CHRISTOPHER HENDRICKS FOUND any face-to-face with M. Errol Danziger thoroughly unpleasant, but he had every confidence that this time would be different.
Lieutenant R. Simmons Reade, Danziger’s sycophantic pilot fish, appeared first. He was a thin, weasel-eyed individual with a contemptuous demeanor and the manners of a demonic marine drill sergeant. The two spent so much time together that, behind their backs, they were known as Edgar and Clyde, a cutting reference to J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, the Beltway’s most infamous closeted gays.
Danziger looked the part. He was short and, unlike his days in the field, was running to fat around his middle, a sure sign that he liked his steaks, fries, and bourbon too much. He had a head like a football and a personality to match: tough, a will to get over the goal line, and always the possibility of fumbling short of the first down. The problem lay in his constant promotions. He had been deadly in wet work, near brilliant as the NSA’s deputy director of Signals Intelligence for Analysis and Production, but a total bust as the director of Central Intelligence. He had no sense of history, didn’t know how CI worked, and, worst of all, didn’t care. The result was akin to trying to jam a dowel into a square hole. It wasn’t working. The reality, however, had done nothing to stop Danziger’s headlong reaving of the hallowed halls of CI.
“Welcome to the director’s suite at CI,” Lieutenant Reade said with all the officiousness of a palace chancellor. “Take a pew.”
Hendricks looked around Danziger’s vast suite and wondered what he did with all the room. Bowl? Hold archery contests? Shoot his Red Ryder BB gun?
Hendricks smiled without an ounce of warmth. “Where’s your shark, Reade?”
Reade blinked. “Beg pardon, sir?”
Hendricks swept the words away with the back of his hand. “Never mind.”
He chose the chair that Danziger had sat in the last time they’d had a meeting here.
Reade took a military step toward him. “Uhm, that’s the director’s chair.”
Hendricks sat down, working his buttocks into the cushion. “Not today.”
Reade, face darkened, was about to say something more when his master stepped into the room. Danziger wore a fashionable pin-striped suit, a blue shirt with unfashionable white collar and cuffs, and a striped regimental tie. A tiny enamel American flag was pinned to his lapel. To his credit, his pause at seeing where Hendricks had seated himself was minuscule. Still, Hendricks didn’t miss it.
Forced into the facing chair, he made a project of lifting the fabric of his trousers over his knees, then shooting his cuffs, before he uttered one word.
“It’s good to see you here, Mr. Secretary,” he said with a closed face. “To what do I owe this honor?”
But of course he knew, Hendricks thought. He had gone crying to his general buddies at the Pentagon, who had petitioned the president. Who’s your mommy, Danziger? he thought.
“Does your visit have an amusing component?” the DCI said.
“Ah, no. Just a passing thought.”
Danziger spread his hands. “Care to share?”
“A private moment, Max.”
M. Errol Danziger hated being called by his first name, which was why he had shortened it to an initial.
Reade was still in the room, thinking of filing his nails, for all Hendricks knew.
“Does the boy need to be here?” It was interesting, Hendricks thought, to see how both Danziger and Reade bristled at precisely the same moment.
“Lieutenant Reade knows everything I know,” Danziger said after a frozen moment.
Hendricks kept silent, and, after several moments, Danziger got the point. He raised a hand in the lazy fashion of Old World royalty, and, following a murderous glare at Hendricks, Reade departed.
“You really shouldn’t have embarrassed him like that,” Danziger muttered.
“What is that, Max? A threat?”
“What? No.” Danziger shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“Uh-huh.” Hendricks scooted forward. “Listen, Max, let’s get something straight. I don’t care for Reade, and I certainly don’t give a shit about his feelings. That being the case, I don’t want to see or talk to him the next time we meet. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” Danziger said in a strangled voice.
Without warning, Hendricks rose and stepped toward the door.
“Wait a minute,” Danziger said. “We haven’t even—”
“The job is yours, Max.”
Danziger jumped. “What?” He trailed after Hendricks.
At the door, Hendricks turned toward him. “You want Samaritan, it’s yours.”
“But what about you?”
“I’m out, Max. I’ve pulled my people.”
“But what about the preliminary work they’ve done?”
“Shredded this morning. I know you have your own methodology.” Hendricks pulled open the door, half expecting Reade to have his ear to it. “As of now, you’re in charge of security at Indigo Ridge.”
