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said.

"Levi. Please."

"Levi. Okay. I just—I'm not sure about the kind of people we'd be going
with."

He shrugged. "I've led a sedentary life, Ms. Creed. I am a scholar, a man
of books, of knowledge, of contemplation. But I am willing to undergo whatever
hardships, do whatever it takes, to uncover this secret." He gave the
impression he'd be willing to take his chances with almost anyone, if that
would get him at whatever knowledge lay buried in the eternal snows of Ararat.

She wondered if it were some kind of twisted prejudice of hers, to find his
scholar's zealotry so laudable, and that of Bostitch and his Rehoboam boys so
scary.

He smiled. "Anyway, from what Charlie and Leif said about you, you have a
reputation in certain circles for taking risks and coming back alive. I figure
I'll be all right if I just stick close to you!"

She ate as she studied him. Not much deterred her from eating when she was
hungry. Her lifestyle meant she took in a lot of calories and used them all.

You've been taken in before, she reminded herself. But the rabbi would have to
be a diabolically skillful actor to fake this goofy artlessness, this seeming
fundamental decency. He strikes me as kind, she thought. There's a virtue I
encounter way too infrequently.

She sighed. "I hope I can live up to your expectations, Levi," she
said. "I'll certainly try."

He lit up. "You mean you'll do it?"

"Against my better judgment," she said, "yes."

Chapter 4
    Annja was sitting at a table
with a lot of men in a hotel conference room in Ankara, Turkey.

"You must understand," said the enormously tall, gaunt man with the
eagle's-beak nose and dark circles under his eyes, "that there exist
certain elements within my government who…resent American patronage of Kurdish
separatists." He wore an olive-drab military uniform with a chestful of
colorful ribbons.

The room air-conditioning worked with a nasty subliminal whine. It was a race
whether it would slowly but inexorably give Annja a blinding headache or drive
her mad. It worked though, keeping the temperature to arctic levels despite
unseasonable heat in the streets of the Turkish capital outside, almost three
thousand feet above sea level in the middle of the central massif of the
Anatolian peninsula.

Unfortunately, it also reacted in some insidious way with the smoke generated
by their host's harsh-smelling Turkish cigarette to produce about the same
reaction as tear gas in Annja's eyes. The Ankara Sheraton had a strict
no-smoking policy. Apparently being a general of the Turkish army allowed you
to opt out on that. Big surprise there, Annja thought.

"Well, General," Leif Baron said, leaning back in his chair and
tapping a pen on the polished tabletop before him. "You should understand
the Kurds have been our good friends in Iraq. They're the best indigenous
allies we have there. What was that, Mr. Wilfork?"

"Nothing of consequence," said the man he'd addressed the last question
to. He answered in what sounded to Annja like an Australian accent. It had also
sounded as if he'd muttered, "The only ones who don't switch sides or
bloody run away," under his breath at Baron's mention of the Kurds.

He wore a tan tropic-weight suit that fit his bulky frame as if he'd picked it
off the rack, possibly at Goodwill: the suit was taut to near splitting at the
shoulders, straining the buttons over his belly, the fabric bagging and
rumpling at the chest. Despite the room's chill he mopped at his big crimson
face with a scarlet handkerchief. His hair was thinning, combed over the top
and white-tinged with yellow, although Annja had the impression he was only in
his early fifties. She glanced at the equally tall and out-of-shape-looking Charlie
Bostitch, who lounged across the table from the general at Baron's side,
looking smug and at ease.

"Nonetheless, the United States has seen fit to provide assistance to
certain Kurd groups internationally recognized as terrorists," the general
said. "Indeed, the United