“It has to do with the Agency.”

“Well, I figured that.”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Absolutely not.” Todd laughed. “She’ll poke her head in around ten. Let’s see how much money I can take from you in head-to-head poker before then.”

They had a twenty-five cent per hand limit, but Reid had still lost over five dollars by the time the President came by to see what her husband was up to.

Dan excused himself when the President came in, claiming he was going to raid the kitchen.

“I stumbled on something you probably don’t know about,” Reid told the President as soon as they were alone. “It’s possible that you do. But one way or the other, I think you should.”

Reid briefed her quickly, hitting the main points: illegal assassination, secretly developed UAV, potentially uncontrollable artificial intelligence program.

If she knew about any of it, it didn’t show on her face.

“I’m not going to insult you, Jonathon, by asking if you’re sure of all this,” she said when he was done.

“I am sure of it, Chris.”

She nodded. “Who else knows?”

Reid assumed that she was in fact asking whether Breanna Stockard’s husband knew.

“Ms. Stockard is aware of most of what I’ve told you. She is in charge of the recovery. I don’t believe she’ll share any of the information with her husband.”

A faint smile came to the President’s lips.

“Zen and I are getting along fairly well these days, all things considered,” said Ms. Todd. “It’s not him I’m worried about.”

“Of course. As far as I can tell, the information has been very tightly controlled in-house. But I simply don’t know for sure. They’re not exactly sharing.”

“What’s the status of your operation to recover the plane?”

“We’ve traced it to a village, and we’re trying to get it back. We had one operation already, but unfortunately our information was incomplete and the UAV wasn’t there.”

“I see. Even when we get it back,” added the President, “there’s a much bigger problem here. Isn’t there?”

“Exactly. That’s why I wanted you to know.”

Chapter 29

Duka

The larceny of the local youth was astounding. A half hour after Amara told the boy he needed a satellite phone, he had three. None of them had the proper circuitry to be tethered to his laptop, but that wasn’t critical—Li Han simply removed their ID circuitry for use in his own. He was online within the hour.

He lost the connection with Shanghai some forty minutes later, but that was just as well—there was always the possibility of being detected if he remained on for too long. And the next set of operations could be done entirely with the laptop.

The battery was edging downward. The power was off and there was no indication when it would be on again. He’d need to get it recharged at one of the houses that used a generator.

Unless one of the children could steal one of those as well. No doubt they could.

Li Han moved his finger across the touch pad, then gave it a soft double tap.

And then, almost against his expectations if not his best hopes, the command screen for the UAV appeared.

Or at least what should have been the command screen appeared. It looked more like a database entry screen.

And half of it was filled with a photo of his face.

He leaned away, trying to make sense of the screen. What was this? The architecture of the program made it clear this should be the command module, and yet how could it be?

It was the command screen, if the logo at the top in thirty-six point Helvetica bold type was to be taken at face value.

How would this run a UAV? Li Han knew that the aircraft was flying itself when it came to simple flight commands, but he expected this section to contain an interface to a ground station.

The left side of the screen had location data at the top: a line with GPS coordinates that appeared to be in Africa, undoubtedly where he had been when the drone went down. Below that were the words SUBJECT CONFIRMED.

Then a blank space and the word: TERMINATE.

Below that: PROJECT ONGOING.

And at the bottom: STATUS: HOLDING.

All the words were in blue, except for STATUS: HOLDING, which was in red.

Li Han stared at the screen. He’d set up the program to run with his debugger. He was about to go back to the shell so he could get a peek at a different part when the words on the screen began blinking: STATUS: SEEKING.

The program was active in the laptop, or at least thought it was.

What the hell was going on?

Chapter 30

Duka

Gerard’s “fortress” consisted of a row of slum buildings behind a patchwork of round huts and small lots at the western end of the city. The buildings, most smaller than a one-car garage back in the States, were pushed together in a jumble behind an abandoned dump. It could be reached only on foot; Danny parked the Mercedes at the edge of the landfill and they hiked in through a maze of alleys.

Two men were sitting in the front room of the two-room shack, drinking some home-brewed concoction. Gerard shouted something at them and they leapt up, grabbed a pair of rifles from the floor and ran outside.

A piece of fabric separated the back room from the front. Gerard pushed it aside and led them into the room; there he introduced Nuri but not Danny to the five men sitting on the floor, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and talking. They were all members of the Meurtre Musique hierarchy. Gerard’s overview filled the four youngest with energy, and they immediately left to rally different members of the group. The fifth, well into his sixties, sat stoically, nodding as Gerard repeated what had happened with more detail.

Danny wanted to get Melissa and get the hell out of there, the sooner the better, but Nuri sat down and started a conversation in French. They talked for nearly a half hour, Danny standing by the curtained door, sliding his hand up and down the barrel of his assault rifle, one eye on the front door. Finally, Nuri rose, and despite the others’ protests, took his leave.

“What took so long?” asked Danny as they left the building.

“We’re being watched,” whispered Nuri. “Wait until we’re back in the car.”

They wended their way back out through the alleys. There were men with Kalashnikovs on the roofs. On the way in Danny had spotted a couple of kids playing and some women working in the yards; all were gone now.

“The older man had heard there were strangers in the village,” Nuri explained when they got to the car. “One was Asian. I asked him where he thought he might be. He gave me a few different possibilities. They’re on the other side of town.”

“You’re not suggesting we go there now, are you?” asked Danny.

“Why not? We’re not part of their war.”

“I’ll remember to say that when the bullets start flying.”

Li Han was examining the interface coding when Amara came trotting down the steps.

“Someone is coming,” he said breathlessly.

“Who?” demanded Li Han.

“A white man,” whispered Amara. “He’s speaking Arabic.”

“Ask what he wants. Then get rid of him.”

Li Han went up with him, crouching in the front room while Amara went to the door. The African shouted something; the man outside answered in Arabic.