Maggie heard the encrypted cell phone even in her sleep. The ring was “The Ride of the Valkyries.” She was no fan of that Nazi Richard Wagner, nevertheless she dearly loved the Ring cycle. She turned over, her eyelids heavy, gluey with sleep. Returning to her apartment after her lunch with Christopher, she had crawled into bed and immediately fallen fast asleep. She’d been in the midst of a dream in which she and Kaja were engaged in the same argument that had defined pretty much their entire childhood. In fact, her throat ached as if she had been screaming in her bedroom as well as screaming in her dream. Screaming at Kaja had never worked. Why had she continued to do it? Their relationship, the secrets they knew about each other, made conflict inevitable. Had they been brothers, they surely would have beaten the crap out of each other. They had worked with what they had, which was precious little, and in the end they could no longer stand the sight of each other. If circumstance hadn’t pulled them apart, they would have parted anyway. And yet, in dreams Maggie missed her sister. Mikaela never appeared in her dreams, but Kaja did. And seeing her, Maggie cried dream-tears, her dream-heart breaking. But when their dream-conversations began, they were invariably acrimonious from the very first words: the bile of two sisters who loved each other but could find no common ground. In latter days their arguments had revolved around their father. Their memories of him were so different, as if he were two people. The arguments, grown ever more bitter and vitriolic, saddened as well as angered her.
With the Valkyries riding herd on her consciousness, she rolled over and stared balefully at the cell phone atop the nightstand. She knew who was calling her: Benjamin El-Arian was the only one with the number.
She dug her thumbs into her closed lids to haul herself into full wakefulness, but ignored the call. Instead she stared at the evening’s dusty shadows extending across the ceiling. Mid-note the Valkyries ceased to ride. In the eerie silence she thought about Benjamin. It was a mystery how she ever could have been attracted to him. He seemed part of another life, another person.
America had changed her. She had traveled to many places in the world, but never, before this, to the United States. Benjamin had planted the idea of America as corrupt and evil, a country that had become weak after a string of diplomatic and military defeats. But she’d had no hands-on experience on which to base that idea. Now that she was here, now that she had spent time at Christopher’s side in the core of capitalism’s prime engine, so to speak, she found America to be dynamic, vital, filled with the thrilling cross-currents of dissent. In short, quite agreeable.
And with that road-to-Damascus moment had come understanding of the speciousness of Benjamin’s bitterly anti-American screed. She had pretended to buy into it, to get close to him, but it was only now, having come into contact with Benjamin’s avowed enemy, that she realized the depth of his self-delusion.
Even now, after having spent so much time with him, she didn’t know whether he had kept his extremist views hidden from the other Domna directors until he was in a position of power, or whether they had been grafted onto him later by Semid Abdul-Qahhar.
She despised the leader of the Mosque, a man animated by a hatred so pure and unrelenting there was no room in his world for compromise. If there were Evil in the world, Evil with a capital E, as the Catholic Church preached, she was certain it must be cultivated and maintained by such hatred.
At first she had been confounded by the alliance between the two men, but gradually, from incidents she witnessed, it became clear that Benjamin was using Abdul-Qahhar as his enforcer to maintain and consolidate his power, to keep the other directors in line. She had seen the result of Abdul-Qahhar’s handiwork on a director who had been foolish enough to publicly defy El-Arian. His corpse had been a sight so diabolically foul that, as a matter of self-preservation, she had immediately consigned it to the realm of nightmare. Only Jalal Essai, of all the directors, had managed to survive as a dissident, and now sought to challenge Benjamin’s leadership. Abdul-Qahhar’s slaughterers had failed to silence his voice, which was why El-Arian had dispatched Marlon Etana to take care of Essai.
She was acutely aware of what a dangerous game she was playing with Benjamin, but she remained resolute in her desire to continue on the path she had chosen. She knew El-Arian found it amusing to have her—the daughter of Christien Norén—under his thumb. She had been meticulous in her planning, careful to give him what he wanted: someone subservient to his will. Her father—secretly working for another entity—had betrayed the Domna. This was a sin Benjamin would not forgive. She understood that the sin of Christien Norén would one day be visited on her. The tricky part lay in clearing out before that day arrived.
