The Bourne Objective

[21]

ANTONIO SLUMPED IN the furious darkness of the convent’s hearth, a darkness so thick and black it seemed to obliterate not just light, but life itself.

Soraya took several steps toward him, peering into the gloom.

“He’s not your pool boy,” Arkadin said. “That’s clear enough.”

She said nothing, knowing that he had begun to bait her in order to gain information. This, in itself, was a hopeful sign, indicating that Antonio hadn’t talked, despite the beating he’d received.

Deciding that outrage was her best course, she turned on Arkadin. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

When Arkadin smiled it was like a wolf appearing through pine trees. “I like to know who my prospective partners are.” His smile lengthened, like knives being unsheathed. “Especially ones that fall into my lap so conveniently.”

“Partners?” She laughed harshly. “You must be fucking dreaming, my Russian friend. I wouldn’t partner with you for-”

He grabbed her then, pressing his lips against hers, but she was ready for him. She folded herself against him and slammed her knee into his groin. His hands on her trembled for a moment, but he did not let her go. His lupine grin never faltered, but there were tears glittering in the corners of his eyes.

“You won’t get me,” she said softly but icily, “either way.”

“Yes, I will,” he said, just as icily, “because you came here to get me.”

Soraya had nothing to say to this, but she was hoping he was making a stab in the dark, because otherwise she was blown all to hell. “Let Antonio go.”

“Give me a reason.”

“We’ll talk.”

He massaged his groin gently. “We already talked.”

She bared her teeth. “We’ll try another form of communication.”

He put a hand on her breast. “Like this?”

“Untie him.” Soraya tried not to grit her teeth. “Let him go.”

Arkadin appeared to consider her request. “I think not,” he said after several moments of tense silence. “He means something to you, which makes him valuable as leverage.” Reaching into his pocket, he produced a switchblade. It snikked open and, pushing her away, he advanced on Antonio. “What should I cut off first, do you think? Ear? Finger? Or something even lower down?”

“If you cut anything off…”

He turned to her. “Yes?”

“If you cut anything off you’ll never be able to sleep while I’m lying beside you.”

He leered at her. “I don’t sleep.”

She had begun to despair for Antonio’s life when her cell rang. Without waiting for Arkadin to give her permission, she answered it.

“Soraya.” It was Peter Marks.

“Yes.”

“What’s happened?” Intuitive as ever, he’d picked up on the tension in her voice.

She stared into Arkadin’s eyes. “Everything’s hunky-dory.”

“Arkadin?”

“You bet.”

“Excellent, you’ve made contact.”

“More than.”

“There’s a problem, I get it. Well, you’ll have to find your way out of it and fast, because our mission’s become urgent.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“You need to get Arkadin to the following address within seventy-two hours.” Then he recited the address Willard had given him.

“That’s an impossible order to fill.”

“Obviously, but it’s got to be done. He and Bourne have to meet, and that’s where Bourne will be.”

A pinpoint of light appeared in the darkness ahead of her. Yes, she thought, it just might work. “Okay,” she said to Peter, “I’ll put a rush on it.”

“And make sure he takes his laptop with him.”

Soraya let out a breath. “How d’you propose I do that?”

“Hey, that’s why you get the big bucks.”

He rang off before she could tell him to go to hell. With a grunt of disgust, she pocketed her cell.

“Business problems?” Arkadin said in a mocking tone.

“Nothing that can’t be solved.”

“I like your can-do attitude.” Mocking her still, he brandished the switchblade. “Are you going to solve this problem?”

Soraya put a thoughtful expression on her face. “Possibly.” Walking past him, she went into the hearth, where Antonio watched her with the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. She was shocked to find him grinning at her.

“Don’t mind me,” he said in a hoarse voice, “I’m having fun.”

Without Arkadin being able to see, she put her forefinger to her lips, then pressed it to his. It came away bloody. She turned back to Arkadin. “It all depends on you.”

“I don’t think so. The ball’s in your court.”

“Here’s how this will work.” She emerged back into the flickering candlelight. “You let Antonio go and I’ll tell you how to find Jason Bourne.”

He burst out laughing. “You’re bluffing.”

“When it comes to someone’s life,” she said, “I never bluff.”

“Still, what does an importer-exporter know about Jason Bourne?”

“Simple enough.” Soraya had already worked out her answer. “From time to time, he uses my company as a cover.” This was a plausible enough story to give him reason to believe her.

“And why does an importer-exporter think I care where Jason Bourne is?”

She cocked her head. “Do you?” This was no time to back down or show weakness.

“And what if you’re not what you say you are?”

“What if you’re not what you say you are?”

He waggled a forefinger at her. “No, I don’t think you’re an importer-exporter.”

“All the more intriguing then.”

He nodded. “I confess I like mysteries, especially when they bring me closer to Bourne.”

“Why do you hate him so?”

“He’s responsible for the death of someone I loved.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You never loved anyone.”

He took a step toward her, but whether it was a threat or simply to get closer to her was difficult to tell.

“You use people, and when you’re finished with them, you crumple them up like a used Kleenex and throw them in the garbage.”

“And what of Bourne? He’s exactly like me.”

“No,” she said, “he’s not like you at all.”

His smile broadened, and for the first time it was without even a hint of menace or irony. “Ah, finally I have a useful bit of knowledge about you.”

She almost spit in his face, but she realized that would make him even happier, because it would indicate just how close he’d come to the bone.

All at once something seemed to change in him. He reached out and ran his fingertips along the line of her jaw. Then, indicating Antonio with the tip of the switchblade, “Go ahead, untie the stubborn fucker.”

As she entered the hearth one last time and knelt to free Antonio, he added, “I don’t need him anymore. I have you.”

This is how it happened.” Chrissie was standing in the kitchen, facing the window over the sink. There was nothing to see, except the grayness of dawn creeping through the treetops like gauze. She had said nothing when Bourne walked into the room, but she started when she felt him beside her.

“How what happened?” Bourne said into the silence.

“How I came to lie to you.” Chrissie turned on the hot water and, placing her hands in the stream, began to wash them as if she were Lady Macbeth. “One day,” she said, “a year or so after Scarlett was born, I looked in the mirror and said to myself, You have a body that’s been abandoned. Perhaps a man can’t understand. I had abandoned my body to motherhood, which means I had abandoned myself.”

Her hands moved in the water, washing, washing. “From that moment, I began to hate myself, and then, by extension, my life, which included Scarlett. Of course, that was something I couldn’t tolerate. I fought against it and immediately fell into a dreadful depression. My work began to suffer, so obviously that the department chair suggested and then gently but firmly insisted I take a sabbatical. Finally, I agreed, I mean I hadn’t a choice, had I? But when I locked my office door behind me, when I drove out of Oxford, drowsing like Avalon in the mist, I knew something drastic had to be done. I knew it was no coincidence that I had locked myself away in a place that never changed. Like my father, I was safe in Oxford, where everything is pre-planned, pre-ordained, even; where there’s no possibility of even the slightest deviation. That’s why he reacted to Trace’s life choices the way he did. They terrified him, so he lashed out at her. It wasn’t until that day, leaving Oxford behind, that I understood that family dynamic and how it had affected me. It occurred to me that I might have chosen my safe life for him, not for myself.”

She turned off the water and dried her hands on a dish towel. The backs were red and raw looking. “I need to get my family out of here.”

“As soon as a friend shows up we’ll leave,” Bourne said.

“Scarlett.”

“She’s with your father.”

She looked back, almost wistfully, through the doorway into the living room. “Scarlett, at least, loves my parents.” She sighed. “Let’s go outside. I’m finding it difficult to breathe in here.”

Through the kitchen door they emerged into the dewy morning. The air was chill, and when they spoke little puffs of steam emerged from their mouths. The bases of the trees were still black, as if the roots were holding on to the dead of night. Chrissie shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

“What happened?” Bourne said.

“Nothing that made sense, it was simply blind luck that I met Holly.”

Bourne was startled. “Holly Marie Moreau?”

She nodded. “She was looking for Trace and found me instead.”

Everything in this puzzle seems to return to Holly, he thought. “And you became friends?”

“More than friends, and less,” she said. “I know that doesn’t make much sense.” She shrugged. “I went to work for her.”

Bourne frowned. He felt like a miner inching along a tunnel without lights, but nevertheless knowing by instinct which way to turn. “What was she doing?”

Chrissie gave a little embarrassed laugh. “She was what she euphemistically called a stocker. Now and again she traveled to Mexico for two or three weeks at a time. At a client’s request, she’d stock a narcorrancho. Narcorranchos are shell estates owned by the Mexican drug lords out in the desert somewhere, usually in the north, in Sonora, but sometimes in a more southerly state like Sinaloa. Apart from a caretaker and maybe a guard or two, no one lives in them full-time.

“Anyway, she took me to Mexico City, to the after-hours clubs, the brothels, where she chose from a list she kept updated weekly, like a calendar or a day planner. We took the girls to whichever narcorrancho was owned by the current client. There were only a handful of Mexicans there when we arrived, some peons, and heavily armed soldiers who sneered at us even while they drooled over the girls. My job was to spruce up the interior and settle the girls in their various bedrooms. The peons did the heavy lifting.

“Gradually, the cars would come-Lincoln Town Cars, Chevy Suburbans, Mercedeses, all with blacked-out windows, wallowing under their armor plating. The security forces would set up a strict perimeter as if we were in an army bivouac during wartime. Then the provisioners would arrive with fresh meat, fruit, cases of beer, crates of tequila, and, of course, mountains of cocaine. The barbecuing of beef and the spit-roasting of whole pigs and lambs would begin. Salsa and disco music blared louder and louder. The roasters stank of sweat and beer so you couldn’t let them near you. Then the bosses arrived with their bodyguards and it was like the Day of the Dead, a festival beyond all festivals.”

Bourne’s mind was racing at a pace that dizzied even him. “One of Holly’s clients was Gustavo Moreno, wasn’t it?”

“Gustavo Moreno was her best client,” Chrissie said.

Yes, Bourne thought, it had to be. Another missing piece of the puzzle.

“He spent more than any of the others. He loved to party all night long. The later it got, the louder and wilder the partying.”

“You were a long way from Oxford, Professor.”

She nodded. “A long way from civilization, too. But then so was Holly. She lived a double life. She said she’d had plenty of practice growing up in Morocco because her family was very strict, very religious, devout, even. A woman had few rights, a girl even fewer. Apparently her father broke away from the rest of the family-which was led by his brother, Holly’s uncle. According to Holly, they had a terrible falling-out. He took her and her mother away to Bali, a place that was the opposite of their village in the High Atlas Mountains. She told no one else about her secret life in Mexico.”

Untrue, he thought. She told me, or I found out, somehow. Which must be how the laptop ended up in Gustavo Moreno’s hands. I must have given it to him. But why? In this puzzle, he thought, there’s always another blank to fill in, another question to answer.

Chrissie turned to him. “I take it you knew Holly.”

When he didn’t reply, she said, “You must be shocked by what I’ve just told you.”

“I’m sorry you lied to me.”

“We lied to each other.” Chrissie couldn’t keep an edge of bitterness out of her voice.

“I have too much experience in lying.” He had a feeling that he’d asked Holly to take him to Mexico on one of her trips. Or had he coerced her into it?

“Why did you quit?” he said.

“You could say that I had an epiphany in the Sonoran Desert. It’s not surprising we hooked up. She and I were both running away from our former lives, from who we were. Or, rather, we had lost our way in our lives, we no longer knew who we were or who we wanted to be. We were intent on rejecting who we were expected to be.” She stared down at her reddened hands as if she didn’t recognize them. “I had thought that the life I’d left-the cloistered sanctuary of Oxford-wasn’t real. But after a time I realized that it was Holly’s life that wasn’t real.”

The sky had lightened further. Birds called from the treetops, and a slight wind brought the smell of damp earth, of living things.

“One night, very late, I wandered into a spare room, or that’s what I thought. And there was Holly on top of Gustavo Moreno, grinding away. I watched for a moment, as if they were two strangers acting in a porno. Then I thought, Fuck, that’s Holly. You could say that I woke up.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think Holly ever did.”

Bourne didn’t think so, either. Sad, but true. Holly had been many things to many people, none of them the same. Those multiple identities had allowed her to burrow deeper into herself, to hide from everyone, when it was her uncle he was certain she feared most.

At that moment Scarlett poked her head out and said, “Hey, you two, we have visitors.”

Inside, both Ottavio Moreno and Peter Marks stood in the living room, eyeing each other warily.

“What the hell is this?” Bourne said.

“Here is Ottavio Moreno, the man who knifed Diego Hererra,” Marks said to Bourne. “And you’re protecting him?”

“It’s a long story, Peter,” Bourne said. “I’ll explain it in the car on the way to-”

Marks turned to Moreno. “You’re the brother of Gustavo Moreno, the Colombian drug lord.”

“I am,” Ottavio Moreno said.

“And the godson of Don Fernando Hererra, the father of the man you knifed to death.”

When Moreno said nothing, Marks continued. “I’ve just come from Don Fernando. He’s heartsick, as you can imagine. Or maybe you can’t. In any event, he doesn’t think you murdered his son. The police, on the other hand, are certain you did.” Without waiting for a reply, he whirled on Bourne. “How the hell could you let this happen?”

Then Ottavio Moreno made a tactical mistake. “I think you’d better calm down,” he said. He should have kept his mouth shut, but possibly he’d been stung by Marks’s words as well as his tone.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Marks said heatedly.

Bourne had half a mind to let the two men come to blows, if only to relieve the built-up tension of the last couple of hours, but there was Chrissie and her family to think of, so he stepped in between the two. Gripping Marks at the elbow, he steered him out the front door, where they could talk without being overheard. Before he could say a word, though, Moreno came storming out.

He headed straight for Marks, but before he was halfway there a shot from the trees stopped him in his tracks. Even as he staggered backward, even as the second shot took part of his skull off, Bourne had flung himself behind Moreno’s Opel. As Marks followed him, another shot cracked through the stillness of early morning.

Marks stumbled and fell.

Boris Karpov accompanied Viktor Cherkesov into the construction site on ulitsa Varvarka. They passed through a gap in the chain-link fence and descended via a ramp into the dead zone. Cherkesov kept them going until they were deep in the heart of the morass of rusting steel girders and cracked concrete blocks; evil-looking weeds sprouted everywhere like tufts of hair on a giant’s back.

Cherkesov stopped them as they approached the bashed-in side of a derelict truck, which had been stripped of tires, electronics, and engine. It was canted over to one side like a ship on its way to the bottom of the sea. The truck was green, but someone had artistically covered it with obscene graffiti in silver spray paint.

Cherkesov’s mouth twitched in an imitation of a smile as he turned away from contemplating the graffiti.

“Now, Boris Illyich, please be kind enough to tell me the gist of your impromptu meeting with President Imov.”

Karpov, seeing no other recourse, obliged him. Cherkesov did not interrupt him once, but listened thoughtfully as Karpov outlined what he had learned about Bukin and those moles under his command. When he was finished, Cherkesov nodded. He produced a Tokarev TT pistol but didn’t aim it at Karpov, at least not exactly.

“Now, Boris Illyich, the question for me is what to do next. First, what shall I do with you? Shall I shoot you and leave you to rot here?” He seemed to spend some time contemplating this option. “Well, to be honest, that would do me no good. By going directly to Imov you have made yourself invulnerable. If you are killed or disappear Imov will initiate a full-scale investigation, which will sooner rather than later wind up at my doorstep. As you can imagine, this would inconvenience me greatly.”

“I think it would do more than inconvenience you, Viktor Delyagovich,” Karpov said without inflection. “It would be the beginning of your end and the triumph of Nikolai Patrushev, your bitterest enemy.”

