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potential avenue to Duberman. But they risked alerting Duberman to what they knew if they went after him.
    “At this point, no. Ice is too thin. I’m just going to go into my office, keep my head down for a couple days. May try to talk to Ian Duffy. Mason’s station chief in Hong Kong. He’s back in D.C. now. Lobbying. Maybe he knows something about how Mason connected with Duberman.”
    The move was a long shot at best, but all they had right now were long shots.
    “So we go our separate ways,” Duto said. “John, in terms of”—Duto made a pistol with his thumb and forefinger—“I know you’ve had difficulties getting hooked up.” Without access to a diplomatic pouch, Wells had trouble getting weapons across borders. “Some places, I still have friends. Russia, for example.”
    Wells wasn’t entirely sure why Duto was working so hard. Getting involved with this mess carried serious risk. Duto wouldn’t bother unless he smelled a bigger payoff.
    Then Wells realized. “You think this is your ticket, don’t you?”
    Duto must have expected the Senate seat would be his last stop. He had won his race as a conservative Democrat, a breed that rarely survived presidential primaries. But now he had a chance at the biggest prize of all. If he could prove that the President’s largest donor was trying to lure the United States into war, he could demand whatever he wanted from the White House. A promotion to Secretary of State or Defense. Done. The President’s endorsement in the next election? Absolutely.
    Duto had used Wells and Shafer before. But never for stakes this high. And Wells had never seen the con so early in the game.
    “La, la, la,”
Wells said. Arabic. No, no, no.
    Duto nodded.
“Nam.”
Yes. “Unless you prefer the alternative.”
    He tapped his wrist. “Come on, you can ride with me to Dulles.”
    “I’ll get there myself.” Wells couldn’t bear sharing a car with this man.
    “As you wish.” Duto walked out.
    Wells and Shafer sat side by side on the edge of the bed.
    “We can’t,” Wells said.
    “Can’t what?”
    “He’s not fit.” Wells wasn’t one hundred percent sure about much, but he was sure that Duto shouldn’t be President. Part of him wanted to flip on the television and watch ESPN for the next eleven days. Let Duto solve this, if he could.
    “You want another war, John? Me neither. Take a minute so you don’t run into him in the elevator. Then go. You have a plane to catch.”
    Wells had nothing left to say. Hewent.

2
    ELEVEN DAYS . . .
    HONG KONG
    T he woman who called herself Salome had spent three hours running countersurveillance, MTR to taxi to Star Ferry and back to MTR, the Hong Kong subway. She reached the pickup spot, an alley behind a run-down Kowloon hotel, just as the gray Sprinter van arrived. She pulled open its cargo doors and stepped inside.
    She was certain that she hadn’t been followed. Wells had no way of knowing where she was. But she was furious with herself for what had happened in Istanbul four days before. She couldn’t afford another mistake.
    Now she squatted inside the van’s cargo compartment, holding a cheap white nylon bag. Gleaming white urinals and dull plastic pipe surrounded her. Anyone who happened to check the van’s license plate would find it was owned by HKMCA Plumbing PLC. The corporation was real enough, one of forty-five hundred subsidiaries of Duberman’s casino company. Thus the Sprinter had every reason to make its way through the tunnel that connected Kowloon and Hong Kong Island and fight through the island’s congested avenues until it reached the narrowroads that led up the side of Victoria Peak. Its destination was Duberman’s $200 million mansion. The house was one of just a handful of private homes on the upper slopes of the Peak, the eighteen-hundred-foot mountain that provided a lush green backdrop to Hong Kong’s skyscrapers.
    After fifty minutes, the van stopped. Through the wire mesh that split the