The situation outside was only slightly less dire. Looking around him, Middleton was reminded of the puzzles Charley had loved when she was a little girl: drawings where everything was slightly off, where you could look and look and still not see the man wearing the shoe on his ear or the bicycle wheel that was really a button. Bodies lay scattered across the courtyard, several of them burning, one missing its head, another an arm. The Niva was engulfed in flames. Shards of glass and other debris from the villa littered the ground. The tall iron gate at the courtyard’s entrance had been blown off its hinges.

An ordinary explosive device couldn’t have caused this much destruction, Middleton knew, his brain slowly beginning to function once again now that he was out of immediate danger. No, this much damage had to be the result of a thermobaric bomb.

As he picked his way through the debris, heading for the gate, Middleton listened for the sounds of approaching emergency vehicles. It was only a matter of time before the fire department arrived and he didn’t want to be there to welcome them. But, strangely, he didn’t hear any sirens.

In fact, he suddenly realized, he couldn’t hear anything. Not the roar of the inferno. Not the howls of pain from the guard by the gate with the metal rod stuck in his thigh. The explosion had numbed his eardrums.

Fighting back a wave of panic, trying to focus on anything besides the fact that he was stone deaf, Middleton forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.

“Wait here,” Jana told the driver as they pulled to a stop outside the front door of the hotel.

The man reached for the key, but Jana stopped him. “Keep it running,” she said, opening the door for herself, swinging her black leather boots out onto the curb. “I won’t be long.”

It was not quite six o’clock when she stepped into the Hotel Queen Elizabeth. Her timing, if not perfect, was propitious. Half an hour later and she would have had to contend with a doorman and a bellhop, but at this early hour there was just a lone receptionist behind the front desk.

“May I help you?” the man asked, glancing up from his computer screen as Jana made her way across the small but elegant lobby. He used the formal vous to address her, but the tone of his voice was pure contempt.

Jana knew exactly what he was thinking: What is this Arab whore doing in my hotel? He was about to find out.

“Give me the key to Charlotte Rosewald’s room,” Jana demanded, approaching the front desk.

The receptionist raised a single black eyebrow. “Would Madame also like the combination to the safe?” he asked, with caustic sarcasm.