“These days, I have bigger fish to fry than Nikolai Patrushev.” Cherkesov said this softly, contemplatively, as if he had forgotten that Karpov was there at all. Then, all at once, he snapped out of it, his eyes refocusing on the colonel. “So killing you is out, which is fortunate, Boris Illyich, because I like you. More to the point, I admire your tenacity as well as your intelligence. Which is why I won’t even bother to bribe you.” He grunted, a sort of laugh gone bad. “You might be the last honest man in Russian intelligence.” He waved the Tokarev. “So where does that leave us?”

“Stalemate,” Karpov offered.

“No, no, no. Stalemate is good for no one, especially you and me, especially at this moment in time. You gave Imov the evidence against Bukin, Imov gave you an assignment. We both have no choice but for you to carry it out.”

“That would be suicide for you,” Karpov pointed out.

“Only if I stay on as head of FSB-2,” Cherkesov said.

Karpov shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Cherkesov had a miniature two-way radio to his ear. “Come down now,” he said to whoever was on the other end of the line.

There was a smirk on his face that Karpov had never seen before. He took a step toward the colonel and, in a moment, gestured. “Look who’s coming, Boris Illyich.”

Karpov turned and saw Melor Bukin picking his way through the rubble.

“Now,” Cherkesov said, slapping the Tokarev into Karpov’s hand, “do your duty.”

Karpov held the Tokarev behind his back as Melor Bukin approached them. He wondered what Cherkesov had told him, because Bukin was totally relaxed and unsuspecting. His eyes opened wide when Karpov brought out the Tokarev and aimed it at him.

“Viktor Delyagovich, what is the meaning of this?” he said.

Karpov shot him in the right knee, and he went down like a smokestack being demolished.

“What are you doing?” he cried as he clutched his ruined knee. “Are you mad?”

Karpov advanced on him. “I know about your treachery and so does President Imov. Who are the other moles inside FSB-2?”

Bukin stared up at him wide-eyed. “What, what? Moles? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Karpov calmly and deliberately blew his left kneecap to smithereens. Bukin screamed and writhed on the ground like a worm.

“Answer me!” Karpov commanded.

Bukin’s eyes were bloodshot. He was pale and trembling in shock and agony. “Boris Illyich, doesn’t our history mean anything? I’m your mentor, I was instrumental in bringing you into FSB-2.”

Karpov loomed over him. “All the more reason that I be the one to clean your dirty house.”

“But, but, but,” Bukin sputtered, “I was just following orders.” He pointed at Cherkesov. “His orders.”

“How easily he lies,” Cherkesov said.

“No, Boris Illyich, it’s the truth, I swear.”

Karpov squatted by Bukin’s side. “I know how we can solve this problem.”

“I need a fucking hospital,” Bukin moaned. “I’m bleeding to death.”

“Tell me the names of the moles,” Karpov said. “Then I’ll take care of you.”

Bukin’s bloodshot eyes darted between him and Cherkesov.

“Forget him,” Karpov said. “I’m the one standing between you and bleeding out here in this cesspit.”

Bukin swallowed heavily, then gave up the names of three men inside FSB-2.

“Thank you,” Karpov said. He stood up and shot Bukin between the eyes.

Then he turned to Cherkesov and said, “What’s to stop me from killing you or taking you in?”

“You may be incorruptible, Boris Illyich, but you know which side of the bread is buttered, or will be.” Cherkesov took out a cigarette and lit up. He did not once look at his fallen lieutenant. “I can clear the way for you to become head of the FSB-2.”

“So can President Imov.”

“True enough.” Cherkesov nodded. “But Imov can’t guarantee that one of the other commanders won’t drop polonium into your tea or slip a stiletto between your ribs one night.”

Karpov knew very well that Cherkesov still had the power to identify and sweep away any of his potential enemies inside FSB-2. He was the only one who could clear Karpov’s path.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re proposing that I take your job?”

“Yes.”

“And what of you? Imov will want your head.”

“Of course he will, but he’ll have to find me first.”

“You’ll go into hiding, become a fugitive?” Karpov shook his head. “I don’t see that future for you.”

“Neither do I, Boris Illyich. I am going to the seat of a higher power.”

“Higher than the FSB?”

“Higher than the Kremlin.”

Karpov frowned. “And what would that be?”

Cherkesov’s eyes glittered. “Tell me, Boris Illyich, have you ever heard of Severus Domna?”

[22]

MARKS GRABBED HIS left thigh, grimacing in pain. The unseen sniper continued to pepper the area. Bourne darted out, took hold of Marks, and dragged him to safety.

“Keep your head down, Peter.”

“Tell that to your pal Moreno,” Marks said. “My fucking head is down.”

“You’re welcome.” Bourne inspected the wound, determining that the bullet hadn’t severed an artery. Then he ripped a sleeve off Marks’s shirt and used it as a tourniquet, tying it around his thigh above the wound.

“I’m not going to forget this,” Marks said.

“No, only I do that,” Bourne said with such a sardonic edge that Marks had to laugh, albeit drily.

Bourne edged around the front of the Opel. He breathed easily and deeply as he scanned the thick line of trees. He’d been up in one of them not so very long ago, and he used his eidetic memory, honed by his Treadstone training, to reconstruct the best possible places for a sniper to secrete himself. By the way both Ottavio Moreno and Marks fell he had a clear idea of where the shooter must be. He put himself in the sniper’s head: Where would he put himself that both had a clear view of the front door and was deeply sheltered?

He heard Chrissie calling, and from the level of anxiety in her voice realized that she must have been shouting to him for some time. Crawling back to the other end of the Opel, he called, “I’m okay. Stay inside until I come get you.”

Scuttling back to the taillights, he sprinted out of cover, hurling himself into the tree line. A volley of shots smacked into the Opel’s front end. From the beginning of the attack, he’d counted the shots. After the last flurry, he’d calculated that the sniper needed time to reload. A couple of seconds was all he needed to reach the protection of the trees. Now he went hunting.

In among the pines and oaks, perpetual shadows clung to the thick jigsaw of branches. Here and there, light filtered through in tiny diamonds, winking and glittering as the wind stirred the woods. Bourne, in a semi-crouch, picked his way through the underbrush, taking care not to crunch down on twigs or pinecones. He made no sound. Every five or six paces he stopped, watching and listening as a fox or a stoat will, alert for both prey and enemies.

He caught sight of a small flash of black-and-brown, blurred, winking out almost before it had a chance to register. He headed toward it. Briefly he considered taking to the trees, but was concerned that dislodged debris would give away his position. At some point he changed direction, veering away, circling to come upon the sniper from the side. As he continued, he repeatedly checked behind and above him for any sign of the sniper.

The glint of metal up ahead pushed him onward at a more rapid pace. Peering out from behind the bole of an oak, he could see the right shoulder and hip of the sniper. He knelt behind a dense patch of underbrush, then scuttled around behind him. A narrow gap between two pines afforded him an excellent view of the front door and driveway. Bourne caught a glimpse of Ottavio Moreno on the ground in a pool of blood. Marks was hidden behind the flank of Moreno’s Opel. Bourne supposed the sniper was waiting for someone to move. He seemed bent on shooting to death everyone who ventured outside the house. Was he NSA, CI, or a soldier of Severus Domna? Only one way to find out.

Bourne approached slowly and cautiously, but at the last moment the sniper must have sensed him because he drove the wooden stock of his Dragunov SVD back into Bourne’s midsection. Then he whirled, swinging the barrel of the Dragunov against Bourne’s shoulder. He was a slim, flat-faced man with small black eyes and a pushed-in nose.

He battered Bourne to his knees and then, with another blow of the Dragunov, onto his back. He pressed the rifle’s muzzle against Bourne’s heart.

“Don’t move, don’t say a word,” he said. “Just hand over the ring.”

“What ring?”

The sniper swung the muzzle of the Dragunov into Bourne’s jaw, drawing blood. But at the same instant Bourne smashed the sole of his shoe into the man’s knee. It bent inward, the bones cracked, and the sniper gasped. Bourne was rolling away even as the sniper squeezed off a shot. The bullet plowed into the ground where Bourne had been lying, splitting an old, rotting board full of long carpenter’s nails.

From one knee, the sniper began to wield the Dragunov like a club, swinging it back and forth to keep Bourne at bay while he caught his breath. Finally, with a concerted effort, he staggered to his feet. That was when Bourne lowered his shoulder and drove it into him. They went down. At once, the sniper tried to maneuver Bourne onto the nails sticking wickedly out of the board. Bourne twisted away, and now the two of them struggled for possession of the Dragunov. Until Bourne lifted an elbow, jamming it into the sniper’s Adam’s apple. He began to choke and Bourne drove a fist into the side of his head. The sniper’s body went limp.

Bourne checked his hands but found no ring. Then he went through his pockets. His name was Farid Lever, according to his French passport, but that told Bourne nothing. The passport could be real or a fake, he had no time to scrutinize it. Lever, or whoever the hell he was, had on him five thousand British pounds, two thousand euros, and a set of car keys.

Emptying the Dragunov’s magazine, he flung the rifle into the woods then slapped the sniper back into consciousness.

“Who are you?” Bourne said. “Who do you work for?”

The black eyes looked up at him impassively. Reaching down, Bourne squeezed the sniper’s ruined knee. His eyes opened wide and he gasped, but not another sound came out of his mouth. It soon would, Bourne vowed. This was a man who had shot two people, one of them dead. Prying open the sniper’s mouth, he shoved his fist in. The man gagged, arching up. He tried to twist away, to move his head from side to side, but Bourne kept a firm grip on him. As his hands came up, Bourne slapped them down and pressed harder, pushing his fist in deeper.

The sniper’s eyes began to water, he coughed and gagged again. Then his gorge rose up uncontrollably and he tried to vomit, but there was nowhere for it to go. He began to asphyxiate. Terror flooded his face, and he nodded as vigorously as he was able.

The moment Bourne extracted his fist, the sniper rolled over on his side and vomited, his eyes tearing, his nose running. His body shook all over. Bourne took him by the shoulders and turned him onto his back. His face was a mess; he looked like a kid who’d gotten the worst of a street fight.

“Now,” Bourne said. “Who are you and who do you work for?”

“Fa… Fa… Farid Lever.” Understandably, he was having trouble speaking.

Bourne held up the French passport. “One more lie and this gets stuffed down your throat, and I promise you I won’t pull it out.”

The sniper swallowed, wincing at the sour taste in his mouth. “Farid Kazmi. I belong to Jalal Essai.”

Bourne took a shot in the dimness. “Severus Domna?”

“He was.” Kazmi had to stop either to regain his breath or to get more saliva in his mouth. “I need water. Do you have any water?”

“Those two men you shot needed water, too. One of them is dead, the other isn’t, but neither is getting any,” Bourne said. “Continue. Jalal Essai…”

“Jalal was a member of Severus Domna. He has broken away from them.”

“That’s a very dangerous course. He must have a damn good reason.”

“The ring.”

“Why?”

Kazmi’s tongue came out, trying to moisten his dry lips. “It belongs to him. For years he thought it was lost, but now he knows that his brother stole it from him years ago. You have it.”

So Jalal Essai is Holly’s dreaded uncle, Bourne thought. The puzzle was at last taking shape. Holly the hedonist on one side, and her uncle Jalal the religious extremist on the other. What if Holly’s father had left Morocco to protect her from his brother, who would surely have clamped down on Holly’s natural tendencies, stifled her, killed her, in a manner of speaking? And then, after his death, who had stood between Holly and her uncle? But in a blinding flash of memory he knew: It was him. Holly had somehow recruited him to protect her from Jalal Essai. He had done that, but the curious relationship among Holly, Tracy, Perlis, and Diego Hererra-a relationship she had failed to tell him about-had undone her. Perlis had found out about the ring from her and had killed her to get it.

“I was to get the ring at all costs,” Kazmi said, bringing Bourne back into the present.

“No matter how many lives it took.”

Kazmi nodded, wincing with pain. “No matter how many.” Something lurked in those black eyes. “Jalal will get it, too.”

“What makes you say that?”

A look of serenity bloomed on Kazmi’s face and Bourne lunged for his mouth. But it was too late. His molars had ground open a fake tooth, and the cyanide inside was already shutting down his systems.

Bourne sat back on his haunches. When Kazmi had breathed his last, he rose and headed back toward the house.

Peter Marks lay on the ground, keeping as still as possible. Moving only caused a further loss of blood. Though well trained, he had never before been wounded in the field, or anywhere else, had never even experienced an accident like falling off a ladder or missing a stair tread. He lay as if dead, hearing his breath sawing in and out of his mouth, feeling the blood pulsing in his leg as if it had developed a second heart, but a heart that was malevolent, black as night, a heart that was close to death, or in whose chambers death had inveigled itself like a thief.

Marks felt his life was about to be stolen from him prematurely, as it had been from his sister. How close he felt to her at this moment, as if at the last instant he had snatched her from the doomed plane, holding her close while they soared through the clouds. This abrupt awareness of the tenuousness of his own life did not frighten him so much as change his perspective. He lay, helpless and bleeding, and watched an ant struggle with a freshly fallen leaf, a new leaf, a luminous green, until moments ago bursting with life. The leaf was clearly too big for the ant, but the insect was undeterred, tugging and pulling, dragging the recalcitrant leaf over pebbles and roots, the huge impediments of its world. Marks loved that ant. It refused to give up no matter how difficult its life had become. It persevered. It abided. This, too, Marks resolved to do. He resolved to look out for himself and for the people he cared about-Soraya, for instance-in a way that he could not have imagined, let alone foreseen, before he had been shot.

And so he lay for some time, hearing nothing but the occasional soughing of the wind through the woods. Which was why, when he heard Chrissie’s voice calling, he said, “This is Peter Marks. I’ve been hit in the leg. Moreno’s dead, and Adam went after the sniper.”

“I’m coming out to get you.”

“Stay where you are,” he shouted back. Dragging himself forward, he struggled to sit with his back against the Opel. “The area isn’t secure.”

But a moment later she appeared at his side, crouched down behind the safety of the car’s bullet-ridden flank.

“Stupid move,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

It was the second time someone had said that to him today and he didn’t like it. In fact, he didn’t like much of anything in his life at the moment, and he became momentarily disoriented, wondering how in the world he had allowed himself to get into this sorry state. He loved no one and so far as he knew no one loved him, not currently, anyway. He supposed his parents had loved him in their gruff overriding way, and surely his sister had. But who else? His latest girlfriend had lasted six months, just about par for the course, before she got fed up with his long hours and inattention, and walked out. Friends? A few. But like Soraya, he used them or they used him. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach and shuddered.

“You’re going into shock,” Chrissie said, understanding him better than he could imagine. “We’d better get you into the house and warmed up.”

She helped him to stand, balanced on his good leg. He put his arm around her, and she helped him toward the house. He moved shakily and, stumbling over a rock or a root, almost sent them both tumbling over.

Christ on a crutch, he thought wildly, I’m full of self-pity today, and was even more thoroughly disgusted with himself than he had been a moment ago.

Her father, who had emerged from the house, rushed to Marks’s other side and helped her with her burden. The old man kicked the door shut when they were inside.

Bourne came upon the woman almost without warning. She was half buried in crisp, dead leaves. Her face was turned away from him, eyes closed. Her long hair was streaked with blood, but from the way she lay, it was impossible to tell whether she was dead or alive. A neighbor out walking, it had been her bad luck to stumble upon Kazmi. Beneath the fall of leaves, he could make out bits and pieces of her red-and-black-checked flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. Leaves appeared to have been kicked over her with considerable haste.

