"He changed some of the target cities. It's still Washington and London, but also Tel Aviv and Paris. He won't explain the change. He wants four billion dollars, and he wants the political prisoners released. He won't explain a goddamn thing to us."

"That's all?" I said. "Four doomed cities? A few billion in ransom? Free some murderers?"

Burns shook his head. "No, that's not all. He's given everything to the press this time. There's going to be panic around the world. But especially in the four cities: London, Paris, Tel Aviv, and here in Washington. He's gone public."

Chapter 73

On Sunday morning, after breakfast with Nana, I left for Paris. Ron Burns wanted me in France. End of discussion.

Exhausted and probably depressed, I slept for a good part of the flight. Then I read a lot of CIA files about a KGB agent who had lived in Paris eleven years ago and might have worked with Thomas Weir. That agent supposedly was the Wolf. And something had happened. A "mistake." A big one, apparently.

I'm not sure what kind of reception I was expecting from the French, especially given the recent history between our countries, but things went fairly smoothly once I arrived. In fact, it seemed to me that the command center in Paris worked better than the similar command centers I'd seen in London and Washington. The reason for this was clear immediately.

The infrastructure in Paris was simpler, the organization much smaller. One official told me, "It's easy to share here, because the file you need is next door or right down the hall."

I received a quick briefing, then was thrown into a high-level meeting. A general in the army looked at me and addressed me in English. "Dr. Cross, to be honest with you, we haven't ruled out the possibility that this violence is part of the jihad, that is to say, Islamic terrorist attacks. Please believe me, they are clever enough to dream up something bizarre like this. They are duplicitous enough to have even dreamed up the Wolf. This would explain the demand to release the hostages, would it not?"

I didn't say a word. How could I? Al Qaeda? Behind everything so far? Behind the Wolf? That was what the French believed? That was why I was there?

"As you know, our two countries don't share the same perspective on the connection between the Islamic terror networks and the current situation in the Middle East. We believe that the jihad isn't actually a war against Western values. It is a complex reaction against the leaders of Muslim nations who haven't adopted radical Islam."

"And yet the four main targets of radical Islam are the United States, Israel, France, England," I spoke from my seat. "And the current targets of the so-called Wolf? Washington, Tel Aviv, Paris, London."