Текст книги "The Bourne Dominion (Господство Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

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 areawake, 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.

22

PETER MARKS FLOATED in and out of consciousness like a swimmer caught in a rip current. One moment, his feet seemed to be on solid footing, the next they were sliding away as a wave crashed over him, taking him off his feet, spinning him down into a reddish darkness distinguished by vertigo and pain.

He heard his own groans and the voices of unfamiliar people, but these seemed to be either at a great remove or filtered through layers of gauze. Light hurt his eyes. The only thing he could get down was baby food, and this only occasionally. He felt as if he were dying, as if he lay suspended between life and death, an unwilling citizen of a gray limbo. At last he understood the phrase bed of pain.

And yet, there came a time when his pain lessened, he ate more, and, blessedly, limbo faded into the realm of dreams, only half remembered, receding as if he were on a train speeding away from a dreadful place in which it had been stalled.

He opened his eyes to light and color. He took a deep breath, then another. He felt his lungs fill and empty without the crushing pain that had gripped him for what seemed like forever.

“He’s conscious.” A voice from above, as if an angel were hovering, beating its delicate wings.

“Who…” Peter licked his lips. “Who are you?”

“Yo, it’s Tyrone, Chief.”

Peter’s eyes felt gluey, there were coronas around everything he looked at, as if he were hallucinating. “I… Who?”

“Tyrone Elkins. From CI.”

“CI?”

“I picked you up offa tha street. You were fucked up.”

“I don’t remember…”

The black head turned. “Yo, Deron, yo, yo, yo.” Then Tyrone turned back and spoke to Peter again. “The ambulance. Remember the ambulance, Chief?”

Something was forming out of the haze. “I…”

“The bogus EMS guys. You got yourself outta the ambulance, shit, still don’t know how.”

The memory started to form like a cloud building on the horizon. Peter remembered the garage at the Treadstone building, the explosion, being hustled into the ambulance, the realization that he wasn’t being taken to the hospital, that these attendants were the enemy.

“I remember,” he murmured.

“That’s good, that’s very good.”

Another face along with Tyrone’s. Tyrone had called him Deron. A handsome black man with an upper-class British accent.

“Who are you?”

“You remember Tyrone? He’s from CI. A friend of Soraya’s.” The handsome man smiled down at Peter. “My name’s Deron. I’m a friend of Jason’s.”

Peter’s brain took a moment to click into gear. “Bourne?”

“That’s right.”

He closed his eyes, blessing the good luck that had landed him in the safest place in DC.

“Peter, do you know who those people were in the ambulance?”

Peter’s eyes popped open. “Never saw them before.” He felt his heart beating and sensed that it had been working hard for some time, working to keep him alive. “I don’t know…”

“Okay, okay,” Deron said. “Save your breath.” He turned to Tyrone. “Can you get on this? There must be a police report on the shootings. Use your creds and see if you can get IDs on the dead men.”

Tyrone nodded and took off.

Deron picked up a plastic glass of water with a bendy straw in it. “Now,” he said, “let’s see if we can get some more liquid in you.”

Placing one hand behind Peter’s head, he lifted it gently and offered him the straw. Peter sipped slowly, even though he was parched. His tongue felt swollen to twice its size.

“Tyrone told me the whole story,” Deron said, “at least as much as he knew.” He took the straw out of Peter’s mouth. “It sounds like you were being kidnapped.”

Peter nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t…” Then Peter remembered. He’d done intensive research on Roy FitzWilliams and the Damascus-based El-Gabal, to which Fitz had had ties. Hendricks had been absolutely paranoid about security on the issue of Roy FitzWilliams. Peter groaned.

“What is it? Are you in pain?”

“No, that would be too simple,” Peter said with a gritty smile. “I fucked up, Deron. My boss warned me to be careful and I did some back-door research on a company computer, which runs through the government server.”

“So whoever was tapping in got scared and sent the extraction team.”

“Well, they tried to kill me first.” Peter described the explosion in the garage. “The extraction team was there as a backup.”

“Which speaks both of meticulous planning and an organization with influence and deep pockets.” Deron rubbed his jaw. “I would say you’ve got big problems, except for the fact that Ty tells me you’re director of Treadstone. You’ve got plenty of firepower yourself.”

“Sadly, no,” Peter said. “Soraya and I are still getting Treadstone back on its feet. Most of our current personnel are overseas. Our domestic infrastructure is still hollowed out.”

Deron sat back, forearms on his knees. Losing his English accent, he said, “Damn, homey, you done washed up at da right place.”

