11:55 p.m. Arabian Standard Time (4:55 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

The Embassy of the United States in Iraq (aka the Republican Palace)

The International Zone (aka the Green Zone)

Karkh District

Baghdad, Iraq

“It’s a very strange thing.”

Luke shook his head. “I know it.”

He was sitting across the plywood conference table from Trudy Wellington and Mark Swann. In the center of the table was a black plastic octopus that up until a few moments ago had been speaking as though it was Don Morris. It was a speakerphone, and Don had patched through on a call from the United States.

The meeting had just broken up. Ed Newsam had been here, but after the meeting was over, he had left in a huff. He and Luke had been in combat together twice now, had completed two successful missions, and were still no closer to friends. Big Daddy Cronin and his British alter-ego, Montgomery, had been here as well, but they had slid away to whisper together about possibilities.

That left Luke leaning back in an old wooden office chair, picking the brains of the young intelligence agents still in the room with him.

The corrugated hut at the desert camp had been full of clothes. Not just clothes, but Western-style clothes—the type of clothes that young people would wear in rich Western democracies. European fashions, American jeans and T-shirt ensembles, leather jackets and boots, sunglasses and jewelry. The jewelry might be very convincing costume jewelry, or it might be the real thing—it was all being investigated, and Luke hadn’t heard anything about it yet. Knowing Iraq, and from what he had seen this morning, he guessed the jewelry was real gold, real diamonds.

There had also been laptop computers in the hut, along with cell phones, MP3 players, video cameras, and personal digital assistants. There were stacks of maps—in particular maps of downtowns and nightclub districts in places like New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and London, along with a host of more minor cities like Geneva, Bruges, Liverpool, Dublin, and Prague.

“It’s not that strange,” Swann said.

“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” Luke said. “What is it?”

Swann shrugged. “It’s infiltration. Like I’ve been saying all along. The one laptop I got a chance to look at was loaded with language software. French, Dutch, German, English. From beginner to level five conversational proficiency. Like Don and Big Daddy said, when the second team went down below, one of the rooms still intact in the bunker was set up as a classroom. They were training people to assimilate. They were going to, or already have, sent people to Europe and the United States, pretending to be exchange students, native speakers, world travelers, whatever you like.”

Luke believed that was true. “I think that part is obvious on its face. But what about the codes?”