“It’s nice to be one of us. To be free from the closet, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Come with me.” He felt a thrum of excitement in his chest; it was just like going back onstage.

He brought her down into the main dining room and there they were: Piet, Demi, six other men including the twins who often stared at her. Now they all stared at her. And in the middle, where the dining-room table should have been, there was a man tied to a chair. Thick rope bound him; a gag protruded from his mouth.

He moaned as Edward and Yasmin entered, his face bruised and beaten.

“Do you see this man, Yasmin?” Edward said.

“Yes, I see him.” Her voice was flat.

“He’s a terrible man, Yasmin. He has been working on a scheme to take you from us and to kill you if he cannot take you away.”

“To take me and to kill me?” Her tone was quiet, unruffled.

“Yes, to take you back to your father. He contacted one of our people with a mouthful of lies; we followed him. Do you know this man, Yasmin?” Edward grabbed the former spy’s head, twisted it toward her. He’d been beaten badly, but she studied the face and finally she shook her head.

“Your father knows we are protecting you from him. Your father sends people to destroy us. In secret. Like this man.”

She said, “Well, that’s wrong. I don’t want to go back to what I was.” And she spat in the man’s face. The gob of saliva hung off a clotted eyebrow, dense with dried blood.

The group gave a soft murmur, watching her.

“Are you sure you don’t know him? He has tried to infiltrate us, through Piet.”

“I don’t know him.” She looked at Edward.

The man bound to the chair stared at her and Edward took the gag from his mouth. “I just… I just want the money I’m owed. By Piet. That’s all. I don’t want to know about anything else.”

“You know about me. From who?” Edward said.

“I don’t know…,” the man said in Turkish, and then Edward started to beat him. Yasmin tried to look away and Demi said, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare look away or we’ll tie you to the chair,” so she didn’t.

Under his fists, Edward saw the blood leap in its little splatters and the teeth break. He stopped and picked up one of the man’s hands. “I have ten ways to make you talk, right here. Bahjat Zaid sent you, yes?” he said, and he began twisting the fingers hard.

Finally the man screamed, “No, no. All right, Zaid sent me,” and then a torrent of words that Yasmin couldn’t follow, and Edward, leaning close, his hand on the man’s shoulder, gentle now, like they were friends.

“You were going to steal our shipment when it arrived in Rotterdam?”

“Yes… trade it for Yasmin. I would get it and then trade it for her. So I could take her back to her father. I will tell you all. Please just don’t…”

“So your route to smuggle our goods from here to America, that was all a lie? I just want to be sure I understand. You have nothing to fear if you tell me the truth.”

“Yes. It was a lie. All a lie. There was no route.” His breathing came in hard jolts.

Edward stepped away, wiped a speckle of blood from the toe of his shoe. He gestured at Demi, standing by a camera. He snapped fingers and said, “Action!”

Demi started the video camera.

Edward pulled out a gun, its barrel capped with a silencer, from the back of his pants. He handed it to Yasmin. He could hear the sudden gasps of the others.

“Act one,” he said. “Kill him.”

She took the gun in her hand. She looked at him in confusion.

“It’s not a test, Yasmin. It’s a duty.”

The man was broken, blood dripping from his mouth. His gaze met hers.

“Yasmin, do it. Now, please, my to-do list is not getting shorter,” Edward said.

She didn’t raise the gun; she stared at the beaten man.

“Yasmin…” He hoped he wouldn’t have to threaten to kill her again.

“I’m deciding where to shoot him,” she said. “I don’t want to hit the ropes instead.”

Edward smiled, a teacher’s pride in his student. The man began to babble in his own tongue, begging her not to shoot, pleading for mercy.

She raised the gun, steadied its grip.

“Yasmin!” the Turk yelled in perfect English. “Your father is trying to help you. Whatever they told you, it’s a lie! Don’t do this!”

“My father is the liar.” The gun wavered a moment. She blinked and fired.

The spit noise was soft; the bullet hit him in the chest. The chair fell over. He was still alive; he screamed in agony.

Yasmin fired again. The bullet struck the man’s throat. He spasmed and then went still. One of the men laughed and then they all clapped for her. She just stared at the dead man, as though he might fade from her sight. She didn’t lower the gun; she was a statue.

“That’s a wrap. Demi, load the footage onto the computer. Blur our faces if they’re visible. Then we’ll get it ready to premiere it for her idiot father.” Edward took the gun from Yasmin and lowered her arm, like settling a marionette back onto its wooden stage. “You are perfect now.”

She cupped her elbows as if she felt cold, and she seemed confused. He took her chin in his hand.

“Your father is now under our heel. He will not give us any more trouble, Yasmin.”

She glanced at the eyes of the others, all on her. “May… may I go back to my room? Or do you need me to help you clean up?”

“Go upstairs.”

She obeyed. The group watched her in silence.

“I wonder,” Piet said, “if that girl is playing you.”

“She is not.”

“I think she might do anything to survive,” Piet said. “She knew it was her or that Turk. You said she was a scientist, right? I think she just might be stone-cold. Don’t turn your back on her. She’s shot a man now. It will be easier the second time. Always is.”

“Shut up and get rid of the body,” Edward said. Piet could do the dirtiest job, given his mouth. “And Demi, I want that tape ready to send. I want her father to start his day with his lovely, perfect daughter.”

35

I OPENED MY EYES.

I heard a baby crying and for one sweet moment I thought it was my and Lucy’s Bundle, and that all was right in the world. That London had never happened.

But the ceiling was weird, a blue peaked roof with white beams cutting across it at an angle. I was in Amsterdam. Morning light shone on my face. I could still hear the baby. I got up and went to the small window that overlooked the Prinsengracht canal and saw a harried mother walking by, pushing a stroller. The night’s rain had gone and it looked like a pretty morning.

I had not thought much about being a father. When Lucy had told me we were going to have a baby, there was at first the shock of surprise and joy. Then I thought of my dad, who’d taken me and my brother to six continents by the time we were ten, who was busy saving the world and often ignoring us. He had been a good father in some ways and an indifferent one in others. I would not repeat his mistakes, assuming I got that chance.

A knock at the door. I kept my gun close and opened it. Mila, dressed like a young account executive, a neat gray suit, muted scarf, stylish shoes. She carried an expensive briefcase and a bag of groceries. She was a little chameleon.

“Are you job-hunting today, Mila?”

“Yes. I hope to work with a better class of people very soon. Get showered, I’ll make coffee. We have a busy day.”

I showered fast, dried, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt and a jacket. When I came out to the small kitchen she had breakfast pastries on a plate, coffee steaming from the percolator. Her laptop was open and a video was playing on it.

Yasmin, shooting a man. The video reached its end, started again.