Текст книги "The Bourne Deception (Обман Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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and ironically, tragically, there were times when he felt he understood Bourne far better than he did Webb. At least, he knew what motivated Bourne, whereas Webb‘s motivations were still a complete mystery. Having tried and failed to reintegrate himself into Webb‘s academic life, he‘d decided to disengage himself from Webb. With a palpable start he realized that here on Bali he‘d also begun to disengage from the Bourne identity with which he‘d come to associate so closely. He thought about the Balinese he‘d encountered here, Suparwita, the family that ran the mountain warung—even this priest whom he didn‘t know at all, but whose words seemed to cloak him in an intense white light—and then he contrasted them with the Westerners, Firth and Willard. The Balinese were in touch with the spirits of the land, they saw good and evil and acted accordingly. There was nothing between them and nature itself, whereas Firth and Willard were creatures of civilization with all its layers of deceit, envy, greed. This essential dichotomy had opened his mind as nothing before. Did he want to be like Willard or like Suparwita?

Was it a coincidence that the Balinese didn‘t allow their children‘s feet to touch the ground for three months—and that he‘d been on Bali for precisely the same amount of time?

Now, for the first time in his defective memory, unmoored from everything and everyone he knew, he felt able to look inside himself, and what he saw was someone he didn‘t recognize—not Webb, not Bourne. It was as if Webb were a dream, or another identity assigned to him just as Bourne had been.

Kneeling outside the Bat Cave with its thousands of denizens stirring restively, with the priest‘s intonations transforming the intense Southern Hemisphere sunshine into prayer, he contemplated the chimeric landscape of his own soul, a place singularly twilit, like a deserted city an hour before dawn or the desolate seashore an hour after dusk, a place that slipped away from him, shifting like sand. And as he journeyed through this unknown country he asked himself this question:

Who am I?

5

THE JOINT NSA-DHS forensics team arrived in Cairo and, to the consternation of everyone except Soraya, was met at the airport by an elite contingent of al Mokhabarat, the national secret police. Team members and their belongings were poured into military vehicles and driven through the blistering heat, blazing sun, and urban chaos of Cairo. Heading southwest out of the city, they traveled toward the desert in glum and silent single file.

―Our destination is near Wadi AlRayan,‖ Amun Chalthoum, the head of al Mokhabarat, said to Soraya. He had spotted her immediately, culled her out of the team to sit beside him in his vehicle, which was second behind a heavily armored halftrack that Chalthoum was doubtless using to flex his muscles in the face of the Americans.

For Chalthoum time seemed to have stood still. His hair was still thick and dark, his wide copper-colored forehead still unlined. His black crow‘s eyes deeply set above the hawk-beak of his nose still smoldered with suppressed emotion. He was large and muscular with the narrow hips of a swimmer or a climber. By contrast, he had the long, tapered fingers of a pianist or a surgeon. And yet something important had changed, because there was about him the sense of a fire barely banked. The nearer one got to him, the more one felt the quivering of his leashed rage. Now that she was sitting beside him, now that she felt the once familiar stirrings inside her, she realized why she hadn‘t told Veronica Hart the whole truth: because she wasn‘t at all certain that she could handle Amun.

―So quiet. Are you not stirred by being back home?‖

―Actually, I was thinking about the last time you took me to Wadi AlRayan.‖

―That was eight years ago and I was simply trying to get at the truth,‖

he said with a shake of his head. ―Admit it, you were in my country passing secrets—‖

―I admit nothing.‖

―—which by right belonged to the state.‖ He tapped his chest. ―And I am the state.‖

― Le Roi le Veut,‖ she murmured.

―The king wills it.‖ Chalthoum nodded. ―Precisely.‖ And momentarily he took his hands off the wheel and spread his arms wide to encompass the desert into which they were just now driving. ―This is the land of absolutism, Umm al-Dunya,the Mother of the Universe ,but I‘m not telling you anything you don‘t already know. After all, you‘re Egyptian, like me.‖

―Half Egyptian.‖ She shrugged. ―Anyway, it doesn‘t matter. I‘m here to help my people find out what happened to the airliner.‖

―Your people.‖ Chalthoum spat out the words as if even the thought of them left a bitter taste in his mouth. ―What about your father? What about his people? Has America so thoroughly destroyed the wild Arabian inside you?‖

Soraya put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She knew she‘d better get her own feelings under control and soon, otherwise the entire mission could spiral out of control. Then she felt Amun‘s arm brush up against hers and the hair at the back of her neck stirred. Good God, she thought, I can’t feel this way about him.And then she broke out in a cold sweat. Was this why I withheld the truth from Veronica—because I knew that if I told her everything she’d never have allowed me to come back here?And all at once she felt herself in jeopardy, not because of Amun but because of herself, her own runaway emotions.

