“Oh, what a nifty idea,” Collins said dryly. “Get a bunch of angry brothers with a blowtorch and some pliers and get medieval on his ass. Now why didn’t we think of that? Wait a minute—we did. Goddammit, Janson, if we could find the son of a bitch, he’d be dead meat, no matter how well protected he is. I’d plug him myself. But we can’t.”

“We’ve tried everything,” said the chairman of the National Intelligence Council. “Tried to lure him, trap him, smoke him out—but no go. He’s become like the man who wasn’t there.”

“Which shouldn’t be a surprise,” Collins said. “Demarest has become a master at playing the reclusive plutocrat, and at this point he’s got greater resources than we have. Plus, any person we bring in represents a risk, another potential blackmail threat: there’s no way we can expand the number of people involved. That operational logic is self-evident. And sacrosanct. Do you see? It’s just us.”

“And you,” said President Berquist. “You’re our best hope.”

“What about people who genuinely oppose ‘Peter Novak,’ the legendary humanitarian? Fact is, he’s not without enemies. Isn’t there some way to mobilize a fanatic, a faction … ?”

“You’re suggesting a pretty underhanded ploy,” Collins said. “I like how you think.”

“This is the place for truth-telling,” the president said to Collins with a warning glance. “Tell him the truth.”

“The truth is, we’ve tried just that.”

“And … ?”

“We’ve basically thrown up our hands, because, as I say, it’s been impossible to locate him. We can’t find him, and the crazy terror king can’t find him, either.”

Janson squinted. “The Caliph! Jesus.”

“You got it in one,” said Collins.

“The man lives for vengeance,” said Janson. “Lives and breathes it. And the fact that his celebrated hostage escaped had to have been a major humiliation to him. A loss of face among his followers. The kind of loss of face that can lead to a loss of power.”

“I could show you a foot-thick analytic report making exactly the same inference,” Collins said. “So far we’re on the same page.”

“But how are you in a position to steer him at all? Every Westerner is satanic, in his book.”

The secretary of state cleared his throat, uneasily.

“We’re opening our kimonos,” the president repeated. “Remember? Nothing that’s said in this room leaves this room.”

“OK,” Derek Collins said. “It’s a delicate business. There’s somebody high up in Libyan military intelligence who … works with us occasionally. Ibrahim Maghur. He’s a bad customer, all right? Officially, we want him dead. He’s known to have been involved in the German disco bombing that killed two American servicemen. Been linked to Lockerbie, too. He’s advised and helped funnel support to all sorts of terrorist organizations.”