The woman hesitated, her eyes darting between Harry and the doorway.

Don’t do it. His eyes pleaded with hers.

She quivered, obviously undecided.

The salāt sounded, calling everyone to prayer over the loudspeakers. The woman appeared to struggle within herself before she knelt and faced Mecca to begin her midday supplications.

A coup did not keep the devout from their worship. Being a man of faith himself, Harry admired that about his Muslim neighbors.

Not one to quibble when an advantage presented itself, Harry bolted out of the room and down a small flight of internal steps to the next level. The house was empty but for its one occupant. He scouted the interior while he considered the best course of escape. Outside, a group of men knelt in the street on the far side of the house.

Borrowing a spare prayer rug from his hostess, Harry drew up the hood of his djellaba to cover his fair skin. With a glance at the roof, he climbed out a window to join the men during their supplications a few minutes before the salāt concluded.

The small group of men rose from their rugs, rolling them up and placing them inside a donkey cart filled with clay water pitchers. Harry fell in behind them, his back to the house. Shadows from the roof projected onto the street, exposing the unmistakable silhouettes of his pursuers.

“Where are you headed?” Harry asked the men, using the local dialect.

His skin prickled as he slipped to the opposite side of the donkey and rubbed between the animal’s ears. The guards moved away, their shadows disappearing.

“Sorroca,” one of the men answered as he took hold of the animal’s lead. “They are out of water after yesterday’s fighting.”

“Who isn’t?” Harry asked.

The eldest, a spry man of possibly seventy, eyed him. “Are you going our way?”

“Partly. I’m for Deljabar,” Harry stated.

“You are most welcome to join me and my family.”

“I thank you.” Harry’s eyes slid back to the water jars. These businessmen were quick to earn a few extra dinars. Others would doubtless follow their example.

Striding beside the donkey cart, Harry only spoke when asked a direct question. His last four months in Lebatu had been spent monitoring the political situation with his trainer—an MI6 agent who had disappeared last week under suspicious circumstances. And now Mustafa, Harry’s contact, was dead.

After a slow three-kilometer walk in the heat, brushing flies from his face every few seconds, Harry parted ways with the water-bartering entrepreneurs, then entered the Deljabar district where Mustafa had been executed. The shock of such brutality still rattled Harry’s system. It had made him careless; otherwise that guard would never have spotted him in the first place.