In an effort to regain some form of equilibrium she said, ―My father never forgot he was Egyptian.‖

―So much so he changed his family name from Mohammed to Moore,‖ Chalthoum said bitterly.

―He fell in love with America when he fell in love with my mother. The deep appreciation I have of it comes from him.‖

Chalthoum shook his head. ―Why hide it? It was your mother‘s doing.‖

―Like all Americans, my mother took for granted everything her country had to offer. She couldn‘t have cared less about the Fourth of July; it was my father who took me to the fireworks celebrations on the Mall in Washington, DC, where he spoke to me about freedom and liberty.‖

Chalthoum bared his teeth. ―I have to laugh at his naÄ•veté—and yours.

Frankly, I assumed you had a more… shall we say pragmatic outlook on America, the country that exports Mickey Mouse, war, and occupying armed forces with equal abandon.‖

―How convenient of you to forget that we‘re also the country that keeps you safe from extremists, Amun.‖

Chalthoum clenched his teeth and was about to respond when the jouncing vehicle rolled through a cordon of his men, armed with submachine guns, keeping the mass of clamoring international press at a safe remove from the crash site, and ground to a halt. Soraya was the first out, settling her sunglasses more firmly on the bridge of her nose and the lightweight hat on her head. Chalthoum had been right about one thing: The airliner had fallen out of the sky not six hundred yards from the southeastern tip of the wadi, a body of water, complete with waterfalls, all the more spectacular because it was surrounded by desert.

―Dear God,‖ Soraya murmured as she began a tour of the crash site, which had already been cordoned off, presumably by Amun‘s people. The fuselage was in two main chunks, embedded in the sand and rock like grotesque monuments to an unknown god, but other pieces, violently disjointed from the body, were scattered about in a widening circle, along with one wing, bent in half like a green twig.

―Notice the number of fuselage sections,‖ Chalthoum said, as he watched the American task force deploy. He pointed as they moved around the periphery of the site. ―See here, and here. It‘s also clear that the plane broke up in midair, not on impact, which, considering the composition of the ground, caused minimal further damage.‖

―So the plane looks more or less the way it did directly after the explosion.‖

Chalthoum nodded. ―That‘s correct.‖

Say what you wanted about him, when it came to his trade he was a first-rate practitioner. The trouble was that too often his trade included methods of interrogation and torture that would make even those running Abu Ghraib sick to their stomachs.

―The destruction is terrible,‖ he said.

He wasn‘t kidding. Soraya watched as the forensics team put on plastic suits, slipped shoe coverings on. Kylie, the explosives-sniffing golden Lab, went in first with her handler. Then the task force split in two, the first group heading into the burned-out interior of the plane while the second began its examination of the ripped-open edges in an attempt to determine whether the explosion had been internal or external. Among this latter group was Delia Trane, a friend of Soraya‘s and an explosives expert from ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Though Delia was only thirty-four, her abilities were such that she was often on loan to various federal law enforcement agencies desperate for her expertise.

Dogged by Chalthoum, Soraya headed into the circle of death, skirting bits of metal so black and twisted it was impossible to determine what they had once been. Fist-size globs that looked like hail on closer inspection turned out to be plastic parts that had melted down in the fiery conflagration. When she came to a human head, she stopped and crouched down.

Almost all the hair and most of the flesh had been scorched to ash, which pocked the partially revealed skull like gooseflesh.

Just beyond, a blackened forearm rose at an angle from the sand, the hand above it like a beckoning flag signifying a land where death ruled absolutely. Soraya was sweating, and not just from the brutal heat. She took a swig of water from a plastic bottle Chalthoum gave her, then proceeded on.

Just before the yawning mouth of the fuselage, a team member handed her and Chalthoum plastic suits and shoe coverings that, despite the heat, they put on.

After her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she took off her sunglasses, peered around. The seat rows were canted at a ninety-degree angle; the floor was where the left bulkhead would have been when the jetliner was right-side up and everyone inside had been alive, chatting, laughing, holding hands, or foolishly arguing until the final moment before oblivion. Bodies lay everywhere, some still in their seats, others thrown clear on impact. The explosion had completely disintegrated another section of the aircraft and those in it.

