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went into with this one," the team's most experienced operative noted. "The last two he approached got far less from him than this Philip Mercer."
    "True," the leader said. "However, neither of those engineers had Mercer's reputation. I read through his dossier from Archive. His academic and field qualifications are impeccable, and he has a substantial resume with American covert activities, first during the Gulf War and later during the Hawaii crisis and last year when the Acer all along, but had to try the other two first because he was unavailable."
    "What should we do?" the woman asked. "It's obvious Dr. Mercer isn't interested. Do we wait and see who is next on Hyde's list?"
    "I don't think so," Ibriham replied. "We need to take the initiative now. We've burned nearly a quarter of our budget already, and the operation hasn't really started yet. We need to get more actively involved. Without results, we may soon be recalled. And this mission's too important to let that happen."
    Already he had a plan in his mind.
    "I believe Philip Mercer's the man we want. Hyde failed to recruit him through normal means, so it's up to us to get him with other, harsher tactics. We need to get leverage on this man, something to force him to Eritrea. Not only as Hyde's agent, but ours as well. From the dossier, I know he has no living family, but we have to find a weakness we can exploit, some vulnerability. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that is off-limits. This takes our highest priority. Mercer must be in Eritrea within two weeks."
    "So you're saying our operational perimeters are wide open?"
    "Yes. Use any means necessary to compel him into accepting Hyde's offer. We know that bribery won't work--he is too wealthy--but there's something out there that will coerce him. I need you to find it. And use it. Any more questions?" Ibriham received nothing but accepting looks. "Good. Get to work. I'll stay on Archive, but I doubt I'll turn up anything more."
    Ibriham dismissed the others and headed into their command room, closing the door behind him. He booted up the main computer terminal and logged on to the Internet, using the World Wide Web as a conduit to the secure Archive database. While his eyes were on the monitor, his mind was elsewhere.
    Born into a family who had resided just outside the walls of Jerusalem for the past nine hundred years, he was no stranger to either tradition or sacrifice. In his youth, many of Ibriham's friends had been Christians and Muslims, but his family was part of a small handful of Palestinian Jews who'd lived for generations in the Holy Land. For centuries that distinction made little difference. But then strife came. Since Israel's creation, first Ibriham's neighborhood and later his family had been shattered by divided loyalties, torn between clan and God. He, too, faced the personal dilemma. On one side was the fiery Palestinian in him, raging to see his people free from outsiders for the first time since Saladin's conquest five hundred years earlier. On the other was the desire for a homeland for his displaced fellow Jews, a place where once and for all they would no longer fear pogroms and anti-Semitism.
    Much like Americans during their Civil War, his family was ripped asunder. One of Ibriham's uncles had been shot and killed by another during the Infitata, the Palestinian uprising that swept the West Bank and Gaza during the 1980s.
    Ibriham had tried to stay out of it, but he, too, was swept into the violence. It happened after the murder of a favorite cousin, a young woman of promise who was slain by Israeli security forces for being at the wrong place at the wrong time following a PLO demonstration in 1989. Ibriham changed that day. He took up arms and began a new life of violence. Putting aside the morals that had shaped his youth, Ibriham deliberately became that which all abhorred. He became a terrorist, one druitwill make believers out of everyone. Even if he is friends with Henna, do