Increasingly we began to pass ramshackle villages with kids in raggedy clothes who stood by the highway with their hands extended-begging for food, money, or trinkets-a few of whom had obviously learned something from the GIs. By the end of the convoy, when Carl and I passed, the kids were all waving farewell with their middle fingers.

Maybe it was a local gesture meaning good luck and good health. Or maybe not.

Well, enough touristy detail. By late afternoon, we were passing through, or by, larger towns and small cities, and by early evening we entered the outskirts of a large, sprawling city with telltale landmarks that were recognizable from television. I glanced at Smith. "Baghdad?"

He leaned back in his seat and stretched. "Better be."

I mentioned, "I have an appointment in the Green Zone. You know the way, right?"

He nodded.

I glanced at my watch. I was sixteen hours late for my rendezvous with Eric Finder-but if Phyllis had known to send transportation from Kuwait, I assumed she had also reset our meeting.

Then Carl said, "That ain't where yer goin', though." I looked at him, and he added, "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed."

After a surprised pause, I replied, "And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

If you're interested, this is Phyllis's eccentric idea of passwords, a passage from a Yeats poem. I guess I understood how this might be sort of a poetic metaphor for this case and all that. But the golden rule of operations is KISS-keep it simple, stupid.

I mean, Carl could have said two, and I could have replied three. Works fine.

Indeed, we were on the same wavelength, because he asked me, "Who thought up that silly shit?"

"My boss."

He stared, obviously wondering if it was contagious.

I stared back. "You're Eric Finder?"

"Nope. Still Carl Smith. I'm taking you to Finder."

"There must be a good reason you lied and didn't identify yourself."

"Must be."

"I'd like to hear it."

"'Cause you'd of spent the whole drive askin' me dumbass questions." He stared straight ahead. "Don't really like to bullshit."

To confirm his suspicion, I asked, "Tell me about your group."

"Like what?"

"How many?"

"Fifteen. Only ten are involved in this, though. Orders are to keep it small and tight as possible."

Of course. The less witnesses the better. "Who are they?"

"Former Delta or Rangers mostly. There's two ex-SEALs, and one guy who was NYPD SWAT." He commented, "He talks real funny." He glanced at me and remarked, apparently in reference to his own credentials, "Delta. Five years."

"Is there a name to this organization?"

"Nope. Truth is, we don't like to be known. We don't bodyguard or handle facility protection like them other groups."

"What do you do?"

"Wetwork."

He confided this matter-of-factly, as though I was expected to know he and his team specialized in rubbing out human targets. In fact, I was now a little embarrassed that I ever accepted Carl Smith for a simple driver.

His impressive physical fitness aside, the man was intensely wound, and a stone-cold introvert. A man of few words is often a man of few thoughts; or he can be someone whose thoughts are best kept to himself.

There was a time when I recognized dangerous men, which was how I survived three conflicts, albeit the last time the bad guys scored a few points by pumping two rounds into yours truly. But that Sean Drummond had lost his edge; if he wanted to survive this one, he needed to remember that. I asked Smith, "How much do you know about this mission?"

He smiled. "Much as I need to know. Why?"

"You know what it's about?"

He shook his head. "We're paid plenty not to know."

"How much?"

"Fifty thou' apiece. Plus expenses."

I whistled.

He glanced at me and insisted, "Hey, we ain't mercenaries."

"Then how about you guys do this one on the house?"

He did not find this funny. After a moment he asked me, "How much you know 'bout Falluja?"

I pointed at the three thick binders on my lap. "I've read and memorized every detail inside these Agency binders."

He asked a little dubiously, "What do they say?"

"I'm an idiot if I go near the place."

He nodded that this was a good insight. In fact, he said, "That's all you need to know. This here's one of them things where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Just do everything we tell you; don't even think you know what the heck's going on." He glanced at me and confided, "We get into Falluja a lot."

"No kidding. Where can I buy some postcards?"

He ignored my nervous sarcasm and informed me, "The Agency hires us to tag buildings."

"Which means what?"

"What we do, we hang around inside the city and sort of watch out for hajis. We see one, we follow 'im back to his nest. We tag the building with an electronic marker, call it in, and wait around to make sure the asshole stays put."

"And then?"

"Then… well, 'bout an hour later, an F-16 comes along, launches a big missile, it locks onto the electronic signature from the tag, and boom. No more assholes."

This sounded like an interesting job, and I wanted to know a little more, but he continued, "Point is, Falluja's asshole central. They're Sunnis, right?… Only they're Wahhabis, like the Saudis. Big-time fanatics. Got it? They don't even get along with other Sunnis, and even Saddam had trouble with this place. He finally said fuck it, problem too hard. Gave up."

I nodded. Though more concise and picturesque, this accorded with the historical and social synopses I had just perused in the CIA tour guide. Even in America, our cities and regions have their own quirks and idiosyncrasies; so if you're operating there, you need to be sensitive to that and adapt, or you stick out like a zit on the prom queen's nose. I mean, I once wore a Yankees cap and "Nixon's the One" T-shirt in Boston; I barely made it out alive.

As I understood it, the Fallujans were like Iraq's Hatfields and McCoys, ornery, moody, and combustible. They don't like outside interference from any outsiders, and particularly they don't like Christians sticking their noses into their affairs. I recalled that about seven months back the Marines had launched an all-out assault, and the fighting turned so fierce they were ordered to conduct a hasty withdrawal-aka retreat. The Marines claimed it was to spare civilian lives; the jihadis said that it was to spare Marines. Whatever.

Knowing my Marine Corps friends, this probably wasn't a good time to invest in Fallujan real estate or to open a shopping mall. A mortuary, however, had possibilities.

"Jihadis now run the place," Smith continued. "They got their own police, they got spotters and informers everywhere, and they got reaction squads that land on yer ass in a split second."

"Got it." I noted that we had peeled off from the convoy and left the roadway. We were bypassing the city center and now were traveling through side streets in what were essentially middle-class neighborhoods in this part of the world.

From the sun's position, I knew we were traveling west, and from my CIA binders I recalled that this direction was the eye of the storm-Sunni territory, the nexus of discontentment and bad attitudes toward Americans.

The city center, I knew from newsreels, had wide, glorious boulevards lined with palm and date trees, statuesque luxury hotels, magnificent government buildings, and opulent palaces, all in line with Saddam's effusive vision of turning Baghdad into the Paris of the Mideast, though the effect was more of a Babylonian Las Vegas.

But outside of the glitzy pomposity of this Potemkin city center, where we were now traveling, the streets were narrow to the point of claustrophobic, grubbier; in fact, squalid. The buildings and homes were packed closely together, and nowhere did I see trees, grass, or shrubbery, which shows that Iraqi homeowners have more sense than Americans-except for the people, nothing here needs to be watered, fertilized, or manicured.