A short walk brought him again to the clubhouse. Trotting with a confident air up the steps to the front porch, he entered the nowfamiliar great room. He looked immediately to the small grouping where he had seen Richards sit down with the mystery man, but the chairs were empty now. Picking up a club phone and calling the guardhouse, he learned that Richards had driven out while he had been changing in the pro shop. Peter set down the receiver. Surely the mystery man would be looking for Florin Popa—people like that felt naked without their bodyguards. In fact, if Peter was any judge of human psychology, the man would be getting antsy as to Popa’s whereabouts. As Peter continued around the great room, he looked for a lone male who was peering around the space with increasing urgency. An older gentleman stood waiting near the rest rooms. He had silver hair like the man Richards had come to see. Perhaps...but no, an older woman emerged from the ladies’ room and smiled at the man—his wife. Chatting amiably, they strolled off. There was no one else.

Wending his way past the club members, Peter made his way out onto the expansive terrace. Sunlight bathed a third of the tables, all of them occupied. The rest, in shadow, were empty. Moving forward, he saw a man with his back to him, his upper torso leaning forward, his hands gripping the wrought-iron railing. He, too, had silver hair.

Peter lifted his head like a bloodhound catching a scent. He unpinned his ID, then snagged a uniformed waiter as he passed by, a tray of empty glasses held high.

“This is my first day and I’m looking for clients. See that guy over there? Know his name?”

The waiter looked at where Peter was pointing. “How could I not? That’s Tom Brick. He’s a fucking whale.”

When Peter looked at him in puzzlement, he added, “Big fucking spender. There’s bedlam among the staff to serve him. Tips twenty-five percent. You get him to sign on with you, my man, you’re in clover, no lie.”

Peter thanked him and let him go on about his business. He affixed his ID to his shirt. Taking a circular route to the railing afforded him several moments to observe Brick before he approached him. He was younger than Peter had imagined, perhaps in his very early thirties. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but possessed a face full of features that failed to mesh, as if it had been fashioned from spare parts.

He had a tattoo of a knotted rope on the back of his left hand. He must have sensed Peter’s approach because he turned just before Peter reached the railing. Brick had a wandering eye, which, oddly, seemed to take Peter in from all sides at once.

Peter nodded. “A perfect day for tennis, wouldn’t you say?”

Brick’s good eye took in Peter’s ID while the other one continued its disconcerting scrutiny. “You’d know better than me, I should think.” Like the late, unlamented Florin Popa, he had an accent. This one was British, however.

“Are you new to Blackfriar?”

“You don’t play tennis, I take it.”

Brick turned to gaze out over the deserted eighteenth hole. “Golf’s my sport. Are you soliciting, Mr.—” another hard look at Peter’s ID

“—Bowden? Bad form, I should think.”

Peter cursed himself for botching the approach so badly. Mentally, he retreated, kept his mouth shut, and began to formulate Plan B, which, admittedly, he should have come up with before saying one word to this man.

He was about to attempt reestablishing contact when Brick turned to him and said in a low voice, “Who the bloody hell are you?”

Taken aback, Peter pointed to his ID. “Dan Bowden.”

“Fuck you are,” Brick said. “I’ve met Bowden.” He turned fully to Peter, his eyes abruptly hard as crystal. “Time to own up, mate. Tell me who you are or I call Security and have you arrested.”

Wait here,” Hendricks said gruffly, then got out and, accompanied by his bodyguard, walked slowly between the headstones until he stopped in front of one. He stood, head down, while his bodyguard, several paces back, looked around, as always, for trouble.

Soraya pushed open the SUV’s door and slipped out. A mild breeze, holding the first heady scent of spring, snaked through the headstones. She came around the back of the Escalade, then stepped carefully over the mounded turf. The secretary’s bodyguard saw her, shook his head, but she kept on, close enough for her to get a partial view of what was engraved on the headstone Hendricks stood in front of: Amanda Hendricks, Loving Wife and Mother.

The bodyguard took a step forward and murmured something to his charge. Hendricks turned, glanced at Soraya, and nodded. The bodyguard beckoned her on.

When she had come up beside him, Hendricks said, “There’s something peaceful about a cemetery. As if there’s all the time in the world to think, to reconsider, to come to conclusions.”

Soraya said nothing, intuiting that she was not meant to answer. Contemplating a loved one’s death was a private and mysterious moment. Inevitably, she thought of Amun. She wondered where he was buried—surely somewhere in Cairo. She wondered whether she would ever get the chance to visit his grave and, if so, what she would feel. If, in the end, she had loved him, it would have been different. Her profound guilt would have, to a mitigating extent, been assuaged. But that she had let go of him, had, in fact, despised him for his ugly prejudice against Jews, against Aaron in particular, shoved her guilt into outsized proportions.

As if divining her thoughts, Hendricks said, “You lost someone in Paris, didn’t you?”

A wave of shame rose inside her. “It never should have happened.”

“Which? His death, or your affair?”

“Both, sir.”

“Yesterday’s news, Soraya. They ended in Paris—leave them there.”

“Do you leave her here?”

“Most of the time.” He thought for a moment. “Then some days...”

His voice trailed off, but there was no need to finish the thought. His meaning was plain.

He cleared his throat. “The difficulty comes in not letting it rest. Otherwise, there will be no possibility of peace.”

“Have you found peace, sir?”

“Only here, Director. Only here.”

When, at last, he turned away from his wife’s grave, she said, “Thank you, sir, for bringing me here.”

He waved away her words. As they walked slowly back to the waiting Escalade, accompanied by the bodyguard, he said, “Are you done, Soraya?”

“No, sir.” She gave him a sideways glance. “About Richards. He lied about Core Energy. He knows about it, knows that Nicodemo is involved in it.”

Hendricks stopped dead in his tracks. “How on earth would he know that?”

Soraya shrugged. “Who knows? He’s the ‘It Boy’ when it comes to the Internet.” She made herself pause. “Then again, maybe there’s another reason.”

Hendricks stood still as a statue. Very carefully, spacing the words out, he said, “What other reason?”

Soraya was about to answer when an abrupt pain in her head blotted out all sight and sound. Leaning forward, she pressed the heel of her hand to her temple, as if to keep her brains from spilling all over someone’s headstone.

“Director?” Hendricks grabbed her, saving her from falling over. “Soraya?”

But she could not hear him. Pain flared through her like forked lightning, blotting out everything else apart from the darkness, which overtook her in a kind of blessing.

7

WE HAVE TO MOVE him now,” Rebeka said as she peered out the window of the fisherman’s cottage. Darkness was falling at a rapid rate. Blue shadows rose like specters. The world seemed unstable.

“Not until he’s regained consciousness.” Bourne crouched beside Weaving, whose face was pale and waxen. He took his pulse. “If we move him now, we risk losing him.”