Текст книги "The Bourne Dominion (Господство Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“No, man, I say triple for that.”

“Triple is too much,” Marchand said.

“Shit, for that bitch triple’s too little. You got ten seconds, then the price goes up.”

“Okay, okay,” Marchand said after a short pause.

Soraya could heard the slither of bills being counted out.

“I’ll have a photo downloaded to your cell phone,” Marchand said.

“Don’t need no pho-to. That Moore bitch’s face is etched in my brain.”

Soraya shuddered. There was something grimly surreal about eavesdropping on the plans for her own imminent demise. She could feel her heart hammering in her throat as the meeting broke up.

She hated these Arabs, but she remained motionless. The mission was to discover whom Marchand had called after they had scared him half out of his wits. These Arab thugs couldn’t tell her; only Marchand could do that. He would never have talked on his own territory, but now that she had caught him in a compromising position with these hit men, he might be more inclined—

She started as Amun came racing out of the shadows. The older of the Arabs turned, a switchblade already in one hand. He stabbed outward, forcing Amun to change direction. The younger Arab smashed his fist into the side of Amun’s head, knocking him down.

Soraya dropped feet-first from the beam, her knee catching the younger Arab in the small of the back. He went down, his head striking the concrete, which shattered his front teeth. Blood spattered from his split lip. He groaned and lay still. Amun scrambled away from the older Arab’s knife, and they both vanished into the darkness.

That left Soraya and Donatien Marchand. He stared at her with the fixed intensity of a trapped wolf. His eyes seemed yellow with hatred.

“How did you know where I was coming?” When she didn’t answer, he glanced around. “Where’s the Jew? Too timid to make it down here?”

“You’re dealing with me now,” Soraya said.

Before she could say another word, Marchand bolted away. She tore after him, back toward the stairs. Part of her mind was with Amun and his fight with the Arab. Were there more down here? But she couldn’t think of that now; she couldn’t let Marchand get away.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and leapt upward, faster and more agile than she had expected. She pounded after, through the wan, gritty light, up through patches of darkness, past the tiny landing, ascending the second part of the staircase, up toward where the bare bulb emitted its waxen light.

Marchand was running so hard he hit the bulb with his shoulder. It swung back and forth on the end of its flex, casting wild and disorienting shadows across the stairs. Soraya redoubled her pace, closing the distance to her enemy.

All at once Marchand stopped and, whirling, drew a small .22 with silver grips. He fired once, wildly, and then again as she closed, the second bullet tearing through the shoulder of her jacket but leaving her unharmed.

Barreling into him, she drove the edge of her hand into his wrist, knocking the .22 out of his grip. With a series of bright, hard clangs, it bounded down the stairs and lay half in the shadows.

Soraya grabbed the front of Marchand’s coat, drawing him to her, but he had reached up and, before she knew what had happened, looped the electrical flex around her neck. He pulled tight and she gagged. Her hands reached up to loosen the flex, but Marchand, standing behind her, only pulled it tighter.

Her fingers scrabbled futilely at the flex cutting into her neck and throat. She tried to draw a breath, but it was no use. A moment later she began to lose consciousness.

16

BOURNE ARRIVED IN Seville with his two passengers without further incident. Interpol hadn’t been waiting for the plane in Madrid, and in Seville the trio passed through the arrivals terminal unnoticed.

As promised, a rental car was waiting for them along with an Internet address. Bourne entered it into his cell phone’s browser and up came a map of the area from Seville to Cadiz. A purple line indicated the route Essai expected them to take. At the end was an address in Cadiz, the place, he assumed, where Don Fernando Hererra was waiting for their arrival.

They climbed into the car, and Bourne started it up then drove them out of the airport. He had spent the air time trying to figure out Jalal Essai’s game. There was no doubt that Essai had fed him a brew of truth and lies, so whether he was ally or enemy was still to be determined. Bourne had also spent much of the time brooding over his friend Boris Karpov. If it was true he had been ordered to kill Bourne, he hadn’t shown up yet. But would he? Essai wanted something from Bourne, something he knew Bourne wouldn’t do if Essai asked him straight-out. Did it have to do with Boris? Bourne felt a vast net beginning to tighten around him, but as yet he had no idea of its size or origin.

Someone wanted him—but why and for what?

“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” Rosie said from the seat next to him.

Bourne smiled, staring straight ahead as he navigated the road. He was concerned about tails, but so far the traffic behind them appeared normal.

