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  The detective squinted. Dean guessed that like most Turks, the man could understand English, as long as it was spoken carefully, but felt more sure of himself in his native tongue.

  “The camera doesn’t use film,” repeated Dean. He slipped his finger to the side, snapping open the compartment where the battery and memory card were kept. “I can give you this. Is this what you want?”

  He pushed on the back of the small Memory Stick and removed it from the camera. It was blank, but the policeman had no way of knowing that.

  “Film?” asked the cop.

  “Evet,” said Dean, using one of the few Turkish words he’d been able to memorize. “Yes. Digital film.”

  He handed it to him. The policeman told him in heavily accented English that he could pick it up at the police station in two days. Then he waved him away, turning to find someone else who might have witnessed the accident.

  “You have to work on your accent,” said the translator as Dean hurried for the bike, chained to a post on the next street.

  “I’ll try and work that in,” Dean replied, fumbling with the combination.

  CHAPTER 5

  The sedative Karr had placed in the men’s drinks was powerful, but the dose in the capsule had been designed for one man, not two, and Karr wasn’t sure it would completely knock the doctor out. He hoped it would; the alternative plan called for him to pop the physician while they changed. He didn’t want to do that, not because it was more complicated, but because he didn’t want to hurt the guy, who seemed a congenial sort.

  But the drug didn’t seem to be working, even though the doctor had drunk nearly the entire glass of tea. He picked up the tube of the pipe, closing his eyes as he took a long breath. Karr found himself staring at him when the doctor opened his eyes.

  “Have another puff,” sad the doctor, passing him the pipe.

  “Love to,” lied Karr. The doctor’s friend looked a little tired at least.

  “So what is your specialty?” asked the doctor.

  “Pediatrics,” said Karr. “But I was thinking I might get into psychiatry.”

  “Psychiatry?”

  “Yeah. Kind of like what you do, only from a different angle.”

  Since he’d had to strip naked to get into the baths, Karr was out of communication with the Art Room. A small implant in his skull functioned as an internal headphone, but the real guts of the radio were sewn into his clothes and belt back in a changing room. Without help from the Art Room, he couldn’t take the conversation too far or make it too specific; Karr knew a lot about a lot of things, but had always kept as far as possible from doctors and their craft.

  “The brain — some things should be mysterious,” said the Turkish doctor, taking the pipe.

  “I think you’re right,” said Karr.

  “The human organism — to be — it is not — a machine.”

  With the last word, the doctor’s head edged backwards. Karr caught him and leaned him against the back of the seat. He turned and found the doctor’s companion already passed out, head against the top of the cushion.

  “I really want to thank you guys for the tobacco,” said Karr, making them comfortable. “And the curdled milk.”

  He stood up. The attendant came over, staring at the men.

  “Guess I bored them,” Karr said, heading for his clothes.

  CHAPTER 6

  Dr. Saed Ramil smiled at the head of internal medicine at Istanbul Medical University Center, nodding as Dr. Ozdilick explained the small private hospital’s elaborate computer system. Each resident at the hospital carried a wireless device that allowed him to see a patient’s complete chart instantly. The devices could display X-rays and other scans as well, though it was generally more convenient to use one of the many larger screens littering the hallways and walls of the rooms.

  “Impressive,” said Ramil. He wondered where Charlie Dean was. He didn’t need him for the procedure, but the op was good insurance if anything went wrong.

  Not that it would.

  Dr. Ozdilick pulled up a pharmacological reference on one of the wall screens. Ramil, trying not to overplay his role as an interested foreign doctor, gave a restrained “mmm” in admiration.

  “In your own specialties of neurology and trauma, we have all of the diagnostic tools one could wish,” said his guide, jabbing a menu at the lower left of the large screen. The screen filled with icons indicating a number of programs. Ramil stared at them as if he were seeing them for the first time.

  “You’re frowning,” said Dr. Ozdilick.

