THEY MADE THE trip down the mountain without difficulty. Bourne had been correct in trusting to Vegas’s local knowledge. His shortcut bypassed all the federal military roadblocks, as well as any of Suarez’s FARC patrols looking for their commander.
Bourne reconnoitered the airport and its environs, looking for hostiles and finding none.
“You can’t go into the terminal looking like that,” Rosie said as she got out of Vegas’s jeep.
Bourne looked at himself in the rearview mirror. There were smears of blood all over him, and his clothes were ripped.
Rosie dug into her bag and came out with a handful of money. “Stay here,” she said.
Bourne was about to protest but the look in her eye stayed him. He watched her head into the terminal and counted off the minutes. At fifteen, he resolved to go in after her.
Vegas leaned against his jeep, smoking. “Don’t worry, hombre. She can take care of herself.”
As it turned out, Vegas’s trust in her was well placed. Rosie emerged from the terminal swinging a white paper shopping bag. She had bought Bourne a shirt and a pair of jeans, along with underwear and socks. As he stripped off his bloody and shredded shirt, she climbed in beside him.
“Ah, good,” she said when she eyed the bottle of disinfectant and the roll of gauze he had taken from the bathroom in Vegas’s house.
She worked expertly on his naked torso, dabbing at all the cuts, scrapes, and abrasions he had collected in his fall from the pine tree. All the while, Vegas smoked his cigarette and grinned hard at Bourne.
“¿Ella es una maravilla, verdad?” She’s a wonder, isn’t she? “¡Tú debe verla en la cama!” You should see her in bed!
“¡Estevan, basta!” But she was laughing, somehow pleased, just the same.
She got out of the jeep then and turned her back so Bourne could strip off the rest of his clothes and pull on the ones she had bought for him.
Two hours after their rendezvous on the road, Bourne limped over to the Perales airport check-in counter. The limp was false, as was his London accent. To his surprise, there were not one or two, but three open tickets waiting for him under the code name Mr. Zed. He was pleased to discover that Essai had paid for everything in cash; there were no credit card numbers on the ticket or voucher receipts. He asked for a wheelchair when the time came to pre-board his flight. He booked his ticket under the name of Lloyd Childress, a British national, according to one of the two remaining passports he carried. He had ditched the third before he had left Thailand because the Domna had found him under that identity.
Afterward, in a secluded part of the modest departures terminal, Bourne told the pair what he had discovered.
“Essai left tickets for all three of us to Bogotá with a connecting flight to Seville, via a stop in Madrid,” Bourne said quietly. “There’s also a rental car voucher for when we arrive in Seville. Essai says final instructions will be with the rental car agreement.” He looked from one to the other. “You have your passports?”
Rosie held up her satchel. “Packed days ago.”
“Good.” Bourne was relieved. He did not want to call Deron, his contact in DC, for forged passports because of the delay it would cause. Besides the Domna, he had to assume both FARC and the federales would at some point be after them. The fire in the tunnel and now the conflagration at Vegas’s house were signs that even the somnolent Colombian military could not ignore. On the other hand, they could not know whether Vegas and Rosie were alive or dead—the same for him, for that matter.
He checked the time. They had almost two hours before their flight left and then, in Bogotá, ninety minutes more until the departure of their overseas flight at 8:10 PM. He was certain they would make their plane here, but Bogotá might be a different story. He needed a plan.
He excused himself. Perales was a small, regional airport. He knew he would have better luck finding what he needed in Bogotá, but if the airport in the capital was being surveilled that would be too late. It was here or nowhere.
There were four shops in the departures terminal: a drugstore, a clothing store, a newsstand that also sold sundries aimed at travelers’ needs, and a souvenir shop, the bright yellow, blue, and red horizontal strips of Colombia’s flag in evidence on everything from T-shirts to bandannas to pennants. They weren’t ideal, but then nothing ever was.
He spent the next fifteen minutes limping from shop to shop buying what he thought he would need. He paid cash for all of his purchases.
When he returned to where the couple were sitting, he divvied up the purchases. Then they all went off to the restrooms.
