Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Brick, in the shotgun seat, grunted now. “How do I know youweren’t following Richards?”

“You don’t.” Peter was thinking as fast as he could.

“If not you, who followed Richards?” Brick asked, as Peter took back roads at his explicit direction. “Who killed my man?”

“Peter Marks. He works for the same outfit Richards does.”

“He suspected Richards?”

Peter nodded, making a right, then an almost immediate left. They were heading away from Arlington, deeper into the Virginia countryside, leaving the manicured lawns and multi-million-dollar housing enclaves behind, driving into wilder terrain. Rolling hills, dense forests, damp glens stretched out before them.

“The next step,” Peter said, “is to take revenge. Otherwise, this organization, having followed Richards to you, will never let you out of its sight.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“But I am. You want to know what I was doing at Blackfriar? Okay. I was keeping an eye on you.” Noting the tensing reaction throughout Brick’s entire body, he said, “I was keeping an eye on you because I want to work for you. I’m tired of being on my own, with no job security, nothing to fall back on.”

“Times are tough,” Brick mused.

“And getting tougher.”

Brick seemed to consider this seriously. Then he said abruptly, “Pull over.”

Peter did as he was ordered, rolling the Audi up onto the grass that edged the two-lane blacktop and putting the transmission in neutral.

The moment the Audi came to rest, Brick snapped his fingers. “Your wallet.”

Peter reached into an inner pocket.

“Careful, mate.”

Peter froze with his coat half-open. “You do it then.”

Brick’s eyes met his in an icy glare. “Go the fuck ahead.”

Using just his thumb and forefinger, Peter carefully extracted the second wallet that was in plain sight in front of the concealed pocket where his real one lay. He handed it over.

Brick allowed it to sit in the open palm of his left hand. With his right, he peeled back the fold. Only then did his gaze drop to read the driver’s license revealed. “Anthony Dzundza.” The icy eyes flicked up again. “What the fuck kind of name is that, mate?”

“Ukrainian.” Legends always felt it was more realistic to use a name that required an explanation. They were right.

Brick’s eyes turned to slits. “You don’t look Ukrainian, old son.”

“My mother’s a beauty from Amsterdam.”

Brick grunted again. “Don’t fucking flatter yourself. You’re not that pretty.” Reassured, he pawed through the rest of the docs in the wallet—credit cards, a bank debit card, museum membership cards, even, amusingly, an unpaid speeding ticket. Then he handed it back.

“You prefer Anthony or Tony?”

Peter shrugged. “Depends on friend or foe.”

Brick laughed. “Okay, Tony, get out. I’ll drop you off. You meet me at the club tomorrow at one.”

“Then what?”

“Then,” Brick said, his face dead serious, “we’ll see what you’re all about.”

After Thorne apologized to the man known to the world as Maceo Encarnación, hurrying out of the Politics As Usualoffices, Encarnación gathered up his greatcoat, and strolled to the bank of elevators.

While he waited, he allowed his practiced eye to observe the orderly pace of the workplace, the concentrated faces, the purposeful strides, the pride puffing out chests. Above all, the sense of superiority and security that, he knew full well, would shatter into ten thousand pieces in the face of the chaos that was about to hurl itself full-tilt at everyone employed here.

The sense of chaos put him in mind of Moscow—the end of the story he had begun before the interview with Charles Thorne was aborted, the end Thorne would never know. Using the algorithms he and his crew had so cleverly and painstakingly devised, he had tracked down the criminals who had hacked his online account and sucked his money into the scarifying Russian underworld. After having thoroughly prepared himself, he had spent precisely three days in Moscow. By the time he had flown out, two corpses, weighed down with their own weaponry, were lying at the bottom of the Moskva River, eyes wide and staring in disbelief. As for the money, Encarnación had repatriated his andretrieved theirs the same way they had robbed him.

When the gleaming chrome elevator doors opened, he stepped in, placing himself next to a blonde with long legs and impressive hips. He’d always been a sucker for impressive hips and butt.

“Good afternoon,” he said, basking in the incandescent glow of her wide smile.

There was frantic movement in the fisherman’s cottage in Sadelöga as the Babylonian fought to strip off his clothes and minimize the damage the flames were wreaking on him.

Stumbling and grimacing, he made his way to the single bathroom, turned on the shower’s cold water tap, and hurled himself beneath the spray. At once, he was engulfed in a cloud of smoke, making him choke. Better than having his skin flayed off. Soon enough the smoke turned to steam.

