His eyes were half-closed behind the tinted lenses of his glasses as he looked inward, assessing what Ledger had told him, working through the implications of the information on Rasouli’s flash drive. If anyone had been in the room they would have thought he was a man lost in the subtleties of a piece of classic jazz. There was no outward sign of agitation.

A slender cell phone sat on the desk blotter next to his laptop. The image on the laptop’s screen was the one Joe Ledger had sent via e-mail. When the song ended, Mr. Church picked up his cell and opened it, punched a number, entered a code that engaged a 128-bit scrambler, and waited for the other party to answer. After three rings, a man’s voice said, “Hello?”

Mr. Church said, “Mr. President, we have a situation.”

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

The Kingdom of Shadows

Beneath the Sands

One Year Ago

The fat American sat uneasily on the edge of a metal chair that was draped with red velvet. He was not accustomed to being uneasy. For most of his life it was other people who were uneasy around him. The other man—if “man” could accurately describe the pale figure who sat opposite him—was not like other people. The American doubted this creature feared anything.

Their chairs were identical, ponderous wrought-iron monstrosities looted centuries ago from a desecrated mosque. A single small candle in a shaded sconce cast the only light, and its pale glow was far too fragile to hold back the enormous walls of darkness that closed in on them from every side. The American could only guess at the size of the chamber in which they sat. During the long and convoluted walk down here from a hidden entrance in the city above, the American could see that it had been carved out of the living rock, and was forever filled with shadows that dripped and whispered. The black mouths of tunnels trailed off into darkness all around them. The American knew that there were guards in those tunnels—creatures equally as pale and strange as this man—but he could not see them.

He could, however, feel them. And he caught glimpses of luminous red eyes staring at him with suspicion and pernicious hunger.

The American and the pale man sat in silence for long minutes. Studying each other with the frankness of butchers.