“Is this really necessary?” Vegas said as he set out the shaving paraphernalia on the stainless-steel ledge above the line of sinks.
“Get on with it,” Bourne said.
Shrugging, Vegas splashed his face with hot water, applied shaving cream, and began to take off his beard and mustache.
“I haven’t seen this part of my face in maybe thirty years,” he said as he rinsed off the disposable razor. “I won’t recognize myself.”
“No one else will, either,” Bourne said.
He took the buzzer he had bought and began to give himself a “high-and-tight,” the military haircut preferred by marines. Then he opened up the various pots of cosmetics he had purchased and started applying color to darken the lower half of Vegas’s newly shorn face to match the rest of it. He made his own lips ruddy, his cheeks hollow and sunken. By the time he was finished, Vegas had emerged from a stall in the new outfit Bourne had picked out for him: shorts, flip-flops, a straw porkpie hat with a yellow, blue, and red band, and a T-shirt with MEMBER: COLOMBIAN CARTEL emblazoned across the chest.
“Hombre, what have you done to me?” he complained. “I look like a fool.”
Bourne had to stifle a laugh. “All anyone will notice is the T-shirt,” he said.
Taking up a pair of scissors, he slit the left leg of his new jeans. He threw a new roll of gauze at Vegas and said, “Bind up my leg from just below the knee to the bottom of my calf.”
Vegas did as he asked.
Bourne put on the pair of magnifying glasses he had bought and said, “Let’s go see how Rosie looks.”
“I can’t wait,” Vegas said with an exaggerated grimace.
At the last moment, he pulled Bourne away from the door and said in a low voice, “Hombre, escuchamé. If anything should happen to me—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’re all going to talk to Don Fernando together.”
His grip on Bourne’s elbow tightened. “You’ll take care of Rosie.”
“Estevan—”
“What happens to me is of no concern. You’ll protect her no matter what. Promise me, amigo.”
The intensity in Vegas’s voice struck Bourne hard. He nodded. “You have my word.”
Vegas withdrew his grip. “Bueno. Estoy satisfecho.”
Bourne opened the door and they stepped out into the terminal, Bourne limping noticeably.
Rosie was waiting for them. The clothes Bourne had bought for her fit her perfectly—maybe too perfectly, as Vegas’s eyes seemed about to pop out of his head when he saw her standing there, hands on shapely hips.
The clothes clung to her curves like a second skin, the low-cut shirt showing off the tops of her breasts to electrifying effect. The skirt was short enough that more than half her powerful thighs were revealed.
“¡Madre de Dios!” Vegas exclaimed. “With that display even dead men will get an erection.”
Rosie gave him what looked like a Marilyn Monroe moue before breaking out into giggles. “Now I’m ready, sugar,” she said to Vegas. “I feel as strong as Xena, the Warrior Princess.”
“That’s the spirit.” Bourne looked around. “Now all we need is the wheelchair.”
Hendricks, on his way to the conference room a floor below his office, was possessed with the desire to call his son, Jackie. Instead, he was stuck in his meeting with Roy FitzWilliams, the head of Indigo Ridge, who it seemed already had some problems with the details of Samaritan.
Last night, after dropping Maggie off, he had spent an hour tracking Jackie down. Good thing he was secretary of defense, otherwise he would have gotten nowhere with the Pentagon concerning his son’s deployment. Jackie, as it turned out, was in Afghanistan. Even worse, he was heading up black-ops patrols scouring the cave-riddled mountains between Afghanistan and western Pakistan, which were inhabited by both Taliban tribal chieftains and the elite al-Qaeda cadres guarding bin Laden. Hendricks had lain awake the rest of the night thinking alternately about Jackie and Maggie.
Entering the conference room with his satellite aides, he settled himself at the head of the table. One of his aides laid down the sheaf of folders dedicated to Samaritan and opened them for him. Hendricks stared down at the computer printouts, trying to anticipate FitzWilliams’s objections, but his mind was elsewhere.
Jackie. Jackie in the mountains of Afghanistan. Maggie had done this to him, opened up his heart. He had kept his desires locked up tight, but now he wanted his son back. His dinner with Maggie, such a simple thing, had been a night of normalcy after years of being out of the flow of life, of immersing himself so deeply in the sinkhole of his work. He had ignored—or was it resisted?—the current urging him onward.
