Ramón shook his head. A dark ring of sweat soaked into his black patch. His voice quivered when he spoke. “They’re gone. The priest is still in his cell.”

Abdullah’s head spun. “I thought I told you to kill them!”

“Yes. I was going to. But considering—”

“This changes everything. The Americans will try to destroy us now.”

“But what about our agreement with them? How can they destroy us with the agreement?”

“The agreement, as you call it, is worthless now. They’ve never known the extent of our operation, you idiot. Now they will.” He hesitated and turned his back. “They will turn on us. It’s their nature.”

Abdullah suddenly slammed his fist on his desk and clenched his teeth against the pain that shot up his arm. Ramón stood still and stared past him. Abdullah closed his eyes and bowed his head into his other hand, gripping his temples. A haze seemed to be drifting over his mind. There now, there now, my friend. Think.

For a moment Abdullah thought he might actually burst out in tears, right there in front of the Hispanic fool. He took a deep breath and cocked his head to the ceiling, keeping his eyes closed.

There, there. He wagged his head, as if to crack it. It is nothing more than a chess match. I’ve made a move and now they have made a move. He ground his teeth.

A CIA agent has penetrated my operation and escaped to tell. The same agent who killed my brother.

Heat flared up his neck again and he shook his head against it, pursing his lips and breathing hard through his nostrils.

It had been a mistake not to kill the man immediately. Maybe the fall had killed them.

“Sir?” He heard the voice, knew it was Ramón’s, but chose to ignore it. He was thinking. There, there. Think.

An image of a thousand marching boys, all under the age of thirteen, suddenly popped to mind. Good Muslim boys on the Iraqi border, chanting a song of worship, dressed in colors. Going to meet Allah. He’d watched the scene through field glasses fifteen years earlier with a lump the size of a boulder lodged in his throat. The mines began erupting like fireworks, pop! pop! and the children’s frail brown bodies began flipping like sprung mousetraps. And the rest walked on, marching into the arms of death. He remembered thinking then that this was the sole fault of the West. The West had armed the Iraqis. The West had spawned infidelity, so that when he saw an example of purity, such as these young boys marching to Allah, he cringed instead of leaping for joy.

So then, think. Ramón was calling him again. “Sir.”