63

Marcus had been badly shaken by the events of the previous night.

Rarely did he second-guess himself on an operation. Casualties happened. Nobody liked it. But you dealt with it and moved on. Becoming paralyzed by regret wasn’t part of the warrior’s code. It dulled one’s senses. It slowed one’s reflexes. It could get a man killed.

Still, Yigal Mizrachi was not just the beloved nephew of the prime minister of a key American ally. He was a member of Marcus’s team. It had been Marcus’s responsibility to keep the kid safe, and he had failed. Not that he could see how admitting to being an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency would have saved Yigal’s life.

Marcus had certainly had plenty of time and quiet to think. After his interrogation and Yigal’s summary execution, al-Masri’s men had not taken him back to the freezer. Instead, they had taken him to the Egyptian’s makeshift office and locked him in a latrine. Given the wretched stench, he had been awake much of the night, replaying the event from every possible angle. Still, he had not come up with a way he could have handled things differently. The writings of Solomon echoed in his head. There was a time to be born. And a time to die. Apparently it had just been Yigal’s time.

Now, it seemed, it was his.

Someone ripped open the door of the latrine. Three enormous men grabbed him, dragged him into the office, and forced him to the floor, on his stomach, facedown. Then, with the barrel of an automatic rifle jammed in the small of his back, they removed his manacles, pulled his hands behind his back, and wrapped them together with so much duct tape that he could not move them at all. After this, they wrapped his feet together with duct tape as well. Al-Masri barked an order in Arabic. The man named Zayan pulled a plastic case from his pocket. He proceeded to remove a syringe, then stuck the needle into a small vial of liquid and drew the plunger back. He squirted some of the liquid out of the needle and tapped the syringe several times, presumably to remove any air bubbles.

Wonderful, Marcus thought. The Egyptian plans to put me down—but doesn’t want me to die of an embolism.

There was no way Marcus was going to take this without a fight. He struggled with the men to wrest himself free. Zayan tried to jab him in the neck, yet at the last moment Marcus shifted his position just enough that the needle missed its mark, scraping the edge of his neck. Al-Masri let fly a torrent of what had to be Arabic obscenities, then slammed his boot down on Marcus’s head, preventing him from moving any further. This time Zayan found what he was looking for. He drove the needle into a vein in Marcus’s neck and injected him with some sort of narcotic. Marcus could feel something oozing down his neck. He was not sure if it was blood or some of the agent meant to put him to sleep. Probably both, he figured. He certainly hoped so. That had, after all, been his objective. There was at least a chance now, however slim, that he would be waking up again before they intended him to.

As the men pulled him back to his feet, Marcus felt his body go limp. Whatever they had just given him, it was working faster than he had expected.

“Bring up the cars,” al-Masri ordered. “I’ll be right there.”

Zayan and others dragged Marcus out of the office, and for a moment, the Egyptian was alone. He lit a cigarette, probably the last he would enjoy for a good while. Then he used his lighter to set his pile of dirty clothes—and the hair he had shaved from his head—on fire. It was, of course, a violation of the orders he had given his men. But the fire was small, and he could not afford to leave a trail behind him. The hardest part was watching the flames melt the watch. Yet he consoled himself with the knowledge that the money Kairos was paying him would cover a hundred others to replace it.

He checked his satellite phone but still found no text messages from Kairos. So he stood there for several minutes, staring into the flames. Then, hearing Zayan call for him, he took one last drag on his cigarette, tossed the butt into the flames, and stamped out the fire with his boot, taking special care to crush every ember. Next he finally transmitted the proof-of-life video to the secure email account the aide at Hezbollah’s headquarters had given him.

There was only one more thing to do. He opened the desk drawer, reached inside, and found the mobile phone belonging to his brother Tanzeel. Reinserting the SIM card, he powered up the phone, tossed it back into the drawer, and headed to the courtyard. The “homing beacon” was on. It was now just a matter of time.