The Bourne Objective

[28]

YOU SEEM SURPRISED,” Tanirt said.

Bourne was surprised. He had been expecting a woman of Don Fernando’s age, possibly a decade younger. It was difficult to tell precisely, but Tanirt seemed to be in her late thirties. This was an illusion, surely. Assuming Ottavio actually was her son, she had to be at least fifty.

“I came to Morocco with no expectations,” he said.

“Liar.” Tanirt was dark-skinned and dark-haired, with a voluptuous figure that had lost none of its lush ripeness. She carried herself as if she were a princess or a queen, and her huge, liquid eyes seemed to take in everything at once.

She studied him for a moment. “I see you. Your name is not Adam Stone,” she said with utter certainty.

“Does that matter?”

“Truth is the only thing that matters.”

“My name is Bourne.”

“Not the name you were born with, but the one you go by now.” She nodded, as if satisfied. “Please give me your hand, Bourne.”

He had called her the moment he landed in Marrakech. As Don Fernando had promised, she was expecting him. She had given him directions on where to meet her: a sweets shop in the center of a market on the southern edge of the city. He had found the market without difficulty, parked, and proceeded on foot through the labyrinth of alleys lined with stalls and shops selling everything from incised leather goods to camel feed. The sweets shop was owned by a wizened Berber who seemed to recognize Bourne on sight. Smiling, he waved him into the interior, which smelled of caramel and roasted sesame seeds. The shop was dark and full of shadows. Nevertheless, Tanirt was illuminated, as if from within.

Now he offered her his hand, palm up, and she took it. Tanirt looked up at him. She wore simple robes, belted at the waist. Nothing was exposed, and yet her sexuality, pulsing with life, seemed utterly revealed to him.

She held his hand tenderly, her forefinger lightly tracing the lines on his palm and fingers. “You are a Capricorn, born on the last day of the year.”

“Yes.” There was no way she could know that, and yet she did. A tingling began in Bourne’s toes, percolating up through his body, warming him, drawing him to her, as if she had established an energy link between them. Slightly disturbed, he thought about walking out of the shop, but didn’t.

“You have…” She stopped short and put her hand over his, as if trying to block out her sudden vision.

“What is it?” Bourne said.

She looked up at him and at that moment he felt as if he could drown in those eyes. She had not let go of his hand. On the contrary, she held it tightly between her two palms. There was a magnetism about her that was both intensely exciting and intensely disquieting. He felt forces inside him tugging him this way and that, as if in fierce opposition.

“Do you really want me to tell you?” Her voice was that of a trained contralto, deep and rich and sonorous. Even at low volume it seemed to pierce into every packed corner of the sweets shop.

“You started this,” Bourne pointed out.

She smiled, but there was nothing happy in it. “Come with me.”

He followed her to the rear of the shop and out a narrow door. Once again in the labyrinthine heart of the market, he looked out at a bewildering array of goods and services: live cocks and velvet-winged bats in cages, cockatoos on bamboo perches, fat fish in tanks of seawater, a butchered lamb, skinned and bloody, hanging from a hook. A brown hen waddled by, squawking as if being strangled.

“Here you see many things, many creatures, but as for people, only Amazighs, only Berbers.” Tanirt pointed south, into the High Atlas. “The town of Tineghir is centered within an eighteen-and-a-half-mile oasis at an altitude of more than five thousand feet, stretching across a relatively thin wedge of lush wadi between the High Atlas range to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south.

“It is a homogeneous place. Like the area around it, the town is inhabited by Amazighs. The Romans called us Mazices; the Greeks, Libyans. By whatever name, we are Berbers, indigenous to many parts of North Africa and the Nile Valley. The ancient Roman author Apuleius was actually Berber, as was Saint Augustine of Hippo. So was, of course, Septimius Severus, emperor of Rome. And it was a Berber, Abd ar-Rahman the First, who conquered southern Spain and established the Umayyad Caliphate in Córdoba, the heart of what he called al-Andalus, modern-day Andalusia.”

She turned to him. “I tell you this so you may better understand what is to come. This is a place of history, of conquest, of great deeds and great men. It is also a place of great energy-a power spot, if you will. It is a nexus point.”

She took his hand again. “Bourne, you are an enigma,” she said softly. “You have a long lifeline-an unusually long lifeline. And yet…”

“What is it?”

“And yet you will die here today or perhaps tomorrow, but certainly within the week.”

All of Marrakech appeared to be a souk, all Moroccans vendors of something or other. Everything seemed to be bought and sold from the storefronts and marketplaces that lined the jammed streets and boulevards.

Arkadin and Soraya had been observed upon their arrival, which he had expected, but no one approached them and they weren’t followed from the airport into the city. This did not reassure him. On the contrary, it made him even more wary. If the Severus Domna agents at the airport hadn’t followed them, it was because they had no need to. His conclusion was that the city, probably the entire Ouarzazate region, was swarming with them.

Soraya confirmed that opinion when he voiced it. “It makes no sense you being here,” she said inside a taxi that smelled of stewed lentils, fried onions, and incense. “Why are you walking into such an obvious trap?”

“Because I can.” Arkadin sat with his small suitcase on his lap. Inside was the laptop computer.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe.”

“Another lie, otherwise I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

He looked at her, shaking his head. “Within ten minutes I could make you cry out, I could make you forget all your previous lovers.”

“I’m charmed, truly.”

“Mother Teresa, not Mata Hari.” He said this with a good measure of disgust, as if her chastity had made him lose respect for her, or at least devalue her.

“Do you imagine I care what a piece of shit like you thinks of me.” It was not a question.

They bounced around in the backseat for some time. Then he said, as if continuing the previous conversation, “You’re here as an insurance policy. You and Bourne have a connection. At the proper time, I mean to make the most of it.”

Soraya, brooding, was silent for the remainder of the ride.

In Marrakech, Arkadin took her along a warren of streets where Moroccans peered at her, licking their lips as if they were trying to measure the tenderness of her flesh. They were engulfed by the madhouse screeches of the jungle. At length, they entered a stuffy shop that stank of machine oil. A small, bald, mole-like man greeted Arkadin in the obsequious manner of an undertaker, rubbing his hands together and bowing continuously. At the rear of the shop was a small Persian carpet. Lifting this aside, he pulled on a thick metal ring, which opened a trapdoor. Switching on a small flashlight, the mole-man descended a metal spiral staircase. At the base, he flicked on a series of fluorescent coils set into a ceiling so low they were forced to stoop as they crab-walked across the polished floorboards. Unlike the shop above, dusty, packed willy-nilly with all manner of cartons, barrels, and crates, the basement was spotless. Along the walls, portable dehumidifiers hummed quietly alongside a row of air purifiers. The basement was divided into neat aisles sided by long, waist-high cabinets, each with three drawers, each one filled with every form of hand weaponry known to modern man. Every weapon was marked and tagged in meticulous fashion.

“Well, since you know my stock,” the mole-man said, “I’ll leave you to make your choices. Bring what you want to buy upstairs, I’ll provide what ammunition you require, and we’ll settle the bill.”

Arkadin nodded absently. He was consumed with passing from one drawer of the arsenal to another, calculating firepower, ease of use, rapidity of fire, and the practicality of weight and size of each weapon.

When they were alone, he removed from a drawer what looked to Soraya like a searchlight with a large battery pack underneath it. Turning to her, he shook the searchlight. The battery pack opened and locked into place. The item was a folding machine gun.

“I’ve never seen that before.” She was fascinated despite herself.

“It’s a prototype, not on the market yet. It’s a Magpul FMG, takes standard nine-millimeter Glock ammo but spits it out a shitload faster than a pistol.” He ran his hand down the stubby barrel. “Nice, huh?”

Soraya thought it was. She’d dearly like one for herself.

Arkadin must have recognized the avidity of her gaze. “Here.”

She took it from him, examined it expertly, broke it down, then put it back together.

“Fucking ingenious.” Arkadin seemed in no hurry to take back the FMG. He seemed to be watching her, but, in fact, he was seeing something else, a scene from far away.

In St. Petersburg he’d taken Tracy to her hotel room. She had not asked him to come up, but she hadn’t protested when he had. Inside, she put her handbag and key down on a table, walked across the carpet and into the bathroom. She closed the door but he didn’t hear the click of a lock.

The river glittered in moonlight, black and thick and full of secrets, like an ancient serpent, always half asleep. It was stuffy in the room, so he went to the window and, unlatching it, opened it. A wind, thick as the river and smelling of it, swirled about the room. He turned, looked at the bed, and imagined Tracy there, her nakedness revealed by the moonlight.

A tiny sound, like a sigh or a catch in the throat, caused him to turn around. The bathroom door, unlatched, had opened, and now another swirl of wind pushed it farther, so that a thin wedge of buttery light fell across the carpet. He entered the wedge of light, and his gaze penetrated into the bathroom. He saw Tracy’s back, or rather a slice of it, pale and unblemished. Lower was the swell of her buttocks and the deep crease between. The pulse of pleasure in his groin was so extreme it bordered on pain. There was that thing about her-his hatred and his dependence-that made him weak. He despised himself, but he could not help moving toward the door and pushing it farther open.

