They would move. They could flee. But the regime would leave no nuclear scientist in peaceful exile; he knew of men in car accidents or sudden terminal illness in Paris and Sydney, perhaps Los Angeles. He tried to seek Will’s help. Will was busy. He set up a meeting, then canceled at the last minute. Finally, he was available. During their one meeting, in Tirana, Albania, on a blasting cold sun of a morning, nothing moved Will’s digit of a face. He made promises; that he did do. But he was, after all they had shared, useless to Hoseyn. It chewed at him. The regime nut still lusted, Will delayed. His wife, finally, properly, as it should have always been, was dead center.

It was her idea to seek out the Sacred Sons. The Pesarah always needed nuclear defectors who could tell of Iranian progress on the bomb and push Washington into an Iranian invasion to topple the regime. Hoseyn countered that they would want him to say the nuclear program was further along than it was. His wife didn’t care what they wanted, she wanted out. And eventually Hoseyn saw it was their only choice.

At first he scoffed at the Pesarah’s idea to stage his death. No one would believe it. That is why, they told him, it is believable. He recalled his early faith in Will’s need for him, and he thought maybe, okay, yes. After the death trick, Hoseyn would leave Iran. His wife argued it would neatly end his relationship with Will. Will would hear of Hoseyn’s death, assume Hoseyn dead, there would be nothing else. Yet he brooded. Would Will be deceived? Wouldn’t the Americans learn he was alive?

At the least, this life after death would be an involuted existence. And that interested him. After studying the photographs of his funeral one night in the suite, he realized the nurse and the orderly wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at them that it was his funeral. His hired caretakers didn’t know of his faked demise. They thought he was a more usual kind of defector, one made ill by regime abuse—poisoning, drug sadism, the reputed enfeeblements.

He was missing from the photographs, wasn’t he? So he left the pictures on display, ordered neatly on the floor. It saved energy, something he still lacked. It had taken too much time to put them down and gather them afterward.