She noticed that wherever a member of the American team went, he or she was shadowed by one of Amun‘s people. It would have been comical if it weren‘t so sinister. Her companion was clearly determined that the forensics team would not make a move, including relieving themselves in the dizzying heat and fetid stench of the portable latrines, without him knowing about it immediately.

―The lack of humidity works in your favor, of course,‖ Chalthoum said,

–slowing the decomposition of those bodies not incinerated beyond recognition.‖

―That will be a blessing to their families.‖

―Naturally so. But really, let‘s not mince words, you haven‘t given much thought to either the passengers or their families. You‘re here to find out what happened to the aircraft: mechanical malfunction or an act of extremist terrorism.‖

He still had the utterly un-Egyptian knack of cutting directly to the quick. The country was a bureaucratic nightmare; nothing got done, not a single answer was forthcoming until at least fifteen people in seven different divisions were consulted and agreed on it. Soraya debated only a moment as to how to answer. ―It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.‖

Chalthoum nodded. ―Yes, because the world wants to know, needsto know.

But my question to you is this: What then?‖

A typically astute query, she thought. ―I don‘t know. What happens then is not up to me.‖

She spotted Delia, signaled to her. Her friend nodded, picked her way through the debris and hunched-over workers, with their bright task lamps, to where she and Chalthoum stood just inside the roasting gloom.

―Anything to report?‖ Soraya said.

―We‘re just beginning the prelim stages.‖ Delia‘s pale eyes flicked toward the Egyptian and back to her friend.

―It‘s all right,‖ Soraya assured her. ―If you have anything, even if it‘s speculation, I need to know.‖

―Okay.‖ Delia‘s mother was an aristocratic Colombian from Bogotá, and the daughter carried much of her maternal ancestors‘ fiery blood. Her skin was as deep-toned as Soraya‘s, but there the similarity ended. She had a plain face and a boyish figure, with blunt-cut hair, strong hands, and a no-nonsense manner that was often interpreted as rudeness. Soraya thought it refreshing; Delia was someone with whom she could let her hair down. ―My sense is that it wasn‘t a bomb. The explosion very clearly didn‘t emanate from the luggage bay.‖

―So, what, a mechanical failure?‖

―Kylie says no,‖ Delia said. She meant the dog.

There was that hesitation again, and it made Soraya uneasy. She considered pressing her friend, but then thought better of it. She‘d have to find a way to talk to her without Amun hanging on their every word. She nodded, and Delia went back to her work.

―She knows more than she‘s telling,‖ Chalthoum said. ―I want to know what‘s going on.‖ When Soraya said nothing, he continued. ―Go talk to her.

Alone.‖

Soraya turned to him. ―And then?‖

He shrugged. ―Report back to me, what else?‖

It was very late by the time Moira was ready to leave the office. With a weary hand she switched off CNN, which she‘d had on with the volume muted ever since the news of the airliner incident in Egypt broke. The incident unnerved her, as it had many people in the security field. No word on what had really happened—not even from her back-channel, not-for-attribution sources, whose terse responses were so brittle they set her teeth on edge.

Meanwhile the press was having a typically monstrous field day—talking heads on TV speculating terrorist attack scenarios. And that didn‘t even count the more out-and-out fabrications posing as ―the truth they don‘t want you to know‖ on thousands of Internet sites, including the toxic chestnut trotted out since 9/11 that the American government was behind the incident in order to advance its own casus belli, its case for war.

As she took the elevator down to the underground garage, Moira‘s mind was in two places at once: here with the new organization she was building and in Bali with Bourne. His grave wounds had made it more difficult to separate herself from him. What had seemed so simple when they‘d discussed her future in the pool at the resort now seemed nebulous and vaguely anxiety producing.

It wasn‘t that she felt the need to take care of him—God knows she would not have made a decent nurse—but that within the eternity when his life had hung in the balance, she‘d been forced to reassess her feelings for him. The possibility that he would be snatched from her filled her with dread. At least, she assumed it was dread, since she‘d never before felt anything like it: a suffocating blackness that blotted out the sun at noon, the stars at midnight.

Was this love? she wondered. Could love produce this madness that transcended time and space, that caused her heart to expand beyond its known limits, that turned her bones to jelly? How many times during the night had she been roused out of a shallow and restless sleep, compelled to pad into the bathroom to stare at the reflection in the mirror she did not recognize.