The door, old and peeling, creaked, and Tracy peered at him over her shoulder. Her body was revealed to him in all its glory. She looked at him with a pity and loathing that brought an animal sound to his lips. Hurriedly, he pulled the door shut. When she emerged, he could not look at her. He heard her cross the room and close the window.

“Where were you brought up?” she said.

It was not a question, but a slap in the face. He could not answer her, and for that-for many things-he burned to kill her, to feel the cartilage in her throat rupture beneath the pressure of his fingers, to feel her blood running hotly in his hands. Yet he was bound to her, as she was bound to him. They were locked in hateful orbit, with no possibility of escape.

But Tracy did escape, he thought now, into death. He missed her, hated himself for missing her. She was the only woman who had refused him. Up until now, that is. As his eyes refocused on Soraya folding up the FMG, he felt a premonitory shiver run through him. For a moment, he saw her skull, and she looked like death. Then everything snapped back into focus and he could breathe again.

Unlike Tracy, her skin was burnished a golden bronze. Like Tracy, she had revealed herself to him when she stripped off the T-shirt he had loaned her to use as a tourniquet for Moira’s thigh. She had heavy breasts, the nipples dark and erect. He could see them now, beneath her top, see them as clearly as if she were still half naked.

“It’s because you can’t have me,” Soraya said as if reading his mind.

“On the contrary, I could have you right now.”

“Rape me, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“If you were going to,” she said, turning her back on him, “you would have already.”

He came up behind her and said, “Don’t tempt me.”

She whirled around. “Your rage is toward men, not women.”

He glared at her, unmoving.

“You get off on killing men and seducing women. But rape? You’d no more consider raping a woman than I would.”

His mind raced back to his hometown of Nizhny Tagil, where he had briefly become a member of Stas Kuzin’s gang, rounding up girls off the streets to stock Kuzin’s savage brothel. Night after night he’d heard the girls’ screams and cries as they were raped and beaten. In the end, he’d killed Kuzin and half his gang.

“Rape is for animals,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m not an animal.”

“That’s your life: the struggle to be a man, not an animal.”

He looked away.

“Did Treadstone do this to you?”

He laughed. “Treadstone was the least of it. It was everything that happened before, everything I try to forget.”

“Curious. For Bourne it’s just the opposite. His struggle is to remember.”

“He’s lucky, then,” Arkadin snarled.

“It’s a great pity you’re enemies.”

“God made us enemies.” Arkadin took the weapon from her. “A god named Alexander Conklin.”

Do you know how to die, Bourne?” Tanirt whispered.

“You were born on Siwa’s day: the last day of the month, which is both the ending and the beginning. Do you understand? You are destined to die and be born again.” This was what Suparwita had told him only days ago in Bali.

“I’ve died once,” he said, “and was reborn.”

“Flesh, flesh, only flesh,” she muttered. And then: “This is different.”

Tanirt said this with a force he felt through every fiber of his being. He leaned toward her, the promise of her thighs and her breasts drawing him into her orbit.

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

Her hands gripped him, pulling him even closer. “There is only one way to explain.” She turned and led him back into the sweets shop. In the far corner she pushed several fragrant bales out of the way, revealing a wooden staircase, full of dust and crystals of palm sugar. They ascended to an upper floor that was, or until recently had been, someone’s living quarters. The owner’s daughter, judging by the posters of film and rock stars on the walls. It was brighter up here, the windows bringing in blinding sunlight. But it was also as hot as a fever. Tanirt appeared unaffected.

In the center of the floor she turned to him. “Tell me, Bourne, what do you believe in?”

He did not answer.

“The hand of God, fate, destiny? Any of those things?”

“I believe in free will,” he said at last, “in the ability to make one’s own choices without interference, either by organizations or by fate, whatever you want to call it.”

“In other words, you believe in chaos, because man doesn’t control anything in this universe.”

“That would mean I’m helpless. I’m not.”

“So neither Law nor Chaos.” She smiled. “Yours is a special path, the path between, where no one before you has gone.”

“I’m not sure I’d put it that way.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not a philosopher. How would you put it?”

“Where is this going?” he said.

“Always the soldier, the impatient soldier,” Tanirt said. “Death. It’s going toward the nature of your death.”

“Death is the end of life,” Bourne said. “What else is there to know about its nature?”

She went to one of the windows and opened it. “Tell me, please, how many of the enemy can you see?”

Bourne stood beside her, feeling her intense warmth as if she were an engine that had been running at speed for a long time. From this lofty vantage point, he could see a fair number of streets and observe their occupants.

“Somewhere between three and nine. It’s difficult to be precise,” he said after several minutes. “Which one will kill me?”

“None of them.”

“Then it will be Arkadin.”

Tanirt cocked her head. “This man Arkadin will be the herald, but he won’t be the one who kills you.”

Bourne turned to her. “Then who?”

“Bourne, do you know who you are?”

He had been with her long enough to know that he wasn’t expected to answer.

“Something happened to you,” Tanirt said. “You were one person, now you’re two.”

She put the flat of her hand on his chest and his heart seemed to skip a beat-or, more accurately, to race past it. He gave a little gasp.

“These two people are incompatible-in every way incompatible. Therefore, there is a war inside you, a war that will lead to your death.”

“Tanirt-”

She raised the hand that had been on his chest, and he felt as if he had sunk into a bog.

“The herald-this man Arkadin-will arrive in Tineghir with the one who will kill you. It is someone you know, perhaps very well. It is a woman.”

“Moira? Is her name Moira?”

Tanirt shook her head. “An Egyptian.”

Soraya!

“That… that doesn’t seem possible.”

Tanirt smiled her enigmatic smile. “This is the conundrum, Bourne. One of you can’t believe it is possible. But the other one knows that it is possible.”

For the first time in Bourne’s memory he felt truly helpless. “What am I to do?”

Tanirt took his hand in hers. “How you react, what you do, will determine whether you live or die.”

[29]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” M. Errol Danziger said when he reached Bud Halliday by phone.

“My birthday was months ago,” the secretary of defense said. “What do you want?”

“I’m waiting in my car downstairs.”

“I’m busy.”

“Not for this.”

There was something in Danziger’s voice that stopped Halliday from blowing him off. Halliday called his assistant and told him to clear his calendar for the next hour. Then he grabbed his overcoat and took the stairs down. As he walked across the White House grounds, the guards and Secret Service agents nodded to him deferentially. He smiled at the ones he knew by name.

Climbing into the back of Danziger’s car, he said, “This better be good.”

“Trust me,” Danziger said. “It’s better than good.”

Twenty minutes later the car pulled up at 1910 Massachusetts Avenue, SE. Danziger, who was sitting nearer the curb, stepped out and held the door open for his boss.

“Building Twenty-seven?” Halliday said as he and Danziger trotted up the steps of one of the modern brick buildings in the General Health Campus complex. “Who died?” Building 27 housed the office of the district’s chief medical examiner.

Danziger laughed. “A friend of yours.”

They passed through two levels of security and took the oversize stainless-steel-clad elevator down to the basement. The elevator reeked of bleach and a sickly-sweet smell Halliday was loath to identify.

They were expected. An assistant coroner, a slight, bespectacled man with a nose like a beak and a dour demeanor, nodded to them, guiding them through the cold room. He stopped three-quarters of the way down the bank of stainless-steel doors, opened one, and slid out a corpse on a tray. A sheet was pulled up over the face. At Danziger’s signal, the assistant coroner peeled back the sheet.

“Mary, Mother of God,” Halliday said, “is that Frederick Willard?”

“None other.” Danziger looked as if he was about to break into a jig of joy.

Halliday took a step closer. He pulled out a small mirror and stuck it under Willard’s nostrils. “No breath.” He turned to the assistant coroner. “What the hell happened to him?”

“Difficult to say at this time,” the man said. “So many things, so little time…”

“The gist,” Halliday said shortly.

“Torture.”

Halliday had to laugh. He looked at Danziger. “Damn ironic, isn’t it?”

“That’s how it struck me.”

At that moment the secretary’s PDA buzzed. He drew it out and looked at it. He was needed at the White House.

Rather than the Oval Office, the president was in the War Room three levels down below the West Wing. Vast computer screens ringed the room, in the center of which was an oval table outfitted with all the accoutrements of twelve virtual offices.

When Bud Halliday arrived, the president was chairing a meeting with Hendricks, the national security adviser, and Brey and Findlay, the respective heads of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. From their grim expressions it was clear there was an emergency brewing.

“Glad you could make it, Bud,” the president said, waving Halliday to a chair on the opposite side of the table.

“What’s happened?” Halliday said.

“Something’s come up,” Findlay said, “and we’d value your advice on how to proceed.”

