Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

He was certain that Li, and possibly Natasha as well, were laughing at him on their nights out, as if he were an animal they constantly taunted through the bars of his cage.

The light of the bedside clock penetrated his eyelids. Barely an hour since he had returned from his 4 am rendezvous with Li at the restaurant in Chinatown. The General Tso’s chicken lay in his stomach like a ball of wax, unmoving and indigestible.

He turned once more, then rolled to the side of the bed and sat up. Today there was to be no respite in sleep, no way out of the noose tightening inexorably around him. Of course, he could ask Soraya for immunity from the coming phone hacking tsunami, but that would mean crawling back to her on his knees, groveling like the basest supplicant. He would be in her power forever, and he knew from bitter experience that she could be merciless when she felt she had been wronged. But what if she was his only recourse? Li had made noises about helping him, but he’d rather be tied to a third rail than be in that bastard’s debt.

No, he thought now, as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, Soraya was his last best hope of getting out of the water before the Justice Department investigation sank all boats.

Then he remembered that she was in the hospital, that she was carrying his baby, and all at once, the General Tso’s chicken moved inside him in an altogether unpleasant manner.

He jumped up, and, sprinting, just made it across his bedroom, over the bathroom tiles, to the toilet before vomiting with such force that he felt as if his intestines had turned inside out.

Li Wan, luxuriating between the impossibly long legs of Natasha Illion, picked up his enciphered mobile and pressed one button. The sounds on the line went immediately hollow as the call was shunted through a series of encrypted substations that hopscotched across the country, across the Pacific, at last ping-ponging dizzily through a cluster of top secret listening posts within Beijing. The offices of the State Administration of Grain were housed in the massive Guohong Building in the Central Government District. Though the top three floors bore the same SAG logo, none of its workers on the floors below were allowedaccess.Therewasaseparateelevatorthatrosefromthecolossal lobby to those top three floors without stopping at the intervening levels. As far as the workers below were concerned, those floors above them housed the offices of the ministers who directed the State Administration of Grain, connected directly to the Politburo itself. No one harbored a desire to go up there; in fact, for them it did not exist.

But for Li Wan, and people like him, those floors were all that existed in the Guohong Building. Their interests did not include grain production, quotas, or yearly allocations. The final destination of the call he initiated that morning in Washington, between Natasha Illion’s silky legs, was a vast office on the very top floor of the Guohong Building.

It was 6 pm in Beijing, but the hour of night or day was of no import, as that office, those three floors, in fact, were fully manned 24/7.

The High Minister stood at the edge of an immense open-plan room whose fifteen hundred computers, linked through a proprietary intranet, were manned by youngsters ranging in age from ten to nineteen. These youngster were hackers all, handpicked by the Chinese military, and their sole job was to hack through the firewalls and intranets of foreign governments and multinationals supplying foreign governments and militaries with cutting-edge weaponry and technologies. To do this, they were broken up into cadres, each one working on the next generation of Trojans, worms, and viruses, be they Stuxnet, Ginjerjar, or Stikyfingers. Anyone trying to backtrace the origins of these attacks would, after a long, arduous search, find that the ISP number belonged to Fi Xu Lang, a disgraced economics professor in a backwater village in Guangdong Province.

The Minister felt an unalloyed sense of pride at the operation that he himself had argued for and set up. The intelligence stolen from a variety of sources had already proved highly valuable to his friend General Hwang Liqun and the rest of the Chinese military.

The Minster felt the vibration of his mobile phone and went out of the cyber sweatshop, down to the far end of the hall, and into his office. He sat behind an ebony-wood desk, inlaid with elephant ivory, that was entirely clear of clutter. There was a rank of six corded phones on one side, a paperweight made of a thick chunk of rhino horn adorning the other side. In front of him was an open dossier marked top secret. The Minister, perhaps fifty, was possessed of the long, elegant face of a conductor or a choreographer. His black hair was slicked back from his wide, intelligent forehead. His hands, long and spidery-thin, were as carefully groomed as his hair and face. As he answered his mobile, he stared at a photo stapled to the inside cover of the dossier. He waited patiently as Li Wan’s call was routed to one of his phones. He held the phone to his ear without letting his gaze leave the photo, which was a black-and-white surveillance snapshot made with a long lens.

As soon as the encrypted connection opened, he said, “Speak.” His voice was high and keening, like that of a child being punished.

