“Your usual magic. Didn’t you once tell me there wasn’t a lock on the planet you couldn’t open?”

“This thing’s probably three hundred years old. What do I look like? Some kind of lock historian?

“So laser-cut keys, computer encryption, thumbprint activation—all a piece of cake to you. But this bucket of rust has stopped you dead.”

She shrugged. “Maybe we should just knock?”

Smith scowled and jerked a finger toward the mouth of the alley. Randi retraced their steps and peeked around the corner, giving him a thumbs-up, but with an urgency that suggested faster would be better than slower.

Smith grabbed a pipe running down the wall and began going up it hand-over-hand, keeping his eye on the rusty straps holding it to the stone. A few pulled out as he passed, but it held long enough to get him to the roof. He crept across it until he was at the inside edge, looking down onto three interconnected courtyards two stories below.

There was a passage below him protected only by a meter-high railing and he swung off the roof, landing on an elaborately tiled floor and nearly falling over the back of a sofa that made up one side of a conversation nook.

He pulled the pistol from his waistband and listened to something that sounded like pans banging downstairs. Beyond that, though, the massive riad-style house was silent. His initial urge was to go straight for the noise, but instead he decided to carry out a systematic search from the top down that would hopefully minimize surprises.

The floor he was on turned out to contain little more than three unused bedrooms. A winding stone staircase took him to the ground floor and he moved in the opposite direction of the noise through interior courtyards dominated by orange-tree-shaded fountains and a lap pool.

Hinges were all well oiled and he carefully opened every door, finding dens, bathrooms, storage areas, and two bedrooms that looked a bit more lived-in. The last door turned out to be the most interesting. Closed, it looked like all the others. When opened, though, it revealed not a room but another door—thick steel and with a high-tech lock that would be more to Randi’s liking.

He backtracked to the entry and eased the front entrance open. Randi immediately slipped inside and he signaled toward the kitchen. A Glock appeared from her chador and she took point, stopping in the archway at the end of the hall. Smith moved up behind her and saw a young woman arranging food on a silver tray. Lunch. But for whom?

The Glock disappeared again, replaced by a roll of duct tape. It was another reason she loved that particular disguise—the hardware and weapons store she could carry with no one the wiser.