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sold, no sign of a kill or kidnap team. Men pushed past him, annoyed that he’d blocked their path. The guy in the sunglasses stepped toward the stairs. Taylor had reached the point of no return. Choose or lose.
    He walked down.
    —
    Up close the man was older than Taylor expected, early forties, though Iranians could be tough to judge. He wore blue jeans and knockoff Doc Martens. He was tall and handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m glad you came,” he said. In Farsi. He sounded native, as best Taylor could judge.
    “What about the store?”
    “This is better.” He led Taylor to the retaining wall, took a final drag on his smoke, and scuffed it under his shoes. His first mistake. Taylor would grab the butt after he left. The agency would test any fingerprints and DNA against its databases.
    “What’s your real name, Reza?”
    “Cigarette?” He offered Taylor the red pack of L&Ms.
    Taylor shook his head. “You know my name, I don’t know yours.”
    “You have a weapon, I do not.” He lifted his arms over his head, made a single slow twirl so Taylor could see the truth of his words. Like a middle-aged Iranian ballerina.
    “Playing the fool, drawing attention to yourself.”
    “If someone has followed me here, I’m dead already.”
    “How does the Guard know my real name?”
    “They don’t. Only me.”
    “How’s that?” In Ankara, Taylor had used a different cover identity.
    “We have a photo of you from Ankara in our files. Nobody ever bothered with it. I saw it a few months ago, I had an idea. Our man said you spoke excellent Turkish—”
    “Who was the man?”
    “He called himself Hussein al-Ghazi when he was in Ankara. A nobody. Back in Tehran.”
    Taylor didn’t remember the guy. But the Ankara exile groups had hundreds of members. “And this man Ghazi gave me up?”
    “All he said was that you spoke good Turkish—”
    “Excellent.”
    “Excellent, yes. Shall I explain, so we can put this behind us, I can tell you why I’m here? We don’t have long.”
    Taylor nodded.
    “I guessed your age and found all the Turkish-studies programs in America and looked up the graduates on the Internet. You don’t look Turkish, so I imagined you must learn at a university.”
    “What if I knew the language because I had some family connection to Turkey instead?”
    “Then I wouldn’t find you. A small risk. All I would lose is time.”
    “Every program?”
    “They’re not large, and most students are Turkish. All the way from 1995 until 2000 I saw only about three hundred Americans. I checked yearbook photos until I found your real name. It took less than a month from beginning to end.”
    Taylor was speechless. A monstrous security flaw, one he’d never considered before.
    “Then I looked at our photos of American consular and embassy officers. We take those as a matter of course. I was fortunate you were still in Turkey, under official cover. And that you’d been here long enough for us to have your official name and title so I could know where to address the letter. I imagined if I’d guessed correctly, you would come. As you have.”
    “But no one else in the Guard—”
    “Correct. Only me. And I don’t intend to tell anyone.”
    The words Taylor had hoped to hear. If they were true. “You want to work for us, Reza? A man in your position must have valuable information.”
    “I’m not here to sell out my country.”
    If a decade as a case officer had taught Taylor anything, it was that agents always said that before they sold out their countries. The Iranian lit another cigarette, dragged deep.
    “Our leaders, they’ve swallowed their own poison. They believe this bomb will make them safe. They hate you and the Jews for trying to stop them.”
    “How close is it?”
    “I don’t know exactly. I have a friend in the program, he tells me very close. Though our engineers have been too optimistic before. But what your country needs to understand, it is already affecting our