“I privately suspected that two or even three of the people in my office were moles, making sure that we were distracted by false leads. The one woman in whom I had confided this was the first person I saw die, a few minutes after we heard the bombs that were the second phase of the poisoning.

“As I raced down alleys and bumped across playgrounds and parks—none of the regular roads were passable—I was making a list of people I had to talk to that day.

“Because anyone who was not stunned that day was guilty. Ipso facto. And . . . there were so many dead bodies lying around that a few more would not raise any suspicions.”

She was behind me, rubbing my shoulders. “How many, Namir?”

“Eleven that day. I tracked them down one by one, along with seven or eight I looked at and spared.”

“You just shot them in cold blood?”

“No. Bullets would look suspicious. I got them alone and strangled them. Then they looked pretty much like all the other corpses.”

“There were more than those eleven? Other days?”

“Six had flown out that morning, including three from my office. To London, Cairo, and New York. In London and Cairo I used my hands. The ones in New York I did shoot, with a pickup gun I’d had for years. Then tossed it in the Hudson.”

“Like the .357 in the shoe box at home?”

“Yeah, behind the drywall. You are such a snoop.”

“It’s in the job description.” Holding on to my shoulder, she floated around in front of me. “Cold-blooded murder isn’t.”

“My blood was not cold that day. Those days.”

“Do you still think they were guilty?”

“I think now that two, at least, were not. But since we have never been able to pin down the organization responsible, I can’t ever know for sure.”

I closed my eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you, burdened you with it. I’ve never told anyone before.”

“Not even Dustin?”

“No. He knows I’ve done some wet work that was not formally sanctioned. He doesn’t know how many, or the fact that I was on a rampage.”

“I won’t tell him. Or anyone. They killed your mother. And four million others. Including the seventeen they killed using you as an intermediary.”

“That’s about the way I rationalize it. But it is a rationalization. Deep down, I know I’ve committed the one sin that can’t be reversed. Or forgiven.”

“God would forgive you. If there were a God.”

I smiled at her. “Yeah. That’s a problem.”

She held me to her softness for a warm moment, her cheek against mine. “There’s another problem,” she whispered. “We seem to be at the wrong planet.”

“Wrong what?”