“Don’t ask questions that you already know the answer to, Bashir. I’ve got your passports, your money, and your phones. Anything else you need before we get out of here? We can use the SUV. If they’ve turned the cameras back on, all they’ll see is two men shoving a body in the back and driving away. Just what they expect.”

Isa examined Rapp’s face for a moment, undoubtedly reevaluating his loyalties in light of the night’s events. Were they to the government that had been about to kill him? Or to the American assassin standing in front of him? Neither would be the answer he’d come up with, but there weren’t a lot of options at this point.

“Not the SUV. I have a better way out.”

“Then lead on, Bash.”

Isa pulled a courier bag from the hall closet and then exited through the sliding back door. They stayed beneath the trees as they crossed his backyard and scaled the fence separating him from his neighbor to the east. The process was repeated four more times, the last of which Rapp had to give the exhausted man a push to get him over. That landed them in the backyard of a corner unit with a two-car garage. Isa entered through the side door and closed it before turning on the lights. He grabbed a set of keys off a hook on the wall and slipped behind the wheel of a Lincoln Navigator. Rapp got in the passenger side, closing his door a little more gingerly than Isa had.

“Won’t the owner hear us?” he said when Isa started the engine and used a button to open the garage.

“A few years ago, I smoothed over an incident involving his youngest daughter,” he said, starting to back out. “It’s made him a very sound sleeper.”

Rapp kept his eye on their surroundings as they cleared the gate and started up the road. The red dots on the neighborhood’s strategically placed cameras were still dark, but that wouldn’t last more than a few blocks. Still, Isa’s exit strategy would be enough to buy them some time. The government would have to review all the footage in the area, make note of all pedestrian and auto traffic, and finally track down Isa’s neighbor, who would probably already have reported the car stolen.

It wasn’t quite like disappearing into thin air, but maybe the next best thing in the current technological era.

“Okay,” Isa said, adjusting the seat into a more comfortable position. “Where to?”

39

THE palm trees and stylish fences of Bashir Isa’s neighborhood were gone, replaced with utilitarian four-story concrete buildings on both sides of the street. They’d been constructed on a site that had once been a chaotic slum—one of the government’s many halting efforts to provide affordable housing for immigrant labor.