“If you come after her…” Bourne allowed the implied threat to hang in the humid air.

Corellos froze for half a second. Then he opened his arms wide. “If I go after the bitch, then come the fuck on.”

5

“GODDAMMIT!” PETER Marks pounded his fist against the steering wheel as he was stopped short at a red light.

“Down, boy,” Soraya said. “What’s eating you?”

“He’s lying.” Peter hit the horn with the heel of his hand. “There’s something going on and Hendricks isn’t telling us what.”

Soraya regarded him archly. “And you know this how?”

“That crap he fed me about why I need to stay here. He’s resurrected Treadstone with your overseas network in place so—what? We can be nannies for the other clandestine services? It’s fucking make-work, there’s nothing real about it.” He shook his head. “Uh-uh, there’s something going on he doesn’t want us to know about.”

Soraya stifled a tart rejoinder and, instead, thought about Peter’s supposition for a moment. She and Peter had worked together for a number of years in CI. They had come to trust each other with their lives. That was no little thing. And instincts had a lot to do with their mutual trust. What had Peter seen or sensed that she hadn’t? To be honest, she had been so elated at being given the go-ahead to run down the death in Paris that she hadn’t paid much attention to what went on after that. More fool, her.

“Hey, slow down, cowboy!” she yelled as he veered around the rear of a truck. “I’d like to live until at least tonight.”

“Sorry,” Peter muttered.

Seeing that he was really and truly upset, she said, “What can I do to help?”

“Go to Paris, get the investigation of your murdered source under way, find out who the hell killed him.”

She looked at him skeptically. “I don’t like leaving you in this state.”

“You don’t have to like it.”

She touched his arm. “Peter, I’m concerned that you’re going to do something stupid.”

He shot her a glare.

“Or at the very least something dangerous.”

He took a breath. “Do you think your being here would change any of that?”

She frowned. “No, but—”

“Then be on the first plane to Paris.”

“You’re planning something.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Dammit, I know that look.”

He bit his cheek. “And before you leave, why don’t you give Amun a call.”

Soraya immediately bridled, thinking he was needling her. But then, when she thought further, she saw the wisdom of his suggestion. “You might be right. Amun could provide a different perspective on this mysterious group.”

She pulled out her cell and texted: “Arr Paris tomorrow AM re: murder. Can U?”

She found her heart beating fast. She hadn’t seen Amun in over a year, but it was only now, reaching out to him, that she realized how much she had missed him—his bright smile, his certain touch, the brilliance of his mind.

She frowned. What time was it in Cairo? Almost 10:30 PM.

As she was calculating, her cell buzzed: a text had come in. “Arr Paris 8:34 AM local, day after tomorrow.”

Soraya felt a warmth suffuse her body. She flexed her hands.

“What’s up?” Peter asked.

“My fingertips are tingling.”

Peter threw his head back and laughed.

Essai drove Bourne away from Corellos’s encampment. The headlights were on, illuminating the dirt track through the dense forest of Bosque de Niebla de Chicaque, but already a pinkish blue light stole through the branches, snatching shadows from along the ground. Birdsong, which had been missing during the depths of the night, ricocheted back and forth above their heads.

“We’re heading west instead of east,” Bourne said, “back to Bogotá.”

“We’re going to the regional airport at Perales,” Essai said, “where I’ll take a flight to Bogotá and you’ll take the car. You need to go farther west, to Ibagué. It’s in the mountains, about sixty miles southwest of El Colegio.”

“And why do I want to go there?”

“In Ibagué you will seek out a man named Estevan Vegas. He’s a member of the Domna—a weak link, as you might say in idiomatic English, yes? I was going to speak with him about defecting, but now that you’re here I expect you’ll have a better chance than I would.”

“Explain yourself, Essai.”

“With pleasure.”

Now that they were away from Corellos’s camp, Essai seemed more relaxed, almost jovial, if such a word could be applied to this taciturn, revenge-obsessed man.

“It’s simple, really. I’m a known quantity within the Domna: a pariah, a traitor. Even with a man like Vegas with shaky loyalty to the group, my presence would be problematic. In fact, it might backfire, providing him with a reason to become defensive, intractable.”

“While I am an unknown quantity,” Bourne said. “Vegas will be more inclined to listen to me.”

“That will depend entirely on your powers of persuasion. From what I know of you, another excellent reason for you to take my place.”

Bourne thought for a moment. “And if he does spill?”

“Your intel on the Domna will be current. I, unfortunately, have been cut off for some time. I am now deaf and blind to the details of their plots and plans.”

“Vegas lives in the middle of nowhere,” Bourne pointed out.

“First of all, the term middle of nowhere doesn’t apply to the Domna,” Essai said. “Its eyes and ears are everywhere.” They bumped onto a paved section of the road, though their speed slowed considerably because it was in desperate need of repair and potholes deep enough to throw an axle seemed to be everywhere. “Second, though Vegas may not know everything we need to know, he’s bound to know someone who does. It will then be your job to find them and charm them out of the information. Then you’ll take a flight out of Perales. Tickets will be waiting for you there.”

“And while I’m trying to poke into the Domna’s dark corners, what will you be doing?”

“Providing a distraction to cover you.”

“What, exactly?”

“You’re better off not knowing, believe me.” Essai manhandled the vehicle around a dual pothole of staggering depth. “There’s a spare sat phone in the glove box, charged and ready to go. Also a detailed map of the area. Ibagué is clearly marked, as is the oil field Vegas runs.”

Leaning forward, Bourne opened the glove box and checked the contents.

“You’ll find my sat number pre-programmed into it,” Essai continued. “That way, we’ll never be out of touch, no matter where we are.”

They rumbled past a gorge with sheer rock walls and, a mile or two farther, an enormous waterfall crashing down a blood-red cliff with enormous, unending energy. The tree canopy became abruptly less thick, more light flickering, a Morse code through the tangle of branches.

They burst through the western edge of the trees. A riot of bougainvillea inhabiting a colonial stone wall shivered, shaking off the early-morning dew in the first slender shoots of sunlight.

Bourne looked out at the countryside. Due west was a chain of formidable mountains, shaggy with dense forest. In a couple of hours that was where he’d be headed.

“What can you tell me about this man Vegas?”

“He’s crusty, belligerent, often intractable.”

“Beautiful.”

Essai ignored Bourne’s sarcasm. “But he has another side. He’s a longtime oilman. He has overseen the oil outfit out there for close to twenty years. By now, I think his veins must run with oil. In any event, he’s strictly hands-on; he believes in a hard day’s work, even at his age, which must be sixty—knowing him, possibly more. He’s hard drinking, buried two wives, lost a daughter to a Brazilian, who seduced her, then spirited her away. He’s never seen or spoken to her in thirty-odd years.”

“Sons?”

Essai shook his head. “He lives with a young Indian woman now, but to my knowledge she’s never been pregnant. Other than that, I don’t know anything about her.”