The children had been forced to watch, kneeling in obeisance, as their mother’s eyes bulged, tongue swollen, punished by their father’s hand.

It was a lesson Nasser learned well.

To be cold. In all ways.

The xenon lamps swept around a corner. From the passenger seat, Nasser motioned to the middle of the block. “Stop there.”

The driver, his broken nose bandaged after the failed kidnapping, slid the sedan to the curb. Nasser twisted around to face the rear seat. Two figures huddled close together.

Annishen, dressed all in shades of black, almost faded into the leather furniture. She even wore a hood over her shaved scalp, giving her a monkish appearance. Her eyes shone brightly out of the darkness. She had one arm around her companion, leaning close, intimate.

He still mewled around the gag. Blood blackened one side of his face and throat. In his bound hands, clutched between his knees, he still held his own right ear. Nasser had discovered the man’s name in a Rolodex.

A doctor.

“Is this the place?” Nasser asked.

The man nodded vigorously, squeezing his eyes shut after verifying the address.

Nasser studied the building’s lobby. A night watchman was stationed behind a desk inside. A security camera protruded above the bulletproof glass doors. Full security. Nasser rubbed his thumb along the edge of the electronic key in his hand, a gift courtesy of their passenger.

After a full day, Nasser was finally back on the trail of the American and the Guild traitor. Last night, he had searched the small home in the Takoma Park neighborhood. He had discovered Seichan’s damaged motorcycle in its garage, but little else. There had been no sign of the obelisk, except for a broken fragment of Egyptian marble in the driveway.

But inside the house, Allah had smiled upon him.

Nasser had discovered a Rolodex.

With several doctors’ names.

It had taken the rest of the day to find the right one.

He turned around again.

“Thank you, Dr. Corrin. You’ve provided the leverage I’ll need.”

Nasser had no need to nod to Annishen. Her blade slipped between the man’s ribs and opened his heart. It was a Mossad technique that Nasser had taught Annishen. He had employed it himself only once before.

As his father knelt in prayer.

Not a child’s vengeance. Only justice.

Nasser shoved open the door to the sedan. He owed his father — if only for the lesson taught to an eight-year-old boy, kneeling before his strangled mother.

Such a lesson would serve him again this night.

To be cold. In all ways.

Exiting the car, Nasser crossed and opened the rear door. Annishen unfolded out of the backseat, rising with a rustle of black leather, resplendent in an Italian-designed calfskin jacket and a dark suede outfit, a match to his Armani suit. There was not a drop of blood on her, proving again the artistry of her craft. He slipped his arm around her and closed the door.

She leaned against him. “The night is just beginning,” she whispered with a contented sigh.

He pulled her closer. Just two lovers returning from a late dinner.

The summer night was still muggy, but the apartment lobby was air-conditioned. The doors sighed open to greet them with a swipe of Dr. Corrin’s key card. The guard glanced up from his desk.

Nasser nodded to him, striding toward the neighboring elevator bank. Annishen offered a tinkling giggle, purring up against Nasser’s side, plainly anxious to get to their apartment. Her hand sidled to the holstered Glock at his waist.

Just in case…

But the guard merely nodded back, mumbled a “good evening,” and returned his attention to the magazine he was reading.

Nasser shook his head as he reached the elevator bank. Typical. What passed for security here in America was more show than substance.

He called the elevator with a press of a button.

Shortly thereafter, Nasser and Annishen stood before apartment 512. He swiped the same key card across the door lock. The indicator light changed from red to green.

He glanced to Annishen. He read the dance in her eyes, stirred from the earlier bloodshed.

“We need at least one of them alive,” he warned.

She feigned a pout and drew her weapon.

Using one finger, Nasser pushed the door handle down. He edged the way open on well-oiled hinges. Not even a creak. He entered first, slipping into the marble foyer. A light flowed from a bedroom in back.

Nasser paused just inside the door.

One eye narrowed.

There was something too still about the air. Too quiet. He needed to go no farther. He held his breath. He knew the apartment was empty.

Still, he waved Annishen to one side. He took the other. In moments, they swept the apartment’s rooms, checking even closets.

No one was here.

Annishen stood in the master bedroom. The bed was made and looked untouched. “The doctor lied to us,” she said with clear irritation and a moderate note of respect. “They’re not here.”

Nasser was in the master bathroom. Down on one knee. He had spotted something on the floor, rolled under the edge of the bathroom’s cherry vanity.

He picked it up.

A red prescription bottle. Empty.

He read the label. The patient. Jackson Pierce.

“They were here,” he muttered hard, and straightened up.

Dr. Corrin had not lied. He had told them the truth — or at least, what he thought was the truth.

“They’ve moved on,” Nasser said, and strode back to the bedroom.

He clenched the empty pill bottle in his fist, swallowing his fury. Commander Pierce had tricked him yet again. First with the obelisk, now with this shuffle of his parents.

“What now?” Annishen asked.

He lifted the pill bottle.

One last chance.

“To begin, Seichan said, “what do you know about Marco Polo?”

She had donned a set of blue-tinted sunglasses. The sun had risen enough that the rooftop restaurant was a mix of shadows and glaring brightness. They had moved to a secluded corner table, sheltered under an umbrella.

Gray heard the clear hesitation in her voice — and maybe a trace of relief. Her will teetered between a wary desire to control the flow of knowledge and a compulsion to release the burden of its weight.

“Polo was a thirteenth-century explorer,” Gray answered. He had read up a bit on the man on the journey here. “Along with his father and uncle, Marco spent two decades in China as honored guests of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. And after returning to Italy in 1295, Marco narrated his travels to a French writer named Rustichello, who wrote it all down.”

Marco’s book, The Description of the World, became an instant hit in Europe, sweeping the continent with its fantastic tales: of vast and lonely deserts in Persia, of China’s teeming cities, of far-off lands populated by naked idolaters and sorcerers, of islands fraught with cannibals and strange beasts. The book ignited the imagination of Europe. Even Christopher Columbus carried a copy on his voyage to the New World.

“But what does any of this have to do with what’s going on today?” Gray finished.

“Everything,” Seichan answered, glancing around the table.

Vigor sipped his tea. Kowalski leaned his ear on a fist propped up by an elbow. While the man looked bored, Gray noted how his eyes clocked around, studying them all, tracking the interplay. Gray suspected there were depths to the man as yet unplumbed. Kowalski absently fed crumbs of tea cakes to scrabbling sparrows.

Seichan continued, “Marco Polo’s tales were not as clear-cut as most people believe. No original text exists of Marco Polo’s book, only copies of copies. And in any such translations and reeditions, marked differences have cropped up.”

“Yes, I read about that,” Gray said, trying to hurry her along. “So many disparities that some now wonder if Marco Polo ever really existed. Or if he was merely a fabrication of the French writer.”