The message was from his dear friend Rita Chadwick, the black sheep of a very old and very wealthy publishing family.

Ahmet looked up from his flip cell phone at the action all around him. Night had come to the oldest place in Geneva. Legend had it that Romans had first built this place and that it had been an open air market for cattle trading.

He sat at an outdoor café in the ancient square, nursing a cup of coffee. The night was cool, and the lights of the town, combined with the splashing of the medieval fountains and the cooing of the rich young lovers, made for a lovely setting. He was alone, just as he liked it.

His tiny flat was a few blocks from here, along the narrow cobblestone streets of the Old Town. It befit the son of a banker that he lived in one of the most expensive neighborhoods, in one of the most expensive cities on the planet.

His name was not Ahmet, although during the past year of living here, he had nearly forgotten that. He was not from Turkey, nor was he the son of a banker, or anything remotely like that. He was not twenty-one years old, as his friends believed. He was twenty-five, and his youthful good looks, his high degree of physical fitness (but not muscularity, no—muscularity was threatening, and Ahmet was anything but a threat) combined with fantastically subtle cosmetic surgery, gave him the impression of being a younger man.

Also, his friends were not his friends. He had no friends here. Or, more accurately, there were people here who thought of him as a friend. They were his friends, but he was not their friend. To Ahmet, friends were a means to an end, a form of currency. They were also a tool of war.

He was here for work, and for no other reason. But he was a convincing actor, and the people around him believed he was a rich young Turk, just hanging out here in Geneva, killing time and partying with the adult children of the global elite.

No. That wasn’t him.

He had been placed here when it became known, about a year ago, that the daughter of the President of the United States would attend one year of school at the Institut Le Rosey, just twenty miles outside the city.

His job was to accomplish the impossible. He was somehow to meet the girl, Elizabeth Barrett, and despite the layers of security around her, he was to charm her, seduce her, and lure her off the campus and away from her security detail. That was his entire job—others would do the rest.