And now here she was in America, a place in which, ironically, she felt safe. It wasn’t the luxuries of American culture she responded to; she’d had her pick of luxuries while in Paris. It was the freedom to say what she thought, to be who she wanted to be without fear of ridicule or reprisal. A new life so different from her childhood, which just as well be light-years away. There was a reason it had been known as the New World, and in certain circles still was. Was it any wonder she didn’t want to return to her life inside the Domna, at Benjamin El-Arian’s side? And it was becoming clear to her that the time was near when she would be free of El-Arian and Severus Domna. Either that, or she would be dead.
The Valkyries rode again, making her teeth clench. This time she knew she had to take the call.
Picking up the phone, she hesitated for a moment, then activated it. “This is an inconvenient time,” she said.
“Every time seems an inconvenient time for you.” There was no misconstruing Benjamin’s displeasure. “You are two days late with your report.”
Maggie closed her eyes and imagined thrusting a knife into his heart. “The field is the field,” she said. “I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what, precisely?”
“What our plan set out to do: discredit Christopher Hendricks in order to protect FitzWilliams from scrutiny during our acquisition phase.”
“And? I have not seen any negative reports concerning Hendricks.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she said shortly. “Do you think something like that can be established in seventy-two hours? He’s the United States secretary of defense.”
El-Arian was silent for a moment. “What progress have you made?”
Maggie sat up, pushing the pillows behind her back. “I don’t care for your tone, Benjamin.” Then she sat, silent and waiting, determined not to say another word until he relented.
“The field is the field, as you pointed out,” El-Arian said after allowing the silence to stretch on past a normal length.
Figuring that was as much of an apology as she was going to get, she relented. “Do you think anyone but me could have gotten to Hendricks in such a short time?”
“I don’t, no.”
Another concession. How lucky can a girl get? she thought.
“The legend you prepared was pitch-perfect,” she said.
Actually, it was people lower on the Domna food chain who had prepared her Margaret Penrod identity, but it never hurt to use a little sugar. Especially, she thought, now that I’m walking such a perilous tightrope.
“And what of Hendricks himself?” El-Arian asked.
“Hooked,” she said, “completely.” It was curious—and not a little frightening—how much disquiet saying this out loud to Benjamin caused her.
“Well then, now is the time to reel him in.”
“Slowly,” she said. “We can’t afford to have him become suspicious at this point.”
El-Arian cleared his throat. “Skara, in twenty-four hours the acquisition period will come to its end phase. We need you to meet that ETA.”
Twenty-four hours, she thought. That’s all the time I have left?
“I understand perfectly,” she said. “You can count on me.”
“I always have,” he said. “À bientôt.”
Skara threw the phone across the room.
Hendricks stood in the garage at what had been the Treadstone building, but which he had ordered abandoned immediately following the car bomb explosion. This was his second visit to the crime scene, the first being less than an hour after the explosion had detonated. At that time, having ordered a phalanx of federal agents to do a secure search of the immediate area and Peter’s house, and not knowing whether Peter Marks had been blown to kingdom come, he had assembled a task force to investigate the matter.
The forensics team had determined that Peter had not been in the car. So far, so good. Then where was he? The task force had had no luck finding him. Hendricks called Marks’s cell but, as before, got his voice mail. Next, he called Ann at the temporary offices he had secured for the Treadstone personnel, but she hadn’t seen or heard from Marks. He gave up and departed the crime scene.
Hendricks arrived home early and unannounced. While his security team scoured the interior for electronic listening devices, as they did twice a week, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a beer. He stood watching the suits go about their business, controlled and precise as ants. Picking up the phone, he tried again to call Jackie, but his son was still in a forward position in the Afghanistan mountains, maintaining communications blackout.
He’d finished half his beer when the team members nodded on their way to take up positions outside. He put down his glass and went into his study, closing the door behind him. The windows were fitted with wide-slatted jalousies, which he kept closed all the time. Sitting down at his desk, he removed a small key from his wallet and inserted it in a lock in the lower left-hand drawer. He took out a tiny disc approximately half the size of his thumbnail. He knew what it was but he had never seen the design before. What he couldn’t understand was why his security team had failed to find this electronic bug in their continual sweeps of his house.
He had discovered it ten days ago purely by accident. He had been in a hurry, his hand sweeping across the desk to snatch up a file that had been delivered by courier. In the process, he had upended a glass Eiffel Tower, swirls of color embedded in it, that Amanda had bought him the first time they had been in Paris. As such, it was a beloved token, a way to keep her close after her death. The tower’s four feet were covered in felt, but when he’d upended it he’d seen that one of the felt discs had been replaced by this curious and frightening electronic bug.
