deep.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Jack sighed.

“So tell me.”

He did as he tried to overcome the lingering effects of whatever they’d pumped into his veins. He told her about the trip to Tel Aviv, the tense moment at Ben Gurion International, the near-miss with Hassan Haddad, breaking into Abdal al-Fida’s apartment, the encounter with Swain and his magic wand, the deaths of Brendan and the others, the e-mails Alain had discovered, Lawrence Soren and the firefight on the island… But mostly he talked about Sara, because it was his only way of hanging on to her right now.

“I shouldn’t have left her on that island,” he said.

“What choice did you have?”

“The one I didn’t take.”

“The one where you wind up dead?”

“Might be better than this,” he said bitterly.

“Uh-huh,” Max said. “And if this Swain guy is using her for leverage, then it seems to me you may have saved both of your lives by getting away.” She paused. “But more importantly, we are facing very organized, very powerful, very well connected megalomaniacs who are planning something bad. Stopping them is more important than anything else.”

“What are you saying?”

She leaned toward him now, her expression intense. “I want to help you, Jack. We all want to help you find Sara. But even more, we want to help our country. That gala starts in a little less than six hours and we need to do everything in our power to keep those bastards from blowing the place up.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“Teamwork,” Max said. “Teamwork and a whole hell of a lot of luck.”

They had turned the salon and pilothouse of the Sea Wrighter into a makeshift command center, reminding Jack of the apartment house in Paris. The Sea Wrighter itself was anchored in the middle of the bay, away from prying eyes and ears, and who knew what else. If they were going to make some kind of move, it had to be done with the greatest of stealth.

Three of Tony’s buddies were here, the same three who had helped them assault the island. Jack had met them over the months in various bars that he and Tony frequented around town, old hardened war vets who still remembered what it meant to fight for your country. Back in the days when the bad guys were easier to spot and you knew who your friends were by the uniform they wore.

Now those uniforms had been replaced by street clothes, and you never knew who might be hiding behind a simple T-shirt and a pair of jeans. And thanks to fascists like Lawrence Soren and the people he bankrolled, there was no way to know when a look of concern or surprise was genuine, or merely a facade designed to manipulate and deceive.

But like Tony himself, his buddies were old-school, the kind of guys you could rely on in a pinch.

There was Mike Abernathy, a steel-eyed sixty-five-year-old former army combat commando badass, who looked as limber as a kid out of high school. Mike had done four tours in Vietnam, earned a chest full of medals, and at one time was even on the short list for a Medal of Honor.

Then there was Jonah Goldman, a fifty-year-old former Navy SEAL whose search-and-rescue missions around the globe were legendary, a guy who looked like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And finally, Doc Matson, former medic and paratrooper who had trained Tony himself. Grizzled, white haired, Doc was the oldest of the bunch, and possibly the toughest, and the others sometimes kidded that he’d fought alongside Ulysses S. Grant.

It was a motley crew, all right, but these men were as tough as they came and had the mental and physical prowess to best any twenty-year-old coming out of the box.

But the biggest surprise here was Dave Karras, Max’s old flame and computer hacker extraordinaire. After that night in his apartment Jack figured he’d never see the guy again, especially in the same zip code as Max herself. Yet here he was, with a shave and a haircut, commandeering three laptop computers that projected their images onto Jack’s sixty-inch television screen.

Jack shot Max a quizzical look and she just shrugged and said, “What can I tell you? I’m a sucker for men who grovel.”

Jack still couldn’t picture them as a couple, but he’d given up on trying to figure out the ways of the heart a long time ago.

“Okay, guys,” Karras said. “I found it.”

He punched a button on one of the laptops and the television screen came to life with a building blueprint.

The California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

The Legion of Honor was a revered part of San Francisco’s history, a common destination for tourists and locals alike. Built in 1924, it was a smaller, multicolumned replica of France’s Palais de la Legion d’Honneur, which sits on the west bank of the river Seine.

San Francisco’s palace stood on a small hill in Lincoln Park, surrounded by a golf course and beautiful ocean vista, looking out toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Jack had always thought its architecture was reminiscent of the buildings in Washington, D.C., and Thomas Jefferson himself had used the original French palace as inspiration for Monticello, his estate in Virginia.

The Legion of Honor had served as a museum since its doors first opened, and had one of the finest collections of ancient and European art in the world.

Jack had been there many times, but looking at it in the form of a blueprint was a new experience for him.

“All right, folks,” Tony said, stepping over to the TV screen. “If Jack’s intelligence is correct, we’re looking at a possible terrorist assault on the museum at twenty-one hundred hours.” He looked at Max and Karras and winked. “That’s nine o’clock for the civilians in the crowd.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

“Happy to oblige,” Tony said, then turned to the rest of them. “We have to assume they’re not going to call off the operation. Jack’s escape leaves them potentially exposed. They have nothing to lose by finishing what they’ve started, though I guarantee the thin black line is going to be even more vigilant now.”

“Thin black line?” Max asked.

“An enemy police action, blended into the shadows by using homegrown operatives,” Tony explained. “The question is how they’re going to pull this off. With the President’s appearance there, security will be locked so tight the chances of bringing in some kind of explosive device are remote, if not impossible.”

“What about the X factor?” Jack asked. “Harold Wickham.”

“Do you think he’ll show?” Tony asked. “I mean, if they’re going to blow the place up-”

“He may put in a token appearance and leave,” Jack said. “But he has clout. He’ll have full access.”

“What about the Secret Service?” Max said.

“They got to MI6, didn’t they?” Jack said. “Who knows how far this reaches.”

“Inside man or not,” Mike Abernathy said, “anyone who enters that place will have to go through a security scanner, a pat down, and a dog sniff, so a simple walk-on isn’t likely.”

“Right,” Tony said. His voice and his expression flattened. “That’s the problem. Me and Mike and Jonah here spent the morning trying to come up with potential alternative scenarios that might make the impossible possible, but we came up blank. Especially with Haddad as a wild card.”

“So we’re wasting our time,” Karras said.

“No,” Jack told him. “This function is the target, even if it’s not ground zero. They made no bones about letting me and Sara know that.”

“Then how the hell are they gonna hit it?” Max asked.

“That’s where Doc here comes in,” Tony said. He gestured to Doc, who was sprawled on Jack’s sofa, picking at his teeth with the corner of a matchbook. “He was downstairs grabbing a nap when the discussion started, but once he decided to get his ass outta the sack he already knew the answer to your question. Which is why I always

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