The Devil's Light Read Free Page A

lucky to have gotten by with it,” Grey said dryly. “I remember the case of one of our analysts, a Hindu, who started sleeping with his mother and sister …”
    â€œNot at the same time, I hope.”
    â€œNo. When confronted, our man said his transgressions were a matter of caste—he couldn’t find a wife of his station in the entire D.C. area. Nonetheless, we fired him. Not for incest, mind you, but for sleeping with foreign nationals. We have our standards, after all.”
    Brooke could not help but laugh. “Thank God for that.”
    â€œWhich reminds me,” Carter continued, “wasn’t there an Israeli woman left over from your former life? You once were quite attached to her, I thought.”
    â€œThat was years ago. It’s been five years since I told her my last lie.”
    Something in Brooke’s tone of voice caused Grey to appraise him. “What happened to her?”
    â€œNo idea. After the war between Israel and Hezbollah, she simply vanished. No email, no phone, no nothing. For all I know she’s dead.”
    Studying Brooke’s face, Grey asked nothing more. “About your career,” he said at length, “it’s time for a think. And a drink.” He hesitated, as though reluctant to ask a favor. “Mind helping me get back up the hill?”
    Regarding his mentor with fond concern, Brooke resolved to stop complaining. “Anything for a single malt scotch,” he said. But he knew Grey had more to say. His mentor had invested too much in Brooke’s career, and in Brooke himself, to remain silent about his future.

TWO
    R estless, Amer Al Zaroor paced a safe house in Peshawar, waiting in the night for a Pakistani general.
    The city was a gateway to Afghanistan, a crowded maze where a man could disappear. Outside the building, a tangled web of electrical wires hung over a dusty street. When morning came, motorized rickshaws and brightly painted buses would belch exhaust into air so polluted that it seared the throat. The apartment where Al Zaroor concealed himself was dingy and featureless, with a flea-infested carpet that stank of dog urine, and one small window over which he had drawn a blind. It was not the sense of confinement that chafed his nerves; as a soldier of al Qaeda he had endured far worse, sustained by a vision of the future. But now he was relying on a man he hardly knew, who might have as many loyalties as his failing country had factions, and whose shifting interests might cause him to deliver Al Zaroor to traitors allied with America and the Jews, Pakistanis with even fewer scruples than their masters. His consolation was that this stranger’s intermediary was a trusted leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba—the fearsome Pakistani jihadists—who had proved his mettle by planning the devastating attack on Mumbai less than three years before.
    Like Al Zaroor, this man—Ahmed Khan—had been waging jihad since America had armed Muslim militia against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. The most zealous fighters of that war became a fraternity. Thus, like Al Zaroor, Khan had extensive contacts among al Qaeda, the Taliban, LET, and the Pakistani military intelligence agency—the ISI—which had been among each group’s earliest patrons. LET and the Pakistani army recruited heavily in the Punjab region; Khan and the general were cousins. Such was Pakistan.
    Al Zaroor’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. When he answered, a man’s voice said, “We’re about to serve the curry.”
    A message from Khan.
    The line went dead. Heart racing, Al Zaroor switched on CNN.
    Nothing yet. The fare remained innocuous, a documentary on microfinancing in India. Watching and waiting, Al Zaroor thought about his first meeting with General Ayub.
    They had faced each other one year ago, in this same dreary room.
    Dressed in a tailored suit, General Ayub was slender, bespectacled, and wholly