“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

“ Dios mio, Rosie,” Vegas said from the backseat, “stop peppering him with questions.”

“I’m only making conversation, mi amor.” She turned to Bourne, but her eyes did not meet his, sliding away into shadow. “I know what it’s like to be alone—really alone, crouched in the shadows watching the sunlight.”

“Rosie!”

“Hush, mi amor.” She addressed Bourne again. “Here is what I can’t understand: Why would someone do this voluntarily?”

“You know,” Bourne said, “you don’t speak like someone from the backwater of Colombia.”

“I sound educated, yes?”

“I admire your vocabulary.”

Her laughter was deep and rich. “Yes, someone like you would.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“No? You are alone, always alone. I think this is the essential thing about you—it defines how you think and everything you do.” She cocked her head. “You have no answer for this?”

“I don’t know a single thing about you.”

She touched the scars on her neck and chest. “But I think you do.”

“The margay.”

“She was so beautiful,” Rosie said, “but I got in her way.”

“No,” Bourne said. “You frightened her.”

Rosie looked away, out her window at the passing scenery, which was nothing much, a series of hypnotically undulating hills, some covered in groves of gnarled, dusty-looking olive trees.

Bourne glanced again in the rearview mirror. There was a red Fiat he was keeping an eye on, though he doubted any professional tail would be driving a red car.

“Stumbling over a margay’s den,” he said, “that doesn’t sound like the kind of behavior I’d expect from someone who was born and raised in the Cordilleras.”

“I was running. Crossing a stream, I slipped on a mossy rock and hurt my knee. I wasn’t looking where I was going; I was frightened.”

“You were running away.”

“Yes.”

“From whom?”

Rosie tossed her head. “You’re always running. You should know.”

“I was told you were running away from your family.”

She nodded. “That is true.”

“I’ve never done that.”

“And yet you’re alone, always alone,” she said. “It must be exhausting.”

Vegas leaned forward. “Rosie, for the love of God!” He turned to Bourne. “I apologize for her.”

Bourne shrugged. “The world is full of opinions.”

“I know why you run,” Rosie said. “It is so nothing will touch you.”

Bourne’s eyes flicked again to the rearview mirror, the red Fiat, then to Rosie’s face, but once again her eyes were averted.

“I suppose there’s not much call for a psychologist in Ibagué,” he said. “Is that where you were born?”

“I am Achagua,” Rosie said. “From the serpent line.”

Bourne, an expert in comparative languages, knew that the Achagua had named their different family lineages after animals: serpent, jaguar, fox, bat, tapir.

“Do you speak the language—Irantxe?”

A slow smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Nice try. I’m impressed. Really. But no, Irantxe is its own language. The Achagua spoke any number of Maipurean dialects depending on whether they lived in the mountains or the Amazon basin.” Her smile broadened. “Please tell me you don’t speak any of those languages.”

“I don’t,” Bourne said.

“Neither do I. They were spoken a very long time ago. Even my father had no knowledge of them.”

Bourne’s eyes returned to the rearview mirror. He could no longer see the red Fiat and, instead, began to concentrate on the black van up ahead. Over the past fifteen minutes, it had had several opportunities to change lanes and speed, but it hadn’t done so. Instead it had maintained its position four vehicles ahead of him.

Checking his side mirror, he waited for a break in the traffic, then, without signaling, shot forward into the left-hand lane. Within seconds he had passed the black van. He watched it firmly planted in his rearview, receding slowly from view. Then it changed lanes and accelerated.

Now he began to look for the box, a tailing maneuver extremely difficult to shake since it involved vehicles in front and behind.

“What’s happening?” Vegas said.

Bourne could feel the anxiety radiating from him like waves of heat.

“There are people on this road who shouldn’t be here,” Bourne said. “Sit back.”

Rosie gripped the handle above her door but said nothing. Her face was set in neutral. She knew when to keep quiet, Bourne thought.

The black van had established a position a car’s length behind him. Apparently, the driver understood he had been made.

Bourne checked ahead, but saw no other black van. He saw two-seater sports cars, a bus full of Japanese tourists, cameras held in front of their faces, and sedans with families. There were also a wide variety of trucks, including a semi, but none of these vehicles seemed likely to be part of the box.

He tried varying his speed, noting how each vehicle in front of him reacted, but he got no definitive read. He thought it interesting—and worrisome—that though the black van had announced itself, the second vehicle was still incognito. He wondered what that meant because it wasn’t part of the box playbook, which dictated all-in or all-out. Once one of the vehicles in the box was made, usually the two vehicles either peeled off or closed in.

