The Shroud of Heaven

One

It was an illusion — more accurately a mirage — and Nick Kismet was not fooled. Nevertheless, his eyes were drawn to the shimmering curtain of superheated air rising from the earth, pooling in mid-air like the surface of a vast lake somehow turned on its side. The Airbus A320 speared onward into the heart of the distortion and the convection waves magically receded.

Spring was now half done and already the desert days had become brutally hot. At sunrise, temperatures of nearly ninety degrees Fahrenheit were reported; by midday, the mercury would reach well into the triple-digit range. And yet, with the fall of night, the day’s heat would radiate back into space to plunge temperatures in the austere environment to the opposite extreme. Indeed, it was a place of extremes.

That’s why they call it the desert, Kismet thought darkly.

He hated this place, hated the arid nothingness and the severe temperatures and the scouring sandstorms. He loathed the constant thirst, the ever-present smell of scorched iron, and the way his clothes felt like sandpaper against his skin. Yet, there was much more to his contempt than recognition of the physical hardships imposed by the harsh conditions.

This was the place where he had almost died.

The desert extremes did not adequately represent the totality of the environment. As the plane sailed onward through the roiling air mass, shedding altitude and cruising speed on approach to its destination, Kismet began to see more green in the brown landscape below. The Tigris River was a barely visible ribbon, glinting in the sun, but its benevolent effects, courtesy of an ancient network of irrigation canals, were visible all around the city. From a distance, it was hard to believe that this place was still a war zone.

The aircraft began to vibrate as it struck pockets of disturbed atmosphere. The turbulence was not unlike slamming into potholes on a paved road, and as the plane made a particularly violent drop, Kismet was grateful for his seat belt. He overheard snatches of conversation from some of his fellow passengers, mostly relief workers from UNICEF and other international agencies, wondering if the plane was taking ground fire.

He smiled humorlessly at the notion. If the civilian aircraft was indeed under attack from anti-aircraft artillery batteries, or even small arms fire, there would be no time to wonder. The plane would simply break up in the air over the city. Yet it was only right that the volunteers be concerned. For most, this endeavor would represent the greatest peril they would ever face — stepping willingly into one of the most violent places on earth in order to do nothing but good — and they certainly had every right to be apprehensive. If he did not share their trepidation, it was only because for him, this would not be such a singular event. As the soldiers with whom he had once served were fond of saying: “Been there, done that.”

It had been twelve years and three months, give or take a few days, since Kismet’s first journey into the desert. He had not come quite so far north that time, but in some ways he had gone much further. Yet that crucible of violence, from which he had escaped using only his wits and the devil’s own luck, was not what he would remember most about his experience in the desert. War, even on such a personal, visceral level, was not the element which had forged him like steel and set him upon the path he now followed. Something else had happened that night in the desert, something he still could not fully explain. Somewhere in the world however, there was at least one person who did know, and Kismet had sworn to find that man. When he did, he would demand an answer to his questions and settle a very special account — a debt payable in blood.

He had been on that path for more than a decade, finding little in the way of solid information, but had never lost hope. In all that time however, his quest had not returned him to the desert sands where he had been reborn. It had taken another war to bring him back here.

He was not returning as a soldier to battle a modern enemy, but rather as a protector of ancient wonders. The second Gulf War — designated Operation: Iraqi Freedom — was not over. Not officially, as the objectives of the war plan had yet to be fully realized, and not literally. Not by a long shot. Men were still fighting and dying in nearly every corner of the country. Sporadic resistance continued to break out, both from organized groups still loyal to the fallen regime and from enraged citizens, striking out blindly at the foreigners who had come unbidden and shattered their world. In many cases, that violence had been directed at objects rather than at people. Several days of looting had followed the collapse of the regime, mostly from government offices, but also from hospitals, banks and museums. It was the latter area of need that had prompted Kismet’s return to the desert.

As the city grew closer, the pilot put the plane into a shallow dive, shedding altitude rapidly. The engines whined with exertion, but Kismet knew they were actually giving up airspeed, slowing down in preparation for landing. He nevertheless got the feeling that the pilot was in a hurry to get his aircraft on the ground. The jet would never be more vulnerable to attack than when on final approach. The landing gear came down with a thump, and he sat back in his chair, knowing that while the flight was almost over, the journey was only just beginning.

Kismet took his place in the queue of passengers poised to disembark. He found it slightly amusing that he was nearly at the head of the line. That never happened when he traveled. Always a stickler for obeying the flight crew’s directive to remain seated until the plane stopped moving, he usually found himself fighting to get out of the cramped row and into the aisle. Evidently no one on this flight was eager to leave the aircraft, their last link with a world that was, if not completely civilized, then at least recognizable.

He noticed one group of Red Cross workers who, like himself, were not put off by their arrival in the war zone. They moved with calm assurance toward the exit, shouldering their gear as if they were simply reporting for another day at work. It was not their collective demeanor that drew his attention however, but rather the face of their leader, a red-haired woman who pushed past him with a confident stride that could only be earned through years of experience in dangerous areas. She caught his appraising glance and returned it with a contemptuous curl of her lips. On a face less lovely, it would have been a sneer.

Must be French, he thought, answering her with a wink.

The heat of the day was beginning to fill the cabin, rapidly displacing the cool air-conditioned environment. The effect was welcome, buffering the passengers against the furnace blast that awaited them on the tarmac. Kismet squinted involuntarily as he stepped out onto the gantry, and then quickly descended. The recently re-christened Baghdad International Airport had not exactly been designed with a view to making travelers feel welcome, but an overwhelming presence of armored vehicles made it seem downright inhospitable. Like his fellow passengers, he was eager to be inside where there was at least the illusion of safety.

A small knot of grim-faced soldiers waited at the foot of the descending staircase. They were young—just boys, thought Kismet, remembering a time when he had been one of them — but their weapons added a gravity to their presence that somehow obviated the need for maturity. Kismet recognized the M4 carbines — the latest incarnation of the venerable M16 assault rifle — and the M136 AT-4 missile launch tubes slung over several shoulders. Despite their almost juvenile countenances, to a man they all had an aged appearance, as if the desert sun had bleached away the flush of youth.

“This way,” directed one of the men, a staff sergeant and leader of the squad. His voice was tight, without a trace of pleasantness. He was not there to play welcoming committee. Kismet nodded and headed in the direction of the soldier’s brusque gesture.

He reached the relative shade of the terminal, passing more soldiers but also men and women in civilian clothes. Armbands differentiated relief workers and agents of the UN, while cameras and sound equipment were the badge of the journalist, but all of the civilians, like the soldiers before them, wore flak jackets and Kevlar helmets. Kismet had been issued similar protective equipment, but it was packed away in the large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He debated donning the equipment, but decided he could survive a few more steps without the precautionary armor.

“Monsieur Kismet?”

Despite the buzz of noise circulating through the terminal, Kismet distinctly heard his name and began looking for the person who had spoken. The voice had been feminine and accented — French, he determined, based on nothing more than the choice of honorific and the lapsed pronunciation of the last syllable: “Kis-may.” He stopped moving, waiting for the caller to present herself.

A petite figure stepped forward, her hair and facial features concealed by a black combat helmet. Her stature was such that he found himself looking down at the top of her headgear. He ducked to get a better look at her face. “Je suis Nick Kismet,” he replied, correcting her pronunciation.

She looked up at him, blinking as if in incomprehension. “Bonjour, monsieur. This way please.”

She turned away before Kismet could commit her features to memory, but his initial impression was one of haughtiness. Twice in one day, he thought, shaking his head. What is it with me and French women?

He knew that his generalization was not quite fair. She had done nothing to earn such an accusation. He was simply projecting the leftover ire from his encounter with the woman on the plane.

He had seen enough to know that his guide was an attractive woman, with the sort of angular features common to European runway models. Though only a stray lock of her dark hair had been visible, sneaking out across her right cheek, it stood in stark contrast to her pale skin, as did her immaculate crimson lipstick. Perhaps her expression was not so much one of arrogance as an unconscious declaration that she did not belong in this place. Shaking his head, he followed after her receding form.

He had gone only two steps when a familiar cry rolled through the crowd. “Incoming!”

He reacted without thinking, echoing the message at the top of his voice though unaware that he was doing so, and launched himself forward. There was no hesitation; this was a lesson learned so deeply as to almost become instinctual. The woman was just starting to respond when Kismet grabbed her arm, pulled her down and covered her with his torso. As an afterthought, he held the duffel bag over his head, reasoning that the armor equipment inside would afford a degree of protection from whatever was about to happen.

With adrenaline coursing through his veins, Kismet could not accurately judge the flow of time. It seemed that several minutes had passed without anything else happening. The only sounds he could hear were the extraordinarily loud percussions of his own heartbeat.

And then the earth moved.

The blast felt like a slap from God, yet Kismet knew he was experiencing only the outer edge of the shockwave: a bubble of displaced air pushed away from the detonation. In the same instant, the roar of the explosion washed over him. There was a deafening rush of noise that brought with it a shower of sand particles and shattered clay bricks.

Through the ringing inside his head, he could distinguish the staccato pops of gunfire. The soldiers were mounting a counterattack against the perceived source of the threat. Kismet doubted the young infantrymen knew where to direct their fire. Most were probably shooting at anything that moved, but in the omnidirectional hailstorm of metal-jacketed ball ammunition, the odds did not favor the unseen enemy. He risked a look.

The wall of the terminal had taken a direct hit, leaving an enormous wound in the brick structure. Through the hole and the thick curtain of smoke and dust, Kismet could see the battle in progress, the young soldiers alternately firing and advancing across the tarmac toward the outer perimeter of the airport, several hundred meters away. The aircraft which had brought him across the desert sands sat impotent and vulnerable, only a stone’s throw from the blast radius.

Adrenaline was still distorting his perception of time, giving him a strange clarity of thought. He became aware of the news crews, rushing forward as if invincible in order to capture scenes of the battle on videotape. Their eagerness seemed ghoulish, but Kismet knew that in their own way, they were as dedicated as the soldiers fighting the battle on both sides. The journalists were true believers in the cause of history. If that explained their enthusiasm, it did not entirely excuse them. Most of the world’s problems could be laid at the feet of the true believers.

The focus of the battle seemed to shift, and Kismet saw a white finger of vapor reaching out across the paved runway. RPG, he thought. A rocket-propelled grenade.

Even as the munition was released it gave away the location of its user, and in a heartbeat, the place from which it had originated became the primary target for the soldiers. But no amount of retaliatory fire could alter the trajectory of the grenade as it streaked toward the terminal. Kismet covered his unnamed companion once more, waiting for the inevitable explosive climax.

The RPG streaked past the nose of the idle jet, missing it by less than ten meters, and slammed into the wall of the terminal, just to the left of the first impact. The orderly matrix of bricks blew apart in a rough circle, showering the interior of the building with deadly fragments. Kismet saw several people struck, some seriously, by the debris. Closer to the blast, a section of the wall that had initially survived intact, now teetered inward and collapsed as a single massive entity onto a group of huddling relief workers and soldiers.

Disdaining his own safety, Kismet sprang erect and darted across the terminal. Chaos had replaced the orderliness of the greeting area. Shrapnel and brick splinters were everywhere, and some who had survived with only minor injuries, or perhaps none at all, now rushed back and forth across the terminal in search of safety. Most simply remained flat on the ground, awaiting the next blast that might finish them all.

A number of figures struggled from the outer edge of the collapsed wall. Kismet caught a glimpse of red hair and instantly recognized the woman from the plane. Her expression remained purposeful as she turned back toward the devastated tableau, immediately plunging her hands into the debris to effect the rescue of her comrades. He was at her side a moment later, lending the strength of his legs and back to the effort of lifting the wall. This time, she did not spurn his presence.

Working together, they shifted a section of wall nearly two-meters square, partially revealing two motionless forms: a US soldier and one of the Red Cross workers. Kismet dug at a scattering of bricks that still pinned the legs of the latter individual, enough so that the woman was able to slip her hands beneath the fallen aid worker's shoulders in order to drag him to safety.

Kismet blinked in disbelief. The woman, ostensibly dedicated to bringing relief to victims of the war, had helped rescue a single individual — her own friend — before fleeing the disaster area. Shaking off his incredulity, he plunged into the ruin once more, pushing aside large chunks of the wall to reveal other victims in dust-streaked camouflage. Another section of the wall, twice as large as the piece he had helped move, had fallen inward, crushing several more unlucky souls. It seemed unlikely that anyone could have endured its massive collapse, but Kismet had witnessed survival stories far more improbable.

He was closer now to the perimeter of the terminal, and able to follow the battle raging outside on the tarmac. The infantrymen were advancing toward the position from which the grenades had been launched, filling the air with bursts of gunfire. He couldn’t tell if they were taking fire but the soldiers were staying low in order to present as small a target as possible. Kismet gave the situation a cursory glance, but kept his focus on driving wedge-shaped pieces of debris under the outermost lip of the fallen wall, forcibly raising it, if only by microscopic increments.

Abruptly, the pitch of the skirmish seemed to change. Kismet looked up from his task, anxious that yet another RPG had been unleashed. Instead of a grenade however, he saw something far more destructive racing toward his position.

In that instant he realized that the grenade attack had simply been a diversion, a feint designed to engage the troops and draw them away from the terminal. The advance had opened a gap in their flank, allowing a single vehicle to break through the outer secure perimeter of the airport, onto the tarmac. At the same instant, gunfire — Kismet recognized the distinctive report of the AK-47—from no less than three separate locations began showering the exposed soldiers, compelling them to dive for cover and effectively preventing them from firing on that lone automobile. Kismet knew instantly the purpose behind the driver’s suicidal attempt to reach the terminal and recognized just as surely that none of the men on the tarmac would be able to stop it. When that car, or rather car bomb, reached the idle jetliner, the battle would be over for everyone. The soldiers on the runway and every soul in the exposed terminal building would be caught in the ensuing firestorm.

With a deftness acquired through weeks of training — and like bicycle riding, never quite forgotten — Kismet snatched a long object from the shoulder of a fallen trooper, removed the safety pin and rolled the cylinder onto his shoulder. The AT-4 anti-tank weapon was only slightly different than the LAW 80 he had learned to use a decade earlier, and a brief glance at the instructions printed on the side of the tube was all he needed to prepare the launcher for firing. A tilt of his head brought the target into view in the peep-sight.

“Backblast clear!” He glanced quickly to his rear, checking to make sure that anyone close enough to have heard his shouted warning was hastening away from the area, then thumbed the red trigger button.

The launch tube filled with fire as the solid propellant rocket motor blasted the 80-millimeter high-explosive warhead across the tarmac. A cone-shaped inferno blossomed behind Kismet — the rocket’s backblast — and an ear-splitting hiss filled the enclosed terminal building as the missile broke the sound barrier.

The car was less than fifty meters from the jet, close enough, Kismet knew, to ignite the fuel in its wing tanks if enough explosives had been packed into the station wagon. The vehicle was a fast-moving target, difficult to strike even in the best of circumstances. To make matters worse, he knew that in the unlikely event of a direct hit, the anti-tank missile would trigger the car bomb, accomplishing the very thing he sought to prevent. All of those factors had flashed through his mind in the instant he fixed his sights not on the advancing vehicle but on a stationary spot on the runway directly in its path.

The warhead slammed into the paved surface before Kismet could relax his finger, and gouged a large crater in the soft asphalt a mere whisper ahead of the car’s arrival. What the missile lacked in pyrotechnic splendor, it made up for in raw kinetic energy. The shockwave swept underneath the station wagon, lifting its front end off the runway and tossing the entire vehicle backward like a sheet of paper in a windstorm.

In that instant, the car detonated in a brilliant supernova. The chassis swelled like an overripe fruit then burst apart in a spray of metal fragments, some still recognizable as automobile components. The shockwave from the secondary explosion radiated outward in a near perfect sphere of force to hammer against the defenseless plane. The wings shuddered and the airframe twisted and popped as a wall of air, hard as steel and moving at the speed of sound, slammed into the fuselage. The jet shifted sideways, pushed by the invisible hand of the blast, and its tires left long streaks of rubber on the runway. An instant later a wheel from the car crashed into the stabilizer fin, followed by a spray of shrapnel that tore into the aluminum skin of the aircraft, peeling back the thin sheets. The port wing gave an agonized groan as a long crack began traveling its length. Kismet saw jet fuel weeping from the underside of the damaged wing and closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. The explosion that followed however was not what he was expecting.

“Are you insane?”

Despite all the fury of gunshots and explosions, that strident exclamation was the harshest noise he had heard since arriving. He turned slowly to find, not surprisingly, the copper-haired woman who had preceded him into the terminal.

“Did you even think to look behind you?” she continued, her scream of fury like fingernails on a chalkboard. Kismet noted absently that the woman was speaking English, fluently judging by the few words he had heard, but faintly accented.

Yep, French.

He countered her ferocious mien with one of calm dispassion. “I checked. It was clear.”

“You almost incinerated us.”

Kismet understood her distress and tried to be sympathetic. To a non-combatant, the plume of fire erupting from the launch tube must have seemed quite threatening. But he had checked before triggering the device. Moreover, his decision to angle the shot into the tarmac meant that most of the rocket’s exhaust had been directed upward, over the head of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the backfire zone.

Outside, the last fragments of debris from the suicide bomb vehicle clattered to the ground. The plane now bore significant scars from the encounter, but could conceivably fly again with extensive repair. Aside from the sole occupant of the vehicle, there appeared to be no casualties directly resulting from the terrorist act.

Beyond the battered aircraft, the tide of the ongoing gun battle had shifted once again. The attacking force, anticipating only success, had suffered a morale shattering defeat. Their return fire trickled to nothing as they abandoned their positions and retreated toward the city. As Kismet gazed across the tarmac, he saw a squad of olive drab military vehicles charge across the open expanse in pursuit.

The red-haired woman remained in front of him, seething with misplaced anger, but said nothing more. Kismet blinked at her, then attempted a compromise. “I’m sorry I frightened you, but you weren’t really in any danger. Not from this at least.” He proffered the spent missile tube like an olive branch.

The woman made a guttural noise that might have been a curse then thrust her hands at his face before spinning on her heel and stalking away.

He lowered the missile launcher, shaking his head in disbelief, and pitched his voice so that there would be no mistaking his ire. “You’re welcome.”

