“You could have gone after him. I’d cut his team considerably. He was on foot.”
“He had too much of a lead.”
“You don’t give up easily.”
“He’s smarter than me.”
Daria smiled in the dark. “Most foes are smarter than you.”
He shrugged, accepting the comment on the face of it.
Daria set the coffee cup on an end table and scrunched herself down the length of the bed. She lay on her back.
“I don’t—”
“Shut up,” she ordered. “Sleep.”
Daria’s head barely hit the pillow before she felt herself drift off. It was a centuries-old soldier’s trick, her body responding to a lifetime’s training. Abandoned orphans learn the same.
If you get a chance to sleep, sleep. It may be your last.
Same with food. If you get a chance to eat, eat. It may be your last.
Both of them were asleep in seconds.
Maryland
It was 9:00
P.M.
by the time John Broom and Major Theo James got to the major’s house. James introduced him to his wife and two of his children—his eldest daughter was enrolled at Brown, majoring in math. James almost levitated when he told John this, showing photos of his daughter adhered to the refrigerator.
“We’ve no idea where she gets it,” James’s wife, Ciara, said. She had a lovely Irish accent. Dublin, John thought.
They excused themselves and went to Theo’s office. There, the major had a computer pre-cleared for access to the mainframe at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.
“Okay.” He shoved up the sleeves of his Notre Dame sweatshirt.
Ciara O’Brian-James entered, bringing them both glasses of white wine, plus one for herself. “May I…?”
“Hell, yes!” her husband gestured toward a third chair. He turned to John. “Ciara is the brains of the outfit. I’m the pretty one.”
John laughed. The couple kissed, holding the kiss a moment, then she sat and smoothed her flower print skirt. “You’re a spy then, John?”
“I’m an analyst. I have, honest to God, never held a gun in my life. But I am hell on wheels when it comes to deposing people.”
Ciara hooted a laugh. “That explains it, then. Theo never brings people back here, unless he likes ’em.”
John sipped his wine. “I have a confession. I did a little research before I met your husband. You teach physics. Your husband was board certified in pediatrics before switching to epidemiology. Your daughter’s majoring in math isn’t really that much of a mystery.”
Theo James finished logging on and chuckled. “That’s because you weren’t there when we found her beer bongs. She was a bit of a hell-raiser in high school. And who do we have to blame for that?”
Ciara smiled but copped to nothing.
Theo slipped on his cheater glasses. “Okay, here we go.… We’re looking up a Soviet biologist, hon. His name came up in something John is investigating.”
John and Ciara moved their chairs so they could see the computer screen. This was a breach in security, but John didn’t say anything.
“János Tuychiev. Biologist from Tajikistan. He…”
The major’s voice faded away.
John said, “What?”
“Hmm. He … I don’t know. He disappeared after Putin took power. I’m not seeing where he ended up.”
The major scrolled down. John pointed at the screen, careful not to actually touch it. He hated when people left fingerprints on his own computer screen. “AISI.”
“What’s that?”
John sipped his wine. “Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna.”
Ciara studied him, her green eyes serious. “Sorry?”
“Italian security.”
“And you knew that, then, without looking it up?”
John blushed. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m a total nerd.”
She turned to her husband. “He’s one of your people, love.”
Twenty-two
The Middle East
Almost Twenty-four Years Ago
The Swellat Bedouin’s Volvo wound through the back streets of the north side of Rafah, past signs of recent aerial bombardment. The girl sat in the back on the torn vinyl seats, straight black hair held back by a rubber band. Her eyes were very dark and very round. She never made a sound.
The Swellat did not speak to her. She did not think to ask him any questions. She did not know him. She did not think he was here to help her.
After a time—she had no idea how long, but maybe hours—the Volvo pulled into a dusty alley. They were well away from the watchful eyes of the Palestinian authorities and the Israeli Defense Forces. No building windows looked out on this particular alley. The only observer was a boy, maybe ten, who sat on a low brick wall and used his fingers to eat koshary out of a cracked bowl.
The Volvo pulled in, nose first. A Renault, also ancient and rusted out, drew into the alley very slowly, moving the opposite direction. The cars drew nose to nose, and then both drivers killed their engines.
