“Age betrayed him,” Archer shot at her. “Weakness betrayed him. He had played the game too long.”

“Is that what this is to you?”

“As it was to my father. But he no longer cared enough about winning.”

“You just answered my question,” Tesla said. “This was your plan all along. It was your plan and he refused to go along with it. He changed his mind, so you killed him.”

Archer didn’t bother denying it. “We had come to see the world a different way.”

Security badge dangling from his throat, Middleton was nearing the front of the vast mass of humanity when he glimpsed a man standing off to the side. On first glance, he wouldn’t have paid him any heed at all, except for the fact that his eyes were held closed, as if he were asleep. Or praying. Second glance brought a flash of recognition from the picture Chernayev had shown him:

Umer!

Middleton had barely formed that thought when one of the reporters squeezed into the press rows plowed his way into the aisle, his face a sheen of dripping sweat. Middleton watched him tear the camera strap from his neck and toss it aside, as security personnel moved toward him.

Middleton swung back toward Umer. His eyes had snapped open and his hand was digging into his pocket.

In that moment it all became clear. The fifty soldiers, thermobaric explosives, the discarded camera . . .

Archer’s men were disguised as journalists, the explosives laden into their Nikons, Canons and video cameras.

The equipment would have been remodeled to include a lead shielding rendering the explosives mostly invisible to detection devices. Add to that the fact that thermobarics were so new that their signature may not have been identified and coded yet.

Middleton made his way toward Umer, wishing now he and Chernayev hadn’t separated.

“I’ve got him,” he said softly into a tiny handheld microphone the Russian had provided him. “Front crowd, southeast facing.”

Middleton saw Umer cupping his hands around a tiny oblong detonator and raising them into a position of prayer. He closed his eyes again. He started to go for the Beretta Chernayev had supplied but didn’t dare risk firing. Even a kill shot to the brain could result in a spasm more than sufficient to activate the detonator. Middleton would have to win this battle in close.

A commotion in the press corps drew Archer’s gaze away from his two captives. Harold Middleton was fighting his way down the aisle.

“No,” Archer rasped. And then his voice dissolved into the throaty scream of a spoiled child. “No!”

With that he lashed a blinding whipsaw of a blow to Tesla’s throat that would have crushed her windpipe had she not turned at the last instant. The blow impacted instead against the side, still mashing cartilage and dropping her momentarily breathless to her knees.