Think of it as an audition, Amos had said. Pull this off cleanly and Special Ops is yours. But as Uzi Navot raced toward Zurich through the fading afternoon light, personal promotion was the last thing on his mind. It was Sarah he wanted—and he wanted her in one piece.

BUT SARAH, lost in a fog of narcotics, was unaware of the events swirling around her. Indeed she had no conception of even the state of her own body. She did not know she was reclining in an aft-facing chair of an eastbound Falcon 2000, operated by Meridian Executive Air Services of Caracas, wholly owned by AAB Holdings of Riyadh, Geneva, and points in between. She did not know that her hands were cuffed and her ankles shackled. Or that a crimson welt had arisen on her right cheek, compliments of Wazir bin Talal. Or that seated opposite her, separated by a small polished table, Jean-Michel was leafing through a bit of Dutch pornography and sipping a single-malt scotch he’d picked up duty-free at the Saint Maarten airport.

Sarah was aware only of her dreams. She had a vague sense the images playing out for her were not real, yet she was powerless to seize control of them. She heard a telephone ring and when she picked up the receiver she heard the voice of Ben, but instead of hurtling toward the South Tower of the World Trade Center he had landed safely in Los Angeles and was bound for his meeting. She entered a stately town house in Georgetown and was greeted not by Adrian Carter but by Zizi al-Bakari. Next she was in a shabby English country house, occupied not by Gabriel and his team but by a cell of Saudi terrorists plotting their next strike. More images followed, one upon the next. A beautiful yacht slicing through a sea of blood. A gallery in London hung with portraits of the dead. And finally an art restorer with ashen temples and emerald eyes, standing before a portrait of a woman handcuffed to a dressing table. The restorer was Gabriel, and the woman in the portrait was Sarah. The image burst into flames, and when the flames receded, she saw only the face of Jean-Michel.

“Where are we going?”

“First we’re going to find out who you’re working for,” he said. “And then we’re going to kill you.”

Sarah closed her eyes in pain as a needle plunged into her thigh.

Molten metal. Black water…

31. Kloten, Switzerland

Kloten, Switzerland