It was as if she had been unceremoniously thrust into someone else‘s life, a life she neither wanted nor understood.

―Who are you?‖ she said over and over to that strange reflection. ―How did you get here? What is it you want?‖

Neither she nor her reflection had answers. In the stillness of the night she wept for the loss of who she had been, in despair of the new and incomprehensible future that had invaded her body like a transfusion.

But in the morning she was herself again: pragmatic, focused, ruthless both in her recruiting and in the stringent rules she set out for her operatives. She made each one swear allegiance to Heartland as if it were a sovereign nation—which in many respects Black River, her main rival, already was.

And yet, the moment the sun fell from the sky, twilight and uncertainty crept through her, and her thoughts returned to Bourne with whom she‘d had no contact since she had left Bali three months ago with the body of a dead Australian drifter and the paperwork identifying it as Bourne‘s. It was a recurring disease she‘d picked up on the island: The thought of his imminent death was enough to cause her to run, and keep running. Except that wherever she went she ended up at the terrifying place where she‘d started, at the moment he‘d fallen to the ground, at the moment her heart had stopped beating.

The elevator door opened onto the shadow-drenched concrete expanse of the garage, and she stepped out, her car key in her hand. She hated this late-night walk through the almost deserted garage. The smears of oil and gas, the stench of exhaust, the echoes of her heels ringing against the concrete made her feel sad and achingly lonely, as if there was no place in the world she could call home.

There were very few cars left; the parallel white lines painted on the unsealed concrete stretched away from her, ending where she‘d parked her car.

She heard the cadence of her own strides, saw the movement of her crooked shadow as it passed across one square pillar after another.

She heard a car engine cough to life and came to a halt, standing still, her senses questing for the source. A dove-gray Audi pulled out from behind a pillar, turned on its headlights, and came toward her, gathering speed.

She drew her custom Lady Hawk 9mm from its thigh holster, moved to an expert sharpshooter‘s crouch, thumbed off the safety. She was just about to pull the trigger when the passenger‘s-side window slid down and the Audi screeched to a halt, rocking on its shocks.

―Moira—!‖

She bent her knees more to lower her line of vision.

―Moira, it‘s me, Jay!‖

Peering inside the Audi, she saw Jay Weston, an operative she‘d poached from Hobart, the largest government ODC—overseas defense contractor—six weeks ago.

At once she put up the Lady Hawk, holstered it. ―Jesus, Jay, you could‘ve gotten yourself killed.‖

―I need to see you.‖

She squinted. ―Well, shit, you could‘ve called.‖

He shook his head. His face was pinched and tight with unaccustomed tension. ―Cell phones are too insecure. I couldn‘t take the risk, not with this.‖

―Well,‖ she said, leaning on the window frame, ―what‘s so important?‖

―Not here,‖ he said, looking around furtively. ―Not anywhere where we can be overheard.‖

Moira frowned. ―Don‘t you think you‘re being a bit paranoid?‖

―Being paranoid is in my job description, isn‘t it?‖

She nodded; she supposed it was. ―All right, how d‘you—‖

―I need to show you something,‖ he said, patting a pocket of an expensive-looking sapphire-blue suede jacket slung across the passenger‘s seat, then took off toward the ramp up to the street before she had a chance to climb in or even answer him.

She sprinted to her car, starting it up with the remote as she ran.

Hauling open the door, she slid behind the wheel, slammed the door shut behind her, and put the car in gear. Jay‘s Audi was waiting for her at the top of the ramp. The moment he saw her approach in his rearview mirror, he took off, turning right out of the garage. Moira followed.

Late-night traffic with people returning home from the theater and movies was light, so there was no real reason for Jay to run the lights on P Street, but that‘s precisely what he continued to do. Moira put on speed to keep up with him; more than once she barely avoided being clipped by the cross-street traffic, tires squealing, horns blaring angrily.

Three blocks from her building they picked up a cop on a motorcycle. She flashed her high beams at Jay, but either he wasn‘t looking or he chose to ignore her because he kept running the red lights. All at once she saw the cop flash by her, heading toward the Audi in front of her.

―Shit,‖ she muttered, putting on some more speed.

She was thinking of how she was going to explain her operative‘s repeated infractions when the cop drew up alongside the Audi. An instant later he‘d drawn his service revolver, aimed it squarely at the driver‘s window, and pulled the trigger twice in close succession.

The Audi bucked and swerved. Moira had only seconds to avoid slamming into the car, but she was fighting the immoderate speed of her own vehicle.