“Minister Ouyang, there has been a significant development.”

Ouyang’s eyelids dropped halfway. He was imagining the room his agent was calling from. It was five in the morning along America’s East Coast. He wondered whether Li Wan was alone or with his longlegged girlfriend.

“This could have a positive or negative impact on my evening, Li. What is it?”

“Through the auspices of stupidity, we have been given an extraordinary opportunity.”

“With Mr. Thorne?”

“Yes.”

“He and his coven of executives at Politics As Usualhave been caught in a phone-hacking scandal that netted them some extraordinary exclusives over the past nineteen months, boosting their bottom line, but leaving them open to investigation by the American Justice Department.”

“This is not unknown to me.” In fact, Ouyang had a contact inside Justice. “Please continue, Citizen Li.”

“From day one, my mission in establishing a mutual conduit with Charles Thorne has been to get to his wife.”

“As chair of the newly formed Homeland Strategic Appropriations Committee, Senator Ann Ring is of extraordinary importance to us.” Ouyang kept staring at the photo, as if trying to unlock the secrets inside the brain of the man caught by one of his surveillance teams. Then he said pointedly, “So far, however, you have failed to engage her on any level apart from the superficial.”

“That time is at an end,” Li said. “Thorne’s back is against the wall. He needs my—our—help. I believe now is the time to extend our hand to support him in his hour of need.”

Ouyang grunted softly, delicately. “In return for what?”

“In return for Senator Ann Ring.”

“I was under the impression—an impression you gave me, I might remind you—that Thorne’s marital relationship is not all it might be, all it shouldbe.”

The insane implication, via the stressed word, was that the couple’s personal troubles were somehow Li’s fault. This was Minister Ouyang through and through. Li set his mind to navigating the increasingly choppy waters.

“That slight estrangement will now work in our favor,” Li said.

Ouyang, running his fingertips ever so lightly over the face of the man in the photo, said, “Please explain.”

“If Thorne and Ann Ring were closer, I feel certain he would have confided in her about the impending investigation. He has told me nothing could be further from the truth. But if I—we—can provide him with a way out, a method of inoculating and indemnifying himself against implication, he would be grateful—and so would she.

“Senator Ring has an exemplary congressional record. Any hint of scandal—even from her husband—could be devastating to her position as chair of the Homeland Strategic Appropriations Committee. If she is disgraced and steps down, we will be back to square one. We will have lost valuable time. We cannot afford to start all over.”

No, Minister Ouyang thought, we most certainly cannot.

“I despise stupidity,” he said.

Li wisely held his tongue.

“There is danger in exposing ourselves to the extent required to extricate Thorne from his predicament.” At the moment, Ouyang appeared to be talking to himself, trying to work out the pros and cons of Li’s suggestion. “As you know, Li, there is a very thin line between an asset and a liability.”

His eyes never left the face he now knew so well, a face he saw in long, drawn-out nightmares to which he returned again and again, an endless repetition that infuriated him.

“I understand, Minister. But I have trained Thorne. He is our unwitting conduit.”

“The best kind,” Ouyang acknowledged.

“Precisely.”

The face had a name, of course, and he knew it as well as he knew his own—a name that was hideous, a name he was determined to eradicate as if it had never existed.

“I have worked long and hard cultivating this conduit. He can be saved from the oncoming storm,” Li said with the full force of his conviction.

“As long as you aren’t exposed, as long as our plan isn’t jeopardized, you have my permission.” He cocked his head to one side, concentrating on both his important conversation with Li and the equally important photo. He grunted. “Do not disappoint me, Li.”

While Li Wan rambled his gratitude, Ouyang tapped the eyes of the man in the photo, first one, then the other, in his mind’s eye blinding him before he was killed, and his name echoed and reechoed in his mind.

Jason Bourne, Jason Bourne, Jason Bourne.

"Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Soraya smiled when she saw Peter enter her room, heard his familiar voice. But seeing him in his bedraggled clothes, her

expression immediately changed. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Thirty million dollars.” He pulled up a chair and began to relate the story of the increasingly visible web that included Richards, Core Energy, Tom Brick, Florin Popa, all leading to the thirty million sunk in a watertight satchel off the Recursiveat Dockside Marina.

“What does it all mean?” Soraya asked when she had absorbed the various strands.

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

“What about Richards?”

The same question Hendricks had asked him. “I’ve decided to give him his lead. Whatever Brick is up to, it runs through Richards.”