Two

As the battle shifted away from the airport, those inside the terminal building began to emerge from their defensive cocoons. Many of the non-combatants, desperately needing something to do in order to restore their dignity following the terrifying incident, raced to assist Kismet in the effort of lifting the fallen section of wall or began administering first aid to the dozen or more victims of shrapnel injuries.

Only moments after the confrontation with the woman whose hair color evidently matched her temperament, Kismet once again found himself under fire for having saved the day.

“Who the hell fired that AT-4?”

The voice belonged to a man, but was no less strident. Kismet straightened from his labors, turning to face a man wearing desert-pattern fatigues with a brown oak leaf sewn into the collar. He checked the nametape over the man’s right breast pocket before answering. “I did, Major Harp.”

The officer gaped at him in disbelief, momentarily losing his voice. It was evident from his manner that the man had expected to find one of the soldiers under his command responsible for what must have seemed like a reckless act. “Who the hell are you?”

“Nick Kismet.” He extended his hand ingenuously.

“A goddamned civilian?”

Kismet lowered his hand with a sigh. “I guess so.”

“I don’t know who you think you are, but this is not some playground where you can come live out your Rambo fantasies.” Kismet got the impression that Harp had used this speech before, practicing and refining his imprecations for maximum effect. The rant continued unchecked. “This is a goddamned war zone, mister. You civilians are to keep your goddamned heads down. I will not have my soldiers put in harm’s way because you people want snapshots for your fucking scrapbooks and war stories to impress women at cocktail parties…”

“Major!”

The torrent of rage and blasphemy instantly evaporated with that single, sharply spoken recognition of rank. Harp stiffened to attention, his eyes no longer fixed on Kismet, as the person who had called out stepped into view. Like the major, this man also wore a khaki camouflage battle dress uniform with an oak leaf on his collar, but his insignia was black: a lieutenant colonel.

The newcomer scrutinized Kismet, then turned to his subordinate. “At ease, major.”

Harp relaxed from the disciplined posture; it was evident that his fire had gone out. The colonel turned back to Kismet. “You’ll have to forgive Major Harp. He doesn’t understand that any man who has earned the Silver Star deserves a little respect even if he no longer wears the uniform.”

Harp’s eyes widened at the revelation and a flush of embarrassment crept over his sand-abraded cheeks, but he kept his silence.

Kismet raised an eyebrow. “Not very many people know about that.”

“Well, I do.” The lieutenant colonel took his hand and began pumping it vigorously. “Jon Buttrick, Mr. Kismet. A pleasure to meet you. And from what I’ve heard, we all owe you a debt of gratitude. If that car had gotten any closer, we’d be cleaning this terminal up with a bulldozer.”

Kismet risked a satisfied grin. “Frankly, colonel—”

”Call me Jon, Nick.”

“Jon. Frankly, I’m glad someone appreciates that I knew what I was doing.”

The officer chuckled. “I’m sure they’ll all figure it out once they hear about it on CNN.” He nodded to a gathering knot of reporters who circled like vultures, waiting for an opportunity to move in and tear him apart with their questions.

“Monsieur Kismet.” The small dark-haired woman who had initially met him upon his arrival darted in front of Buttrick. “You’ll be late for your meeting.”

“My meeting,” Kismet echoed, loud enough for all the journalists to hear. He could almost sense their panic as they saw him maneuver for an escape. “Thank you again for your kind words, colonel.”

The other man nodded with a knowing smile, allowing the woman to guide Kismet away from the swarm. “Hey, Nick. Listen, if you want to blow up some more stuff, do me a favor and re-up.”

Kismet ignored the chuckling officer and focused intently on the woman’s shoulders. She hastened directly to the spot where Kismet had left his bags, the place where he had pushed her down and shielded her with his own body. He didn’t even know her name. “Mademoiselle, I don’t believe we’ve been—”

”Marie,” she replied, looking up from beneath the bulky helmet. Her smile could not quite erase his memory of the haughtiness he had earlier detected. “My name is Marie Villaneauve,” she continued in English. “And I also appreciate your prompt action in my defense.”

She then nodded toward the pack of reporters and videographers that had decided to chase after him. “However, I believe we are now even.”

No matter where he went in the world, Saeed Tariq Al-Sharaf always made sure that he had a view of water. He preferred river frontages most of all. Rivers were the source of life, as far as he was concerned. He had grown up in a place without rivers, a place where water was procured only through physical labor, but as he matured, gaining authority and with it a measure of wealth, he had moved closer to the great river and made a solemn promise to always pitch his tent within sight of water.

Of course, he was not alone in his appreciation of an aquatic panorama. The scenic vistas he craved came with a hefty price tag, especially here where the presence of so many affluent businessmen, politicians and celebrities had inflated real estate prices by an order of magnitude. Additionally, the lease of the chateau was being handled through a proxy, a faceless law office in Geneva, and that act of representation further bumped up the expense of maintaining a view of the river.

But what a view it is, thought Saeed. Worth every euro.

His eyes lingered on the sun-dappled surface of the waterway, contemplating it meditatively, as if in prayer. It was as close as he came to devotion. Even when he had lived in the desert, he had flaunted the five-times daily ritual call of the muezzin. He accepted that there was no God but God, but held to the personal belief that Allah had put man on earth to find his own way. Religion was a tool for rallying, and if necessary manipulating, the rabble, but served no divine purpose that he could see.

The muster of the masses was now fully underway in the country of his birth. The Persians had not won the nation through conquest — that had been the work of the American devils — but in anticipation of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, the theocratic government of Iran had sent hundreds of mullahs over the border, insinuating into the Shiite community in order to cultivate popular support for a religious government in Iraq. During his reign, Saddam had brutally quashed any number of attempts on the part of the faithful to organize, recognizing the power inherent in such zeal, but the Americans were reluctant to employ such decisive tactics in defense of their cause, and so the Shiite majority was becoming emboldened to take control of the nation.

Saeed had been following the story with great interest, even as he had followed the build-up to war and the subsequent campaign. He did not really care how the game eventually played out, but he craved information about the struggle. It was very important to know which way the wind was going to blow in order to chart his course.

He turned away from the river, his eyes slow to adjust after staring into the glare, and turned up the volume on the television set. The twenty-four hour satellite news channel to which he kept the set tuned at all times had been broadcasting almost nothing but coverage of the war and civil unrest for several weeks. The latest developments concerned him directly. Agents from Interpol and the American Federal Bureau of Investigation had successfully recovered a great number of art treasures looted from the National Museum in Baghdad, preventing them from being dispersed in the European black market. While Saeed’s interests had not been directly affected, the affair would draw unwelcome attention to what had been a largely ignored enterprise.

A flashing graphic on the screen seized his interest, the words “Breaking News,” which sometimes heralded a significant change in the position of the pieces on the global game board. As he had come to expect, the new development regarded something that had just occurred in his homeland. He listened carefully to the English language broadcast, mentally translating the foreign words as he watched.

There had been an attack at what he still thought of as the Saddam International Airport. A suicide bomber had blown himself up in an effort to bring great destruction upon the troops massed at the large facility a few kilometers outside of Baghdad. The explosion had done some structural damage and caused several injuries, however it was being reported that the only fatality resulting from the blast was the bomber himself. As if to underscore this point, the handsome journalist reporting the incident stood on the runway, with a smoking pile of debris just over his left shoulder.

“The suicide bomb attack appears to have been part of a broader strategy. An effort to disrupt a key supply route. However, that desperate mission was thwarted, not by US troops, but rather by a civilian bystander.”

The screen cut to video footage of two men conversing: one a soldier in desert camouflage, the other wearing blue jeans and a khaki shirt. Judging by his appearance, Saeed would have believed the second man to be a soldier in civilian attire. He was obviously in excellent physical shape and his close-cropped hairstyle was de rigueur among American military personnel. Probably from their CIA.

“This man,” continued the reporter in a voice-over, “an American representative of the Global Heritage Commission, part of the UN’s effort to address the looting of Iraqi antiquities, happened to be in the right place at the right time, and with the right weapon, to prevent the terrorist bomber from reaching his destination.

“The man, identified as Nick Kismet, picked up a portable missile launcher, like the one seen here.” The picture changed to stock footage of a US soldier carrying an anti-tank weapon, but Saeed had already stopped watching, and after a moment, thumbed the button on the remote control to mute the speaker in order to make a telephone call.

Her introduction notwithstanding, Marie Villaneauve was proving to be a tough nut to crack. As she guided Kismet through the mostly vacant terminal building she said very little, answering only a few direct questions with monosyllabic replies. He no longer sensed that she was trying to be rude, but her quiet indifference was nevertheless wearing thin.

He made one last attempt. “So you’re with UNESCO?”

“Oui.”

Kismet admitted defeat. Small talk had never been his strong suit anyway.

Their destination lay in an unfinished wing of the airport building. The Baghdad International Airport — the metal letters affixed to the exterior walls still read “Saddam International”—had never really been used for its intended purpose. Shunned by most of the global community for decades, Iraq had failed to become a leading travel destination, even in the Arab world. The facility had however become a critical target of the US-led coalition during the month-long campaign to overthrow the brutal despot. A perfect landing zone for resupply flights, it was lightly defended and close enough to the capital city to serve as a base of operations for the final push on Baghdad. It now served as a central receiving area for both military and civilian activities, and until the earlier suicide bomb attack, was thought to be a safe haven for foreigners.

Baghdad was actually a safer place for Americans than some of the areas to the south, where Shiite activism was reaching a fever pitch. The Sunni Muslims living in the country’s largest city were primarily interested in restoring their infrastructure, and the US Army engineers assisting in that effort were viewed as heroes rather than interlopers. But as the events of that morning had amply demonstrated, violence did not require a majority opinion. There were international journalists still occupying some of the hotels in the city, but most critical operations were being run from the secure environment of the airport. Likewise, the UN headquarters had been locked up and left behind two months previously, meaning that UNESCO’s mission in Iraq would also have to be based at the airport.

Marie led him to a windowless door at the end of a hallway, identified only by a sheet of paper from a laser printer with the acronym of her organization in block letters, taped beside the doorpost. She turned the knob, pushing the door open, and stepped aside.

Kismet demurred. “Ladies first.”

The instinctive deferment won a crooked smile from his reticent guide, and she proceeded through the door ahead of him. Once over the threshold, he eased his duffel to the floor, sensing that the long journey was nearly over.

“Hello, Nick.”

Kismet whirled, instantly recognizing the voice, and all thoughts of breaching Marie Villaneauve’s social defenses were put aside. “Pierre, you old bastard.”

Pierre Chiron, the man who had befriended him during a visit to France eight years before, and who had ultimately given him a job, crossed the barren room and embraced Kismet heartily. “Ah, Nick. It’s always good to see you.”

“I had a feeling you’d be here, though I can’t imagine why.” Kismet drew back, holding his old friend at arm’s length, and got his first real look at the man. He didn’t like what he saw.

He knew Chiron to be in his late sixties, but the UN scientist seemed to have aged at least another decade beyond his natural years. On the occasion of their last meeting, the Frenchman had been robust if slightly stooped from years of academic torpor, but he now seemed hollow, a summer leaf gone prematurely to autumn. Kismet smiled to hide his dismay.

“My God, Nick. How long has it been?”

“Not since…” He hesitated. He had not seen Chiron since Collette’s funeral. “Almost six years,” he amended hastily, trying to steer his comments away from the painful memories that his recollection was stirring up. “We’ve done a lot of good in that time.”

Chiron managed a wan smile. “My many young protégés have accomplished wonders. Alas, I have done little more than sit back and take credit for it all.”

Kismet was not fooled by the old man’s modesty. Although he had not since paid a visit to Chiron’s home or to the UNESCO headquarters — both in Paris — he had stayed in touch. Following the death of his spouse, Chiron had to all appearances thrown himself into the task of saving the UN’s scientific and cultural organization. His Global Heritage Commission had been an integral part of restoring UNESCO’s credibility, to the point that the United States had now committed itself to restoring its lapsed membership. Nevertheless, his desolate physical appearance bore testimony to the fact that he had not completely found solace in his work.

“Well, you’ve got me this far. What’s next? Are we going to comb the city for looted artifacts?” Though his voice held a hint of irony, he half-expected Chiron to answer affirmatively. The collapse of the Iraqi regime had led to a period of wanton vandalism and pillaging, stripping away in a single night the treasures of the most ancient civilization on earth. Protecting those tangible links to cultures since past was part and parcel of the GHC’s charter. Although Chiron had been trained as an atomic scientist, as chairman of GHC it was appropriate that he take an interest in the crisis.

Chiron however shook his head sadly. “Interpol and your American FBI have already taken that task upon themselves, and with great success I might add.”

“What, then? Putting the National Museum back together? I hope you didn’t bring me over here just to sweep up the broken glass and build new dioramas?”

The old man stared at him silently for a moment, then glanced at Marie. “Ah, where are my manners? You’ve made a proper introduction to my assistant, I trust.”

Kismet’s eyebrows betrayed his irritation, but he otherwise kept his expression neutral. “After a fashion.”

“Monsieur Kismet saved my life,” intoned Marie, her voice matter-of-fact. She removed her bulky helmet, giving Kismet his first real opportunity to study her face. Her dark hair, not quite black, was styled in a modified wedge cut, longer toward the front where it curled under at her jaw on either side. Her forehead was covered by squared-off bangs, perfectly parallel to her sculpted eyebrows. The effect was decidedly contrived, too artificial for such a rugged environment. Kismet recalled his earlier appraisal. She did indeed look like a fashion model, stranded now on the wrong kind of runway.

Chiron burst into laughter. “Did he indeed? He has a habit of doing that.” He laughed again. Though smile lines cracked his face, the humor seemed to erase years of despair. “Yes, I heard some shooting. Was that you, Nick?”

“Old habits die hard.”

“Well you both look no worse for wear. Come, let’s settle down.” He gestured toward one of the unfinished walls where several foam shipping containers had been arranged into makeshift furniture. “Have you eaten?”

“On the plane. I don’t know if that qualifies as food.”

“Alas, it’s better than what I have to offer.” Chiron held up a brown plastic bag about the size of book. “Meals, Ready to Eat, or so they say. I like the fruit candies, but…” He shook his head sadly.

Kismet didn’t think his old friend could afford to miss any meals. He opened his duffel bag, rooting around inside for a heavily wrapped parcel. “When I realized you might be here, I took a chance. I think you’ll be pleased.”

He opened the package, revealing a bottle of red wine along with a baguette and a wheel of Brie. Chiron’s eyes lit up. Kismet turned to Marie. “I imagine you’re getting pretty sick of MREs, too. Join us?”

For a moment, he thought she would accept the invitation. She even took a step toward the improvised settee, an eager smile blossoming on her painted lips. Then, unexpectedly, the smile wilted. “I’m sure you two have a great deal to discuss. Regrettably, I shall have to decline.”

Kismet nodded, unsurprised by her decision. He sensed Chiron’s disappointment, but did not entirely share the sentiment. “Another time, perhaps. Though I’ll warn you, the fare might not be as palatable.”

She nodded, and then backed away, her helmet tucked under one arm. When she was gone, he turned to Chiron. “Where did you find the ice queen?”

The Frenchman pretended not to hear the question. He held up the bottle, displaying the label with mock contempt. “Sonoma valley? I mistook you for a civilized man.”

“It gets worse,” Kismet replied ruefully. “I didn’t bring any glasses.”

Chiron lifted his drink, tilting the ceramic coffee mug toward the younger man. “To Collette,” he declared in a solemn voice.

The corner of Kismet’s mouth twitched in anxious surprise, but he raised his own cup in salute. “To Collette.”

The sun was settling into the western sky, but the air remained warm as an arid wind blew in from the south. After scrounging the porcelain cups, the two men had made their way onto the flat roof of the terminal in order to enjoy the imported repast as they contemplated the end of the day. It was a scene that harkened back to the summer Kismet had spent in Paris, a guest in the Chiron household.

Pierre’s wife had doted on him, welcoming him as the child she would never have, and Kismet, whose biological mother had vanished from his life before his earliest memory, eagerly embraced the attention of a maternal figure. It had proven to be a brief, but mutually satisfying relationship. Meanwhile, Chiron had helped him scour the UNESCO archives for any clues that would lead him to resolve the mystery of what had happened one fateful night in 1991: Kismet’s first journey into the desert. Though never fully understanding what it was the young man sought, the scientist and diplomat had enjoyed the role of mentor. More than once, the two men had gathered, along with Collette, on the veranda to watch the sunset. Her conspicuous absence was now a painful reminder of what had happened in the years that followed.

Chiron sighed. “I do miss her, Nick.”

Kismet nodded uncertainly, but said nothing.

The other man stared into his cup, swirling the dark contents as if looking for an omen in the dregs. “Do you think she is with God?”

The question caught him off guard. He knew Pierre to be a staunch secularist, at best an agnostic. The issue of faith had been broached almost from the start of their acquaintance; two men of uncertain beliefs, meeting on the threshold of a place revered by the devout, had presented a noteworthy contrast.

“If He’s out there, I’ve no doubt she’s with Him.”

“If.” Chiron laughed, then drained the contents of the mug. “The great unanswered question. She never had any doubt though. Not even at the end.”

Kismet looked at his own cup, averting his eyes from the older man. The Frenchman’s turn of speech reminded him of the morose rambling of a drunkard. He made no attempt to fill the uncomfortable void, but silently hoped the other man would change the subject. Chiron however was not finished.

“You think a lot about God when you get to be my age. Always wondering if you made the right choices.”

“I imagine that’s only natural.”

Chiron chuckled again, but there was a bitter note in the words that followed. “What a game this is. Blind, we must choose a path through the maze and follow it to the end. Only then are our eyes opened, and the wisdom or foolishness of our choices becomes manifest. I don’t know about you, but I hardly think that’s fair.”

“That’s where faith comes in. You and I aren’t believers, so we can never really understand why someone might choose a life wholly guided by their religious beliefs. But to the true believer, it must seem like the only choice.” It was more than Kismet had wanted to say on the subject and he immediately regretted having let the other man draw him out. Still, nothing he had said was a revelation. They had exchanged similar words on more than one occasion. The difference this time was the import Chiron seemed to place on the subject.