At the periphery of her vision she saw the motorcycle cop peel off and head north at a cross street. The Audi, in the middle of a series of sickening pendulum-like swings, smashed into her, sending her car spinning.

The collision flipped the Audi over like a beetle on its hard, shiny back. Then, as if a monstrous fingertip had flicked it, it continued to roll over, but Moira lost track of it as her car struck a streetlight and careened into a parked car, staving in the offside front fender and door. A blizzard of shattered glass covered her as she was jerked forward, hit the deployed air bag then dizzyingly was slammed back against her seat.

Everything went black.

Climbing carefully over the rows of seat backs was like wading into a sea frozen solid with reef-struck bodies. It was the small broken bodies of the children that were hardest to pass by without heartbreak. Soraya murmured a prayer for each of the souls deprived of the full flight of life.

By the time she reached Delia‘s position, she realized that she‘d been holding her breath. She let it out now with a small hiss, the acrid odors of burned wiring, synthetic fabrics, and plastics invading her nostrils in full force.

She touched her friend on the shoulder and, mindful of her Egyptian observer, said softly, ―Let‘s take a walk.‖

The observer made to follow them, but stopped at a subtle hand sign from Chalthoum. Outside, the desert light was blinding, even with sunglasses, but the heat was clean, the arid spice of the desert, the murderous sun a welcome respite from the death pit into which they‘d both sunk. Coming home to the desert, Soraya thought, was like returning to a longed-for lover: The sand whispered against your skin in intimate caress. In the desert you could see things coming at you. Which was why people like Amun lied, because the desert told the truth, always, in the history it covered and uncovered, in the bones of civilization from which the eternal sand had scoured away all lies. Too much truth, people like Amun believed, was a terrible thing, because it left you nothing to believe in, nothing to live for. She knew she understood him far better than he understood her. He believed otherwise, of course, but that was a useful delusion for him to hold close.

―Delia, what‘s really going on?‖ Soraya asked when they‘d plodded some distance away from the al Mokhabarat sentries.

―Nothing I can substantiate at the moment.‖ She looked around to make sure they were alone. Seeing Chalthoum staring after them, she said, ―That man is creeping me out.‖

Soraya moved them farther away from the Egyptian‘s penetrating gaze.

–Don‘t worry, he can‘t overhear what we say. What‘s on your mind?‖

―Fucking sun.‖ Squinting behind her sunglasses, Delia used her hands to shadow her face. ―My lips are going to peel off before the night is over.‖

Soraya waited while the sun continued to throb in the sky and Delia‘s lips continued to burn.

―Fuck it,‖ Delia said at last. ―Five to two the crash wasn‘t caused by something inside the aircraft.‖ She was an inveterate poker player; every situation was a matter of odds. She often transformed nouns into verbs, too.

–I instinct a particular explosive.‖

―So it was no accident.‖ Soraya‘s blood ran cold. ―You ruled out a bomb so, what, an air-to-air missile?‖

Delia shrugged. ―Could be, but you read the transcript of the flight crew‘s last conversation with the tower at Cairo International. They saw no sign of a jet coming up on them.‖

―What about from underneath or behind?‖

―Sure, but then the radar would‘ve picked it up. Besides, according to the copilot, he saw something smaller even than a private jet coming up on them.‖

―But only at the last possible instant. The explosion took place before he had time to describe what it was.‖

―If you‘re right, that leads us toward a ground-to-air missile.‖

Delia nodded. ―If we get lucky the black box will be intact, and its recorder might tell us more.‖

―When?‖

―You saw what a mess it is in there. It‘s going to take a while to ascertain whether it‘s even retrievable.‖

Soraya said in the dry, ominous whisper of the hot wind that reshapes the dunes, ―A ground-to-air missile would bring an entire universe of very nasty possibilities into play.‖

―I know,‖ Delia said. ―Such as the involvement, either complicit or implicit, of the Egyptian government.‖

Soraya couldn‘t help but turn to look at Chalthoum. ―Or al Mokhabarat.‖

6

MOIRA AWOKE to the ticking of her mother‘s heart. It was as loud as a grandfather clock and it terrified her. For a moment she lay in a fury of darkness, reliving the blur of sound and motion as the paramedics came, took her mother off to the hospital, all seen through a haze of tears. That was the last time she saw her mother alive. She never had a chance to say good-bye; instead, the last words she‘d said to her were ―I hate your guts. Why don‘t you stay out of my life!‖ All of a sudden her mother was dead. Moira was seventeen.