“A terrorist attack on one of our overseas bases?”

“Rather closer to home.” Hendricks appeared to be taking point. Reversing a dossier in front of him, he slid it across the table to Halliday. He spread his hands. “Please.”

Halliday opened the dossier and was confronted with a photo of Jalal Essai. He stayed very calm, was pleased to see that his hand was steady as it turned the onionskin pages of the file.

When he was certain he had himself perfectly under control, he raised his gaze. “Why are we looking at this man?”

“We have information linking him to the torture and murder of Frederick Willard.”

“Evidence?”

“As yet, no,” Findlay said.

“But we have every indication that it will be forthcoming,” Hendricks said.

“Do you want me to buy the bridge, too?” Halliday said caustically.

“What’s disturbing, Mr. Secretary, is that this man Essai has flown beneath our radar, even though he represents a clear and present national security threat.” This from Findlay again.

Halliday tapped the dossier. “There is intel here on Essai going back years. How could we not-?”

“That’s the question we need answered, Bud,” the president said.

Halliday cocked his head. “Well, I mean to say, where did this intel come from?”

“Not from your farm, clearly,” Brey said.

“Nor from yours,” Halliday shot back. He looked from one face to another. “You’re not thinking of pinning this oversight on my people.”

“It wasn’t an oversight,” Findlay said. “At least, not an oversight on our part.”

There was a strained silence in the room, which was finally broken by the president. “Bud, we thought you’d be more forthcoming.”

“Shit, I didn’t,” Brey said.

“When confronted by the evidence,” Hendricks added.

“Evidence of what?” Halliday said. “There’s nothing I have to explain or apologize for.”

“You all owe me a hundred dollars apiece,” Brey said with a smirk.

Halliday glared at him with naked rage.

Hendricks picked up the phone, spoke a few words into the receiver, then set it down.

“For God’s sake, Bud,” the president said, “you’re making this damnably difficult.”

“What is this?” Halliday stood up. “An inquisition?”

“Well, you haven’t helped yourself.” There was deep sadness in the president’s voice. “Last chance.”

Halliday, standing as rigid as a war veteran’s statue, ground his teeth in fury.

Then the door to the War Room opened and in walked the twins, Michelle and Mandy. Their eyes were laughing. At him.

Christ, he thought. Jesus Christ.

“Be seated, Mr. Secretary.”

The president’s voice had turned so full of suppressed anger and a sense of personal betrayal, it sent a shiver down Halliday’s spine. With a sinking heart, he did as he was ordered.

Ahead of him stretched the long, humiliating road to disgrace and ruin. Listening to the tapes the twins had made of his conversations with Jalal Essai in the hideaway apartment, he wondered whether he had the courage to retreat to a quiet, private place and blow his brains out.

Oserov arrived in Morocco with his face swathed in bandages. In Marrakech he found a shop where they made a wax impression and, from this template, a latex mask, white as starlight, that fit over his ruined face. Its terrible, cold stoicism belied the raging torment beneath, but he was grateful for the anonymity it afforded him. He bought a heavy black-and-brown-striped hooded thobe to conceal his head and the top part of his face. With it on, the hood cast the rest of his face in deep shadow.

After a brief meal, which he wolfed down without tasting, he wasted no time renting a car and planning out his route. Then he set out for Tineghir.

Idir Syphax went slowly and methodically through the house in central Tineghir. He moved from shadow to shadow like a wraith or a dream, soundlessly, light as air. Idir had been born and raised in the High Atlas region of Ouarzazate. He was used to winter’s cold and snow. He was known as the man who brings ice to the desert, which meant that he was special. Like Tanirt, the local Berbers were afraid of him.

Idir was slim and well muscled, with a wide mouth of large white teeth and a nose like the prow of a ship. His head and neck were swathed in the traditional blue Berber scarf. He wore robes of a blue-and-white check.

On the outside the house was identical to its neighbors. Inside, however, it was built like a fortress, the rooms a set of nesting boxes protecting, at its heart, the keep. The walls were constructed of solid concrete reinforced with steel rods; the heartwood doors had two-inch-thick metal cores, rendering them impervious to even semi-automatic fire. There were two separate electronic security systems to get through: motion detectors in the outer rooms and infrared heat detectors in the inner ones.

Idir’s family had deep ties with the Etanas reaching back centuries. The Etanas had founded the Monition Club as a way for the Severus Domna to come together in various cities across the globe without attracting attention or using the group’s real name. To the outside world, the Monition Club was a philanthropic organization involved in the advancement of anthropology and ancient philosophies. It was a hermetically sealed world in which the sub-rosa members of the group could move, meet, compare work, and plan initiatives.

Idir had had his own ideas about power and succession, but before he could act Benjamin El-Arian had moved into the power vacuum created when Jalal Essai’s brother had decamped. Now that Jalal Essai had shown his true colors, the Essai family was dead and buried as far as Severus Domna was concerned. His defection had occurred on El-Arian’s watch. Idir had already had several conversations with Marlon Etana, the organization’s top-ranking member in Europe. Together, he had told Etana, they were more than a match for Benjamin El-Arian. Etana wasn’t so sure, but then years in the West had made Etana cautious, timid, even, in Idir’s opinion. Not desirable traits in a leader. He had plans for Severus Domna-big plans-beyond the scope of anything El-Arian or Etana could conceive of. He had tried negotiations, reason, and, finally, appealing to the vanity and ego of the leaders. All to no avail. That left only the path of violence.

Satisfied with his final inspection, he locked up the house and walked away. But not too far. The show was about to begin, and he had reserved for himself a front-row seat.

The moment Arkadin had acted on his suspicions, the moment he had sliced through the tendons at the back of Moira’s knee, the idyll of his sojourn in Sonora was shattered. He saw it for the illusion it was. Not for him the slow pace and hot sun, the slinky dancers and the sad rancheras. His life led elsewhere. From that time forward he couldn’t wait to leave Mexico. He had been bitterly betrayed. Sonora had held up to him the mirror of his life, the life to which he was bound no matter how much he might long to leave it.

In Morocco he was back in his element, a shark moving through deep and dangerous waters. But for thousands of years sharks have been bred to survive dark and dangerous waters. So, too, Leonid Arkadin.

Armed and never more dangerous, he drove out of Marrakech with Soraya, a woman he found perplexingly complicated. Until he had been gulled by Tracy, he had been used to dominating women in every sense imaginable. Conveniently forgotten was his own mother, who had controlled him completely by keeping him locked in a closet where rats had eaten three of his toes before he fought back, first by ragefully biting off their heads, then by killing his mother. He despised her so thoroughly that he had expunged her from both his consciousness and his memory. What glimpses remained were scenes from a cheap and grainy film he had seen when young.

And yet it had been his mother who had led him to view women through a particular lens. He flirted relentlessly. He felt only contempt for those who succumbed to his masculine charms. These he chewed up and threw away the moment he became bored with them. On those rare occasions when he encountered resistance-Tracy, Devra, the DJ he had met in Sevastopol, and now Soraya-he reacted differently, less surely, and doubt in himself had crept in like a fog, resulting in failure. He had failed to see through Tracy’s facade; he had failed to protect Devra. And with Soraya? He didn’t yet know, but he could not stop thinking about what she had said about his life being a struggle to be a man, not an animal. There was a time when he would have laughed at anyone who made such an accusation, but something had changed in him. For better or for worse he had become self-aware, and this self-awareness lent him the certainty that what she said wasn’t an accusation at all, but a statement of fact.

All this went through his mind as he and Soraya drove to Tineghir. It had been chilly enough in Marrakech, but here in the snowbound High Atlas an icy wind knifed through the canyons, flooding the wadi with frozen air.

“We’re coming to the end of the road,” he said.

Soraya did not reply; she hadn’t said a word for the entire car ride.

“Have you nothing more to say?”

His tone was deliberately mocking, but she just smiled at him and looked out the window. This abrupt change in her demeanor disturbed him, but he was unsure what to do about it. He couldn’t seduce her and he couldn’t browbeat her. What was left?

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tall figure-too tall to be Berber-in a black-and-brown-striped thobe. The hood shadowed his face, but as the car moved past, he could see that there was no disfigurement. The figure moved with Oserov’s gait, but how could it be him?

“Soraya, do you see that man in the black-and-brown thobe?”

She nodded.

He stopped the car. “Get out here and approach him. Do whatever you have to do. I want you to find out if he’s Russian, and if he is, whether his name is Oserov. Vylacheslav Germanovich Oserov.”

“And?”

“I’ll be sitting right here, watching. If it’s Oserov, give me a signal,” he said, “so I can kill him.”

She gave him an enigmatic smile. “I was wondering when I’d see it again.”

“What?”

“Your rage.”