He needed to return to Peter Marks and to the people in the house, but he couldn’t bypass the woman until he found out whether she was alive and, if so, how badly she was injured. Creeping closer, he put a hand out to find the pulse in her carotid artery.

Her eyes snapped open, her hand rose up, clutching a hunting knife by its handle. The point stabbed out toward his chest and, as he moved, sliced through his shirt and across the skin covering his breastbone. She sat up, coming after him. Leaves fell away from her like freshly turned earth from an animated corpse. Bourne grasped her wrist, redirecting the knife away from him, but she had a second knife in her other hand. Struggling with her, he saw it very late, and took the point on the bone of his shoulder.

She was well trained and surprisingly strong. She scissored her legs, catching his right ankle, taking him off balance. He fell backward and she was on him. He had control of one wrist, but the knife blade scythed in to slit his throat. Using the carpenter’s nail like a push dagger, he slapped his hand against the side of her neck, puncturing her carotid artery.

A fountain of blood arced out, pulsing with each slackening beat of her heart. The woman toppled over into the leaves that had covered her. She looked up at him with Kazmi’s enigmatic smile, that smile that made him believe that Jalal Essai wasn’t finished with him, that had put him on alert, that had caused him to keep the carpenter’s nail hidden in his left hand. Were Kazmi and the woman working together? Had she been his backup? It seemed so to him, a diabolical scheme that made of Jalal Essai a formidable enemy with whom he had a difficult and shadowed past, a man who doubtless nursed a blood grudge against him.

As Chrissie and her father sat Marks down in a chair, they heard rifle shots. Chrissie gave a little gasp and ran to the door, pulling it open against her father’s shouted warning. Still in the shadows of the doorway, she peered out past the driveway and the Opel to the woods beyond, but she could see nothing, even though she strained with every ounce of her strength to penetrate the foliage, to spot a sign that Bourne was still alive. What if he was wounded and needed help?

She had already made up her mind to go after him, as she imagined Tracy would have done in the same circumstances, when she saw him emerging through the branches. Before she could take a step, someone flashed past her, down the steps.

“Scarlett!”

Scarlett raced down the driveway, skirted the dead man, passing around the trunk of the car, and flung herself into Bourne’s arms.

“This is real blood, your blood,” she said a bit out of breath, “but I can help you.”

Bourne was about to brush her gently away, but her obvious concern changed his mind. She genuinely wanted to help, and he couldn’t take that away from her. He knelt down beside her so that she could check his cuts and bruises.

“I’ll get bandages from Granddad’s kit.” But she made no move to leave him, digging in the dirt with her fingers as children will when they’re embarrassed or at a loss for words. Then she put her face up to his. “Are you all right?”

He smiled. “Imagine tripping over a rock.”

“Just scratches and bruises?”

“That’s all.”

“That’s good then. I-” She held something up for him to see. “I found this just now. Does it belong to Mr. Marks? This is where he was lying.”

Bourne took it and rubbed the dirt off. It was a Severus Domna ring. Where had it come from?

“I’ll ask Mr. Marks when we get inside.” He pocketed the ring.

At that moment Chrissie came up, out of breath not only from the all-out sprint but also from the terror of having her daughter exposed to more danger.

“Scarlett,” she said.

Bourne saw that she was prepared to scold her daughter until she glimpsed her examining Bourne’s superficial wounds with absolute concentration and she, like Bourne, shut her mouth to allow this mini-drama to play out.

“If you let me put bandages on your cuts,” Scarlett said, “you’ll be fine.”

“Then let’s go inside, Dr. Lincoln.”

Scarlett giggled. Bourne stood up, and the three of them returned in silence to the house, where Bourne went directly to where they had sat Marks. Chrissie’s father was tending him with materials from an astonishingly well-stocked first-aid kit. Marks’s eyes were closed, his head back. Bourne guessed the professor had administered a sedative.

“The first-aid kit’s from the trunk of Dad’s car,” Chrissie said as Scarlett rummaged around for bandages and Mercurochrome. “He’s been a hunter all his life.”

Bourne sat cross-legged on the rug while Scarlett ministered to him.

“The wound’s a clean one,” Professor Atherton said of his own patient. “Bullet went clear through, so the chance of infection is low, especially now that I’ve cleaned it out.” He took the Mercurochrome from Scarlett, applied it to two squares of sterile gauze, placed the gauze over the entrance and exit wounds, then expertly wrapped the whole in surgical tape. “Seen much worse in my day,” he said. “The only problem now is to make sure he rests and gets some fluids in him as soon as possible. He’s lost a lot of blood, though not nearly as much as if he didn’t have the tourniquet on.”

Finished, he looked up from his patient to see Bourne. “You sure look like crap, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is.”

“Professor, I need to ask you a question.”

The old man snorted. “Is that all you do, son, ask questions?” He put a hand on the arm of Marks’s chair and levered himself up to a standing position. “Well, you can ask me anything you like, doesn’t mean I’ll answer you.”

Bourne stood as well. “Did Tracy have a brother?”

“What?”

Chrissie frowned. “Adam, I already told you that Tracy was my only-”

Bourne held up his hand. “I’m not asking your father whether you and your sister had a brother. I’m asking if Tracy had a brother.”

A malevolent expression gathered on Professor Atherton’s face. “Bugger’n’blast, son, in days gone by I’d’ve boxed your ears for saying something so bloody-minded.”

“You didn’t answer the question. Did Tracy have a brother?”

The professor’s expression darkened further. “You mean a half brother.”

Chrissie took a step toward the two men, who were now faced off like street fighters about to settle a grudge. “Adam, why are you-?”

“Don’t get all gutted up over nothing.” Her father waved away her protest. And then to Bourne: “You’re asking me if I had sexual relations with another woman and something came of it?”

“That’s right.”

“Never did,” Professor Atherton said. “I loved the girls’ mother and I’ve been faithful to her for longer than I care to remember.” He shook his head. “I think you’ve made rather a hash of this.”

Bourne was unfazed. “Tracy worked for a dangerous man. I had to ask myself why because it seemed doubtful that she would work for him willingly. Then Chrissie provided a partial answer. Tracy told this man she had a brother who was in trouble.”

At once Professor Atherton’s demeanor altered radically. All color drained out of his face; he might have fallen if Chrissie hadn’t stepped to his side to support him. With some difficulty she got him to sit down in the chair opposite Marks.

“Dad?” She knelt beside him, his clammy hand in hers. “What is this? Is there a brother I don’t know about?”

The old man kept shaking his head. “I had no idea she knew,” he mumbled as if to himself. “How the bloody hell did she find out?”

“So it’s true.” Chrissie shot Bourne a glance, then redirected her attention to her father. “Why didn’t you and Mum tell us?”

Professor Atherton sighed deeply, then passed a hand across his sweating brow. He looked at his daughter blankly, as if he didn’t recognize her, or he was expecting to see someone else.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But you must.” She seemed to rise up, stiffening her spine, and she leaned in toward him as if to lend her words more weight. “You have no choice now, Dad. You have to tell me about him.”

Her father remained silent, impassive now, as if free of a fever that had gripped him.

“What’s his name?” she implored. “Can’t you tell me that much?”

Her father’s eyes would not meet hers. “He had no name.”

Chrissie sat back, as if he had slapped her across the face. “I don’t understand.”

“And why would you?” Professor Atherton said. “Your brother was born dead.”

[23]

JALAL ESSAI WAS a marked man and he knew it. As he sat on a bridge chair he’d opened up in his darkened bedroom, he considered these factors: Breaking with Severus Domna had not been an easy decision-or rather, while the decision had been easy, the actual implementation had been difficult. But then it was always difficult, Essai thought, deliberately putting oneself in harm’s way. He had not acted on his decision until he had worked out the methods of implementation, drawing up a list in his mind of all the possible paths he could take, then eliminating them one by one until he reached the one with the fewest objections, the most acceptable level of risk, and the best odds of success. This methodical approach was how he arrived at every decision: The process was the most logical. Also, it had the added benefit of calming his mind, not unlike his prayers to Allah, or contemplating a Zen koan. The empty mind fills itself with possibilities unavailable to others.

So he sat, absolutely still, within the darkness of his apartment, the blackness of his bedroom where all the blinds were drawn against nighttime’s streetlights and the passing headlights of the occasional car or truck. Night, and the threat of night. Night was to him what a cup of espresso was to others, a calm and satisfying state of reflection. He could navigate his way through darkness, even nightmares, because Allah had blessed with the light of the true believer.

It was 3 AM. He knew what was coming, which was why he had chosen not to run. A runner makes an excellent target as he leaves his own territory. He stumbles-and he dies. Essai did not intend to stumble. Instead he had prepared his bedroom for the inevitable, and he was willing-content even-to remain in place until the enemy showed his face.

He heard the sound first. A tiny scratching, as if of mice, from the living room, in the direction of the front door. The sound very quickly ceased, but he knew the enemy must have picked the lock on his door, because someone was in the apartment. Still, he did not move. There was no reason to move. He cast his gaze on the bed, where a lump under the covers revealed to his enemy’s eyes the presence of a sleeping body.

The quality of the darkness changed, deepening, becoming thicker, dense with the pulse of another human being. Essai’s focus narrowed even more. His enemy, now in the kill zone, bent over the bed.

Essai felt the motion as a stirring of the air as his enemy drew out a dagger and plunged it into the figure sleeping in the bed. At once the plastic skin punctured, spraying the would-be killer with a geyser of battery acid with which Essai had filled the inflatable sex toy.

His enemy reacted in predictable fashion by falling backward, limbs pinwheeling. On the floor he tried and failed to wipe the acid off his face, neck, and chest. This action only served to smear the acid over more of his face, neck, and chest. He gasped, but because the acid was eating his lips and tongue he could not get out any words or even a scream. A nightmare scenario for him, Essai thought, as he rose from the chair at last.

Kneeling over the enemy-the man Severus Domna had sent to kill him for his disloyalty-he smiled the smile of the just, the righteous in Allah’s beneficent eyes, and putting a forefinger against his lips he whispered, “Shhhhh,” so low that only he and his enemy could hear.

Then he took up the assassin’s dagger and picked his way to the doorway into the hall. Pressing himself against the wall, he waited, emptying his mind of expectation. Into this divine emptiness came the most probable route the second man would take. He knew there was a second man, just as he knew his assassin would not use a pistol to kill him, because these were the two major methods of operation Severus Domna employed: stealth and backup. Methods he himself had used in going after Jason Bourne and the ring.

A diagonal shadow falling across the width of the hall bore out his thesis. Now he knew where the second assassin was, or rather had been, because he was on the move. His compatriot had had enough time to effect the kill, and now he was closing the gap between them to determine if anything was amiss.

Something certainly was amiss, a fact confirmed to him as the dagger, thrown with great accuracy by Essai, penetrated his chest between two ribs and pierced his heart. He fell heavily, like a wildebeest taken down by a lion. Essai approached him, knelt, and determined there was no pulse, no life left. Then he returned to his bedroom, where the first assassin was writhing on the floor with ever-more-uncoordinated movements.

Snapping on a lamp, he studied the man’s face. He did not recognize him, but then he didn’t expect to. Severus Domna would not have sent anyone he could identify on sight. Squatting down beside the man, he said, “My friend, I pity you. I pity you because I have chosen not to end your life and therefore your suffering. Instead, I will leave you as you are.”

Pulling out a cell phone burner, he dialed a local number.

“Yes?” Benjamin El-Arian said.

“Delivery for you to pick up,” Essai said.

“You must be mistaken. I didn’t order anything.”

Essai put the cell to the assassin’s mouth, and he made sounds like a cow in distress.

“Who is this?”

Something had changed in El-Arian’s voice, a febrile element that Essai, the cell to his ear again, was able to catch.

“I estimate you have thirty minutes before your assassin dies. His life is in your hands.”

Essai closed the cell and, standing, ground it to bits beneath his heel.

Then he addressed the assassin for the last time: “You will tell Benjamin El-Arian what happened here, and then he will deal with you as he sees fit. Tell him that the same fate awaits anyone he sends after me. That’s all you need to do now. His time-and yours-is over.”

Moira, standing on the starboard side of the yacht, watched the exchange of infrared signals through the night glasses the captain had handed her moments before. She could see the cigarette boat lying to as the yacht came up on it. Moving her field of vision slightly, she saw two figures in the cigarette besides the signaler. A man and a woman. The man was almost certainly Arkadin, but who was the woman and why would he have someone else on board? Berengária had told her Arkadin came out to meet her boats with just a mate, an old Mexican named El Heraldo.

The captain continued to keep the yacht’s engines idling as it slid through the black waves on its own momentum. Now Moira could make out Arkadin’s face, and beside him was-Soraya Moore!

She almost dropped the night glasses overboard. What the hell? she thought. For every plan there was a wrench that could jam up the works. Here was hers.

The quiet lapping of the water was all she heard as the cigarette came up alongside the yacht. A crewman tossed down a rope ladder; another manned the winch. Meanwhile two other crewmen were busy hauling up the cargo from belowdecks. Berengária had explained the routine in detail. A crate was loaded into the net to be winched down to the cigarette so Arkadin could inspect the contents.

As this was happening, Moira leaned over the rail, peering down at the people in the cigarette. Soraya saw her first, her mouth forming an O of silent surprise.

What the hell? she mouthed up to Moira, who had to laugh. They’d both had the same reaction on seeing each other.

Then Arkadin caught sight of her. Frowning, he climbed the ladder. The moment he swung aboard the yacht he drew out a Glock 9mm and aimed it at her midsection.

“Who the hell are you?” he said. “And what are you doing on board my boat?”

“It’s not your boat, it belongs to Berengária,” Moira said in Spanish.

Arkadin’s eyes narrowed. “And do you belong to Berengária also?”

“I belong to no one,” Moira said, “but I am looking out for Berengária’s interests.” She had thought about the possible answers to his questions during the entire trip up the coast of Mexico. What it boiled down to was this: Arkadin was a man first, a homicidal criminal second.

“Just like a woman to send a woman,” Arkadin said, as disdainful as Roberto Corellos.

“Berengária is convinced you no longer trust her.”

“This is true.”

“Perhaps she no longer trusts you.”

Arkadin gave her a dark look but said nothing.

“This is a poor state of affairs,” Moira acknowledged. “And no way to run a business.”

“And how does the woman who does not own you suggest we proceed?”

“For a start, you might lower the Glock,” Moira observed.

By this time Soraya had made her way up the ladder and now appeared, swinging her legs over the yacht’s brass railing. She seemed to size up the situation immediately, looking from Moira to Arkadin and back again.

“Fuck you,” Arkadin said. “And fuck Berengária for sending you.”

“If she had sent a man, the chances are good the two of you would have killed each other.”

“I would have killed him, certainly,” Arkadin said.

“So sending a man would not have been the smart thing to do.”

Arkadin snorted. “Fuck, we’re not in the kitchen.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re not even armed.”

“Therefore, you won’t shoot me,” Moira said. “Therefore, you will be willing to listen when I talk, when I negotiate, when I propose a way to go forward without suspicion on either side.”

Arkadin watched her as a hawk watches a sparrow. Perhaps he no longer considered her a threat, or possibly what she said had gotten through to him. In any event, he lowered the Glock and tucked it away at the small of his back.

Moira looked pointedly at Soraya. “But I won’t talk or negotiate or propose anything with someone unfamiliar. Berengária told me about you and your boatman, El Heraldo, but now I see this woman here. I don’t like surprises.”

“That makes two of us.” Arkadin jerked his head in Soraya’s direction. “A new partner, on probation. She doesn’t work out, I put a hole in the back of her head.”

“Just like that.”

