He saw an envelope on the hardwood floor, as if he were checking out. He padded over to it in his socks, picked it up, seeing nothing on the outside. He opened it, unfolding cheap printer paper stained with poorly reproduced images.

He saw the first one and collapsed on the bed, feeling his world sucked into a black hole.

He flipped through them until he came to a grainy picture of him kissing Christine on the gondola, the most damning thing in the stack. He felt faint.

Chris returned to the photo and thought, Why, why, why? Who would do this? Why did I do this? What was I thinking?

Chris Fulbright was a comfortably happy forty-five-year-old man in charge of a small marketing department for a start-up company developing 3-D printers. Originally fighting tooth and nail for survival, they’d managed to cut a pretty good niche in the market, with foreign buyers wanting their services. Tax breaks in Florida had brought the company there, and he’d followed, believing in the inherent success about to be achieved. He’d worked hard, and had made a name for himself by landing the overseas accounts in Italy.

Now, all of that would mean nothing. He loved his wife. He loved his kids. He truly did . . . and then he’d met Christine, at, of all places, a Staples graphics center.

In a crunch for time, he’d needed to buy unforeseen posters for a launch of a product. His usual supplier had had no ability for a quick turnaround, and, in a panic, having run out of options, he’d walked into a Staples business store near his office. And seen Christine. Or, more correctly, had seen her breasts.

She was a community college dropout, fully fifteen years his junior, but she was vivacious and engaging. More to the point, she was interested in him.

They’d laughed at the similarities of their names, forming a connection that had led to a longer visit than his order took, and he’d then gone on his way, but he’d developed an itch. He’d found himself going back to that store more and more often. Eventually, he’d broached a date. Nothing but drinks, he’d promised. A little small talk, since it was closing time and all.

It had become a weekly habit, and he’d dared think about the next step. As a leader of the youth group in his church, he’d landed this sweet gig of chaperoning three altar boys over to Europe to meet the pope, and he’d hit upon a bold idea. A once-in-a-lifetime vacation for Christine, in a place where nobody knew either of them.

On their sixth “date,” having done nothing but enrich the same bar, he’d broached the trip. Surprising him, she’d agreed. Nothing was said explicitly. There was no overt discussion of payback, but in her acceptance, he knew it was understood.

He had intended to close the deal tonight. Break his marriage vows forever by dropping into the abyss of Christine’s lily-white breasts. Instead, he had a pack of pictures on his lap that would explode his world.

What the fuck had he been thinking?

He looked at the images again, and began focusing more clinically. Who would do this? They had a single competitor for their 3-D services on the European continent: a group out of Germany that had threatened them with all manner of European patent infringements. Because the technology was so new, it was open season, with the patents up for any number of attacks, and Chris had convinced the CEO that they were bluffing. But now it looked like they were playing hardball.

He crumpled the pictures on the bed, thinking of how he could extricate himself from the situation. Clearly, European operations were no longer in the equation. What he needed to do was ensure that the competition was willing to delete his transgressions. Permanently. A note accompanying the pictures gave instructions for a meeting, but nothing as to a demand. He’d have to determine that tonight.

He remembered Christine, but no longer felt any excitement. He only wanted to get her on the first plane back to the United States. At the end of the day, Chris was a married father of two. There was no way some copy girl from Staples could interfere with that.

He sent her a message saying he would have to delay their date tonight, and thought about just breaking up with her in the email, but he knew he couldn’t. She’d have questions, and he’d need to meet in person to answer them. He realized she might not take it well, and was another possible leak. At that thought, he put his head into his hands.

He sat on the bed for the rest of the day, alternately squeezing his fists until his knuckles were white and unabashedly weeping.

50

The connecting door opened to my room, and Jennifer came in, followed by Knuckles. He said, “This is convenient. I figured you’d want a room that connects to the TOC, but I guess we all have our priorities.”

Jennifer elbowed him in the gut, causing a woof of air. He backed up, rubbing his belly, saying, “Touchy, aren’t we?”

She said, “This is serious. No joking around.”

I saw her expression and knew she was about to make trouble. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with. I was analyzing Google Maps, trying to figure out the best observation points to conduct surveillance of the Internet café, the only anchor we had, and I wasn’t happy with the interruption. I preempted her, saying, “You guys finish with the plane? You got everything we need?”

While the Gulfstream was invaluable for infiltrating kit past customs, it was a pain in the ass to get said kit out of the aircraft and into our tactical operations center. A lot of back-and-forth, running “checklists” and doing “maintenance.”

Knuckles said, “Retro’s getting the last of the optics. We’re good to go with weapons and commo. Believe it or not, the front desk helped bring it up.”

Knuckles saw my glare and said, “I know, I know, but those guys won’t take no for an answer. Me and Jennifer were toting damn near a hundred pounds of weaponry in three Gucci luggage bags. If we had waved off, they’d have become suspicious. They didn’t seem to mind. Probably do that shit all the time for the Albanian mafia.”

We were staying at the Sheraton Hotel, a five-star affair snuggled between the city and a giant green space, Tirana’s version of Central Park. The hotel itself was probably the nicest property in the city, and it seemed the management knew it. They acted a little embarrassed to be working there, like the rich guy who brought home a normal date, now apologizing for the manservants and thousand-dollar espresso machines. It was annoying, but this was the only place we could find with high-speed Wi-Fi, and a lack of that was a nonstarter on this mission. Although having the management tote up our weapons was a bit much.

Jennifer said, “Hey, I’ve been going over the data from the Taskforce, and I think I’m on to something. I ran it past Knuckles, and he thinks so too.”

I said, “Unless it involves a French terrorist of Algerian descent, I do not care. Do you realize what we’re up against? The damn guy is using an Internet café right next to the US embassy. Like he’s taunting us. Or planning an attack.”

I stabbed my finger at the laptop screen and said, “He’s using our own security to prevent us from snatching his ass. Maintaining eyes-on of that café is going to be damn near impossible. It’s surrounded by police, all who work for the embassy, which we’re not allowed to coordinate with.”

Knuckles said, “Can’t be that bad. It’s a US embassy. We can get eyes-on from a distance. At least past the blast radius.”

He was referring to a document called the Inman Report, produced after the 1983 bombing of our embassy in Beirut, which mandated certain standards for standoff and blast protection. Standards that grew more urgent after the 1998 bombings in Africa. It stipulated US embassies maintain at least a modicum of defensive capability, with standoff distances from vehicle-borne explosives and even glass construction specifications. Unfortunately, like a lot of quagmire in the US government, the design parameters apparently hadn’t made it to Tirana, Albania.