“Ah, yes. Faith. Jesus’ disciples asked for more faith. Do you know that what he told them? ‘If you have faith as a grain of a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.’” He moved close, so that Kismet could not avoid direct eye contact. “How can that be, Nick? You either have faith, or you do not, correct? How can you quantify faith?”

“I have no idea.” He moved back a step, then sat on the brick parapet, his back now against the sunset. “Christ, Pierre, you didn’t drag me halfway around the world to debate philosophy, did you? We could have done that in Paris.”

“My apologies. I recall a time when you enjoyed our discussions.”

The reproof lacked the weight of sincerity, but Kismet still chose a conciliatory tone. “Chalk it up to jet lag. Maybe tomorrow, over coffee…”

“No, you are right. There is a time and place for this, and it is not now. It is rude of me to distract you from the real reason I have summoned you. There is important work for us here, and to be quite honest, I need your help.

“As you may have heard, many of the early reports about the pillage of the museums were exaggerated. In some cases, the relics had been stored away by the staff in anticipation of the coming war. A great many other pieces were returned by thieves whose consciences caught up with them. However, a few pieces made it out and are already showing up on the European black market.”

“But you said that Interpol had that covered.”

“Indeed they do, and I’ve no interest in duplicating their efforts. However, I have been monitoring their investigation and discovered some rather disturbing inconsistencies.

“There is a secret list of art treasures being circulated among illicit collectors. Interpol has access to it, but does not wish this information to become public. I have seen the list. Some of the items that are being made available do not appear to have come from the catalogue of Iraq’s national museum.”

Suddenly Kismet understood. “You’re thinking grave robbers?”

Chiron nodded “It is a crime in the eyes of Allah to steal, but to dig something up from the ground and sell it to buy bread for your family? Where is the crime in that?”

“How much are we talking about? Could it just be one guy who got lucky and found a trove, or is this an organized effort?”

“That is what I hope to determine.” He tipped the bottle toward his cup, half-filling it. “A significant historical find would be a great boon to the people of this country — to the whole world. It would remind them that this place is the source of civilization. A timely distraction both from the war and the memories of oppression.”

“Where do we start?” Wheels were already turning in Kismet’s head, the earlier conversation thankfully forgotten.

Chiron refilled Kismet’s cup, decanting the last of the Pinot Noir from the bottle. “There is a man at the museum who has…ah, we shall say that he has demonstrated divided loyalties. He is one of the assistant curators, devoted to the cause of history, but a pragmatist. I suspect he may be trading with a rival organization to the one we are seeking, but his indiscretions are not our concern at present. I believe he will be able to put us on the path. Getting to him in order to conduct an interview however has proven difficult. The city is a very dangerous place.”

The last piece fell into place. “Oh. I guess that’s where I come in.”

“You have experience in this environment. That is unique among our organization. My people are scientists, academics. Furthermore, I suspect that our search will lead us into the wilderness, where our lives may be placed in further jeopardy.”

“So I’m the hired muscle.” He made the statement without a hint of accusation.

“If you like. There are other considerations, some of them personal.”

“Such as?”

Chiron leaned on the short wall next to him, the weariness once more in evidence. “You are like a son to me, Nick. I can’t think of anyone I would rather have with me. That being said, you are also an American, whereas I — not only am I French, but also a representative of the United Nations. As you might well imagine, neither of these factors have endeared me to the military authorities.”

Kismet nodded, comprehending. Despite repeated position statements to the effect that France remained an ally of the United States and that the UN was both a legitimate and important presence in the process of building world peace and security, popular sentiment among Americans, both citizens and soldiers, remained decidedly isolationist. The French government’s vocal opposition to US foreign policy in the days preceding the war had severely widened that rift, so much so that certain reactionaries had pushed to rename “French Fries” and “French Toast” in congressional cafeterias. It had been no coincidence that the bottle of wine Kismet had purchased before leaving New York had been from California; many retailers had pulled French wines from their shelves.

Meanwhile, the perception of an impotent United Nations had only been reinforced by that body’s inability to maintain concerted opposition to the ruthless dictator of Iraq. To make matters worse, immediately following the unquestioned victory of coalition forces, the UN had demanded a significant role in the rebuilding of that devastated nation. For many Americans who were already questioning the relevance of the UN, this only added insult to injury.

A lifetime of travel and association with men like Chiron had taught Kismet not to paint the world in the broad strokes of nationalism. To be sure, political differences among nations could not be ignored, just as religious, economic and tribal distinctions sometimes led to unbridgeable gulfs between individuals, but Kismet preferred to make that determination only after giving a person a chance to demonstrate where their loyalties lay. As for the United Nations…well, perhaps it was deserving of some of the criticism heaped upon it, but Kismet could not escape the fact of where his paychecks originated.

Chiron let out his breath with a sigh. “And….”

“There’s more?”

The older man turned to face him, his expression unusually grave. “The artifacts, Nick. They date from the Babylonian dynasty — seventh century BC — but they are not of Babylonian origin. They are the treasures of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest. Do you know what that means?”

Kismet felt his breath catch in his throat. He knew exactly what it meant.

Three

A column of olive drab Heavy Motorized Multi-Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV) known as Humvees in the argot of the common soldier, departed from the airport at 0915 local time. Each of the military transports was identified by a series of stenciled letters painted on the front and rear bumpers. These four were numbered in sequence, from D-42 through D-46. Delta four-six was the vehicle reserved for the platoon leader but today it carried the mission commander — Lt. Col. Jonathan Buttrick — along with two other soldiers. Bringing up the rear was a resupply vehicle, different only from the others with respects to its cargo and passenger complement. This Humvee carried only a driver and an assistant, along with five twenty-liter jerrycans of diesel. The second Humvee in the convoy likewise was crewed by two soldiers, but carried also two VIP passengers.

Kismet had experienced an odd moment of déjà vu upon climbing into the military vehicle. The wide-bodied conveyance had just been coming into its own twelve years earlier, and while he had ridden in them on numerous occasions prior to the first war against Iraq, he had not been in one since. Although the design had been modified for civilian use, proving very popular as an urban utility vehicle especially among wealthy celebrities, Kismet still thought of it primarily as an engine of war. The fact that he was now wearing Kevlar armor only served to reinforce this impression. While his actions the previous day owed a great deal to his military training, that had been instinctual. Voluntarily getting into the Humvee had required a conscious decision, and was therefore just a little bit disconcerting. Once inside, the stale smells of sweat and mildew proved almost overpowering. It was an unwelcome transition from what had occurred the night before.

Locating Buttrick in the sprawling, chaotic complex had been a difficult task, but once accomplished, securing a squad of infantry soldiers to serve as an escort proved virtually painless. Despite Chiron’s fear that support for a United Nation’s mission would be in short supply, the accommodating officer had looked upon the request as good public relations. Nevertheless, Kismet wondered if someone like Major Harp would have been as quick to send the request up the chain of command. Afterward, Kismet had headed back to the GHC office to pass along the good news.

He had found Marie sitting silently in the sparsely furnished office, reviewing maps of the city. “Where is Pierre?”

She raised a finger to her meticulously painted lips, then pointed to a dark corner where lay a shapeless cloth mass: a sleeping bag, presumably with Chiron inside. “He was tired,” she whispered.

Kismet could tell she was being diplomatic. Chiron had been inebriated at their parting — too much wine, drunk too fast — and had likely passed out the moment he lay down. For his own part, the Pinot Noir had left him with a mild headache. He nodded deferentially, then went to find some water.

“Monsieur…Nick.”

Mildly surprised that she had initiated communication, he had turned. “Yes?”

She had crossed the room silently and now stood only a step away. Her expression had changed somehow — nothing more than a relaxing of her disdainful jaw line — but the effect was irresistible. “Did you save any wine for me?”

Although he had not, the ice was nonetheless broken. They had stayed up longer than Kismet intended, talking about their respective tasks with the Global Heritage Commission and how they had each met up with Pierre Chiron. The discussion had then turned to a shared concern regarding the older man’s mental status. Marie had not known him prior to Collette’s death and therefore was unaware of the severe change that his unresolved grief had brought about, but his decline even in the brief time she had known him was impossible to ignore.

Eventually, the conversation had faltered. Kismet’s initial reticence had been swept away by her charm, all the more so because he had not anticipated being attracted to her, but there was a limit to what could be accomplished in a single evening. She was curious about his motives, about his personal stake in uncovering the source of the black market artifacts, and that was something he was not prepared to reveal. Even Chiron, the man who had been like a second father to him, barely knew the half. As she probed his defenses, he had begged off, once more citing the cumulative effects of jet lag, and bade her goodnight. Only a dozen paces separated their sleeping areas, and while nothing more was said, he remained acutely aware of her nearness until fatigue finally overcame him.

Reflecting on the pleasantness of the night before was a welcome distraction from the brief journey into the city. The anxiety of the soldiers escorting them was a constant reminder that they were heading into a potentially hostile area. Each of the soldiers carried an M4 carbine along with an assortment of other personal weapons but the Humvee turrets, which were capable of supporting numerous heavy weapon systems, remained sealed. Kismet understood the logic behind this decision. Openly displayed .50 caliber machine guns would have sent the wrong message in a city where the US military was trying to project a benevolent presence. It was a command-level decision, not necessarily supported by the soldiers on the ground, who felt rather like they were being sent into a potentially dangerous situation with one hand tied behind their backs.

Kismet was also armed, though the handgun in his waist pack — a lightweight Glock 19, semi-automatic pistol — was hardly the weapon of choice for a combat zone. In addition to the gun he carried a kukri knife, likewise secured in the small nylon pack he wore around his waist. The heavy chopping knife, with its distinctive boomerang-shaped thirty-centimeter-long blade was a tangible link to the events that had changed his life twelve years previously. The blade had been offered as a token of respect, but before that night had ended, Kismet had been forced to use the kukri as a weapon of last resort. It remained a treasured memento of that ill-fated mission, though no less utilitarian.

To distinguish themselves from combatants, the UN personnel wore white flak jackets and helmet covers, prominently displaying the letters of their organization. A similarly adorned banner was draped across the rear of each Humvee, hopefully reinforcing the message to the local populace that their excursion into the city had only peaceable motives.

The convoy moved at a safe but deliberate pace of eighty kilometers per hour, along highways that were virtually empty. In a modern city of six million souls, the lack of automobile traffic was vaguely disturbing, but Baghdad was still recovering from the brief siege that had heralded the end of a dictatorship. Certain parts of the city were still without electricity and running water, and there were reports of gasoline shortages and long lines — even riots — at refueling stations.

Navigating by means of a GPS system, the lead vehicle in the column charted a decisive course toward the city. Their route took them along the main highway within sight of several palatial complexes, some of which were now only shattered memories of their former opulence. As the road drew parallel with a westward curving segment of the Tigris River, the convoy threaded between the Sujud Palace and the military parade grounds, both of which bore testimony to heavy bombing and ground battle. Kismet did not strain for a better look. He loathed the idea of playing ghoulish tourist.

The journey progressed uneventfully, but the comfort level inside the Humvee bottomed out rapidly. The Lexan windows remained closed as a protective measure, bottling up the musty odor which emanated from the cracked upholstery. To make matters worse, the driver informed them that he would be running the vehicle’s heater in order to dissipate the rising engine temperature. The interior quickly became a claustrophobic hot-box.

“A pity Marie couldn’t join us,” mused Chiron, raising his voice to be heard over the incessant roar of the engine. It was the first comment the older man had made on the subject — the first thing he had said all morning really, except for a few brief utterances in preparation for departure.

“She didn’t strike me as the rugged, adventurous type. I’d say she’s lucky to have stayed behind.” Kismet then threw a sidelong glance in the other man’s direction. “I thought that it was your decision.”

Chiron smiled cryptically. “I found a pretext with which to discourage her from joining us, but I did so for your sake.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nick, it’s been clear to me from the start that whatever this thing that drives you, it is a deeply personal matter.” He leaned over the upraised platform covering the drive shaft and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “You’ve kept it secret even from me. What you haven’t told me only fires my curiosity. Shall I review?

“You are sent on a clandestine meeting in the desert with a defector. The man seems to have information about you, and believes you will be interested in a very precious relic, unearthed in the ruins of ancient Babylon. What was that relic? Never mind. I suspect I don’t want to know.

“Then your meeting is violently interrupted by a man who also claims to have knowledge about you. Both men believed that you will have an interest in whatever this relic is, but you claim no particular desire to possess this, or any other artifact of the ancient world.

“I have tried to offer whatever help I can. And I have let you keep your secrets. It is clear that the beginning of this labyrinth begins with a discovery here, in the sands of Iraq — the ruins of ancient Babylonia — and perhaps by returning to source, we will be able to find the thread of Theseus and a solution to this mystery.”

“Theseus.” Kismet echoed the word in a distant voice, his mind elsewhere. He knew he ought to trust Chiron. The Frenchman had certainly demonstrated uncompromising fealty, without demanding a full disclosure of his own personal agenda.

“Pardon?”

“You mentioned Theseus — the warrior in Greek mythology who survived the labyrinth designed by Daedelus and slew the Minotaur. It made me think of something.” He drew in a deep, contemplative breath. “The truth of the matter is that I’ve never shared all the details of my search because most of it is just too unbelievable.”

“I think I can keep an open mind.”

“I told you about the men who attacked us that night and about their leader. What I didn’t tell you was his name. He seemed more than eager to share it at the time: Ulrich Hauser.”

“Ah, a German perhaps?”

“He told me that he was not part of any nation’s army, but he and his men obviously had military training. He told me something else. When I asked who he was — not just his name, but the reason behind his actions — he said: ‘We are the chains of God, sealing Pandora’s box for the preservation of mankind. We are Prometheus, guiding the destiny of the world until humanity is ready to ascend Olympus.’ I’ve never forgotten those words.”

“Ah, thus the association with my mention of a figure from Greek myth. Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. But what’s the connection to these ‘chains of God’? If memory serves, Zeus chained Prometheus to a mountain, where he was tormented until Hercules set him free. I don’t recall anything about his sealing up Pandora’s box; in fact, Pandora was created as Zeus’ retribution for the theft of fire.”

“I didn’t say I knew what it meant,” confessed Kismet. “From the context, and from some bits and pieces I’ve put together over the years, I’ve come to suspect that they might be some kind of mystery cult.”

The convoy exited from the main highway, entering the city streets, and the driver’s assistant relayed the message that they would be arriving momentarily. Kismet nodded in acknowledgment.

“A modern mystery cult.” Chiron was quick to return to their conversation. “The Pandora’s box reference could indicate their belief that mankind is unready for some secret knowledge that only they possess.”

“I told you it was hard to believe.” He feigned a chuckle, trying to conceal his discomfort with the subject.

“And this artifact? It would have had great significance to them? And to the world?”

Kismet shifted in his seat, but did not answer. The question had been rhetorical anyway.

Chiron began ticking off facts on his fingers. “Let’s see, we have a relic unearthed in Babylon, from the period of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquests. It is something uniquely significant; not some potsherd or clay figurine, but a treasure that might upset the balance of the world. In his day, Nebuchadnezzar conquered most of the Middle East, even taking tribute from Egypt. Most noteworthy to moderns of course was his victory over Jerusalem. The city was razed and all of the treasures of Solomon’s temple were carried off as spoil.”

He paused, his gaze intensifying as he looked across the seat. “Have I found the thread, Nick?”

Kismet shrugged. “I didn’t get a very good look at it, whatever it was. In any event, it’s gone. It sure as hell isn’t here anymore.”

“Then what do we hope to learn today?”

He laughed. “I thought we were trying to protect the cultural history of Iraq.”

Chiron sat back with a smug grin. “There, you see? You have secrets which even now you do not wish to share. I understand, but Marie is curious. She would ask the same questions, but demand a better answer. That is why I have left her behind.”

“Pierre, I promise that one day, I will tell you everything. Right now, it’s so confusing that even I don’t know what to believe.”

The Humvee slowed as it pulled into an almost vacant parking area, alongside a blockish two-story brick building. The ornate facade — a reproduction of a Babylonian era arched city gateway — and prevalence of weathered statuary in the courtyard seemed confirmation enough that they had arrived at their destination: the Iraq National Museum. The spectacle presented by the edifice and the artistry that adorned it was not sufficient to draw the eye away from the damage wrought by the recent fighting. Twisted iron and shattered brick littered the museum grounds, and the walls were now scorched and pitted with bullet holes. To underscore the volatility of the situation, two M1A1 Abrams tanks were parked in front of the structure, their crews hunkered down inside the protective armored shell. The presence of US troops not only deterred potential looters, but evidently also scared off everyone else.

Kismet worked the door lever, eager to be out of the sweltering interior of vehicle. Chiron however had more to say. “Perhaps today will be that day.”

The Frenchman was the last to get out, pulling himself from the vehicle like a man twenty years older than he was. The soldiers had already fanned out around the parked convoy, and though the muzzles of their carbines were pointing at the ground, to a man they gripped their weapons purposefully.

Buttrick was quick to approach, glancing around anxiously. “Well, this is your show now, Nick. I’ve got to tell you, I feel kind of exposed out here.”

“I wish I could tell you how long this will take, but I’ve really no idea.”

Buttrick followed them toward the entrance, warily scanning the surrounding area for any signs of trouble. Kismet focused on the path ahead and spied two men standing beneath the Ishtar gate reproduction. The men were well dressed, but their suits had a rumpled appearance, and their facial expressions were haggard and lean. The older of the two, a distinguished-looking man in his fifties, sporting a bushy mustache shot through with gray, watched their approach nervously. The younger man stepped forward to greet them.

“I am Hussein Hamallah. Peace be upon you,” he said, offering the traditional greeting in accented English. He gestured to his companion. “This is Mr. Aziz.”

Kismet dredged up his own memory of the Arabic response: “Wa aleekum is-salaam.”

Hussein appeared pleased. “I will serve as translator on your behalf today. Please sirs, come inside.”

A large open garden area greeted them just beyond the formal entrance, but it was evident even from the first glance that the museum had undergone an upheaval. Piles of debris — stone chips, broken glass, and reams of tattered paper — were everywhere. Working among the chaos were several men and women, presumably the staff of the facility, attempting to restore the repository to its former glory. Kismet felt a silent respect for those people, knowing that in all likelihood, they were laboring with only a tacit promise of reward. His own office, in the sub-basement of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, brought him into regular contact with similarly devoted individuals, people for whom the call to educate others about culture and history was more than just a job.

