"Oh, well… he now works in the White House. On the National Security Council staff. A special assistant to the President."

"I love when the good guy wins."

"Martin outsmarted us-"

"Martin outsmarted you. Personally, I thought he was an asshole."

"All right… me. There's nothing to be done about it now."

She was right, of course. And actually, I felt a pang of guilt for indulging in that bratty told-you-so. I can rise above the vindictive and small-minded stuff. Then again, she doesn't; why should I?

I stared at her for a moment, then said, "Let's make sure I'm clear on all this. In summary: Ali bin Pacha will be interrogated by his homies, Lebrowski has a new desk with job security, Charabi has a papal dispensation, and… what have I missed?"

"A few details. Nothing important."

Actually there was something important-me. I asked, "Where does this leave Bian and me?"

"Oh… yes. You will complete this leg of the investigation. Actually, the people who redirected this operation are very impressed with both of you."

"Does that mean my plane won't accidentally blow up on the way home?"

She ignored my paranoia. "You've apprehended an important terrorist, Sean. If he talks, it could help change the course of this war. We're all very interested in what he might disclose."

"It sounds like Washington is more interested in suppressing what Charabi might divulge."

"In this business, you rarely achieve all that you want. You have to celebrate what you get." She looked away from me and said, "There's a good chance you'll be rewarded for this impressive accomplishment."

"You can't imagine how good that makes me feel."

"And your personal feelings, as you know, are entirely irrelevant."

"That's what I meant."

"Also I was asked to remind you of the secrecy statements you signed-you remember what that means. As I'm sure you've guessed, this is what Waterbury is discussing with Major Tran back at the plane."

I looked at her a long time, then said, "They're rubbing it in our faces. Yours too, Phyllis. Doesn't this bother you?"

She surprised me and replied, with a rare display of emotion, "You're damned right it does."

We walked on in silence for a few moments before another unnerving thought hit me. "Wait…" I asked, "How did the Saudis learn about Ali bin Pacha? Don left before we got to that part."

"That's the question, isn't it?"

I stared at her.

"I'm telling you the truth. Out of the blue, the Saudi ambassador called the White House yesterday. He threw quite a stink."

"Can't anybody in the Agency keep a secret?"

This apparently was funny, because she laughed.

I said, "A very small circle were aware of this operation, Phyllis. How could the Saudis have learned about it?"

"I don't know the answer to that. But the ambassador knew. He wouldn't disclose how, but he knew. So, the Director and I were directed to work out an arrangement with Turki."

"You said yesterday? Before we had our hands on bin Pacha?"

"That's right. You might even say that was the decisive factor in our decision."

"I didn't think you made any decisions."

She ignored this sarcastic insight and continued, "We were quite aware that Saudi intelligence could have tipped off bin Pacha's organization. But in the event we didn't figure it out on our own, Turki subtly reminded us."

I said nothing.

"So it became a choice, Sean. A choice between taking bin Pacha out of circulation with the chance of learning what he knows or losing him altogether."

We walked for a distance in silence. A solitary runner in battle dress trousers and brown desert boots, off to our left, was jogging laps around a building on the airfield, and he drew both of our eyes. His brown Army T-shirt was soaked with dark sweat, his chest heaved with exertion, and he continued to place one foot in front of another, running in endless circles. He and I had a lot in common; but he and this war had even more in common. Phyllis dabbed her upper lip with a hankie and commented, "This is such a miserably hot and complicated place for a war, don't you think?"

"I don't recall any wars in good places."

"I recall better wars. Less convoluted ones." In a rare moment of philosophizing, she said a little sadly, "All wars have an ugly underbelly to them. The people who fight those clandestine battles are never invited to the ticker-tape parades, and afterward you won't find them bellying up to the bar of VFW lodges, bragging about their battles."

Moving back to the topic at hand, I observed, "At least we will now know what bin Pacha tells the Saudis."

She smiled. "We would've known anyway."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you think you're the only smart person in the room? Before bin Pacha's wound was closed, Enzenauer embedded an electronic device beneath his skin. Mr. bin Pacha is already on the air and broadcasting."

I should've been surprised by this revelation, yet for some reason, I wasn't.

I observed the sheik, off in the distance, with his robes aflutter, scurrying across the airfield, back into the hangar and up the airplane steps, without the slightest clue how completely out of his fucking league he was.

I took Phyllis's elbow and guided her back to the hangar. We walked up the steps to the plane and, just at the moment Phyllis stepped through the doorway, I mentioned, "By the way, I doubled the pay for Eric and his team."

If nothing else, I would always have the memory of her expression.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

We reconvened and the next few minutes were spent hashing out the logistics, details, and timing of Ali bin Pacha's interrogation. This whole conversation had a rushed and surreal quality, which is usually the case when the room stinks of guilt.

For Bian, and for me, it felt like being rotated on a barbecue spit.

In return for this "small favor you are providing," Turki promised to provide us "a very illuminating file" his intelligence service had on Ali bin Pacha. By inference, bin Pacha had been a target of interest to the Saudis for a long time. I already suspected this, of course, though it was nice to have it confirmed. Then again, the file we received would look like Mom's old coupon book after a busy day at the mall; nothing but holes and ragged edges, a remnant of the mighty file it once had been. He didn't say this; he didn't need to.

Phyllis suggested that since bin Pacha was to remain under joint custody, there was really no need to risk transporting him to Saudi Arabia, that in fact the CIA had a facility south of Baghdad that was perfectly suitable for this kind of legerdemain. She suggested further that "our old friend Turki"-not speaking for me- should fly in guards and interrogators, bin Pacha would be fooled, and we would jointly decide his fate afterward.

Her friend Turki agreed to this suggestion without the slightest hesitation. In fact, I thought he looked relieved.

Maybe the idea of CIA people wandering through a Saudi high-security prison was problematic for him. Who knows? We might bump into his countryman Osama bin Laden tucked away in a cell. With these people, you never know But since we seemed to be into suggestions, I suggested, "It might be a long time before bin Pacha breaks. I'm sure you're all very busy people. Let Bian and me handle it, and we'll get back to you."

Everybody was impressed by my thoughtfulness, and nobody seemed to think it was a good idea.

But it brought to the surface what we all knew. There were serious trust issues under the table: The sheik trusted nobody, I didn't trust Phyllis, who didn't trust Waterbury, Waterbury couldn't spell "trust," and Bian was playing with an ace up her sleeve. For sure, a lot of phony smiles and false assurances were being passed around, but if this were a poker table, there would be cocked pistols on everybody's laps, and blood would be shed before the pot was claimed.