FitzWilliams was late. Hendricks channeled his anger away from himself, toward the head of Indigo Ridge, so that when FitzWilliams came bustling in, all energy and bonhomie, Hendricks barked at him.
“Sit yourself down, Roy. You’re late.”
“Sorry about that,” FitzWilliams said, sinking into a chair like a punctured balloon. “It couldn’t be helped.”
“Of course it could have been helped; it can always be helped,” Hendricks said. “I’m sick of hearing people use excuses instead of taking responsibility for their actions.” He flipped the pages of the Samaritan file. “No one’s fault but your own, Roy.”
“Yessir.” FitzWilliams’s cheeks were flaming. His voice seemed caught in his throat. “Definitely my bad. Won’t happen again, I assure you.”
Hendricks cleared his throat. “Now,” he said, “what’s your problem?”
Five, Rue Vernet, which housed the Monition Club, was a large, vaguely medieval-looking building constructed of pale gold stone. To one side there was a sunken formal garden with curving gravel paths looping back on themselves, lined with sheared boxwood hedges. In the center was a boxwood fleur-de-lis, ancient symbol of the French royal family. There were no flowers, giving it an austere beauty all its own.
Soraya allowed Aaron to take the lead, standing just behind and to one side of him as he rang the front doorbell. Amun stood directly behind her, so close she could feel his heat. It was odd how the three of them had become a triangle simply because Amun had willed it into being.
As the door opened and they were led inside, she wondered whether her love for Amun was real or imagined. How could something that had seemed so real last week dissolve into a mirage? She was appalled at the thought of how easy it was to fool yourself into believing an emotion was authentic.
They were led through the interior of the building by a young woman unremarkable in every way: medium height, medium build, dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, a detached expression that squeezed all personality from her face.
Soft indirect light illuminated their way down corridors lined in expensive wood and small framed illuminated manuscripts, which were hung at precise intervals. Their footfalls made no sound on the plush charcoal-colored carpet into which they sank as if in a marsh.
At length, the young woman stopped before a polished wooden door and rapped softly. She responded to an answering voice and opened the door. Stepping aside, she waved them into the suite beyond.
The first room of the suite appeared to be a study as well as an office. It was dominated by a hardwood refectory table and floor-to-ceiling library shelves filled with oversize tomes, some of which looked very old. A number of chairs upholstered in fragrant leather were scattered around the room. To one side was a large globe showing the world as it was known in the seventeenth century. Beyond this space was another distinct room that appeared to be a living room in a residence, modern and lighter in tone and decoration than the study.
When they entered, a man atop a low rolling stepladder twisted his torso, peering at them over a pair of old-fashioned half spectacles.
“Ah, Inspector Lipkin-Renais, I see you have brought reinforcements.” Chuckling lightly, he came down off his perch and approached their group. “Director Donatien Marchand, at your service.”
Amun shouldered past, interrupting before Aaron could complete introductions. “Amun Chalthoum, head of al Mokhabarat, Cairo.” His stiff, formal bow had about it a vaguely threatening aspect that caused Marchand a brief hesitation, a startle in the depths of his black eyes, before his mouth returned to its business-like smile.
“I understand you’ve come about M. Laurent’s unfortunate demise.”
Aaron cocked his head. “Is that how you would characterize it?”
“Is there another way?” Marchand meticulously dusted off his fingertips. “How may I help you?”
He was a shortish man whom Soraya judged to be in his mid- to late fifties, but quite fit. His long hair was graying at the sides, but his widow’s peak was still pure black. It possessed the peculiar metallic gloss of a raven’s wing, spinning invisible light into an oil slick of colors.
Aaron consulted his notes. “Laurent was run down on Place de l’Iris, at La Défense, at eleven thirty-seven in the morning.” He looked up abruptly into the director’s eyes. “What was he doing there?”
Marchand spread his hands. “I confess I have no idea.”
“You didn’t send him to La Défense?”
“I was in Marseilles, Inspector.”
