The Israeli threat was enough to get el-Tariq’s mouth running,” said Nick to Mrs. McDowell in her hospital room the next day. “Now, I can’t tell you what the issue here is, as it’s classified, and you are not cleared. Sorry. But let me say again: we think you did a great job.”

“So—it was worth it?” she asked. “I didn’t pop the button too early?”

“These clowns could have turned ugly. If you waited, you might not have gotten a chance. You’re here, you did your duty.”

“I’m so happy to be of use.”

“Here’s what you got us: we confirmed that Juba is in America and that he sheltered at this mosque. That’s the first step of a long process. We didn’t get him, no, but that’s just the way the cards fell. He was out ‘learning’ and was smart enough to get away when he was alerted the imam had busted you. If the cards had been different, he would have been down there in that little basement room and it would have been game over.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Can’t be helped. Tell her, Mr. Gold.”

“Mrs. McDowell, the importunes of providence in these affairs are always puzzling. Enough to suggest that God’s favorite weapon is His sense of randomness, which keeps any of us from getting too smug.”

“But,” said Nick, “we also learned a lot. El-Tariq has connex with a previously unknown terrorist cell, which we’ll track and bring down. We learned that through these guys, el-Tariq had access to Dark Web intelligence penetrations, including the Social Security database and some kind of facial recognition technology. They got your face from your driver’s license, ran it, and came across the photo in The Baltimore Sun of Tommy and you, which ran with his obit. That’s big-time facial ID software, so it proved again there’s a lot of money and ambition behind this. But now we’ve got our computer people working on any leads that dope may run to.”

“And the kid,” said Swagger. “We got the kid.”

“Yes,” said Nick. “Potentially, the game winner. We’ve got a picture and other ID of the boy who’s running with Juba. We’ve got all his credit information, which has been flagged for instant law enforcement notification if accessed. And his picture has been sent to four thousand police agencies, so we think it’s only a matter of time.”

“What do you think, Mr. Swagger?”

“I’m surprised that Juba has hooked up with this kid. It’s not like him. I mean, look at him. He could be any kid at the mall.”