Buttrick excused himself from the group and returned to the convoy to organize security, while Hussein steered the party into a corridor where a few examples of Assyrian art and history remained visible amidst the smashed display cases. They did not linger within sight of these but instead ascended a spiral staircase to the second floor. From there, Kismet and Chiron were directed into a small conference room, which aside from a uniform coating of dust on the furnishings, appeared to have missed out on the ill fortunes of war. They removed their bulky armor while Hussein hastily brushed the seats of two chairs, then gestured for the guests to sit.

Aziz remained aloof, as if debating what tack to take with the men from the Global Heritage Commission. For Kismet, who had studied law and seen his share of deposition proceedings, the man’s reticence was understandable. The Iraqi curator would doubtless hold back from volunteering information, lest he accidentally incriminate himself. The burden of asking the right questions would fall to the interrogators. Addressing the older man directly, Kismet fired off a positioning shot.

“What is your function here, sir?”

The translation was almost instantaneous, and Aziz rattled off a response. “Until this war, I was restoring the palace of Ashurbanipal. Now, I do what I can for the museum.”

“Your efforts are greatly appreciated,” supplied Chiron, diplomatically. “Hopefully, the rich history of your nation will soon be restored to a place of dignity, for all the world to discover.”

“Inshallah,” murmured Aziz. God willing.

“We are pleased that many of the relics thought lost in the looting have already been accounted for.”

“Yes. The situation could have been much worse.”

Kismet decided to move in. “Has the looting stopped?”

The curator blinked at him, then turned to his assistant. “Mr. Aziz does not understand your question. Do you refer to the looting in the city, or to the museum?”

“The museum, of course. Are items still being stolen and sold on the black market?”

“No. We have inventoried all that remains. It is accounted for.” The answer was unequivocal, but Aziz’s certainty came as no surprise.

“What about other relics? Relics from archaeological sites that perhaps haven’t been catalogued yet?”

Aziz’s lip twitched. “There are rumors of men finding the treasures of the ancients and selling them illegally. If I knew more, I would immediately contact the authorities.”

Chiron jumped in, his tone conciliatory. “We know, of course, that you have no part in this criminal activity, Mr. Aziz. However, it is these rumors that interest us. Anything you could tell us would be greatly appreciated.”

Kismet struggled to hide his dismay. His old mentor had just tipped their hand to the Iraqi curator, virtually promising the man immunity from further action as well as implying that his cooperation would be rewarded. In a culture where bargaining was almost an art form, a basic rule of negotiation was that the first person to make an offer lost the advantage. Aziz would now be able to dictate the terms of the exchange. He could tell that the Iraqi sensed victory as well by a subtle shift in the man’s posture.

“Do you know Samir Al-Azir?”

Aziz had been on the verge of speaking when Kismet blurted out the name. He paused long enough for Hussein to make the translation, but it was evident that he had understood the question. The Iraqi curator barely concealed a frown as he replied.

“This name means nothing,” explained Hussein. Kismet could not tell if the young man was translating Aziz’s words or elucidating at his own discretion.

Samir Al-Azir; the name given to Kismet by the defector he had met in the desert during the fateful mission in the hours prior to the war known as Desert Storm. Kismet knew that there must be more to the man’s name — the defector had supplied a proper name and a family designation, yet had withheld his surname — but there was nothing else to go on. Samir Al-Azir was the end of the thread Chiron had mentioned. If he failed to pick it up here, a singular opportunity to unriddle the maze of his life might be lost.

“He was an engineer working for the government twelve years ago. He was working on the restoration of Babylon.”

“The restoration of that ancient city has been going on for more than twenty years. Thousands of men have been involved. You can’t expect me to remember one particular man.”

“Don’t you?” Kismet’s voice held a tone of accusation. He was trying to regain control of the situation by putting the curator back on the defensive. “He uncovered a wealth of artifacts from the Babylonian dynasty. I can’t believe such an important discovery would have gone unnoticed.”

Hussein rattled off the Arabic equivalent, then turned to Kismet before the older man could reply. “Please sir, you must understand. What you are asking… It would be like asking you if you know Joe from New York.”

Kismet’s stare never left Aziz. The other man continued to squirm uncomfortably as he uttered another denial.

“I don’t believe you.” Kismet understood enough that he did not need to wait for an interpretation before pressing his argument. “I think you know exactly who I am talking about, and what he discovered. I think you’ve been illegally selling other artifacts from that same dig. And I think you had better start telling us everything you know about Samir Al-Azir and what he found at Babylon.”

The accusation hung in the air like a static charge as Hussein reluctantly converted the demand into his native language. Before Aziz could reply however, a trilling noise broke the silence. Mildly startled, Kismet turned to Chiron, but the Frenchman only shrugged. It was Aziz who eventually responded to the electronic tone, drawing from his breast pocket a familiar-looking object: a Qualcomm portable telephone handset. He opened the oblong device and began speaking in a low voice. After a brief exchange, he rose and excused himself via Hussein.

As Aziz stepped across the threshold of the conference room, Kismet turned his attention to the young translator. It was evident to Kismet that Aziz was concealing information, but Hussein seemed truly in the dark respecting his superior’s activities. “Where did you learn English?”

After a moment of distrustful incomprehension, the young man smiled. “Oxford. I studied abroad in my youth.”

Kismet smiled at the implication that Hussein had somehow left his immaturity behind during his instructional years. “You speak it very well. How long have you been working with Mr. Aziz?”

“I have been at the museum for three years, but not exclusively with Mr. Aziz. I translate for many among the staff and assist visiting dignitaries, such as your honored selves.”

Kismet nodded slowly. It was doubtful that Hussein would be privy to any dark secrets. Men like Aziz rarely entrusted such matters to their subordinates. He decided to try a different tack. “I wasn’t aware that phone service had been restored.”

Hussein raised an eyebrow, then cast a glance over his shoulder toward the exit where he had last seen Aziz. “It has in some places. But that phone does not require a local connection.”

“It’s a satellite phone, isn’t it?” Kismet already knew the answer. The unusual antenna configuration of the Qualcomm GSP1600 marked it as a device designed to do more than simply interface with the local cellular network. In an age where most cell phones were miniaturized to the point that they might easily be concealed in a closed hand, the bulky handset and long antenna extension had given Aziz’s phone away as a receiver capable of picking up transmissions beamed to the Globalstar satellite network. With a sat-phone, you could take a call from almost anywhere in the world. “That’s a pretty expensive piece of hardware.”

Hussein immediately went on the defensive. “We maintain a large repository of knowledge about the ancient world. Our patrons in Europe want us to be able to share information with universities and scientists around the world. When the threat of war began to loom, they arranged for this technology to be put at our disposal.”

Kismet nodded slowly. “And there’s been a lot of communication since?”

“Many scholars are concerned about the looting and damage to priceless antiquities. They call to express their support for our efforts to restore the collection.”

“Then we are all working toward the same goal,” intoned Chiron.

For once, Kismet was grateful to the older man for his saccharine observation. He had no desire to keep Hussein on guard. If anything, he needed the young translator in a more cooperative frame of mind. “Have you been to any of the major dig sites?”

The young man remained wary. “I have been to all of them.”

“I spent some time in the ruins of Ur, Tall al Muqayyar.”

“Near An Nasiriyah. Yes, I have been there.”

“This is a wonderful country to live in if you are a lover of history,” Chiron remarked. His expression of vague disinterest belied the conviction in his tone, but the sentiment was evidently something the young assistant curator could grasp. Hussein broke into a broad smile.

“It’s all here,” he answered, an enthusiastic boy discovering the world for the first time and eager to share. “The birthplace of civilization, the oldest forms of writing, the oldest laws. The father of all faiths, Ibraim, was born here and his descendants — the twelve tribes of Arabia — remain to this day. Alexander the Great walked here, as did the Christian Saint Peter. History begins here.”

“You’ve barely scratched the surface, my boy. God himself has walked here. In the oldest writings, His presence is felt. The Garden of Eden was here, at the headwaters of the river Euphrates.”

“Yes!” Hussein clapped his hands together emphatically. “And He spoke to Ibraim and called him out of Chaldea. Exactly. No matter what your faith, you cannot escape the fact that God has made His will known in this place.”

Kismet glanced at Chiron, trying to determine if the sudden oration on the religious significance of the region was part of some broader plan to gain the younger man’s trust. If it was, the Frenchman hid it well.

“I wonder what’s keeping Aziz?” he ventured, looking for a way to put the conversation back on track. Hussein started to rise, eager to be of service, but Kismet forestalled him. “No, I’ll go. I wouldn’t mind a chance to stretch my legs. I’ll yell if I get lost.”

He moved past the long table toward the doorway Aziz had exited through. As he turned the knob, he listened for the sound of the man’s voice. “Mr. Aziz?”

The door opened into an office half the size of the conference room. It was difficult to say what purpose the room had served prior to the chaos following the war. Now it was an impromptu storeroom cluttered with paper and boxes. Another doorway on the opposite wall exited the room and Kismet picked his way carefully though the litter, intent on locating their reluctant host.

The next room appeared to be a gallery set aside for seasonal exhibits, but like the storeroom, it now housed only rubble. Piles of broken statuary and brick were heaped in the corner, while empty display cases with smashed-out glass windows lined both long walls. At the far end of the hall, Kismet saw Aziz talking animatedly to a shorter individual dressed in the long garments of a Bedouin. The man’s face was almost completely covered by a swath of fabric from his turban.

Kismet stopped short, mildly embarrassed at the interruption. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were—”

Both men turned abruptly at the sound of his voice. Aziz wore a guilty expression, as if caught in an indiscreet moment, but the robed figure showed no such hesitancy. He thrust a hand into the folds of his garment and whipped out a long, tubular object. In the instant of time it took Kismet to recognize that it was a pistol, outfitted with a sound and flash suppressor, the man aimed and fired.

Aziz took two rounds in the chest at close range before Kismet could raise a hand in protest. The groan that escaped from the curator’s lips as he sank to his knees was far louder than the noise of the fatal shots. Then, a third shot bored a red cavity, no thicker than a pencil, in the center of Aziz’s forehead to silence him forever.

Four

Kismet’s initial shock wore off in the instant the killer administered the coup de grace. He threw himself sideways, ducking behind the solid base of a shattered display case, and thrust a hand into the nylon pack belted around his waist. The small pack was designed around a breakaway holster, secured with Velcro, which contained his Glock 19 semi-automatic handgun. He ripped it free of its stays and balled his fist around the grip as he chambered a round. His finger tightened on the trigger. With his left hand steadying the barrel, he rolled into the open, bringing the gun to bear on the place where he had seen the assassin a moment before, dreading the inevitable return fire.

The hall was empty.

He caught a glimpse of the killer’s loose robes, fluttering through the doorway like a bird taking to flight, and decisively gave chase. After crossing the hall, he vaulted over the still-twitching form of Aziz, and was just in time to see the assassin’s back disappear into a gallery to his right. With the pistol outstretched before him, he gave chase.

The gallery into which he ran seemed to abruptly transition him four millennia into the past. The room was like a darkened chamber in an ancient temple keep. One wall was devoted entirely to a sculpted alabaster relief featuring figures with curly, square-cut beards. Even in the mere seconds in which Kismet had to identify the objects in the gallery, he had no difficulty recognizing the signature of the Akkadian civilization, the second great culture to arise in Mesopotamia.

Yet here too, the hand of war had dealt a blow. Many of the artifacts had been vandalized, smashed by looters with no rational motive. Kismet had read news reports concerning one noteworthy sculpture, a bronze bust of the great Akkadian king Sargon, that had been taken by an opportunist hoping to score a small fortune in the international antiquities trade. Though the head had been recovered, it would be some time before such a valuable relic would again be displayed openly. Hundreds of other pieces — cuneiform tablets dating back to the time of Hammurabi, alabaster lions and gryphons, bronze artworks from the dawn of metallurgy — were now likewise secreted away from public view.

He caught sight of the robed figure dashing through the middle of the gallery, intent on reaching the far exit. He was gaining on the man, his longer strides closing the distance, but the assassin held the advantage of knowing where he was going. If Kismet lost visual contact, even for a moment, the pursuit would be over. He raised the gun, sighting down the barrel on the fleeing killer. “Stop!”

The assassin did not look back, but the shouted warning triggered a spontaneous response. He dove forward, making a fluid transition into a somersault that momentarily removed him from Kismet’s sight picture. As the man came up, he pivoted on his leading foot, turning away from the headlong course toward the far end of the course.

Kismet’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he could not bring himself to fire. The adrenaline surging through his veins was not quite strong enough to override a deep-seated inhibition against causing inadvertent harm to innocents. He knew well the limitation of his ability with the firearm — he was out of practice. Although the basic knowledge of how to shoot was something never quite forgotten, it was a skill that lost its edge over time, and it had been a long time since he had fired the weapon, even on a shooting range. Using the anti-tank rocket the day before had been simple by comparison; the AT-4 was a sledgehammer compared to the nine-millimeter projectiles from the Glock, which would require near surgical precision to be effective. He might have scored a hit on the darting figure, but it seemed just as likely that his round would go astray, striking and further damaging one of the Old Babylonian artifacts, or worse, wounding an unsuspecting museum worker. The escaping assassin, while never realizing that he was not nearly in as much danger as he might have believed, took advantage of Kismet’s internal struggle to widen the gap between them, and slipped out of the Akkadian gallery.

Recognizing that the gun would only be a liability in his chase, he jammed the weapon back into the waist pack as he ran through the hall and put on a burst of speed as soon as it was secure. There had been no hesitation in his decision to chase after the killer; it had been an immediate reaction to what he had witnessed. Yet now, as his brain went into overdrive, he began to see the ultimate goal of his pursuit. The killer had silenced Aziz, locking away whatever knowledge the curator possessed that might have aided Kismet in his search for answers. That pre-emptive strike might forever throw him from the path if he failed to bring the assassin to heel.

Another corner separated the relics of Old Babylonia and Akkad from the earliest civilization in the region, and perhaps the world: Sumeria. With his hands now free and his purpose set, Kismet sprinted through a maze of displays featuring potsherds and clay tablets, restored to their proper place by virtue of being relatively valueless.

The assassin, never once looking back, seemed to hesitate as if uncertain about which route of egress to follow. Only as his pursuer’s footsteps became audible did he think to take evasive action, but the opportunity to escape had already passed. Kismet dove forward, arms extended, and tackled the fleeing killer.

Both men tumbled uncontrollably, caroming between the upright display cases. Kismet folded his arms around the assassin’s legs, immobilizing him, but in the corner of his eye, he saw one of the openly presented relics tremble with the force of impact. A female figurine, arms raised to balance a large water container on her head, wobbled like a bowling pin atop a squarish pylon directly above where the two combatants lay sprawled.

Kismet breathed a curse as he realized what he would have to do. Releasing the grip of his right arm, he thrust his hand up and snatched the sculpture away from the inevitable attraction of gravity. Even as his hand closed protectively around the statue’s legs, the assassin seized the advantage. He flexed his knee, then drove his leg straight out like a piston, solidly connecting with the side of Kismet’s head.

A haze of bright blue momentarily eclipsed his view of the world. He felt the killer squirming out of his weakened grasp and made a belated but vain attempt to redouble his efforts. As gently as possible, he laid the figurine aside and brought his hands up defensively. Kismet knew he could physically overpower the smaller man, but his foe still possessed a gun and had showed no hesitation in dispatching Aziz. His ears were ringing from the first blow and through a haze of stars, he could just make out the other man, rising to his feet, legs spread in a defensive stance.

The killer moved like lightning, spinning on one foot and bringing the other around in a kick aimed at Kismet’s head. A raised arm deflected most of the powerful assault, but Kismet felt a stab of pain just below his elbow. He tried to grab the outstretched leg as it rebounded away, but was too slow. His opponent twisted out of his reach, leaping and rolling like an acrobat.

The evasive maneuver took the lithe killer sideways, away from the center of the room and off course for a hasty exit. Kismet moved to flank the man, forcing him back to the edge of the gallery. The man paused as he realized his mistake, drawing to a stop in front of the balcony wall that overlooked the garden courtyard below. He spun around and his eyes, the only part of his face not covered by the turban and veil, locked for a moment with Kismet’s. There was nothing human in the gaze. Just the cold, tactical stare of a killing machine, surveying a battlefield. In that instant, Kismet realized that if he failed to quickly subdue his opponent, the violence would escalate to a fatal conclusion.

He raised his hands, palms down in a steadying gesture, and took a slow step forward as if attempting to negotiate. The move was a feint. As soon as he sensed that his opponent had taken the bait, Kismet sprang forward again. The assassin was fast, but he had nowhere to go. Kismet’s shoulder plowed into the man’s mid-section, driving him back even as the former’s arms encircled him.

Kismet’s cheek struck a hard object beneath the assassin’s robes, the silenced pistol, but it was something soft and yielding pressing into his forehead that caused him to falter in the ferocity of his assault.

The veiled killer struggled free of his grasp and Kismet careened headlong. He managed to recover his footing and backpedaled to block the exit once more, but the assassin no longer seemed interested in escaping by that route. Instead, with robes fluttering like the scarves of a dancer, his foe whirled around and dove toward the balcony wall. Kismet gasped involuntarily as the other figure took flight.

He reached the railing just in time to see the assassin land gracefully, cat-like, on two feet. The downward momentum translated effortlessly into forward motion and the assassin moved unimpeded toward the exit, oblivious to the amazed exclamations of clueless laborers working in the garden.

“Shit.” Kismet muttered the rare curse because he knew what he had to do.

With considerably less elegance than his opponent, and a good deal more trepidation, he closed his fists around the railing and vaulted over the barrier. He kept his handhold firm, describing a pendulum motion with his body, until the soles of his feet were parallel with the floor. Only then did he let go, narrowly avoiding a collision with the outward facing balcony wall, and dropped two vertical meters to crash noisily into an unidentifiable thorn bush. The assassin reached the entrance lobby while he struggled to disentangle himself, and Kismet knew he had lost the race.

