Except that Harris hadn’t set him running like a rat in a maze just to find the girl, he thought. That could have been handled through channels by mid-level types. The station chief in Riyadh would have given it to the ambassador, who would have whispered it to King Salim. The king would have denied it, but the message would have been delivered and the Crown Prince would have passed the word down. There would have been a little titillating gossip within the byzantine tangle of the royal family and a few might cluck over Abdul Sa’ad’s wicked ways, but they would keep it in the family and the prince would be forced to give up the girl. He figured Abdul Sa’ad wouldn’t want it to get to the ulama. Not even the king would want to face any criticism from the strict Sunni religious council and if Kelly was still alive, she’d be delivered in due course, after a stern warning from the Company to keep her lid shut on her little Arabian adventure. That was how it should have gone down.

But watching the firelight play on the faces around the campfire, the Scorpion knew that getting the girl wasn’t the mission at all. He should have realized it before, he thought, cursing his own stupidity. “Things are a little dicey in Arabia,” Harris had said. The Scorpion’s thoughts had returned to that sentence time and again, like a popular tune you hear on the radio in the morning and can’t get rid of all day. But if finding the girl wasn’t the mission, what was? “Sometimes, when hunting rabbits, one puts up a lion,” Koenig used to say, rocking on the balls of his feet in the Quonset hut during their paramilitary training at the Farm; what the trainees used to call “the boom-boom course.”

The answer to the riddle was in front of him around the campfire, like a gift-wrapped package waiting to be opened. There was no way to signal Macready, his nominal case officer on this one, because he was already in the red zone and it really didn’t matter anyway. He would have to get closer and find out what they were up to.

“Might as well,” Sergeant Walker used to say as they saddled up for a patrol in Indian country in Quang Tri province, “that’s what they’re paying us for.” But his feet didn’t want to move. He felt safe in the grave, that “fine and private place.” If they spotted him, he didn’t think they’d just pour him a cup of coffee and hand him a bowl of mansuf. Not after what they had done to Chambers.