Aaron’s smile was sharp as an arrow. “M. Laurent had a cell phone, Director. I assume you do, too.”
“Of course I do,” Marchand said, “but I didn’t call him. In fact, I had no contact with Laurent for a number of days prior to my leaving for the south.”
Soraya noticed that Amun seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. He had broken away and was studying the books that lined the director’s study.
Aaron cleared his throat. “So what you’re claiming is that you have no knowledge of what business M. Laurent had in the Île de France Bank building two days ago.”
Very clever, Soraya thought. Aaron waited until now to mention the Île de France Bank.
Marchand blinked as if blinded by a very strong light. “I beg your pardon?”
“Until M. Laurent’s murder—”
“Murder?” Marchand blinked again.
Now Aaron had him, Soraya thought.
“Until his murder, M. Laurent was your assistant, is that not correct?”
“It is.”
“Well, then, M. Marchand. The Île de France Bank.” There was a slight edge to Aaron’s voice, and he had picked up the pace of his questioning. “What was M. Laurent doing there?”
Marchand’s voice turned abrupt, waspish. “I have already told you, Inspector.” He seemed to be losing his temper, which was the point.
“Yes, yes, you claim you don’t know.”
“I don’t know.”
Aaron consulted his notes, flipped a page, and Soraya felt a little spark of glee rise up in her. Aaron opened his mouth. Here it comes, Soraya thought.
“Your answer interests me, Director. My research has revealed that much of the funding for this branch of the Monition Club comes from accounts in the Brive Bank.”
Marchand shrugged. “What of it? A number of our senior members have their accounts at Brive. These men are large annual donors.”
“I applaud their altruism,” Aaron said lightly. “However, after no little digging it has come to my attention that the Brive Bank is a subsidiary of the Netherlands Freehold Bank of the Antilles, which, in turn, is owned by, well, the list goes on and on and I don’t want to bore you. But at the end of the list is the Nymphenburg Landesbank of Munich.” Here Aaron took a breath, as if to emphasize the exhaustion brought about by the amount of digging he’d had to do.
“Is Nymphenburg Landesbank wholly owned? Indeed it is. And for a time this stopped me in my tracks. But then I decided to turn my supposition upside down. And what do you know? Early this morning I discovered that for the past five years the Nymphenburg Landesbank of Munich has been quietly buying up pieces of…” Now he shrugged. “Need I say it, Director?”
Marchand was standing stock-still, his hands in midair. Soraya, looking at them, had to give the man credit: His hands were rock-solid, not a tremor to be seen.
Aaron grinned. “Nymphenburg Landesbank now owns a controlling interest in the Île de France Bank. The takeover was devilishly difficult to detect mainly because both the Landesbank and Île de France are private institutions. As such, they are not required to divulge changes in policy, key personnel, or control.”
He stepped toward Marchand a pace and lifted a forefinger. “However, it occurred to me that there might be another reason for my difficulty in unearthing the connection.”
The silence grew so thick that finally Marchand said through gritted teeth, “And what would that be, Inspector?”
Aaron closed his notebook and put it away. “À bientôt, M. Marchand.” Until next time.
With that, he turned on his heel and left. Soraya followed in his wake, but not before grabbing a handful of Amun’s jacket and dragging him away from his study of the book spines.
Outside, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping, flitting from tree to tree.
“How about some lunch?” Aaron said. “My treat.”
“I’m not hungry. I’d rather get back to our hotel room,” Amun replied.
“Well, I’m hungry enough for two,” Soraya said, avoiding Amun’s dark glare.
Aaron clapped his hands. “Splendid! I know just the place. Follow me.”
Soraya sensed that Amun didn’t want to follow Aaron anywhere, but unless he could find a taxi station, he had no choice.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you had discovered?” Soraya said as she came up alongside Aaron.
“There wasn’t time.”
Soraya suspected this was only partially true. But she held her tongue because she sensed that Aaron hadn’t wanted her to say anything to Amun.
They returned to the Citroën and when they were all settled in, Soraya next to Aaron up front and Amun in back with his carry-on bag, Aaron fired the ignition. But before he could put the Citroën in gear, Amun leaned forward and put a hand on his arm.