The flames extinguished, he stripped off the remnants of charred underwear, and stepped out of the shower. His body was as lean and long-armed as that of a long-distance swimmer, all rippling muscle, hard and compact beneath taut, sun-burnished skin.

He dared not use a towel on the burns that covered much of his chest, neck, and hands. He used the mirror over the sink to check out the glass shard in his back. It took him a moment because his eyes were watering so profusely. He thought his body would retain scars, especially his neck, but he was too well trained to dwell on that. Instead, he got down to the business at hand, scrutinizing his wound with a surgical precision and thoroughness.

Even though the end of the shard had broken off when he fell on it, there was enough still visible for him to pull it out. Bracing himself against the edge of the sink and looking over his shoulder into his image in the mirror, he grasped the shard just beneath the jagged edge. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly and completely. At that instant, he pulled hard, and the shard slid free. The wound began to drool blood, but it was clean and he knew it would soon stop.

Dripping water, still pink with his blood, he returned to the kitchen, opened the back door, and, naked, threw himself facedown into the snow. The cold, he knew, would help minimize the swelling as well as numb the pain. When he’d had enough, he turned on his back, numbing the wound there.

After a few more minutes, he picked himself up and, returning inside, rummaged in the kitchen cupboards until he found a package of baking soda. Shaking out the powder into a bowl he took down from a shelf, he mixed it with water, stirring it into the consistency of a thick paste. Then, breath hissing through clenched teeth, he began to daub this poultice on his burns until they were completely covered in a thick salve that would both protect and begin to heal his wounds.

In the bathroom, he found a full tube of antibacterial cream, plus the remnants of the powerful prescription antibiotics Rebeka had left behind. On the tube’s label were typed both her name and an address in Stockholm. The pain was already fading, the baking soda drawing it out of him. In a while, he’d throw himself into the snow again.

He guzzled down two antibiotic tablets with a beer he found in the refrigerator. Pulling his knife from between the floorboards, he paced back and forth with the silent, ferocious, cruel mind-set of a tiger until he felt his full strength flooding back.

Looking again at the label on the vial of antibiotics, he could not help but smile. Her address in Stockholm. He’d be on them again, and this time, he vowed, they’d all die.

10

DO YOU LIKE films?” Don Fernando asked over breakfast coffee and croissants at Le Fleur en Ile.

“Of course I like films,” Martha Christiana replied. “Who doesn’t?”

After dinner the night before they had agreed to meet again this morning. He had not invited her back to his apartment after dinner. He wondered whether she had been disappointed.

“I mean old films. Classics.”

“Even better.” She sipped her coffee, served in a huge, thick cup. Outside the plate-glass windows, the magnificent rounded rear of Notre Dame rose, majestic and delicate, flying buttresses spreading like multiple wings. “But many old films aren’t the classics they’re reported to be. Have you seen Don’t Look Now? When it isn’t being preposterous, it’s incomprehensible.”

“I was thinking of Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.”

She shook her head. Her eyes were bright in the spark of morning light. “Never saw it.”

When he’d told her the synopsis, she said, “So everyone in this house is trapped, just as we ourselves are by our lives. They argue, fight, make love, grow weary and bored. Some die.” She snorted. “That isn’t art, it’s existence!”

“True enough.”

“I thought Buñuel was a surrealist.”

“Actually, he was a satirist.”

“Frankly, I don’t see anything in the least bit amusing in the film.”

Don Fernando didn’t either, but that was beside the point. He had thought of the film because Martha Christiana was an exterminating angel. He knew who and what she was. He had been in the company of women of her ilk. More than likely, he would be again. If he survived her.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was a sinister emissary. Nicodemo had commissioned her. This fact heartened him. He was getting close. It meant he had stirred this particular level of hell sufficiently that she had been dispatched to usher him to his death.

Smiling at his exterminating angel, he said, “The first time I saw the film I was sitting next to Salvador Dalí.”

“Really?” She cocked her head. She wore a Chanel rayon suit the color of breaking dawn over a butter-yellow shantung-silk blouse, open at the throat. “What was that like?”

“All I could see were his damnable mustaches.”

Her laugh was as soft and buttery as her blouse. “Did he say anything at all?”

“Dalí never said anything that wasn’t for shock effect. Not in public, anyway.”

Her hand crossed an invisible barrier, her fingers taking his. “You’ve led such a fascinating life.”

He shrugged. “More than some, I suppose. Less than others.”

The slanted sunlight, caught in her eyes, made them glitter like hand-cut gems. “I’d like to know you better, Don Fernando. Much better.”