“You don’t know what Oserov has done; you don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She opened the car door and climbed out. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”

Soraya carefully picked her way through the teeming street toward the tall man in the black-and-brown thobe. The key for her, she knew, was to remain calm and to keep her wits about her. Arkadin had outmaneuvered her once; she wasn’t going to get caught out like that again. There were a number of times during the drive to Tineghir when she had calculated she had a chance of escaping, but for two reasons she never made the move. The first was that she had no real confidence that she could elude Arkadin. The second, and more important, was that she had vowed to herself that she would not abandon Jason. He had saved her life more than once. No matter what malicious stories recirculated within CI about him, she knew she could count on him for anything and everything. Now that his life was in imminent danger, she would not run away and hide. More to the point, she had to do something to change Arkadin’s immediate trajectory.

Approaching the man, she began to speak to him in Egyptian-inflected Arabic. At first, he ignored her. It was possible that in the street hubbub he did not hear her, or thought she was speaking to someone else. She moved around so that she stood squarely in front of him. She spoke to him again. He kept his head slightly lowered and did not respond.

“I need some help. Do you understand English?” she said.

When he shook his head, she shrugged, turned, and made to walk away. She whirled around and said in Russian, “I recognize you, Vylacheslav Germanovich.” His head came up. “Aren’t you a colleague of Leonid’s?”

“You’re a friend of Arkadin’s?” His voice was thick and clotted, as if there were something in his throat he hadn’t completely swallowed. “Where is he?”

“Right over there.” She pointed to the car. “Sitting behind the wheel.”

Everything happened at once. Soraya backpedaled, Oserov swung around in a semi-crouch. Beneath the thobe he had concealed an AK-47 assault rifle. In one fluid motion he raised the AK-47, aimed it, and fired at the car. People, screaming, scattered in every direction. Oserov kept firing as he advanced across the street, drawing closer and closer to the car, shuddering on its shocks as it was sprayed with bullets.

When he came abreast of the car, he stopped. He tried to open the driver’s door, but it was so distorted it would not budge. Cursing, he reversed the AK-47, using the butt to knock out what was left of the window. He peered inside. It was empty.

Whirling, he leveled the AK-47 at Soraya. “Where is he? Where is Arkadin?”

Soraya saw Arkadin slither out from beneath the car, rise up, and wrap his arm around Oserov’s neck. He pulled backward with such force that Oserov’s feet left the ground. Oserov tried to slam the rifle’s butt into Arkadin’s rib cage, but Arkadin eluded each attack. Oserov whipped his head back and forth in an attempt to keep Arkadin from gaining a stranglehold. As he did so, his mask began to slip; becoming aware of this, Arkadin ripped it off, revealing the swollen, hideously disfigured face beneath.

Soraya crossed the now empty street, approaching the two antagonists with slow, deliberate steps. Oserov dropped the AK-47 and drew out a wicked-looking dirk. Soraya could see that it was out of Arkadin’s line of sight, he was unaware that Oserov was about to plunge it into his side.

Arkadin, absorbed in his life-or-death struggle with his hated enemy, breathed in the stench of an open sewer and realized that it was coming from Oserov, as if the people he had murdered had clawed their way out of the ground, twining about him like deeply rooted vines. Oserov seemed to be rotting from the inside out. Arkadin pulled him tighter as Oserov continued to struggle, continued to try to find a way out of the vise he was in. But once engaged, neither of them would let go or relinquish a hold on the other, as if their epic struggle was of one person becoming two. Two people fighting for dominion, battling in the abyss of unthinking and unreasoning rage. The conflict was not only against Oserov’s crimes, but against Arkadin’s own inhuman past, a past he daily tried to shove out of his mind, to bury as deeply as he could. And yet, zombified, it kept rising from its grave.

“That’s your life,” Soraya had said, “the struggle to be a man, not an animal.”

Figures in his past had conspired to break him down, to reduce him to an animal. His one chance at being something more had arrived in the guise of Tracy Atherton. Tracy had taught him many things, but in the end she had betrayed him. He had wished her dead and now she was dead. Oserov, his enemy, embodied everyone and everything that had ever conspired against him, and now he had him, now he was slowly, inexorably squeezing the life out of him.

His attention was suddenly drawn to a movement glimpsed from the corner of his eye. Soraya was sprinting the last fifteen feet that separated them. She struck Oserov a blow on his left wrist that paralyzed his hand. Arkadin saw the dirk as it fell at Oserov’s feet.

For a frozen instant he stared into Soraya’s eyes. A secret, silent communication passed between them and then, in a flash, vanished, never to be spoken of or referred to aloud. Arkadin, his heart seething with a rage that had been building for years, slammed the heel of his hand against the side of Oserov’s head. The head jerked hard to the right, against the wall of Arkadin’s encircling arm. The vertebrae cracked, Oserov spasmed like an insane marionette. His fingernails clawed at Arkadin’s forearm, drawing rivulets of blood. He bellowed like a buffalo, and for an instant his strength was so great that he almost broke away.

Then Arkadin cracked his neck again, harder this time, and whatever burst of energy was left in Oserov drained into the gutter. Oserov gave a terrible, soft cry. He tried to say something that seemed vitally important to him, but all that escaped his mouth was his tongue and a gout of blood.

Still, Arkadin would not let him go. He continued to slam the side of his head as if the neck had not already sustained multiple fractures.

“Arkadin,” Soraya said softly, “he’s dead.”

He stared at her, the light of madness in his eyes. Her hands were on him, trying to pry Oserov away from him, but he could feel nothing. It was as if his nerve endings were locked within the last moments of the struggle, as if his will to destroy Oserov would not terminate, would not allow him to let go. And he thought: If I keep hold of him I’ll be able to kill him again and again.

Gradually, however, the hurricane of emotion began to ebb. He felt Soraya’s hands on him. Then he heard her voice, repeating, “He’s dead,” and at last he unwound his arm. The corpse collapsed into a grotesque heap.

He looked down at Oserov’s ruined face and felt neither triumph nor satisfaction. He felt nothing at all. Empty. There was nothing inside him, just the abyss growing darker and deeper.

Punching a code on his cell phone, he walked to the rear of the car. He unlocked the trunk and took out the laptop in its protective case.

Looking around, Soraya could see a number of men in their Berber robes. They had been watching from the shadows. The moment Oserov slid to the ground, they began to converge on the car.

“It’s Severus Domna,” Soraya said. “They’re coming for us.”

At that moment a car screeched to a halt beside them. Arkadin opened the rear door.

“Get in,” he commanded, and she obeyed.

Arkadin slid in beside her and the car took off. There were three men inside, all heavily armed. Arkadin spoke to them in rapid, idiomatic Russian, and Soraya remembered their exchange in Puerto Peñasco.

“What do you want from me now?” she had asked Arkadin.

And he had answered: “The same thing you want from me. Destruction.”

Then she heard the words scorched earth and knew that he had come to Tineghir prepared to wage war.

[30]

BOURNE ARRIVED IN Tineghir armed with the knowledge Tanirt had given him. Inevitably, he was drawn to the crowd around the bullet-riddled car. The dead man was unrecognizable. Nevertheless, because of the severely burn-scarred face he knew it must be Oserov.

There were no police around the body or, indeed, anywhere in the area. But there were plenty of Severus Domna soldiers, which in this area probably amounted to the same thing. No one had made a motion to do anything about the corpse. Flies buzzed in ever-increasing swarms, and the stench of death was beginning to spread like an airborne disease.

Bourne passed the scene by, got out of his car several blocks away, and proceeded on foot. What Tanirt had said had changed his plan, and not, he felt, for the better. But he had no choice, she had made that quite clear.

And so he looked up. The sky was the pale and abandoned color it often is at five in the morning, though it was now deep in the afternoon. Instead of heading toward the address he had been given, the Severus Domna house, he searched for a café or restaurant and, finding one, entered it. He sat down at a table facing the front and ordered a plate of couscous and whiskey berbere, which was mint tea. He waited with one leg crossed over the other, emptying his mind, thinking of Soraya and nothing else. The small glass had been placed before him, the fragrant tea poured from a height without a drop spilled when he saw the Russian glance in as he walked slowly by. It wasn’t Arkadin, but it was a Russian, Bourne could tell by his features and the way he used his eyes, which was neither Berber nor Muslim. This told him a number of things, none of them helpful.

The couscous came, but he was without an appetite. Soraya entered the café first, but Arkadin wasn’t far behind. He expected Soraya to have a haunted look, but she didn’t, and Bourne wondered whether he had underestimated her. If so, it would be the day’s first positive sign.

Soraya picked her way through the café and sat down without saying a word. For some moments Arkadin remained in the doorway, watching everything. Bourne began to eat his couscous with his right hand, which was the custom. His left hand lay in his lap.

“How are you?” he said.

“Fucked.”

He gave her a thin smile. “How many men does he have with him?”

She appeared surprised. “Three.”

Arkadin came toward them. On the way, he picked up a chair from an adjacent table and sat down on it.

“How’s the couscous?”

“Not bad,” Bourne said. He pushed the plate across the table.