Arkadin walked to where Soraya stood and, cocking his thumb and forefinger as if they were a gun, he pressed its muzzle to the base of her skull. “Boom!” Then he turned and, smiling in the most charming manner, said, “So speak your mind.”

“There are too many partners,” Moira said bluntly.

This gave Arkadin pause. “For myself,” he said at length, “I don’t care for partners in the least.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, they’re a part of doing business. But if Berengária wants out…”

“We were thinking more of Corellos.”

“She’s his lover.”

“This is business,” Moira said. “What she did with Corellos was to keep the peace between them.” Now she shrugged. “What better weapon does she have?”

Arkadin seemed to look at her in a new light. “Corellos is very powerful.”

“Corellos is in prison.”

“I doubt for much longer.”

“Which is why,” Moira said, “we hit him now.”

“Hit him?”

“Kill, terminate, murder, call it what you like.”

Arkadin paused a moment, then burst out laughing. “Where in the world did Berengária find you?”

Moira, glancing at Soraya, took a not-so-wild guess, thinking: Pretty much the same place you found your new partner.

Why would she do that?” Professor Atherton had his head in his hands. “Why would Tracy tell anyone that she had a brother?”

“Especially when that put her in Arkadin’s debt,” Chrissie added.

“She did more than mention her brother,” Bourne said. “She concocted an elaborate lie about him being alive and in debt over his head. It’s as if she wanted Arkadin to have something on her.”

Chrissie shook her head. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

It did, Bourne thought, if she had been sent to get close to Arkadin. To report on his deals and his whereabouts, for example. He was not, however, about to speculate with these people.

“That question can wait,” he said. “After the shots in the woods, we need to get out of here.” He turned to Professor Atherton. “I can carry Marks, can you maneuver on your own?”

The old man nodded curtly.

Chrissie gestured. “I’ll help you, Dad.”

“See to your daughter,” he said gruffly. “I can take care of myself.”

Chrissie packed up the first-aid kit. She carried it out the front door, holding Scarlett’s hand. Bourne picked Marks up, sliding him up onto his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said, herding the professor outside.

Chrissie took him around to his car, which was parked out back. Bourne packed Marks into the rental, which was miraculously unscathed. Chrissie pulled her father’s car around, and Scarlett clambered in.

Bourne approached her.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“You go back to your life.”

“My life.” Her laugh was uneasy. “My life-and my family’s life-will never be the same.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

She nodded.

“In any case, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She smiled wanly. “For a moment, I was Tracy, and now I know that I never wanted to be like her, I just thought I did.” She put a hand on his arm, briefly. “It was good she met you. You made her happy.”

“For a night or two.”

“More than many get in a lifetime.” Her hand dropped away. “Trace chose her life, it didn’t choose her.”

Bourne nodded. Turning away, he peered into her car. When he tapped on the glass, Scarlett opened the window. He placed something in her hand and closed her fingers around it.

“This is just between us,” Bourne said. “Don’t look at it until you’re home and alone.”

She nodded solemnly.

“Let’s go,” Chrissie said, not looking at Bourne.

Scarlett raised her window. She said something Bourne couldn’t hear. He put his hand flat against the window. On the other side, Scarlett pressed her hand over his.

Marks had left the key in the ignition and now Bourne started it up.

A combination of the noise and vibration as Bourne came out of the driveway and turned onto the road woke Marks from his stupor.

“Where the hell am I?” he mumbled thickly.

“On your way to London.”

Marks nodded in the manner of a drunk who is struggling to reacquaint himself with how the world works. “Fuck, my leg hurts.”

“You were shot, you lost some blood, but you’ll be fine.”

“Right.” Then something in his face changed and a shudder passed through him as if the memories of recent events had resurfaced. He turned to Bourne. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’ve acted like a shit.”

Bourne said nothing as he continued to drive.

“I was sent out to find you.”

“I figured that out.”

Marks rubbed his eyes with his knuckles in an effort to clear his head of the last cobwebs. “I work for Treadstone now.”

Bourne pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Since when has Treadstone re-formed?”

“Since Willard found a backer.”

“And who might that be?”

“Oliver Liss.”

Bourne had to laugh. “Poor Willard. Out of the frying pan.”

“That’s it exactly.” Marks’s tone was mournful. “The whole thing’s a total fuckup.”

“And you’re part of the fuckup.”

Marks sighed. “Actually, I’m hoping to be part of the solution.”

“Really? And how would that work?”

“Liss wants something you have-a ring.”

Everyone wants the Dominion ring, Bourne thought, but he remained silent.

“I was supposed to get it from you.”

“I’d be curious to know how you were going to do that.”

“To be honest, I don’t have a clue,” Marks said, “and I’m no longer interested in that.”

Bourne was silent.

Marks nodded. “You have a right to be skeptical. But I’m telling you the truth. Willard called just before I arrived at the house. He told me the mission had changed, that I was now to get you to Tineghir.”

“In southeast Morocco.”

“Ouarzazate, to be precise. Apparently, Arkadin is being brought there, too.”

Bourne was silent for so long Marks felt compelled to say, “What are you thinking?”

“That Oliver Liss is no longer calling the shots at Treadstone.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Liss would no more order you to get me to Ouarzazate than he would open a vein.” He looked at Marks. “No, Peter, something’s changed radically.”

“I felt that myself, but what?” Marks took out his PDA and went on a number of government news sites. “Jesus,” he said at last, “Liss was taken into custody by the Department of Justice pending an investigation into his role in illegal Black River dealings.” He looked up. “But he was cleared of those charges weeks ago.”

“I told you something’s radically changed,” Bourne said. “Willard is taking orders from another source.”

“It has to be someone very high up the food chain to get the investigation reopened.”

Bourne nodded. “And now you’re as much in the dark as I am. It looks like your boss sold you down the river without even a second’s thought.”

“Frankly, this comes as no surprise.” Marks rubbed his leg. His pain-filled exhale was a whistle of protest.

“There’s a doctor in London who’ll be discreet about the gunshot wound.” Bourne put the car in gear and, checking for traffic, pulled out onto the road. “Just so you know, Diego led me into a trap. There were enemies waiting for me at the club.”

“Did Moreno have to kill him?”

“We’ll never know now,” Bourne said. “But Ottavio saved my life back there. He didn’t deserve to be shot down like a dog.”

“Which brings me to who the hell was firing at us.”

Bourne told him about Severus Domna and Jalal Essai without going into detail about Holly.

“I was attacked in London. I pulled an odd gold ring off the forefinger of my assailant’s right hand.” He fished around in his pockets. “Shit, I seem to have lost it.”

“Scarlett found it. I gave it to her as a souvenir,” Bourne said. “Every member of Severus Domna carries one.”

“So this is all about an old Treadstone mission.” Marks seemed to consider the implications for a moment. “Do you know why Alex Conklin wanted the laptop?”

“No idea,” Bourne said, though he thought he did know now. Was there anyone besides Soraya and Moira he could trust? Though he knew Soraya and Peter were good friends he still didn’t know whether he could trust Marks.

Marks shifted uncomfortably. “There’s something I need to tell you. I’m afraid I roped Soraya into joining Treadstone.”

Bourne knew that Typhon could not run successfully without her, so he assumed that Danziger was systematically dismantling the old CI and remaking it in the image of Bud Halliday’s beloved NSA. Not that it was any of his concern. He hated and distrusted all espionage agencies. But he knew the good work that Typhon had accomplished under its original director, and later under Soraya. “What is Willard having her do?”

“You won’t like this.”

“Don’t let that stop you.”

“Her mission is to get close to Leonid Arkadin and the laptop.”

“The same laptop that Conklin had me steal from Jalal Essai?”

“That’s right.”

Bourne wanted to laugh, but then Marks would ask questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Instead he said, “Was it your idea for Soraya to get close to Arkadin?”

“No, it was Willard’s.”

“Took him some time to come up with it?”

“He told me about it the day after I recruited her.”

“So chances are he had the assignment in mind for her when he asked you to recruit her.”

Marks shrugged, as if he couldn’t see how it mattered.

But it mattered very much to Bourne, who saw in Willard’s thinking a pattern. All the air went out of him. What if Soraya wasn’t the first female Treadstone had recruited to keep an eye on its first graduate? What if Tracy had been working for Treadstone? Everything fit. The only reason Tracy would lie, deliberately putting herself in Arkadin’s power, was so that he would hire her and keep her close, allowing her to pass on intel about both his whereabouts and his business ventures. A brilliant plan, which had worked until Tracy had been killed in Khartoum. Then Arkadin had vanished again. Willard needed a way to regain contact, so he had resorted to a tried-and-true Treadstone tactic. Arkadin used women like dish towels. They would be the last people he would suspect of keeping tabs on him.

“Soraya found him, I take it.”

“She’s with him now in Sonora and knows what to do,” Marks said. “Do you think she can get him to Tineghir?”

“No,” Bourne said. “But I can.”

“How?”

Bourne smiled, remembering the entry in Noah Perlis’s notebook. “I’ll need to text her the information. She’ll know what to do with it.”

They were in the outskirts of London now. Bourne got off the motorway at the next exit and pulled over in a side street. Marks handed him his PDA and recited Soraya’s number. Bourne punched it in, then pressed the SMS button, composed the text, and sent it.

After returning Marks’s PDA, he resumed driving. “I don’t know how it’s happened,” he said, “but Severus Domna is running Willard and Treadstone.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Jalal Essai is Amazigh. He comes from the High Atlas Mountains.”

“Ouarzazate.”

“So is Willard taking orders from Essai or Severus Domna?”

“For the moment it doesn’t matter,” Bourne said, “but my money’s on Severus Domna. I doubt Essai has the clout to get Justice to take Liss into custody.”

“Because Essai has broken away from Severus Domna, right?”

Bourne nodded. “Which makes the situation that much more interesting.” He made a left turn, then a right. They were now on a street of neat, white Georgian row houses. A Skye terrier, industriously sniffing at steps, led his master along the pavement. The doctor was three houses down. “It’s not often my enemies are at each other’s throats.”

“I take it you’re going to Tineghir, despite the danger. That couldn’t have been an easy decision.”

“You have your own tough decision to make,” Bourne said. “If you want to stay in this business, Peter, you’ll have to return to DC to take care of Willard. Otherwise, one way or another, he’ll wind up destroying you and Soraya.”

[24]

FREDERICK WILLARD KNEW about the White Knights Lounge. He’d known about it for some time, ever since he had started compiling his own private dossier on Secretary of Defense Halliday. Bud Halliday possessed the kind of arrogance that all too often brings men of his lofty status down into the dust with the rest of the peons who painfully labor over their lives. These men-like Halliday-have become so inured to their power, they believe themselves above the law.

Willard had witnessed Bud Halliday’s meetings with the Middle Eastern gentleman whom Willard had subsequently identified as Jalal Essai. This was information he’d had when he met with Benjamin El-Arian. He didn’t know whether El-Arian was aware of the liaison, but in any event he wasn’t about to tell him. Some information was meant to be shared only with the right person.

And that person appeared now, right on time, flanked by his bodyguards like a Roman emperor.

M. Errol Danziger came over to where Willard sat and slid into the ancient banquette. Its stained and ripped Naugahyde skin spoke of decades’ worth of benders.

“This is a real shithole,” Danziger said. He looked like he wished he’d worn a full-body condom. “You’ve slid down in the world since you left us.”

They were sitting in an anonymously named rheumatic bar-and-grill off one of the expressways that linked Washington with Virginia. Only pub-crawlers of a certain age and liver toxicity found it inviting; everyone else ignored it as the eyesore it was. The place stank of sour beer and months-old frying oil. It was impossible to say what colors its walls were painted. An old nondigital juke played Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, but no one was dancing or, by the looks of them, listening. Someone at the end of the bar groaned.

Willard rubbed his hands together. “What can I get you?”

“Out of here,” Danziger said, trying not to breathe too deeply. “The sooner the better.”

“No one we know or who’d recognize us would come within a country mile of this cesspit,” Willard said. “Can you think of a better place for us to meet?”

Danziger made a disagreeable face. “Get on with it, man.”

“You’ve got a problem,” Willard said without further preamble.

“I’ve got a lot of problems, but they’re none of your business.”

“Don’t be so hasty.”

“Listen, you’re out of CI, which means you’re nobody. I agreed to this meet out of-I don’t know what-acknowledgment of your past services. But now I see it was a waste of time.”

Willard, unruffled, would not be taken off topic. “This particular problem concerns your boss.”

Danziger sat back as if trying to get as far away from Willard as the banquette would allow.

Willard spread his hands. “Care to listen? If not, you’re free to leave.”

“Go ahead.”

“Bud Halliday has, shall we say, an off-the-reservation relationship with a man named Jalal Essai.”

Danziger bristled. “Are you trying to blackmail-?”

“Relax. Their relationship is strictly business.”

“What’s that to me?”

“Everything,” Willard said. “Essai is poison for him, and for you. He’s a member of a group known as Severus Domna.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Very few people have. But it was someone in Severus Domna who got Justice to take another look at Oliver Liss and incarcerate him while it’s investigating.”

A drunk began to wail, trying to duet with Connie Francis. One of Danziger’s gorillas went over to him and shut him up.

Danziger frowned. “Are you saying the US government takes orders from-what? — can I assume from this one name that Severus Domna is a Muslim organization?”

“Severus Domna has members in virtually every country around the globe.”

“Christian and Muslim?”

“And, presumably, Jewish, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, whatever other religion you’d care to name.”

Danziger snorted. “Preposterous! It’s absurd to think of men from different religions agreeing on a day of the week to meet, let alone working together in a global organization. And for what?”

“All I know is that its objectives are not our objectives.”

Danziger reacted as if Willard had insulted him. “Our objectives? You’re a civilian now.” He made the word sound ugly and demeaning.

“The head of Treadstone can hardly be classified as a civilian,” Willard said.

“Treadstone, huh? Better to call it Headstone.” He laughed raucously. “You and Headstone are nothing to me. This meeting is terminated.”

As he began to slide out of the banquette, Willard played his ace. “Working with a foreign group is treason, which is punishable by execution. Imagine the ignominy, if you live that long.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Imagine you in a world without Bud Halliday.”

Danziger paused. For the first time since he walked in, he seemed unsure of himself.

“Tell me this,” Willard continued, “why would I waste our time on nonsense, Director? What would I have to gain?”

Danziger subsided back onto the banquette. “What do you have to gain by telling me this fairy tale?”

“If you thought it was a fairy tale, I would be talking to myself.”

“Frankly, I don’t know what to think,” Danziger said. “For the moment, however, I’m willing to listen.”

“That’s all I ask,” Willard said. But, of course, it wasn’t. He wanted much more from Danziger, and now he knew he was going to get it.

On the way back to the office, Karpov had his driver pull over. Out of sight of everyone, he vomited into a clump of tall grass. It wasn’t that he’d never killed anyone before. On the contrary, he’d shot a great many miscreants. What made his stomach rebel was the situation he was in, which felt like the underbelly of a rotting fish or the bottom of a sewer. There must be some way out of the coffin he found himself in. Unfortunately, he was caught between President Imov and Viktor Cherkesov. Imov was a problem all rising siloviks had to deal with, but now he was beholden to Cherkesov and he was certain that sooner or later Cherkesov would ask him for a favor that would curl his toes. Looking into the future, he could see those favors multiplying, taking a toll until they shredded him completely. Clever, clever Cherkesov! In giving him what he wanted, Cherkesov had found the one way around his, Karpov’s, incorruptibility. There was nothing to do but what good Russian soldiers had done for centuries: Put one foot in front of the other and move forward through the mounting muck.