He allowed his smile to widen. She was good, he thought. Better than most. But he would scarcely expect anything less from Nicodemo.

“I’d like that,” he replied. “More than you know.”

Delia was waiting for Charles Thorne at Admitting.

She had been watching people come and go through the imposing front entrance of the Virginia Hospital Center for ten minutes. She was sipping very bad coffee she had unadvisedly purchased from a vending machine on the same floor where Soraya was still in surgery.

Delia had met Soraya nine years ago, when Soraya was still working for the late Martin Lindros at CI. At that time, Delia was alone, unsure of who she was, let alone what her sexual orientation might be, which was the one area of life that frightened her. For a time, she had thought she was asexual. Soraya had changed all that.

Delia had been sent into the field to disarm a bomb that had been found in the vicinity of the Supreme Court building. Soraya was there along with several FBI agents in an attempt to determine who had set the device and whether he was a foreign or homegrown terrorist. Either possibility was frightening.

The bomb’s mechanism proved to be difficult to neutralize, which pointed to a professional terrorist. Everyone, save Soraya, had backed away to a safe distance while Delia worked on defusing it.

“You ought to get clear of here,” Delia remembered saying. “No one ought to be alone,” Soraya answered her.

“If I fail, if this thing goes off—”

Soraya had engaged her eyes for the briefest moment. “Especially at the end.” Then she had produced the most disarming grin. “But you won’t fail.”

Thorne, striding into Admitting, rudely shattered her reverie. Recognizing the anxious expression on his face as he came up to her, she said, “She had the procedure and passed a quiet night. That’s all I know.”

As he followed her down a linoleum-floored corridor to the bank of oversized elevators, he said, “What you told me over the phone.”

“All true,” she said, intuiting his meaning.

“There can be no doubt?”

His eyes were clouded, with what emotions she could not yet say.

“How many men d’you think she was sleeping with, Charles?” She shot him an angry look. “But, really, your attention should be focused on her.”

“Yes, of course. I know that,” he said distractedly.

The elevator doors opened, allowing people to exit. They stepped in, and Delia pressed the button for the third floor. They rode up in silence. The elevator car smelled of disinfectant, sickly-sweet disease, and the slow secretions of the aged.

As they stepped out onto the third floor, Delia said, “I have to warn you that Secretary Hendricks is here.”

“Shit. How am I going to explain my presence?”

“I’ve thought of that,” Delia said. “Leave it to me.”

She led him down the hushed corridor, at the end of which was the metal door that opened onto the operating wing.

Thorne inclined his head. “That’s where it happened?”

Delia nodded.

Thorne licked his lips, his anxiety living on his face. “And she’s not awake yet? That can’t be good.”

“Don’t be negative,” Delia said, clearly annoyed. “The procedure’s delicate. She’s being carefully monitored.”

“But what if she—?”

“Keep quiet!” she said, as they passed the secretary’s bodyguard and entered the recovery waiting room.

Hendricks was in the corner farthest from the flat-screen TV, on which CNN was streaming soundlessly. He was on his mobile, scribbling notes on a small pad perched on one knee. He scarcely looked up when they came in. Delia stared at the oily film that had developed on her coffee and, disgusted, threw it into the trash can.

Before either of them could sit down, Hendricks finished his call and, looking up, recognized Thorne and did a classic double take.

As he rose and came over to them, Delia said, “Anything?”

He shook his head. Then he turned his attention to the man beside her.

“Charles Thorne?”

“Guilty,” Thorne acknowledged, before realizing what, in the coming days and weeks, that could mean.

The two men pumped hands briefly.

“I must admit,” Hendricks said, “to a certain amount of confusion regarding your presence here.”

Delia kept a smile on her face. “The three of us are friends. I ran into him this morning and he insisted on coming with me.”

“That’s good of you,” Hendricks said distractedly. “She can use the support.”

“I don’t want Soraya to be alone when she wakes up,” Delia said.

And right on cue, one of her surgical team appeared in the waiting room. Looking from one to the other, he said, “I have news.”

Tom Brick, with Peter beside him, drove the red Audi south, deeper into the Virginia countryside.

The sky was filled with troubling clouds; yesterday’s sun was only a memory. At length, Brick turned onto Ridgeway Drive, a bent finger that passed through dense copses of trees through which, now and again, could be seen the rooflines of large houses. Around one last bend to the left, Ridgeway came to an end at a circle off which were four houses separated by deep woods.