“Just a moment,” he said.
Soraya, acutely attuned to both these men, felt immediate alarm. If Amun was going to start a fight she had to find a way to head it off.
“Amun, let’s just go,” she said in as even a voice as she could muster. She had been witness to Amun’s temper; she did not ever wish to be on the receiving end of it.
“I said wait,” he said in that tone of voice that turned lesser human beings to stone.
Aaron took his hand off the gearshift and half turned in his seat. To his credit, he was content to be patient.
“That was a good piece of work in there.” Amun stared straight into Aaron’s eyes. “I admired the technique.”
Aaron nodded. “Thank you.”
It was clear he had no idea where this was going. Neither did Soraya.
“You hit a nerve with Marchand and you left him wondering and frightened,” Amun continued. “It’s too bad you didn’t plant a bug in his office. Then we could have found out who he’s calling right now.”
Aaron appeared slightly put out by Amun’s denseness. “This isn’t Egypt. I’m not allowed to bug people’s offices or homes without proper authorization.”
“No, you aren’t.” Amun unzipped his bag and pulled out a dull black box about the size of a first-generation iPod. It had a grille on the top. “But I can.”
He flipped a hidden switch and at once they heard Donatien Marchand’s voice caught in midsentence. They were able to listen to the rest of the phone conversation.
“—God alone knows.”
…
“Not really, no, it’s not the first time I’ve had an inquiry from the Quai d’Orsay.”
…
“Certainly, but I tell you this one feels different.”
…
“No, I don’t know why.”
An unusually long silence.
“It’s the Egyptian. Having the head of al Mokhabarat—”
…
“Bullshit, you wouldn’t like it, either. The guy gave me the creeps.”
…
“Now I don’t know what—”
…
“You try that, then. You didn’t look these people in the eye.”
…
“Really? I haven’t even mentioned the woman—Soraya Moore.”
“Well, you may know her, but I don’t. She worries me most of all.”
…
“Because she says nothing and sees everything. Her eyes are like X-ray machines. I’ve had the misfortune of meeting several people like her. Inevitably, it’s gotten messy—very messy. And with this Laurent business, messy is the last thing we need.”
…
“Oh, you do, do you? And who would that be?”
There ensued what seemed to be a shocked silence before Donatien Marchand’s voice started up again.
“You can’t be serious. Not him. I mean to say, there’s got to be another alternative.”
…
“I see.”
Marchand sighed in what sounded like resignation.
“When?”
…
“And it has to be me?”
…
“All right then.” Marchand managed to inject a girder of steel into his voice. “I’ll give him his orders immediately. The usual price?”
A moment later the connection was broken. The three eavesdroppers sat in silence, their bodies very still. The atmosphere was suddenly stifling, the musk of men and woman mingling into a thick stew. Soraya felt the slow, heavy beat of her heart. It was one thing listening in on a conversation, quite another when a key part of that conversation concerned you.
“Interpretation?” Aaron said a bit breathlessly.
“It sounds as if Marchand has been ordered to contact a hit man.”
Aaron nodded. “That was my take, as well.” He turned his head. “Amun?”
The Egyptian was staring out the Citroën’s window and didn’t bother to answer. “Here he comes,” he said, pointing to Marchand, whom they could see emerging from the Monition Club. He got into a black BMW and took off.
As Aaron put the Citroën in gear and pulled out after him, Amun said, “I assume you’ve both lost your appetite.”
The federales were looking for Bourne, all right. At least the identity Bourne had used to enter Colombia. Of course, that identity no longer existed. Neither did the man in the blurry wire photo the cops were passing around the international departures terminal in Bogotá.
“Don’t worry,” Bourne said from his seat in the wheelchair, “it’s me the federales have an interest in, not you or Rosie.”
“But the Domna has connections—”
“In this case,” Bourne cut in, “I very much doubt they’d want the federales involved. Too many questions would be asked.”
Nevertheless, as Vegas pushed Bourne across the concourse, he exuded nervous energy the way the sun generates heat. This was a problem—of what magnitude Bourne could not yet determine—for cops could smell fear from a thousand yards away.