He told himself this was all in a good cause-getting rid of Maslov and the Kazanskaya was surely worth any inconvenience to him. But that was like saying I was only following orders, and depressed him further.

He returned to the backseat of his car, brooding and murderous. Five minutes later his driver missed a turn.

“Stop the car,” Karpov ordered.

“Here?”

“Right here.”

His driver stared at him in the rearview mirror. “But the traffic-”

“Just do as you’re told!”

The driver stopped the car. Karpov got out, opened the driver’s door, and, reaching in, hauled the man out from behind the wheel. Unmindful of the honking horns and squealing brakes of the vehicles forced to detour around them, he bounced the driver’s head off the side of the car. The driver slid to his knees, and Karpov drove a knee into his chin. Teeth came flying out of the driver’s mouth. Karpov kicked him several times as he lay on the pavement, then he slid behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, and took off.

I should have been an American, he thought as he wiped his lips over and over with the back of his hand. But he was a patriot, he loved Russia. It was a pity Russia didn’t love him back. Russia was a pitiless mistress, heartless and cruel. I should have been an American. Inventing a melody, he sang this phrase to himself as if it were a lullaby, and in fact it made him feel marginally better. He concentrated on bringing down Maslov and how he would reorganize FSB-2 when Imov named him director.

His first order of business, however, was dealing with the three moles inside FSB-2. Armed with the names Bukin had vomited up, he parked the car in front of the nineteenth-century building housing FSB-2 and trotted up the steps. He knew the directorates that the moles worked in. On the way up in the elevator, he took out his pistol.

He ordered the first mole out of his office. When the mole balked, Karpov brandished the pistol in his face. Siloviks all over the floor emerged from their dens, their secretaries and assistants picked their heads up from their mind-numbing paperwork to follow this unfolding drama. A crowd formed, which was all the better, as far as Karpov was concerned. With the first mole in tow, he went into the second mole’s office. He was on the phone, turned away from the door. As he was swinging back, Karpov shot him in the head. The first mole flinched as the victim flew backward, his arms wide, the phone flying, and slammed into the plate-glass window. The victim fell to the floor, leaving behind an interesting abstract pattern of blood and bits of brain and bone on the glass. As stunned siloviks crowded into the doorway, Karpov snapped photos with his cell phone.

Pushing his way through the agitated throng, he frog-marched the now shivering first mole to his next stop, a floor up. By the time they appeared, news had spread and a crowd of siloviks greeted them in silent astonishment.

As Karpov was dragging his charge toward the office of the third mole, Colonel Lemtov shouldered his way to the front of the group.

“Colonel Karpov,” he shouted, “what is the meaning of this outrage?”

“Get out of my way, Colonel. I won’t tell you twice.”

“Who are you to-”

“I’m an emissary of President Imov,” Karpov said. “Call his office, if you like. Better yet, call Cherkesov himself.”

Then he used the mole to shove Colonel Lemtov aside. Dakaev, the third mole, was not in his office. Karpov was about to contact security when a terrified secretary informed him that her boss was chairing a meeting. She pointed out the conference room, and Karpov took his prisoner in there.

Twelve men sat around a rectangular table. Dakaev was at the head of the table. Being a directorate chief, he would be more valuable alive than dead. Karpov shoved the first mole against the table. Everyone but Dakaev pushed back their chairs as far as they could. For his part, Dakaev sat as he had when Karpov barged in, hands clasped in front of him on the tabletop. Unlike Colonel Lemtov, he didn’t express outrage or appear confused. In fact, Karpov saw, he knew perfectly well what was happening.

That would have to change. Karpov dragged the first mole along the table, scattering papers, pens, and glasses of water, until the man fetched up in front of Dakaev. Then, staring into Dakaev’s eyes, Karpov pressed the muzzle of his pistol into the back of the first mole’s head.

“Please,” the prisoner said, urinating down his leg.

Karpov squeezed the trigger. The first mole’s head slammed against the table, bounced up, and settled into a pool of his own blood. A Pollock-like pattern spattered across Dakaev’s suit, shirt, tie, and freshly shaven face.

Karpov gestured with the pistol. “Get up.”

Dakaev stood. “Are you going to shoot me, too?”

“Eventually, perhaps.” Karpov grabbed him by his tie. “That will be entirely up to you.”

“I understand,” Dakaev said. “I want immunity.”

“Immunity? I’ll give you immunity.” Karpov slammed the barrel of the pistol against the side of his head.

Dakaev reeled sideways, bouncing off a terrified silovik paralyzed in his chair. Karpov bent over Dakaev, who lay huddled half against the wall.

“You’ll tell me everything you know about your work and your contacts-names, places, dates, every fucking thing, no matter how minute-then I’ll decide what to do with you.”

He hauled Dakaev to his feet. “The rest of you, get back to whatever the hell you were doing.”

Out on the floor he encountered absolute silence. Everyone stood like wooden soldiers, unmoving, afraid even to take a breath. Colonel Lemtov would not meet his eyes as he took the bleeding Dakaev over to the bank of elevators.

They went down, past the basement, into the bowels of the building where the holding cells had been hewn out of the naked rock. It was cold and damp. The guards wore greatcoats and fur hats with fur earflaps, as if it were the dead of winter. When anyone spoke, his breath formed clouds in front of his face.

Karpov took Dakaev to the last cell on the left. It contained a metal chair bolted to the raw concrete floor, an industrial-size stainless-steel sink, a toilet made of the same material, and a board projecting from one wall on which was a thin mattress. There was a large drain situated beneath the chair.

“Tools of the trade,” Karpov said as he pushed Dakaev into the chair. “I admit to being a little rusty, but I’m sure that won’t make a difference to you.”

“All this melodrama is unnecessary,” Dakaev said. “I have no allegiance, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” Karpov began to run the water in the sink. “On the other hand, a self-confessed man of no allegiance can hardly be trusted to tell the truth willingly.”

“But I-”

Karpov shoved the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth. “Listen to me, my agnostic friend. A man without allegiance to something or someone isn’t worth the beating heart inside him. Before I hear your confession, I will have to teach you the value of allegiance. When you leave here-unless you do so feet-first-you will be a loyal member of FSB-2. Never again will people like Dimitri Maslov be able to tempt you. You will be incorruptible.”

Karpov kicked his prisoner out of the chair onto his hands and knees. Grabbing him by his collar, he bent him over the sink, which was now filled with ice-cold water.

“Now we begin,” he said. And shoved Dakaev’s head under the water.

Soraya watched Arkadin dancing with Moira, presumably to make her jealous. They were in one of Puerto Peñasco’s all-night cantinas, filled with shift workers coming and going from the nearby maquiladoras. A sad ranchera was bawling from a jukebox, luridly lit up like someone’s bad idea of the UFO in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Soraya, nursing a black coffee, watched Arkadin’s hips moving as if they were filled with mercury. The man could dance! Then she pulled out her PDA and studied the texts from Peter Marks. The last one contained instructions on how to lure Arkadin to Tineghir. How did Peter come up with this intel?

She had hidden her shock at seeing Moira behind her professional facade. The moment she had climbed aboard the yacht she’d felt the floor fall out from under her. The game had changed so radically that she had to play catch-up, and fast. Which was why she had hung on each word of the conversation between Moira and Arkadin not only for content but also for tonal nuance, any clue as to why Moira was actually here. What did she want from Arkadin? Surely the deal Moira was making with him was as bogus as her own.

Outside, the night was very dark, without moonlight. Because of the cloud cover, only a wan halo of stars toward the crown of the sky was visible. Inside, the cantina stank of beer and body odor. The room was raucous with a desperation tinged by hopelessness and despair. She felt surrounded by people for whom tomorrow didn’t exist.

She wished that she and Moira could talk to each other, if only for the briefest moment, but under Arkadin’s eye that was impossible. Even going to the ladies’ room at the same time would doubtless arouse his suspicion. She didn’t know Moira’s cell number, so texting her was out. There remained only a verbal conversation laced with coded messages. If they were on parallel paths, or even by chance the same one, it was essential they not get in each other’s way.

Arkadin and Moira were dripping sweat when they returned to the table. Arkadin ordered beers for them, and another coffee for Soraya. Whatever might happen tomorrow, he was clearly enjoying being with the two women tonight.

“Moira,” Soraya said, “do you know anything about the Middle East, or is your expertise strictly in the Americas?”

“Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and to some extent Brazil are my territories.”

“And you work alone?”

“I have a company, but right now I’m on special assignment to Berengária Moreno.” Moira gestured with her chin. “And you?”

“My own company, though there’s a conglomerate that’s looking for a hostile takeover.”

“Multinational?”

“Strictly American.”

Moira nodded. “Import-export, you said?”

Soraya stirred some sugar into her coffee. “That’s right.”

“You might be able to use my, ah, expertise against hostile bidders.”

“Thank you, but no.” Soraya sipped her coffee, then put the cup back in its saucer. “I have my own, ah, enforcers.”

“What do you call a thought in a woman’s head?” Arkadin leaned forward, looking from one to the other. “A tourist!” He laughed so hard he almost choked on his beer. Then, noting their somber expressions, “Shit, lighten up, ladies, we’re here to have fun, not talk business.”

Moira looked at him for a moment. “What do you get when you cross a Russian with a Vietnamese? A car thief that can’t drive.”

Soraya laughed. “Now we’re having fun.”

Arkadin smiled. “Have any more?”

“Let’s see.” Moira drummed her fingers on the table. “How about this? Two Russians and a Mexican are in a car. Who’s driving? The police.”

Arkadin laughed and shook his finger at Moira. “Where do you pick up these jokes?”

“In prison,” Moira said. “Roberto Corellos loves making Russians the butt of jokes.”

“Time to switch to tequila,” Arkadin said, signaling the waiter. “Bring a bottle,” he said to the young woman who came over. “Something fine. A reposado or añejo.”

Instead of another ranchera, the jukebox began to play “Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa.” Gene Pitney’s high twang rang out over the laughter and shouts of the drunken patrons. But morning was coming, and with it a change in the clientele. As the night owls slowly staggered out, the night-shift people from the maquiladora drifted in, heads aching, tails dragging. There were fewer of them, as well, most of them stumbling home to fall into bed without taking off their clothes.

Before the tequila got to the table, Arkadin had grabbed Moira’s hand and was swinging her onto the dance floor, which for the first time all night was larger than a postage stamp. He held her close while they swayed to the Burt Bacharach melody.

“You’re something of a smart-ass,” he said, smiling like a shark.

“It didn’t come easy,” she said.

He laughed. “I can only imagine.”

“Don’t bother.”

Arkadin swung her around. “You’re wasting your time in South America. You should come to work for me.”

“Before I set up Corellos’s murder?”

“Let that be your last assignment.” He stuck his nose into the side of her neck and inhaled deeply. “How are you going to do it?”

“I thought you said no business.”

“Just this one bit, then it’s all fun. I swear.”

“Corellos is addicted to women. I have a connection to his supplier. When is a man more vulnerable than after sex? I’ll find someone who’s good with a knife.”

Arkadin pulled her hips harder into him. “I like it. Set it up right away.”

“I want a bonus.”

He nuzzled her neck, licked her sweat. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

“Then I’m yours.”

Karpov’s cell phone rang while he was in the process of reprogramming Dimitri Maslov’s mole. Dakaev was drowning, or more precisely, he believed he was drowning, which was, after all, the point. But ten minutes later, when Dakaev was back in his stainless-steel chair and Karpov was pouring tea into a glass, his cell rang again. This time he answered it. A familiar voice was on the other end of the line.

“Jason!” Karpov cried. “How excellent to hear your voice.”

“Are you busy?”

Karpov glanced over at Dakaev, slumped over, his chin on his chest. He looked barely human, which was also the point. You couldn’t build something new without tearing down what had been there before.

“Busy? Yes. But never too busy for you. What can I do for you?”

“I assume you know Dimitri Maslov’s lieutenant, Vylacheslav Oserov.”

“You assume correctly.”

“Do you think you can find a way to get him somewhere?”

“If you mean somewhere like hell, yes I can.”

Bourne laughed in his ear. “I was thinking of something a little less terminal. A place, let us say, in Morocco.”

Karpov took a sip of tea, which was in desperate need of sugar. “May I ask why you need Oserov in Morocco?”

“He’s bait, Boris. I intend to catch Arkadin.”

Karpov thought of his sojourn in Sonora, his deal with Arkadin, and added him to the list of President Imov and Viktor Cherkesov. He had promised Arkadin his chance at Oserov, but fuck that. I’m too old and too bloody-minded to owe so many dangerous people so much, he thought. One less is a step toward none.

Then he looked over at Dakaev, the conduit to Dimitri Maslov and, therefore, Vylacheslav Oserov. After what he had just been through, he had no doubt that the prisoner would jump at the chance to do what Karpov asked of him.

“Tell me in detail what you need done.” Listening, Karpov smiled contentedly. When Bourne was finished, he chuckled deeply. “Jason, my friend, what I wouldn’t give to be you!”

Just after sunrise they were all sweaty enough to want to go into the water. At the convent, Arkadin gave Moira and Soraya oversize T-shirts. He was in surfer trunks that came down to his knees. His upper body and limbs were a museum of tattoos that, if interpreted correctly, traced his career in the grupperovka.

The three of them waded through the surf, pulled and pushed by the waves rushing onto the golden sand. The sky was still pink, paling out to the color of butter. Gulls dipped and swooped over their heads and tiny fish nibbled at their feet and ankles. The water came up and slapped them in the face, making them laugh like children. The unalloyed joy of being let free in the ocean.

Out beyond the surf line, Moira thought it odd that Arkadin kept diving for seashells rather than stare at her breasts through the wet T-shirt, especially after the way he’d been dancing with her at the cantina. She had found out little enough information about Soraya’s mission from the coded conversation Soraya had started and Arkadin had nipped off with his misogynistic joke.

While Arkadin was still trolling for shells, she set off after Soraya to see if the two of them could speak briefly. Diving through an incoming wave, she began to swim out to where Soraya was drifting on her back, but something caught her left ankle, jerking her back.

Jackknifing her body, she looked behind her. Arkadin had hold of her. She pushed back at him, palms against his chest, but he only drew her more closely to him. She rose up, breaking the surface, and found herself face-to-face with him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She scrubbed the sheeting water off her face. “I can’t stand properly.”

He let her go immediately. “I’ve had enough and I’m hungry.”

Moira turned and shouted to Soraya, who plunged down from her float and paddled over.

“We’re going to breakfast,” Moira said.

The two women waded out of the surf with Arkadin just behind them. They had reached the high-tide line, hillocks of dry sand ahead, when Arkadin bent over. Using the scythe-like edge of the seashell, he severed the tendons at the back of Moira’s left knee.

[25]

THE VILLAGE OF Whitney, Oxfordshire, lay twelve miles west of Oxford, on the Windrush River. All that was missing were Hobbits and Orcs. Bourne drove out from London in a rental car. The afternoon was cool and dry with peeks of sun now and again through the rolling clouds. He hadn’t lied to Peter Marks; he had every intention of going to Tineghir. But first there was something he needed to do.

Basil Bayswater lived in a thatch-roofed cottage straight out of a Tolkien novel. It had quirky round windows and flower shoots springing up in neat beds lining a white gravel walkway that led up to the front door. This door was thick and wooden, with a roaring brass lion’s-head knocker in its center. Bourne used it.

Several moments later a man quite a bit younger than he had expected opened the door.

“Yes? How may I help you?” He had long hair brushed straight back off his wide forehead, dark, watchful eyes, and a strong chin.

“I’m looking for Basil Bayswater,” Bourne said.

“You’re looking at him.”

“I don’t think so,” Bourne said.

“Ah, you must mean Professor Basil Bayswater. I’m afraid my father passed away three years ago.”

