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Prologue

"Traitorous fucking bastard!"

Marty Mathews stared at her boss, division chief Vince Deerfield, with a hidden sense of surprise as he threw the thick file on Khalid el Hamid-Mustafa across the desk

The dull, yellow folder hit, slid, then fell from the desk to scatter loose sheets of information and pictures at her feet

Khalid el Hamid-Mustafa The bastard son of a Saudi sheikh suspected of terrorisious hardliner, a man who ruled one of the more barren sections of Saudi Arabia, on the Iraq border He had tarred his sons with his own brush and in doing so had subjected Khalid to years of suspicion by the United States

It was the reason Marty had been tailing Khalid for the past two years As an FBI agent, one on the low end of the totem pole as far as her boss was concerned, Marty had been stuck playing babysitter and peeping Thomasina to one of the most sexually active men she had ever laid her eyes on

A dark, brooding, dangerous man There was no doubt in her erous man to cross If she had doubted it, then the inforiven her over the past years would have confirmed it

There was a reason why she had never reported any of the ed in Quite siodfather, the director of the FBI

"No coreen eyes spitting fire and brimstone back at her

"I'ent who's followed him for the past two years," she replied politely "As my reports state, there's no evidence to support the suspicion that Mr Mustafa has any ties to a terrorist community "

Vince threw hilare was nerve-racking It boded ill to any agent on the receiving end of it Unfortunately, she was the agent in question

"Two years," he snapped "I gave you two years, Agent Mathews, to find just a shred of evidence to support the suspicions we have against him Two years I could have convicted a five-year-old with that amount of time on my hands "

No doubt he could have but, on the other hand, he wouldn't have had a godfather as director of the entire FBI going over his reports, editing the minor points that could have supported that suspicion because Khalid was currently his favorite mole

"A five-year-old wouldn't have the decadent lifestyle Mustafa has " She rolled her eyes at the thought of it "I rather doubt the man has the ti with his little friends "

That was odfather liked to smile and deny it