The assassin hit the double doors, blasting through them with hardly a pause, and continued through the elaborate archway. After the controlled interior lighting of the museum, the rays of the midday sun stabbed down like knives, causing the robed figure to raise a shading arm. No one took notice. What was one more traditionally dressed Arab in a nation almost exclusively populated by them? The killer slowed to a walk, staying close to the outer edge of the building, and crept along the perimeter. The soldiers, unaware of the commotion inside the museum, carried out aimless patrols around their vehicles or huddled together in small knots of conversation. Aziz’s slayer saw an opening and launched into motion.

A lone infantryman stood at the rear of D-42, the refueling vehicle, idly smoking a cigarette and paying attention to little else. The assassin moved like lightning, flashing in front of the hapless soldier and striking before the young man could even register surprise. A slashing blow to his exposed throat left the soldier gasping for air, while the robed killer effortlessly ripped his carbine away.

The violent attack did not go unnoticed by the other soldiers, but the lethargy of too much heat and too little action slowed their collective response. Before a single man could lift his weapon, the assassin checked the captured M4, advanced a round, and switched the fire selector to “burst”. Fire and lead erupted from the muzzle, splitting the silence with a series of rapid cracking sounds. To a man, the infantry squad hit the ground, dashing for cover as they wrestled to bring their weapons to bear, but their target had already moved on.

The assassin popped open the door to the Humvee and slipped inside with practiced familiarity. The military vehicle had a simple starter switch and was secured only by a padlocked cable looped around the steering wheel. Using the stubby barrel of the carbine as a pry-bar, the assassin broke the shackle and toggled the starter switch. The diesel fuel, already warmed by the desert sun, ignited instantly.

Kismet could barely hear the shots through the dense brick walls, but what he could make out was enough to slow his pace as he ran toward the exit. His shirt and the skin underneath had been torn to shreds during his violent extrication from the museum’s interior gardens, but he gave it little thought. He was far more concerned about catching a stray bullet as he stepped outside the sheltering brick structure.

The distinctive popping sound of gunfire ceased as he reached the doors, but he continued with hasty caution, moving in a duck walk through the archway. He eased around the corner, just in time to see a lone Humvee tearing out of the parking area and onto the street. The pandemonium that lingered in its wake was explanation enough as to what had just occurred. The lone assassin had somehow stolen the vehicle under the noses of the infantrymen and was escaping.

Colonel Buttrick was already marshaling his troops for the pursuit, but every passing second put the fleeing Humvee further away. Before Kismet could cross half the distance to the parking area however, the first of the three transports took off in a spray of sand and gravel, while three soldiers, now standing in a firing line, continued to pump short bursts from their carbines at the rapidly diminishing target vehicle. If the bullets found their mark, they were insufficient to slow the assassin.

A second Humvee pulled away close on the heels of the first and Kismet saw the third give a slight tremor as its gears were engaged. Desperate to reach that last remaining vehicle, he sprinted ahead, no longer concerned about the exchange of weapons fire.

He was not sure what exactly he hoped to accomplish. Catching up to Aziz’s killer seemed a remote possibility at best, but that individual was the only person remaining who could answer the question burning in Kismet’s mind: why had Aziz been silenced?

The death of the curator had been eerily familiar. The killer had controlled the situation, yet upon discovery, Aziz had become the target, not Kismet. The phone call had evidently been a ruse to separate the Iraqi from his inquisitors, yet for what purpose? Had he been marked for death all along? What secret had died on his lips? Kismet knew from experience that secrets worth killing for were the kind of secrets that most needed to be revealed, and presently the assassin was his only link to that secret. If the soldiers succeeded in overrunning the fleeing Humvee, they would probably follow the time-honored progression of shooting before questioning. Perhaps that fact, more than anything else, spurred him onward as he drew closer to his last opportunity to join the chase.

As he closed to within ten meters, the Humvee’s rear tires began to turn. A scattershot of gravel blasted into his face as the driver punched the accelerator a little too eagerly, and Kismet involuntarily looked away for a moment. Three more steps, in less than a second, brought him to the place where, only a moment before, the Humvee had sat idle. Now there was only a toxic cloud of diesel exhaust. Still running, he thrust out both hands, blindly groping for the vehicle as he blinked away the sand and fumes.

The fingers of his right hand bounced off the hardened aluminum exterior of the rear hatch, momentarily catching on the fabric of the white United Nations banner rigged across the back end of the vehicle. His left hand however closed on something more substantial: the driver’s side antenna mount. He reflexively closed his fingers, gripping the coiled spring of metal as he might a lifeline.

The Humvee lurched forward and Kismet was abruptly yanked along with it. A stabbing pain shot from his elbow to his shoulder as his full weight suddenly depended from that lone extremity, but he did not let go. He made a futile effort to run behind the vehicle. There was no hope of keeping pace with the racing transport, but Kismet reckoned he only needed to get his feet under him long enough to propel himself up and onto the rear hatch. If he failed to do that, nothing else would matter.

For a moment or two, he succeeded. Pouring on a burst of speed, he actually managed to run along behind the Humvee, easing the strain on his left arm incrementally. He could feel the ground vanishing beneath his toes, moving faster than his legs could propel him, and knew that he would only get one chance. With two more bounding steps, he threw his right hand forward, groping for anything that might give him a second secure point of contact.

Once more, his reaching fingers found no purchase. The smooth exterior of the vehicle was free of latches and other protuberances. With half a meter of ground clearance, the designers had not even bothered with collision bumpers. The rear of the vehicle was a featureless metal wall, rising vertically above nothingness before sloping forward at a forty-five degree angle. He once more found himself clutching the flimsy UN banner as he was yanked forward off his feet.

Miraculously, the flag did not tear as his weight pulled the fabric taut. The sudden shock was absorbed by the rubber bungee cords that stretched from grommets at each corner of the strip. As he lost his footing, Kismet swung forward and his face slammed into the vehicle. The impact was not hard enough to knock him loose from his precarious handhold, but it proved a thankful distraction from the jarring blows that now traveled up from his feet as they dangled and scraped along the rough macadam roadway. The heavy leather of his boots afforded a measure of protection, but that would not last. His footwear was being methodically sanded away by friction from the relentless forward movement.

The Humvee’s speed was impossible to judge, but Kismet knew intuitively that he was now moving too fast to safely let go. He could not give up in his quest to gain a perch on the vehicle even if he chose to do so. If the impact did not kill him, the drop onto the pavement would scour the flesh from his bones. Though his left arm now burned with exertion and the pain of torn ligaments, he summoned every ounce of will power that remained and channeled it into a single pull.

His muscles bunched under the tattered remains of his shirt. To avoid losing what little progress he had made, he jammed his right arm deep under the UN flag until he could feel the fabric cutting into his armpit. Though his progress seemed marginal, he found that by flexing his knees, he could lift his feet away from the constant scraping punishment, if only for brief moments.

Nothing else existed in his world but the task of hauling himself onto the back of the Humvee. The streets of Baghdad flashed by unnoticed, and even the pursuit of the assassin now seemed a secondary concern. Kismet counted twenty ragged breaths before trying once more to lift himself higher, but his effort collapsed after only a moment, yielding almost no reward. Gritting his teeth, he tried again.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Buttrick pushed the accelerator pedal to the floorboard, intent on closing the gap between his own vehicle and the rest of his command. He had no idea what had happened inside the museum, much less the identity of the robed malcontent who had opened fire on his men and stolen the resupply vehicle, nor did he care. The enemy had struck a blow on his watch, and that was intolerable.

One of his men, the driver of the stolen Humvee, was down, possibly dead from a crushing blow to cricoid cartilage. Buttrick had only glimpsed the man’s fall, hands ineffectually clutching his throat as he collapsed beside the vehicle, but his blue pallor was explanation enough; the man was suffocating. He knew the medics might be able to save the man with an emergency field tracheotomy, but it would be messy. Buttrick clung to the image of the gasping soldier in order to fuel his resolve.

“Where the fuck are we?” he growled.

The sergeant in the seat beside him was frantically checking his city map against the GPS locator. “We’re coming up on the Shuhada Bridge over the Tigris.”

Buttrick’s mind ran through possible strategies. The bridge would be an excellent place to catch their prey, but only with outside help. “Get on the horn and see if anyone’s patrolling on the other side. Maybe we can scare up a roadblock.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant’s fingers closed on the radio handset before his superior finished speaking.

Neither man was aware of Kismet’s life and death struggle, less than three meters away, nor could they have possibly known that his fingers were at that very instant clenched around the base of the radio antenna.

The military radio had the capacity to send and receive coded information on a shifting cycle of frequency modulation wavelengths. Yet, beneath all the computerized circuitry, it operated on principles that had not changed in over a century. At its core, the device converted the sounds of the human voice into bursts of electricity, which then traveled along copper wire to the antenna, and it was only there that the electrical pulse became a radio wave. The antenna was essentially an electromagnet, disrupting the local magnetic field with measured bursts of energy that could be gathered out of the air and deciphered only by a correctly tuned receiver unit. Depending on the power of the transmitter and the length of the antenna, it was possible for those signals to reach out over hundreds of kilometers, or even into space. Despite quantum leaps in technology, long-distance communications still relied on that simple conversion of electricity into magnetism.

When the soldier in the passenger seat of the Humvee depressed the switch, even before speaking, an electrical circuit closed. A pulse of electricity, amplified by a system of transistors and capacitors, raced from the small box secured to the dashboard, along an insulated coaxial cable, to the rear antenna mount, where it burst into the atmosphere in an invisible lightning bolt.

And like lightning, it would blast anyone unlucky enough to be touching the antenna at that instant.

Five

Two things saved Kismet. Two factors, which by their random and coincidental nature, could only be described as pure luck.

Unaware of the impending radio transmission, and only faintly cognizant that such a surge could erupt from the antenna, Kismet had but one goal: to reach just a little higher. His knees slipped ineffectually against the metal shell of the vehicle in a struggle to find purchase and relieve, if only for a moment, the burning fatigue in his arms. His right elbow was tucked under the UN banner strung across the back end of the Humvee but he didn’t trust the thin fabric to hold his weight. His left arm however, bruised at the elbow during the struggle at the museum and on fire with lactic acid buildup, could hold on no longer. His fingers, though rigid like claws, began to uncurl, involuntarily slipping away from the spring-coil at the base of the antenna. The failure of his grip saved his life.

Though grounded by the glancing contact of his feet with the roadway, his fingers were barely touching the antenna. Had the transmission occurred mere seconds earlier, the fierceness of his grip would have held him locked in place as the current poured through his body, but the severity of the shock was greatly minimized due to the marginal contact between Kismet and the antenna. Even so, the surge slapped his hand like a blow from a baseball bat.

The shock seized every muscle in his body, instantaneously firing all the nerve endings in a numbing jolt. The kinetic release knocked his hand away, and would have easily thrown him aside like a rag doll had his right arm not been entangled in the UN flag. Therein lay the second bit of luck to which Kismet would owe his life: the fabric held up under the sudden weight of his collapse.

Hung up in the banner and stunned by the electrical discharge, Kismet dangled behind the racing Humvee like a fish caught by the gills in a net. His feet trailed helplessly along the roadway as the vehicle pulled onto the Shuhada Bridge.

The call for assistance reached several listening ears. A two-man patrol cruising in the vicinity of the now defunct Baath party headquarters, just north of the city’s transportation hub, immediately turned toward the 14^th July Highway, racing to intercept the fugitive vehicle. Further away, a Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter was diverted from its landing at the Baghdad International Airport and sent to provide aerial surveillance. Its estimated time to contact was less than three minutes. All over the city, R/T operators began relaying the urgent call for help to their commanding officers, who in turn began weighing Buttrick’s urgent needs against their own respective assignments. More then a few of these hastily dispatched squads of soldiers to the target area, but even the closest contingent had no chance of reaching the bridge before the chase moved beyond, onto the west bank of the Tigris River. Despite their tardiness however, it was reasonable to assume that the crew aboard the Black Hawk would guide the reinforcements, via radio transmissions, through the urban area in order to trap the commandeered Humvee.

In the pandemonium of pursuit, it never occurred to any of them that the assassin was also listening.

Kismet was gradually roused from his stunned condition by the incessant hammering of his feet against the deck of the bridge. The memory of the electrical shock was already fading. The discharge had done no permanent damage. A lingering numbness in his extremities was all that remained. In every other way however, his situation continued to be dire.

Cautiously twisting his torso, he brought his left hand around, gripping the corner of the banner in order to relieve the cutting pressure under his right arm. There was no choice now but to trust the flag to bear his weight. Nevertheless, gaining a more dependable perch remained imperative.

With deliberate slowness, he raised his right leg, hooking his heel under the bungee cord that secured the lower right corner of the banner. The rubber band provided a surprisingly stable foothold, allowing him to wrestle his arm free. After flexing his fingers for a moment to restore circulation, he reached back to his waist pack, fumbling until his fingers closed around the carved wooden grip of his kukri.

Kismet drew the heavy blade from its sheath and in a single practiced motion brought it around in an overhand chopping motion. The curved edge of the knife struck true but the blade rebounded from the aluminum shell, nearly twisting out of his fatigued grip. Disheartened by the failure, he braced himself against the anticipated recoil and tried again.

His attack against the vehicle’s metal skin failed to do more than make a few dents, but the incessant hammering alerted the occupants of the vehicle to their unexpected passenger. Kismet, lost in a single-minded effort to chop out a secure handhold, was oblivious to the shouted offers of assistance, originating from the open turret atop the Humvee. When the sergeant’s voice finally broke through, he could only stare dumbly at the outstretched hand.

“Take it!”

Methodically sheathing his knife, Kismet leaned in close and reached up. Surrendering himself to the other man’s grip, he allowed the soldier to draw him up onto the flat roof. Only there did he take note of the pursuit. From this vantage, he could make out the other vehicles in the convoy as they raced single file across the bridge. The Humvee piloted by Aziz’s killer had a lead of only a few seconds, but it was enough. As he watched, the vehicle shot past the end of the span and down the rampart. A few moments later, it made a hard right turn on the banked exit onto a divided highway. The driver made no effort to slow down for the turn, allowing the wheels to drift across the outside lane until they rebounded from the concrete abutment. The large tires left a streak of black, but were otherwise undamaged as the Humvee bounced back into the left-hand lane. The heavy suspension shuddered violently but the driver never lost control.

“You okay?” the sergeant shouted in his ear.

Kismet nodded, gripping the edge of the turret with both hands to show that he was secure.

“Better get inside. This is going to be one rough ride.” With that, the sergeant ducked down into the vehicle, settling into the front passenger seat. Kismet waited until he was clear, then heaved himself headfirst through the opening.

Despite the noise of the diesel engine, he thought that it seemed much quieter in the Humvee’s interior, at least until Buttrick addressed him.

“Kismet!” The urgency of the crisis had evidently superceded their first name basis. “What the fuck is going on?”

He fought to catch his breath. “We were interviewing one of the curators. I guess somebody didn’t want him talking to us.”

“Shit. Who is this guy? Local?”

“I don’t think so.” He mentally reviewed what he did know about the escaping killer. The initial crime had borne the earmarks of a professional hit, but what he had witnessed thereafter suggested the kind of training available only in the world of international espionage. Kismet had one more salient bit of information regarding the assassin, but decided to play his cards close to the vest and refrained from supplementing his claim of ignorance.

“Well whoever he is, he can sure drive. The American people paid good money for that vehicle. I’d hate to have to destroy it, but this guy isn’t giving me much choice.”

“You would also be destroying our only chance to get some answers.” He could sense the colonel’s disapproval in the silence that followed. “I guess if that’s what it takes.”

The Humvee left the bridge, following in the trail blazed by the other three. Kismet gripped the seat in order to keep from being tossed around the interior as the vehicle went off-road. The other two pursuing vehicles were visible, but he could not discern the one that led the chase. Buttrick’s co-pilot maintained communication with the other soldiers in the command, verifying that the quarry was still in sight, and took updates from the other forces moving in to close the trap.

The driver of the captured Humvee did not relent, red-lining the transport’s engine and refusing to yield to pedestrians or other vehicles. In order to prevent the gap between them from widening, Buttrick and the other drivers were forced to implement a similar strategy.

At a major interchange near Tala’a Square, a car driven by a local civilian screeched to a stop, narrowly missing the stolen Humvee as it plowed through heedless of other traffic. The irate driver blasted an angry, sustained note with his horn before applying the accelerator. The soldier in the leading pursuit vehicle — designation D-44—intently focused on his prey, reacted too late. The front end of his Humvee crushed the fender panels of the smaller car and the heavy truck tires rolled up onto its hood, snapping the chassis and demolishing the engine block. The military vehicle scraped over the wreckage, wreaking further ruin on the already devastated vehicle, then bounced down once more onto the pavement. The encounter had lasted only a heartbeat, but it was a moment added to the assassin’s lead.

Other cars, speeding into the intersection from each direction, scattered to avoid becoming caught in a pile-up. Several of these took to the sidewalk in a last-ditch effort to avoid a collision with the wrecked car or the rest of the convoy as it charged past the scene of ruin. Buttrick clenched his teeth in a fierce grimace as he glanced down at the shattered civilian vehicle, but he said nothing.

The chase continued along a main boulevard, known locally as Hayfa Street, heading north and west. To their left, the Tigris followed a meandering path, weaving into view before turning away at a right angle. With the river effectively blocking one avenue of escape, it seemed inevitable that they would eventually trap the fleeing assassin. Buttrick began directing his reinforcements to close in ahead of them and stage a roadblock at the foot of the Al Azamiyah Bridge. On the straight thoroughfare, Kismet had an unobstructed view of the entire progression. Their prey dodged in and out of the moderately heavy civilian traffic, as did the other two vehicles. With nearly half a kilometer between Buttrick’s vehicle and the assassin’s, it was difficult for Kismet to differentiate the almost identical vehicles. Unable to add anything to the pursuit, he resigned himself to the role of spectator.

A voice crackled from the radio speaker. “Delta Four-Six, this is Bravo Two-Five. We are leaving the rail yard and proceeding onto Hayfa Street ahead of you. Do you want us to block the road? Over.”

Buttrick glanced at the map, then shook his head. “We’ll pass them before they can get in position. Have them block the highway leading to the Sarafiya Bridge, just in case. Then they can join us in closing the trap.”

His commands were relayed by the sergeant and a moment later, the Humvee, which had identified itself as B-25, broke across the road in the barely visible distance, crossing the intersection well ahead of the chase and came to a stop in the middle of the cross street.

