He returned to the cockpit, pausing to listen for any sounds from back beyond the storage area. Then he loosened the dashboard cover and searched for a way to cross wire the ignition. The computer that controlled the speedboat’s functions looked as complicated as the ones he worked with in the lab.

Rarely an impatient or easily frustrated man, Kazimi cursed his situation and his limitations. There was a single paddle on the floor. Untying the boat and trying to row it out to sea was a possibility. But the afternoon was giving way to dusk, and the gray, choppy, uninviting ocean was frigid. To make matters worse, the brisk wind was onshore. In all likelihood, if he could even get the heavy inboard boat past its boathouse, it would end up wrecked at the base of the mammoth cliff.

His odds of making it away from Red Cliff, he decided, were considerably better on land. He scrambled off the magnificent craft, carefully stepped around the edge of the boathouse, and jumped to the rocky shoreline. To his left, the cliff face rose almost straight up, like a massive arcade climbing wall. Between its base and the lapping waves were five feet of sand, pebbles, and stones.

The wind and salt air stung Kazimi’s lips as he made his way along the treacherous shoreline, slipping on seaweed-covered rocks. When he fell, he pushed himself up and plunged ahead. When he got hurt, he ignored it. His plan was simply to keep going. Sooner or later he would have to come to a trail that would cut up away from the water. For a few moments he considered trying to scale the cliff wall itself, but for years his exercise had consisted solely of half-hour walks around the streets of D.C. once or twice a day. A climb like this one, challenging for an expert, just wasn’t going to happen.

One foot … the other. Again … Again.

The going was painfully slow, and now he had another concern—another enemy. The width of his treacherous and narrow escape trail was shrinking. The tide was coming in. He estimated he had traveled maybe two hundred yards, perhaps a little more. The trail was now half the width it had been when he started. To his left, the cliff was just as sheer. The wind was noticeably picking up, and the thin outfit he had worn to the lab was not fending off the chill. With every step, the taste of his newfound freedom was becoming more bitter.

It was at that moment, with the late-afternoon shadows moving across the water, that Kazimi thought he saw movement on the rocks well ahead. He tensed, uncertain if the vision was a seabird, a person, or his imagination. If it was one of Bacon’s massive bodyguards, there was nothing he could do except try to escape the way he had come—this time sloshing through deepening water all the way.