Nicole froze with her straw still in her mouth. “The Saudis? What do they have to do with any of this?”

“Pull up a map of the Middle East on your phone.”

“You have a phone,” she said, picking hers up, then starting to thumb in a search.

“Yours is right there. Mine’s all the way down in my pocket.”

Nicole stopped and glared at him. He gave her an innocent smile.

Turning her attention back to her phone, she pressed a couple more buttons, then set it down between them.

“Okay, look between Israel and Iran. What do you see?”

“Other countries, of course.”

“Exactly. We can’t get to Iran without flying over other countries. But if we take the northern route, that means—”

“I get it. Flying over Syria and Iraq.”

“Exactly. Syria essentially belongs to Putin, and as we just said, he’s a wild card. We can’t know if he’ll make the IAF pay on the way back from Iran, make Israel pay later, or just say, ‘Sucks to be you, Khamenei.’ But any way you look at it, he’ll exact some sort of price out of Israel.”

“What about the central route over Jordan, then Iraq?”

The barista delivered his coffee, which Nir received with a “Thanks.” Then turning back to Nicole, he said, “Good question, because it seems the most logical route. But we’re touch-and-go with Jordan’s King Abdullah. He’s in a tough place. He’s Western enough to be hated by the Arabs and Arab enough to be distrusted by the West. He makes semi-nice with Israel for his own preservation, but he has too many militant Arabs and Palestinians in his country to allow our air force to fly over for a major attack on fellow Muslims. Giving permission for that is a good way to get himself assassinated.”

“So that leaves the southern route and Saudi Arabia.”

“And thanks to the Abraham Accords, we actually have a relationship with them. It’s not necessarily formalized yet, but the back channels we’ve had with them for years no longer have to remain so hidden.”

“Can we trust them?”

Nir laughed. “Absolutely not. The royal family is corrupt, and the crown prince is as shady a dude as you’ll ever find.”

Nicole threw up her hands. “Okay, now I don’t get it again. Why would we depend on a government we can’t trust run by shady characters?”

“Because they need Iran’s nuclear program gone as much as we do. They know if Iran doesn’t bomb them themselves, they’ll give the Houthis a nuke so they’ll do the dirty work in their stead.”