“So what? Businesspeople are on their cell phones constantly.” Aaron appeared unimpressed. “It was a coincidence.”

“Maybe it was,” Soraya said, “maybe it wasn’t.” She turned toward his car. “Let’s talk to your tech and see if he managed to pull anything from the phone or its SIM card.”

As they were walking back to Aaron’s car, she stopped and turned around. She looked at the building directly across the sidewalk from where the hit-and-run took place. Her gaze rose up the gleaming green-glass and stainless-steel facade.

“What building is this?” she asked.

Aaron squinted up through the noonday gloom. “It’s the Île de France Bank building. Why?”

“It’s possible that’s where Laurent was coming from.”

“I don’t see why,” Aaron said, checking his notes. “The victim worked for the Monition Club.”

Another fact Soraya hadn’t known about her would-be informant.

“It’s an archaeological society with offices here, Washington, DC, Cairo, and Riyadh.”

“When you say here, you mean La Défense?”

“No. The Eighth Arrondissement, at Five, Rue Vernet.”

“So what the hell was he doing here? Getting a loan?”

“The Monition Club is quite wealthy,” Aaron said, again consulting his notes. “In any event, I checked with Île de France. He had no appointment with anyone at the bank, he wasn’t a client, and they never heard of him.”

“So why was he here on a busy workday morning?”

Aaron spread his hands. “My men are still trying to find out.”

“Maybe he had a friend there. Have you talked to his associates at the Monition Club?”

“No one knows much about him, he kept to himself, apparently. He reported directly to his superior, so no one could tell me what he was doing at La Défense. Laurent’s superior is out of town until tonight. I have an appointment to interview him tomorrow morning.”

Soraya turned to him. “You’ve been very thorough.”

“Thank you.” The inspector couldn’t hide his smile.

Soraya walked to his car, but before she got in, she took one last look at the Île de France building. There was something about it that both drew and repelled her.

The semi’s driver called to his pal, and the man turned and went back to where the other driver waved a book of wooden matches. The openbed driver leaned forward while the other one struck the match and held the flame to the end of his cigarette. He reared back, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs. The semi’s driver checked nervously over his shoulder, measuring the FARC’s progress.

Bourne quickly checked the seat and the glove box. Nothing. Then in the well of the passenger’s side he saw a cheap plastic lighter. It must have fallen out of the driver’s pocket as he was getting out. He grabbed it. He slithered out of the truck’s cab and went farther down the line until he encountered a knot of drivers.

“¿Hombre, sabe usted lo que está pasando?” one of them asked. Do you know what’s going on?

“FARC guerrillas,” Bourne said, which got them even more agitated.

“¡Ai de mi!” another cried.

“Escuchamé,” Bourne said. “Does anyone have a jerry-can of gasoline; my truck is dry. If the rebels order me to move and I can’t, they’ll shoot me dead.”

The men nodded their agreement with this grim assessment, and one of them ran off. A moment later he returned and handed Bourne the jerry-can.

Bourne thanked him profusely and departed. When he was sure no one was watching him, he climbed up onto the canvas of the coffee truck and disappeared back underneath.

Inside, he used the screwdriver to puncture the jerry-can near the bottom, so the gasoline slowly leaked out over a couple of the sacks. Then he lit it. The result was a whoosh of flames, followed by a cloud of thick smoke so acrid it was choking. Bourne, holding his breath, got out of there before more gas leaked out and the conflagration spread. His eyes were already watering. The smoke billowed up through the hole in the canvas. Bourne climbed down just as the canvas itself caught fire. Flames licked upward, and now the smoke billowed in earnest as the rest of the hemp sacks started to burn. The smoke quickly reached the tunnel’s arched ceiling and, boiling, spread horizontally.

It took only moments for visibility in that part of the tunnel to erode severely. People started coughing and wheezing, their eyes tearing so badly they couldn’t see. Shouts went up from the soldiers in the forefront. Then the basso voice of the commander bellowed through, calling for his men to retreat. But the smoke was too thick, and the soldiers were bent over, gasping.

Bourne sprinted through this chaos, shoving aside soldiers and drivers alike. The wrench was gripped in his right hand. A FARC rebel loomed out of the smoke, abruptly blocking his path with both his body and his submachine gun. Bourne slammed him across the cheek with the wrench, kicked him in the groin, and, as the rebel doubled over, slid past him. Another was on him almost immediately. Bourne could see the commander; he had no time to waste. Absorbing two punishing body blows, he drove home the screwdriver between two ribs, and the rebel went down.

Bourne came up on the commander from a different lane. Sliding across the hood of a vehicle, he grabbed the man, disarmed him, and, jerking him hard, pulled him, stumbling, toward the light at the far end of the tunnel.

The commander was gasping and trying to spit out the smoke. His red-rimmed eyes continued to brim with tears, which rolled down his pockmarked cheeks. He struck out blindly. He was very strong. It took a knife-edged blow of Bourne’s hand to his throat to subdue him.

Bourne pulled him along as fast as he could, ignoring the commander’s choked curses. He was beyond the perimeter of the advancing rebels. Up ahead, he could make out the jerry-rigged blockade of FARC vehicles: four jeeps and a flatbed truck FARC was using for provisions, weapons, and ammo transport. Two drivers, who had been smoking, had grabbed their pistols and were now aiming the weapons at Bourne. Then they saw their commander, his own Makarov pressed into the side of his head.

“¡Ponga sus armas hacia abajo!” Bourne shouted as he drove the commander forward.

When they hesitated, he slammed the barrel into the soft spot behind the commander’s right ear. Blood spurted and the commander cried out. The rebels put their pistols down on the hood of the flatbed truck.

“¡Ahora se alejan de los jeeps!”

“¡Haz lo que dice!” the commander shouted through a fit of coughing.

The men backed away from the jeeps; Bourne shoved the commander forward into one and climbed in beside him. A rebel lunged for his pistol and Bourne shot him in the shoulder. As he spun away and fell to the ground, Bourne said, “¿Tu turno?” Your turn? The other rebel raised his hands and did not budge.

“¡Si vienen después de nosotros,” Bourne called back to the men as he started the vehicle and put it into gear, “lo mato!” If you come after us, I’ll kill him.

He stepped on the accelerator and they sped away from the smoking tunnel.

7

THE MOMENT PETER got back to Treadstone HQ, he fired up his computer, logged in his code name, using the algorithm of the day, and scoured all the clandestine services’ databases for the word Samaritan. He wasn’t surprised to receive a null finding. He sat staring at the blank screen for a moment, then typed in “Indigo Ridge.”

This time he got an immediate hit. He read the government assessment with mounting fascination. Indigo Ridge, an area in California, was ground zero for the mining of rare earths. Rare earths, he read, were essential for rechargeable nickel hydride batteries—something he used every day, but never gave a thought to. The real name was lanthanum nickel hydride—a rare earth. Rare earths were used in every laser as well as in electronic warfare, jamming devices, the electromagnetic railgun, the Long Range Acoustic Device, and the Area Denial System used on the Stryker vehicle. The list of cutting-edge weapons needing rare earths was staggering.