I'd spent my life in shitholes where the water is undrinkable, where the rats carry bubonic plague, where you're lucky if you just catch malaria, and I'd never been sick a day. Two hours after we left port on Yuri's rust bucket, I was hit with a fever that I was sure was pneumonia. I slept for forty-eight hours, shivering and sweating. Probably longer. My cabin didn't have a porthole. I couldn't tell day from night, slept right through Benghazi and a couple other ports.
By day three, the fever felt like it was breaking, but I still couldn't ea or even leave my bunk except when I had to. On the fourth day, I steppe(unsteadily out on deck, took a brief stroll around, and did a double ta e We'd left La Spezia sailing under the Xerxes II. Now we were the De mopolis. I had this suspicion we were carrying more than just cars.
I was an albatross, bad luck. The crew ignored me. It was fine with m I had time to try to sort out the story to date. Here's what bothered me: had blanket coverage all the way from Newark, and at least a day in Ne
York a week earlier. Both times it was Applied Science Research, a company I now knew (thanks to O'Neill) Webber had on contract to do his dirty work. I then get to Paris, and someone calls in the French. It couldn't fcave been Applied Science Research on its own. The French still have too piuch common sense to outsource espionage. There had to have been some Ijcind of nod from the CIA. Webber again? He had been assigned to Paris Lnd would have known who to call. I didn't have a shred of evidence it was kim, but it was the only thing I could think of. Who else would mobilize a [resource like that? Still, it didn't add up. Webber wanted me out of the Agency, sure, but now that I was gone, why keep up the chase?
Then there was the mystery of robbing me. The first time, on the plane, Ihey got my laptop. The second time, in the cafe, my clothes. The only thing of value I had left was the photo. I'd already established that. The only rea-son for calling in the French that I could think of was to set up another ihance at grabbing it. But who other than me cared about a twelve-year-oid snapshot? Webber? Not likely. O'Neill was right: No one in the government, CIA or otherwise, gave a damn about Bill Buckley.
Still, it had to be the photo. And if the interest in it had nothing to do fcvith Buckley, then it was someone else. Or something else. I was sweating in a dark cabin, churning through all the possibilities I could come up with, Mien the blindingly obvious occurred to me: Ask someone in the photo. I pould immediately cross off bin Laden. The Taliban would cut my head off as soon as I tried to cross the border into Afghanistan. That left me with Nabil Shahadah, the only other person in the photo I knew by name.
Shahadah wasn't going to be easy to find. At least three Israeli com-piando teams had been shot up trying to get to him before me. Now drones ¦rrned with Hellfire missiles flew over Gaza 24/7 ready to incinerate Nabil Re first lock they got. Still, I couldn't see another choice. If I didn't get an pnswer to the picture, I'd live the rest of my life as the Flying Dutchman of F^-spooks, pursued for a reason I couldn't begin to understand. First, Ptough, I needed to put down a red herring.