“Won’t Brick be suspicious that you didn’t wait around to kill whoever it was he was bringing back to the house in Virginia?”

 Peter hitched his chair forward. “I don’t think so. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t stay around. I think that was just a test.”

“An intelligence test.”

“Brick doesn’t trust me fully.” Peter shrugged. “Why should he? As far as he’s concerned, I crawled out of a hole and saved him a lot of grief. But so what? In his business, he’s got to run me through a maze before he can accept me completely.”

“So you’ll contact him again?”

Peter winked at her. “You bet.” He stood up. “Now relax. I want to see you on your feet before long.”

Don Tulio sat in his rental car watching as Sam Anderson, his team having scoured and dredged the marina basin for any sign of the man who had attacked his boss, berated the crew and sent them back down to try again.

Anderson stood giving orders to a man Don Tulio knew from conversations overheard as Sanseverino. Sanseverino nodded and went back up to the parking lot. Don Tulio followed Sanseverino as he drove Peter’s car to the hospital. Don Tulio was an expert driver; he knew how to tail someone without being discovered.

Now he sat in his car, watching as Sanseverino trotted into the ER entrance and disappeared into the bowels of the hospital complex. He had no intention of following Sanseverino inside, where there was sure to be security and every chance he would be made. Why bother, when all he had to do was wait here for jefeMarks to emerge, get in his car, and drive off? Don Tulio, time running out, would follow him and take his pound of flesh. The plane he had chartered back to Mexico City was ready and waiting for him.

As to the thirty million, he knew for certain it was gone. The federaleshad it, which meant it had evaporated like smoke. His lieutenants, having decapitated the sacrificial lamb Don Tulio had chosen from within his ranks, were hard at work replacing the thirty million. Rehabilitating his image with Don Maceo weighed just as heavily on his mind. Don Maceo would have already been placated, at least temporarily, by the head the Aztec’s lieutenant had delivered. But he would not be impressed until the money was returned and Don Tulio delivered the second head and informed him to whom it belonged.

The Aztec checked the 911 handgun, its hollow-point ammo, one more time. Then, setting the gun on the seat next to his gravity knife, he leaned his head back, closing his eyes halfway. He had developed the ability of sleeping with his eyes half-open, like a reptile. Nothing got by him when he was in this state. His mind relaxed and rested while his senses remained on alert. It was this peculiar ability that alerted him to jefeMarks emerging from the hospital, accompanied by Sanseverino. The two men went directly to Marks’s car. A brief altercation broke out as Sanseverino insisted on driving. Marks acquiesced, and his deputy got behind the wheel while Marks himself climbed in beside him.

Don Tulio turned on his ignition a moment before Sanseverino did. He followed the car out of the hospital parking lot at a discreet distance, varying the number of vehicles between them. As he drove, he hummed a cumbiatune that reminded him of sleek arms and powerful legs, sweat-slicked bodies, minds lubricated with mezcal, all moving to the insistent beat.

Sorry we haven’t found him yet, boss,” Sanseverino said as he negotiated a turn. “Maybe the currents took him, ’cause if he was down there the divers would’ve found him by now. The current was sucking out, they told me, so Anderson sent them down to search a wider circle.”

“Dammit,” Peter said, “I needed to ID him in order to follow the money trail back to its source. Without him, we’re at a dead end.”

“Dead is dead,” Sanseverino said.

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Peter grumbled. He was in a foul mood. Everything is going wrong today, he thought, refusing to admit how worried he was about Soraya. Plus, he didn’t like that she had shut him out; it wasn’t like her.

“Anderson said to leave it and go home,” Sanseverino said. “Take the day and night to recuperate.”

Peter shook his head. “With Soraya down, Treadstone is undermanned as it is.”

“We’re kind of circling, you realize that?” Sanseverino said. “I have no idea where we’re going.”

“Take a deep breath.” Peter pulled out his mobile. “In a moment you will.” He looked up Delia’s mobile in his address book and clicked on the highlighted number. A moment later, Delia answered.

“It’s Peter,” he said, brusquely. “We need to talk.”

“I’m—”

“Now.”

“Uh-oh.”

He grinned fiercely. “That’s right. ‘Uh-the-fuck-oh.’ Where are you?”

“Out of the office. On a case.”

“I’ll come to you.” He snapped his fingers. “Address.”

