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himself against it.
    The van rumbled forward, a bit at a time, until it arrived at the gate. The inspection was made, the manifest read, the rear doors unlocked so the suits could make certain no one was hiding inside. The driver and the two suits were inside the van for several minutes. When he felt them emerge, Jack held his breath, but no one thought to check the roof. After a short exchange, the driver returned behind the wheel, put the van in gear, and passed through the gate.
    Jack was inside the foreign trade zone.
    The sun was just rising off a low pink, cotton-candy cloudbank in the east. The sky was filled with a pearly radiant light. Jack checked his watch: twenty minutes to takeoff. Plenty of time left. Now that he was in the FTZ, the worst was over. From the truck’s roof, he had a clear look at three of the four runways. The InterGlobal Logistics aircraft was scheduled to use runway 1R/19L. In fact, he could see the plane. It was not yet moving, Ben King having notified the pilot of Jack’s last-minute, clandestine boarding.
    Jack waited until the truck slowed, then wormed his way down onto the ground. He made his way directly toward the aircraft, which was no more than a thousand yards away. He had made the decision that once inside the FTZ, the best way to proceed was to look like he belonged there, rather than skulking about in the shadows. Around him maintenance people were hurrying to and fro, calling to one another. Small trains of crates were being ferried back and forth between warehouses and the cargo holds of aircraft being serviced prior to takeoff.
    Last-minute packages and crates were still being loaded into the InterGlobal aircraft; the open cockpit door, reached via a rolling aluminum ladder, shone in the morning sunlight, beckoning tantalizingly. A cargo vehicle finished loading up the next plane over and rumbled toward him, then stopped, turned, and slowly backed up to the rear of the warehouse along which Jack was striding, where a small crane was waiting.
    As soon as the cargo vehicle was in place, the crane began loading enormous windowed crates onto its flatbed. Jack paralleled the warehouse wall in order to keep to the most direct route to the InterGlobal Logistics’s aircraft and had just passed a side door when he felt a sudden presence behind him. Before he could turn, he felt the cold steel of a pistol muzzle press into the back of his neck.
    “Don’t move,” a deep male voice said from just behind him. “Don’t even fucking breathe.”

 
    F OUR
    R EDBIRD’S HANDS were full of blood when the call came in. Amid the stench of death, he stripped off his latex gloves, and responded to his master’s voice.
    “Here.” His voice was a low rasp.
    “Commission status,” Henry Dickinson said, half a world away in his D.C. office.
    “Done and done.” Redbird stared down at the two corpses, lying in dark pools of their own blood. Bare limbs entwined, they looked like lovers caught in an eternal embrace. Perhaps that was what death was, Redbird thought—an embrace by an unknown lover.
    “That’s a relief,” Dickinson said.
    Redbird frowned. “Did you have doubts?”
    “Not at all. But I have a new commission for you that can’t wait.”
    Redbird stepped carefully over the corpses and went to the window, stared out into the German early afternoon, dull as flint. “I’m—Hold on.”
    An American Air Force jet, taking off from Ramstein Air Base went screaming through the leaden sky, the sound of its engines rattling the small items inside the cheap hotel’s ground-level room like an earthquake. There was an elevated risk in closing this commission so close to the U.S. military presence, but that very risk was what he lived for, sinking into the delicious shiver down his spine when he trod the dangerous precipice.
    When the noise subsided sufficiently, Redbird’s mind returned to the conversation. “I’m good to go,” he said.
    “Fine,” Dickinson said. “I’m sending