“I can’t,” said Bug, “he’s on a conference call with somebody overseas. Don’t know who and he’s marked his line for ‘no intrusion.’”

“Then make goddamn sure I’m his next call,” I growled, and hung up.

Violin’s car was gone by the time I stepped out of the alley with Ghost lumbering along beside me. A few people threw me annoyed looks. Iran had weird rules about dogs on the street. I ignored them.

As we picked our way through the crowds of shoppers, I kept one eye on the cars, watching to see if Violin circled back. Then I froze. Another car drifted along, and the driver, much like Violin, was looking side to side to scan the pedestrians. It wasn’t my guardian angel. It was a man, and when he turned my way I saw a gaunt face and red rat eyes staring through the glass.

A Red Knight.

Christ.

I darted out of the flow of traffic and stood in the dense shadows under the broad awning of a big vegetable stand. The car rolled along, and the head moved back and forth, and I held my breath. Then it was gone in the long flow of traffic that vanished into the heat haze. He hadn’t spotted me.

“Sheeez,” I breathed.

I was becoming increasingly paranoid. It felt like there was nowhere to go, no place, not even a street corner, where I could catch my breath. It was getting hard to catch my breath and that had nothing to do with the relentless heat.

The vegetable seller glanced at me and offered a handful of figs. I shook my head, and with a word to Ghost, turned and headed a different way. We needed to get off the street right now. The CIA safe house was close.

We kept our heads down and melted into the crowd.

Interlude Three

Interlude Three

Council Chamber of the Red Order

Jaffa, The Holy Land

October 1191 C.E.

Sir Guy LaRoque and Father Nicodemus sat at the end of a long rectangular table made from a massive and ornate wooden door that had once hung in a Jewish temple. The temple was now in ashes, its treasures parceled out among the priests and senior knights of the Hospitallers.

There were a dozen seats at the table. Nine knights sat there, and the rest were minor priests of Nicodemus’s choosing. Each of them had sworn the same oaths, each had sealed their oaths with the tip of a heated knife blade.

Without looking up, Nicodemus said, “Do you know this story, Sir Guy? The binding of Isaac?”

The Frenchman hedged. “Perhaps not as well as I should—”