“The whole package here is a little too cute,” said Bug. “Either Rasouli thinks we’re pretty dumb, which isn’t likely; or he thinks we’re really smart. I’m going with that, because layer after layer he’s giving us useful stuff, but stuff only we’d figure out. I mean, I’d buy the whole ‘this was damaged’ business if there were more bits of useless junk, but there’s hardly any of that. Almost everything we have is useful in some way.”

“Which is statistically improbable,” added Circe.

“Why the subterfuge?” mused Rudy. “If the drive was deliberately damaged, should we infer that Rasouli is double-crossing us in some way?”

“Possibly,” said Bug. “At the same time, I don’t think he knows enough. By fragmenting the data he has, it tells us a lot while at the same time possibly disguising all that he doesn’t know.”

“Why go to such lengths?” asked Rudy. “He reached out to us for our help.”

“Politics,” suggested Aunt Sallie. “He’s an ambitious little bastard. Maybe he found a way of strengthening his position within Iran, or maybe within Islam, while still removing a possible threat to his country. The less specific he is with us, the easier it could be to spin the actual outcome in his favor.”

“That’s cynical,” Rudy said.

“Hell, we do it all the time. Spin control is the second most important tool of statecraft, and probably the third most important weapon of war after big guns and strong allies.”

“It’s also devious,” added Rudy. “Very much the Hugo Vox model.”

Circe sighed. “Yes.”

“Do we trust the information?” asked Auntie. “Can we trust it?”

“Do we have a choice?” muttered Circe.

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Golden Oasis Hotel

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 9:42 a.m.

I kept expecting the woman to call back, but she didn’t.

Violin.

I went into the bathroom to pack my toiletries. Ghost came and sat in the doorway, watching me in case I happened to discover a beef bone in my shaving kit.

As I puttered around, I tried to make some sense of the pieces of the mystery I had, but it was like trying to assemble one picture with pieces from four different puzzles. There was the hikers thing. That’s why I was here in Iran. There was no intention or even possibility of any interaction with the Iranian government. I don’t think I had ever spoken Rasouli’s name aloud before today; until now it was only a name in news stories and in a handful of CIA field reports that crossed my desk.