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was on the outside looking in.
    So what the hell was the director telling the president and First Lady in that conference room right now?

“ SIR. MA’AM. PLEASE . if you could have a seat,” Director Burns said as he motioned the president and First Lady to the long conference table in the center of the room. Executive AD Peter Lindley was closing all the vertical blinds on the windows and doors. A single Secret Service agent took his post inside, while the rest of the traveling entourage waited in the corridor.
    “What’s going on, Ron?” Edward Coyle asked. At the same time, he laid his hand over his wife’s shaking fingers. “Obviously something’s happened. You’d better tell us right now. I’m serious. No politics, no games. Not this time.”
    Burns stayed on his feet. “First, let me emphasize that we can’t fully trust anything we receive from an unknown source. For all we know, this could be a deliberate attempt to distract or mislead our investigators.”
    “All right, all right. Enough with the prelude,” the president ordered. “Let’s hear it. Please.”
    The director nodded to Lindley, who set a briefcase on the table. He opened it and took out two sealed plastic evidence bags.
    As soon as Mrs. Coyle saw the little black lacquered case in the first envelope, her hand flew up to take it from Lindley.
    “ That’s Zoe’s! ” she said. “She bought it in Beijing this summer.”
    In the other bag was an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheet of paper. It was laid out flat now, but several creases showed where it had been folded.
    “These came into a suburban Washington field office by regular mail this morning,” Burns said. “I can tell you that Zoe’s fingerprints are the only ones on that black case.”
    Mrs. Coyle stared at the little box, running her finger slowly across its contours through the plastic. It was heartbreaking to watch.
    “This note was folded up inside,” Burns pressed on. “It’s totally clean of prints as well. We’ve already taken a sample of the ink. We could get something there. I want to assure you we’re putting every resource onto this.”
    “ What do they want, Ron? ”
    Unlike his wife, the president was stone-faced. During the campaign, he’d been equally praised and criticized for his stoicism — or robotic quality, depending on whose story you were reading. He had been a law professor at one time and it showed. Burns admired the man’s strength, in any case. He knew he couldn’t have held up nearly as well under similar circumstances. His two daughters, and his wife, were his life, at least his life away from work.
    “This is going to come as a shock,” he told the First Couple. “ But again, let me stress that we can’t assume anything about this, true or false.”
    Even now, Burns realized, he was stalling the president of the United States. Finally, there was nothing left to do but lay the note flat on the table in front of them. It was only a few sentences, and they were brutally succinct.
    “ There is no ransom. There will be no demands. The price, Mr. President, is knowing that you will never see your children again .”

HALA AL DOSSARI POPPED OPEN her eyes and looked with alarm around the room. For the fourth straight morning, it took a moment, maybe five seconds, to remember exactly where she was.
    Wayfarer Hotel .
    Washington .
    America .
    It was strange, waking to silence, in such an uncomfortable, foreign environment. At home, they woke to the adhan every morning, ringing out from two dozen mosques in the neighborhood. Back in their coral house. With their two beloved children.
    That all seemed like somebody else’s life now — finishing up her residency, worrying about what to make for dinner, eating alone with Fahd and Aamina most nights while Tariq worked late at his accounting firm.
    That was before he started coming home from the mosque talking about American devils, and the inevitable war — any number of things Hala knew