The Messenger

last thing on his mind. It was Sarah he wanted—and he wanted her in one piece.

    B UT S ARAH , lost in a fog of narcotics, was unaware of the events swirling around her. Indeed she had no conception of even the state of her own body. She did not know she was reclining in an aft-facing chair of an eastbound Falcon 2000, operated by Meridian Executive Air Services of Caracas, wholly owned by AAB Holdings of Riyadh, Geneva, and points in between. She did not know that her hands were cuffed and her ankles shackled. Or that a crimson welt had arisen on her right cheek, compliments of Wazir bin Talal. Or that seated opposite her, separated by a small polished table, Jean-Michel was leafing through a bit of Dutch pornography and sipping a single-malt scotch he’d picked up duty-free at the Saint Maarten airport.
    Sarah was aware only of her dreams. She had a vague sense the images playing out for her were not real, yet she was powerless to seize control of them. She heard a telephone ring and when she picked up the receiver she heard the voice of Ben, but instead of hurtling toward the South Tower of the World Trade Center he had landed safely in Los Angeles and was bound for his meeting. She entered a stately town house in Georgetown and was greeted not by Adrian Carter but by Zizi al-Bakari. Next she was in a shabby English country house, occupied not by Gabriel and his team but by a cell of Saudi terrorists plotting their next strike. More images followed, one upon the next. A beautiful yacht slicing through a sea of blood. A gallery in London hung with portraits of the dead. And finally an art restorer with ashen temples and emerald eyes, standing before a portrait of a woman handcuffed to a dressing table. The restorer was Gabriel, and the woman in the portrait was Sarah. The image burst into flames, and when the flames receded, she saw only the face of Jean-Michel.
    “Where are we going?”
    “First we’re going to find out who you’re working for,” he said. “And then we’re going to kill you.”
    Sarah closed her eyes in pain as a needle plunged into her thigh.
    Molten metal. Black water…

31.

Kloten, Switzerland

    T HE H OTEL F LYAWAY AT 19 Marktgasse is a house of convenience rather than luxury. Its façade is flat and drab, its lobby plain and antiseptic. Indeed its only notable attribute is its proximity to Kloten Airport, which is only five minutes away. On that snowy February evening the hotel was the site of a secret gathering, of which management and the local police still know nothing. Two men came from Brussels, another from Rome, and a fourth from London. All four were specialists in physical surveillance. All four checked in under assumed names and with false passports. A fifth man arrived from Paris. He checked in under his own name, which was Moshe. He was not a surveillance specialist but a low-level field courier known as a bodel. His car, an Audi A8, was parked outside in the street. In the trunk was a suitcase filled with guns, radios, night-vision goggles, and balaclava helmets.
    The last man to arrive was known to the girls at the check-in counter, for he was a frequent traveler through Kloten Airport and had spent more nights at the Hotel Flyaway than he cared to remember. “Good evening, Mr. Bridges,” one of the girls said to him as he strode into the lobby. Five minutes later he was upstairs in his room. Within two minutes the rest had joined him. “A plane is about to land at Kloten,” he told them. “There’s going to be a girl on board. And we’re going to make sure she doesn’t die tonight.”

    S ARAH WOKE a second time. She opened her eyes just long enough to take a mental snapshot of her surroundings, then closed them before Jean-Michel could stab her in the leg again with another loaded syringe. They were descending now and being buffeted by heavy turbulence. Her head had fallen sideways, and with each lurch of the aircraft her throbbing temple banged against the cabin wall. Her fingers were numb from the pressure of the handcuffs, and the soles of her feet felt as though they were being jabbed by a thousand needles. Jean-Michel was still reclining in the seat across from her. His eyes were closed, and his fingers interlaced over his genitals.
    She opened her eyes a second time. Her vision was hazy and unclear, as if she were enveloped in a black fog. She lifted her hands to her face and felt fabric. A hood, she thought. Then she looked down at her own body and