LYING CRYING DYING

Antiheroes by the dozens in this deft, dark tale of terrorists, counterterrorists, and those who use them.

Pascual Rose had been a courier employed by radical groups famous for unquenchable zealotry and indiscriminate murder—until the day he experienced what amounted to an epiphany: “Courage,” he then decided, “in the service of atrocity is no virtue.” At which point he contacted Israel's Mossad and the CIA, earning in both counterterrorist arsenals a place as a semi-valued weapon. But earning, as well, the ferocious enmity of the friends of those he sold down the river. So there he is in hometown Barcelona in a sort of low-rent witness protection program set up by his new masters—hanging out, living a kind of half-life, while hoping for something better to come along. Something better does. Her name is Kataxia—beautiful, seductive, dangerous and deadly—and once upon a time she and Pascual were loving comrades in arms. (“I need her,” he tells a friend, “like the blood in my veins.”) Now, after their lengthy separation, she's managed to find him. What's more, she hasn't exactly arrived empty-handed: along with her is a suitcase full of five million francs, a treasure chest lifted from a notorious terrorist after he tried to kill her. If they can find a way out of Barcelona to, say, Morocco, where tainted money can be readily laundered, they can build a new life together, she tells him. Money can do that, Kataxia insists, and Pascual is persuaded. The question is: How much time do they have before the hunters track them down? Not much. And, as it turns out, the hunters come in unexpected and even heartbreaking shapes.

Unlovable lovers by any respectable standard, but Martell (as Sam Reaves: Get What’s Coming, 1995, etc.) is a skilled enough storyteller to con you into caring about them.