Don Tulio followed jefeMarks’s car out into the countryside, moving farther and farther away from the more populated areas of the section of Virginia closest to DC. Quite soon, he was lost. The rental car wasn’t equipped with a GPS, but his mobile was. He fumbled it out with one hand and turned it on.

Not that it mattered exactly where they were, not at this moment, anyway. All he had to do was to keep his eye on the car in front of him and, as the traffic began to thin out, figure out ways to keep his own car from being spotted by either Marks or Sanseverino. This included some fancy maneuvering, but luckily, even when the traffic was at its sparsest, there were always trucks to hide behind for a time.

Don Tulio narrowed his cruel Aztec eyes against the glare and kept pumping his foot on the accelerator. It wouldn’t do to maintain a constant speed, which would mirror that of Marks’s car, and, therefore, bring attention to himself. By moving in and out of the sight line of their mirrors, he made himself all but invisible.

They had been traveling for close to forty minutes when Don Tulio saw the large red-brick building off to their right: Silversun High School. A group of official-looking vehicles were parked helter-skelter near its front entrance. Peering more closely, he spotted figures in loose-fitting jackets with atf printed on their backs in oversized bright yellow letters.

A moment later, Marks’s car slowed, preparing to take the next right onto the approach road to the school.

This is it,the Aztec thought. I’ll never get a better chance.

Accelerating, he came up right behind Marks’s car as if from nowhere. The touch of a button slid his window all the way down. The Chevy sped up. He grabbed his 911 off the seat. Then he swerved to the right, overtaking the Chevy within seconds.

As he came abreast of the car, he glimpsed jefeMarks’s pale face turn inquiringly toward him. He saw the muzzle of Marks’s police Glock. Aiming the 911 directly at Marks’s face, he squeezed off one, two, three shots, then he stamped on the brakes, negating any chance of return fire.

Ahead of him, the Chevy slewed wildly, then swerved, tires squealing as the driver put on the brakes and began a sweeping U-turn. That was the Aztec’s cue. Accelerating again, he broadsided the Chevy, staving in both doors on the driver’s side. His own front end crumpled, jarring him so hard his teeth clacked together.

His head snapped back against the seat and the airbag deployed, but he was ready, puncturing it with the point of his knife, slashing it away from him with the blade. The seat belt was jammed, and he used the knife like a machete to hack through it as if it were a fibrous jungle vine.

He kicked out, impatient now to view his handiwork, and the door swung open, screaming a bit as metal abraded metal. The hinges were askew. He got out, a little dazed by the sudden brute force of gravity rushing back in.

Staggering over to the Chevy, he could see that Sanseverino had been caught in the broadside. His entire left side, trapped by the airbag, was crushed by the metal hammer of the collapsed door. His head was canted at an unnatural angle, as if he were inspecting the footwell. He wasn’t inspecting anything, the Aztec observed. He was dead.

Bending over, he peered more deeply into the Chevy’s interior. Where was jefeMarks? The door on his side was open, the window down, but there was no sign of a body, alive or dead. How could that be? The Aztec had put three bullets through the Chevy’s window, as close to point-blank as it was possible to get in a moving vehicle.

The most infinitesimal movement alerted him, and, hurrying around the front of the wreck, he saw Marks, who looked as if he were pinned under his own car. The jefewas conscious.

“How?” the Aztec said in English. “I shot you three times. How did you survive without a scratch?”

Marks looked up at Don Tulio and said in a voice like the rustle of dry leaves, “Bulletproof glass.”

“Fuck!”

“Who are you?”

“The one who brings your death.” The Aztec stalked toward where Peter lay. “You stole my thirty million, fucker.”

“And who did yousteal that thirty million from?”

Don Tulio held the 911 in one hand, his opened knife in the other. Now he pointed the handgun at Marks. “Since you’ll be separated from your head thirty seconds from now, I’ll tell you. Don Maceo Encarnación.”

“I spit on Don Maceo Encarnación,” the jefesaid. “And I spit on you.”

Within the blink of an eye, Peter brought the Glock he had been clutching into view, and, squeezing the trigger, shot the man standing over him in the left side of his chest. But Peter heard two shots, not one. As the man staggered back, Peter felt a blinding pain engulf him. He tried to breathe, coughed, felt a hot gout of blood rushing into his throat, choking him. He could not breathe. His heart labored as he lost strength.

