Blown Circuit Read Online Free Page A

compromised, I was free to use the device. Hard-lined Internet café access was still less traceable, but it was thought that, at the beginning of my mission at least, the iPhone, with its anonymous SIM, might offer a measure of convenience. The iPhone also provided a direct link to the CIA tech team in Virginia, a fact of particular interest to me since I had been informed that Mobi Stearn, the crack civilian engineer to whom I owed a debt of gratitude for his work on my previous mission, had also been recruited.
    The iPhone was modified with, among other things, a bug detector and a hard on/off switch that interrupted the power supply to ensure that the unit couldn’t be tracked when I didn’t want it to be. It was also preloaded with a guide to the region that I would need.
    I dropped the wet daypack containing the evidence I had gathered and stripped down, wrapping the light, checkered cotton towel around my waist. A Turkish bath was essentially a steam room, so I knew it was going to be hot in there. I decided to bring the bottle of water in with me. The backpacks I figured I’d leave where they were, but regarding the amulet, I wasn’t so sure. I decided to drop it into the plastic bag with the water on the off chance that I could figure out what it meant.  
    I locked the flimsy changing room door behind me, and the thin guy directed me to a door at the back of the lobby. I was glad I wasn’t wearing anything more than a towel, because the warmth hit me from the moment I stepped inside, rising steam making it difficult to see the white marble floor and walls through the mist. There were a few benches in the long rectangular space, with showers on one side of the room and toilet stalls on the other, like a locker room at a swimming pool.
    I could see a second door entering the hammam proper, steam curling out from underneath it. I decided to rinse off briefly before going into the next room. I turned on the single faucet, the cool water feeling strangely good on my skin in the warm room. A shower also gave me a chance to survey the space. One of the things they pounded into us back at the Farm was the importance of being aware of your surroundings. Entry points, exit points, places for an adversary to hide, the whole thing. From my vantage, I could see the Turkish toilets through their swinging doors and the long benches to the left of me. Short of squeezing up through the sewer, there was no other way into the room.
    I turned off the shower, refastened the cotton towel around my waist, and picked up my plastic bag. The misty glass door into the next room was so wet with condensation that water rolled down it in little rivulets before hitting the steam rising from the crack at the bottom of the door. I was still a good forty minutes early so I was in no hurry. I took a final cool breath and pulled open the door, a wall of hot steam billowing out to greet me as I entered.  
    The hot air was so thick with steam that it took several seconds before my eyes adjusted. When they did, I saw that I was in a round room. There were no windows, but there was light. It shone down from cylindrical holes in the domed plaster ceiling. The heat was overpowering. Instantly I felt the hot steam opening my pores. A white marble octagonal slab, about the size of a king-sized bed sat in the middle of the room, steam rising off it, while individual washbasins and faucets ran around the outer wall of the room in a wide ring. I counted eight stations laid out around the room like numbers on the face of a clock.  
    I wasn’t alone. Across from me, in the mist, a man squatted at a far washbasin running a shallow brass bowl of water over his head. The towel around his waist was wet, his body glistening in the fog. He looked to be in his sixties, lean and tall, with gray stubble growing from his chin and a few stray strands of silver hair still left on his head. He didn’t pay me much heed. Just a brief moment of eye contact and he was back