Arkadin used the ends of the fingers of his right hand to taste the couscous. He nodded, licked off the oil, and wiped his fingers on the tabletop.

Arkadin hunched forward. “We’ve been chasing each other a long time.”

Bourne took the plate back. “And now here we are.”

“Cozy as three bugs in a Moroccan carpet.”

Bourne took up his fork. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot with the gun you have aimed at me under the table.”

A flicker passed across Arkadin’s face. “It’s not for you to decide, is it?”

“That’s a matter of opinion. I have a Beretta 8000 loaded with.357 hollow-points aimed at your balls.”

A black expression was erased by Arkadin’s harsh laugh. It sounded to Bourne as if he had never really learned how to laugh. “Bugs in a carpet indeed,” Arkadin said.

“Besides,” Bourne said, “with me dead, you’ll never get out of that house alive.”

“I think otherwise.”

Bourne buried the tines of the fork in a mound of couscous. “Listen to me, Leonid, there are other forces at work here, forces neither you nor I can handle.”

“I can handle anything. And I brought allies.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Bourne said, quoting an Arab proverb.

Arkadin’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

“We are the only two graduates of Treadstone. We were trained for situations like this. But the two of us are not exactly alike. Mirror images, perhaps.”

“You’ve got ten seconds. Get to the fucking point.”

“Together we can beat Severus Domna.”

Arkadin snorted. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Think about it. Severus Domna brought us here, it has prepared the house for us, and it believes that when we come together one of us will wind up killing the other.”

“And?”

“And then everything goes according to its plan.” Bourne waited a moment. “Our only chance is to do the unexpected.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Bourne nodded.

“Until he’s not.”

Arkadin placed the Magpul he had been holding onto the table, and Bourne set down the Beretta that Tanirt had given him.

“We’re a team,” Bourne said. “The three of us.”

Arkadin glanced briefly at Soraya. “Spit it out then.”

“First and foremost,” Bourne said, “is a man named Idir Syphax.”

The house crouched in the middle of the block, its flanks rubbing up against those of its neighbors. Night had fallen, swift and complete, like a hood thrown over a head. All around the valley the mountains were pitch black. A bitter wind, knifing through the town, hurried snow crystals or grains of sand across streets and down alleys. The light from the stars was hallucinatory.

Idir Syphax was crouched on a rooftop across the street from the rear of the house. Flanking him were two Severus Domna sharpshooters, their Sako TRG-22 rifles aimed and ready. Idir watched the house as if waiting for his daughter to come home, as if feeling the danger of unknown places spreading its wings, as if the house itself were his child. And, in a way, it was. He had designed the house with advice from Tanirt. “I want to build a fortress,” he had told her. And she had said: “You cannot do better than to follow the plan of the Great Temple of Baal. It was the greatest fortress known to man.” After scrutinizing what she had drawn for him, he had agreed, and he himself had helped to build it. Every board, every nail, every length of rebar, every form of concrete bore the tattoo of his sweat. The house was invented not for people, but for a thing, an idea, an ideal, even; anyway, something intangible. In that sense it was a sacred place, as sacred as any mosque. It was the beginning of all things, and the end. Alpha and omega, a cosmos unto itself.

Idir understood this but others in Severus Domna did not. For Benjamin El-Arian, the house was a Venus flytrap. For Marlon Etana, it was a means to an end. In any event, for them both, the house was a dead thing, a pack animal at best. It was not holy, it was not a gateway to the divine. They did not understand that Tanirt had chosen the spot, using the ancient incantation she possessed and he coveted. He had once asked her what language she was chanting. It was Ugaritic. She said it was spoken by the alchemists of King Solomon’s court, in what is now Syria. That was why she had placed the statue in the very center of the house, the space from which its holiness emanated. He’d had to have it smuggled in because any statues of this sort were strictly forbidden by sharia. And of course, neither Benjamin El-Arian nor Marlon Etana knew of its existence. They’d have had him burned alive as a heretic. But if Tanirt had taught him anything, it was that there were ancient forces-perhaps mysteries was a better term-that had preceded religion, any religion, even Judaism, which were all the inventions of mankind in attempts to come to terms with the terror of death. The origins of the mysteries, Tanirt had told him, were divine, which according to her had nothing to do with man’s conception of God. “Did Baal exist?” she had asked rhetorically. “I doubt it. But something did.”

Save for the wind, the night was still. He knew they were coming, but he didn’t know from where. All attempts to follow them had ended in failure-a failure, he told himself, that was not unexpected. On the other hand, there had been attraction. Arkadin’s three men had been neutralized at the sacrifice of four of his own. These Russians were fierce warriors. Not that it mattered; Arkadin would not gain entrance no matter what he tried. All houses had vulnerabilities that could serve as points of entrance-sewers, for instance, or drains, or the place where the electrical lines came in. Because this house was not designed for people there were no sewers. Because there was no heating or cooling, no refrigerators or ovens to drain electricity, all the electrical systems ran off a giant generator in a shielded room within the house. There was, literally, no way into the house that wouldn’t set off the various alarms, which would in turn trip other security measures.

His son, Badis, had wanted to come, but of course Idir wouldn’t hear of it. Badis still asked about Tanirt even though at eleven he was old enough to know better. Badis remembered only when Tanirt loved his father, or at least said she loved him. Now she engendered in Idir a bone-deep terror that invaded his nights, his very sleep, shattering it with unspeakable nightmares.

It had all gone wrong when he had asked her to marry him and she had denied him.

“Is it because you don’t believe I love you?” he had said.

“I know you love me.”

“It’s because of my son. You think that because I love Badis more than anything I can’t make you happy.”

“It isn’t your son.”

“Then what?”

“If you have to ask,” she had said, “then you will never understand.”

That’s when he had made his fatal mistake. He had confused her with other women. He had tried to coerce her, but the more he threatened her, the larger her stature seemed to grow, until she filled his entire living room, asphyxiating him with her presence. And, gasping, he had fled his own home.

The sounds of the bolt-action Sakos brought his mind back into focus. He peered through the darkness. Was that a shadow flitting across the rooftop of the house? His sharpshooters thought so. In the hallucinatory moonlight there was a blur, then nothing. Utter stillness. And then, out of the corner of his eye, the shadow moved again. His heart leapt. His order for them to fire was already on his lips when from behind him he heard his name being called.

He whirled to see Leonid Arkadin standing spread-legged, an odd-looking boxy weapon in his hand.

“Surprise,” Arkadin said and promptly shot off two sharp bursts from the Magpul that took off the heads of the sharpshooters. They folded like marionettes.

“You do not frighten me,” Idir said. His face and robes were soaked with the blood and brains of his men. “I have no fear of death.”

“For yourself, perhaps.”

Arkadin motioned with his head and the woman, Soraya Moore, appeared out of the shadows. Idir gasped. She herded Badis in front of her.

“Papa!” Badis made a lunge toward his father, but Soraya caught him by the material at the back of his neck and jerked him back to her. “Papa! Papa!”

A look of terrible despair crossed Idir’s dark face.

“Idir,” Arkadin commanded, “throw your men over the parapet.”

Idir looked at him for a moment, dumbstruck. “Why?”

“So your men will know what happened up here, so they will fear the consequences of their actions.”

Idir shook his head.

Arkadin strode over to Badis and stuck the blunt barrel of the Magpul into his mouth. “I pull the trigger and even his own mother won’t recognize him.”

Idir blanched, then glowered impotently. He bent and picked up one of the sharpshooters, but there was so much blood the corpse slipped out of his hands.

Badis stared, wide-eyed and shivering.

Gathering the corpse to him, Idir rolled it onto the parapet. When he dropped it over the edge, they heard the sound it made smacking against the street. Badis shuddered. Quickly now Idir dumped the second corpse down onto the street. Again that thick, almost viscous sound made Badis jump.

Arkadin gestured. Soraya dragged the struggling boy to the edge of the roof and pushed his head over the side.

Idir made a move toward his son, but Arkadin waggled the Magpul, shaking his head.

“So you see death has many aspects,” Arkadin said, “and eventually fear comes to us all.”

And so at last the knives came fully out of their sheaths. Bourne came down off the roof when he heard the two shots. And now, as he saw Arkadin push Idir Syphax along in front of him, he came to meet them. Bourne and Arkadin stared at each other as if they were opposing agents about to exchange prisoners at the edge of no-man’s-land.

“Soraya?” Bourne said.

“On the rooftop with the boy,” Arkadin said.

“You didn’t hurt him?”

Arkadin glanced at Idir, then shot Bourne a disgusted look. “If I’d had to, I would have.”

“That wasn’t our deal.”

“Our deal,” Arkadin said tersely, “was to get this job done.”

Idir fidgeted in the tense silence, his eyes darting from one man to the other. “You two need to get your priorities straight.”

Arkadin struck him across the face. “Shut the fuck up.”