So this is how it ends, he thought. And, strangely, he didn’t seem to mind.

20

REBEKA LAY UNMOVING on top of Bourne as the hearse drove through the burnt, bitter pre-dawn of Mexico City.

They were enclosed within the polished elm coffin Maceo Encarnación had ordered for Maria-Elena, his deceased cook. Diego de la Rivera himself sat beside the driver. The coffin, locked into its stainless-steel rails, was the only thing in the capacious rear. Black curtains covered the windows.

“The coffin is how Maceo Encarnación has the deceased travel back to the mortuary,” Diego de la Rivera had told them just before they had departed. “The coffin material and style are already picked out. His security guards know me; they’ll look into the interior, but they won’t bother searching it. Trust me.”

Events transpired just as Diego de la Rivera had said. The hearse was stopped outside the gates. From inside the coffin, Rebeka and Bourne could hear muffled voices. A moment later, the wide rear door opened, more voices were heard, closer this time. Then the door slammed shut. Some rude laughter, then the hearse was granted entry to Maceo Encarnación’s estate. Gravel crunched beneath the hearse’s tires as the vehicle traveled at a funereal pace along the semicircular driveway, then around to the rear of the villa.

More voices, less querulous. Again, the rear door was opened, but this time the coffin was unlocked from its position, and Diego de la Rivera and his driver carried it into the house, presumably to where Maria-Elena was laid out.

At some point, the coffin was set down. A triple knock followed by a double informed them that their journey was at an end. The coffin’s lid was lifted up, and, like vampires in the night, they climbed out into the dimness of a room that smelled of perfume and death.

Apart from the corpse of the unfortunate Maria-Elena, Diego de la Rivera and his driver were the only other people visible. They were in the woman’s bedroom. It was filled with trinkets, entire shelves covered with miniature skulls and skeletons, gaily painted in Day-Glo colors, obviously collected over the years from Day of the Dead festivals. The body lay on the white cotton coverlet, which was edged in decorative eyelets. Maria-Elena had been a handsome woman: wide Olmec face, large in bosom and hips, but with a narrow waist. Her hands were folded on her stomach. She wore a yellow dress printed with red poppies, making her seem as festive as the papier-mâché skulls and skeletons that surrounded her.

“There’s an armed man outside the door. He’s the one who greeted us at the back door,” Diego de la Rivera whispered to them. “ Vaya con Dios. You’re on your own from now on.”

Bourne grabbed him by the elbow. “Not quite yet.”

Maceo Encarnación’s man turned as Diego de la Rivera exited Maria-Elena’s bedroom.

“I left something in the hearse,” he said sheepishly.

The man nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

As the guard moved off after de la Rivera, Bourne stepped out and slammed him in the back of the neck. Dazed, the man half-turned into Bourne’s smash to the side of his head. He went down, unconscious.

Bourne dragged him into the bedroom and disarmed him, sticking a Sig Sauer into his waistband. He found a gravity knife and pocketed that as well. Selecting a piece of clothing from Maria-Elena’s dresser drawer, he stuffed it into the security man’s mouth. Then he tied his hands behind his back with a scarf and shoved him under the bed, settling the end of the coverlet over him so that he was completely out of sight.

“Now,” Bourne said as de la Rivera reentered the bedroom, “it’s  vaya con Dios.”

Just outside Maria-Elena’s closed bedroom door, Bourne and Rebeka stood silent and still, listening to the sounds of the house, alert for any footfalls, voices, anything at all that might indicate there were security guards inside the house as well as outside, but, apart from a radio, dimly playing Tino Rossi’s 1945 version of “Besame Mucho,” there was no sign of life.

It was very early, barely sunrise. It was a good bet that the principals of the house were still sleeping. But someone must be up, listening to the sinuous music. And now they heard soft footfalls down the hallway, so they ducked into a bathroom, leaving the door ajar just a sliver.

Bourne saw a beautiful young woman, wrapped in a long, silken robe intricately embroidered with flowers and vines, come down the wide, curving polished-wood staircase and hurry along the hallway past them. She was clearly naked beneath the robe. Judging by her features and her grief-stricken expression, he guessed she must be Maria-Elena’s daughter. Peering out carefully, he saw her disappear into her mother’s room. A moment later, as they emerged from their hiding place, they heard a low wail of despair from behind the bedroom door.

“Poor thing,” Rebeka whispered in Bourne’s ear.