The girl sat in the back. She turned her head and watched the ten-year-old boy who watched them. His fingers moved mechanically from his bowl to his mouth.
The driver of the Renault stepped out, a puff of dust—part sand, part concrete from a week’s old bomb crater—rose around his boots. He carried a paper bag, the top folded down many times and twisted tightly.
The Swellat in the Volvo stepped out. The men met between the grilles of their cars. The boy watched. The girl watched, but she also watched the boy. He was whip-thin and sinewy, and wore ancient Chuck Taylor sneakers and jeans and a once-white Adidas T-shirt.
His eyes stayed locked on the transaction.
The Swellat took the folded-over bag and unclenched the top, opening it. He peered in, reached in. His fingertip, when it emerged, was white. The girl thought it looked like the dried, bomb-damaged cement at their feet.
The Swellat Bedouin sniffed the white powder off his finger. He reacted as if he’d received a slight shock. He nodded. He carefully scrunched down the paper bag again.
He returned to the car and opened the rear door.
As the black-haired girl stepped down, she heard the crackle of pottery shattering. She glanced around. The boy hadn’t moved. But his bowl was missing.
The Bedouin pinched the girl’s stick-thin shoulder and directed her forward. The dust puffed under her grubby sneakers. He positioned her in front of the Renault driver.
The Swellat said, “Good material, cousin. Yes?” They were the first words he had spoken in the girl’s presence. She understood the Arabic but struggled with his accent.
The Renault man smiled thinly under an even-thinner mustache. His face was pocked with the results of a caustic explosion, his skin as shiny as rubber. “And you wouldn’t cheat me? Cousin?”
His accent also was foreign to the girl’s ear but different from that of the Bedouin.
He laughed. “I against my brother, yes? My brothers and me against my cousins. Then my cousins and I against strangers. Are you not my brother today?”
Renault man laughed. He nodded.
The Bedouin pinched the girl’s shoulder and pushed her forward two steps. She stared up at the new man, who stared down.
The Bedouin Swellat returned to the Volvo, slammed the door as he climbed in. He revved the engine and backed away.
The girl and the new man stood by the Renault. The man with the shiny red skin smiled down at her. She did not smile up.
The boy stepped into her line of sight. He addressed the driver. The driver sneered down at him.
“All praise to God,” the boy said, stepping closer, his left hand extended, palm up.
“Fuck off, beggar,” the man said. He pulled his arm up as if to backhand the boy.
“Sir, have you—” The boy continued, then jumped forward, whipped his right hand around from behind his back. He jammed a pie-wedge shard of bowl through the man’s shiny cheek.
The little girl shrieked.
The driver screamed and stumbled back against the hood of his car. Blood flowed. It was strangely, artificially red against the white dust of the alley. The boy grabbed the girl and ran. The girl weighed nothing and the boy was strong and fleet. He guided her quickly down the alley, hooked a left into another, narrower alley, dashed through a nest of vendors, down yet another alley, to a hiding place behind a tobacconist.
The little girl shuddered. Her eyes were huge and black.
“Are you okay?” the boy tried in Arabic. The girl stared at him.
“Are you okay?” This time in Hebrew.
She nodded.
“My name is”—the boy hesitated—“not important.”
“Why did you help me?”
The boy glowered. “I know his kind. I know what they sell children for. Look, there are tunnels to Egypt. I know them. Better than anyone. There’s a man on that side. He used to be a librarian. When there were libraries. He can keep you safe.”
The boy rose and the six-year-old girl didn’t.
“Come on!” the boy hissed.
“Who are you?” the girl whispered in Hebrew.
The boy looked around. The tobacconist had the Hebrew name Asher. It would do for now. “Asher.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“You won’t be if you follow me.”
“Are Mummy and Daddy coming for us?”
The newly named boy didn’t have any idea how to answer that one. She could tell from his eyes that he thought about lying, but didn’t. “I don’t think so.”
The girl thought about that for a moment. She turned huge, black eyes on him. “Can you take care of me?”