Brick took the right-hand driveway, graveled and well-kept. Stands of evergreens rose up on either side, so that at the dogleg left, the road vanished as if it had never existed. They were in a world of their own, cut off from everyone and everything.

Rolling the Audi to a stop, Brick got out and stretched. Peter followed him, surveying the house, which was large, stately, built as sturdily as a castle of brick and quarried stone. Architecturally, it fell neatly into the post-modern style: two stories with deep eaves, oversized windows, and a sun-splashed cantilevered deck.

Brick trotted up the front steps and, from the deep shadows of the eaves, said, “Coming, Tony?”

Peter, conscious that he was now Anthony Dzundza, nodded and went up the steps. Inside, the ground floor was light-filled and spacious. The furniture was low, sleek, modern—pale as bones stripped of flesh.

“Would you like a drink, Tony?”

Peter reminded himself why he was here. Tom Brick was the person to whom Dick Richards had run when Soraya had told him that she had it on good authority that Nicodemo was connected with Core Energy.

“ Where did you hear that?” Richards had said. “ Tom Brick is CEO of Core Energy.”

And here Peter—or, rather, Anthony Dzundza—was with Brick. Both Peter and Soraya had been certain that Richards would bolt to the president, to whom they assumed he reported. But no, it was to Tom Brick he had run. What in hell was going on? Was Richards a triple agent, working for the president andBrick?

The living room was L-shaped. Peter followed Brick around to the left as he headed toward the wet bar, but then he pulled up short. There at the short end of the L was a man standing with his legs slightly spread. His jacket was off, so Peter had a clear view of the Glock snug in its holster beneath his left armpit.

“Tony, say cheers to Bogdan.”

Peter said nothing. His tongue seemed to have cleaved to the roof of his mouth. The scowling Bogdan was standing beside a plain wooden slat-back chair, incongruous in this maximally designed house. A man, his back to Peter, sat strapped and bound to it.

Brick, at the bar, said without turning around, “As they say in the movies, choose your poison.”

Peter did not have to see his face to know that the imprisoned man was Dick Richards.

Not hearing an answer, Brick turned, an old-fashioned glass in one hand. “I’m having an Irish whiskey. I’ll make two.”

Peter, desperately trying to make sense of the scene, stood his ground while Brick poured the drinks, brought them over, and handed him one.

He clicked his glass against Peter’s, then drank. “ Cent’ anni, as they say in the Mafia.” He laughed. Then, seeing the direction in which Peter was looking, he gestured with his drink. “Come. I want to show you something.”

Reluctantly, Peter followed him over to where Richards and Bogdan, his forbidding guard, were situated out of the line of sight of any of the windows. As if anyone would be poking around way out here. Anyone apart from Peter himself, that is.

“You said you want to work for me.” Brick’s voice assumed a warm, collegial tone, two men chatting at their club or on the golf links. “That’s a tall order. I’m quite careful whom I hire, and never off the street. And, you see, that’s my dilemma, Tony. Much as I’m grateful for the information you’ve provided, you’re off the street.”

Brick took another small swallow of the whiskey, rolling it around his mouth before he swallowed. Then he smiled amiably. “But I like you. I admire your style, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” Slipping the Glock from Bogdan’s holster, he held it out butt first to Peter. “You advocated doing away with Peter Marks, Dick’s boss. While I admire your initiative, I don’t think it would be wise to go after a man like that. We don’t want to bring down a shitstorm, do we?” He waggled the Glock invitingly, and reluctantly Peter took it. “No, I believe a far better choice is to nip matters in the bud, take them to the cleaners– isn’t that how you Americans say it?—the man who knows too much. That’s the brill move. So here he is, mate, waiting for the proverbial axe to fall.” Grinning, he nudged Peter forward. “We don’t want to disappoint him, now do we?”

A line of pink was taking its time showing itself above the eastern horizon as they approached Stockholm.

They had made the crossing to the mainland in a minimum of light, but Bourne, having navigated the bay with Christien, guided them unfailingly to the car he had brought Rowland down in. They had bundled Rowland into the backseat, Rebeka sliding in beside him, while Bourne climbed behind the wheel.

Now, hours later, as they approached the city, Bourne exited the highway, turning left at the end of the off-ramp, and rolling through sleeping streets, eventually pulling up beside an empty lot, due for new construction. It was enclosed by a drunken chain-link fence that had seen better days.

Turning in his seat, Bourne said, “Get him out of here.”