Directing them to the business-class lounge, Bourne presented their tickets to one of the attendants, a slim, deeply tanned young woman, who personally showed them the best place to park the wheelchair, then went to get a server for them. There were definitely perks to being perceived as disabled, Bourne thought, but right now the most important one was throwing the federales off his trail.
When the server appeared, Bourne ordered a stiff drink for Vegas to calm him down. Rosie ordered her own; Bourne wanted nothing.
“I’ll be fine once I see Don Fernando again,” Vegas said.
“Stop looking around,” Bourne said. “Concentrate on me.” He turned to Rosie. “Hold his hand and don’t let go, no matter what.”
Rosie hadn’t said a word since they disembarked their regional flight from Perales, but Bourne sensed little fear in her. Her innate trust that Vegas would protect her come what may appeared to insulate her from their precarious situation.
The moment she gripped Vegas’s hand, he relaxed visibly, which was lucky since, at that moment, a pair of federales stepped into the lounge and started querying the receptionists. Both of them shook their heads when they looked at the photo of Bourne. Nevertheless, the two cops decided to make a circuit of the lounge.
Vegas had not yet seen them, but Rosie had. Her eyes locked on Bourne. He grinned at her, he laughed as if she had made a joke. Understanding, she laughed back.
“What’s going on?” Vegas said. “What the hell is so damn funny?”
“In a minute or two, a pair of federales will pass by here.” Bourne saw the fear bloom anew in the older man’s face. He was a country fellow, unused to the confines of the big city, and here in the lounge there was nowhere to run.
He had already consumed more than half his drink. His face was pale. Bourne could see the bones of his skull clearly beneath the suddenly waxy skin; dead men looked better. Seeking to distract him, Bourne asked him about the oil fields—his early days, when he was learning the trade, when the danger was the most acute. He became animated, as Bourne had hoped. Clearly, he loved his work and was adept at its every nuance. All the while, Rosie listened as attentively as if she were a geological engineer.
The federales were fast approaching their area, strutting with their chests out, their hands on the butts of their sidearms. Tension ratcheted up. Even Rosie was not immune, Bourne saw.
“I saw the tamarind tree out back,” Bourne said, “and the cross that marked the grave.”
“We do not speak of this,” Vegas said, shaking.
“Mi amor, cálmate.” Rosie kissed him on the cheek. “He couldn’t know.”
“I had no intention—”
Rosie lifted a hand to stop him. “You couldn’t know,” she said grimly. She offered Vegas a wan smile that guttered like a candle in the wind. She turned back to Bourne. “Our son, nine days old and already he held the entire world in his eyes.” A tear slid down her cheek, which she immediately wiped away with the back of her hand. “This is how it is with children, before they are corrupted by the adult world.”
“His death was a complete mystery.” Vegas’s words seemed squeezed out of him, as if each one gave him pain. “But what do I know? Only where I’ve been. I don’t know where I’m going.”
“They have to be protected, the children,” Rosie said. Something in what Vegas had just said disturbed her deeply.
The federales were only steps away.
Bourne said, “You can have the chance to protect another one.”
They both stared at him.
It was Rosie who spoke. “But the doctor said—”
“That was a doctor in the middle of Colombian nowhere. There are specialists in Seville, in Madrid. If I were you, I wouldn’t give up hope.”
The pair of federales swaggered past. Their eyes glancing over the tourists: the man in the wheelchair, whom they took to be an American war vet; the old man with the T-shirt emblazoned with its stupid logo that set them laughing. But mostly they let their gazes linger over the high breasts and long legs of the woman whose sensuality took their breaths away.
And then, like a storm cloud passing, they were gone, and the entire lounge seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Maggie—Skara thought of herself as Maggie now; it was effortless—was due for her daily report to Benjamin El-Arian. She luxuriated in bed, only a top sheet covering her naked body, and regarded the encrypted cell phone she used only for communicating with El-Arian. Then she turned away and stared at the pale blue-gold light of morning pearling the loose-weave curtains of her bedroom. At this hour, it was so quiet she could almost hear the faint crackle and spark of the light, as if it were the only thing stirring, shifting easily as the sun slowly dissolved the darkness.