Suddenly the black van made its move, coming up on Bourne’s left. He switched into the center lane and, moments later, it followed. He kept going, into the right-hand lane even though the semi was now in front of him. If the black van followed, he could always swing around the semi’s left.

With a burst of speed, the black van cut off a chugging sedan as it swerved into the right-hand lane behind Bourne. Bourne looked for a break in the traffic to switch to the center lane, but even as he plotted vectors the black van came up dangerously close behind him. He accelerated, and, at that precise moment, the rear of the semi slammed down, its edge casting off a shower of sparks as it dragged along the roadbed.

The moment Bourne saw it, he understood. The rear panel had been retrofitted as a ramp. The black van then gently rear-ended him, urging his rental car farther toward the ramp and the yawning empty interior of the semi, the box’s second vehicle. These people never meant to tail him, never meant to kill him: They meant to capture him, seal him in, and take him out of the field permanently.

Soraya, struggling to stay conscious, dug her heels into the grit of the staircase. At the same time, she swiveled her hips to the left, moving them out of the way of her right elbow, which she drove into the soft spot in Marchand’s throat.

Marchand reared back, so shocked that he took his hands off the flex to belatedly protect his vulnerable throat. With her right hand, she tore the flex away from her throat. She slammed her knee into Marchand’s crotch. He gasped, bent over double, and she wrapped the flex around his neck, pulling on both ends so hard he collapsed to his knees.

He made little gasping sounds like a fish on the deck of a boat. He looked up at her, his watering eyes bloodshot and bulging. He tried to swipe at her with his right hand, then his left, but her grip on him was terminal.

She bent over, shoving her grim face in his. “Now, M. Marchand, you’re going to tell me what I want to know. You’re going to tell me now or by Allah I will take your life and your soul and I will grind them both to dust.”

He stared at her. His face was becoming bloated, dark with pooled blood. Tears of pain spilled out of his eyes. She could see the whites all the way around.

“Ak, ak, ak” was all he could manage.

The moment she loosened the flex the smallest amount he lashed out at her, but she slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose, resulting in a spray of blood that covered his upper lip, cheeks, and chin.

“Now talk,” she said. “Who did you call after we left your office?”

His eyes opened even wider. “How… how did you know?”

“Tell me.”

“Why bother? You will kill me anyway.” His voice sounded sodden, as if he were speaking to her from underwater.

“And why not? You were planning my death,” she said. “But unlike you, I might have a measure of mercy inside me. That’s the chance you’ll have to take.”

All of a sudden his shoulders slumped and he shrugged. “So I tell you. What does it matter? You won’t get out of here alive.”

Soraya had had enough of him. Her desire to break him into little pieces became overwhelming. Taking his broken nose in her hand, she turned it like a water faucet until new tears sprang from his eyes and he was panting like a pack animal about to collapse. Then and only then did she loosen the flex sufficiently.

She stared hard into his eyes. “Five seconds, four, three—”

He jabbed upward, his fist connecting with her left breast. Soraya saw stars and, staggering back, almost pitched off the stairs. Seizing his moment, Marchand sprang at her, his face purple, his cheeks blotchy, and his breath sawed raggedly from his throat. His hands throttled her, bending her backward as he attempted to pitch her off the staircase down into the blackness at the bottom.

Also struggling for breath, Soraya cursed herself for letting down her guard, while working to spread his forearms and mitigate his attack. But Marchand was out for blood.

Soraya punched and punched, but she lacked leverage, so her blows were having a minimal effect. Lights were bursting behind her eyes and she was having trouble thinking. She struggled mightily, but that only seemed to worm her deeper into his grip. Slowly, inexorably, he pushed her backward against the railing, until her back was arched painfully.

Light and shadow danced spastically, eerily, as the bulb swung to her ever more desperate movements. She found herself staring at the light bulb, a miniature sun emanating from the coils. Then she blinked. She was at the tipping point and felt him marshaling his energy to heave her over the side. Her arm shot up. Grasping the base of the bulb, she slammed it into Marchand’s left eye.

He screamed as the glass shattered, piercing his eyeball. Soraya, feeling the pressure come off, shoved the broken base deeper in.

The corona of the electric shock spun her backward like a giant hand slap. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths, desperate to return oxygen to her system. She felt harrowed, hollowed out.