The boy looked down at the girl. He presented his hand. She took it, and he easily hefted her to her feet. He smiled at her. She smiled back.
Asher Sahar said, “Of course, because Belhadj will—”
* * *
“Kill you.”
Daria awoke, sweating, her breathing shallow. Always, the damned nightmares. The alley. The Swellat. The driver’s bleeding cheek. The …
She looked around, eyes wide.
She was in a farmhouse. In the middle of France.
She wasn’t under the bed, at least.
And she hadn’t awakened Belhadj, who lay on his back, dead to the world.
She got up to use the bathroom. Her mouth felt gummy and coated in dirt. She took a detour to check the straight razor behind the coffeepot. It was still there. She padded to the bathroom looking for toothpaste or mouthwash. She found a box of condoms. She took it down from the shelf behind the mirror and studied the box.
She walked back to the bedroom with it.
Belhadj lay on his back. One wrist behind his head. His eyes were open, watching her move in the low light, inside the boy’s shirt, one button done.
“In my sleep earlier,” he whispered, “I said, ‘I thought I lost you.’”
Daria tossed the box on the bed by his hip. His slate-gray eyes tracked it. Then turned back to her.
Daria lay atop him, unmoving, and he held her.
They made love. And then they slept again, she against his warm, sinewy side, calm.
Old soldiers’ tricks: if you get a chance to sleep, sleep. If you get a chance to eat, eat.
Same with finding solace in bed: it may always be your last time.
Twenty-three
Sourthern France
Saturday morning, Daria found Belhadj still looking grungy and fatigued despite a shower. He sat at the French family’s aging PC, reading printouts. He had made coffee.
“There’s nothing perishable in the refrigerator. Nor piled up mail,” he said, peering at the printouts. “I think the family plans to be gone a while.”
Daria nodded and let him get on with his research. She showered again. She still smelled dust and asbestos in her hair, though that was likely her imagination. She studied her eyes in the mirror. She felt the glands in her neck. She seemed healthy enough.
She buttoned herself into the boy’s denim shirt. She returned to the dining room, poured coffee and sat, one heel up on the seat of the chair, hugging her nut-brown knee. “I don’t think I’m infected with Asher’s flu.”
The Syrian squinted up at her, nodded, his unruly hair bobbing. He turned back to the dot-matrix printouts and Daria realized he probably needed reading glasses.
“Why did the French hit me so hard? Doesn’t knocking down a factory seem excessive?”
“First, they thought they were hitting
us
. They assumed I was with you in the factory. Second, I understand the American president is coming to the Group of Eight summit in Avignon. If we are the so-called villains of this affair, and if we have targeted the president, then the entire G-8 summit would be at risk.” Belhadj smiled thinly. “If I were in charge of security there, I’d assume the villains were after the entire free world.”
“I’m too tired to attack the
entire
free world.” Daria raked wet hair away from her face.
Belhadj rose and poured them both more coffee. “Your one-legged pathologist said something about recognizing the
signature
of the virus. He said, ‘The Tajik, Tuychiev.’ I thought I recognized the name. A couple of years ago, there was this crazy Soviet scientist, originally from Tajikistan, living in Milan. He contacted Pakistan, the Saudis, us, and offered to sell a flu virus. This was before Assad the younger fucked everything up. Syria was still making overtures to the West, so we declined the offer. I was on a team that investigated the man. If this Tuychiev is still around…?” He shrugged.
“What happened with you and the Mukhabarat?”
Belhadj sat and slid the printouts back into their black plastic shelf. He acted as if he might not have heard her. Daria sat, hugging one knee, and waited him out.
“If I said ‘The Group,’ would you know who I meant?”
Daria said, “Musical or—”
“Never mind. For a long time now, some of us have been looking for a sort of group. It’s probably legend. It’s a cluster of Jewish true believers from the 1950s and ’60s who decided that no means were too great to protect Israel. This group believed that the Israeli leaders could be trusted only so far, since they were elected by the people. America and Western Europe were great and true allies, but could be trusted only so far. This group, if it existed, believed that once every so often, someone else would need to act. Someone not elected, not beholden to the military or to the United Nations.”