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journey. Even taking a private charter with all its amenities was still traveling, and traveling always seemed to wear him out.
    He noticed a blacked out BMW with heavily tinted windows, not unlike the one Dufort had escaped Agadir in less than twenty-four hours ago.
    This time, the front passenger window rolled down, and he could see Emily in the driver's seat. She motioned for him to get in. Sean opened the back door and plopped his bags inside before joining her in the front. The door had barely closed behind him when she stepped on the gas and accelerated down the airport street.
    "Nice to see you too, Emily," he said, hurrying to put on his seatbelt.
    She raised an eyebrow and passed him the slightest grin. "Always a pleasure, Zero."
    "Do you really have to call me that? I just picked it because of the whole twelve agents thing and I sort of work outside their..." he fumbled for the word, "boundaries."
    "Actually, I was going to assign that to you anyway. You know the protocols, Sean. When you're on assignment, I will only refer to you as Zero." She paused for a second. "Except for just then when I called you by your name. And you know what you have to call me." The last part carried a little playful edge to it.
    Sean sighed. "Yes, Director."
    The BMW zoomed around the curved on-ramp to the Autobahn and merged into traffic behind a shipping van. A few seconds later, after a gray Volkswagen passed them on the left, she changed lanes and sped up.
    "So," Sean said, watching as Emily left the slower vehicles behind on the right, "you were a little skimpy on the details as to why I'm here right now."
    "You know me. I prefer to talk about that sort of stuff in person."
    "Worried about bugs, are we?" He grinned, but his question carried serious implications.
    "Never know," she said. "Better safe than sorry."
    She guided the car back into the right lane once they'd passed all the slower drivers, allowing a red Ducati 899 Panigale to zip by. Sean stared longingly at the motorcycle, as if he'd just seen the most beautiful woman on the planet walk by.
    Emily went on. "Yesterday, a Swiss research scientist by the name of Franziska Ott was abducted from her lab in Lucerne. A few hours later, a video was released online. It featured the young woman, bound and gagged."
    "Confirmed it's really her?"
    "Yes. Facial recognition software analyzed the footage. She was taken by a terrorist organization known as the Black Ring."
    Sean gave a nod, now staring forward down the road. The overcast skies above looked as if they were about to burst with rain. "I've heard of them," he said. "Shady, even for a terrorist group. They've been rebuked by other jihadists for being capitalistic. I guess the others don't feel like eating is important."
    She addressed his humorous comment with a dry observation of her own, apparently not in the mood for laughs. "It isn’t when dying is the secondary goal. Still, seems like a racket if you ask me. Now it seems they want something from the professor." She pulled out her phone and handed it to him. "Press play."
    Sean did as told and watched the short video clip of the woman in her lab coat, gagged with a rag in her mouth and her hands behind her back. She was on her knees in what appeared to be a damp basement. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling in front of the woman, and a wet line proceeded down the concrete blocks behind.
    Sean finished watching the video, listening to the demands of the kidnappers. He handed the phone back to Emily. "Well, at least we know they're not in the Middle East."
    Emily frowned, her eyebrows knit together. "What do you mean? How do you know that?"
    "In fact," he said, ignoring her question, "I'd go ahead and rule out some of the African nations as well. Definitely Somalia. I'd say Libya and Egypt are probably out as well."
    "How do you know that just from watching ninety seconds of footage?" she asked, incredulous.
    "First of all, isn't that one reason you love me? I'm