His first instinct was to cover his butt, and at the same time to get his beloved Bureau off the blameline. Somebody was going to be held accountable for this, either the CIA or the FBI, and the early bird was already humping the worm.

Actually, he looked badly shaken-I didn't blame him-and I approached him, squeezed his arm, and reminded him, "This is a crime scene. Treat it as one."

"Uh…" He looked around the cell, trying to decide his next move.

I asked, "Was the killing recorded?"

He stared back and did not reply.

I repeated the question.

"Uh… no. As I mentioned, the video feed from the cell… it was, well… disconnected from the central control room. The sessions in the interrogation room… we only intended to record those."

He looked unhappy to confess this, and I looked even unhappier to hear it. I said, "All right. This was a close-range shooting, right? Probably there's blood splatter on the weapon, probably fingerprints on the trigger, and definitely there will be powder residue on the hand of the shooter." I squeezed his arm again. "Jim… Find the killer."

He looked at me, and in true Bureau spirit said, "I… This is going to be really sensitive. I have no legal authority over the Saudis."

"Do you think you're building a case for an American court? Screw the legal niceties." I pointed at bin Pacha's corpse. "They did."

"Okay, yeah." He stepped back into the hallway and fell into the groove, ordering his people to separate the prisoners, even as he dispatched a man upstairs to retrieve a crime kit.

Bian started to say something, but I placed a finger on her lips. I pointed up at the light fixture.

I removed my finger from her lips. She took a deep breath and exhaled, "It was all for nothing, Sean. Everything… for nothing."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Here's a sad fact about a land where death by violence is ubiquitous: The aftermath machinery works with stunning efficiency.

Ali bin Pacha's body was bagged, tagged, and deposited in the base morgue-a long metal shelf in a refrigeration van sequestered from the dining facility. The Saudi weapons were all collected, dusted, and tested for powder residue. Simultaneously, the five Saudi guards and the two agents planted in the bordering cells were interrogated by linguists, fingerprinted, swabbed for powder traces, and then locked, individually, into separate cells.

All of which is SOP whenever conspiracy is a factor, and in this case it was a waste of effort, time, and cell space. We had to assume this was a coordinated conspiracy run by professionals; ergo, the Saudis had been prepped and rehearsed long before we laid eyes on them. Still, after a big screwup everybody pays painstaking attention to procedures they should've obeyed before. Human nature. I do it.

Regarding me, for nearly forty minutes, Tirey's people forced me to recount, over and over, what I had observed. This also is SOP, having the witness repeat the story as you look for flaws, deviations, omissions-anything that indicates the witness isn't reliable, or overlooked an important detail, or isn't credible. There were no deviations-bin Pacha was dead, we had been caught with our pants down, and now everybody was scrambling to figure out how, and why. But the subtext here was who should be blamed, rather than who did the crime.

Solving a closed-room mystery, after all-especially with abundant forensic evidence-is no more challenging than tying a hangman's knot. But putting a name to the killer would look good on paper, at least. Everybody was regretful, embarrassed, and uptight. A high-value detainee had been whacked under their noses, in their own ultra-high-security prison. This isn't supposed to happen.

When the Feds were finally bored with taking my statement, Tirey informed me that Phyllis wanted to see me in the observation room.

I shut the door behind me as I entered, and I found Phyllis and Bian alone, seated side by side at the conference table, sipping pale Iraqi tea and enjoying an amiable chat, the topic of which was not bin Pacha, not this case, not even Iraq. At the moment I entered, in fact, Phyllis was informing Bian, "… incredible shoe sale, twice a year at Nordstrom. The best brands. Usually about half off."

To which Bian had replied, "I'll be sure to watch for it."

I mean, you forget these are women, with a life outside of spying and soldiering, with feminine interests, quotidian things like shopping, cooking, knitting. Somebody get me a gun.

I said, "Excuse me," before we were all sharing recipes and trading reviews of Danielle Steel's lastest novel.

Phyllis shot me an annoyed look. "In a moment." She handed Bian a wallet-size photograph. "I appreciate your sharing this with me. He's a most attractive young officer."

The picture was Magnificent Mark, of course. I watched Bian tuck it gingerly inside her wallet. She smiled at Phyllis. "He's a great guy. I'm very lucky."

I cleared my throat. "Is this an inconvenient moment? I mean, our prisoner was just murdered, this case is completely blown, and I want to go home."

Phyllis massaged her temples. "We're all upset, Sean. Outrage won't help."

"What will help? New shoes?"

"We were waiting for you, so Bian and I decided to use the opportunity to become better acquainted."

Bian said to me, "Besides, it's not complicated-al-Fayef played us for idiots."

"We are idiots."

Phyllis awarded me a hard stare, no doubt regretting her stupid "maverick and misfit" management theory. Despite losing arguably the most valuable prisoner of the war since Saddam, she appeared cool and collected, another day at the office, another blown operation. But, after all, the Agency had suffered so many setbacks and embarrassments since September 10, 2001, that I suppose you either respond with studied indifference or you eat a bullet. She said to me very quietly, "We are not idiots. But in retrospect, yes… we should perhaps have been more vigilant when he was so agreeable about forgoing rendition."

No perhaps about it, lady.

She looked at me and said, "You were the only one who asked why there were no Americans on the cellblock. Why? Did you anticipate something like this?"

She did not add, "Because we all were blind to this possibility, including a guy named Drummond." But that was understood. "No," I admitted, and added, "I was operating on my general distrust of Saudis."

"We all let down our guard," commented Bian. "In my view, we were all fooled… and we all share responsibility."

Right. But the board of review wasn't going to see it that way- when it's pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey time, there's only one dart, and they shove it up only one ass. But why bring that up?

Phyllis, to her credit, did say, "It's my responsibility."

I asked, "Are you the senior officer in the facility?"

"Technically, that would be Tirey. But this was my operation."

"I thought Waterbury was in charge. Speaking of which, where is the golden boy?"

"Gone." She gave me a faint smile. "A few minutes after bin Pacha was shot, he remembered he had an urgent appointment with somebody in Baghdad."

I smiled back. In other words, the moment the poop hit the fan, his feet hit the floor. And by now I was sure he had called his buds back in Washington and pointed the finger for this screwup at Phyllis. To err is indeed human, but to blame others is the mark of a promising political appointee.

We all knew, though, that the parties who ultimately were responsible were the power brokers back in D.C. who ordered Phyllis to cooperate with the Saudis in the first place and, de facto, set this chain of events in motion. But if you believe any blame was going to fall in their exalted direction you've never held a job in the federal government.