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“Lady, what is Chicago Tribunal?” he asked.

“It’s the Tribune. It’s a newspaper. Didn’t they tell you anything?”

“I’ve never heard of it. Lady, I’ve never heard of you.”

He told me he started his job the previous March, but he would not give me his name or his card or his title.

“Why you not have a CV? Why not?” he asked, growing angry.

I needed to somehow turn this around, and now, this guy was very suspicious.

“I can write a CV and deliver it to you tomorrow morning.”

“No,” he said. “I will interview you, and do it that way.”

He sat down and pulled out a notebook. He asked where I worked, my dates of employment, where I graduated college, where I was born.

“Montana,” I said.

He squinted. “Lady, I’ve never heard of it.” Then he thought for a second. “Montana bikes. I’ve heard of them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What’s your ancestry?”

This time I squinted. “Why?”

“Not for work,” he said. “Because I’m curious.”

But it was for work. He wanted to know if I was Jewish. They always wanted to know if we were Jewish.

“I bet you’re German,” he said.

“German Irish,” I said.

“Religion?” he asked.

“Catholic,” I claimed.

We were getting along now. I apologized for my rudeness. He apologized for calling me lady. Then he demanded to see my most recent story and my website. He immediately became suspicious again.

“That picture doesn’t look like you,” he said, looking at my mug shot online. “She looks a lot younger. She looks a lot nicer.”

“Well, it’s from a few years ago.”

The man finally stood up.

“Don’t go anywhere for ten days,” he said, as he walked out my front door.

I worried I would never get my visa.

But I stayed busy. Zardari was sworn in as president the day after my spook visit. At a press conference with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at the president’s house in Islamabad, both men pledged to cooperate against militants but didn’t say how. I sat in the back row, near the exit, as the event featured absolutely no security, no metal detectors, no bag searches, even though the list of people who wanted to kill either man was surely the size of a New York phonebook. I sent a text message to a colleague outside, letting her know the reason if anything should explode. Afterward, we were escorted out through the kitchen. I stole a Diet Coke.

The next night, Samad drove some friends and me to a dinner inside the diplomatic enclave. My phone beeped with a text message from a number with a British international code.

“Hello, Kim, I arrived London yesterday. Congratulations on AZ becoming the new president, how is he doing and how have the people taken it? I am working on the project we discussed and will have the result soon. Best wishes and warm regards.”

I had no idea who sent the message. My brother? Sean? No, this sender clearly knew me from Pakistan. And what was the project? What had I discussed? I read the text message to my friends, and we pondered the sender. Then, finally, I remembered reading that Nawaz Sharif had flown to London so that his sick wife could have some tests.

“Is this Nawaz?” I replied.

“You are correct,” he responded.

The project. That was funny. Everyone in the car, even the man from the U.S. embassy, agreed that I needed to see this through. And I thought—well, we all did—how hilarious it would be if Sharif actually found an option that worked.

CHAPTER 21

LONDON CALLING

After finally being promised a visa that would allow me to return to Pakistan, I flew to India to write some stories. Nawaz Sharif asked for my number there. He needed to talk about something important, outside Pakistan. One early evening, he called from London. Sharif wondered whether I would be back in Pakistan before Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday at the end of Ramadan. Maybe, I told him. He planned to go to Pakistan for a day, and then to Saudi Arabia for four days.

“I am working on the project,” he said.

“Day and night, I’m sure,” I replied.

Sharif said the real reason he was calling was to warn me that the phones were tapped in Pakistan.

“Be very careful,