Choke Point

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Thanks to the U.S. Department of State for sponsoring a speaking trip to Germany that allowed for research in Amsterdam. To Jen Wood and Nancy Zastrow for their help in the office. To David and Laurel Walters for the repeated copyedits. To Dr. Genevieve Gagne-Hawes for her brilliance. My editor, Christine Pepe. Agents Amy Berkower, Dan Conaway, and film agent Matthew Snyder.

And to Marcelle, Storey, Paige, Louise, Betsy, and Brad for keeping the family close.

The air is visible. It smells of camel dung and human sweat. It tastes worse. It comes in hot waves, stealing any appetite he might have had and stinging his eyes. Flies buzz past his ears and light on his face. He waves them away, his right hand a horsetail of constant motion.

The sun-soaked skin of the man who sits cross-legged before him looks shrink-wrapped over long, thin bone. Unflinching rheumy eyes stare back at him beneath wild white eyebrows. John Knox studies the man’s long flat-nailed fingers as they punch out numbers on a battery-operated calculator that serves as their translator—money, the only language spoken here.

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