Her mind was filled with many thoughts, some of them conflicting. But mainly she knew she did not want to speak with Benjamin. He was like a tether, dragging her back to another life, one she had chosen, true enough, though far from willingly.
It was funny, she thought now, how the exigencies of life forced you to make decisions. That there could be any form of control was an illusion. Life was chaos; attempts to control or even contain it could only end in tears.
She had shed enough tears for several lifetimes. The last time, when she saw her mother on the coroner’s slab in the chill house of the dead, when she broke down sobbing with her two sisters, she had promised herself she would never shed another tear again. And she had kept that promise until last night. What was it about Christopher Hendricks that had shattered her resolve? For hours, while his presence still throbbed through her like a fever, she had lain awake thinking about this question. She had traced and retraced their evening together, combing through each nuance of voice and gesture like a starving tramp pawing through bags of garbage.
Around four o’clock she had finally given up, turning on her side, curling up, and closing her eyes, willing herself to drift off, as she often did, by thinking of her two sisters. Mikaela was dead now, killed in the pursuit of their revenge, but Kaja was very much alive, though, by mutual agreement, they’d had no contact with each other for years. Maggie imagined the two of them together, touching foreheads as the triplets had done when they were very young, that particular feeling of a shared warmth flowing through them, a closed circuit that made them special and kept the outside world—the hateful world of their childhood, of Iceland, the betrayal of their father—at bay. He’d left them and their mother to kill, to, finally, be killed, all in the name of what? The shadow organization to which their father belonged. She thought of their father now, walking out the door into the snow glare of a Stockholm winter. She had watched him go, never to return. And then nothing, until she had uncovered the news that he had been killed by his intended target, Alexander Conklin. A chill had flashed down her spine, a feeling she had not been able to share with her sisters. She closed her eyes on the bleakness of Stockholm, on the image of her father walking away from her—from all of them. She wanted to dream of him, which was why she held the memory of him close to her as she drifted.
With sleep drawing her into its arms, a dream rose like a ghost from the grave, but her father wasn’t in it. She and Christopher were at a sports complex. It was completely empty, save for them. Moonlight shone on a vast pool. She looked down and saw Christopher smiling at her. He waved up to her, and she realized that she was standing on a high-dive board.
Go on, he said. You needn’t wait for me.
She had no idea what he meant, but she knew she was going to dive. She stepped to the end of the board and curled her toes around the edge. She flexed her knees, felt the spring in the board, the coiled power of it, and it gave her great courage.
She sprang up and out in a beautiful arc. Her arms were in front of her, her palms together as if in prayer. She saw the water coming to meet her as she dropped through the night. Moonlight silvered the pool, turning it into glass, into a mirror. She saw herself diving down to meet the water, but it wasn’t her she saw just before she cleaved the water. It was Christopher.
That’s when her eyes flew open. Across the room, she saw the curtains patterned with dawn light, which to her half-dreaming mind looked thick and aqueous. For a moment, she thought she was underwater, deep in the belly of the pool, on her way up. Then recognition flooded her, and she knew with a certainty she felt in her bones. She and Christopher were so alike she felt chills ripple through her.
She sat up in bed, her pulse beating in her ears.
“Dear God,” she said aloud, “what is to become of me.”
Peter awoke in an ambulance, siren wailing, rocketing along the city streets. He was lying strapped to a gurney, feeling as weak as a preemie.
“Where am I? What happened?”
His voice was thin and reedy, unfamiliar against the insistent ringing in his ears.
A face bent over him, a young man with blond hair and an open smile.
“Not to worry,” the blond said, “you’re in good hands.”
Peter tried to sit up, but the restraints prevented him from moving. Then, all at once, like an oncoming locomotive hurtling out of the mist, he remembered walking across the underground garage, pressing the button on his key fob to start his car’s engine, and then a crack like the end of the world. His mouth felt dry and sticky. There was a metallic smell in his nostrils that made him queasy.
