He tried now to understand what the Israelis could have learned from the farmhouse. The blaze of light—searing and brilliant—told him that Adid had lit the powder and that everything in the shop was obliterated. But assume nothing. What if a Jew got in there and at least got a look?

So, did they see? And if they saw, did they understand? It might have meant nothing to a Zionist commando—the boxes of American bullets, the jars of powders, the reloading manuals, the targets. Still, assume nothing. He saw it. He reported it. The rabbis studied his reports and interpreted them correctly. But there was nothing in the house that carried an indicator of the mission. None of the guards knew the scope of the mission. They would know only that there was a mission. But, then, there was always a mission, so what did that tell them?

He had but one worry: had Adid destroyed the laptop along with himself? He remembered it was on the desk in his quarters. He had told Adid over and over of its importance. Certainly, even in the gravity of the situation, the arrival of raiders, Adid would have remembered the core of his mission and taken the laptop with him as he fell back into the shop and its powder cache. No piece of electronic equipment could stand up to that sort of conflagration. It would have been liquidized under the affront of the flames.

I am safe, he decided.

If they didn’t have the laptop, they knew nothing.

14

The black cube

What laptop?” said Swagger.

“He’s being coy,” said Cohen. “It’ll play so well when Spielberg films it.”

“What laptop?” said Swagger.

“Sergeant Swagger,” said the Director, speaking to him directly for the first time, “you graciously visited Hell on our behalf and did not come out empty-handed. If we had the time, I’d give you a medal. But as you’re about to learn, we don’t have the time.”

The Director lifted his briefcase from the floor, opened it, and took out a plastic bag holding a curled and blackened laptop computer. Someone had put a burst through its screen, turning it into a spiral nebulae of fractures surrounding large holes that showed clean through. The keyboard had modulated into a wave, and most of its keys were shapeless nubs.

“Do you remember?” asked Cohen. “Gas and flame, your arm on fire, your Uzi too hot to hold. Somehow you reached out and snagged it, and, in another second, another jug of powder went, and then all of them. Somehow—God favors the insane perhaps?—you grabbed ahold, staggered out, and collapsed.”

“Wish I’d done that,” said Bob. “It seems pretty cool. Also, by the way, I tripped over a gun case with the initials A.W. on it, the third letter gone to fire.”

“It’s all coming back?”