The stolen Humvee suddenly cut hard to the left, sweeping across both lanes of traffic on a perpendicular approach toward the edge of the road. A collision with the concrete barrier seemed inevitable, but when the front end of the vehicle reached the steeply sloped obstacle, the elevated front end passed over its upper limit, allowing the tires to make contact. The rear wheels continued to supply forward momentum, while the front tires ascended the near vertical hump of cement and stone.

Instantly, the Humvee launched into the air. The rear wheels finished their journey, striking the barricade to give a final burst of impetus as the vehicle leaped skyward and sailed over the highway divider in a short parabolic arc.

The rear tires touched down first, seeming to lightly kiss the pavement, but the contact was enough to snap the front end down violently, creating a ripple of energy that bounced the Humvee across both lanes toward the far edge of the road. Traffic on the highway was light enough that no unlucky souls happened to be in the landing area, but the drivers of several approaching cars instinctively jammed their brakes, skidding out of control to collide with one another. The pile-up began to cascade behind them as the captured Humvee hit the barrier on the far left, lifting once more into the air.

At almost the same moment, the turret gunner on Bravo 25 overcame his disbelief and squeezed the butterfly trigger of his Browning fifty-caliber machine gun. A noisy stream of ammunition began pouring after the renegade vehicle. A few of the rounds found their mark, punching enormous holes in the rear of the stolen truck, but most went wide as evidenced by the tracer rounds that sizzled well past the Humvee and smacked into parked railway freight cars hundreds of meters beyond. The noise and light show was enough to cause the war-weary motorists on the lane ahead of the convoy to stop short and duck their heads.

“Damn it!” Buttrick raged. “Tell them to hold fire. There goes our roadblock.”

Before the sergeant was able to key the message, Delta 44 broke to the left. Inspired by the success of the assassin’s jump and intent on maintaining the pursuit, the young soldier driving the lead chase vehicle drove head-on into the concrete barrier. Buttrick muttered a disbelieving oath as the Humvee lofted over the divider and touched down successfully.

The sergeant sent out a frantic call to the forces deploying near the bridge to abandon that location. Meanwhile, the assassin’s vehicle kicked up a column of dust as it continued across an open field toward an obvious destination, the rail yard, with the daredevil soldier in the lead Humvee close behind.

The driver of the second Humvee — D-43—seemed less enthusiastic about making the airborne transition across the opposite lanes and off of the highway, but he knew what had to be done and did not ease off of the accelerator once committed to the jump. Buttrick began swinging to the far right of the road in order to begin his approach along the same path.

Delta 43 cleared the barricade easily, but as the rear tires hit the short wall, there was an audible snapping noise. One of the struts on the right rear wheel broke, causing it to cant outward at a forty-five degree angle. As the rear tires banged down on the pavement, the wheel on the right was no longer supplying power in a straight line. The back end turned an impossibly tight circle, pivoting on the undamaged left wheel and spun around beneath the still elevated front end. The Humvee corkscrewed in the middle of the highway and flipped onto its back with a sickening crunch.

At that instant, unaware of the second vehicle’s demise, Buttrick began his charge toward the barricade. Like the three others before, the last Humvee in the column hit the concrete divider and launched skyward. The jump was flawless, but the wreck of the D-43 lay like a turtle on its back directly in his landing zone. Because there was nothing else to do, Buttrick held the steering wheel steady as they crashed down toward its exposed underbelly.

Delta 43 was still turning counter-clockwise circles on the macadam as D-46 dropped from the sky. The two vehicles almost missed each other. Half a second earlier or later and the two Humvees would have been parallel. Instead, the left side of Buttrick’s vehicle caught the outstretched front end of D-43 as it swung around through another revolution. Delta 46 tilted sharply to the right and when the wheels on that side made contact with the pavement, the angle was enough to pull the Humvee over.

Kismet had planted his feet squarely on the floorboards and gripped either side of the driver’s backrest in anticipation of the jump, but nothing had prepared him for the violence of the landing. As Delta 46 began its roll, the doors flew open and Colonel Buttrick, overwhelmed by centrifugal force, was ripped from his seat as the Humvee rolled onto its right side. The roll continued, and the twisting Humvee moved forward and sideways at the same time, missing the stunned officer by a mere inches. An instant later, the open doors were crushed as it turned onto its left side. Kismet felt the almost irresistible tug of G-forces wrenching him toward the opening, and for a heartbeat, he saw nothing but dusty pavement. His grip failed and he slammed face first onto the roadway as the vehicle turned again, coming to a rest on its tires.

Kismet lay stunned for a long moment before daring to open his eyes. He instinctively struggled to his knees, and was mildly surprised that his body complied with only a minimum of complaint. Despite the initial violence of the wreck, he had managed to remain in the protective confines of the Humvee until most of its energy was expended. The force with which he had hit the roadway was no worse than tripping and falling onto a hard surface.

No better either, he thought darkly as he pushed to his feet.

A few steps away, Buttrick and the sergeant were also coming around. A figure in combat camouflage snaked from the overturned D-43 and hurried over to assist their fallen comrades. Though shaken, the soldiers inside that Humvee appeared to be uninjured. Kismet absently wondered if they had been foresighted enough to buckle their seatbelts before engaging in the ludicrous pursuit. No one in Buttrick’s vehicle had taken that precaution, and to a man they had been yanked from their seats.

Delta 46 sat idle a few meters away.

Kismet stared at the crumpled, but relatively intact Humvee as though trying to divine its purpose. The engine had evidently stalled, but for all the outward damage — the missing doors and crushed fender panels — the vehicle appeared operational.

Still trying to determine the significance of the Humvee’s presence, Kismet saw movement in the corner of his eye and looked out across the field. Beyond the second concrete barricade, the stolen resupply vehicle was struggling to maintain its lead. Its left rear tire — perforated by a few lucky shots from Bravo 25’s machine gun — was coming apart. Huge chunks of black rubber were thrown out in its wake, directly in the path of the remaining chase vehicle. Though the Humvee was equipped with a run-flat rim, essentially a hard rubber tire inside the inflated outer tire, which allowed it to remain operational in exactly such a circumstance, the reduced wheel diameter cut its top speed nearly in half, especially on the loose sandy surface. Delta 44 was going to win the chase.

Kismet glanced back at the dazed survivors of the crash, then looked again at the vehicle from which he had been thrown. Responding to an undefined impulse, he began walking toward the wounded Humvee.

“Kismet?”

He heard Buttrick’s croaked inquiry, but elected to ignore it. Instead, he quickened his pace, reaching the doorless vehicle in a few steps, and slid behind the steering wheel. He searched for only a moment to locate the starter switch, and turned it all the way to the right.

A triumphant grin crossed his mouth as the engine rattled to life. Still in gear, he had only to depress the accelerator and Delta 46 was back in the chase.

Buttrick was shouting for him to stop but Kismet, full of purpose, paid no heed. He brought the vehicle around in a wide turn, taking it nearly to the center divider before turning the front end toward the outside of the road, where a second unbroken string of concrete barricades stood as a guard rail. Almost as an afterthought he pulled the seatbelt taut across his lap and locked it in place before stomping the accelerator pedal to the floor.

Though he had already endured one such jump, the perspective from the driver’s seat was different somehow. He was a little closer to the action and further from the pivot point of the rear wheels, but the real dissimilarity lay in the act of initiating a nearly suicidal assault on the barrier. As a passenger, all he had to do was hang on. Although the approach seemed to take forever, it was over in an instant. The front end was violently knocked upward and the rest of the Humvee followed. The landing on the loose soil beyond the road was less forceful than the first and Kismet easily maintained control.

He quickly located the chase by the enormous cloud of dust. Both vehicles were traveling in a straight line toward the city’s main rail yard. The Humvee driven by the assassin became visible as it made an abrupt right-hand turn, peeling off from what would otherwise have been a collision course with a line of empty freight cars, and began traveling parallel to the rail spur. Realizing he had an opportunity to intercept, Kismet angled toward a point ahead of their quarry while Delta 44 swung into line directly behind, continuing the relentless advance.

Kismet gripped the wheel breathlessly. His bid to flank the assassin had only one fatal flaw: the artificial barrier posed by the rail cars ended well short of the intercept point. However, just beyond the last car, at the point where spur entered onto the main track, a second train was moving through the rail yard at a deliberate but unstoppable pace. Once that train passed the intersection, it would close the door of escape.

The assassin evidently saw this as well. With a desperate burst of speed, Delta 42 charged ahead. As it did, the run-flat rim on the left rear tire began to come apart, scattering large pieces of rubber across the gravel near the rail bed. The vehicle swerved uncertainly, but somehow the driver managed to maintain control as it approached the end of the idle train.

Kismet saw what was about to happen but was powerless to prevent it. The assassin swerved across the spur, the vehicle fishtailing uncertainly as it bounced over the iron rails, but straightened as it crossed the mainline a whisper ahead of the advancing locomotive. The driver of D-44, once more suffering from tunnel vision, never looked away from his goal.

Kismet made an instinctive grab for the radio handset, impotently shouting: “Break off!”

The message was never received.

The train was only traveling about twenty-five kilometers per hour but its mass was relentless. It hit the Humvee broadside, nearly bisecting the vehicle, and drove it forward along the tracks. The horrifying scene was lost from view as the locomotive pushed the wreckage beyond the parked train on the branching track, but there was no mistaking the eruption of black smoke as the diesel fuel tank, warmed by the desert sun and compressed by the crushing weight of the train, reached its flashpoint and exploded.

Kismet, still shouting a warning that would never be heeded, stomped on the brake pedal, bringing the Humvee to a halt a few meters from the rolling line of rail cars. The pursuit seemed to be over.

Fired by the same impulse that had motivated him to chase after the assassin in the first place, Kismet refused to admit defeat. Flooring the throttle once more, he veered out into the open area for several seconds before coming around in a wide turn that brought him parallel to the incoming train. He eased back on the accelerator, matching the pace of the rail cars, and tried to put the pieces of his plan into coherent order.

He knew that Delta 42 was nearly on its last gasp. Once the ruined tire fell completely apart, the assassin would be forced to continue on foot. All Kismet had to do was get to the other side of the moving train and that meant he was going to have to abandon his Humvee and transfer to the train. As long as D-46 was traveling at the same speed as the rail cars, he would at least have a chance of making the transition.

He looked around for something to hold the accelerator pedal down, but found nothing. Everything not bolted in place had been thrown clear during the earlier rollover. His eyes then settled on the radio unit. While it was secured in place, the clamping bolts were easily loosed, and a moment later he pulled it free of its mount. The weight of the back-up battery inside the oblong metal box made it ideal for what he had in mind. He removed his foot from the pedal and replaced it with the radio.

That minor success was overshadowed by the fact that he was now running out of road. His course alongside the moving train was soon going to bring him to the spur where the idle freight cars were parked. He would have to make his move quickly or not at all.

The train loomed above the passenger side door and the metal rungs of an access ladder were visible beyond the opening, but Kismet did not relish the idea of trying to squirm across the interior of his vehicle in the seconds that remained. He instead sprang for the open turret hatch in the center of the Humvee’s roof and thrust himself through the opening in a single decisive jump. The driverless vehicle maintained course and speed, but he knew there was no time for delay.

His objective now seemed much further away than before. Though he was relatively close to the rolling train, there remained a distance of almost two meters between the edge of the Humvee’s roof and the rungs of the ladder. To make matters worse, the train was slowing; the engineer had thrown the brakes in a futile effort to prevent the collision with Delta 44 and the juggernaut was still steadily decelerating. The ladder Kismet was so focused on reaching was gradually falling behind him.

Throwing caution to the wind he stepped back, then took a running leap toward the train. An instant later, he found himself hanging from the rungs on the side of a tanker car. He wasn’t sure of how he had completed the leap, but there was no time to waste figuring it out or congratulating himself on making it look easy. With a deep breath, he started ascending the ladder.

Delta 46 continued to roll alongside the train, gradually pulling ahead in its race to oblivion. A heartbeat later it plowed into the parked freight cars and annihilated itself. The Humvee came apart in a spray of metal, plastic and rubber, pelting the moving train with almost unrecognizable pieces of debris. Kismet ducked reflexively as a chunk of olive drab fiberglass struck near his extended hand.

His arms were still burning from the exertion of his crazed ride on the back of the ill-fated vehicle and he felt the fatigue rapidly building to the point of failure. After heaving himself onto the catwalk that framed the oval cylinder of the tank car, it was a struggle to get to his feet. From this vantage however, he could see all but a few shadowy corners of the labyrinthine rail yard. The assassin’s vehicle was limping along parallel to the moving train, taking refuge in its behemoth shadow, the driver perhaps assuming that the chase was over. Kismet saw clearly that path that would take his foe to freedom, but wondered if the way out was as obvious at ground level. Shaking the fatigue from his arms, he took off at a sprint.

Running along the top of the moving train was disconcerting. Though he poured all his remaining energy into the effort, he felt like he was losing ground with every step. His progress along the top of the tanker remained unimpeded, but the simple truth of the matter was that the train was still taking him in the wrong direction at a pace nearly equal to his own.

At the end of the tank car, he made a relatively simple leap over the intervening distance, onto the next cylindrical body. Though mindful of the moving surface beneath him, he nevertheless went sprawling as soon as his feet touched down. Fortunately, the opposing forces of motion were in line and he did not slip from the narrow metal walkway, but another moment of advantage had gone to the fleeing killer. Kismet scrambled up and took off again.

By the time he reached the far end of that second rail car, the train had slowed almost to a full stop. His next leap was far less dramatic, and as he ran along the top of yet another tank car, the movement beneath him ceased altogether. Fatigue from his aerobic effort was settling into his legs and chest, but he pressed on, prompted to still greater exertion by the fact that he was finally getting somewhere. However Delta 42 was slowing, hampered by the ruined tire and the driver’s uncertainty about how to negotiate the maze of train cars parked on spur lines at every turn. He closed the distance on the Humvee in what seemed like only a few seconds, then continued ahead along two more rail cars before turning to face the killer.

He moved out to the edge of the catwalk, calculating the effort required to cross the distance and fixing in his mind the exact moment at which he would have to jump. There would be only one opportunity for him to make the crossing — no false starts, no second-guessing. Yet his earlier successes now filled him with confidence, overriding that instinctive fear of falling. As the Humvee crept closer, he drew in a deep breath, then let it out.

Suddenly his world seemed to collapse inward. Blood, rushing to nourish and repair his exhausted extremities, seemed to have been shunted away from his brain, and darkness began closing in around the periphery of his vision. He felt an overwhelming need to vomit.

The Humvee was nearly below him. It was now or never; Kismet had no choice but to make a leap of faith.

The transition from the top of the train car onto the moving hood of the vehicle was not so much a jump as a controlled fall. Kismet made no effort to keep to his feet as he slammed into the molded fiberglass cover, but instead redirected the momentum of his drop into a sprawl across the broad windshield.

Through the dark haze occluding his vision, he could not make out the assassin’s reaction to the sudden assault, but he was not expecting a hospitable welcome. He had not forgotten that the killer was armed with a silenced pistol, but there was a much simpler way for repelling boarders against which Kismet would have little defense. His earlier misadventure had revealed just how difficult it would be to cling to the smooth shell of the vehicle.

The Humvee immediately began to swerve back and forth, but Kismet was ready. Blindly grasping the top mounted windshield wiper arms, he held on as the vehicle bucked beneath him. The driver’s attempt seemed half-hearted. The lost rear tire was proving more troublesome than expected, and after only a couple attempts, the Humvee’s path straightened once more. Kismet did not wait to see what would happen next. He scrambled onto the roof of the vehicle, removing himself from the killer’s line of sight.

The momentary dizzy spell seemed to relent as he resumed moving. It was the rest, not the exertion, that had compromised his blood pressure. He did not find this realization especially encouraging. He knew the effect would only worsen as the struggle continued, eventually reaching a point where he would simply collapse. It wouldn’t do at all to finally capture his foe and then pass out before commencing the interrogation.

The Humvee shifted to the left beneath him, not in an attempt to shake him loose, but simply a turn leading them one step closer to the edge of the maze. As the platform beneath him stabilized once more, Kismet turned his attention to the hatch covering the turret. The sheets of metal were secured from within by several snap-down clamps. He contemplated trying to use the kukri to pry it open, but rejected that plan. His forced entry would likely be so noisy that the assassin would be waiting to dispatch him with a gunshot as soon as he tried to pass through. He would have to find a better solution.

Spread-eagled prone on the roof and still fiercely gripping the driver’s side windshield wiper pivot with his right hand, he drew the gun from his waist pack and wormed toward the left side of the car. He ducked down long enough to look in through the window then pulled back quickly in case the assassin was waiting with gun drawn. Seeing no evidence that such was the case, he reached down with the gun and hammered on the pane.

“Stop now!” He repeated his order twice more, shouting each time and punctuating his words with taps on the plastic surface.

His demand was ignored. Delta 42 continued limping across the rail yard, angling toward the gaps between parked trains and scraping over the metal tracks. Like a table with one short leg, the entire vehicle wobbled uncertainly as it moved, dropping down on the chewed-up remains of the rear wheel then rebounding onto the three good tires. But then, as the path out of the maze became apparent, the driver did something that seemed completely counter-intuitive. The Humvee began to accelerate.

He was forced to stow the gun once more and hold on with both hands as the vehicle picked up speed. The last set of tracks fell behind as it pulled onto a graveled road, and as the engine poured more and more power into the three good wheels, the vehicle seemed to stabilize. Kismet however, began to feel more and more uncertain as their velocity increased, and a glance into the hot wind blasting against his face supplied more than adequate reason for concern. The road on which they were now hurtling forward ended in a locked gate.

Reason dictated that the driver was bluffing. Surely no sane person would charge such an obstacle headlong. Yet, as the barrier drew nearer, Kismet became more certain of the assassin’s intentions. When the Humvee hit the simple iron gate, the sudden stop would catapult him forward, hurling him from his precarious perch and launching him like a missile. It was conceivable that he might survive with only a few broken bones, but the odds did not favor that outcome. The only safe choice was to abandon the vehicle.

