And that is always a bad bet against a professional, because a professional’s entire value is precisely the possession of systems for the unexpected.

Everything that undid them in ninety minutes, the memorized number, the emergency protocol, the embassy liaison, the pre-positioned resources, existed because someone, years ago, had done the unglamorous work of preparing for a disaster no one thought would come.

Martin Shaw had made us memorize that number in a boring conference room, and everyone had mocked him, and the number had sat unused for years, a piece of preparation that looked, right up until the moment it saved my life, like a waste of everyone’s time.

That is the nature of real preparation: it is invisible and pointless-seeming for years, and then, on a single morning, it is the difference between a woman weeping on a beach and a woman flying home with an army assembling to meet her enemies.