Then she smelled burning flesh and almost gagged. She stood up straight, groaning, every muscle in her torso sore and aching. Marchand was on his knees. His hands were glued to the base of the bulb, which was buried in his eye socket. Muscles jumped and spasmed even as he fell over, his heart short-circuiting.

17

THE ONCOMING BLACK van was behind Bourne, the semi ready to scoop them up in front. To the right was a two-foot shoulder ending in a galvanized-steel guardrail, beyond which was a steep drop-off into an olive grove clinging to the side of a hill. On his left was a convertible Mercedes, the oblivious driver bobbing his head to the music pouring out of his speakers. There was no time for thought, only instinct forged by years of training and hard experience.

Bourne accelerated, closing the car’s-length distance between him and the ramp. Then he was on the ramp itself, the nose of the rental car pointed up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vegas shouted.

Halfway up the ramp Bourne turned the wheel hard to his left and, at the same time, stamped the accelerator to the floor. The car shot up and off the ramp. Airborne, it passed over the Mercedes, the undercarriage clearing the driver’s head by inches even before he instinctively ducked. Horns blared, brakes screeched. Bourne clipped the rear end of the car in the far left lane, regained control, and kept going. Behind him, cars piled into one another in a chain reaction, but the rental car was free now, accelerating away from the semi and the black van, both of which were caught in the expanding chaos of a massive crash.

“ ¡Madre de Dios!” Vegas cried. “Is my poor heart still beating?”

Rosie released her grip on the handle above the door. “What Estevan means is thank you.”

“What I mean is I need a drink,” Vegas muttered from behind them.

The day was spent, the sun, yellow bordering on orange, pressed down against the hills in the west like a fried egg. Twilight swept across the olive groves, lending their tortured branches a spooky aspect. They were racing west, toward the darkness of night and a sprinkling of first-magnitude stars.

The atmosphere in the car had altered. Bourne could feel it as surely as you feel the onset of winter, a drop in the pressure, a tiny shiver of a premonition. Following their escape from the box, a subtle shift in the balance of his two charges had occurred. It was as if Vegas, the competent oil man, felt like a fish out of water away from his mountains and his oil fields. Whereas their journey away from Ibagué had caused Rosie to blossom like a flower in sunlight.

He thought about the elaborate box, which had the hand of the Domna all over it. The Domna had tracked him down. Had Jalal Essai told them? Bourne wouldn’t put it past him. Essai remained a complete mystery to Bourne.

Painful as it might be, everything Rosie had said was true: He was running away from everything and everyone. And of course, it was clear why. Once, he had cared deeply for a handful of people. Now all of them save Moira and Soraya were dead. Perhaps some of them, because of him. No more, an insistent voice inside of him cried. No more. His new philosophy, developed without his even being aware of it, was simple: Keep running. He knew he couldn’t get hurt running. But the downside, the collateral damage that Rosie had so cleverly pointed out to him, was that he felt nothing. Was that living? Was he even alive? And if he wasn’t, what was the state of being in which he found himself?

To distract himself, he turned to Rosie. “Why were you running away?”

“The usual reasons.”

She had a knack of answering questions as he would have, without revealing any pertinent information. “There are no usual reasons,” he shot back.

This made her laugh, a sound he found intriguing. It was deep and rich, launched from her stomach. There was nothing shallow or phony about that laugh. “Well, you’re right about that.”

She was silent for some time. Bourne caught a look at Vegas, asleep in the backseat. He looked drawn, exhausted, as if he’d traveled from the Cordilleras to just outside Cadiz on foot.

“I was not a good girl,” Rosie said, after a time. She was staring out her side window. “I was, what do you call it, the black sheep. Whatever I did made the people around me angry.”

“Your family.”

“Not just my family. There were friends affected, too. That was one of the things my family couldn’t forgive me for.”

They rode on in silence, the wind cracking and moaning through the car. Rosie pushed her hair back behind her ear, revealing a small tattoo on the inside of one of the whorls.

“I see you keep a serpent with you at all times,” Bourne said. The snake was striped orange and black.

She touched the pink shell of her ear. “It’s a skytale.”

“It looks mythical. Does it breathe fire?”

“Huh! I’ve yet to hear about a creature that breathes fire.”

“You haven’t met some of the Russians I have.”

That laugh again, filling the car as if with perfume.

Bourne hesitated only a moment. “But you have met some bad people.”

The wind floated her hair over her ear, obscuring the tiny dragon. “Pretty bad, yes.” Before he could follow up, she said, “Why are you running?”