Two possibilities had immediately occurred to him. The first was that someone on his security team had planted it and was deliberately ignoring it during the sweeps. The second was that this bug was so sophisticated, it was invisible to the electronic sweeps. Neither hypothesis was comforting, but the second one disturbed him more because it meant an unknown entity was in possession of surveillance equipment that far outstripped the US government’s own. He had made several discreet inquiries, pulling in favors from people deep inside the intelligence community whom he thought might be able to tell him if a cabal inside the government was working against him. So far, no hint of such a group had surfaced.
He stared at the bug now, a dull silver-green, scarcely distinguishable from the felt pads on the bottom of Amanda’s gift. He had quite deliberately kept it live, putting it on his desk, making innocuous calls and such because he did not want its owner to know that he had discovered its existence. It was this bug that had prompted him to form the complex communications system with Peter Marks. He replaced it, shut the drawer, and locked it.
Opening his laptop, he logged onto the government server on which his files resided, navigated to the encrypted file, and opened it. To Peter’s credit, he had figured out the system and accessed the encrypted file on Hendricks’s computer. A message detailed what Marks had discovered. At a regional meeting in Qatar in the spring of 1968, Fitz was listed as a consultant for El-Gabal Mining, a now defunct government-run company. What interested Marks—and now Hendricks himself—was that Fitz had neglected to list El-Gabal on his CV.
In light of Marks’s own investigation, it might not be so surprising that he hadn’t reported in, Hendricks thought now. If Marks had found something further on Fitz, then, following the attempt on his life, he might have gone undercover to check it out himself. Maybe he had contacted Soraya. Hendricks rang her cell but, again, got no answer. He pulled out his cell and went out of the study, down the hall, and into a bathroom, where he turned on the taps.
It was after nine in Paris, so he called Jacques Robbinet at home. His wife told him that her husband was still at the office. Apparently there was an international incident he’d had to handle. Worried now, Hendricks called Robbinet’s office. While the connection was being made, he stared out at his deserted house and not for the first time wished with all his heart that he could hear Amanda puttering about, cleaning out the closets as she loved to do. It depressed him to think that the closets hadn’t been touched since her death. He wondered what the house would be like with Maggie in it permanently.
Robbinet finally answered. “Chris, I was just going to call. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of an incident.”
“What kind of incident?” Hendricks listened with sweaty hands as Robbinet related the meeting with M. Marchand, how Soraya, Aaron Lipkin-Renais, and the Egyptian Chalthoum had followed Marchand, and all that had happened.
“So Chalthoum is dead.” Christ, what a fuckup, Hendricks thought. The head of al Mokhabarat murdered on French soil. No wonder Robbinet was still at the office; he’d probably be there all night. “Is Soraya okay?”
“As far as Aaron knows, she is.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“She’s still unconscious.”
Hendricks’s stomach began to throb like a second heart. He pulled open the door to the medicine cabinet, shook out another Prilosec, and swallowed it dry. He knew he was taking too many, but what the hell.
“Will she live?”
“The doctors are still evaluating—”
“Dammit, Jacques, you’ve got to keep her safe.”
“Aaron says the doctors—”
“Forget Lipkin-Renais,” Hendricks said. “Jacques, I want you with her.”
Silence for several heartbeats. “Chris, I’m knee-deep in merde over the Chalthoum murder.”
“He was killed by North African Arab extremists.”
“Yes, but on French soil. The Egyptian embassy has gone ballistic.”
Hendricks thought a moment. “Tell you what, I’ll take care of the Egyptians if you take care of Soraya.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. Jacques, I consider this a personal favor.”
“Well, it’ll be a personal favor on both sides if you can get the Egyptians off my back. We already have enough problems with the Arabs here without the stink this will cause when it hits the news.”
“It won’t,” Hendricks said grimly. “Jacques, do what you have to do, but get my girl back on her feet.”
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I have some news, Chris.” He gave Hendricks his new, encrypted cell number. “Try not to worry.”
But Hendricks couldn’t help it. Dammit, he thought as he cut the connection and scanned his phone book for the number of the Egyptian president, what the hell is happening to my people?
Don Fernando was waiting in the hallway when Bourne and Essai emerged from their meeting.
“Jason, a word, if you don’t mind.”
Essai gave a curt nod and disappeared down the hall.
“How did it go?” Don Fernando asked.
“We’ll see,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando removed a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and lit up. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve chosen to keep Estevan in the dark,” he said around clouds of aromatic blue smoke.
