“Then I suggest that you get your ass back to Greece and practice some diplomacy. If Yaxaas spooks before we make contact, this whole operation will go up in smoke.”

—

“ARE YOU CRAZY or do you have some kind of death wish?” said Pickens.

He’d been off-camera during the videoconference, sitting at the kitchen table.

“I’m not afraid of Graves,” Jake said. “I just don’t like the idea of partnering with a warlord.”

“Look, Jake, I respect your idealism, but this is Somalia. The whole goddamn place is corrupt. Everybody is on the take. Hell, the new president was sitting in a cubicle in Buffalo, New York, working for the state department of transportation before the warlords bought the election for him. You’ve got to get your head around the fact that until somebody better comes along, the warlords make the rules.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to perpetuate the system.”

“This isn’t the West, Jake. Hell, the average Somali thinks the warlords have supernatural powers, and it’s all about power down here. So unless you’ve got some way to enforce your values on the entire population, you’ve got to work within ‘the system.’”

Jake was pacing around the small kitchen.

“What do you think Graves does if we tell him we’re not going to do it?” Pickens said.

“He’ll replace us with someone who will.”

“Exactly. It’s a lawful order. Our job is to follow it.”

Jake stopped pacing.

“It still sucks,” he said.

“Brother, I don’t like Yaxaas any more than you do, but let’s talk to the man.”

“All right,” Jake said.

“All right,” said Pickens, “but first you’ve got to go to Greece and buy us some time.”

THIRTY

IT WAS RAINING in Athens when the Agency Gulfstream touched down.

Jake declined an umbrella from the aircrew and walked slowly across the tarmac, savoring each cool drop as it hit his face. Having grown up on the east coast of the United States, where rain was largely considered an inconvenience, he’d come to take it for granted, like light or air, but living amid the famine that was killing man and beast in the Horn of Africa made Jake appreciate its life-giving power like never before.

He picked up a rental car at the general aviation terminal and slogged through the tail end of the morning rush hour as he drove to the Romanos offices in Glyfada. Jake was looking out the window of Athena’s conference room, searching through the gray mist for the island of Aegina, when she walked in.

She was holding the acrylic tombstone they’d swapped out of the agent’s office.

“Did it work?” she asked.

“It did,” Jake said. “We’ve made a preliminary identification of the man we were looking for.”

“Preliminary? Are you telling me he still hasn’t been arrested?”

“Arrangements are being made.”

“But I can fire the agent?”