Walking to the now-unoccupied chair, her new threat sat down and crossed his legs. He signaled for Asadi to lean toward him, and the lieutenant obliged. Nicole watched Asadi’s face as the man whispered to him. Suddenly, the officer side-glanced toward Nicole with a surprised look.

Most likely busted, she started shivering again.

You can’t give up now. You’ve got to make them doubt what they think they know. Remember what Nir told all his agents in case of capture. Fake it until you make it. Never admit anything. Every minute that passes is one the Mossad can use to gain your release.

Asadi straightened, and the new man turned his face toward her.

“Lama at b’Iran?”

Nicole recognized the Hebrew right away. Other than Iran, she didn’t know what the words meant, but there was no mistaking the sound. This was a tactic Nir had warned them about. The enemy will use Hebrew to try to get a reaction.

Putting as much desperation into her voice as she could, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak your language. I wish I did.” Looking up at Lieutenant Asadi, she said, “Will you please tell him I don’t understand Iranian?”

“The language I speak is Farsi,” said the man in the suit, sounding a little piqued. His accent made Nicole think of Patrick Stewart in the X-Men movies. “There is no such language as Iranian.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, this time looking toward the floor.

“The dumb, helpless model. Interesting cover. It might have worked if you hadn’t caved in that officer’s face.”

She met his gaze, making sure her eyes displayed fear and regret, not fear and satisfaction. “He was assaulting me. I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just defended myself.”

The man sighed and tugged at the crease in his pant leg. “He is a fool, and now he’ll be breathing through his mouth for the next three weeks. However, despite his being a moron of the highest caliber, he is still an officer in the Traffic Police of the General Command of the Law Enforcement of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And you, my dear Nicole le Roux, have assaulted him. In my ‘dangerous’ country,” he said, making air quotes with his fingers, “as I overheard you call my homeland, it seems you are the only one who could be categorized as dangerous. Do you know what the prison sentence is for assaulting a state officer? Take a guess.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nicole mumbled, looking down again.

“Twenty years minimum. Oh, and sometimes they also remove the offending hand. I wonder what the market is for middle-aged, one-handed swimsuit models whose bodies have endured twenty years in a foreign maximum-security prison. What do you think? You’re the expert.”

Nicole couldn’t answer. She was too busy fighting her sudden nausea.