Rebeka appeared about to query him, then thought better of it. Instead, she opened the curbside door and hauled Rowland out into the pre-dawn light. Bourne shut off the engine, got out, and, coming around the front of the car, took Rowland by the collar and frogmarched him to a waist-high gap in the fence.

“Bourne,” Rebeka said, “what are you going to do?”

Pressing his hand to the top of Rowland’s head, Bourne guided him through the gap, then stepped through himself. As he did so, Rowland made a break for it. Bourne went after him. Owing to his two frozen toes, Rowland ran at a spastic, lurching pace, so Bourne caught up to him without difficulty. He slammed him on the back of his head, and Rowland collapsed to his knees, where he remained, his upper torso rocking back and forth as if he had lost all sense of equilibrium.

Rebeka came up to them. “Bourne, don’t hurt him. Now that he’s regained his memory, we need what’s in his head.”

“He’s not going to tell us a damn thing.” He slammed the back of Rowland’s head a second time. “Are you, Rowland?” Rowland shook his head, and Bourne struck him a massive blow between the shoulder blades. With an animal grunt, he fell into the snow-covered dirt. Bourne reached down and hauled him back to his penitent kneeling position.

Alarmed, Rebeka said, “Bourne, what are you going to do?”

“Shut up.” Bourne was filled with a murderous rage, not only because this man had tried to kill him, had, judging by his actions in the fisherman’s cottage, been sent to kill him, but because he had regained his memory. Bourne had not. In all the years since being pitched into the Mediterranean, he still knew next to nothing about his previous life. It was true enough that he had managed to slot himself into the Bourne identity—he wasJason Bourne now—but he was still a man without a past, without a home, without any place to call his own. He floated in the air, unmoored, ungrounded, forever searching for—he didn’t even know what he was searching for. But this man—who, if Rebeka was to be believed, had been sent by Jihad bis saifto kill him—had regained everything he had lost when Rebeka’s shot had grazed his head, pitching him into Hemviken Bay. He struck Rowland again. Justice! And again. He wanted justice!

“Bourne...Bourne, for God’s sake!”

Rebeka, both her hands wrapped around his right forearm, stopped him from a third blow.

He kicked Rowland in the kidney, and felt a measure of satisfaction as he crumpled over onto his side.

Then the acute rage subsided, and he allowed Rebeka to interpose herself. With a glare, she crouched down and began to help Rowland to his feet. This Bourne could not tolerate, and he struck the back of Rowland’s knee so that he once more fell to his knees. Leaving him there, she rose to her feet and confronted Bourne.

“He was sent to kill me,” Bourne said before she had a chance to speak.

“One of many, yes?” She sought to hold his eyes with her own, then she shook her head again. “Don’t for a moment think I don’t know what’s really going on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said dully. He felt spent and, worse, empty.

“Let’s pretend you do.” She took a step toward him, lowering her voice. “What use will beating him to a pulp do? It’s counterproductive,” she added, answering her own question. Then, as if uncertain whether she had gotten through to him, she repeated: “It’s counterproductive.”

His eyes cleared, and he nodded. She smiled tentatively. “Now, let’s go at him. Together, maybe we can achieve what each of us alone has failed to do.”

They went around, crouching down in front of Harry Rowland, who looked at them blearily out of red-rimmed eyes.

“I know you work for Jihad bis saif,” Rebeka said, not yet trusting Bourne to begin this stage of the interrogation on the proper note. “Now, by your own actions, we know you were sent to kill Bourne.”

“What we don’t know,” Bourne said, taking his cue from her, “is why.”

Rowland’s head swayed a little from side to side. He licked his lips, which were coated with dried blood. “Why does anyone want to kill you, Bourne?”

“You’re a threat to this network,” Rebeka said to Bourne. She turned back to Rowland. “Why?”

His bloodshot eyes stared at her. “You did this to me. I was besotted with you. Those nights in Dahr El Ahmar, you made me forget my mission.” He cocked his head to one side. “How did you do that? I don’t understand. What magic did you work?”

“This is what we do, Harry.” Rebeka put a hand gently on his thigh. “The charade worked both ways. You fooled me. I had no idea you were a member of Jihad bis saif. Until the end.”

He licked his lips again. He could not take his eyes off her. “What happened? I was so careful. What gave me away?”

Her fingers moved on his thigh. She had seized on the pleading tone in his voice. “Tell me why Bourne is a threat to Jihad bis saif.”

“ Jihad bis saif,” he repeated with a sneer. “You don’t know the first thing about Jihad bis saif.” Curiously, he was almost laughing.