“I pissed off some very powerful people. They had plans and I got in the way.”

Rosie gave Vegas a quick glance over her shoulder. “If it’s the Domna, then good for you.”

This brought a wry smile to Bourne’s face. “What do you know about Estevan’s involvement with them?”

Rosie hesitated, possibly considering whether or not to violate a confidence. Then she said, “His involvement wasn’t voluntary, I can tell you that.”

“How did they trap him?”

“His daughter.”

“I thought she ran off with a handsome Brazilian?”

“Who told you that? Suarez?” When Bourne said nothing, Rosie shrugged and went on grimly. “That is the story Estevan decided on. It made sense, it was plausible. But the truth is the Domna kidnapped her. Where she is, I have no idea. Every week, Estevan received a photo of her holding a dated newspaper so he knew she was alive.”

“But Estevan rebelled,” Bourne said.

She ran her hands through her hair. “Essai told him that the Domna didn’t have his daughter. They had taken her, but long ago she escaped. No one knows how or where she is. The only thing that Essai could tell Estevan was that the two men who had kidnapped her were found dead, their throats slit. The rest is a complete mystery.”

“And the photo they sent him every week?”

“Photoshopped. They apparently used a girl built like her, then put Estevan’s daughter’s head onto her shoulders.” She shuddered. “Ghoulish.”

“I assume Estevan has never heard from her.”

“Not a word.”

Bourne turned off the highway at the exit for Cadiz. “Not long now.”

“Thank God,” Rosie said under her breath.

“She must have had help,” Bourne said thoughtfully.

“Estevan and I talked about that a lot.” She shrugged. “For all the good it did.”

Bourne could see the city up ahead, like a shining ball of Byzantine brass. He rolled down the window all the way and drew the rich scent of the sea into his lungs.

“How much does Estevan know about the Domna?” Bourne asked. He remembered Essai telling him that if Estevan couldn’t tell him what the Domna’s new plan was he would surely know someone who could.

Rosie shifted in her seat. “The fact that he had to be coerced into working for them should tell you all you need to know.”

“He was a cog in a wheel.”

“Everyone except the directors is a cog. It’s safer that way; compartmentalization provides complete security. In Estevan’s case, he provided an invaluable service.”

“Which was?”

“Oil rigs are under constant stress, parts wear out, clog, snap. New parts are always on order, the older ones being shipped back to the various manufacturers, you get the idea.”

Bourne did. “What was Estevan smuggling in and out of Colombia for them?”

Rosie shrugged. “Drugs, weapons—for all I know, human beings. Honestly, it could have been anything.”

“Estevan never told you?”

“He never knew. The sealed crates came and went. They were marked in a certain way. He was prohibited from opening them. He was simply the conduit.”

“Curiosity is part of the human condition,” Bourne said. “He never peeked?”

“They were sealed in a specific fashion. Anyway, if he found a way in, he never spoke about it.”

“Would he keep something like that from you?”

“As you have seen for yourself, Estevan is extremely protective of me. He would die rather than expose me to danger.”

When is a response not an answer?Bourne thought. When Rosie provides it.

They had entered the streets of old Cadiz, ablaze with light and sharp shadows. The filigreed architecture of North Africa was all around them. It was as if they had immigrated into another world, one suspended on the ocean, balanced between East and West, part of both, belonging to neither.

The light of day looked fatigued; the sharp odor of a storm was in the air. Night was already beginning to gather.

They drove on, down crooked streets, hearing the calls of street vendors in Spanish and Arabic, inhaling the incense of history.

Where did you learn to pilot a boat?” Marlon Etana said as he sat on the sailboat’s bench.

“I’m full of surprises,” Essai said. “Even to a man like you.”

“A man like me sent to kill a man like you.”

Essai laughed. “The best-laid plans.”

After meeting up at the café early in the morning, the two men had shared a coffee. They talked about home, about nothing at all. Then they went for a long walk, but even then nothing of consequence passed between them. This was how they wanted it, how it had to be. Theirs was a relationship so buried in conspiracy, deceit, and deepest cover they often had difficulty communicating simply as human beings.

Essai had reserved a sailboat at the rental dock, and they had set sail just after lunchtime, when the world of Cadiz was still drowsing in siesta. All the other boats had pushed off just after dawn, so they wouldn’t return until late afternoon. No one saw them; no one but the rental agent was around, and his sole interest was in the euros that crossed his greedy palm.

