“Coalition paid better,” Ian replied gloomily.

“I read,” said Daniel, “that an IED blast changes how your brain works, if you’re close as Rafe was.”

“We weren’t that far, either.”

“But Rafe was closer.” Rafe had been leaning off the running board at ninety miles an hour firing warning bursts at civilian vehicles when the lead car detonated the IED. “It screws up your prefrontal cortex. That’s the part that makes you who you are. Rafe was a happy guy, before.”

Ian’s expression said he could not bear to talk about Rafe’s prefrontal cortex, which could have been his prefrontal cortex. He changed the subject, with a bitter smile.

“You know what the Old Man calls us?”

“What?” Daniel asked with sudden interest. The “Old Man” from Phoenix had dropped in once while Daniel was still in rehab. If the Old Man asked him to lead a convoy into Hell, Daniel would ask only if there was time to suit up or were they going in naked.

“I heard him tell the head doc.”

“What did he call us?”

“Banished Children of Mammon.”

“Did he really?”

“I didn’t get what he meant,” said Ian.

“It means contractors like you and me and poor Rafe get no vets hospital, no pension, no health care.”

“I know that. And I know ‘banished.’ What the fuck is Mammon?”

“Money. We did it for the money and now we get zip.”

Ian nodded. “Yeah, I get that. ‘Mammon’ means ‘money’? How come?”

“Like a money god.”

“So we prayed to the fucker and got our asses in a sling.”

Daniel was surprised to feel his face break into a smile. “Exactly…You hear anything on the Old Man?” he asked.

“He was putting feelers out the other day. He’s looking for Iboga.”

“Who’s that?”

“Don’t you watch the news?”

“I don’t watch the news,” said Daniel. “I don’t read the papers. I don’t surf the Internet. If I walk by TV in the airport, I look the other way. Whatever is going on out there, I don’t give a flying fuck. Who’s Iboga? Why’s the Old Man hunting him?”

“He was an African dictator who stole the country’s money when the insurgents kicked him out. The Old Man must have hired on to get it back.”

“African? What does he look like?”

“Big black bastard weighs twenty-five stone at least.”

“Give it to me in pounds.”

“Three hundred.”

“Does he sharpen his teeth?”

Ian looked at Daniel. “Why do you ask?”

“I seen him.”

“Go on!”

“I did. Didn’t get a good look, but how many three-hundred-pound guys are black with pointy teeth?”

“Where?”

“Corsica. Where I live.”

“What, he’s just walking around Corsica?”

“No, he’s holed up with a crew on Capo Corso. Up north. I seen him last week at Bastia, where the ferries come in from Nice and Marseille.”

“If you didn’t get a good look, how do you know his teeth are sharpened?”

“A guy who was closer told me. They got off a yacht, piled into SUVs, and convoyed north.”

“Why are you saying they’re holed up?”

“The locals were saying they were like a crew hiding out or setting up a job. The locals are into that shit, so they keep track of the competition. Corsica’s a wild place.”

“Tell me again what you’re doing there?”

“I’m down in Porto-Vecchio, way down south. Other end of the island.”

“Mind me asking what you’re setting up?”

“Nothing. I got a dive shop for the tourists.”

“Really?” asked Ian. “Was that expensive, to set up a dive shop?”

“No big deal. I always saved my money. No way I was going to get treated like garbage and come out of it poor. Hey, you should come down sometime. I got room in my house. Beautiful water. Beautiful fish. Beautiful girls. Nice people, Corsicans, long as you don’t piss ’em off. Don’t fuck with them and they’ll give you the shirt off their back.”

“Excuse me, young man,” said a small voice.

The two big men looked down at a tiny white-haired woman carrying a handbag on her arm.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Is this where we get the bus to Exeter?”

“No, ma’am,” said Daniel. “It’s back there in the restaurant, where they’re serving your lunch.”

* * *

QUINTISHA UPCHURCH ANSWERED her “graduates’” line, the phone number that was given to the growing flock of Janson’s saved. Calls came in for help and to help. She could tell by the tone of the voice which it would be. This was a “to help” call, and she recognized the British Midland accent as belonging to a boy named Ian.

“Ms. Upchurch, if you were in communication with Mr. Janson, you might mention that a certain former president for life was spotted in Corsica. Up north on Capo Corso.”

Quintisha Upchurch promised to pass it on.

The professional qualities that had convinced Paul Janson that she was the woman to administer CatsPaw and Phoenix included a habit of discretion grounded on innate reticence. She would never dream of mentioning that Daniel, the rough American with whom Ian had been discussing Iboga in a Cornwall nursing home, had telephoned her minutes earlier with the same message. Or that since similar messages were flooding in from widely scattered parts of the globe, she would first shunt them through the research person assigned to collate and vet before they were passed to the boss.

* * *

IN THE PRIVACY of a First Class sleeping pod, Paul Janson worked the airline phone. His first priority was to drastically reduce his flying time to Sydney. He called a general in the Royal Thai Air Force. Their conversation got off to a bad start.

“I recall that you were against me,” said the general, a fighter pilot who had risen quickly in the ranks thanks to excellent connections and ordinary skills enhanced by extraordinary bravery.

“You recall,” Janson replied bluntly, “that I determined you were the lesser of two evils.”

“What do you want?”

“Recompense for that action.”

“Why?”

“You profited by it. You’re an active serving general. The other guy is dead.”

Thai Chinese, like all overseas Chinese, were not the sort to pontificate about honor and respect. They weren’t like Pakistanis and Afghans, proud of “honor killings,” or Italian Mafia clinging to their secret societies and omertà. But these children of the Chinese diaspora who peopled the merchant class of Southeast Asia practiced a code of honor no less strong for their reserve. As strangers in strange lands, they divided the world into two categories. Strangers were by definition enemies. People they knew were friends. What Janson had always admired most was the fluidity—once they knew you, once you had done business or traded favors or shared a kindness or taken their side, you were a friend.

After a long silence, the general asked, “What do you need?”

“The fastest jet in Bangkok capable of flying four thousand, six hundred, and eighty-five miles to Sydney ahead of my commercial connection.”

“That’s all?”

Janson could not tell whether the general was being sarcastic. But they both knew he could have asked for so much more than a fast long-haul jet. Janson thanked him warmly. The debt was settled. That which was needed most was most valuable.

Janson left urgent messages with a contact in Sydney who worked undercover for the Australian Crime Commission, thinking he could look out for Jessica at the airport. While Janson waited for a response, he followed up on the SR names. Bloch, the French mercenary, was believed to be in a Congo jail. Dimon, the Serbian computer wizard, was reported active in the Ukraine. Viorets, the Russian, was currently on leave from the SVR, and the Corsican Andria Giudicelli had been seen days earlier in Rome. Van Pelt, Janson already knew, was headed for Sydney.

Iboga, who had supposedly left a trail through Russia, the Ukraine, Romania, and Croatia, had now been seen simultaneously on the French island of Corsica and in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, which were six thousand miles apart.