Bourne took the Vespa around a corner, speeding after the gunman. He could see him up ahead on the white Vespa, weaving in and out of traffic as he followed the road along the waterfront, heading south. It was difficult to make up ground, but slowly, by running the bike full-out, Bourne was gaining. The gunman had not looked behind him; he didn’t know that someone was on his tail.

He went through a light as it was turning red. Bourne, hunched over the handlebars, judged the vectors of the cross-traffic and, with a twist to the left, then the right, shot through the intersection.

Down the block the gunman had pulled over to the curb behind a black van. He popped open the rear doors and, with the help of the van’s driver, hoisted the Vespa into the interior. Then he slammed the doors, and both men climbed into the front. Bourne was still going full-out, and as the van pulled out into the flow of traffic he was no more than two car lengths behind.

The van soon turned off the sea road, heading into Cadiz itself. It followed a tortuous path down the city’s narrow, crooked streets. At length, the van pulled over and stopped along a street of warehouses. The driver got out and unlocked a door that rolled up electronically, then returned to the van. Bourne ditched the Vespa and sprinted as the van drove through into the interior. The door rattled down and Bourne dived through with just enough room to spare.

He lay on a bare concrete floor that stank of creosote and motor oil. The only illumination came from the van’s headlights. Doors slammed as the two men jumped down onto the concrete. They didn’t bother to unload the Vespa. Bourne rose to one knee, hiding behind an enormous metal barrel. The gunman must have gone to a switch box, because a moment later light flooded the interior from a pair of overheads, capped with green shades. There seemed to be nothing in the warehouse except more of the barrels and two stacks of wooden crates. The driver switched off the headlights, then the two men crossed to the crates.

“Is she dead?” the driver said in Moscow-accented Russian.

“I don’t know, everything happened too fast.” The gunman laid his pistol down on top of one of the crates.

“It is unfortunate that you didn’t stick to the plan,” the driver said with a tone of lamentation only Russians could exhibit.

“She came outside,” the gunman protested. “The temptation was too great. Hit her and run. You would have done the same.”

The driver shrugged. “I’m just happy I’m not in your shoes.”

“Fuck you,” the gunman said. “You’re the other half of this team. If I missed her it’s going to fall on both our shoulders.”

“If our superior finds out,” the driver said, “our shoulders won’t be supporting anything worth talking about.”

The gunman picked up his weapon and reloaded it. “So?”

“So we find out if she’s dead.” The driver squared on his companion. “And if not, we rectify your error together.”

The two men stepped behind the stack and opened a narrow door. Before he went through into what Bourne surmised might be the office, the gunman extinguished the lights. Bourne crept to the van, carefully opened the driver’s door, and rummaged around until he found a flashlight. In the rear, he went through a box of tools and picked out a crowbar. Then he stepped to the stack and squatted down so that the crates were between him and the rear door. Switching on the flashlight, he played the beam over the crates. The wood was an odd greenish color, smooth and virtually seamless. The beam slid across the surface, and he felt his heart rate accelerate. The crates were marked with their origin, Don Fernando’s oil company in Colombia.

Boris felt his blood run cold. “Cherkesov came hereto meet with Ivan?” He shook his head. “This I cannot believe.”

The heavyset man signaled to one of the men along the wall, who stepped forward. Boris tensed as the acolyte reached into his robes, but all he brought out was a set of grainy black-and-white photos, which he held out to Boris.

“Go on, take a look,” the heavyset man said. “Because of the lighting, you’ll be able to tell that they were not doctored in any way.”

Boris took the photos and stared down at them, his mind working a mile a minute. There were Cherkesov and Ivan speaking together. A bit of the Mosque’s interior could be seen behind them. He took note of the date the camera had printed in the lower left-hand corner of the photos.

He looked at the heavyset man kneeling on the prayer rug. He hadn’t budged since Boris had been shown into the room. “What were they talking about?”

A smile formed on the lips of the heavyset man. “I know who you are, General Karpov.”

Boris stood very still, his gaze not on the kneeling man, but on his acolytes. They seemed to have as little interest in him as they had before. “Then you are one up on me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t know who you are.”

The smile broadened. “Ah, curiosity! But it is far better for you that you don’t know.” He unlaced his fingers. “We must concentrate on the matter at hand: Cherkesov and Volkin.” He locked his red lips. “I am, shall we say, acutely aware that FSB-2, of which you are now the head, and SVR are locked in a deadly power struggle.”

Boris waited out the silence. He was getting to know this nameless man, his predilection for dramatic pauses and declarations, the way he meted out information in precise bits and pieces.

“But that power struggle,” the man continued, “is far more complicated than you know. There are powers lining up on either side that far surpass those of FSB-2 and SVR.”

“I assume you’re referring to Severus Domna.”