Helen started to say something, but the sheer enormity of what he was saying overwhelmed her. She sat down heavily on the sofa with tears shining in the corners of her eyes.

Belew went into the bedroom, came back with a portable stereo tape player, which he set on the coffee table. “Care for a little late-night listening before you turn in?”

She tried to be polite: “No, I’m sorry I’m not in the mood for any music -”

He punched the button.

Lynn Saxon’s voice came out, slightly muffled: “Washington on the line, finally. Shag ass over here!”

She frowned up at Belew. He looked straight into her eyes.

“All right, Mr. Bohart. I’ve got Agent Hamilton here with me now.”

“About this Flash thing -”

“Yeah. Yeah. Meadows was already spooked. We think the Geeks had done something to tip him off – he had the vial in his hand…”

“But Mistral -”

“She just wasn’t up to it, you know? Woman in a man’s job. What’d you expect? I got no clue why SCARE wished her ass on us. Probably trying to put a spoke in our wheels -”

“If you’d let me finish a sentence, Saxon… we were surprised to learn how, ah, how lenient Flash had been with her.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, boss. The guy’s so far gone on drugs, he changes into somebody else… I mean, you just don’t expect him to walk away and leave anybody, you know, alive in his backfield.”

“There’s no chance he intended her to die in the fire in the carpet warehouse?”

“He told her he reckoned she could blow the flames out, and the Geek police were coming up the hill to lend a hand. He just wanted her off his case.”

“The Director… Saxon, are you still there?”

“Didn’t want to interrupt you again, Mr. Bohart. Look, if he’s concerned about our little civvie ace showing up the Agency, you can tell him from me he’s got nothing to worry about. She’s strictly out of her depth. We’re talking serious bimbo here.”

Helen sniffed, and looked at Belew in outrage. He held up his hand.

“- other concern,” the man on the far end of the connection was saying. “We’re having some real problems here. Another damned limp-dick federal judge came out for legalization two days ago, and the press is getting out of hand. Public support for the War on Drugs is beginning to waver. If this goes too far -”

“I know. I know. The end of civilization as we know it.”

“Precisely. A victory for the forces of darkness. There are larger issues involved here, Saxon. The fate of the Agency could be involved. We are in need of serious image enhancement… we talked about this before you left. There was a reason we acquiesced to the pressure to let Ms. Carlysle join the team.”

“Look, if we need a martyr that badly, why don’t you just let me and Gare waste the bitch ourselves and get it over with? This Meadows wimp hasn’t come through, and it sure wouldn’t give us any problems. We’d make it look good.”

“For God’s sake, Saxon, watch your mouth! This is an international connection. We don’t know who might be listening…”

Belew switched off the tape player and smiled. “‘Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful,’ Nietzsche tells us.”

She stood and walked toward the fireplace. “I don’t believe it. How did you get that?”

“My dear, remember whom I work for.”

She put her head in her hands. A moment later a sob escaped between her fingers. “Oh, my God.” He came up behind her and put his arms around her. This time she didn’t pull away.

“They were talking about… about killing me.”

“You can’t make a New World Order without breaking a few eggs.”

She tore away then, whirled, tearful and angry. “You think it’s funny!”

“Not at all. I think it’s appalling. I’ve been putting my life on the line for my country for three decades. It hasn’t been so fine young cannibals like Agent Saxon could erase the distinction between the good guys and the bad.” He took her by the upper arms.

“What are you doing in all this?” she asked.

“Helping you – and them – apprehend a federal fugitive. But somebody’s playing a deeper game. I thought you should know.”

He gathered her body against his, slid his hands down her arms to the wrists, brought them together behind her. He held them there with one hand while the other arm circled her shoulders.

They stood that way for a minute, two. “How do you feel?”

She sniffled. “I feel… safe.” She looked up at him, blinking the tears from her hazel eyes. “Isn’t that silly?”

“Not at all.” He kissed her. After a moment she opened her mouth to him.

Chapter Thirteen

The truck park was no-man’s land; King’s X. Mark only hoped the bearded Pasdaran toughs who hung around the gates like wolves respected the ancient sanctity of base. He did realize their record in that line was none too good.

He’d run into a snag. Otto and the Great White Mercedes were fixing to turn around and drive back to Istanbul. Mark could go with him or stay here.

Neither was exactly what he had in mind.

Mark walked across the graveled parking lot sipping fruit juice from a bottle. The sky was high and blue and serenely uninvolved. The morning air was cool, almost chill. Off in the distance a tape-recorded call to prayer played from a minaret.

A voice called his name: “Mark! Mark Meadows!”

Tears filled his eyes. Don’t I get any breaks? He threw his bottle down and without even looking back started to run for the gate. He knew what the DEA would do to him; there was at least some question with the Revolutionary Guard.

He ran into something. It seemed to have the dimensions and solidity of a redwood. It said, “Oof”

He looked up. He was six-four; he looked up anyway. The man he’d run into had a good three inches on him. He also had a hook nose, a wild beard, wild hair, and a round cap on top of his head that looked like one of those little cushions old ladies put on their divans.

Mark looked left and right. The boy he’d collided with had brought his brothers along to play. His big brothers. They wore baggy pants and Western shirts that looked like they’d come from Goodwill and vests over them. They all had knives as long as Mark’s forearm through their belts. They did not look well socialized, at all.

One of them wore a red rose over one ear. He grinned at Mark when he caught his eye. He had a gold tooth.

“Mark! Mark, my man. What’s your hurry?”

He turned to face his doom. In this case Nemesis took the form of a skinny guy of maybe medium height, with a dirty-blond handlebar mustache, round cherry-tinted wire-rim glasses, and a black straw cowboy hat with a big feather panache plastered on the front that made it look as if a sparrow had run into him in a full-power dive. He resembled the counterculture answer to Richard Petty.

“Frank?” Mark asked in a barely audible croak. “Freewheelin’ Frank?”

“One and the same, bro, one and the same.” He gave Mark a huge hug, and then, by God, a Revolutionary Drug Brothers Power Handshake.

“So how the hell have you been, man?” he demanded, holding Mark at arm’s length. “It’s been what? God, fifteen, sixteen years. You’re lookin’ better than I would have thought possible, you lanky son of a bitch. There’s something about you – it’s like you’re more, you know, together than I’ve seen you before. And there’s something else, around the eyes”

“Just crow’s feet, man.”

“Oh, I’m forgetting my manners. Mark, I want you to meet the boys: this is Yilderim, and this is Muzaffar, and Qasim, and this is Ali Sher.”

Ali Sher was the one with the rose. He grinned again at his name and batted his eyes.

“Uh… hi,” Mark said. “Pleased to meet you. What, uh, like, what line of work would you boys happen to be in?”

“They’re mujahidin, Mark,” Freewheelin’ Frank said. “Afghan freedom fighters.”