HE COSTA DEL SOL was not as warm as the last time Robie had been here. The wind was chilly. The sky was gray. And there was rain in the forecast.

The ride over in the high-speed ferry was rough, the big boat pitching and swaying until it got fully up to speed. Yet even then the twin hulls of the catamaran were beaten by the heavy waves.

Robie wore a leather jacket, dungarees, and combat boots. If he was going into combat he needed the appropriate footwear, he figured. He had no weapons on him. As always, he had to trust that what he needed would be waiting for him. He sat in a seat next to one of the windows and watched the seagulls fighting the swirls of wind over the choppy water. The gray Med lashed up at the hull of the ferry and spray battered the windows. Robie did not flinch when this happened, as did other passengers around him.

He didn’t react to things that could not hurt him.

Because of the rough water the crossing took longer than normal. When they pulled into Tangier the sky was growing dark. Robie clambered down the walkway of the ferry and joined the crowd making their way to transportation into town.

Unlike last time, Robie boarded one of the tour buses along with a group of other passengers. When the bus was three-quarters full the doors hissed closed and the driver swung the bus onto the road leading away from the port. Robie looked back once at the ferry and wondered if he would be alive to take it back across the strait.

Right now, he wouldn’t bet on it.

The bus ride took about twenty minutes, and by the time it stopped and the doors hissed open again, the rain had begun to fall. While the tour guide took charge of the group, Robie walked off in the opposite direction. His destination had been planned well in advance. There was supposed to be someone waiting for him.

There was.

The man was young, but his features carried the weariness of someone much older. He wore a white robe and a turban and had a jagged scar down the right side of his neck.

It was from a knife, Robie knew. He had a scar too, but on his arm. Knife wounds never healed properly. Serrated blades ravaged the skin too much, tearing up the edges of the flesh so badly that even a gifted plastic surgeon couldn’t fix it completely.

“Robie?” the young man said.

Robie nodded.

“You come here to die,” said the man matter-of-factly.

“Or something,” replied Robie.

“This way,” he said.

Robie went that way. They entered an alley where there was a van.

There were five men in the van. They were all larger men than Robie and looked just as fit and strong as he was. Two wore robes, three didn’t. They were armed.

Two men searched Robie in every possible way that one could search another.

“You came without weapons,” said the young man in an incredulous tone.

“What would have been the point?” replied Robie.

“I thought you would go down fighting,” said the young man.

Robie didn’t answer him.

He was hustled into the van and driven back out of the city.

The rain was falling harder. Robie did not mind the rain. What he did mind was wind, but that had fallen away. The drops fell straight down. But they fell fast. The storm was moving quickly, he thought.

The van kept going,

About thirty minutes later it stopped and passed through a security checkpoint.

It was not the same private airport. That would have been too easy.

The doors to the hangar opened and the van drove straight in.

A different jet was parked here. It was smaller than Talal’s 767. To Robie it looked like an Airbus A320. The man owned two planes that were used by commercial airlines to fly hundreds of people at a time.

Robie was pushed roughly out of the van. The farther away they had gotten from prying eyes, the harsher the treatment had become. He was now completely in their power, so the kick in his back that knocked him to the cement was not wholly unexpected.

The young man said something in Farsi to the man who’d kicked Robie.

Robie picked himself back up and said, “Tell him he hits about as hard as my sister. And if wants his ass kicked tell him to try that again, only with me facing him.”

The young man said, “I will not tell Abdullah that. Otherwise he will kill you.”

“No he won’t. Because if he robs Talal of his fun, he’ll be dead too.”

“Is that what you think this is, fun?”

“For him, maybe. Not so much for me.”

“You have ruined a great plan.”

“I stopped a maniac from screwing up the world.”

“I can debate you point by point.”

“I don’t care what you think you can do. Where are Special Agent Vance and Julie Getty?”

“They could be dead.”

“They could be. But they’re not.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Again, the fun factor. I know Talal really needs to feel it right now.”

“Yes, I do.”

Robie turned to see Prince Khalid bin Talal walk down the stairs from his jet.