“How you deal with your friends is your business,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando eyed Bourne for a moment. “I like you, Jason. I like you very much. Which is why I don’t take offense at your implied rebuke.” He paused for a moment, took the cigar out of his mouth, and stared at the glowing end. “Friendship can take many forms. Being a man of the world, I assume you know this.” His eyes raised to meet Bourne’s. “But I know you’re not this sort of man. You are a dying breed, my friend, a true throwback to the days of conscience, honor, duty, and friendships that are sacred.”
Still, Bourne said nothing. He resented being told what kind of man he was, even if it was the truth.
“So now we come to the difficult part.” Don Fernando stuck the cigar back into a corner of his mouth. “Kaja has her eyes on you.”
“That’s a quaint way of putting it.”
Don Fernando nodded. “All right. She’s fallen in love with you.”
“That’s insane. Despite what she said, she hates me for killing her mother.”
“Part of her does, unquestionably. But that part is someone who had never met you, who was driven by the sight of her mother dead on a marble slab. She built a fantasy around that. And then you appeared, a flesh-and-blood man. Along with that came the details surrounding her mother’s murder. None of which, I believe, she was prepared for.”
Don Fernando took more smoke into his mouth. “Consider this from her point of view. You appear and save her and Estevan not once, not twice, but three times—from both the Domna and the people whom her father worked for. She knows nothing about you, least of all that you killed her mother. She’s two people now, one fighting against the other.”
“That isn’t my concern,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando sucked on his cigar, enveloping them both in a cloud of smoke. “I don’t believe you mean that.”
“Is she in love with Vegas?”
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
“I mean to,” Bourne said. “Circumstances are already complicated enough without Vegas blowing up in a jealous rage.”
“She’s out in the loggia.”
“You can’t see the loggia from here,” Bourne said.
“I know where all my guests are.”
Bourne wondered about that; he hadn’t noticed video surveillance cameras.
Don Fernando smiled. “Go find her, Jason. Straighten this out before it turns into a blood feud.”
This is how it will go,” Zachek said. “The contact is waiting at the side entrance to the Mosque. You will say to him, ‘There is no God but one God,’ and he will reply, ‘God is good. God is great.’ ”
Boris and Zachek, engulfed in blackest shadow, huddled one block from where the Mosque rose, dark and ominous against the seething Munich sky.
“You know this man,” Boris said.
Zachek nodded. “Ostensibly he works at the Mosque, but—”
“I understand,” Boris said.
Zachek checked his watch. “It’s time,” he said. “Good luck.”
“The same to you.” Boris gave him one last look. “By the way, you look like shit.”
Zachek gave him a sorrowful smile. “Nothing lasts forever.”
Boris left him then, stepping out onto the street, merging himself with the ebb and flow of pedestrian traffic. He paced himself carefully; he was expert at blending in. Better than Zachek would ever be. Fleetingly, he wondered whether he could trust the SVR agent. There were no sure things in his business, all you could do was home in on a person’s psyche and try to push the right buttons. Their time together had been short, but it had been as intense as two soldiers inhabiting the same foxhole in wartime. Life had been compressed; he felt he’d gotten a good psychological read on Zachek.
He was approaching the Mosque’s side entrance and there was no help for it now. He had to trust Zachek.
Two men lounged in the doorway, speaking in low tones, but as Boris approached, one broke away and left. Boris stepped toward the remaining man, who was small and square-shouldered. His full, curling beard reached to his chest. He smelled of tobacco and stale sweat.
“There is no God but one God,” Boris said.
“God is good, God is great,” the man replied, and, turning, led Boris into the Mosque.
He removed his shoes and washed his hands in the font of a stone fountain. Boris followed suit. The man took Boris down a narrow, poorly lit corridor, past cubicles without doors in which shadows moved and whispered voices conversed like the soft drone of insects. Farther away, Boris heard the massed chanting of prayer, the high-low ululations of the muezzin as he spoke to the faithful. The atmosphere was close, oppressive, and Boris strained to see ahead.
They turned left, then right, then right again. The place was a labyrinth, Boris thought. Not an easy place to get out of quickly. At length, the contact stopped outside a doorway. Turning to Boris, he said, “Inside.”
“You first,” Boris said.
As soon as the man had turned his back, Boris put his right hand on the grips of his Makarov. The man turned around and, shaking his head, held out his hand. Boris froze.
