullah. He’ll want his son on the throne.”

“Mansour.”

“Yes. And I’ve decided that Abdullah is right about Mansour. He believes only in power.”

“Is Abdullah faithful?”

“Yes. More than I am. But you don’t understand what it’s like to be our age. We see death around every corner. We can’t pretend that Allah will protect us any longer. But then Allah’s kept his bargain with us. We’ve had our lives. What I mean is that whether you believe matters less at our age. What will be will be. Allah will judge us all on his own scale, heaven or hell. And if it turns out to be nothing at all on the other side — and yes, we all wonder that, too — we can’t help that, either.”

Wells found himself liking this old man. “You think Khalid will be a good king?”

“I don’t know. But it’s what Abdullah wants, and I’ve pledged to help him.” Miteb looked Wells over. “I know what you think. You think, Why help these men? What gives them the right to all this money that comes out of the ground? But this is our system. Maybe in fifty years, we’ll have something different. A constitutional monarchy like Jordan. But it’s impossible now. The princes and the clerics won’t allow it. And look at Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela, Libya. Wherever there’s oil, there are dictators and war.”

As Miteb had said, Wells was inclined to stay out of this battle for a sticky black throne. Yet Miteb had made a persuasive case. He hadn’t pretended that Khalid would be a perfect ruler. He had said only that Khalid was better than the alternatives.

“All right. Let’s say I’ll help you. Tell me, how do the attacks last week relate to all this?”

“Possibly they don’t. Possibly it’s coincidence, Al Qaeda picked last week for more attacks. But I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so, either.”

“So it’s a new group. One capable of launching three attacks at once. Avoiding detection from America. Hitting a hotel in the center of Riyadh. They’re well-trained and well-financed. They must have had friends inside the muk. Maybe the very top, maybe not, but certainly some help.”

“Say you’re right. What’s the point?”

“To create instability. Anger my brother, make him overreact. His temper gets worse every week. I think because he’s in so much pain. So he lashes out at his brothers and the senior clerics. Then Saeed goes to the other princes and says, ‘We all love Abdullah, but we can’t trust him anymore. He needs to step down.’ Already they whisper that he’s paranoid.”

From what Wells had seen of Abdullah, the scenario was plausible. “That’s why Abdullah can’t strip Saeed and Mansour of their power quietly?”

“If he tries to move openly against Saeed, Saeed will say that Abdullah is losing his mind. Abdullah made a mistake when he said that he wanted his son to be king. We have a proverb, ‘Your tongue is your steed. Guard it and it guards you, abuse it and it abuses you.’ My brother spoke too soon. That gave Saeed the opening, set everything else in motion. But what’s done is done. Abdullah couldn’t help himself.”

“What if Saeed has won already?” Wells said.

“It’s possible. But my brother has been popular. Especially among ordinary people. And if Saeed and Mansour were sure they’d won, they’d have no need to provoke Abdullah. They would just wait for the succession.”

“So. Now that I understand, what is it you want me to do?”

A brown leather satchel lay at Miteb’s feet. Miteb reached down and slipped his palsied fingers through the handle. He pulled it up, his wrists shaking. Wells could almost feel him straining.

“Prince—” Wells reached over.

“No. Let me.” Inch by inch, Miteb edged the satchel higher, his lips quivering. I’ll never be that old, Wells promised himself. Never. Even if I am. Finally Miteb dropped the satchel on the seat — and let out a giant fart that filled the Maybach.

“Smells like a barrel of oil,” Wells said.

Suddenly, both men were laughing. “One day you’ll understand.”

“Inshallah, I hope not.”

INSIDE THE SATCHEL, WELLS found a spy’s treasure trove.

An Algerian passport, real, with a name and date of birth but no photo. What operatives called a blank. A battered cell phone, its screen cracked. An empty wallet, its brown leather splattered with blood. A Nikon D300, a professional-grade SLR, with a telephoto lens. A second camera, a Canon small enough to be hidden inside a man’s palm. A half-dozen flat white plastic rectangles embedded with black strips — passkeys for a hotel or office building. Three architectural maps of a fan-shaped neighborhood that Wells didn’t recognize. A plastic police evidence bag that contained a wad of riyals, the Saudi currency, and a money clip of hundred-dollar bills.

