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loose thread on the zipper of his exercise-suit top.
    “How are we feeling today, Mr. Uday?” she said.
    He kept his attention on the loose thread. “Lost. Always lost.”
    “Can you remember what it was like to be found?”
    The man’s face darkened. “To be found is to be hurt. To be lost is to be safe.”
    “You’re safe here. Are you lost here?”
    He nodded. “Yes. Safe. Lost.”
    Dr. Green jotted a note to herself on the progress worksheet. At least now she could engage him in some dialogue. When he’d first come to her, weeks ago, she’d been unable to get anything out of him. He’d been pushed to the top of the Center’s waiting list after his initial examination and, fortunately for him, an opening came quickly.
    “How long have you been lost?” she said.
    Uday pulled at his lip and stared over her shoulder at the wall and her diplomas there. “Not as long as I was found.”
    “How long were you found?”
    He dropped both hands into his lap. The fingers knotted together, writhing like snakes.
    “Many weeks,” he said. “Many, many weeks.”
    “Yes,” she said. “I know. Do you know who I am?”
    “You’re not the One. My wife told me.”
    “The One?”
    “No more screaming. No more . . . with the wires. No more. You’re not the One. I know the One. For me was the screaming, many times when he brought us to work, he brought screaming for us.”
    “Who brought screaming for you?”
    “Saddam brought it for us. We were lost and then we were found. Then we were the screaming while others watched.” He fell silent and studied his hands in his lap.
    Dr. Green measured him with eyes used to calculating the human toll of disclosure. Saddam. She’d dealt with the handiwork of the Saddam regime before. She quietly flipped through the notes section of Uday’s folder. According to his wife, who’d brought him to the center, he’d been a government bureaucrat high in the favor of Saddam Hussein. He’d been close to Saddam’s son-in-law. After the son-in-law defected and then returned, there was a purging of all those close to him. Uday had been one of those tortured to madness. He’d languished in a prison cell till his wife had been able to bribe his jailers and buy him out. They’d escaped to the west, to America, to the Center where his mind and body could be repaired.
    So he was safe here, as safe as he could be.
    “Saddam,” the broken man said. He closed his eyes and began to hum tonelessly as he rocked back and forth in his seat. “Saddam.”

DOMINANCE RAIN HEADQUARTERS, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
    Michael Callan, a senior consultant with Kroner-O’Hanrahan, one of the country’s most prestigious international security firms, sat on Ray Dalton’s office sofa and forked Caesar salad out of a Styrofoam to-go box. Ray sat across the low coffee table from him in an armchair and munched on a roast beef and Swiss sandwich. Their favorite place for lunch was too crowded for a quiet talk, so they’d opted for a takeout meal in the privacy of Ray’s office.
    Callan wiped his mouth on a napkin and said, “Who were the hitters?”
    “The Twins,” Ray said. He set his sandwich down on the table and picked up the remote control for the VCR and television unit mounted in his wall. He rewound the tape of the hit in Minneapolis to a close-up of the two beautiful women on the moped.
    “Top-shelf,” Callan said. “They still in Amsterdam?”
    “That’s where they are. Marie Garvais and Isabelle Andouille, the only all-woman crew working in the business of taking out heavily protected targets, with a stellar record of success for a wide variety of clients. Everybody from the narco cartels to a sampling of European government agencies. Even, once or twice, for us.”
    “That’s very much off the record, I suppose.”
    “You probably have it somewhere in those expensive computers you maintain in Tyson’s Corner.”
    Callan grinned, a smear of salad dressing on his upper lip. “You got that