UNTIL SOKOLOV WOKE up that morning in the safe house and literally smelled the coffee—for the day shift had awakened at 0600 local time and begun to brew it on the camp stove—he did not understand how completely fucked he was, how interesting the situation had become. And then he felt astonished and ashamed that he’d let events get so far ahead of him. He had been defeated by Ivanov at the game of Normal. Getting on a plane and flying somewhere to do a job: What could be more normal than that? But Ivanov had not shared with him any information about how they would actually get into the country. Now men nominally under Sokolov’s control had done murder in the United States and they were in China illegally, and at the mercy of whatever local gangsters or officials Ivanov had cut a deal with.