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Over his two decades of service in the Mideast—including the Iraq War, followed by the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars—Fahad had not exactly grown used to violence. The truth was that violence had never particularly fazed him. His first assigned killing hadn’t bothered him in the least, and professionals generally considered the first to be the most disturbing.

Fahad al-Qadi got off the plane at JFK and met his driver, Haddad al-Naqbi, at baggage claim. Both men wore black suits, white shirts, dark ties and sunglasses, but the resemblance ended there. The chauffeur wore a cheap, off-the-rack suit and a discount-store white shirt. A fake street-vendor Rolex adorned his wrist. Fahad’s suit, on the other hand, was a Desmond Merrion bespoke custom-tailored for him in Dubai. A white silk D’Avino shirt and a Stefano Ricci tie of sheerest scarlet silk went with it. His Rolex platinum Submariner was studded with diamonds and rubies. Dita Grandmaster designer sunglasses completed the ensemble.

Most professional assassins sought anonymity. Fahad desired it as well. His problem was that as a dark-skinned Muslim male—especially one who had spent much of his life on utterly illegal missions, traveling through airports—he was subject to racial profiling, which could easily lead to search and seizure. Even worse, Interpol had his fingerprints, and he might very well be a suspect in those recent Moscow murders. After all, he’d done them.

Fahad had learned decades ago, however, that when he was expensively dressed, law enforcement officers tended to give him a pass, no doubt on the assumption that professional terrorists wouldn’t dress like billionaire celebrities. Nor did they wish to provoke the ire of a man who appeared to be both wealthy and powerful. Also because of his expensive attire, people seldom looked at his face. They either glanced furtively at his wardrobe and accoutrements or gawked openly at them. They remembered the costly clothes, not the man’s face.

And he liked haute couture.

As for facial anonymity, his ubiquitous sunglasses—combined with an ever-changing variety of haircuts, hair coloring and tinted contact lenses—further reduced the likelihood of facial identification.

The driver, Haddad, led him through the automatic glass doors, and Fahad followed him into the parking lot to the black Lincoln Town Car. He climbed in the backseat, taking his black Gucci shoulder bag with him.

“Is everything arranged?” Fahad asked.

“In the trunk, sir, and at the house.”

“Excellent.”

“Rush hour doesn’t start for another hour, so we should make good time,” the driver said.

Fahad sat back, loosened his tie and pondered his assignment. Over his two decades of service in the Mideast—including the Iraq War, followed by the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars—Fahad had not exactly grown used to violence. The truth was that violence had never particularly fazed him. His first assigned killing hadn’t bothered him in the least, and professionals generally considered the first to be the most disturbing.

This op was different, however. Not only was he to cobble together a crude but powerful Hiroshima-style nuke and set it off in New York City, Putilov and that psycho, Kamal ad-Din, had added an extra, last-minute assignment. He was to take out a wealthy hedge fund manager whom Kamal and Putilov held personally responsible for artificially elevating Middle Eastern grain prices in seasons of drought, thereby precipitating famines in that region. The subsequently skyrocketing food prices had too often inspired people to take to the streets in protest. During the so-called Arab Spring, those protests had exponentiated to the point that Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya were thrown out of office and subsequently died ignominious deaths. Fahad had, at various times, plied his violent trade at the behest of Mubarak and Qaddafi as well, so ordinarily he wouldn’t have minded killing the Wall Street titan out of simple loyalty to former employers who had once filled his personal coffers to overflowing. That fool had fucked with his current employers and caused the deaths of previous employers? That was good enough for Fahad. Fine. He’d be happy to put him down … hard.

But Kamal and Putilov had also involved that harpy from Gehenna, Raza Jabarti, and she even scared Fahad. He’d seen her do things to suspects during interrogations that still gave him the cold sweats, still kept him up nights and would haunt him to his grave. That whore was hell with the hide off. Raza gave a whole new meaning to the words “evil bitch.”

Furthermore, both she and that satan from St. Petersburg, the Russian president Mikhail Ivanovich Putilov, had designed and defined how he was to kill the famine derivative … creep.

And now they were going to make him do something to that poor hedge fund bugger, which made him sick to his soul and scared him half to death—and nothing ever spooked Fahad. Raza and Putilov were paying him $5 million to put the guy through all the tortures of Dante’s Inferno—and then some. Fahad did not know if he actually had the stomach to do it.

He took a deep breath. You can handle it, Fahad said to himself. I know you fucking can. Just get a grip on yourself. You can make this happen.