From what he’d gleaned there had been fallout from the aborted brief to take el-Habib into custody. Just the thought of that sent him into a paroxysm of rage. Seiran el-Habib’s contacts inside Mainland China were key to the Alchemists’ continuing plans. Any disruption of the content those contacts were supplying could not be tolerated. If there was a continuing danger to el-Habib it would surely be from the man whose demonic persistence in the Well St. Vincent had observed firsthand. Which was why he had messengered over the brief on Ibrahim Mansour to Hemingway’s office, marked “Eyes Only from the Office of the President of the United States.” St. Vincent had deemed keeping Whitman occupied by sending him and his team off to Beirut the best option to ensure el-Habib’s continued safety.

“… this has to stay between the two of us,” Omar the Idiot was saying now. “It’s not an official op, which, as you know, we are forbidden by law to conduct on U.S. soil … Also I don’t want her spooked.”

“Why in the world would she be spooked?”

“Because one of her best clients is Greg Whitman.”

That, of course, caused St. Vincent to come to full alert.

*   *   *

“A word,” Whitman said.

Charlie nodded, followed him out, down the hall, into one of the rumpled bedrooms.

How was it, Whitman wondered, that the Alchemists kept coming back into his life, ever darker, evil, bent on wholesale destruction? It was as if the hand of Fate was pulling him back into their orbit—St. Vincent’s orbit—in order to put a stop to them. None of this was in his expression when he said to Charlie, “What the hell was that back there?”

“You know perfectly well what it was.”

“Alice was your responsibility. El-Habib was my interrogation.”

She looked him hard in the face. “No, you made Alice my responsibility.”

“There’s only one head to this monster. Me.”

“Well, I’ve seen that monster, Whit. The real monster. Down in the Well that was you. So, really, what I was doing was saving you from yourself.”

“I don’t remember that being part of your job description.”

“And I don’t remember saving me as being part of yours.”

They stood toe to toe, so close their noses all but touched. Only once before had the tension between them reached this pitch—the night she had hit him, the night he had walked out.

His side ached where she had struck him; he hated that, hated them both for the damage they had inflicted on each other, but he could see no way for either of them to stop. You might as well ask the sun and moon to join hands, he thought.

“We are who we are,” she whispered.

“It is what it is,” he said.

“And never the twain shall meet.”