At length, Bourne handed Arkadin the laptop in its protective case. Then he took hold of Idir and said, “You’ll lead us inside. You’ll be the first through every barrier, electronic or otherwise.” He produced his cell phone. “I’m in constant touch with Soraya. Anything goes wrong…” He waggled the cell.

“I understand.” Idir’s voice was dull, but his eyes burned with hatred and rage.

He led them around to the front door, which he unlocked with a pair of keys. The moment they entered, he punched a code into a keypad set into the wall to the left of the door.

Silence.

A dog barked, unnaturally loud in the night, and in that highly charged atmosphere moonlight seemed to strike the house with the sound of sleet.

Idir coughed and turned on the lights. “Motion detectors come first, then the infrareds.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small remote control. “I can turn them both off from here.”

“Without the generator everything goes down,” Bourne said. “Take us to it.”

But when Idir started in one direction, Bourne said, “Not that way.”

A look of terror crossed Idir’s face. “You’ve been talking to Tanirt.” Breathing her name, he shuddered.

“If you know the way,” Arkadin said irritably, “what the fuck do we need him for?”

“He knows how to shut down the generator without it blowing the building to bits.”

That sobering news shut Arkadin up for the moment. Idir reversed directions, taking them on a route that skirted the outer rooms. They came to the first motion detector, its red eye blank and dark.

They passed it, Idir going first, as usual. They reached a door and Idir unlocked it. Another corridor unfolded like a fan, turning first this way, then that. Bourne was put in mind of the chambers of the great pyramids in Giza. Another door loomed before them. This, too, Idir unlocked. Another corridor, shorter this time and perfectly straight. They passed no doors. The walls were unadorned, stuccoed a neutral color that looked like flesh. The corridor ended at a third door, this one made of steel. They went through this. Ahead could be dimly seen a spiral staircase descending into darkness.

“Turn on the lights,” Arkadin ordered.

“There is no electricity down there,” Idir said. “Only torches.”

Arkadin lunged at him but Bourne blocked his path.

“Keep him away from me,” Idir said. “He’s a lunatic.”

They started down the staircase, unwinding into the darkness. At the bottom Idir lit a reed torch. He handed this to Bourne and reached into a niche in the wall where a wrought-iron basket contained a clutch of torches. He lit a second one.

“Where are the alarm systems?” Bourne asked.

“Too many animals down here,” Idir said.

Arkadin glanced around at the bare poured-concrete floor, which smelled of dust and dried droppings. “What kind of animals?”

Idir pushed forward. In the flickering torchlight the lower level seemed immense. There was nothing to see but flames crackling in the darkness. The smoke thickened the airless atmosphere. All at once they found themselves in a narrow passage. Within forty paces it began to curve, and they followed it around to the right. Once again the walls were doorless, completely blank. The passage kept curving. It seemed to Bourne that they were in a spiral, moving in ever-narrowing concentric circles, and he guessed they were approaching the heart of the building. An unseen weight seemed to press down on them, making breathing difficult, as if they had plunged under a deep subterranean lake.

At last, the corridor ended, opening out into a room roughly in the shape of a pentangle, inasmuch as it had five sides. There was a deep pulsing, like the thrum of a gigantic heart. It filled the room, the vibration stirring the thick air.

“There it is.” Idir nodded toward what seemed like a chunky plinth in the center of the room. On it stood a black basalt statue of the ancient god Baal.

Arkadin whirled on Idir. “What kind of crap is this?”

Idir took a step toward Bourne. “The generator is under the statue.”

Arkadin sneered. “All this idiotic mumbo-jumbo-”

“The missing set of instructions is hidden inside the statue.”

“Ah, that’s more like it.” As Arkadin picked his way toward the statue, Idir moved closer to Bourne.

“It’s clear enough you hate each other,” he whispered. “He moves the statue and a fail-safe packet of C-Four affixed to the side of the generator is activated on a three-minute delay. Even I can’t stop it, but I can lead you out of here in plenty of time. Kill this animal so he won’t harm my son.”

Arkadin was reaching out for the statue. Bourne could sense Idir holding his breath; he was ready to run. Bourne saw this moment clearly: It was the point in time that both Suparwita and Tanirt had somehow foreseen. It was the moment when his rage to revenge Tracy’s death could be sated. The moment when his two warring personalities would finally tear him apart from the inside out, the moment of his own death. Did he believe them? Was there no clear-cut moment in his life? Was everything infused with the unknown of the life he could not remember? He could turn away from the dangers to him, or he could master them. The choice he made now would stay with him, would change him forever. Would he betray Arkadin or Idir? And then he realized that there was no choice at all, his path lay clearly before him as if illuminated by the light of the full moon.

Idir’s plea was clever, but it was irrelevant.

“Leonid, stop!” Bourne called out. “Moving the statue will set off an explosion.”

Arkadin’s outstretched arm froze, his fingertips inches from the statue. He turned his head. “That’s what this sonovabitch told you behind my back?”

“Why did you do that?” Idir’s voice was full of despair.

“Because you didn’t tell me how to turn off the generator.”

Arkadin’s gaze shifted to Bourne. “Why is that so fucking important?”

“Because,” Bourne said, “the generator controls a series of security measures that will stop us from ever leaving here.”

Arkadin stalked over to Idir and backhanded the barrel of his Magpul across the Berber’s face. Idir spat out a tooth along with a thick gout of blood.

“I’m done with you,” he said. “I’m now going to take you apart piece by piece. You’ll tell us what we want to know whether or not you want to. You aren’t afraid of death, but you have already shown me your fear. When I get out of here I’m going to throw Badis off that roof myself.”

“No, no!” Idir cried, scuttling around to the side of the generator housing. “Here, here,” he muttered to himself. At the base of the plinth he depressed a stone, which slid out of the way. He threw a switch, and the throb of the generator ceased. “See? It’s off.” He stood up. “I’ve done what you asked. My life is nothing, but I beg you to spare my son’s life.”

Arkadin, grinning, set the case on top of the plinth, unlocked it, and took out the laptop. “Now,” he said, as he fired up the computer, “the ring.”

Idir crept closer to the plinth. He managed to tap his fingernail along the top of the computer before Arkadin delivered a heavy backhand blow that swatted him back on his heels.

As Bourne was taking out the ring, Idir said, “It won’t do any good.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Arkadin snapped.

“Let him speak,” Bourne said. “Idir, what do you mean?”

“That isn’t the right laptop.”

“He’s a liar,” Arkadin said. “Look here-” He took the ring from Bourne and inserted it. “-it has the slot for the ring.”

Idir’s laughter was tinged with hysteria, or with madness.

As Arkadin slid the ring through the slot again and again, he tried in vain to bring up the ghost file on the partitioned hard drive.

“You fools!” Idir could not stop laughing. “Someone has been fucking with you. I’m telling you it’s the wrong laptop.”

With an inarticulate cry, Arkadin swung around.

“Leonid, no!”

Bourne leapt at him, too late to keep him from firing, but he ran full-tilt into Arkadin’s right shoulder. The spray of bullets went wide, but two bullets struck Idir’s chest and shoulder.

Both torches were on the floor, crackling as they burned down. They were more than half finished. Bourne and Arkadin attacked each other with hands, feet, and knees. Arkadin, the Magpul in his right hand, hammered at Bourne, who was forced to raise his hands in front of his face in order to deflect the blows. Deep contusions, then ragged cuts broke out on his wrists from the force of the Magpul’s heavy barrel pounding him. He brought his knee up into Arkadin’s stomach, but it seemed to have little or no effect. At the next blow Bourne grabbed the barrel, but it raked down his palm, slicing it open. Arkadin turned the muzzle on Bourne, and Bourne slammed the heel of his bleeding hand into Arkadin’s nose. Blood flew as Arkadin’s head snapped back, the back of it banging off the floor. He squeezed off a short burst, the noise deafening in the space. Bourne struck him again, slamming his head to the right, where a blur of movement shot toward him.

A large rat, terrified by the noise, leapt blindly at Arkadin’s face. Arkadin swung at it and missed. He rolled away, grabbed one of the torches, and thrust it out wildly. The rat leapt away, scrambling across Idir’s slumped body. The flames caught its tail, the rat screamed, and so did Idir, whose robes were now alight and burning with an acrid stench. Staggering to his feet, he slapped wildly at the flames with his good arm, but staggered, off balance, and fell against the plinth. His head struck the statue of Baal, knocking it off the generator housing. It shattered against the floor.

Rising, Bourne ran toward Idir, but the greedy flames had already engulfed him, making it impossible to get close. The sickening stench of roasting meat, the bright burst of flames, and then an ominous ticking counting down the three minutes of life they had left.

Arkadin swung his arm around and fired, but Bourne had moved behind Idir, and the burst of gunfire went wide. The flaming torch was fast guttering. Scooping up one of the torches, Bourne ran back into the doorway to the corridor. Under cover, he drew the Beretta. He was about to fire back when he glimpsed Arkadin on his hands and knees, scrabbling about in the rubble of the shattered statue. He picked out an SDS memory card, brushed it off, and, rising, stuck it into the appropriate slot of the laptop.