With only seconds remaining before the collision, he scooted headfirst toward the sloping rear hatch of the Humvee, and reached down to the familiar United Nations banner that had adorned each vehicle in the ill-fated convoy. From this perspective, the damage wrought by Bravo 25’s machine gun was evident. A series of ragged holes marred the smooth shell of the vehicle and had punched through the white flag in several places. A dark stain — diesel fuel from the resupply cans — was spreading like blood from some of the wounds.

Kismet grasped the damaged banner with both hands, then allowed his weight to fall sideways. His feet came around in a broad arc and abruptly all of his mass was depending from the torn flag as his boots dragged along the gravel roadway.

“This seems familiar,” he muttered through clenched teeth. Dismissing the irony of his situation, Kismet braced himself for what was about to happen, and let go.

The impact was much worse than he had expected. His chest slammed into the ground, driving the air from his lungs even as inertia continued to propel him along behind the doomed Humvee. The grainy pebbles that covered the roadway were more forgiving than a paved surface, but nonetheless stripped the skin from his palms and elbows. It was, he imagined, like being pulled across a cheese grater. He made a belated effort to roll in order to reduce the burn of friction, but all this seemed to do was spread the pain around evenly.

He did not see the collision, but there was no mistaking the sickening crunch of metal on metal. Kismet’s agonizing tumble ended about ten meters from the rear of the Humvee. The vehicle was still quaking on its springs from the shock of hitting the barrier.

That the driver had been willing to flirt with suicide in an effort to knock him loose from his perch seemed too ludicrous to consider, yet there was no refuting the obvious outcome. Nevertheless, it stood to reason that the assassin would have taken steps to survive the crash, and it was this assumption that motivated Kismet to haul himself erect and draw his weapon.

He advanced with due caution, feeling acutely the pain of his exertions in every muscle and joint as he crept forward, staying low. He expected the assassin to appear at any moment, brandishing a gun, but there was no sign of activity on board the Humvee. He raised his head level with the windows for a second, then quickly ducked down again.

The vehicle was abandoned. Kismet looked in again, more assertively to verify what that initial glance had revealed. There was no sign of Aziz’s murderer behind the wheel.

The collision had crumpled the hood and grill of the vehicle, and a plume of superheated steam rose from the ruptured remains of the radiator. However, aside from what was mostly cosmetic damage, the Humvee had weathered the crash quite well. The cheap padlock securing the gate had snapped, allowing the single iron I-beam to burst open on its hinge, transferring some of the kinetic energy away from the vehicle. Nevertheless, the occupant of the vehicle would have been subjected to a violent burst of force, certainly enough to stun, if not kill.

Kismet backed away quickly, realizing that the assassin had in all likelihood abandoned the doomed troop mover just as he had. He turned a quick circle, making sure that the killer had not somehow flanked him, then hastened to the other side of the wreck.

The passenger side door was gone, ripped off its hinges by the force of the collision, and thrown well beyond the gateway. Kismet drew the obvious conclusion: the door had been open at the moment of impact. He scanned ahead, seeing for the first time that beyond the gate, the service road connected with a paved street and the city proper. After a momentary survey, he detected movement, and recognized the retreating back of the killer, now well over a hundred meters away.

He took off running before he could even consider the alternatives. It galled him to have been so close to capturing his foe, only to suffer such a setback. The first steps were sheer hell, but his determination carried him through, and once he hit his stride, the pain seemed to recede. The pounding in his skull however returned with a vengeance and as he sprinted toward the street, dark shadows gathered in his vision.

He knew on a clinical level what was happening. He was getting dehydrated. The outpouring of energy in pursuit of the killer beneath the brutal desert sun had sapped his finite reserves. The adrenaline that fired him through one bruising encounter after another was no substitute for the most basic element of life: water. He only hoped the assassin was feeling it as well.

A horn blast and screeching tires alerted him to the peril he had completely ignored. Though traffic in the city was light, it was by no means nonexistent, and he had wandered into the middle of the Arbataash Tammuz or 14^th July Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in this section of the city. He reached the center of the divided road without mishap, and paused there to wait for a clearing. After so many close calls, this minor brush with fate hardly fazed him.

Despite the delay, he was gaining on the assassin. His longer legs gave him a definite advantage but his stamina was not without limits. He waited for an opening in traffic, and then darted toward the far edge of the road, vaulting the concrete barrier to continue across the barren expanse.

Aziz’s murderer had nowhere to hide in the open vastness. Acres of dusty nothingness stretched in every direction. The tableau was broken only by an occasional warehouse or shipping container storage yard. The assassin however seemed to be angling toward a construction site, with tall columns of steel and masonry springing out of the sand like a stricken forest. Kismet focused the flagging strength of his will power into a final burst of speed.

As he neared the incipient structure, its overwhelming scope became apparent. The upright columns, arranged in pairs around the perimeter, delineated an area as large as a football stadium. A great deal of excavation had been done, literally carving the site out from the desert floor, but the building work was yet in its infancy. He had no idea what purpose it would serve when, or if, it was completed. All he saw now was a chaotic maze in which his foe might seek refuge.

At the edge of the site, the assassin made a misstep, tripping over a piece of re-bar and sprawling headlong. Kismet seized the opportunity, and before the robed figure could rise, closed the gap and pounced.

The assassin struggled from his grip, kicking at his outstretched arms and backpedaling away. After enduring so much, Kismet was not about to be thrown off now. Shrugging off the ineffectual blows, he charged forward again, leaping from a crouch at his enemy’s mid-section.

His arms closed on air. Somehow, the assassin had ducked beneath him, rolling across the ground and springing up lightly, even as Kismet committed to the futile assault. This time however, the trained killer made no attempt to flee.

As Kismet struggled to rise, he felt something strike the back of his knees. The assassin had gone on the offensive, knocking his feet from beneath him with a low sweeping kick. This was followed immediately by a flurry of punches aimed at his face and torso. Some of the blows he blocked, and those that made contact were not especially forceful, but the overall effect of the assault was cumulative. He felt like a piece of steak being tenderized by repeated hammer blows.

Rejecting the innate impulse to protect himself, he lashed out into the heart of the storm. His fist caught the assassin on the cheek. Though a swath of fabric — the killer’s veil — muted the intensity of the contact, the insistent attack ceased as the robed figure pitched backward. Kismet’s follow-up was sluggish; he was at the limit of his strength and resolve. Sensing this, his opponent sprang lightly erect and ran at him.

The charge was abruptly aborted as Kismet brandished his pistol, aiming directly at the other person’s face. The assassin froze and for a long moment, both simply stood their ground, panting with exhaustion. Finally, Kismet broke the relative silence. “That’s better. Now, let’s talk about a few things.”

The assassin took a tentative step backward, but Kismet gestured with the Glock, asserting control. “The safety’s off. You know I mean it.”

“I don’t think you do.”

The assassin’s voice was low, intentionally unrecognizable, but even that short declaration served to establish certain facts about the killer’s identity. The words were delivered in English — confident, unaccented, idiomatic English. Despite the conscious effort at disguise, there was something faintly familiar about the voice. Kismet tried to keep his foe talking.

“Believe me, I will. It’s the least I can do for the soldiers you killed today.”

He could almost sense the mocking laughter behind the veil. “You know I could have killed you, back at the museum.”

Kismet felt a chilly whisper of déjà vu. When he spoke, he felt he was reciting the words from a script burned in his memory. “Why didn’t you?”

He knew exactly what the assassin was going to say, or at least the substance, but his expectations were proven wrong. Instead of speaking, the assassin remained silent for several seconds, then abruptly flashed into motion.

Kismet squeezed the trigger reflexively, snapping off a shot that pierced the air where an instant before the assassin’s laughing eyes had been. He missed by a hair’s breadth and immediately began tracking the movement with the barrel of the pistol, but the assassin remained a moment ahead of his impulse to fire. The Glock barked several times in succession, but the bullets zipped ineffectually past their target. He stopped firing when his foe ducked around an enormous stack of unused masonry blocks, and resumed the foot chase with the gun still locked in his right hand.

As he approached the corner around which his quarry had disappeared, he was able to distinguish a strident cry in Arabic. The words were simple enough for him to translate.It was a cry for help. While the tone was several octaves above the low voice the assassin had used, Kismet had no doubt that the same person was now summoning help, perhaps from the workers on the site. Underneath the shouted words however, there was a strange humming noise, like a building electrical current.

Ready for anything, Kismet raised the Glock and rounded the corner.

A sea of faces gazed back at him. Hundreds, possibly thousands of men, young and old, armed with crude signs demanding that the United States leave their country, as well as sticks, stones and at least a few AK-47 assault rifles, stood their ground directly ahead of Kismet. To a man, they were barefoot. The assassin had already vanished into the throng, blending chameleon-like into the surroundings, which left him alone to face the wrath of the mob.

It dawned on Kismet right then that the construction site in which he now stood was not a stadium or high-rise office complex, but rather the Al-Rahman mosque, which upon completion would be the second largest in the country and certainly one of the largest houses of worship on the planet. Not only was his presence an affront to the collective political will of the group before him, he was also insulting their faith by standing on holy ground.

No one moved for a long, eternal moment. Then, from somewhere in the back of the crowd, a shout went up, demanding that the blood of the infidel be shed. The tide turned and the outraged sea roared toward him like a tsunami.

Six

At nine o’clock that morning, roughly fifteen minutes before Kismet and Chiron had set out with their escort to interview Mr. Aziz at the Baghdad Museum, a very different sort of meeting was taking place not far from the route chosen by Colonel Buttrick. The assemblage was open to any male resident of the city, but implicit in the invitation was the message that those who chose to attend ought to have a deep belief that there was no God but God — Allah in the local parlance — and an abiding faith in the guidance of the imams, the spiritual heirs to the Prophet Mohammed. The meeting — a protest rally — was for, of, and by the Shiite citizens of the city, which accounted for roughly half its population. Baghdad was a melting pot where many members of that majority sect, displaced by the pogroms of Saddam Hussein during his twenty-six years in power, had ultimately relocated, living and working alongside the more secularly minded Sunnis.

There were a few among the crowd who were not Arabs, nor even citizens of Iraq, but were in fact Persian agitators, bent on stirring the sleeping giant that was the Shiite majority in Iraq to forcibly oust the United States’ occupying forces and establish a theocracy. Their simple message resonated with a people too long oppressed, who looked upon the foreigners in their midst as merely the latest form of subjugation.

Nearly three thousand men had gathered in front of the Parliament building, not far from the Sujud palace and the military parade grounds, outwardly carrying signs, American flags and effigies, the latter items to be consigned to flames when the watchful eye of the news media turned their way. But under their robes, they carried weapons. For the most part, these consisted of knives and cudgels. A few however had laid their hands on Russian-made assault rifles and sidearms abandoned by the defeated Iraqi military forces. While there was no particular plan to make use of these articles of destruction, the rabble were ready for the call to arms; ready and willing.

Shortly after the four Humvees had passed by unsuspectingly, the crowd had commenced a march to the Al Rahman mosque, a distance of just over two kilometers. The raw skeleton of the massive Islamic temple had become a powerful symbol to these people. Because it was incomplete, not yet bedecked with gaudiness like the extravagant Umm al-Ma’arik or “Mother of All Battles” mosque which stood more as a testament to the former president than to God, it represented the potential of the Shia to shape their own destiny, albeit with a gentle nudge from their fellow believers to the east.

The center of the mosque site was an open circle, more than one hundred meters across, where no work had yet been done. In fact, very little would be done in this area at least until the construction reached the final stages, following the erection of a glorious gilt dome. For now however, the area served as an impromptu amphitheater where a number of honored speakers whipped the already fervid crowds into a religious frenzy.

It was no coincidence that brought the assassin to this place. The rally was an ideal place to blend in and escape the searching eyes of the US military. Had Kismet realized that his foe had intentionally led him to this place, he would have greeted the notion with a degree of irony. There was a very good reason why the crowd spread out across the mosque site was exclusively male. The Quran did not permit members of the fairer sex to attend such a gathering.

Therein lay the one piece of information concerning Aziz’s murderer about which Kismet had no doubts. It was the secret he had, for no rational reason, held back in his discussion with Buttrick. In the initial moments of the chase, when they had grappled at the museum, he had felt breasts. The cold-blooded, highly trained assassin was a woman.

At just that instant however, the assassin’s gender, or for that matter, the inequality of the local religious teachings was the last thing on Nick Kismet’s mind.

He instinctively brought his gun to bear, waving it in a broad arc before him in hopes of intimidating the crowd. It was a foolish effort, he realized. In the zeal of the moment, a collective sense of invulnerability had come over the protestors. To be sure, each man had applied the simple logic of the odds — there were far more of them than bullets in his gun. However, the charge was deflected somewhat. The human surge seemed to run into an invisible barrier three meters from where he stood, wrapping around him to either side while maintaining that minimum safe distance. In the space of a heartbeat, he was surrounded.

Realizing his mistake too late, Kismet turned to flee. Although they had outflanked him, the mob was at its weakest point where they had filled in at his rear. The human wall was a thin line no more than two men deep. He swung his pistol in their direction and fired.

The shot was intentionally high. The last thing he wanted to do was compound an already dire situation by killing someone. If he crossed that line, the crowd would settle for nothing less than dismembering him. As it was, the sound of the discharge fanned the flames of wrath, but for those directly in the line of fire, the warning shots had the desired effect. The men dropped in a panic, weakening the line as he charged.

In that moment of sublime pandemonium, Kismet reckoned his chances of escape were about even. Despite the overwhelming force of numbers, the crowd was a cumbersome entity, limited by the strength and speed of its leading edge. Those in the middle had to rely on guidance from their comrades and sometimes the lines of communication were slow and unreliable. The seeds of a plan sprouted as he closed in on the skirmish line. All he had to do was get past them and he would have the advantage.

At the moment of contact, he attempted to vault over the cowering defenders. His focus was narrowed to the three of four men who actually had a chance of stopping him. One man, older than his companions and more wary, was practically on his hands and knees. Kismet leaped over the man’s bent back, and was a step closer to freedom.

Suddenly his world spun around. Instead of open sky, he found himself staring at the desert floor and before he could even begin to comprehend what had happened, the wind was driven from his lungs as his torso slammed into the ground. Someone, perhaps the old man, had snared his ankle, ripping him out of the air in mid-leap.

The protest marchers swarmed over him like warrior ants, tearing blindly at his extremities. The gun discharged several times, although he made no deliberate effort to pull the trigger, and cries of pain and rage went up from the dog pile. The Glock was torn from his fingers a moment later, even as blows began raining down upon him.

In that frantic moment, adrenaline took over. The instinctive need to survive — to flee and fight — directed his hands and feet in a way that his conscious mind could not fathom. He began to kick and punch and gouge, twisting like a dynamo, inflicting close-quarters damage that slowly accumulated to the point where his attackers were forced back, if only to arm’s length. As they fell away, Kismet’s fingers closed on the haft of his kukri and he wrenched it free from its scabbard, waving it menacingly. The large steel blade intimidated the mob in a way his firearm could not. It held promise of slashing wounds and lost limbs, rather than the almost intangible threat of a bullet hole.

There was blood on the sand. Some of it was his, but at least two of the men had suffered gunshot wounds and lay motionless on the ground. Others bore the marks of Kismet’s adrenaline fueled counterattack with bloody noses and split lips, but he knew that whatever traumas he had managed to inflict were reflected and magnified on his own body. Rivulets of warm fluid were dripping from his chin, and somehow he knew it wasn’t perspiration.

He feinted experimentally with the kukri, driving once more at what he perceived to be the weakest point. As he did, one youth broke toward him, screaming a war cry. Kismet whirled to face him, slashed blindly and the blade found flesh. There was a crunch of steel on bone as the heavy knife lopped off a hand, and the battle yell became a howl of agony.

Kismet did not waste time surveying the damage. The youth had broken ranks to attack him, leaving a hole in the perimeter of the assault. Still slashing the kukri before him, he charged toward the gap. A few brave fingers snagged his clothing as he pushed through, but none were able to stop him. In a moment he was through.

As the mob began to realize that their prey had eluded the pinchers and was now escaping, their rage grew to blinding proportions. Men pushed forward, heedless of those ahead of them, and dozens were crushed or trampled in the surge. The crowd seemed to fragment beyond that point, with individuals breaking loose and sprinting after Kismet, while most remained caught in the snarl. Notwithstanding this, their strength of numbers remained.

Kismet wove through the obstacles of the construction site, more intent on staying in motion than reaching any particular goal. The task before him seemed overwhelming; he had to find refuge in an unfamiliar city where virtually everyone wanted him dead.

For a moment, he thought about trying to cross back through the rail yard in order to rendezvous with Buttrick and his soldiers. He immediately dismissed that idea.All it would accomplish would be to bring the rage of the masses down on those men as well. Instead he stayed on a straight course, veering left or right only when an obstacle presented itself.

He ducked his head reflexively when he heard the familiar crack of his own gun being discharged. The distinctive sound of the nine-millimeter pistol repeated two more times, but none of the rounds found their mark, and after the third concussion, the gun fell silent. It was only a momentary reprieve.Kismet knew there were other guns among the crowd.

He reached the edge of the construction site, slipped through an inexplicable stand of trees, and once more onto the barren brown desert floor. The kukri in his right fist seemed like an anchor, weighing him down and making each step that much harder, but the crimson stain on its edge was compelling testimony to its usefulness. Besides, the thought of throwing it away was abhorrent. He had once believed he would die with the blade in his hand; now it seemed another such opportunity for that fate had arrived.

He dared not look back. There was no need to verify the fact that mob was at his heels. He was more concerned about what lay directly ahead — a lot of nothing. There was nowhere to hide, no safe place where he would be granted refuge. This was an endurance race, and he would lose only when he could run no more.

So he ran.

Nothing else existed but to keep moving. Time was measured by the pounding of his heart in his ears, synchronized to the rhythm of his footsteps — four strides per beat. He could hear nothing else. His field of vision likewise was narrowing, focusing in on a fixed object: a high-rise structure directly ahead and perhaps five kilometers in the distance. He had no idea what the building was and there was no way he would ever reach it, but it was something tangible that he could move toward. He was barely aware of the darkness closing in at the edge of his vision.