Moira screamed as blood bloomed in the water like a stranded jellyfish. Arkadin caught her as she canted over.

“My God,” Soraya cried, “what’ve you done?”

Moira continued to scream, bent double, clutching her left leg.

Arkadin, ignoring Soraya for the moment, bared his teeth at Moira. “Did you think I didn’t recognize you?”

Something icy congealed in the pit of Moira’s stomach.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you in Bali. You were with Bourne.”

In her mind’s eye she saw the flight through the village of Tenganan, and then Bourne being shot by a sniper hidden in the forest.

Her eyes opened wide.

“Yeah, that was me.” He laughed, throwing the bloody seashell up in the air and catching it as if it were a ball. “You were with Bourne. You’re his lover. And now fate has brought you to me.”

Soraya was both outraged and terrified. “What the hell is happening here?”

“We’re about to find out.” Arkadin turned to her. “This is Jason Bourne’s lover, but perhaps the two of you know each other.”

With a force of will, Soraya kept her panic down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, I’ll spell it out for you. I never bought your story, but I wasn’t going to send you away until I found out what you really wanted. I strongly suspect Willard sent you. He tried this trick on me once before with a woman named Tracy Atherton. He sent her to keep an eye on me, to report back on all my business dealings. And it worked. She was dead by the time I figured it out. But you I fingered from the get-go, because Willard is a creature of habits, especially ones that have worked for him.”

“Let her go,” Soraya said, more agitated with each passing moment.

“I might do that,” Arkadin said. “I might even let her live. But that’s entirely up to you.”

Soraya walked over and took Moira away from him. Gently and slowly, she lowered her to the ground. Then she slid her wet shirt over her head and, winding it around Moira’s left thigh, pulled it as tight as she could and tied it. By that time Moira had passed out, from either the shock or the pain, or both.

“It’s you I want,” Arkadin continued. “You’re the one talking about Khartoum, you’re the one who wants to get me there. You tell me who you are and what you know and I’ll consider lightening Moira’s punishment.”

“We need to get her to the nearest hospital,” Soraya said. “This wound has to be cleaned out and disinfected as soon as possible.”

“Again”-Arkadin spread his hands-“up to you.”

Soraya looked down at the back of Moira’s knee. Dear God, she wondered, will she ever walk normally again? She knew the longer they waited to get Moira into the hands of a competent surgeon, the worse off she’d be. She’d seen tendons severed like this. They weren’t easy to repair, and who knew how badly the nerves were affected?

She let out a long breath. “What do you want to know?”

“For starters, who are you?”

“Soraya Moore.”

“The Soraya Moore, director of Typhon?”

“Not anymore.” She stroked Moira’s damp hair. “Willard has resurrected Treadstone.”

“No wonder he wants to keep an eye on me.

What else?”

“Plenty,” Soraya said. “I’ll tell you on the way to the hospital.”

Arkadin loomed over her. “You’ll tell me now.”

“You might as well kill us both right here.”

Arkadin cursed her, but in the end he acceded to her demand. Hefting Moira in his arms, he carried her back to the convent. While he slid her into the backseat, Soraya went to get a shirt. She was rooting through Arkadin’s desk when he found her.

“Fuck, no,” he said and, grabbing her wrist, dragged her outside.

Half throwing her into the passenger’s seat of the car, he said, “I will kill you as soon as look at you.” Then he went around the front of the car, slid behind the wheel, and fired the ignition.

“You’re right.” Soraya kept Moira’s leg elevated as they sped through the outskirts of Puerto Peñasco. “Willard wanted me to get close to you, to report on your whereabouts and your business dealings.”

“And? I sense there’s something more.”

“There is,” she said. She knew she had to sell this part perfectly. She no longer believed absolutely in her ability to outsmart him, but this much she needed to do. “Willard has become interested in a man I’m sure you know, because he works for Maslov: Vylacheslav Oserov.”

Arkadin’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, but his voice betrayed nothing of what he must be feeling. “Why would Willard be interested in Oserov?”

“I have no idea,” Soraya said. This much, at least, was true. “But I do know that yesterday a Treadstone agent ID’d Oserov in Marrakech. He tracked Oserov out into the Atlas Mountains, to a village called Tineghir.”

They arrived at Santa Fe General, on Morua Avenue, but Arkadin made no move to get out of the car.

“What was Oserov doing in Tineghir?”

“Looking for a ring.”

Arkadin shook his head. “Speak plainly.”

“This particular ring somehow unlocks a hidden file on a laptop hard drive.” She looked at him. “I know, I don’t understand it, either.” All of this information had been in the last text message she had received from Peter. She opened the rear door. “Can we get Moira into the ER, please?”

Arkadin got out of the car and slammed the door she had just opened. “I want more.”

“I’ve told you all I know.”

He stared into her face. “You see what happens to people who fuck with me.”

“I’m not fucking with you,” Soraya said. “I’ve betrayed a trust, what more do you want from me?”

“Everything,” he said. “I want everything.”

They rushed Moira into the emergency room. While the personnel were hooking her up and taking her vitals, Soraya asked for the name of the best neurosurgeon in Sonora. She spoke idiomatic Spanish; furthermore, she looked Latina. These attributes opened doors for her. When she got the surgeon’s private number, she called him herself. His PA said he was unavailable until Soraya threatened to find the PA and wring his neck. The surgeon came on the line shortly thereafter. Soraya described Moira’s injury and told him where they were. He said considering a cash bonus of two thousand American dollars was involved, he’d be over immediately.

“Let’s go,” Arkadin said the moment she disconnected.

“I’m not leaving Moira.”

“We have further business to discuss.”

“Then we can discuss it here.”

“Back at the convent.”

“I’m not going to fuck you,” she said.

“Thank God, fucking you would be like fucking a scorpion.”

The irony of his comment made her laugh despite her worry and despair. She went to look for coffee, and he followed her.

Bourne drove to Oxford as fast as he dared without attracting the attention of the police. The city was precisely as he had left it both times he had been there. The quiet streets, the quaint stores, the lifelong denizens going about their chores, the tearooms, the bookstores, all like a miniature created by an obsessive eighteenth-century academic. Driving its streets was like visiting the inside of a snow globe.

Bourne parked near where Chrissie had left her Range Rover when they had come together, and he trotted up the steps of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. Professor Liam Giles was also right where he had been when they had last been there, bent over his desk in his voluminous office. He looked up as Bourne entered, blinking owlishly, as if he didn’t recognize him. Bourne saw that it wasn’t Giles after all, but another man of Giles’s approximate build and age.

“Where’s Professor Giles?”

“On leave,” the man said.

“I’m looking for him.”

“So I gather. May I ask why?”

“Where is he?”

The man blinked his owlish blink. “Away.”

Bourne had looked up Giles’s official bio on the way over, which was available on the Oxford University Web site.

“It’s about his daughter.”

The man behind Giles’s desk blinked. “Is she ill?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. Where can I find Professor Giles?”

“I don’t think-”

“It’s urgent,” Bourne said. “A matter of life or death.”

“Are you being deliberately melodramatic, sir?”

Bourne showed the man the EMS credentials he’d lifted after the crash. “I’m quite serious.”

“Dear me.” The man gestured. “He’s in the loo, at the moment. Battling the eel pie he ingested last night, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The neurosurgeon was young, dark as an Indian, with the long, delicate fingers of a classical pianist. He had very delicate features, so he wasn’t, in fact, an Indian. But he was a hard-nosed businessman who would not proceed until Soraya had pressed a roll of bills into his hand. Then he rushed away from them, consulting with the ER doctors who had done the workup on Moira while he strode toward the OR.

Soraya drank her shitty coffee without tasting it, but ten minutes later, while she paced the hallway uselessly, it began to burn a hole in her stomach, so when Arkadin suggested they get something to eat she agreed. They found a restaurant not far away from the hospital. Soraya checked to make sure it wasn’t colonized by insects before she sat down. They ordered their food, then sat and waited, sitting across from each other but looking elsewhere, or at least Soraya was.

“I saw you without your top,” Arkadin said, “and I liked what I saw.”

Soraya snapped into focus. “Fuck you.”

“She was an enemy,” he said, referring to Moira. “What law is she protected by?”

Soraya stared out the window at a street as unfamiliar to her as the dark side of the moon.

The food came and Arkadin began to eat. Soraya watched a couple of young women with too much makeup and too little clothing on their way to work. Latinas showing off their bodies with such casualness still astonished her. Their culture was so far from hers. And yet she felt right in tune with the aura of sorrow here. Hopelessness she could understand. It had been the cultural lot of her gender from time immemorial, and was the major reason she had chosen the clandestine services where, despite the usual gender bias, she was able to assert herself in ways that made her feel good about herself. Now, for the first time, she saw those girls in their too-tight tops and too-short skirts in a different light. Those clothes were a way-perhaps their only way-to assert themselves in a culture that continually demeaned and devalued them.

“If Moira dies, or if she can’t walk-”

“Spare me the toothless threats,” he said, mopping up the last of his huevos rancheros.

That was Arkadin’s business, she thought. No matter what he might think to the contrary, he was in the business of demeaning and devaluing women. That was the subtext in everything he said and did. He had no heart, no remorse, no guilt, no soul-nothing, in short, that defined and distinguished a human being. If he isn’t a human being, she thought with a kind of irrational terror, what is he?

The men’s loo was five doors down from Professor Giles’s office. Giles was clearly being sick behind the closed door of one of the stalls. A sour stench had pervaded the room, and Bourne strode over to the window and shoved it open as far as it would go. A sticky breeze slowly stirred the stench as a witch will her bubbling pot.

Bourne waited until the noises had subsided. “Professor Giles.”

For some time, there was no answer. Then the stall door was wrenched open and Professor Giles, looking distinctly green around the gills, staggered out past Bourne. He bent over the sink, turned on the cold water, and buried his head beneath the flow.

Bourne leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. When Giles picked his head up, Bourne handed him a handful of paper towels. The professor took them without comment, wiping his face and hair. It was only as he threw the wadded towels into the trash that he appeared to recognize Bourne.

At once his back stiffened and he stood up straight. “Ah, the prodigal returns,” he said in his most professorial tone.

“Did you expect me?”

“Not really. On the other hand, I’m hardly surprised to find you here.” He gave Bourne a wan smile. “Bad pennies continue to turn up.”

“Professor, I’d like you to once again get in touch with your chess-playing colleague.”

Giles frowned. “That may not be so easy. He’s reclusive and he doesn’t like answering questions.”

I can imagine, Bourne thought. “Nevertheless, I’d like you to try.”

“All right,” Giles said.

“By the way, what’s his name?”

Giles hesitated. “James.”

“James what?”

Another hesitation. “Weatherley.”

“Not Basil Bayswater?”

The professor turned away, facing the door.

“What question do you want to put to him?”

“I’d like him to describe the afterlife.”

Giles, who had been headed for the door, paused, turning slowly back to Bourne. “I beg your pardon?”

“Since Basil Bayswater’s son buried him three years ago,” Bourne said, “I would think he’d be in a perfect position to tell me what it’s like to be dead.”

“I told you,” Giles said, somewhat sullenly, “his name is James Weatherley.”

Bourne took him by the elbow. “Professor, no one believes that, not even you.” He moved Giles away from the door to the far end of the loo. “Now you’ll tell me why you lied to me.” When the professor remained silent, Bourne went on. “You never needed to call Bayswater for the translation of the engraving inside the ring, you already knew it.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. Neither of us was truthful with the other.” He shrugged. “Well, what can you expect from life? Nothing is ever what it seems.”

“You’re Severus Domna.”

Giles’s smile had gained a bit more traction. “There’s no point denying it, now that you’re about to hand over the ring.”

At that moment, as if he’d had his ear to the door, the man who had been behind the professor’s desk entered the loo. With the SIG Sauer in his hand he looked quite a bit less owlish. Immediately two more men, larger, muscular, armed with silenced pistols, came in just behind him. They fanned out, their weapons trained on Bourne.

“As you can see,” Professor Giles said, “I haven’t given you a choice.”

[26]

VYLACHESLAV OSEROV WAS nursing not only his facial wounds but also a planet-size grudge against Arkadin, the man who had tormented him for years, and who was the cause of his hideous disfigurement in Bangalore. The chemical fire had eaten through layers of skin and into the flesh itself, which made recovery difficult and a return to normalcy impossible.

For days after he returned to Moscow, he had been swathed in thick bandages through which seeped not only blood but a thick yellow fluid whose stench made him gag. He had refused all painkillers and when the physician, on Maslov’s orders, tried to inject him with a sedative, he broke the man’s arm and very nearly his neck.

Every day, Oserov’s howls of pain could be heard all over the offices, even in the toilets, where the other men congregated for a brief respite. His cries of agony were so dreadful, like an animal being dismembered, they frightened and demoralized even Maslov’s hardened criminals. Maslov himself was forced to tie him to a column, like Odysseus to the mast, and tape his mouth shut in order to give him and his people some respite. By this time, Oserov had deep gouges on his temples, bloody like tribal scars, where in his agony he had dug his nails through the skin that had not been burned away.

In a way, he had become an infant. Maslov couldn’t send him to a hospital or a clinic without awkward questions being asked, an FSB-2 investigation being initiated. So Maslov had tried to set him up at Oserov’s apartment, which was in a dreadful condition of disrepair, having been reclaimed, like an abandoned jungle temple, by insects and rodents alike. No one could be induced to stay there with Oserov, and Oserov could not be expected to survive there on his own. The office was the only option.

Oserov could no longer look at himself. No vampire avoided mirrors more assiduously than he did. Also, he hated being seen in sunlight, any strong light, for that matter, behavior that gave rise to his new moniker among the Kazanskaya, Die Vampyr.

He sat now brooding in Maslov’s offices, which by necessity were moved every week. In this room, which Maslov had designated his, the lights were out and the shades drawn against the daylight. One lamp across the room from where he slumped down cast a small circle of illumination across the scarred floorboards.

The fiasco in Bangalore, his failure to kill Arkadin or, at least, gain the laptop for Maslov, had scarred him in more ways than one. His physical appearance had been compromised. Worse, he had lost the confidence of his boss. Without the Kazanskaya, Oserov was nothing. Without Maslov’s confidence, he was nothing within the Kazanskaya. For days now he had been racking his brains as to how to get back in Maslov’s good graces, how to restore the majesty of his position as field commander.

No plan, however, had presented itself. It meant nothing to him that his mind, torn apart by the agony of his wounds, was scarcely able to put two coherent thoughts together. His only thought was of revenge against Arkadin, and to get for Maslov what he wanted most: that accursed laptop. Oserov didn’t know why his boss wanted it, and he didn’t care. His lot was to do or die, that’s how it had been ever since he had joined the Kazanskaya and that was how it would remain.

But life was strange. For Oserov salvation came from an unexpected quarter. A call came through. So sunk in black thoughts was he that at first he refused to take it. Then his assistant told him that it had come in on a scrambled cell line, and he knew who it must be. Still, he resisted, thinking that at the moment he had neither the interest nor the patience for anything Yasha Dakaev had to report.

Oserov’s assistant poked his head in the door, which he had strict orders never to do.

“What?” Oserov barked.

“He says it’s urgent,” his assistant told him, and quickly withdrew.

“Goddammit,” Oserov muttered, and picked up the phone. “Yasha, this better be fucking good.”

“It is.” Dakaev’s voice sounded flat and faraway, but then he was always having to find out-of-the-way nooks and crannies in the FSB-2’s offices to make his calls. “I have a line on Arkadin’s movements.”

“At last!” Oserov sat up straight. He heart seemed to pump at full speed again.