“Leonid, leave it,” Bourne shouted. “The laptop is a fake.”

When there was no response, Bourne called Arkadin’s name again, this time more urgently. “We have just over two minutes to find our way out of here.”

“So Idir would have us believe.” Arkadin sounded distracted. “Why would he tell us the truth?”

“He was terrified for the life of his son.”

“In the land of the blind,” Arkadin shot back, “there is no incentive to tell the truth.”

“Leonid, come on! Let it go! You’re wasting time.”

There was no response. The moment Bourne showed his face in the pentangle, Arkadin fired at him. His torch sparking and sputtering near its end, Bourne sprinted back up the corridor the way they had come. Halfway along, the torch guttered and died. He threw it aside and kept on, his eidetic memory guiding him unerringly to the base of the spiral staircase.

Now it was a matter of outrunning the clock. By his estimation, he had less than two minutes to get out of the house before the C-4 exploded. He reached the top of the staircase, but there was no light. The door was closed.

Returning to the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed another torch, lit it, and sprinted back up to the top. Twenty seconds wasted. A minute and a half remaining. At the top of the staircase, he held the torch up to the door. It had no handle on this side. Not even a lock marred its smooth surface. But there must be a way out. Leaning in, he ran his fingertips around the edge where the door met the jamb. Nothing. On all fours he probed the lintel, found a small square that gave to the pressure of his fingertip. He jumped away as the door opened. Just over a minute left to find his way through the maze of concentric circles and out the front door.

Along the curving corridor he went, fast as he could, holding the torch high. The electric lights had been extinguished when Idir had thrown the switch turning off the generator. Once he paused and thought he could hear footsteps echoing behind him, but he couldn’t be certain, and he pressed on, spiraling outward, ever outward toward the skin of the house.

He went through the two open doors and was in what he was sure must be the last of the corridors. Thirty seconds to go. And then the front door was ahead of him. Reaching it, he hauled on the handle. The door wouldn’t budge. He battered on it, to no avail. Cursing under his breath, he turned back, staring down the windowless, doorless corridor. “Everything in the house is an illusion,” Tanirt had told him. “This is the most important advice I can give you.”

Twenty seconds.

As he passed close to the outer wall, air stirred at the side of his head. There were no vents, so where was it coming from? He ran his hand over the wall, which, he surmised, must be the outside wall of the house itself. Using his knuckles, he rapped on the wall, listening for an anomalous sound. Solid, solid. He moved farther back down the corridor.

Fifteen seconds.

And then the sound changed. Hollow. Standing back, he slammed the heel of his shoe into the wall. It went through. Again. Ten seconds. Not enough time. Thrusting the torch into the ragged hole, he set it afire. The flames ate up the paint and the board behind it. Dropping the torch, he covered his head with his arms and dived through.

Glass shattered outward, and then he was rolling in the street, picking himself up and running, running. Behind him, the night seemed to catch fire. The house ballooned outward, the shock wave of the explosion lifting him off his feet, hurling him against the wall of the building across the street.

At first he was struck deaf. He picked himself up, staggered against the wall, and shook his head. He heard screaming. Someone was screaming his name. He recognized Soraya’s voice, then saw her running toward him. Badis was nowhere to be seen.

“Jason! Jason!” She ran up to him. “Are you all right?”

He nodded but, examining him, she was already shrugging off her coat. Ripping off a sleeve of her shirt, she bound his bleeding hands.

“Badis?”

“I let him go when the house blew.” She looked up at him. “The father?”

Bourne shook his head.

“And Arkadin? I made a circuit of the building and didn’t see him.”

Bourne looked back at the fierce blaze. “He refused to leave the notebook and the ring.”

Soraya finished bandaging his hands, then they both watched what was left of the house being consumed by the fire. The street was deserted. There must have been hundreds of eyes watching the scene, but none of them was visible. No Severus Domna soldier appeared. Bourne saw why. Tanirt was standing at the other end of the street, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips.

Soraya nodded. “I guess Arkadin finally got what he wanted.”

Bourne thought that must, after all, be true.

[31]

DIDN’T I TELL YOU,” Peter Marks said crossly, “that I didn’t want to see anyone.”

It was a rebuke, not a question. Nevertheless, Elisa, the nurse who had been looking after him ever since he’d admitted himself to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, appeared unfazed. Marks lay in bed, his wounded leg bandaged and hurting like poison. He had refused all painkillers, which was his prerogative, but much to his annoyance his stoicism hadn’t endeared him to Elisa. This was a pity, Marks thought, because she was a looker as well as being whip-smart.

“I think you might want to make an exception for this one.”

“Unless it’s Shakira or Keira Knightley I’m not interested.”

“Just because you’re privileged enough to wind up here doesn’t give you the right to act like a petulant child.”

Marks cocked his head. “Yeah, why don’t you come over here and see what it’s like from my point of view?”

“Only if you promise not to molest me,” she said with a sly smile.

Marks laughed. “Okay, so who is it?” She had a gift of excavating him out of even his darkest mood.

She came over and plumped up his pillow before elevating the top half of the bed. “I want you to sit up for me.”

“Shall I beg, too?”

“Now, that would be nice.” Her smile deepened. “Just make sure you don’t drool on me.”

“I have so few pleasures here, don’t take that away from me.” He grimaced as he pushed himself farther up the bed. “Christ, my ass is sore.”

She made a show of biting her lip. “You make it so easy for me I can’t bring myself to humiliate you even more.” She came over and, taking a brush from a side table, neatened his hair.

“Who is it, for Christ’s sake?” Marks said. “The fucking president?”

“Close.” Elisa went to the door. “It’s the defense secretary.”

Good God, Marks thought. What can Bud Halliday want with me?

But it was Chris Hendricks who walked through the door. Marks fairly goggled. “Where’s Halliday?”

“Good morning to you, too, Mr. Marks.” Hendricks shook his hand, pulled over a chair, and without taking off his overcoat sat down beside the bed.

“Sorry, sir, good morning,” Marks stammered. “I don’t… Congratulations are in order.”

“That’s the spirit.” Hendricks smiled. “So, how are you feeling?”

“I’ll be up and about in no time,” Marks said. “I’m getting the best of care.”

“I have no doubt.” Hendricks placed one hand over the other in his lap. “Mr. Marks, time is short so I’ll cut right to the point. While you were overseas Bud Halliday tendered his resignation. Oliver Liss is incarcerated and, frankly, I don’t see him getting out anytime soon. Your immediate boss, Frederick Willard, is dead.”

“Dead? My God, how?”

“A topic for another day. Suffice it to say that with all this sudden upheaval, a power vacuum has formed at the top of the pyramid, or one of them, anyway.” Hendricks cleared his throat. “Like nature, the clandestine services abhor a vacuum. I have been following the systematic dismantling of CI, your old bailiwick, with something of a jaundiced eye. I like what your colleague did with Typhon. In this day and age, a black-ops organization manned by Muslims focused on the extremist Muslim world seems a rather elegant solution to our most pressing ongoing problem.

“Unfortunately, Typhon belongs to CI. God alone knows how long it will take to right that ship and I don’t want to waste time.” He hunched forward. “Therefore, I’d like you to head up a revitalized Treadstone, which will take up Typhon’s mission. You will report directly to me and to the president.”

Marks frowned deeply.

“Is something the matter, Mr. Marks?”

“Everything’s the matter. First off, how on earth did you hear about Treadstone? And second, if you’re as enamored of Typhon as you claim, why haven’t you contacted Soraya Moore, Typhon’s former director?”

“Who said I haven’t?”

“Did she turn you down?”

“The relevant question,” Hendricks said, “is whether you’re interested.”

“Of course I’m interested, but I want to know about Soraya.”

“Mr. Marks, I trust you’re as impatient to get out of here as you are with your questions.” Hendricks rose, crossed to the door, and opened it. He nodded, and in walked Soraya.

“Mr. Marks,” Secretary Hendricks said, “it’s my pleasure to introduce you to your co-director.” As Soraya approached the bed, he added, “I’m quite certain the two of you have many matters, organizational and otherwise, to discuss, so if you’ll excuse me.”

Neither Marks nor Soraya paid him the least bit of attention as he stepped out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Well, look who the wind blew in!” Deron stepped out of his doorway as Bourne came in. As soon as Bourne was inside, Deron gave him a huge hug. “Dammit, man, you’re worse than a will-o’-the-wisp, first I see you, then I don’t.”

“That’s the idea, isn’t it?”

Then he glanced down at Bourne’s bandaged hands. “What the fuck?”

“I had a run-in with something that tried to eat me.”

Deron laughed. “Well, you must be okay then. Come on in.” He led Bourne into his house in Northeast Washington. He was a tall, slim, handsome man with skin the color of light cocoa. He had a clipped British accent. “How about a drink or, better yet, something to eat?”

