“I could not go through the regular diplomatic channels,” he continued in a quiet and confidential tone, “for reasons that should be apparent to you.”

“Because your regular diplomatic channels are staffed by vultures, thieves, cutthroats, and scumbags,” I said. “And your own people would sell you out for the price of a bowl of lentil soup.”

“No,” he said, “my own people would sell me out, that is not a question, but it would be for very much money.”

“Ah. So you know that your ambassadors and diplomats are as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks.”

He smiled. “There is a saying: ‘Trust a thief before a diplomat.’”

“That says it.”

“There is a matter of great importance and equally great complexity that needs to be dealt with, but it is so…” Rasouli waved his hand as he searched for the word.

“Fragile?” I suggested. “Volatile?”

“Either will do. Both, I suppose.”

“And you thought it would be easier to discuss it by ambushing me with snipers?”

“Would you have agreed to this meeting without them?”

“Probably not.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Besides … the snipers were already here, preparing for another task. I … borrowed them.” He paused, then added, “That other task is now canceled and will likely be abandoned.”

“What was the other job?”

Rasouli considered, then shook his head. “No, it would confuse things to discuss that. What we are here to discuss is much more important.”

“Before we get to that—why me?”

He spread his hands. “You came highly recommended.”

“By whom?”

“A mutual friend.”

“Give me a name.”

A strange, fierce light flared in his eyes and he studied every inch of my face before he answered. “Hugo Vox.”

Rasouli couldn’t have hit me harder if he’d swung a baseball bat at my face.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Not at all.”

I swallowed a lump the size of a football. Hugo Vox. Now if there was ever an “enemy of god,” then Vox had my vote. Pretty much my vote for “actual supervillain” too. Vox used to be one of the most trusted men in the United States anti- and counterterrorism community, trusted by the kind of people who don’t trust anyone. Vox was a screener for above-top-secret personnel and the director of Terror Town, the most effective counterterrorism training facility in the world. To be “vetted by Vox” was the highest honor and a seal of absolute trust. Unfortunately he turned out to be a murdering psychopath and a founding member of the Seven Kings, a secret society that we believed to be behind everything from 9/11 to the London hospital bombing. A very conservative estimate of the deaths that could directly or indirectly be laid at his door was somewhere north of twelve thousand. I wanted his head on a pole, as did most of the law enforcement agencies in the world. My boss, Mr. Church, most of all.