  “Oh, just trying to decipher these.” Ramil feigned a smile. Instead of practicing the procedure umpteen times with the Desk Three people, he should have taken an acting course. That was the tough part of this, wasn’t it? Pretending to be someone else. The medical procedure he could do cold.

  Any second, Red Lion would be wheeled through the doors downstairs and they could get to work. Then he’d relax. It would be like the old days, the really old days in Vietnam when he worked in the MASH unit. He’d be nervous until the snap of the gloves. Then something else would take over and the butterflies would disappear.

  “Doctor?”

  Ramil looked at his guide. “Might I have some water? I feel thirsty.”

  Dr. Özdilick led him a few yards down the hall to a large water cooler. Air bubbled up from the jug with a loud kerklunk. It tasted like cardboard in his mouth, but at least it was cold.

  “There you are,” said a quiet voice behind them.

  Ramil turned and saw that Charlie Dean had finally arrived. Rather than reassuring him, it caused his stomach to turn — the operation was ready to begin.

  “My colleague, Dr. Gomez from Madrid,” Ramil told Dr. Özdilick.

  “Yes, you introduced us yesterday. How was the session?”

  “A little bit, eh, not interesting,” said Dean. He spoke English with a Spanish accent that was more Mexico than Madrid, but few people in Turkey would know the difference.

  Dr. Özdilick’s pager gave a short beep.

  “Excuse me,” said the doctor, retreating a few steps down the hall to the open window of a nurse’s station.

  * * *

  Lia adjusted her headpiece as the ambulance backed in toward the emergency room entrance of the Istanbul Medical University Center. The bodyguard who had shot the Turkish man was crouched near the door, watching the attendant who’d slapped an oxygen mask on Asad.

  Even with the pure oxygen, the al-Qaeda operative seemed to be having trouble breathing. If Asad died, the whole operation would be a waste.

  Even so, Lia would have relished seeing Asad choke to death. In his mid-thirties, with the air of a humble and soft-spoken college professor, he’d been responsible for hundreds of deaths, and was in Istanbul to plan thousands more.

  The ambulance doors opened and the bodyguard jumped out, surveying the area before letting the attendants take the stretcher out. Lia put her fingers on Asad’s throat as if she were taking his pulse. She trotted alongside as the attendants pushed him inside, people backing out of the way to allow them to pass. She had a brief speech outlining his symptoms ready, but a nurse began immediately examining the patient as he was wheeled in, and before Lia could say anything, the woman had barked instructions for the hospital’s neurologist to be called.

  The attendants pushed the rolling stretcher toward a set of white curtains at the far end of the room. A nurse appeared and told Lia in Turkish that she was not permitted beyond the common area.

  “I’m a nurse,” Lia said, also using Turkish.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, she comes,” insisted the bodyguard in English. Though his pistol was in his holster and out of sight, his voice was sharp enough that the nurse backed off and let Lia join them.

  “They’re just finding out that Dr. Kildare won’t be joining the party,” said Rockman over the Deep Black communications system. “They’ll be calling our guy down any second.”

  “His pupils a
ren’t responsive,” Lia told the doctor who met them. The drug-induced symptom had an immediate effect: the doctor concluded that the patient probably had a concussion or an even more serious head injury.

  “Explain that you are not Turkish and that’s why you’re using English,” said Rockman, sounding like a play prompter when an actor went off script during rehearsal.

  Lia, knowing it was unnecessary, ignored the voice in her head. She helped one of the nurses set up a blood pressure cuff. Asad’s blood pressure had been low in the ambulance and was even lower now — a deviation from the script considerably more severe than Lia’s dropped line.

  “We need the neurologist very quickly,” the young doctor told one of the nurses. “And get Dr. Kayseri, the trauma expert.”

  * * *

  Dean watched Ramil stare up at the ceiling as Dr. Ozdilick explained the situation. A prominent visitor, a businessman from Syria, had been involved in a car accident and had an unknown head injury. The hospital’s chief trauma expert had not answered his home phone, and their neurologist was on his break at a local Turkish bath; it might be a half hour or more before either arrived.