The day was clear, just some high clouds passing, the sun beating down, flattening the water to beaten brass. Still, the wind was up, and Essai maneuvered the small sailboat expertly, effortlessly, as if he had been born on the water. The edge of Cadiz slipped away, a Saracen’s massive scimitar, its hilt encrusted with jewels winking in the sunlight.

It wasn’t until the sun lowered, the western sky turning into a palette full of gaudy colors, that they got around to talking.

“El-Arian still thinks you hate me, yes?” Essai said.

“More than ever, I think.” Etana’s skull was gilded, but his thick beard extinguished the light. “I wanted to go after Bourne, but Benjamin assigned me to you.”

“The wily bastard recruited Viktor Cherkesov. Cherkesov has Boris Karpov in his back pocket; he’s the only one who does.”

From his seat in the cockpit, Etana stared down into the water, cobalt with streaks of orange interspersed with an inky black. “I don’t think that’s the only reason he recruited Cherkesov.”

Essai turned from checking the wind, one hand on the wheel. “Oh?”

Etana pulled into himself, elbows on stringy, muscular thighs. “Cherkesov’s first assignment wasn’t meeting with Karpov. El-Arian sent him to the Mosque.”

Essai felt a chill run through him. The light was wavering before his eyes, turning from gold to blue-black. “The Mosque in Munich?”

“The very same.”

“But why?”

Etana sighed. “I’d have to be a sorcerer to know that.”

“He sent a Russian ex–FSB director to the Mosque?” Essai shook his head. “El-Arian must be mad.”

Etana raised his eyes to Essai’s. “We need to come up with a better explanation, and quickly.”

“What about the plan?” Essai didn’t want to think about the Mosque. The Mosque and the people who now ran it were the reason for the hatred burning inside him.

“El-Arian briefed the directors before I left Paris, but of course I wasn’t part of the meeting. No one has said a word.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to.”

The wind changed and the sails were beginning to luff, rippling like a flag. Essai rose briefly, made an adjustment, then returned to the cockpit and tacked starboard.

“Careful,” he said.

With a crack of the sail, the boom swung past them.

Essai kept the boat close-hauled, the quartering wind pushing out the sails like a fat man’s cheek. They skimmed through the water, roughly paralleling the shore.

Etana steepled his brown fingers, long as a pianist’s. “I admit you were right, Jalal. There’s no doubt the Mosque’s influence over the Domna is increasing every day.”

“This is Abdul-Qahhar’s doing,” Essai said bitterly. “Servant of the Subduer, indeed!”

“But how did El-Arian come under their control?”

Essai kept the boat steady on its course. “One has to go back decades, to a man named Norén, a deep-cover operative who infiltrated the Domna. Now and again, the Domna required a bit of wet work, and they used Norén. He was a ghost—a reliable ghost—which is the most important thing. But all the while he was on assignments for the Domna he was compiling lists of names, dates, facts, and figures.”

“To use against the Domna.”

“They were used. We lost twenty-one operatives in the span of three weeks.”

“But who was he working for?”

“No one knows, though many people within the Domna and under its control tried to find out.” Essai squinted off to the west, where thunderheads were building. The wind grew gusty, the water choppy, and he turned the wheel, heading for shore. “Norén was killed.”

“What happened?”

“He was overmatched on one of his assignments.”

Etana grunted. “Who was the target?”

Essai maneuvered the boat so that it was running before the wind, the hull cleaving the water, spray slapping them in the face with each wave crest.

“A man named Alexander Conklin shot him dead.” Essai gave his companion a glance. “Heard of him?”

Etana shook his head.

Essai kept one eye on the roiling thunderheads. “Conklin was the head of Treadstone. In fact, he created it. One of the primary missions of Treadstone was to take down the Domna hierarchy. That’s why Conklin became a target.”

“And after Norén?”

“The whole idea of terminating Conklin was deemed too risky,” Essai said. They were nearing the shore now, the gusty wind pushing them fast, so that he had to begin a long tack in order to slow them.

“Here, take the wheel and hold it steady.”

With Etana’s hands on the wheel, Essai stepped out of the cockpit, went forward, and reefed the jib in order to cut their speed even more. He could feel the storm’s damp slap on his face, though it hadn’t yet broken.

When he returned to the cockpit, he retook the wheel.

“Conklin and Treadstone scared the Domna,” he said. “That was when El-Arian reached out to Abdul-Qahhar.”

“Without getting the other directors’ prior consent?”