Jana’s phone made a sound in Nora’s pocket just as she and Charley stepped into an Apple reseller on the Boulevard Saint Germain. There had been no Apple store under the Louvre pyramid. Planned, but not yet built. Mired in bureaucracy. Old Europe. The Saint Germain place had been recommended by a clerk in an Orange cell phone store. Orange was the old France Telecom and was the exclusive carrier for the new iPhone in France. An iPhone charger was OK for an iPod, but it wouldn’t fit the MacBook Air doohickey. Hence a taxi ride and a short search along a row of chic boutiques.

There were two guys loitering in the corner of the store. Tesla noticed them immediately. She thought: cops. Then Jana’s phone made the sound and she delayed for a crucial second. She saw the cops staring at her, at her face, at her shirt, at her awkward posture.

She said, “Charley?”

“Yes?”

“Run.”

“What?”

“Now.”

The big Boeing flew on, straight and level, thirty-eight thousand feet. Middleton finished his soda and said, “Dams are big things.”

Chernayev said, “Tell me about it. I paid for most of the concrete.”

“Too big to destroy with explosives. The problem has been studied many times, both defensively and offensively.”

“I know. So whatever wild card is in play here is not only wild but also quite possibly stupid.”

“So why worry?”

“The dam will survive. No doubt about that. But we can’t issue the same guarantee about your secretary of state.”

“She dies, there’ll be a world war.”

Chernayev said, “I don’t want that.”

“Just a regional war?”

“First things first, Harry.”

Tesla was hampered by the raging pain in her shoulder, so Charley got out to the street first. Nora turned at the door and flung the first thing that came to hand, which was Jana’s cell phone from her pocket. It caught the leading cop hard under the eye and he spun away and crashed into a glass display case and sent small technical items skittering across the floor. The second cop stumbled and sidestepped and Tesla had a two-yard lead by the time she hit the sidewalk.

Charley had bolted straight through the traffic. Panic, probably, but smart too. Tesla plunged after her through yelping tires and blasting horns. Together they made it across.

They ran.

They had no idea where they were going. They turned randomly left and right in alleys and entrances and barged through knots of people. Every step sent bolts of agony through Nora’s body and every accidental contact with passersby nearly killed her. But adrenaline kept her moving.

Moving, but not fast enough.