“I want to savor every drop of your pain,” Sark continued. “No dying of shock, no quick-and-easy heart attack. Sepsis is my preference for you. It takes longest time, provides most agony. I want to keep you for days. My record is five.” He held up a callused hand, fingers spread, in case Evan needed a visual aid. “But you are strong. This I remember.” Standing seemed to take Sark some effort, his joints arthritic. He tapped the Lexan between them almost fondly, his mouth splitting in a grin, showing those pitted teeth once again. “I am hopeful you will do much better.”

*   *   *

Assim al-Hakeem entered the ballroom, the glare from the windows falling across his shoulders, seemingly adding more weight. He limped toward the provided chair outside the Lexan vault, one shoulder permanently shrugged. He’d suffered nerve damage from all the explosions.

In the summer of 2002, Evan had killed Assim’s twin sister, triggering the car bomb she was transporting to a Fourth of July parade in Virginia Beach. The early detonation had scattered her and her Dodge Neon across Interstate 264.

Sadly, Assim had not been in the passenger seat. He’d been a busy boy that year, sending a natural-gas truck into a synagogue in Tunisia and engineering a bus bombing in Karachi. American-born, he and his sister moved easily between nations, renting themselves out at exorbitantly high rates. Though ostensibly Muslim, they were not ideologues; they were devoted only to their bank balances. It was rumored that they’d even provided services to the CIA in Colombia.

With great relief Assim lowered himself onto the chair. He licked his chapped lips, showing chipped front teeth.

“Hello, Nowhere Man.”

“Assim. You look tired.”

He sighed. “All that traumatic brain injury. It’s like football. After a while you can’t even tell the difference between a hard hit and a concussion. There are lesions in my brain now, they tell me. I don’t have many years left. I’ve got all the money in the world and no time to spend it.” He gave a sheepish laugh, lifted a tremulous finger. “I have one thing to set right before I die. And I am willing to spend every cent I have amassed to that end.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Do you understand what you’ve taken from me?” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his jittering arms making his shoulders wobble. “Do you understand what you do?”

“Yes. I do what you do. But for better reasons.”

“I don’t think so. Ayisha and I, we were pure. We understood our jobs, our motives. We never wrapped ourselves in dogma or morality or became true believers of one stripe or another. We called it what it was.” He looked weary, so weary. His gaze grew loose, unfocused. “She was beautiful.”

“Yes,” Evan said. “She was.”