“According to the report that just came across my desk, he’s on his way to Morocco,” Dakaev said. “Ouarzazate, a village in the High Atlas Mountains called Tineghir, to be precise.”

“What the fuck is he going to do in Buttfuck, Morocco?”

“That I don’t know,” Dakaev said. “But our intel says he’s on his way.”

This is my chance, Oserov thought, jumping up. If I don’t take it, I might as well eat my Tokarev. For the first time since that last night in Bangalore, he felt galvanized. His failure had paralyzed him, he had been gnawing at himself from the inside out. He’d become disoriented with shame and rage.

He called his assistant in and gave him the particulars.

“Get me the fuck out of here,” he ordered. “Book me on the first flight out of Moscow that’s heading in the right direction.”

“Does Maslov know you’re off again?”

“Does your wife know that your mistress’s name is Ivana Istvanskaya?”

His assistant beat a hasty retreat.

He turned away and started formulating a plan. Now that he’d been given a second chance, he vowed he would make the most of it.

Bourne raised his hands. At the same time, he kicked Professor Giles in the small of the back. As Giles, arms flailing, stumbled toward the three gunmen, Bourne whirled, took a long stride toward the open window, and dived through it.

He hit the ground running at full speed, but soon enough, as the adjoining university building loomed up, he was required to slow his pace to match that of Oxford’s denizens. Pulling off his black overcoat, he stuffed it in a trash bin. He looked for and found a knot of adults, professors most likely, walking from one building to the next, and slipped into their midst.

Moments later he saw the two Severus Domna gunmen as they raced from the Centre. They immediately split up in a military-like formation.

One of the men came toward him, but he hadn’t yet seen Bourne, who eeled his way to the opposite side of the knot. The professors were debating the merits of the right-wing German philosophers and, inevitably, the effect Nietzsche had on the Nazis, Hitler in particular.

Unless he had a chance to get to Professor Giles alone, which he doubted, Bourne had no desire for another physical encounter with Severus Domna. The organization was like a Hydra: Lop off one head and two took its place.

The gunman, who had hidden his weapon beneath his overcoat, approached the knot of professors, oblivious as they were locked in their philosophical ivory tower. Bourne presented the gunman with his anonymous back. The gunman would be looking for a man in a black overcoat. Bourne was happy to take any edge he could.

The knot of professors trotted up the steps and, in elegant fashion, poured into the university building. Bourne, debating the finer points of Old German with a white-haired professor, stepped across the threshold.

The gunman reacted as he glimpsed Bourne’s reflection in the glass pane of the open door. Taking the steps two at a time, he tried to shoulder his way through the knot of men who, though elderly, were certainly not passive, especially when it came to decorum and protocol. As one, they formed a living wall, pushing back at him in the manner of a phalanx of Roman soldiers advancing on the barbarian enemy. The gunman, taken aback, retreated.

The pause gave Bourne the time he needed to slip away from the professors, down the corridor with its sounds of well-shod feet and hushed conversations bouncing off the polished marble floor. A line of square windows, high up, bestowed sunlight on the crowns of the students’ heads like a benediction. The wooden doors blurred by as Bourne made for the rear of the Centre. Bells sounded for the beginning of the four o’clock classes.

He raced around a corner, into the short corridor leading to the rear door. But the Severus Domna gunman pushed through it. They were alone in the back corridor. The gunman had his overcoat draped over his right arm and hand, which held the silenced pistol. He aimed it at Bourne, who was still sprinting.

Bourne went down, sliding on his backside along the marble floor as a shot whizzed by overhead. He barreled into the gunman with the soles of his shoes, knocking him over. The pistol flew out of his grip. Bourne rolled over, slammed his knee into the point of the gunman’s chin. His body went slack.

Voices echoed down the corridor from just around the corner. Scrambling to his feet, Bourne scooped up the pistol, then dragged the gunman out the rear door, down the steps, and deposited him behind a thick boxwood hedge. He pocketed the pistol and continued along the university pathways at a normal pace. He passed fresh-faced students, laughing and chatting, and a dour professor, huffing as he scurried, late for his next lecture. Then Bourne was out onto St Giles’ Street. In typical English fashion, the afternoon had turned gloomy. A chill wind swept across the gutters and storefronts. Everyone was bent over, shoulders hunched, dashing like boats fleeing an oncoming storm. Bourne, blending in as he always did, hurried to his car.

Go,” Moira said, when she was out of recovery and had gained full consciousness.

Soraya shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“The worst has already happened,” Moira said quite rightly. “There’s nothing left here for you to do.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” Soraya insisted.

“Neither should you. You’re still with Arkadin.”

Soraya smiled, somewhat sadly, because everything Moira said was true. “Still and all-”

“Still and all,” Moira said, “someone’s coming to look after me, someone who loves me.”

Soraya was slightly taken aback. “Is it Jason? Is Jason coming for you?”

Moira smiled. She had already drifted off to sleep.

Soraya found Arkadin waiting for her. But first she needed to speak with the young neurosurgeon, who was, in his own way, optimistic in his prognosis.

“The main thing in instances like these where nerves and tendons are involved is how quickly the patient receives medical attention.” He spoke formally, as if he were Catalan, rather than a Mexican. “In this respect, your friend is extremely fortunate.” He tipped his hand over, palm down. “However, the wound was ragged rather than clean. Plus, whatever she was cut with wasn’t clean. As a result, the procedure took longer, and was both more delicate and more complicated than it might otherwise have been. Again, fortunate that you called me. I don’t say this out of self-aggrandizement. It’s a matter of record, a fact. No one else could have managed the procedure without botching or missing something.”

Soraya sighed with relief. “Then she’ll be fine.”

“Naturally, she’ll be fine,” the neurosurgeon said. “With a proper course of rehab and physical therapy.”

Something dark clutched at Soraya’s heart. “She’ll walk naturally, won’t she? I mean, without a limp.”

The neurosurgeon shook his head. “In a child, the tendons are elastic enough that it might be possible. But in an adult that elasticity-or rather a good part of it-is gone. No, no, she’ll have a limp. How noticeable it will be depends entirely on the outcome of her rehab. And of course, her will to adapt.”

Soraya thought for a moment. “She knows all this?”

“She asked and I told her. It’s better that way, believe me. The mind needs more time to adapt than the body does.”

“Can we get out of here now?” Arkadin said, after the neurosurgeon had vanished down the corridor.

Shooting him a murderous look, Soraya brushed past him, striding through the bustling lobby and out onto the street. Puerto Peñasco looked as strange as a dream, as unfamiliar as if it were located in a Bhutanese valley. She looked at the people passing by as slowly as sleepwalkers. She saw their Aztec or Mixtec or Olmec features and thought of beating hearts carved from the chests of living sacrifices. She felt as if she were covered in congealed blood. She wanted to run, but felt paralyzed, rooted to the spot as if by the hands of all the sacrificial dead buried beneath the ground.

Then she felt Arkadin close beside her and shuddered as if waking from one nightmare into another. She wondered how she could stand to be near him, to talk to him after what he’d done to Moira. If he had exhibited even an iota of remorse, she might have felt differently. But all he had said was, “She’s the enemy.” Which meant, of course, that she herself was also the enemy, that the same thing, or worse, could happen to her.

Without a word being exchanged between them, he herded her back to his car, and soon enough they set off back to the convent.

“What do you want from me now?” she asked him in a dull voice.

“The same thing you want from me,” he said. “Destruction.”

The moment they entered the convent, Arkadin began to pack. “While you were going through your hand-wringing, I made reservations for us.”

“For us?”

“Yes,” he said without missing a beat. “You and I are going to Tineghir.”

“If I go anywhere with you I’ll be sick to my stomach.”

He paused and turned to face her. “I think you’ll be useful to me when I get to Morocco, so I don’t want to kill you. But I will if you give me no other choice.” He went back to his methodical packing. “Unlike you, I know when to cut my losses.”

It was at that moment that Soraya caught sight of the laptop, which, for her, had taken on a mythical significance. He was right, in his own way, she thought. As right as Moira had been. It was time to get past her personal abhorrence at his actions. It was time to return to acting like a professional. Time to cut her losses.

“I’ve always wanted to see the High Atlas Mountains,” she said.

“You see?” He tucked away the laptop. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

Jalal Essai, sitting in an anonymous car he had boosted early this morning, watched Willard emerge from the Monition Club. As Essai observed, he did not move as if he had been defeated by the receptionist, or had waited in vain to be seen by a member of the club. Rather, he descended the stairs as Fred Astaire might, lightly and trippingly, as if to music playing in his head. This jaunty attitude disturbed Essai. It also raised the hackles on the back of his neck, which was far worse.

Essai, whose life was in constant jeopardy ever since his home had been invaded by Severus Domna, knew from being on the other side that a passive response, such as flight, would only result in his eventual death. The organization would come after him again and again, until someway, somehow, somewhere it succeeded in terminating his life. Under these extreme circumstances, there was only one way to stay alive.

Willard turned a corner and stopped, looking to flag down a taxi. Essai pulled over to the curb and rolled down the passenger’s-side window.

“Need a lift?” he said.

Willard, startled, drew back as if affronted. “No, thank you,” he said, and returned to scanning the traffic for an empty cab.

“Mr. Willard, please get into the car.”

When Willard looked back, he saw the man holding a wicked-looking EAA 10mm Hunter Witness pistol, aimed at his face.

“Come, come,” Essai said, “let’s not make a scene.”

Willard opened the door and slid into the passenger’s seat without a word.

“How, may I ask, are you going to drive this vehicle and at the same time keep me under control?”

In answer, Essai slammed the barrel of the Hunter Witness against the side of Willard’s head just above his left ear. Willard sighed as his eyes rolled up. Essai leaned the unconscious body against the window and returned the pistol to its shoulder holster. Then he put the car in gear, waited for a gap, and slid out into traffic.

He drove south through the district. At some invisible demarcation, the massive government buildings vanished, replaced by local businesses, cheap retail outlets, fast-food chains, storefront missions, and corner bars. Outside the bars, young men in hoodies loitered, exchanging small packets of dope for wads of bills. Old men sat on stoops, head in hands or leaning back against the gray stone steps, eyes half closed, heads nodding. Caucasians grew rare as hen’s teeth, then disappeared altogether. This was a different Washington, one tourists never saw. Congressmen, either. Patrol cars were few and far between. When one did appear, it rolled at speed, as if its occupants couldn’t wait to be elsewhere, anywhere but here.

Essai pulled the car over in front of something that passed for a hotel. Its rooms went by the hour, and when he dragged Willard inside, supporting him, the whores assumed Willard was a drunk, passed out on his feet. They showed Essai their flyblown wares. He ignored them.

He placed a doctor’s black bag on the scarred counter of the attendant’s foul-smelling cubbyhole and slid a twenty across. The attendant was whey-faced, slim as a twig, neither young nor old. He was watching porn on a portable TV.

“What,” Essai said, “no concierge?”

The attendant laughed but didn’t turn his glassy eyes from the TV screen. Without looking he unhooked a key from a pegboard and dropped it on the counter.

“I don’t want to be disturbed,” Essai said.

“Everyone wants the same thing.”

He slid across another twenty, the attendant snapped it up, selected a different key, and said, “Second floor in the back. You could die in there and no one would know.”

Essai took the key and the black bag.

There was no elevator. Getting Willard up the stairs proved something of a chore, but Essai managed. A grime-laden window at the far end of the narrow hallway let in light that seemed both leaden and exhausted. A bare bulb burned halfway down, highlighting the constellations of obscene graffiti scrawled on the walls.

The room looked like a jail cell. The bare-bones furnishings-a bed, a dresser with a drawer missing, a rocking chair-were either gray or colorless. The window looked out on an air shaft, where it was always nighttime. The room smelled strongly of carbolic and bleach. Essai did not want to think of what had gone on there in the past.

Dumping Willard on the bed, he set down the doctor’s bag, opened it, and placed a number of items in a neat line on the stained coverlet. This bag and its contents were always with him, a habit that had been ingrained in him at an early age, when he had been in training to move to America, to insinuate himself into the lives of the people Severus Domna selected. He had no idea how the group came up with Bud Halliday’s name or how it suspected that he would rise so quickly into the firmament of American politics, but then he was used to Severus Domna’s uncanny prescience.

Using a box cutter, he stripped off Willard’s clothes, then unwrapped a Depends and fitted it around his loins. He slapped Willard’s cheeks lightly enough to rouse him slowly out of his unconscious state. Before Willard was fully conscious, he elevated his head and shoulders, and tipped a bottle of castor oil down his throat. At first, Willard choked and gagged. Essai eased off, then fed the viscous liquid to him more slowly. Willard swallowed it all.

Disposing of the bottle, Essai slapped Willard hard on one cheek, then the other, sending blood rushing into his head. Willard started awake, his eyes blinking rapidly. Then he looked around.

“Where am I?” His voice was thick and furred.

When his tongue ran around his lips, Essai reached for the roll of duct tape.

“What’s this taste?”

As Willard started to retch, Essai slapped a length of tape across his mouth.

“If you vomit, you’ll suffocate. I advise you to clamp down on your gag reflex.”

He sat on the chair, rocking slowly as Willard struggled to regain his equilibrium. When he saw his prisoner winning that battle, he said, “My name is Jalal Essai.” His eyes opened wide at Willard’s response. “Ah, I see you’ve heard of me. Good. That makes my job easier. You’ve just come from seeing Benjamin El-Arian. It was El-Arian, I warrant, who told you about me. He painted me as the villain, I have no doubt. Well, heroes and villains-it’s all in your point of view. El-Arian would deny this, but then he’s proved himself to be irresolute, like a reed blown first this way then that by shifting winds.”

Essai rose, crossed to the bed, and ripped the tape off Willard’s mouth.

“I know you’re wondering about that taste in your mouth.” He smiled. “You swallowed a bottle of castor oil.” He pointed. “Hence the diaper. Not long from now some very nasty stuff is going to be coming out of you. The diaper will help contain it, or at least some of it. I’m afraid there will be too much for it to absorb, and then…” He shrugged.

“Whatever you want from me you won’t get.”

“Bravo! That’s the spirit! But sadly for you, I’ve already gotten what I want. Like others El-Arian has dealt with or sent after me, you’ll be dumped on his doorstep. This procedure will continue until he ceases his actions and forgets about me.”

“He’s not about to do that.”

“Then he and I have a long road to travel.” Essai wadded up the tape and threw it away. He stuffed the roll back into the black bag. “You, however, have a significantly shorter road to travel.”

“I don’t feel well.” Willard said this in a curious voice, as if he were a querulous child talking to himself.

“No,” Essai said, stepping back from the bed, “I don’t suppose you do.”

[27]

NIGHT STILL LAY along the macadam roads and concrete sidewalks the following morning when Bourne arrived at Heathrow Airport. It was drizzling and chilly, and he was happy to get out of London. His flight left at seven twenty-five and arrived in Marrakech at one fifteen, with a brief stopover in Madrid. There were no direct commercial flights.

He was sitting in the only coffee shop open at that hour, its plastic chairs and tables wan in the fluorescent lights, sipping over-roasted coffee that tasted like ashes when Don Fernando Hererra appeared, walked over, and sat down without either invitation or greeting.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando said nothing. Lost within his beautiful suit, he seemed to have aged since the last time Bourne had seen him, though only a week or so had passed. He was staring absently at a display of luggage in the window of a store across the concourse.

“How did you find me?” Bourne said.

“I suspected you were going to Marrakech.” Abruptly he turned to Bourne and said, “Why did you kill my son? He was only trying to help you as I asked him to do.”

