AT 6:05, she heard three quick taps on the door. Then two more. She opened up, and Rashid stepped in. Though if she hadn’t expected him, she might not have known who he was. The dapper doctor in the thousand-dollar suit had become a white-robed villager with a scraggly black beard and sunken cheeks. He closed the door, sat on the bed, smoothed his robe. “Salaam aleikum, Miss Simmons.”

“Aleikum salaam.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. More important, how are you? You look different.”

“You think so? I don’t see it.” He smiled, and for the first time she recognized him. His smile, simple, almost shy, hadn’t changed.

“Are you hungry?” She’d put out bags of chips and bottles of soda. Case officers were supposed to have snacks at these meetings. Usually they went uneaten. Not today.

Rashid gulped down half a bottle of Coke. “I suppose I’m hungry. They took me to a camp. In the mountains. Then a missile hit another camp a few kilometers away. So none of us could go anywhere.”

“They blamed you for the attack?”

“No, no. Just when one camp is hit they keep the others quiet for a few days. They know that the drones watch for movement after an attack. So we were stuck. And this camp was low on food. We had to be careful we didn’t run out.”

“It sounds difficult.”

“I wasn’t used to it, that’s all.”

I was wrong, she thought. I should never have suspected you. Yet some corner of her mind still wasn’t convinced. The brave smile, the patchy beard. Was he acting? He couldn’t be. If he could pull this off, he belonged in Hollywood. If she wasn’t going to disappear into the counter-counterespionage funhouse, she had to believe in her agents. Anyway, Rashid had no reason to make up this story. He was a spy, not a charity case. He knew the agency would judge him on the intel he produced. Rashid — no, Marburg—had given them three solid reports in two months. Reason enough to trust him.