Then the pain set in and she began screaming.

The ticking was real; it was, in fact, the sound of the over-revved engine cooling. Hands were pulling at her, cutting through the web of her seat belt, the flaccid cloud of the air bag. As if in a dream, she felt her body moving, the drag of gravity settling in her shoulder and the pit of her stomach. Her head felt as if it had been split open; she was nauseated with pain. Then, with a crash that reverberated through the cotton in her ears, she was out of her steel cage. She felt the night air soft on her cheek, and there were voices near her, buzzing like angry insects.

Her mother… the hospital waiting room, stinking of disinfectant and despair… the sight of the wax doll in the open coffin, horrifying in its inhuman lack of animation… at the cemetery, the yellow sky reeking of coal gas and sorrow… the ground swallowing the coffin whole, like a beast closing its jaws… clods of newly turned earth damp with rain and tears…

Awareness returned to her slowly, like a fog creeping over a moor, and then, with the suddenness of a floodlight being switched on, full consciousness returned. Awakening from a dream, she knew where she was and what had happened. She felt death close by, knew that it had bypassed her by inches. Each breath felt like fire and ice, but she was alive. She wriggled her fingers and toes. All there; all working.

―Jay,‖ she said into the face of the paramedic bent over her. ―Is Jay all right?‖

―Who‘s Jay?‖ a voice out of her field of vision said.

―There was no one else in your car.‖ The paramedic had a kind face. He looked too young for this kind of work.

―Not my car,‖ she managed. ―The one in front.‖

―Oh, jeez,‖ came the voice at her side.

The kind face above her split in sorrow. ―Your friend… Jay. He didn‘t make it.‖

Tears leaked from the corners of Moira‘s eyes. ―Oh, hell,‖ she said. ―Oh, damn.‖

They began to work on her again, and she said, ―I want to sit up.‖

―That wouldn‘t be a good idea, ma‘am,‖ the kind face said. ―You‘re in shock and—‖

―I‘m sitting up,‖ Moira said, ―with or without your help.‖

With hands under her arms, he drew her up. She was in the street, next to her car. When she tried to look around, she winced and lights exploded behind her eyes.

―Get me to my feet,‖ she said through gritted teeth. ―I need to see him.‖

―Ma‘am—‖

―Is anything broken?‖

―No, ma‘am, but—‖

―Then get me to my goddamn feet!‖

There were two of them now, the second one improbably looking younger than the first.

―Do you even shave?‖ she said as they raised her off the tarmac. Her knees nearly buckled and a wave of blackness consumed her so she had to lean on them for a minute.

―Ma‘am, you‘re white as a sheet,‖ the kind face said. ―I really think—‖

―Please don‘t call me ma‘am. My name is Moira.‖

―The cops will be here in a minute,‖ the other one said under his breath.

She felt a clutch in the pit of her stomach.

The kind face said to her, ―Moira, my name is Dave and my partner here is Earl. There are policemen who want to ask you what happened.‖

―It was a policeman who caused all this,‖ Moira said.

―What?‖ Dave said. ―What did you say?‖

―I want to see Jay.‖

―Believe me,‖ Earl said, ―you really don‘t.‖

Moira reached down, patted her Lady Hawk. ―Don‘t fuck with me, guys.‖

Without another word they took her down the street. It was littered with car parts and the glitter of blown-out windows and taillights. She saw a fire truck, an EMT ambulance beside the hideous wreck of the Audi. No one could have survived that crash. With each step she gained strength and confidence.

She was banged up and bruised, possibly, as they said, in shock, but otherwise unscathed. Luck beyond words. She thought of the pig spirit in Bali, who must still be protecting her.

―Here come the Warm Jets,‖ Earl said.

―He means the cops,‖ Dave translated.

―Guys,‖ she said, ―I need some alone time with my friend and the cops won‘t let me have it.‖

―Neither should we,‖ Dave said dubiously.

―I‘ll handle these bozos.‖ Earl peeled off to intercept them.

―Steady on.‖

Dave gripped her more tightly as she staggered without Earl‘s countervailing support. She took another couple of deep breaths to clear her mind and steady her body. She knew she had very little time before the cops would brush aside whatever smokescreen Earl managed to concoct.

They passed the all-but-unrecognizable crumple-and-twist of the Audi. She took a deep breath, righted herself, then they were at what remained of Jay Weston. He looked more like a lump of raw meat than a human being.

―How in the world did you get him out?‖