  “Of course we must help,” said Ramil, glancing at Dean. “Where is the emergency room?”

  “This way,” said Dr. Ozdilick, nodding gratefully. He started toward the elevator.

  “Lia’s downstairs in the emergency room,” said Rockman from the Art Room as Dean got into the elevator. “Everything’s going great.”

  * * *

  The elevator stopped but the door didn’t open right away. Ramil’s stomach lurched. For a half second he was sure the elevator had malfunctioned and they were trapped here.

  To be tripped up by a ridiculous mechanical failure…

  The door sprung open. People rushed at them. Ramil followed Dr. Ozdilick down the hall. It was all very familiar — they’d constructed a set just like this in an abandoned warehouse near Baltimore.

  “We can wash up here,” said Dr. Ozdilick, gesturing to the left. “I’ll find you a coat.”

  During the rehearsals, Ramil had bantered with the actor playing Ozdilick, saying things like, “Do you arrange these emergencies for all your guests?” or, “Cutting down on staff costs by using visitors?” But he couldn’t find the words now. His stomach roiling, he wanted to fast forward everything, just get the knife into his hand, relax, focus on what he was doing.

  Ramil glanced back at Dean. The Deep Black op wore the expression he always wore: stoic watchfulness. For some men, such an expression masked deep fear, but in Dean’s case it was an expression of who he was. From what Ramil knew of him, Dean never felt fear, or even butterflies in his stomach.

  Ramil scrubbed his hands at the sink so thoroughly even the old doctor who had supervised his first residency would have been pleased. Dr. Özdilick had found white physician’s coats for him and Dean; Dean’s looked a size too small, but Ramil’s was a perfect fit.

  “This way, doctors,” said Dr. Ozdilick.

  A door swung open at the end of the corridor and Ramil caught a glimpse of daylight from the windows in the clinic beyond. His colon twisted ever tighter as he followed Dr. Özdilick down a corridor of examining spaces formed by curtains suspended from the ceiling. One flew open abruptly; Ramil jumped back as a man with a stubble beard and an ill-fitting suit loomed in the middle of the passage. He had a gun in his hand, and he pointed it at Dr. Özdilick.

  “Help him,” demanded the man. “In the name of God, help him. He is dying.”

  CHAPTER 7

  William Rubens looked up at the large screen at the front of the Art Room, watching the feed from one of the security cameras in the Istanbul hospital. If there was a commercial computer system in the world that Rubens’ team of computer specialists couldn’t break into, they hadn’t found it yet. Conveniently for Desk Three, the hospital’s security videos shared the same mainframe that housed its impressive — though not entirely secure — patient information system, where Asad’s vital signs were just now being recorded by a special set of instruments.

  Contrary to the calculations of the experts who’d said the accident wouldn’t produce any real injuries, the driver of Asad bin Taysr’s car had suffered a compound leg fracture, but otherwise everything was proceeding smoothly. Lia had indicated that Asad had been stunned but not hurt, exactly as planned. Now, however, Rubens realized that the terror leader’s blood pressure numbers were not what they had expected. He walked up the wide steps at the center of the Art Room to a set of consoles where an NSA doctor was monitoring the situation, standing by to give the team advice if needed.

  “Asad’s blood pressure — is it wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s low,” said the doctor. “It’s the opposite of what was supposed to happen from the drugs Lia gave him. Perhaps it’s a reaction to the knockout gas.”

  “I see.”

  “If it’s a reaction, I wouldn’t want to give him any more anesthetic. It might kill him.”

  “On the other hand, he may really have a severe head injury requiring surgery,” said Rubens.

  “Yes, that’s the problem.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Lia saw Dr. Ramil freeze as the bodyguard demanded that he save Asad. His face paled and his eyes seemed to push back in their sockets. He was the perfect picture of fear.