“It’s the only way,” the man said.
Boris produced the Makarov, unloaded it, and put the bullets into his pocket. Then he handed over the pistol.
The man took it, stepped across the threshold, and Boris followed. Boris found himself in a small square room with one window above chest height, the glass translucent; it was illuminated like a rose window by either daylight or streetlight.
A heavyset man with a greasy-looking beard sat cross-legged on a prayer rug. He was talking to two men who immediately rose and stepped away. Boris noted that they took up positions on either side of the room with their backs to the walls.
The heavyset man ran thick fingers through the tangle of his beard, which was as black as his eyes.
“You are SVR?” he said in a phlegmy voice. “From Zachek?”
Boris nodded.
“You want to know about Viktor Cherkesov,” the man said. “Why he came here, whom he saw, and what was conveyed.”
“That’s right.”
“This is difficult information to obtain. Furthermore, it puts me in a precarious position.” The heavyset man cleared his throat. “You are prepared to pay.”
Since it wasn’t a question, Boris remained silent.
The man smiled now, revealing a pair of gold incisors. The rest of his teeth looked mossy, and there was an unpleasant odor wafting off him, as if food were rotting in his mouth or stomach. “Let us proceed, then.”
“How much—?”
The man raised a meaty hand. “Ah, no. I have no need of more money. You want information from me; I want the same from you.”
Boris was keeping a clandestine eye on the two men at the walls. They seemed to be interested only in the light filtering through the window. “What sort of information?”
“Do you know a man named Ivan Volkin?”
The question almost took Boris’s breath away. “I’ve heard of him, yes.”
The heavyset man pursed his lips, which were red and full. They looked obscene surrounded by the beard. “This is not what I asked.”
“I’ve met him,” Boris said cautiously.
Something changed in the man’s dark eyes. “Perhaps, then, the information we exchange concerns the same subject.”
Boris spread his hands. “I don’t see how. I want to know why Cherkesov was sent here. I have no interest in Volkin.”
The heavyset man hawked and spat into a small brass bowl at his side. “But you see, it was Volkin whom Cherkesov came here to see.”
Bourne found Kaja, arms wrapped tightly around herself, standing in the loggia. She was watching a nightingale flit through a tree as if trying to find its way back home. He wondered whether Kaja was trying to do the same thing.
She stirred when she heard him but didn’t say a word until the nightingale had settled on a branch and begun its lovely song. By that time, Bourne was standing beside her.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” he said.
“I was hoping you’d come. Then it would be just like it is in the movies.”
“You haven’t struck me as the romantic type.”
“No?” She moved beside him, shifting from one hip to the other. “How have I struck you?”
“I think you’re someone who will do anything to get what she wants.”
She sighed. “You think I’ll break Estevan’s heart.”
“He’s a simple man, with simple needs,” Bourne said. “You’re anything but.”
She looked down at her feet. “Suppose you’re right.”
“Then Estevan was a means to an end.”
“For five years I gave him pleasure.”
“Because he believed what you told him.” Bourne turned to her. “Do you think he would have fallen in love with you if he’d known who you really are and what you needed him for?”
“He might have, yes.”
She turned to face him. Moonlight struck her cheeks, but her eyes remained in shadow. Here in Don Fernando’s garlanded loggia, all the ripe lushness of her figure was on display. Bourne had no doubt that she had deliberately positioned herself for maximum sensual effect. She knew very well the powers at her command, and she was unafraid to wield them.
“I don’t want to talk about Estevan anymore.”
“Perhaps, but I need to know—”
She put her hands on either side of his face, her lips close to his. “I want to talk about us.”
And then Bourne understood. He could see the desire burning in her eyes; a desire not for him in the traditional sense. He, like Vegas before him, was a means to an end. All she wanted was to find out the truth about her father. Men could do this, not women, which was why she had turned herself into a serial lover. She attached herself to whichever man she sensed could get her closer to her goal.
“Don Fernando is under the misapprehension that you’re in love with me.”
She frowned. “Misapprehension?”
Then she stepped toward him and kissed him hard on the lips. As she did so, she plastered herself to him. Bourne could feel every hill and valley of her womanly body.
“Don’t,” he said, pushing her away.
She shook her head, her lips slightly parted. “I don’t understand.”
He wondered whether she had tricked herself into believing that she loved him. Was that how she had so successfully deceived Vegas, by deceiving herself?
“You understand perfectly well,” Bourne said.