“The police in Riyadh found all this a few days ago. We were fortunate. Mansour’s men weren’t involved. There was an auto accident. A big truck ran through a traffic light, hit a car, crushed it and killed the driver. When the police came, they found the car was stolen and the driver had no identification. When the police opened the trunk, they found the passport and the camera and called their captain.”

“Why didn’t they tell the Interior Ministry?”

“The head of the police in Riyadh is loyal to Abdullah. He’s ordered that this type of material be passed to him so that he can give it to the mukhabarat himself. Sometimes files are lost before they reach the muk. You understand?”

“Saeed and Mansour don’t know you’ve found all this.”

“Correct.”

“But you told me the police haven’t identified this man. How can you be so sure that he’s connected to the men behind the attacks last week?”

Miteb had no answer.

“If this is all you have, you and your brother are really drawing thin.”

“‘Drawing thin’? I don’t understand.”

Wells held up the phone and the plastic evidence bag. “The phone and money were in the driver’s pocket?”

Miteb nodded. “The phone doesn’t work anymore. But it still has its memory. And it shows three calls from mobile phones with Lebanese area codes.”

Which might not have been made from Lebanon at all, Wells thought. “Did he have anything else? Receipts? Credit cards? A map with a big black X marking the spot of his hideout?”

Miteb smiled. “No map. As for the rest, I can ask, but I don’t think so. Everything the police found is here. You see they even kept the money from the wallet.”

“We’re lucky for that.”

Wells took the money from the plastic bag. He set the clip with the hundred-dollar bills aside and thumbed through the Saudi currency, thirty or so bills, ranging from one-riyal to five-hundred-riyal notes, their edges streaked with blood.

“You don’t need to take that,” Miteb said. “If you need money, tell me.”

“Here’s a thirty-second tutorial on tradecraft, Prince. The man who died in that crash was a professional. Or at least professionally trained. He kept almost everything in his head. But nobody can remember everything.” Wells thumbed through the hundred-dollar bills, then examined the riyals more closely. “You’ve got to give yourself help. And even the most careful cops aren’t likely to check your banknotes for hidden information.”

Wells held up a one-riyal note. Four numbers were written in tiny Arabic script in the upper-right corner: 5421. On the next note, four more numbers in the lower-right corner: 8239.

“See these? I find three more bills like this, I have a sixteen-digit credit-card number with a three-digit pin — personal identification number. Let’s say my handlers are giving me a new card once a month. And they don’t want me to keep the physical cards. That’s a lot to remember, nineteen digits. This way I don’t have to. I put the bills together and I have my card. I can use it on the Internet whenever I like. And if the card gets canceled and I need a new one, I spend the money and get fresh banknotes and repeat the process.”

“Very good.”

“I didn’t invent it.”

“So now that you have the credit card, what will you do?”

“I’m not planning to do anything.”

“Please, Mr. Wells. My brother and I, we can offer you whatever you like, but you told us yesterday that money didn’t matter, and I believe you. I don’t know how to convince you.”

“Convince me to what?”

“Find out who was paying this man. Where they’re located. What we’d ask our mukhabarat to do if we trusted them.”

“Even if you’re right that the muk are involved, the chain won’t run all the way up to Saeed or Mansour. At best, I’ll find somebody a couple steps removed.”

“That’s closer than we are now. Then you infiltrate, stop the next attack.”

“I don’t know what Pierre Kowalski told you about me. But that’s not how it works. I can’t just find these men and tell them I want to join the war against Abdullah.”

Miteb sagged against his seat. Wells saw the prince’s exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders. None of this could be easy for a man his age.

“All right,” Wells said. He slipped the money into the plastic bag and put the bag and everything else back into the satchel and put the satchel at his feet. “I’ll make a few calls, see what I can find.”

Miteb put his arms around Wells, kissed Wells’s cheeks with his papery lips. His trembling fingers skittered over Wells’s back. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything.”

“But you will.”

“Maybe.” But Wells knew he was lying. He’d chosen a side already.

AT THE HOTEL, WELLS called a number that would be burned into his brain even if he lived to be older than Abdullah. The phone rang once. Then: “Shafer here.”

“Ellis. I need your help.”