“Sorry, old friend, no time. I’m flying out to London tonight.”

“Well, then, I’ve got just the passport for you.”

Bourne laughed. “Not this time. I’m here to pick up the package.”

Deron turned and looked at him. “Ah, after all this time.”

Bourne smiled. “I’ve finally found the proper home for it.”

“Excellent. The homeless make me sad.” Deron took Bourne through the rambling house and into his enormous studio, fumey with oil paint and turpentine. There was a canvas on a wooden easel. “Take a look at my newest child,” he said before disappearing into another room.

Bourne came around and took a look at the painting. It was almost finished-enough, anyway, to take his breath away. A woman in white, carrying a parasol against a burning sun, walked in high grass, while a young boy, possibly her son, looked on longingly. The depiction of the light was simply extraordinary. Bourne stepped in, peering closely at the brushstrokes, which matched perfectly those of Claude Monet, who had painted the original La Promenade in 1875.

“What do you think?”

Bourne turned. Deron had returned with a hard-sided attaché case. “Magnificent. Even better than the original.”

Deron laughed. “Good God, man, I hope not!” He handed Bourne the case. “Here you are, safe and sound.”

“Thanks, Deron.”

“Hey, it was a challenge. I forge paintings and, for you, passports, visas, and the like. But a computer? To tell you the truth the composite housing was a bitch. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten it quite right.”

“You did a great job.”

“Another satisfied customer,” he said with a laugh.

They began to drift back through the house.

“How’s Kiki?”

“As ever. She’s back in Africa for six weeks working to improve the locals’ lot. It’s lonely here without her.”

“You two should get married.”

“You’ll be the first to know, old man.” They were at the front door. He shook Bourne’s hand. “Ever get up to Oxford?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Give the Grand Old Dame my regards.”

“I will.” Bourne opened the door. “Thanks for everything.”

Deron waved away his words. “Godspeed, Jason.”

Bourne, on the night flight to London, dreamed that he was back in Bali, at the top of Pura Lempuyang, peering through the gates that framed Mount Agung. In his dream he saw Holly Marie moving slowly from right to left. As she passed in front of the sacred mountain, Bourne began to run toward her and, as she was pushed, he caught her before she could fall down the steep, stone steps to her death. Holding her in his arms, he looked down on her face. It was Tracy’s face.

Tracy shuddered and he saw the jagged shard of glass impaling her. Blood inundated her and ran over his hands and arms.

“What’s happening, Jason? It’s not my time to die.”

It wasn’t Tracy’s voice that echoed in his dream; it was Scarlett’s.

London greeted him with an uncharacteristically brilliant, crisp, blue morning. Chrissie had insisted on picking him up at Heathrow. She was waiting for him just outside of security. She smiled as he kissed her on the cheek.

“Baggage?”

“Only what I’m carrying,” Bourne said.

Linking arms with him, she said, “How very nice to see you again so soon. Scarlett was so excited when I told her. We’ll have lunch up at Oxford and then pick her up from school.”

They walked to the car park and got into her battered Range Rover.

“Old times,” she said, laughing.

“How did Scarlett take the news about her aunt?”

Chrissie sighed as she pulled out. “About as well as could be expected. She was a complete wreck for twenty-four hours. I couldn’t go near her.”

“Children are resilient.”

“That, at least, is a godsend.” After winding her way out of the airport, she got on the motorway.

“Where is Tracy?”

“We buried her in a very old cemetery just outside Oxford.”

“I’d like to go straight there, if you don’t mind.”

She gave him a quick look. “No, not at all.”

The drive to Oxford was quick and silent, both Bourne and Chrissie lost in thought. In Oxford they stopped at a florist. At the cemetery, she turned in and parked the SUV. They got out and she led him through the ranks of headstones, some very old indeed, toward a spreading oak tree. A brisk wind was blowing from the east, ruffling her hair. She stood slightly back while Bourne approached Tracy’s grave.

He stood for a moment, then lay the bouquet of white roses at the foot of the stone. He wanted to remember her as she had been the night before her death. He wanted to remember only their intimate moments. But for better or for worse, her death had been the most intimate of moments between them. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the sensation of her blood on his hands and arms, a crimson silk scarf being drawn across them. Her eyes looking up at him. He had so wanted to hold on to the life that was draining out of her. He heard her voice whispering in his ear and his vision clouded. His eyes burned with tears that welled but would not spill over. How he wished he could feel her breathing beside him.

Then he felt Chrissie’s arm around him.

Scarlett, breaking away from a gaggle of her schoolmates, ran into his arms. He picked her up and whirled her around.

“I went to Aunt Tracy’s funeral,” Scarlett said with a child’s terrible gravity. “I wish I had known her better.”

Bourne hugged her tight. Then they all got into the Range Rover and, at his request, drove over to Chrissie’s office at All Souls College, a large, square room with windows that overlooked the ancient college grounds. It smelled of old books and incense.

While Bourne and Scarlett settled themselves on the sofa Chrissie used to grade papers, she made tea.

“What do you have in the briefcase?” Scarlett asked.

“You’ll see,” Bourne told her.

Chrissie came over with the tea service on an antique black japanned tray. Bourne waited patiently while she poured the tea, but Scarlett squirmed until her mother offered her a sweet biscuit.

“Now,” Chrissie said as she pulled up a chair, “what’s all this about?”

Bourne placed the attaché case on his lap. “I have a birthday present for you.”

Chrissie frowned. “My birthday is almost five months away.”

“Consider this an early gift.” He unlocked the case, opened the snaps, and removed a laptop computer, which he placed on the table beside the tea service. “Come sit beside me,” he said.

Chrissie rose and moved onto the sofa while Bourne opened the laptop and started it up. He had made sure to fully charge the battery on the flight over. Scarlett sat on the edge of the cushion to be closer to the screen.

The screen swelled with images as the computer finished booting up.

“Scarlett,” Bourne said, “do you have the ring I gave you?”

“I keep it with me.” Scarlett dug it out. “Do I have to give it back?”

Bourne laughed. “I gave it to you and I meant it.” He held out his hand. “Just for a moment.”

He took the ring and inserted it in the slot that had been built for it. This was the laptop he had stolen from Jalal Essai, Holly’s uncle, at Alex Conklin’s behest. He hadn’t delivered it because he had discovered what it contained and determined that it was too important a find to be given over to Treadstone, or anyone in the clandestine services. Instead he had asked Deron to make a fake laptop. Accompanying Holly on one of her trips to Sonora to stock a narcorrancho, he had been introduced to Gustavo Moreno. Bourne had allowed the fake laptop to fall into the drug lord’s hands because having it eventually come to light in Moreno’s possession would keep any suspicion on Conklin’s part from falling on him.

Similarly, he had switched the Solomon ring with the one Marks had taken off his London assailant. The fact that Scarlett had found Marks’s ring when Marks had been shot gave him a perfect cover for the switch. He had been correct to assume the Solomon ring would be far safer in her hands than in his own.

The two pieces fit together perfectly. The mysterious inscription engraved on the inside of the ring unlocked the ghost file on the laptop’s hard drive, a PDF file, a perfect replica of an ancient Hebrew text.

Chrissie hunched forward. “What is this? It looks like… directions?”

“You recall the discussion we had with Professor Giles.”

She glanced at him. “Funny you should mention him. A squad of MI6 came and took him away yesterday.”

“I’m afraid I had something to do with that,” Bourne said. “The good professor was part of the group that made so much trouble for us.”

“Do you mean-?” Her gaze returned to the ancient text. “Good Lord, Jason, you don’t mean to tell me-!”

“According to this file,” Bourne said, “King Solomon’s gold is buried in Syria.”

Chrissie’s excitement grew. “At Ugarit, somewhere on or around Mount Casius, where the god Baal was said to live.” She frowned as she came to the end of the text. “But where, exactly? The text is incomplete.”

“True,” Bourne said, thinking of the SD card Arkadin had found in the shattered statue of Baal. “The last bit is lost. I’m sorry about that.”

“No, don’t be.” She turned and hugged him tightly. “My God, what a fantastic gift.”

“If it’s the truth, if you find King Solomon’s gold.”

“No, in and of itself this text is invaluable. It provides a trove of research material that will help shed light on what’s fact and fiction about King Solomon’s court. I… I don’t know how to thank you.”

Bourne smiled. “Give it as a gift to the university in your sister’s name.”

“Why, I… Of course! What a wonderful idea! Now she’ll be closer to me, and a part of Oxford, too.”

He felt the memory of Tracy settling around him with a contented sigh. He could think of her now in all her incarnations and not be swamped in sorrow.

He put his arm around Scarlett. “You know, your aunt had a hand in this gift.”

The girl looked up at him, her eyes wide. “She did?”

Bourne nodded. “Let me tell you about it-and about how very courageous she was.”