“You’re wrong.” She shook her head. “Dead wrong.”
Amun!” Soraya cried when she returned to consciousness.
“He’s gone, Soraya.”
Aaron bent over her, his face filled with concern.
“Remember?”
And then she did: the descent into darkness, being nearly strangled to death by Donatien Marchand, Amun running up the stairs, the shots, the blood, and then the fall. Her eyes burned as they welled up and tears spilled out the corners, running down her cheeks, dampening the pillow.
“Where—?”
“You’re in a hospital.”
She turned her head, suddenly aware of the tubes running into her arm.
“I need to see him,” she said.
But when she attempted to rise, Aaron pushed her gently back down.
“And you will, Soraya, I promise you. But not now, not today.”
“I have to.” She became aware that her struggle was for naught; she had no strength. She could not stop crying. Amun dead. She looked up into Aaron’s face.
“Please, Aaron, wake me up.”
“You are awake, Soraya. Thank God.”
“This can’t be happening.” Why was she crying? Her heart seemed to have cracked open. The question of whether her love for Amun was real or not seemed irrelevant now. They had been colleagues, friends, lovers—and now he was gone. She had dealt with loss and death before, but this was on a completely different scale. Dimly, she was aware of her sobbing, and of Aaron holding her, the smell of him mixing with the sickly sweet odors of the hospital. She clung to him. But it was so odd that with Aaron holding her she should have the sense of being alone. Yet she did, and in a sense she felt more alone than she ever had before. Her work was her entire life. Like Jason, she had made little room in it for anyone else—save Amun. And now…
Jason entered her head then. She thought of the losses he had suffered, both professional and personal. She thought mostly of Martin Lindros, the architect of Typhon, her boss, and Jason’s closest friend at the old CI. She had been rocked by Lindros’s death, but how much worse it must have been for Jason. He’d moved heaven and earth to save his friend, only to fail at the very end. Thinking of Jason made her feel less alone, made her feel the oppressiveness of her surroundings, gave her the understanding that she needed to get away, to think, to sort matters out.
“Aaron, you’ve got to get me out of here,” she said with a depth of desperation that startled even herself.
“You have no broken bones, just some bruised ribs. But the doctors are concerned about a concussion—”
“I don’t care,” she cried. “I can’t bear to be in here a moment longer.”
“Soraya, please try to calm down. You’re understandably distraught and—”
She pushed him away, as roughly as she was able. “Stop treating me like a child and listen to what I’m saying, Aaron. Get me the fuck out of here. Now.”
He studied her face for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Give me a moment and I’ll clear it with admissions.”
The moment he left the room, Soraya struggled to a sitting position. This made her head hurt, but she ignored it. She peeled back the tape and slipped the needle out of her arm. Carefully, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floor felt cold. Her ankles tingled when she tried to put weight on her legs. She waited for a moment, breathing deeply and evenly to bring more oxygen into her body. Holding on to the bed, she took several tentative steps—one, two, three—like a toddler learning the basics. Painfully slowly, she made her way across the room to the closet and took out her clothes. She was acting now purely on instinct. Walking stiff-legged like a zombie, she made it to the door and hung on there, renewing her energy while she breathed.
Then she hauled open the door and peered out, looking both ways. Apart from an old man shuffling away from her, holding on to the rolling rack that held his fluid drip, no one was about. Across the corridor was a utility room. She steeled herself and stepped out. The moment she did, she heard voices approaching. One was Aaron’s. He wasn’t alone. Willing her legs to move, she lunged for the handle of the utility room door, swung it open, and stepped inside. Just as the door sighed shut she caught a glimpse of Aaron flanked by two doctors heading for her room.
Bourne and Essai found Kaja and Vegas in the entryway. The front door was open and, beyond, Don Fernando could be seen directing two cars up his driveway.
“It’s ten o’clock,” Kaja said. As if she sensed that Bourne and Essai, having appeared together, wanted to talk with her, she added, “Dinner time is sacred for Don Fernando.”
Bourne approached them. “Estevan, how are you feeling? You’ve been asleep for hours.”
Vegas steepled his fingers against his forehead. “A little groggy, but better.”
Don Fernando stepped into the doorway. “Our transportation has arrived.”
Their destination was a seafood restaurant on the other side of Cadiz. Its expansive terra-cotta-tiled terrace abutted a stone seawall that overlooked the southern part of the harbor. Boats lay at anchor, bobbing gently in the swells. A launch pearled the water as it passed by, leaving a fast-dissolving froth in its wake. Moonlight lay on the water like a silver mantilla; overhead were handfuls of stars.