The crowd could not match his pace. Their collective motivation to rend his limbs was not as fierce as his will to survive. Barefoot and exhausted from the long march, many were content to fade into the background, allowing their brothers and neighbors the thrill of the kill. A few score however surged ahead, breaking away from the mob and sprinting with all their might after the fleeing figure. Unconsciously, the men separated into two packs, forming wedges behind the fastest runners. As they narrowed the gap, each leader angled away from the distinctive pattern of Kismet’s footprints, swerving into a parallel course that would enable them to cut off and overwhelm him. Through the pounding and the darkness, he almost failed to notice.

One young man, wielding a rudimentary carving knife whetted so frequently that it was a mere sliver of steel, charged prematurely. He dived at an angle, the wooden grips of the knife squeezed tight in his right fist, and stabbed at the center of Kismet’s back. The blade snagged in the already ragged fabric, and as he felt the first twinge of pain, Kismet twisted away. The attack had thrown the running youth off balance, and as the knife was torn from his grip, he sprawled forward onto the sand. The man closest behind tried to leap over his fallen comrade but mistimed his jump, tripping on an outstretched leg and likewise ending up prone on the desert floor.

Aware now that his enemies were within striking distance, Kismet slashed back blindly with the kukri, sweeping the blade like a scythe in order to clear the area directly to his right. He then made a sharp turn in that direction, creating further confusion among his pursuers and the left-hand wedge inadvertently collided with the other group in their eagerness to adjust course. Before they could orient on his new vector, Kismet wove back in the other direction.

The mosque was now well behind him, along with most of the protestors. A distance equivalent to two football fields separated Kismet from the place where he had, for a moment at least, brought Aziz’s murderer to heel. The featureless arid plain was grudgingly giving way to urban growth and he could discern streets ahead and a handful of commercial structures rising up before him.

A distant crack of thunder signaled that one of his pursuers, possibly with the main body of the crowd, had finally realized that bullets travel farther and faster than human feet. The Kalashnikov assault rifle chattered for only a moment before falling silent. The shooter had discharged the entire magazine with a single fully automatic burst, but a moment later, other guns joined in a thunderous symphony. Kismet saw a few puffs of dust where bullets struck ahead of him. The soldier he had once been knew that the men were simply wasting ammunition. Although the unrelenting stream of lead seemed intimidating, the explosive discharge of gases from the muzzle of the AK-47 typically caused the weapon to buck and pull up, sending most of the rounds off into space. Still, there was always a chance that one of those randomly fired projectiles would find him.

He dismissed that possibility, not because it was unlikely but because there was nothing he could do about it. Dissociating from the dire circumstances, he returned his gaze to the high-rise tower. It seemed no closer now than when he had begun, but in the back of his mind, he decided he would visit the skyscraper and see what the city looked like from its highest vantage.

A different sort of noise overpowered the cacophony of gunfire a deep, rhythmic pulse that resonated in his chest and even throbbed at his fingertips. He tried to fit this puzzle piece into the tapestry of his flight but it simply didn’t belong.

That was when he heard the voice from heaven.

The assassin wasted no time separating herself from the crowd. She well knew the fate she would suffer if her gender were discovered by the mob, to say nothing of her ethnicity. Fortunately, the masses were focused elsewhere.

On the margin of the gathering there was little movement and rampant speculation. She overheard some of the men relaying gossip passed back from the front. Rumor had it that a squad of US Marines had attacked the holy men leading the rally and killed several young men with their bayonets. She smiled behind her veil and kept moving.

At the eastern edge of the mosque grounds, she found a flatbed truck, still loaded with steel re-bar. The uniform layer of dust accumulated on the vehicle suggested that it had been some time since anyone had reported for work at the job site. After checking that nobody was paying her any special attention, she climbed up onto the bed, then pulled herself onto the roof of the cab.

Though only about three meters above the desert floor, she had a clear view of what was fast becoming a riot. Kismet was a barely visible speck, followed by several more insect-like shapes, scurrying across the sand. Behind them, a single dark mass, gradually resolving into individual entities. She greeted the scene with satisfaction. Kismet had chased her across half the city and very nearly killed her. It was nice to see him on the receiving end for a change.

Her smug expression fell a moment later as a dark shape hove into view above the crowd. She knew immediately what it was. During her wild ride through the city streets, she had monitored several transmissions between the motorized forces and the crew of a Black Hawk helicopter. The military aircraft had been following the developments on the ground, waiting for an opportunity to move in and rescue Kismet. She shook her head in resignation and took out her phone.

Saeed picked up on the second ring. “Well?”

“It’s done.”

His relief was unmistakable. “And…ah, the other matter?”

She thought for a moment about how to phrase her report. It was no secret that the US National Security Agency employed a small army of computers to monitor every telephone call and radio transmission on the planet. Because the volume of communication was simply too great for every conversation to be analyzed, the eavesdropping programs watched for certain keywords—“bomb” for example — or specific names, at which point a recording would be made for further analysis. If one was not already the subject of scrutiny, it was a fairly simple thing to avoid detection by the carefully employ of euphemisms. However, it had come as no small surprise to learn that one of the earmarked words was the name of the man who had nearly killed her. She had more than once wondered why Nick Kismet merited such special attention.

“As you instructed, I left it alone. However, the situation almost took care of itself without my help.”

“How so?” Relief was instantly changed to concern.

“I took your advice and went to the meeting. He followed and attracted a lot of attention.”

“Ah, I see. Well, that would be something beyond our control, wouldn’t it?”

She didn’t understand why the distinction mattered, but for now she was content to maintain the illusion that Saeed was calling the shots. “It doesn’t matter. He’s going to be leaving on his own terms.”

There was another audible sigh. “A pity, but perhaps it’s for the best.”

“I can still take care of this.”

“No. I have something else in mind. For now I want you to find out what further plans will be made. Call me again when you know more.”

“Very well.” She severed the connection without exchanging the customary pleasantries and replaced the phone handset in the folds of her garment. Only then did she return her gaze to the scene playing out in the distance.

The Black Hawk was hovering above a block of buildings, evidently looking for a clear area in which to set down. She squinted, trying to bring the far off tableau into focus. Abruptly, a tendril of white smoke leapt from the center of the crowd, arcing toward the helicopter.

The smile returned to her lips. Perhaps she had been premature in reporting Kismet’s escape.

The electronically amplified voice from the helicopter suffused Kismet with hope, something that had been in short supply since his initial encounter with the angry mob. But he wasn’t home free yet.

“Mister Kismet! You have to find a clear area where we can set down! Keep moving, sir. We’re here for you.”

The voice was reassuring, although the request seemed a Herculean task. It was all he could do to stay ahead of his pursuers. Furthermore, he had no idea what lay ahead or how to go about finding a suitable landing zone. All he could do was continue moving forward and hope for the best, but knowing that he was no longer alone somehow made it bearable.

The crew of the Black Hawk did not limit themselves to encouraging words however. The helicopter dropped in low over the buildings, its rotor wash stirring up a cloud of sand that occluded the view of all but those closest to Kismet. This was followed by a scattering of warning shots fired from the aft door of the aircraft. The 5.56-mm rounds kicked up more dust, but the noise of the shots was lost in the thunder of the rotors.

Someone on the ground however recognized that the American soldiers were firing on the crowd and took the action he deemed appropriate. The young man had long dreamed of striking a blow against the godless Americans occupying his country, and a lucky discovery of a munitions cache had given him the means to do so. Hauling out the long tube of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, he sighted in on the open door and pulled the trigger.

An eruption of fire from the back of the tube engulfed half a dozen people standing directly behind the young man. Because the launcher was pointed skyward, an explosive concussion rebounded off the ground, instantly killing the grenadier and two others. Several more people lay stunned and smoldering in a three-meter radius around the now useless weapon. The grenade however, once released, did not require its operator to continue living, and raced mindlessly toward its target.

The co-pilot spied the incoming RPG and shouted a warning. The warrant officer at the controls immediately banked the helicopter. It was a blind throw. If the projectile was aimed accurately then the maneuver would likely save them, but there was an equal chance that by moving, he was putting the aircraft directly in the path of what would otherwise have been a near miss.

While the hapless youth’s inexperience with the weapon had cost him dearly, his marksmanship was intuitive. Had the Black Hawk remained at station, the grenade would have entered the open hatch and detonated inside the armored craft, killing everyone inside and probably dozens more on the ground. The flight officer’s desperate move saved countless lives. The grenade missed the body of the helicopter by scant inches, but the yawing maneuver left the rotor blades completely vulnerable. The white plume of exhaust shot by the fuselage and up into the circle described by the airfoil-shaped vanes. A loud clank filled the cockpit as one of the rotor blades struck the grenade.

Miraculously, the detonator tip of the grenade failed to make contact. The edge of the rotor struck the rocket body scant millimeters from the high-explosive payload, shattering the fuze mechanism and rendering the device impotent. As the broken pieces fell back to earth, the crew of the Black Hawk exchanged incredulous glances. Then the pilot put some more air between them and the ground.

Kismet was unaware of the helicopter’s brush with disaster, but there was no mistaking the sound of its retreat. A grimace crossed his lips as he threaded into an alley, then crossed a through street and continued on in a straight line. He had lost sight of his reference point — the skyscraper — but he had not deviated from his course.

The commercial area gave way to another open field, through which cut Dimashq Street, part of the route leading from the airport into city. Kismet charged headlong toward the lanes without checking for oncoming vehicles.

He made furtive glance to his rear. At least a score of men continued to dog his heels, and behind them perhaps a hundred more spilling from the city blocks. He couldn’t fathom why the Black Hawk crew had not chosen to set down in the open area he had just crossed. He could not imagine a better LZ. But stopping and waiting for them to arrive was not an option.

There was a shriek of rubber on macadam and a strident horn blast as oncoming vehicles, unaware of his life and death crisis, vented their irritation as they swerved past. The mob swarmed over the barrier a moment later.

Beyond the highway lay a stand of trees — some kind of urban park — through which he dared only navigate the straightest possible course. The terrain was irregular, demanding greater exertions and more attention to every step. He stumbled mechanically through the forested area, beyond exhaustion now, beyond awareness of the pain and fatigue. His flight from the mosque had taken him across nearly three kilometers of the city. Nearly fifteen minutes of non-stop effort, while blood seeped from dozens of scrapes, lacerations and contusions; and the desert sun stripped away vital moisture, leaving him dehydrated and feverish.

He had no doubt that, one way or another, it would all be over soon.

His gaze then fell on something that, for the moment at least, defied comprehension. The first thought to cross his mind was that a spaceship was taking off from a low hill a few hundred meters away. From his perspective, the smooth shape looked like an upside down spoon lifting into the sky. Spurred on by an irrational curiosity, he almost forgot about the bloodthirsty mob at his heels as he raced toward the reddish object.

He quickly saw that the curved structure was not floating free above the ground. Rather it was supported at one end by a massive column, from which the rest of the dome cantilevered at a slight angle, giving the illusion of flight. As he drew closer, he recognized it was yet another of the gaudy monuments built by the former government, and while its purpose eluded him, it now became a critical point of focus for a very different reason: the Black Hawk had returned, and was hovering near the copper-colored dome.

Like spider’s silk, a rope dropped from the underside of the helicopter and a human shape slid down onto the upraised surface where he took to one knee and readied his weapon. Kismet couldn’t tell what the man was doing, but a moment later a projectile shot over his head and fell into the midst of the swarm. A cloud of white vapor erupted from the grenade — non-lethal CS gas — which left dozens among the crowd gasping and choking, and stalled the main body of the mob. The head of the monster however — more than two dozen men who had managed to match Kismet’s pace — were already well out of the affected area.

There was an obscene noise from the helicopter, and a simultaneous eruption of stone chips in a line to Kismet’s left. A soldier aboard the Black Hawk had fired a burst from the side-mounted mini-gun. The motorized system of rotating barrels threw an astonishing number of rounds down-range, chewing through a target like a chainsaw — sounding like one too — but the gunner was still trying to minimize civilian casualties, and at some unconscious level, the crowd knew this. The pursuers simply fell into line behind Kismet without breaking stride.

The soldier on the dome now raised the butt of his carbine to his shoulder and commenced firing. Kismet could not hear the M4’s report but there was an audible cry of pain behind him. The agonized cursing continued, suggesting that the shot had wounded rather than killed. In fact, the 5.56 mm round had done nothing more than graze the man’s shin, but it was enough to take him out of the chase. More similarly well-placed shots followed, but the threat of pain was only stoking the fire of rage among the mob, some of whom were also armed with automatic weapons. Sparks began to dance on the surface of the dome as one AK-47 after another was emptied at the lone soldier. The man stood his ground. Most of the wildly aimed shots missed the monument completely and those that hit were nowhere close to his position. Nevertheless, his comrades aboard the helicopter began directing their weapons at the muzzle flashes in the crowd and this time they did not hold back.

As Kismet closed to within a hundred meters of the monument, another soldier fast-roped onto the dome surface and directed the heavy line down toward the base of the structure. The helo moved in low over the center of the broad dome, until it was hovering about ten meters from its summit. The additional slack in the rope allowed the soldier to rappel down to the bottom of the arching pedestal, where he began urging Kismet onward. His right hand however maintained a fierce grip on the lifeline.

Kismet hurdle-jumped a short wall, landing in what appeared to be the basin for a fountain — the water supply had been shut off at the onset of the war — and continued up a series of long concrete steps. The final distance was the hardest, requiring him to climb and zigzag a course of ramparts and stairs leading up to the monument. At one turn, he found himself staring out over the oncoming horde, while a glance to his left revealed that a dozen men were now only a few steps behind. Failing to find any reserves of energy in his body, he wrote a mental IOU and sprinted ahead.

A dark vise closed on his skull as a ringing nose deafened him to the sounds of battle. He could just make out the soldier, beckoning frantically only a few steps away, and before the curtain fell over his eyes, he threw out his left hand.

He wasn’t aware of the moment where the soldier’s grip closed around his wrist, nor did he feel the rope go taut as the Black Hawk ascended a few meters, drawing both men up the steep incline toward the top of the dome. The next cognizant moment found him laying supine on the crest of the curved structure, spread out like a sacrifice.

The soldier who had pulled him up knelt beside him, shouting something in his ear. Kismet nodded dumbly and rolled over, automatically sheathing his kukri. Had he been more alert, he might have simply discarded the weapon. It had sentimental value, but his rational mind would have judged his situation far too urgent to squander precious seconds keeping track of his equipment.

The helicopter’s rotor wash tore at the ragged remains of his clothing. He was reluctant to stand up, lest the insistent wind blast him from the smooth metal surface of the dome. The Black Hawk moved off however, easing the tempest, and took up a position just off the forward tip of the upraised monument. Several faces crowded around the open side door, urging the three men to make the short jump to relative safety. The soldier who had pulled Kismet up now turned to him, and shouted in his ear.

“This is easier than it looks, sir. Watch me!”

He turned away and crossed cautiously to the edge of the dome, hunched low to avoid the whirling vanes overhead, and stepped out onto the deck of the Black Hawk. From Kismet’s point of view, it seemed that he had not even leapt. The soldier turned to face him, once more exhorting him to hurry.

The crowd was massing at the base of the monument, the initial attempts to scale the forty-five degree slope had been easily thwarted as the remaining soldier clubbed at outstretched hands with the plastic stock of his carbine. But as reinforcements joined the vanguard, the advantage of their overwhelming numbers now became apparent. From several points around the fulcrum of the cantilevered structure, groups of men began boosting individuals high enough to get a purchase on the hot copper surface. The infantryman, recognizing that their tactic would eventually succeed, turned away and ran toward the helicopter. Only then did Kismet realize that it was Colonel Buttrick.

“Get the fuck off this thing!”

Kismet nodded again, then scrambled to his feet, preceding the officer by a few steps. At the outer limit, the gulf between the aircraft and the dome seemed less traversable. Not trusting his weary body to make the crossing in one easy step, Kismet took a running start and hurled his weight forward at the last instant.

No less than four pairs of hands caught him as entered the helicopter. Once his feet were planted on the deck, he turned to watch Buttrick make his move. Directly behind the colonel, the heads and shoulders of the first wave became visible. Desperate to find a vent for their anger, the mob was not relenting, even though it appeared their prey had already eluded them.

Like Kismet, Buttrick was not about to showboat the crossing. All that mattered to him was getting off the dome by the most expedient means. Hunched over, he moved at a dead run across the dome, gathering his strength for the final jump.

At that instant, the pilot saw the telltale plume of another RPG launch off in the distance. Although he knew there was a still a man outside, his instinctive response occurred a millisecond ahead of rational thought. He tapped the rudder pedal with his left foot, swiveling the helicopter a few degrees on the axis of the main rotor. The grenade’s trajectory brought it nowhere near the aircraft, but that momentary correction came at the worst possible moment.

Buttrick had already committed to the jump. There was no halting or redirecting his momentum. The opening in the side of the Black Hawk was no longer where he expected it to be. He managed to throw an arm around the edge of the door before slamming into the armored side of the helicopter and surrendering to gravity.

Inside, the sudden maneuver had thrown everyone off balance. The confident soldiers, unprepared for the shift, abruptly found themselves clutching for handholds. Kismet, nearest to the door, was hurled against the bulkhead, but even as he hugged the wall, trying to keep his feet, he saw Buttrick make his doomed leap from the monument. He threw out a desperate hand and somehow snared the colonel’s wrist.

As Buttrick’s full weight came down on the outstretched arm, Kismet was pulled to the deck. The colonel’s face twisted in agony as the burden wrenched his shoulder out of joint, but Kismet did not let go. He felt the other man groping with his free hand for a purchase, but dared not release the grip of his other hand on the bulkhead, lest both of them fall. After a few seconds of scrabbling, the colonel’s fingers knotted into the fabric of Kismet’s shirt, easing the strain on his pinned arm.

With the platform beneath them stable once more, the soldiers hastened to assist their colonel, forming a human chain to keep one another secure. It took them only a moment to pull their leader to safety, after which the helicopter pulled away. Kismet struggled to his feet, still clinging to the bulkhead, and gazed down at the receding mass of people swarming around the monument. As the distance grew, the individual faces smeared into an indistinguishable mass.

“So that’s what it looks like from up here,” he mumbled.

Then he realized that everything else was growing blurry. Despite the desert heat, he began to shiver uncontrollably as his world darkened. He felt strong hands seizing his arms and body, holding him fast, but he nevertheless began falling and there was no pulling him back.