The Mideast was the place. Saudi Arabia, especially. Plenty of money to spend, but no infrastructure. And feeling pretty paranoid after what Iraq did to Kuwait. His contacts over there kept telling him they didn’t want or need mercenaries, but Baker knew different. Every Saudi he’d met thought he should be a prince. No one wanted to do the dirty work. That was why the country was full of Koreans and Pakistanis, imported to do all the menial work. If your Mercedes broke down, there was no one to fix it. But so what? You bought another one. And as for soldiering, why put your ass on the line when you can hire someone else’s ass to take your place?

Baker wasn’t getting any younger. He was tired of shopping himself around. His lion’s share of the bonus when this job was done would put his finances on an even keel and pay up his mother’s nursing home bills, but he wasn’t about to spend the rest of his life sitting around and watching the tube. He needed a reason to get up in the morning, and Saudi Arabia looked to be a bottomless well of steady, low-risk paramilitary work, waiting to be tapped. If he showed this Iswid Nahr group Muhallal worked for that he could get things done, that he was the man, he’d be set for the rest of his working life.

But Baker believed in his own version of Murphy’s Law: No matter how deep you’ve buried it, never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan.

He wanted the whole crew in on tonight’s dirty work. They could look on it as a sort of bonding ritual… a sort of baptism of blood.

Baker smiled. Not blood… a baptism of fire.

After which they’d be more than comrades in arms. They’d be accomplices.

And the Arab? Baker would tell Kemel Muhallal about it later.

7.

7.

Yoshio stood by the lamp in Kemel Muhallal’s second bedroom and stared across the courtyard at his own apartment.

He had seen Muhallal leave and had sneaked over to do a quick search. Nothing. He had opened and thoroughly searched every drawer, every closet, every corner, every possible hiding place, and had found nothing unusual.

And now he stood where Muhallal and sometimes his superior, Khalid Nazer, stood and studied something almost every night. What? What could interest them so? And why did they always gaze at it here, under this lamp that was never turned off?

Was that the key? The lamp?

Yoshio reached under the shade and found the knob. He twisted it, and the lamp turned off. He twisted it again, and the bulb glowed once more.

Just a lamp.