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Marcus knew he needed to move quickly.

He proceeded to punch in one of the set of numbers Langley had given him. As expected, the call went straight to voice mail. Marcus recited his personal, onetime authorization code, then spoke briefly and quietly. Keeping his eye on the second hand of the clock on the wall, he made sure he stayed on the line long enough for a trace to be executed. At precisely ninety seconds, he hung up, then wiped down the receiver with a tissue he pulled from a box on the desk and tossed the tissue into a trash basket.

It was now 11:19 p.m. Marcus moved to the door and strained once again for any evidence that someone was coming. He heard none. No shoes coming down the freshly mopped hallway. No keys jangling. No hushed voices. No squawking portable radios. Marcus could almost hear his SERE training officer telling him to double-time it back to the bunkroom. He had taken all the risks he needed to for one night. It was time to wait for the cavalry to arrive. But Marcus had never been one to play it safe. So he decided to explore a little.

Not sure exactly what he was looking for, though a mobile phone would be handy—not to mention a Glock 9mm—Marcus began with the file cabinets. Most of what he found was of no value to him. Personnel files. Financial ledgers. Folders filled with receipts of various kinds. Datebooks filled with apparent scheduling notes. Almost nothing was in English. He shifted to the desk drawers. Here, too, he found little of value. More files. Office supplies. Snack foods he had no interest in trying. And a tangle of wires related to phone chargers, laptops, and other electronic devices. But no phone.

In the bottom of one drawer, however, he hit pay dirt—a metal box with a small steel padlock on it. This looked promising, so Marcus rooted around in the nearby drawers for a key. Finding none, he settled for a paper clip. He unbent it, then snapped it in half. Taking one L-shaped piece in each hand, he inserted them in the key slot on the underside of the padlock and began jiggling them both, applying pressure in a clockwise direction. A moment later, the lock clicked open.

He opened the box and found five stacks of crisp 1,000-pound Lebanese notes in their distinctive teal color with the sketch of a cedar tree on each side. Each stack was bound by a rubber band. In addition, there was a handful of loose bills, plus some change. Marcus made a quick count. In each stack there were two hundred 1,000-pound notes. That put the total at over one million Lebanese pounds.

It was not as much as it sounded—worth about seven hundred U.S. dollars—but given that he had nothing, it seemed like a gift from heaven. With this, he could easily buy a burner phone, allowing him to stay connected with Langley as he avoided the forces that al-Masri and the Sheikh had deployed to find him and then linked up with whoever the Agency had sent to rescue him. Or maybe he could use the money to simply hire a cab to take him to the U.S. Embassy or to the Swiss or British Embassies. Maybe that was the best way—the fastest and the simplest route to safety in a city crawling with people bound and determined to kill him.

Marcus stared at the money, hesitating. He needed it, to be sure, but could he really justify taking money from a church? Perhaps. He flashed back to his childhood and all the stories his mother had taught him from the Scriptures. Hadn’t she taught him that God loved him and would always take care of him? Hadn’t she taught him that the Lord in his mercy could provide for his every need? And wasn’t that exactly what was happening now? How else could he explain stumbling on so much cash, right when he needed it most?