  “Brother,” she whispered in her Egyptian Arabic, tugging at the bodyguard’s shoulder. “The gun may not be a good idea here. The doctors are not used to being threatened. If they are nervous, they may not be able to do their job.”

  The man turned and glared down at her.

  “And someone who sees it might call the police,” added Lia.

  Something flickered in the bodyguard’s eyes — hate, she thought, though she wasn’t sure whether it was toward her or the police.

  “I will be nearby,” the bodyguard told her. Lia needed the translator’s help to untangle his quick Syrian tongue. “If they do the slightest harm to him, scream, and I will run and send them to hell where they belong.”

  * * *

  Dean nudged Ramil into the curtained cubicle. The emergency room physician gave Dean and Ramil a quick read of the patient’s vital signs and condition: shallow head wound, unconscious, low blood pressure.

  “There are other patients arriving,” said the doctor. “Can you take him?”

  “Of course,” said Ramil smoothly.

  Dean took a small penlight from a nearby tray and checked for a concussion. The pupils were nonreactive; Dean gave a loud “hmmmm.”

  “Mr. Dean, there appears to be a problem with the patient’s blood pressure,” said the specialist back in the Art Room. “There’s a chance it may be a reaction to the drugs. His heart beat also seems irregular. You’ll want to make sure Dr. Ramil makes a note of it.”

  Dean glanced up at Ramil, who was just checking Asad’s eyes with a borrowed penlight.

  “Can we have skull films?” Dean asked. “We should get them right away. If there’s a hematoma—”

  “I would strongly recommend a CT scan,” said Ramil. “As a precaution.”

  “Yes, by all means,” said Dr. Ozdilick.

  “Blood pressure is low,” said Dean.

  “Is it?” said Ramil, bending over Asad.

  * * *

  Ramil had already seen the blood pressure, but he pretended now to notice it for the first time. He was not a neurologist, but he had extensive experience with trauma patients, and he knew that this was not only unexpected but a bad sign. It might mean not only that Asad had really been injured in the accident, contrary to expectations, but that the injury was life threatening.

  On the other hand, there were no obvious signs of cranial swelling. There was no obstruction to his airways and he was breathing normally. His temperature was fine.

  If anything, the drugs that Asad had been given should have raised his blood pressure slightly. So was this a reaction to them?

  They had planned to check for a hematoma. It was part of the sta
ndard medical procedure for a potentially serious head injury. And since the bug could be spotted on a scan, the films taken before the implant could be substituted in the hospital’s high-tech system later on if Asad was kept overnight for observation. Now, though, they had to take the scan to really rule out a head injury.

  In layman’s terms, a hematoma was a pool of blood that leaked into a place where it shouldn’t be; it had to be removed or a patient might die from the injury. If this was the case, the low blood pressure would cause the brain to receive less oxygen. At the same time, the arteries in the brain would attempt to overcome the flow restriction and dilate, increasing blood flow and amplifying the injury. The result would be fatal unless Ramil operated immediately to relieve the pressure.

  He could do that. He hadn’t expected to, but he could.

  Then again, the patient didn’t have any of the other symptoms Ramil would expect to accompany that sort of head injury. This might be a reaction to the drugs he’d been given.

  Something which also could be fatal.

  “We need to insure positive ventilation,” said Ramil. “Is there an anesthesiologist?”

  “He’s been paged,” said the nurse.

  “We can’t wait. We need an intravenous, and we’ll want to ventilate,” Ramil told the nurse, adding that she should prepare doses of morphine and fentanyl, and to have ephedrine on hand.

  Ephedrine especially, he thought, but he had to play it as someone who didn’t know what was going on would.

  “Pressure dropped a little,” said Dean. He wasn’t looking at the instruments, and Ramil realized he had probably been prompted by the medical expert back in the Art Room.

  “Six milligrams of ephedrine,” said Ramil.

  He caught Dean looking at him as he waited for the hypo.

  “He’ll be all right,” said Ramil.

  CHAPTER 9