Then the screech and crunch of crumpling metal, the explosion of bursting glass, the compression of her chest by the seat belt as the car came to a stop, the crying of Ruthie from the back seat—all invaded that peace, and reality crashed back in.

“That worked well,” said Nemo, sounding completely unfazed.

The pursuing black car had veered off the road at the last moment, crashing into a tree at about fifty miles an hour. Nemo had steered the Mini right past Fritz and Franz and stopped a short way up the lane. Now he backed up until they were even with the remains of the other car. The front right side was crumpled against a tree and the driver slumped through the side window. He wore no seat belt and so had been bludgeoned badly by the airbag. Patton wasn’t sure if he was alive or not. The passenger, who had been smart enough to wear his seat belt, lay against the deflated airbag, moaning softly.

“You stay here,” said Nemo toward the back seat, not that Ruthie seemed to need any convincing. “Patton, you come with me.”

Nemo grabbed his backpack out of the trunk and strode quickly toward the wrecked car.

“You want to tell me why you did that?” said Patton. “You could have gotten us all killed.”

“Not a chance,” said Nemo. “These guys had orders to protect the Enigma message at all costs. They knew if they collided head-on at high speed with a Mini Cooper, everything in our car would be toast. Sure, we would be collateral damage, but the message would have gone up in flames. So I picked a narrow road with trees on the side so they would have to veer into something nice and solid. Looks like it did the trick on this one.” He held his fingers against the neck of the driver feeling for a pulse.

“Jesus, is this what you always do? Somebody causes you trouble so you kill them? You don’t think maybe there’s a more subtle solution to the problem?”

“Look, I never lied to you. You knew I was a killer when you got on that plane with me. And I guarantee you, if we hadn’t killed him, eventually he would have killed us.”

“Is that the guy who shot at me?” said Patton.

“No, that would be Fritz over there in the passenger seat. Here, secure him, will you?” Nemo pulled out a handful of thick plastic zip ties from his bag and tossed them to Patton. The edges of the plastic digging into her hand took her right back to Kandahar and this time she did feel an attack of anxiety coming on—her stomach knotted, her vision blurred, and she felt dizzy as she gripped the strips of plastic.