“Then enlighten us,” Bourne said in Arabic, then Pashto. When Rowland didn’t respond, Bourne shook his head. “There is no Jihad bis saif, is there?”

“Oh, but there is.”

A hinted-at smile of self-satisfaction was wiped off Rowland’s face by Bourne’s fist as it connected with his cheek. A squeak came from him as his head snapped back on his neck. Bourne caught him before he could fully tumble over. He slapped Rowland until his eyes came back into focus.

“I guess I don’t believe you.” He gripped Rowland’s jaw hard. “Let’s put an end to this. Tell us what you know or—”

At that moment, a helicopter appeared over the rooftops, arcing across the sky.

“Cops?” Rebeka said, squinting up into the oyster-colored dawn.

“No insignias.” Bourne rose, jerked Rowland onto his feet.

The copter came swinging in toward them. Clearly, it was homing in on them.

“We’d best find cover,” Bourne said. But before they could move, the copter was overhead. The chattering of machine-gun fire ripped up the dirty snow. Chips of ice and clots of freshly turned earth flew in all directions. Bourne tried to pull Rowland along with them, but the fire, meant to separate them, was too intense. The men inside the copter left them no choice. He and Rebeka ran toward a stack of piled-up brick and stone from the razed building.

Bourne made one last attempt to reach Rowland, but the withering fire drove him back. The copter was moving, but instead of rising, it shot forward. The firing began again, this time clearly directed at Bourne. He dived under the cover of some wooden boards, which immediately began to splinter apart. He rolled, snaking away from where Rebeka had hidden, conscious of keeping the bullets away from her even while he sought to protect himself. Since it had explicitly targeted him, it was clear the copter belonged to Rowland’s network, that those inside had recognized him.

The copter stopped, hovering twenty feet off the ground. A door slid open and a rope ladder extended from it. Rowland was up and was running unsteadily toward it. As Bourne wriggled under more boards, Rowland grasped a rung.

Men inside the copter winched up the ladder, grabbing hold of Rowland as soon as he was within arm’s reach. The copter now closed with the area where Bourne was hiding. The firing continued in brief but ferocious bursts. The boards kept flying apart, making it necessary for him to move again and thus expose himself.

The gunfire continued to track him, moving closer and closer. That was when Bourne heard the sirens. Someone had called the cops. He saw the flashing lights as a string of police vehicles rounded a corner and raced down the street toward the lot.

The men in the copter saw them too. With a last burst of gunfire at the place where Bourne had been moments before, the copter rose, banked, and, as the sirens wailed ever louder, vanished into the rising sun.

11

MS. MOORE IS out of surgery and in recovery,” the doctor said.

There was a collective sigh of relief in the waiting room. “Is she okay?” Secretary Hendricks said.

“We relieved the pressure and stopped the bleeding. We’ll know more in the next twenty-four hours.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Thorne blurted.

Delia quickly placed herself between him and the surgeon. “How is the fetus?”

“We’re monitoring it. We’re hopeful.” The surgeon was pale. He looked wiped out. “But, again, the next number of hours are critical for both mother and child.”

Delia took a breath and let it out. “So you can’t rule out...intervention.”

“At this point,” the surgeon said, “nothing should be ruled out.” He looked at them. “When she wakes up, I think it would help if she saw a friendly face.”

Hendricks stepped forward. “I should—”

“With all due respect,” Delia said, “if she sees you, the first thing she’ll think of is Peter, and he’s not here, is he?”

“No.” Hendricks turned to the doctor. “I would like very much to see her, if you don’t mind.”

The surgeon nodded. He was clearly uncertain, but cowed by Hendricks’s position. “But only for a moment, Mr. Secretary.”

I’m so sorry,” Hendricks said, bent over Soraya’s supine form. “I fear I’ve asked far too much of you.”

Her huge, dark eyes regarded him woozily, running in and out of focus, and she mouthed two words: My job.

He smiled, brushing damp hair off her forehead. There was a tube running out of the side of her head, surrounded by bandages. She was hooked up to multiple machines monitoring her heart rate, pulse, and blood pressure. She looked weak, a pallor beneath her skin, but otherwise sound enough.

“Your job is one thing,” Hendricks said. “But this—what has come about because of it, is quite another.”

Beneath the ebbing torpor of the anaesthesia, her eyes showed surprise. “You know.”

He nodded. “The doctors said not to worry. The baby’s fine.”

A tear welled out of her eye, rolling down her cheek.