The maître d’, making a fuss over Don Fernando, showed them outside to a round table near the seawall. The restaurant was filled with glamorous types. Gold and platinum baubles on the wrists of slender women in Louboutin shoes gleamed in the candlelight. Jewels graced their throats and long necks.
“I feel like an ugly duckling,” Kaja said as they seated themselves.
“Nonsense, mi amor.” Vegas squeezed her hand. “No one here outshines you.”
Kaja laughed and kissed him with what seemed great affection. “What a gentleman!”
Bourne was sitting on the other side of her, and he felt the heat of her thigh pressing against his. She was turned toward Estevan, their hands still clasped. Her thigh slid back and forth against him, the friction creating a clandestine link between them.
“What’s good to eat here?” he asked Don Fernando, who was seated on his right hand. Don Fernando’s answer was drowned out by the roar of Vespas swinging along the sea road outside the restaurant.
The waiter uncorked the first bottle of wine from the stash Don Fernando had brought with him. They all drank a toast to their host, who told them that he had already ordered.
Bourne took his leg away from Kaja’s, and, when she turned to look at him inquiringly, he gave her a brief but emphatic shake of his head.
Her eyes narrowed for the space of a breath, then, announcing her need to leave the table, she pushed her chair back hard and stalked across the terrace. Don Fernando shot Bourne a warning look.
Vegas put down his napkin and was about to rise when Don Fernando said, “Estevan, calmaté, amigo. This is a security matter; I’d rather have Jason keep an eye on her.”
Bourne got up and, crossing the terrace, stepped into the closed-in part of the restaurant, where he was assailed by the aromatic scents of seafood being cooked with Moroccan and Phoenician herbs and spices. He spotted Kaja exiting the front door, and he snaked his way around the tables crowded with boisterous patrons.
He caught up with her on the narrow sidewalk. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She pulled away from him. “What does it look like?”
“Kaja, Estevan will suspect something.”
She glared at him. “So? I’m tired of all you men.”
“You’re acting like a spoiled child.”
She turned and slapped him across the face. He could have stopped her, but he felt the outcome would be worse.
“Feel better now?”
“Don’t think I don’t know what’s happening here,” she said. “Don Fernando is terrified I’ll tell Estevan who I really am.”
“Now would not be a good time.”
“Say what you mean. Never would be a good time.”
“Just not now.”
“Why not now?” Kaja said. “He treats Rosie like a child. I’m not a child anymore. I’m not Rosie.”
Bourne kept an eye on the road, the clouds of young men on Vespas laughing drunkenly, vying with one another as they rode at a daredevil’s pace. “It was a risk bringing both of you to Cadiz, but the alternative would have meant both your deaths.”
“Don Fernando should never have gotten Estevan involved in smuggling for the Domna,” she said. “It’s clear he’s not cut out for that kind of life.”
“Don Fernando wanted a way in,” Bourne said.
“Don Fernando used Estevan,” she said, disgusted.
“So did you.” Bourne shrugged. “In any case, he could have refused.”
She snorted. “Do you think Estevan would refuse that man? He owes Don Fernando everything.”
“Querida!”
They both turned to see Vegas emerge from the restaurant, his expression filled with concern.
“Is everything all right?” He came toward her. “Did I do something to make you angry?”
Kaja automatically turned on her megawatt Rosie smile. “Of course not, mi amor.” She had to raise her voice over the revving Vespas. “How could you do anything to make me angry?”
Taking her in his arms, he swung her around, her back to the street. Three shots buzzed past Kaja’s shoulder and head, and blew Estevan backward, out of her embrace, and Bourne leapt onto her, covering her as the white Vespa with the gunman accelerated away from the curb. Bourne dragged her to her feet.
“Estevan!” she cried. “Estevan, oh, my God!”
Vegas had landed in a bloody heap against the restaurant’s front. The white stucco was spattered with his blood. Bourne kept her away, pushing her into the arms of Don Fernando, who had run out of the doorway.
“They tried again!” Bourne shouted. “Keep her inside!”
Then he stepped off the curb, corralled a young rider who had just stopped to gawk at the bloody body, and yanked him off his Vespa.
The boy stumbled over the curb, landing on his backside. “Hey! What?” he cried as Bourne roared away down the traffic-choked road.