At one point, Gamez asked Alex if he knew whether Hilzoy was using or dealing drugs.

“No,” Alex said. “I mean, I didn't know him that well, but I never saw him… saw any sign that he was using drugs. And he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would be dealing them. Can I ask why you're asking?”

Gamez pursed his lips. His cheeks expanded, then he blew out a long, slow breath.

“We found a substantial amount of heroin hidden in Hilzoy's car.”

“Heroin? Are you serious?”

Gamez looked at him. The look said, Do I not look serious?

Alex was trying to process it all. “You think… he was killed because he was dealing drugs?”

“It's possible.”

“Yeah, but… I mean, why wouldn't whoever killed him take the drugs?”

The moment he said it, Alex felt foolish. He was no cop, and he didn't want Gamez to think he was second-guessing him.

But Gamez only shrugged. “Someone searched his apartment. Most likely looking for the dope. The way it was hidden in the vehicle it could have been overlooked. What about enemies? Did Hilzoy have any?”

“I don't think so. Well, he was divorced last year and it sounds like it was a little messy, but I don't know any more than that.”

After another hour of Q &A, Gamez closed his notebook. “I appreciate your cooperation,” he said. “Just one last question, and it's really a favor because it helps us rule things out and saves us time. Would you mind giving us a DNA sample before you go?”

Alex's eyes widened. At some point, Gamez had asked him if he'd ever been in Hilzoy's car or apartment. The answer was no, thank God, and now Alex understood why he'd been asking.

Gamez was looking at him closely again. Alex was suddenly aware that this guy interviewed people, maybe dozens of them, every single day. He had probably been lied to more that morning, and by experts, too, than Alex had been lied to in his life.

Alex shrugged. “No, I don't mind, if it helps. What do you need me to do?”

There was really nothing to it. A consent form, a cotton swab rubbed against the inside of his cheek, and that was that. Gamez walked him back down to the lobby. He handed Alex a card.

“If you think of anything else, please give me a call,” Gamez said. He held out his hand. “And I'm sorry about your client.”

Alex sensed from the gesture and the words that Gamez had pretty much ruled him out. He shook Gamez's hand. “I hope you catch who did it.”

“We'll get him,” Gamez said, and left.

Hilzoy was dealing drugs? At a level where people were murdered over it? Alex couldn't believe it.

Well, Hilzoy was tight for money after the divorce. Maybe it had made him desperate. But how could he be so stupid?

Or maybe he had lost his nerve. Maybe that happened to some people when they got so close to the thing that could make their dreams come true.

Getting into his car, he looked back at the station. With the mirrored windows, it looked as impregnable to understanding as it did to attack.

He thought of the cool way Gamez had said, We'll get him. He should have been comforted by the man's confidence. Instead, there was something chilling about it.

Ben spent three days in Ankara. He wasn't in a hurry, and didn't want to cross a national border until some of the potential heat from Istanbul had evaporated. The hit was all over the television news and in the English-language dailies. The Iranians had been identified as such, but there were no reports of their affiliations beyond nationality. The fifth guy was a total unknown. Ben assumed he'd been operating sterile, carrying no passport or other identifying documents, and if no one claimed him, he would remain, at least to the public, the Turkish equivalent of a John Doe.

He'd checked in immediately with his commander at JSOC, the military's Joint Special Operations Command, an African-American named Scott “Hort” Horton. Horton was a legend in the black ops community, a veteran of countless campaigns both public and secret, a swashbuckler who had ridden on horseback with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fought with the Contras in Nicaragua, and personally led clandestine small-unit hunts for bin Laden in Pakistan's northwest tribal regions, a man of impeccable patriotic credentials who could trace his military ancestry all the way back to the Fourth United States Colored Infantry, which fought with Major General Edward Ord's Union Army of the James at the decisive Battle of Appomattox Court House. Horton was a colonel and Ben only an E-8 master sergeant, but despite the difference in their age, rank, and service, and despite the near reverence Ben felt for the man, Ben addressed him as Hort. Members of the unit called one another by their first names or call signs regardless of rank. There was no saluting, either, or much other regular military behavior. They didn't need it. They were too small, too irregular, and too specialized for the spit-and-polish discipline and hooah spirit that kept the regular army cohesive. And although they wouldn't have said it in so many words, they were also too elite.

Every one of the unit's members had been through the same brutal feeder system: Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, and Delta, or the marine or navy equivalent. A candidate needed a personal recommendation from someone already in the unit before being invited to try out, and at least three confirmed combat kills. Most, like Ben, who had been blooded in Mogadishu, had many more than that. Once selected, candidates were put through MOTC-the CIA's Military Operations Training Course-then subjected to a variety of grueling physical and psychological tests, culminating in something known as “the Final,” which Hort was reputed to have designed himself, in which the candidate was drugged, hooded, flown to a third-world country he had never visited and whose language he didn't speak, and left with no money, passport, or anything else but the clothes on his back. His objective was to carry out a designated clandestine act that would involve a prison term if it were discovered, then return to the United States undetected. Only men who had passed every test, including the Final, were accepted into the unit. There were three areas of specialization: signals intelligence, human intelligence, and the shooters. Everyone had crossover skills, of course, but Ben was primarily a shooter.

Over the years the unit had been known by a variety of names: Foreign Operating Group, Intelligence Support Activity, Centra Spike, Gray Fox, and quite a few others. The frequent name changes were part of JSOC's ongoing efforts to persuade government bean counters that the elite unit was being reformed following inquiries into the latest assassination or other covert op du jour. An ambassador would protest that he hadn't been briefed, someone from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence or the Armed Services Committee would ask what the hell was going on, the Pentagon would tell JSOC it had better behave, JSOC would say sorry and give the unit a new name. Egos would be massaged, faces saved, consciences salved. But the program itself never really changed. Because the truth was, the more restrictions Congress and the brass laid down on “white” special ops units like the Green Berets, the greater the need for “black” units like Ben's. It was a demand-side problem, and thank God there were men who would always find a way to create a supply.

Ben briefed Hort about the way it went down in Istanbul, using a pay phone and a portable scrambler that fit over the mouthpiece of the receiver. He told him about the Russian.

“You sure he was Russian?” Hort asked in his gravelly baritone and cultured coastal drawl.

“Pretty sure,” Ben said. “He had the Slavic cheekbones and pale skin, and that flat expression, if you know what I mean. Plus he was standing there like he was untouchable.”