Kennedy smiled. “Nice choice of stemware.”

“This place is filled with prudes and teetotalers. It’s not like the old days, I’ll tell you that.”

Kennedy held up her mug. “To the old days.”

Wicka raised her mug and clanged it against Kennedy’s. “Although, I suppose in the old days they would have never let us out of the secretarial pool.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, screw the old days.” Wicka pointed toward the fireplace and two waiting chairs. “I saw in the paper today Stu Garret drowned while vacationing in Central America.”

“ Costa Rica,” Kennedy offered.

Wicka took the chair on the right and studied Kennedy for a moment. Finally, she offered, “The man was a real jerk.”

Kennedy pursed her lips while she thought of an appropriate response. She got the sense Wicka might know more than she was letting on. “He had a knack for getting under people’s skin.”

“He sure did.” Wicka took a drink and said, “I hear you’re leaving for Iraq in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Be careful.”

“I always am.”

“I mean extra careful. I don’t trust the Iranians.”

Kennedy brought the mug up to her lips but didn’t take a drink. “I’ve found Ashani to be a pretty reasonable person to deal with.”

“I don’t know him, but he’s not the one I’m worried about. It’s that little Amatullah who scares the heck out of me.” Wicka took a drink of brandy. “Why is it that these wacky dictators are all short?”

“Coincidence.” Kennedy took a sip. “Saddam was over six feet tall.”

“What about Hitler? He couldn’t have been more than five ten.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Chairman Mao.”

“What about Stalin? I don’t think he was short.”

“Well…whatever it is, I don’t trust Amatullah. Just be very careful while you’re over there. Especially after I put on my little performance in New York tomorrow. They are not going to like being embarrassed like that.”

“No, they won’t, but that’s why I’m going over there to offer them the olive branch.”

“Don’t forget that men like Amatullah don’t want peace. They need us as an enemy to stay in power.”

“True, and that’s why I’m the one making the trip and not you. There’s nothing official about this. Not until they agree to keep a leash on Hezbollah.”

“I’m not saying I don’t agree with the plan. I do. I’m saying be careful.”

Kennedy smiled. “I will. So what can I help you with for tomorrow?”

The sun was dropping beyond the horizon as the G-5 descended out of a patch of wispy clouds. The city of Mosul spread out beneath them, the Tigris River slicing along the eastern edge of the metropolitan area of two million. Five main bridges connected the old city to its sprawling suburbs. The city’s roots were steeped in trade. For centuries it had been an extremely ethnically and religiously diverse place. In the late eighties Saddam Hussein put an end to that. He drove out the Jews, the Christians, and most tragically the Kurds.

Saddam replaced them wholesale with Sunni families who had sworn allegiance to him or were from his hometown of Tikrit. The Kurds were forced out of the city and took refuge in the foothills along the Turkish border, where they continued to build a guerrilla force and live in defiance of Saddam. Since the fall of Saddam, the city had been in flux. The CIA had formed a very effective relationship with the Kurds. Whenever things got ugly in Mosul, the CIA would call their Kurdish friends who were garrisoned to the north. They would roll back into the city and slap down whichever faction was causing trouble. The Shia population this far north was nothing like it was in the south, but that didn’t stop Iran from sending in its Badr Brigades to stir up trouble, or al-Qaeda in Iraq from trying to foment violence between the Sunnis and the Kurds.

Rapp looked past the port-side wing and counted the bridges. He couldn’t understand why the damn country just wasn’t split in three. It didn’t even exist in its current state until the aftermath of WWI. For five centuries the Turks, the Kurds, the Persians, and the Safavids had all fought over a piece of land made fertile by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Then the British and the French came along and decided to redraw the map of the Middle East and everything went to hell. Mosul, thanks to the Kurds, however, was showing real stability. So much so that the pilots felt safe enough to take a straight approach over the heart of the city. If it had been Basra or Baghdad they would have corkscrewed their way down onto the strip. Not an enjoyable way to land.

The plane set down gently and proceeded to the CIA’s sector within the base, where the sixty-million-dollar Gulfstream 5 was placed inside a hardened hangar. One by one they filed off the plane and opened the cargo hold. Rapp grabbed his oversized backpack along with two black rectangular cases. He walked to the door of the hangar in time to see two sedans approaching. The first was a Ford Crown Victoria, and the second was a Chevy Caprice Classic. The vehicles were dusty and dented and approaching at a speed that made Rapp a little nervous.

The driver of the first car began waving through the open window. Rapp could barely make out the face of the person on the other side of the tinted windscreen. It was Stan Stilwell, the CIA’s chief of base in Mosul. The car came to an abrupt halt and the door sprang open. In the tradition of T. E. Lawrence, Stilwell had gone native. He was dressed in a loose-fitting pair of black dress pants and a gray and black check-patterned dress shirt. His face was a dark shade of bronze, and his black mustache was so thick it looked as if he’d been growing it since puberty.

“Brother Mitch,” Stilwell announced as he transferred his cigarette from his right to his left hand. “It’s good to see you.”

Rapp took Stilwell’s hand and met him with a half hug. “How the hell have you been, buddy?” Rapp had known Stilwell for more than a decade. A few years his senior, Rapp had been a mentor of sorts for Stilwell on his first overseas assignment.

“I’m great. Things are good here in Kurdistan.”

“I bet. How many girlfriends?”

“A few.” Stilwell smiled, revealing a thin gap between his top front teeth.

“You know one of these days you’re going to end up with a very angry father on your hands, and he’s going to make you choose between castration and the altar.”

“No one’s caught me yet.”

Rapp thought about reminding him of the time he’d had to talk Kennedy out of reprimanding him for one of his unreported dalliances but didn’t want to bring it up in front of Ridley. “Famous last words.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m just saying sooner or later your luck is going to run out.”

Stilwell took a drag from his cigarette. “You’re probably right.”

“Is everything ready to go?”

“Yep. He’s waiting for us back at my place. Give me those bags.” Stilwell looked over Rapp’s shoulder and saw Ridley. “Hey, boss. How you doing?”

“Stiff,” Ridley said in a grumpy voice.

“Good to see you too.” Stilwell picked up Rapp’s two cases and stuffed them in the sedan’s big trunk. “Boss,” he said to Ridley, “why don’t you ride with Mike in the second car? I don’t expect any problems, but there’s no sense in making it easy for them.”

“Stan,” Rapp said as he pointed to Dumond, “meet Marcus.”

“Hey, Marcus, let me take those bags from you.” Stilwell grabbed the first black case and almost dropped it. “Jesus, what in the hell do you have in here?”

“Equipment.”

“No shit.”

Rapp walked to the rear of the car where everyone had congregated. Looking at Stilwell he asked, “Did Rob brief you on everything?”

“Not all the details, but I can see where you’re going.”