“I didn’t kill him, Don Fernando.” It was then Bourne felt the nick of the knife point on the inside of his thigh. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“I have traveled far beyond wise, young man.” His eyes were pale, liquid, filled with anguish. “Now I am a father grieving for his dead son. That’s all I am, that’s all the life this old frame can muster.”

“I would never harm Diego,” Bourne said. “I think you know that.”

“There is no one else but you.” Don Hernando’s voice, though soft, was like a cry full of pain and suffering. “Betrayal, betrayal!” He shook his head. “The only other possibility is Ottavio Moreno. He’s my godson. He would never lay a hand on Diego.”

Bourne sat very still, feeling a trickle of blood down his leg. He could end this at any moment, but he chose to let the situation play out because a violent end wouldn’t help him. He was extremely fond of Don Hererra; he couldn’t lift a finger against him. “And yet, it was Ottavio who knifed Diego,” he said.

“Lies!” The old man was quivering. “What possible reason-?”

“Severus Domna.”

At once Don Hererra blinked. A tic started in his right cheek. “What’s that you say?”

“You’ve heard of Severus Domna, I take it.”

The old man nodded. “I’ve crossed swords with a few members over the years.”

This interested Bourne greatly. Now he was doubly glad he had chosen not to act. “I have something Severus Domna wants,” Bourne said. “Its emissaries have followed me in London, Oxford-elsewhere here. Somehow one of them got to Diego. His assignment was to bring me to the Vesper Club, where they were waiting for me. Ottavio found out. He might have acted too hastily, but he was protecting me, I assure you.”

“You and he know each other?”

“We did,” Bourne said. “He died yesterday.”

The old man’s face grew hard. “How?”

“He was shot by a man employed by Jalal Essai.”

Don Hererra’s head swung around. Life was beginning to bloom on his cheeks. “Essai?”

“He wants the same thing Severus Domna wants.”

“He’s no longer with the group?”

“No.” Slowly Bourne became aware of the knife point being withdrawn.

“My sincere apologies,” the old man said.

“I know you must have been proud of Diego.”

For a time, Don Hererra said nothing. Bourne waved down a waiter and ordered two coffees. When cup and saucer were set down in front of Don Hererra, the old man stirred in some sugar, then took a sip, wincing at the taste.

“I can’t wait to get back to Sevilla.” His eyes engaged Bourne’s. “Before you go, there is something I must tell you. I used to hold Ottavio Moreno in my arms when I visited his mother. Her name is Tanirt and she lives in Tineghir.” He paused; his gaze was probing, and he was once again his old canny self. “That is where you’re headed, isn’t it?”

Bourne nodded.

“Be very careful, señor. Tineghir is the nexus of Severus Domna. Tineghir is where it was born, where it first flourished, due mostly to Jalal Essai’s family. But the Essais were split when Jalal’s brother turned his back on Severus Domna, uprooted his family, and moved to Bali.”

That would be Holly’s father, Bourne thought.

“Benjamin El-Arian, whose family coveted the Essais’ power, used the schism to gain influence. So far as I know, he has been the leader of Severus Domna for some years now.”

“So it’s all-out war between Essai and El-Arian.”

Don Fernando nodded. “From what I’ve been able to glean, Severus Domna doesn’t take kindly to members leaving the fold. Blood in, blood out.” He finished off his coffee. “But back to Tanirt. I’ve known her for a long time. She is, in many respects, the female I’ve been closest to most of my adult life, and that includes my late wife.”

“I think I should know if she’s your mistress.”

The old man smiled. “Tanirt is a special person, which you will discover for yourself when you speak with her.” He leaned forward. “Escúchame, señor, she is the first person you must see when you arrive in Morocco.” He scribbled a line on a scrap of paper. “Call her at this number when you arrive. She will be expecting you. Her advice will serve you well, there can be no doubt. She sees all sides of every situation.”

“Am I to believe that she was Gustavo Moreno’s mistress, and now she’s yours?”

“When you meet her you will understand,” Don Fernando said. “But this much I will say. Tanirt is no one’s mistress. She is who she is. It is not for any man to have her in that way. She is…” He looked away for a moment. “… wild.”

Dimitri Maslov received the news that Colonel Boris Karpov was getting a haircut and shave at the Metropole barbershop with cautious optimism. Karpov, also a cautious man, never got his hair cut at the same place twice.

Maslov summoned Oserov, but was informed that Oserov was AWOL, having left Moscow the day before. Maslov, seething, had had enough of Oserov. In fact, he’d kept him on this long only to piss off Arkadin, for whom he harbored both a father’s love and a spurned parent’s bitter hatred. But Oserov’s humiliating failure in Bangalore had sunk him fatally. He had become all but useless to Maslov, having acquired the stink of defeat.

“Where did he go?” Maslov inquired of Oserov’s assistant. They were standing in the offices, surrounded by Maslov’s crew.

“Tineghir.” The assistant coughed and licked his dry lips. “Morocco.”

“Why did he go to Morocco?”

“He… he didn’t tell me.”

“Did you try to find out?”

“How would I do that?”

Maslov drew his custom-made Makarov and shot the assistant between the eyes. Then he turned a murderous gaze on each of his men, slowly. The ones closest to him stepped back a pace, as if struck by an invisible blow.

“Anyone who thinks he can take a piss without my order, step forward.”

No one moved.

“Anyone who thinks he can disobey an order, step forward.”

No one breathed.

“Yevgeny.” He turned to a stocky man with a scar beneath one eye. “Arm yourself and your two best men. You’re coming with me.”

Then he stalked back into his office, went to the cabinet behind his desk, and began to pick through weaponry. If the debacle in Bangalore had taught him anything it was that if you want to get something difficult done, do it yourself. Times had changed. He knew it, yet he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Everything was more difficult than it had been. The government had become aggressively hostile, the siloviks had run off the more pliable oligarchs, and good people were harder and harder to find. The easy money had been made. Now he had to claw and scratch for every dollar. He was working double the hours just to make the profit he’d earned ten years ago. It was enough to make you weep for lost youth. The fact of the matter is, he thought as he fitted a suppressor to the muzzle of his Makarov, it’s no fun being a criminal anymore. Now it’s work, pure and simple. He’d been reduced to the level of an apparatchik, and he hated it. This new reality was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He was exhausted from trying to keep his head above water. And then, to top it all off, Boris Karpov had become his personal bête noire.

Well armed, he slammed the cabinet doors shut. Hefting his Makarov, he discovered a newfound vigor. After so many years behind a desk, it felt good to hit the streets, to take the law into his own hands, to shake it until it went limp and gave up. He felt ready to bite off its head.

The Metropole barbershop was situated off the vast, marble-and-ormolu lobby of the Federated Moskva Hotel, an old and venerable establishment located between the Bolshoi Theater and Red Square. The building was so ornate, it seemed at any moment on the verge of imploding from the encrustations of cornices, balustrades, carved stone panels, massive lintels, and projecting parapets.

The Metropole was set up with three old-fashioned barber’s chairs, behind which were a mirrored wall and the cabinets that contained the various implements of the trade: scissors, straight razors, shaving cream machines, tall glass jars of a blue liquid disinfectant, neatly folded towels, combs, brushes, electric hair clippers, canisters of talcum powder, and bottles of bracing aftershave.

Currently all three chairs were occupied by clients over whom had been spread black nylon smocks that snapped at the neck. The two men at either end were getting their hair cut by barbers in the traditional Metropole white uniforms. The man in the middle, reclining on his chair with a hot towel wrapped around his face, was Boris Karpov. While his barber stropped a straight razor, Karpov whistled an old Russian folk melody he remembered from his childhood. In the background a dinosaur of a radio played a staticky news report, announcing the latest government initiative to combat growing unemployment. Two men, one young, one old, sat in wooden chairs on the other side of the shop, reading copies of Pravda while waiting their turn.

Yevgeny’s men had reconnoitered the hotel lobby for ten minutes, assiduously checking for FSB-2 agents. Finding none, they signaled to their boss. Yevgeny, in a long winter overcoat similar to the ones his men wore, entered the Federated Moskva, along with a family led by an unsmiling Intourist guide. While the guide led the family to reception, he walked directly to the Metropole, assuring himself that Boris Karpov was, indeed, the man in the center chair getting his face scraped. As soon as the barber lifted the towel from Karpov’s face, Yevgeny turned and signaled to his man who was standing by the revolving door. This man, in turn, signaled Maslov, who got out of the black BMW parked in front of the hotel, went across the sidewalk, and up the steps.

The moment he appeared through the revolving door, Yevgeny and his men went into action, just as had been planned. The two men stationed themselves on either side of the Metropole entrance. There was no other egress.

Yevgeny walked in and, drawing his Makarov pistol, used the barrel to signal to the two men waiting to get the hell out. He swung the muzzle of the Makarov in the general direction of the clients getting their hair cut to keep them and their barbers from moving. He nodded and Maslov entered.

“Karpov, Boris Karpov.” Maslov had his Makarov at the ready. “I understand you’re looking for me.”

Karpov opened his eyes. His gaze rested on Maslov a moment. “Shit, this is awkward.”

Maslov grinned wolfishly. “Only for you.”

Karpov raised a hand from under his smock. The barber took the edge of the straight razor from his cheek and stepped back. Karpov looked from Maslov to Yevgeny to the two armed men who now appeared in the doorway.

“This doesn’t look good for me, but if you’ll listen I think we can work a deal.”

Maslov laughed. “Listen to this, the incorruptible Colonel Karpov begging for his life.”

“I’m just being pragmatic,” Karpov said. “I’m soon to become the head of FSB-2, so why kill me? I’d be an excellent friend to have, don’t you agree?”

“The only good friend,” Maslov said, “is a dead friend.”

He took aim at Karpov, but before he could squeeze the trigger, an explosion blasted him backward off his feet. A hole had appeared in Karpov’s smock from the bullet he had fired. He threw off the smock at the same time as the two other clients-both FSB-2 undercover agents-fired through their smocks. Yevgeny’s two men went down. Yevgeny killed one of Karpov’s men before Karpov shot him three times in the chest.

Karpov, his face still covered with shaving cream, walked over to where Maslov lay on the black-and-white tile floor.

“How do you feel?” He aimed his pistol at Maslov’s face. “At the end of an era?”

Without waiting for a reply, he squeezed the trigger.

Moira opened her eyes after what seemed like days or weeks of sleep, and saw Berengária Moreno’s face.

Berengária smiled, but it was a smile full of concern. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a train.” Her left leg was in a full cast, suspended by a sling-and-pulley system, so the lower half was above the level of her head.

“You look beautiful, mami.” Berengária’s voice was light and breezy. She kissed Moira lightly on the mouth. “I have a private ambulance waiting downstairs to take us back to the hacienda. A full-time nurse and a physical therapist have already settled into their guest rooms.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” It was a stupid thing to say. Luckily, Berengária had the good grace to ignore it.

“You’ll have to get used to calling me Barbara.”

“I know.”

Then her tone changed, her voice softened, and she leaned close to Moira. “I was sure I’d never see you again.”

“Which only goes to prove that there are no sure things in life.”

Berengária laughed. “God knows.”

“Barbara…”

“Mami, please, I’ll be angry if you think I expect anything. I would do anything for you, including leaving you alone, if that’s your wish.”

Moira put her hand against Barbara’s cheek. “Right now, all I want is to recover.” She sighed deeply. “Barbara, I want to be able to run again.”

Barbara put her hand over Moira’s. “Then you’ll make it so. And I’ll help you, if that is your wish. If not…” She shrugged.

“Thank you.”

“Get better, mami. That’s how you’ll thank me.”

Moira’s expression clouded over. “You know, I wasn’t lying to Arkadin. Corellos has to be dealt with, and the sooner the better.”

“I know.” Barbara almost mouthed the words, so softly did she speak.

“It will take some thought, but the problem will give me something to concentrate on besides my leg.”

“I’m tempted to say just concentrate on getting better, but I know you’ll laugh in my face.”

Moira’s expression darkened even further. “You’re in the wrong business, you know that, don’t you?”

“It was my brother’s life.”

“I’m tempted to say that it doesn’t have to be yours, but I know you’ll laugh in my face.”

Barbara smiled ruefully. “God knows there’s no escaping family.” Absently, she stroked Moira’s cast. “My brother was good to me, he protected me, he looked out for me when others tried to take advantage of me.” She looked into Moira’s eyes. “He taught me to be tough. He taught me how to hold my head up in the world of men. Without him I don’t know where I’d be.”

Moira thought about this for some time. One compelling reason to stay with Barbara was so she could convince her to leave her brother’s business behind, despite her perceived obligation to him. Moira hadn’t been in touch with her own family for years, didn’t even know whether her parents were still alive. She wondered if she cared. Her own brother was another matter entirely. She knew where he was, what he was doing, and with whom he associated. She was certain he knew nothing of her. They had severed ties in their early twenties. Unlike with her parents, she felt something for him, but it wasn’t good.

She took a deep breath and exhaled the stale air of her past. “I’m healing faster than the surgeon had expected, and no one thinks more highly of his work than he does.”

Barbara’s eyes twinkled. “Well, you know, nothing is as we expect.”

This time, both women laughed together.

Benjamin El-Arian sat behind his desk in his study. He was on the phone with Idir Syphax, the top-echelon member of Severus Domna in Tineghir. Syphax had confirmed that both Arkadin and Bourne were on their way to Morocco. El-Arian wanted to make certain that every detail he had worked out for their strategy was understood and in place. This was no time for surprises; he had no illusions concerning the nature of the two men.

“Everything is prepared inside the house?”

“Yes,” Idir said in his ear. “The system has been checked and rechecked. Most recently by me, as you requested. Once they’re in, they won’t be able to get out.”

“We built a better rat trap.”

A chuckle. “That’s the size of it.”

Now El-Arian came to the most difficult question. “What about the woman?” He could not bring himself to utter Tanirt’s name.

“We cannot touch her, of course. The men are terrified of her.”

With good reason, El-Arian thought. “Leave her alone, then.”

“I will pray to Allah,” Idir said.

El-Arian was pleased. Pleased also that Willard had actually made good on his end of the bargain. He was about to add a comment when he heard the screech of a car taking off from outside his Georgetown brownstone. Because he was wearing a wireless headphone he was able to get up, walk across the carpet, and peer through the slats of the wooden shutters without breaking off the call.

He saw a bundle lying awkwardly on his front steps, as if it had been dropped there. The cylindrical shape was wrapped up in an old carpet. He estimated the length to be somewhere between five and a half and six feet.

While still talking into his mike, he went down the hall, opened his front door, and hauled the carpet into his foyer. He grunted; it was very heavy. The carpet was tied in three places with common twine. He went back to his desk, retrieved a folding knife from a drawer, and returned to the foyer. Squatting down, he severed the three lengths of twine and unrolled the carpet. This unleashed an unholy stench that caused him to jump back.

When he saw the body, when he recognized it, when he realized that it was still alive, he cut short the call. Staring down at Frederick Willard, he thought, Allah preserve me, Jalal Essai has declared war on me. Unlike the deaths of the men he had sent to terminate Essai, this was a personal statement.

Setting aside his natural revulsion, he bent over Willard. One eye would not open, and the other was so inflamed there was no white at all.

“I will pray for you, my friend,” El-Arian said.

“I have no interest in Allah or in God.” Willard’s dry, cracked lips scarcely moved, and something terrible must have been done to his throat or vocal cords because his voice was nearly unrecognizable. It sounded like a razor cutting through flesh. “The rest is darkness. There is no one left to trust.”

El-Arian asked him a question, but the answer wasn’t forthcoming. Leaning forward, he touched the side of Willard’s neck. There was no pulse. El-Arian said a brief prayer, if not for the infidel, then for himself.