bit his lip, steeling himself against the terror within. The job must be done.
Estere stirred at his side, looking up at him from her prone position by the sniper rifle. “You’re going, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice curiously brittle.
Unable to speak, he nodded, glancing over into her dark eyes.
“It scares you, does it not?”
“What does?” Thomas asked, once more taken off-guard by her bluntness.
“Death.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Doesn’t it everybody?”
She seemed to take the question seriously. “The wise men say that to be a Kurd is to look Death in the eye. It has been that way since the days of my fathers. As Allah has willed it.”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re going anyway?”
“Don’t seem to have many other options,” Thomas sighed, reaching for the rifle that lay at his side.
“I once heard that courage is being scared, but saddling up anyway.”
Her words brought a smile to his face as he recognized the quote.
“Too many American movies,” he exclaimed, laughing as he punched her lightly in the shoulder. “I needed that. The good old Duke.”
Her eyes softened and she reached over, putting her hand in his. “I wish you weren’t going.”
Thomas looked away across the mountains, towering stark and wild against the afternoon sky. There seemed to be nothing to say. Words could not express the emotions roiling through his heart. Life seemed so sweet, so precious, here at it’s end.
He looked back to see her angrily wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. His arms opened to her and she fell against him, her body shaking with noiseless sobs as the long-dammed tears broke forth.
“It’s okay,” Thomas whispered, hugging her to him as he repeated the meaningless lie. “It’s all gonna be okay.”
She looked into his eyes and her upturned face was wet with tears. She seemed about to speak, but the words never came.
Her face was only inches from his own and it seemed so natural. He bent down and kissed her, tasting the salt of tears on her lips. She responded with a desperate passion, her arms circling around his neck and holding him close.
Someone cleared his throat behind the couple and Thomas extricated himself from her embrace to find Sirvan standing about five paces off, a distinctly uncomfortable look on his face.
“I will accompany you into the village tonight,” her brother remarked stiffly. “Two men can work faster than one.”
Then he was gone, disappearing back up the mountain path.
Thomas leaped to his feet, the rifle in his hand as he hurried after him. He caught up with Sirvan before the young Kurd could rejoin the main body of fighters.
“Look,” Thomas began, feeling suddenly awkward. “I didn’t mean-I know what you must think-”
Sirvan cut him off before he could even figure out what to say. “I am not an Arab, Thomas. It is none of my concern. If Estere finds your advances unwelcome, she will kill you herself. Anything I might feel inclined to do would be entirely superfluous…”
There were few places in the earth where Harry felt truly at peace. The church he had attended ever since boyhood was one of them.
As he drove in, he found himself marveling once more at the atmosphere of the old church. The building had started life as the church of a Methodist circuit-rider back in the 1800s, a marvelously simple structure.
A single car sat in the parking lot, in the pastor’s space. That was to be expected-the service didn’t start for over an hour.
Harry walked into the auditorium, finding it empty, as he had figured it would be. The lights were off, a single shaft of sunlight streaming in from the eastern window to fall directly upon the altar.
He smiled. It might have been by design of the architect, but in that moment it seemed remarkably providential.
Walking forward, he fell to his knees before the altar. He was so very, very tired, the stress of the Iranian mission and the guilt of losing a team member weighing upon his shoulders.
“Dear Lord,” he began simply, his voice trailing off into silent prayer. Here in the quiet, kneeling in the sunlight, it all came pouring out.
How long he knelt there, he never would know, but when he rose, it was as though a weight had been removed from his shoulders. A reassurance, perhaps.
His beliefs had never been a hindrance to his mission-not in the way some might have thought. Rather they strengthened his resolve. Some might have called his worldview simplistic, but not anyone that truly knew him. In the perpetually clouded world of espionage, he clung to one fundamental truth: Evil existed to be destroyed.
Knowing that, everything else became clear.
There in the stillness, he suddenly felt a presence behind him, the knowledge that someone was there striking home with the certainty of death.
He turned quickly, his hand flickering inside his suit toward the Colt secured in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
“Good morning. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
Harry withdrew his hand, his face relaxing into a smile as he recognized the figure in the back of the auditorium. “No problem, pastor. I had just finished.”
Pastor Scott emerged from the shadows, still in his shirtsleeves, adjusting a microphone to his lapel. “You’ve noticed.”
“Noticed what?” Harry asked.
“The peace. This old church has seen many a battle over the years, but it’s still as peaceful as the first time I walked through the doors. ‘The peace of God, which passeth all understanding.’”
Harry nodded. “Yeah. I had.”
“I’m glad you could join us,” the older man remarked, laying a hand on Harry’s shoulder. If he could feel the straps of the holster, he gave no sign.
“Plans changed,” Harry replied simply. “I’m flying out again tonight.”
“I’ll be praying for you.”
Harry turned, looking the pastor in the eye. They both fought evil, in their own way. Both had seen the dark side of battle. And they regarded each other with the respect of comrades-in-arms. “And I for you…”
The slippery slope. In better times, during his college days at Princeton, Michael Shapiro had dismissed the concept as archaic, a throw-back to the old notions of moral absolutes-right and wrong.
They had been good days, heady times. Looking back he realized he had been just like every other young man. The world on a string. Before the climb to power.
Before his own feet had hit that legendary slope. The Deputy Director’s Suburban slowed to a stop at the first checkpoint of the complex that was the Central Intelligence Agency, and Shapiro sighed, leaning against the back seat of the SUV as his driver handed out their identification.