Bourne mentally surveyed the layout of the two-floor villa that el Enterradorhad showed them. The non-help bedrooms were upstairs. Bourne noted with curiosity that Maria-Elena’s daughter had come from there, not the main floor, where by all rights she ought to have her sleeping quarters. Plus, the dressing gown she had wrapped around her must have cost as much as her mother’s yearly salary. These small oddities were pushed aside as they began to ascend the staircase, their senses on high alert.

Once they had assured themselves that no one else was on the stairs, they raced the rest of the way up, reaching the second floor landing without incident. This upper floor was divided in two. The west wing—to their left—was Maceo Encarnación’s immense master bedroom suite, which included a sybaritic bathroom and a massive wood-paneled study. The east wing—to their right—contained four en suite guest bedrooms. It was toward the east wing they crept, keeping their heads below the railing until they reached the wall where the bedrooms started, two on each side.

Bourne signed that he’d check the bedrooms on the left while Rebeka should take the ones on the right. Nodding in affirmation, she stepped down the hallway. He watched her for a moment before he went to the first door.

Placing one ear against the door, he listened, but, apart from the low hum of the HVAC system, he heard nothing. Hand on the knob, he turned it, opened the door, and silently stepped into the bedroom.

Heavy curtains hung across the window. In the dimness, he made out the basic furniture: bed, dresser, desk, and chair. No one was in the bed, whose coverlet was undisturbed. The air in the room smelled stale; no point checking the bathroom.

Returning to the hall, he saw Rebeka emerging from the first bedroom on her side. She shook her head: no one there, either. They moved farther down the hall until they were standing in front of the third and fourth bedrooms.

Hearing soft footfalls on the staircase, they turned, crouching down, pressed back against the walls. Maria-Elena’s beautiful daughter came floating up the stairs as if on a cloud, trailing her extravagant robe behind her. Reaching the landing, she turned to her left, moving into the west wing and vanishing behind the heavily carved mahogany door to the master suite.

Bourne and Rebeka exchanged glances before they went back to work. As before, Bourne put his ear to the bedroom door, but this time he heard, very faintly, the sound of running water. Signaling for Rebeka to join him, he slowly turned the doorknob, opening the door just enough to peek inside. This bedroom was as dim as the previous one, but here the bedcovers were rucked back, the pillow clearly showing the indentation of a head.

Bourne slipped inside the room, Rebeka following him soundlessly. The shower was on, the door to the bathroom slightly ajar. Signing that he would go in while she checked the closets, Bourne stole across the bedroom and, turning his body sideways, tapped the door slightly and slipped through the wider opening into the steam-bound bathroom. Bright lights were on, blindingly reflected off the shiny white tiles.

In one motion, Bourne was across the space, his arm extended, hand pulling back the opaque shower curtain. Water streamed from the showerhead, cascading down on empty space. There was no one in the shower.

Understanding bloomed. With an inarticulate growl, Bourne whirled, retracing his steps, out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Rebeka, half inside the closet, turned as he came in. As she did so, Harry Rowland, emerging from the depths of the closet, slammed his fist into her side, where she had been knifed in Damascus six weeks ago. Before Bourne could move, he had a knife across her throat. From behind her, he grinned like a death’s-head. Bourne was certain Rebeka knew at least a dozen ways to free herself. She wasn’t able to; Rowland saw to that. He bent her torso cruelly, causing her to gasp like a fish out of water. A red stain slowly spread across the side of her shirt where she had been struck. “One of the useful bits of intel I picked up when I was nosing around the Dahr El Ahmar camp,” Rowland said, eyes darkening, “was where she was wounded and how bad it was.”

He moved infinitesimally, shifting something Bourne couldn’t see because Rebeka was in the way. Then he punched her in the side, and she hissed her pain through clamped teeth. The bloodstain widened.

She stared at Bourne with bloodshot eyes.

“Let her go, Rowland,” Bourne said.

“Is that a request or a threat? Either way.” Rowland shook his head.

“This fucker has been following me halfway around the world, and now you have joined the hunt.” He smiled with his teeth. “See, this is what it’s like to regain your memory.” Nodding, he continued: “Oh, yeah, I know who you are, you poor amnesiac freak. I actually feel sorry for you, living half a life, carrying that shadow around with you, day and night, awake or asleep. A nightmare of unimaginable proportions.”

Rebeka moved and he struck her again in the same place.