Peter thought about Hendricks. He needed to brief his boss on what had happened. He also needed to find out why he had been targeted and by whom. He moved his right hand, forgetting that he was restrained.
“Hey,” he said thickly, “take off the straps. I need to get to my cell.”
“Sorry, buddy, no can do.” The blond smiled down at him. “Can’t free you while the vehicle is in motion. Rules and regs. If you get hurt you can sue my ass off.”
“Then have the driver pull over.”
“Can’t do that, either,” Blondie said. “Time is of the essence.”
Peter was regaining his wits with every second, but he still felt physically exhausted, as if he’d just finished running a marathon. “I assure you I’m feeling much better.”
Blondie produced a rueful expression. “I’m afraid that you’re not in the best position to judge. You’re still in shock and not thinking clearly.”
Peter raised his head. “I said, have the driver pull over. I’m a federal agent reporting directly to the secretary of defense.”
The smile faded from Blondie’s face. “We know that, Mr. Marks.”
Peter’s heart began to race as he struggled with the restraining straps. “Let me the fuck up!”
That’s when Blondie showed him the Glock. He laid the barrel gently against Peter’s cheek. “This says lie back and enjoy the ride. We’ve got some time to go.”
Which meant he wasn’t being taken to a hospital. Peter stared up into Blondie’s face, which was now as blank as a bank vault door. Were these the people responsible for wiring his car with explosives?
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Blondie looked down at him, took the Glock away from his cheek.
“I know you expected me to die in the explosion.”
Blondie stroked the barrel of the Glock lovingly.
“What impresses me is how you got past security to wire my car.”
Blondie delivered a wry smile to someone out of Peter’s field of vision. “Who says it was wired in the garage?”
So these were the people who had targeted his car, and they knew where he lived. He still didn’t know who they were working for or—more to the immediate point—how many of them were in the ambulance with him. He assumed three—Blondie, the driver, and whoever Blondie had grinned at just now—but maybe there was a fourth riding shotgun up front. One thing was clear: These people were well trained and well funded.
The ambulance swerved around a corner. Peter felt the gurney wanting to slide to one side, but it was locked down. Fortunately, the turn loosened the straps so that he could get his left hand free. Moving it down off the top of the gurney, he searched for the lever that would unlock it. A bit of surreptitious fumbling brought his fingers to the right spot, and he held on tight.
Blocks passed, and Peter was despairing of ever getting his chance, but then he felt the centrifugal force begin to kick in as the ambulance went into another turn. He pushed down on the lever at the apex of the turn. The gurney slammed into Blondie’s knees, then caromed back the other way. Peter freed his right hand, and when Blondie fell over him, Peter grabbed his Glock. As Blondie tried to right himself, Peter slammed the pistol into the side of his head.
The second man came into Peter’s view, lunging at him. Peter fired and the man spun backward. His heavyset frame careened into the rear doors. Peter unsnapped the straps holding him down and slid off the gurney.
At the same time, the ambulance was slowing; the driver was probably alarmed by the gunshot. Peter wasted no time. Leaping over the two bodies, he wrenched open the doors and jumped out. He hit the ground and rolled on his hip, but having used the last reserves of his strength, he was having difficulty even getting to his knees.
Several yards farther on, the ambulance had pulled over. The driver jumped out, running back toward where Peter lay. Peter knew his only chance was the Glock, but he had lost it during his fall. He desperately looked around and saw it lying in the gutter. But the driver was on him before he had a chance to crawl the few feet toward it.
He was plowed under by the driver’s fists. He had no strength left with which to adequately defend himself, let alone retaliate. Bright spots of light exploded behind his eyes and waves of blackness rolled over him. He struggled against unconsciousness, but it was a losing battle.
A drowning man going under for the last time could not have felt more despairing than Peter did. He never imagined a moment like this, a defeat this unexpected and complete. And then, after a maelstrom of violence, a concentration of pain, the last wave reaching up to pull him down, there was a soft breeze on his face. Sunlight. The sweet smell of a motorcycle’s exhaust.
And a face, blurry and indistinct as a dark cloud, loomed large in his limited field of vision.
“Not to worry, Chief, you’re not dead yet.”