The men were about fifty yards in front of him, near the lake, and they turned toward him. They seemed surprised to see him too. He had a choice now. Continue on, challenge their guns, or turn and run, which would perhaps mean challenging their ability with their guns. He wished he had carried a pistol, but his handlers insisted that he not do so. To be caught with an illegal weapon would have made things worse.

He made a choice. He continued forward. The men stared at him. Nagib moved at a quick pace.

He came within twenty feet. One of them broke into a grin and raised a hand in greeting. Then Nagib could see what they were doing. They had a bag of duck decoys that they were about to set onto the lake. They were hunters. Or they looked like hunters. Guns made Nagib nervous, especially when he didn’t have one.

Nagib approached.

One of the men raised a hand in a friendly wave. “G’morning!” he called.

Nagib nodded. “Morning,” he answered. He hoped his accent didn’t betray him.

“Where you off to?” asked the second man.

Nagib made a funny motion with his head, pointing to where the woods picked up again on the other side of the lake.

“Yeah, well, enjoy your jog,” said the first hunter.

Nagib nodded in accord. He kept going. He jogged several paces and wondered whether he was going to get shot in the back. He looked over his shoulder. The two men weren’t even watching him. One of them said something to the other, probably a joke at Nagib’s expense, and they both glanced back at him and laughed. They saw him looking. They gave him a friendly wave as if he were a nutcase to be indulged. Then they returned to setting out their string of decoys.

Okay, Nagib said to himself, go ahead and kill the little birds. That’s good. I have larger prey myself. He kept jogging.

A pair of blue ribbons tied to tree trunks marked his entry point to the far woods. He traveled a path, found three more blue ribbons. The last one was a hundred feet before a chain-link fence that ran through a thick area of trees. Forewarned, Nagib spotted the trip wire at the base of the fence that might have alerted the US Border Patrol. He stepped carefully over it and climbed the ten-foot fence.

It was an easy climb, up and over the top. He spotted the trip wire on the American side and was careful to avoid it when he jumped back to the ground. The snow was brittle but cushioned his landing. A big man, he couldn’t avoid hitting the ground hard.

Hurry, hurry.

He glanced at his watch again. He was right on time, but this part had to be executed with speed and care. The Americans were paranoid about their borders these days. He knew they had teams patrolling the woods, sometimes on snowmobiles, often in pairs, and frequently with rifles. The last thing he needed was a chance encounter.

He accelerated his pace. He looked again at his watch: 5:18. The trees were still thick. He continued to find the ribbons that had been left as markers for him by teams of Islamic moles within Canada and the United States.

The sky brightened. He approached a clearing. In the distance, he could hear some of those snowmobiles. He froze for a second and listened to the wind. He had a sense that he was near the final clearing.

He made a move toward it: a final zigzag route of a hundred meters weaving around trees, following a path that might have been imperceptible to anyone else.

He came to the clearing. Down a slope below him, about fifty feet away, was the same highway from which he had been dropped off, except this part was on the American side and had gone past the immigration station.

He looked at his watch. It was time again. Five twenty-three.

He looked to his left. An old Ford station wagon approached in the Canada-bound lane, its lights on, a freezing mist still falling. That was the type of vehicle he had been told to expect. Nagib stepped from the trees and waved.

The driver cut his lights for a moment, then put them back on. That was the all clear. Then he cut them a second time, flashed twice, and accelerated.

Nagib hurried down the embankment. Across the highway the Ford slowed, eased into the slow lane, then left the road. It drove down into the deep furrow between the northbound and southbound roadways and executed a U-turn, coming up onto the southbound side.

It slowed to a stop where Nagib stood by the side of the road. He was shivering but smiling from behind his growth of rough beard. Inside the old car the driver leaned over and unlocked the door on the passenger side. Nagib opened the door and got in. The interior smelled of sweat, stale tobacco smoke, and car deodorizer.

The driver checked his rearview mirror and hit the gas. There was no suggestion of any complication.

They spoke Arabic. “Have any trouble?” the driver asked after a minute. Nagib recognized the accent as Egyptian.

“None,” Nagib answered.

Another minute passed. The car moved as quickly as the icy highway would allow. “Good,” he finally said. A few miles later, he added. “We’re going to Brooklyn, New York, first. You’ll get a weapon, some money, and some clothes. Do you know your assignment yet?”

“I know what I’m supposed to do,” Nagib said. “I don’t know who or where.”

The driver grinned slightly. “You’ll be instructed on that too,” he said. He flipped a pack of Marlboros to his passenger. “There’s food in a bag on the seat behind you. We’ll be driving for seven hours. Be comfortable.”

Nagib nodded. He grabbed a gas station sandwich from the seat behind him and a carton of juice. For much of the rest of the ride, no one spoke. A million thoughts passed through Nagib’s head as they traveled, but most he thought of his wife and two young children who were back in the Middle East. In Damascus. That was all part of this assignment and part of the irony. If Nagib completed his assignment, it would be his last. He would be paid a lot of money in cash. His handlers would whisk him out of America quickly and relocate him to London. After a year, when the coast was clear, his family would be smuggled into Great Britain to join him.

It all made sense.

For half of the ride, Nagib slept. He had come a long way on a special assignment and was very much on schedule.

Eight seventeen the same morning.

Alex’s cell phone was yakking at her.

She was in the cold parking structure that led to her office at FinCEN; the structure was open, and the cold wind from the Potomac swept through like a Russian scythe. Her cell phone had come obnoxiously alive with a text message.

Her boss, Mike Gamburian, already had a burr in his butt for the morning:

Alex-Come see me right away this a.m. mg

She texted back.

OK

Seventeen minutes later Alex wandered down the corridor toward her boss’s office. Mike’s door was usually half open. Alex could never figure out whether that was a good sign or a bad one, the in-between nature of the door. Was it a metaphor, an omen, or a gravitational quirk in the old building?

Today, however, as she approached it, she was not in the mood to overanalyze.

She arrived at Mike Gamburian’s door and used the toe of her shoe to nudge it open.

Gamburian was at his desk, leaning back.

“Ah,” he said.

“You asked to see me?” she said.

“Yes. I sure did. Come in and sit down,” he said.

“Will I be sorry?”

“Probably,” he said. He was seated in front of his Fenway Park montage that still hung from 2004. Alex settled into the leather chair in front of his desk.

“So? What’s up?” Alex asked.

“Name the most disreputable person you’ve ever met in your life,” he said. “Aside from me, of course, I don’t count.”

“Hard to name just one,” she said. “I’ve been compiling a pretty good list in recent years.”