Fazani was still looking quizzically at Hijazi, still trying to figure out what his game was, but he nodded as he turned to Zuwayy. “Let’s do this, Jadallah,” he said. “Once we have our people in Egypt and get our cut of the oil revenues, then we can set about destroying Salaam and taking over. We’ll put our spies in place all over Egypt, and we’ll keep an eye on every move her military forces make. We’ll play her game for a while, let her think she’s won—and then, when she’s gotten a little fatter off the oil money, we’ll stomp her once and for all.”

Zuwayy still didn’t look pleased. He looked warily at both Hijazi and Fazani. “I will not wait long for all this to happen,” he said. “A month or two, no more. We get our concessions from Egypt, and then we move in—and Salaam dies, this time for good.”

ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT
 THE NEXT NIGHT

At Amina Shafik’s urging, Susan left the balcony of her Alexandria home late at night, got undressed, showered, then stood in the steamy bathroom for several minutes, staring at the hazy reflection in the mirror. She had plenty of questions for that person in the mirror, but no answers were forthcoming.

Her eyes roamed over her wet, naked body, pausing on the still-unhealed scars from the blast that took her husband’s life. Her breasts were spared, but the blast had chewed and scorched large segments of her left shoulder, arm, and hand—a few more feet closer, the doctors said, and the blast would’ve taken her arm. Her left eye was still intact and would require several more surgeries to get any vision at all, but the doctors warned that if the vision in her right eye started to get worse, they would have to enucleate the left eye to keep it from sympathetically damaging the right.

She was lucky to be alive, she thought. Somebody up there still likes me. It also meant that if she was still alive, her mission here on Earth was still not yet finished. But what was her mission? Was it to avenge her husband—or was it something else? It was too late, and she was too tired, to think about it any more.

Susan shook her head at the sad, scarred reflection in the mirror, mercifully shut off the bathroom light, and stepped into...

... a dark figure standing directly in front of her.

“Major! Ilha’uni!” she shouted. She swung with her right fist, but her blow was effortlessly turned away.

Behind the figure, the bedroom door burst open. Amina Shafik, crouching low behind the doorjamb with her side arm pointed inside, shouted, “Wa’if! Yiden ala tul! Imshi! Stop! Hands up! Move away!” But Susan felt a crackling of electricity, like stiff cellophane being crunched inside her skull, and Shafik collapsed to the floor.