Until they reached Langley. This was not over, no way, not for any of them. It was a major screwup, and it was going to take a lot of time to fix it. If that was even possible. The White House had started asking its damn questions at just the wrong time.

“Are they in the air yet?”

“They’re being signed out of the hoosegow as we speak. The Frenchies don’t like people getting into their secure areas, especially not us.”

“Sam, you’re gonna hate me for this. But you gotta find a way to keep my people in country. I need them urgently, right now.”

He shook his head. “It’s over. So over.”

“Call in favors. Do anything.”

“Nothin’ I can do. They’re toast.”

“Then I need an immediate appointment with the ambassador.”

Sam blinked. “You’re kidding. You’d bring the politicos in on something like this? A jerk like you couldn’t possibly have a congressional sugar daddy.”

Paul tried using what he hoped might be a trump card. “It’s terrorism, Sam. I’m in the middle of a heavy operation that involves France only because we happened to follow an international terrorist onto French soil. If we lose this woman, innocent people are gonna die.”

Sam picked up the phone. “You don’t need the ambassador.” He spoke in rapid-fire French. Paul couldn’t follow it precisely, but he could tell that he was going up the ladder to somebody very senior somewhere, and this senior individual was being asked for urgent and immediate intervention.

Sam hung up. “The chief of the Division of Internal Security of the Sûreté will see us in ten minutes.”

This time they had an embassy Citroën with a driver, so it was a lot easier to get around. “You’re out there in the middle of nowhere without any support staff, the three of you,” Sam said.“Bound to be a problem, an operation that’s being run that far outside of guidelines, that thinly staffed.”

“We’re effective. That’s the bottom line.”

“I don’t want to intrude, Paul. But I gotta tell you, you look like hell. In fact, I’d give road kill a better rating. Whatever it is you’re doing that you’re so effective at, it’s taking you apart.”

He and Sam had learned to strangle people with piano wire and plant microphones under the skin of pet cats together. They’d been in Cambodia together, where none of their training applied and nothing they did worked. They had fought the silent war together when it really was a war.

“It’s just another shitty op, my friend. You look great, by the by. Tennised, golfed, and swum.”

“Also pokered every Tuesday night with the Brits. It’s a good life here, as long as you don’t get yourself in the kind of trouble your two goons are in.”