“I’m sorry,” she said. “Shall I come back?”

He shook his head and she slid his tray out and set down the plate of cookies and the glass of milk.

“Still warm,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

Karpov smiled at her, but there was more than a hint of sadness in it. “You can sit down beside me.”

Her soft silver bell of laughter wafted over him like a cool breeze. “What a flirt you are, Mr. Stonyfield,” she said. Shaking her head, she left him alone.

Karpov stared down at the cookies, not seeing them at all. He was thinking of Jason Bourne, he was thinking about what he was setting out to do, he was thinking of what his decision would mean not only for the present but for the rest of his life.

Nothing would ever be the same. The knowledge didn’t frighten him—he was too used to the unknown for that. But he did have a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if a group of moths were fluttering there, directionless, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

It wouldn’t be long now. That was the only thing he knew for certain.

Marcel Probst, the Quai d’Orsay IT tech to whom Inspector Lipkin-Renais had delivered Laurent’s cell phone and its SIM card, was one of those Frenchmen for whom wine, cheese, and an arrogant sneer were the essentials of life.

Moments after she had arrived with Aaron, Probst made it clear via a sour, almost offended look that he did not like Soraya. Whether it was because she was Muslim or a woman, or both, Soraya could not say. Then again, he didn’t seem entirely enamored of Aaron, either, so who could say. In any event, his face, sour as a prune, announced his prejudices like a warning sign on a highway.

Probst was dapper, well dressed, and in his late forties. In other words, the direct opposite of the American IT techs of Soraya’s acquaintance. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, she thought as she stepped up to his workbench. It contained, among other paraphernalia, a laptop computer and an oscilloscope flanked by a pair of high-end bookshelf speakers.

“What do you have for us?” Aaron said.

M. Probst pulled on his lower lip, making it into a kind of teapot spout. “The phone itself is beyond even my skills,” he said, “and the SIM card is a mess.”

Apparently, he never met a consonant he didn’t try to swallow. Maybe, Soraya thought, they tasted like Brie.

M. Probst cocked an eyebrow upward. “Was the instrument, by any chance, compromised while being transported here?”

“Certainly not,” Aaron said. And then, somewhat irritably, “Have you found something or not? Get on with it, if you please.”

M. Probst grunted. “The curious thing is that from what I can tell, the SIM card was wiped clean of information.”

Soraya’s heart sank. “From the damage?”

“Well, mademoiselle, that depends. You see, this SIM card was subjected to two forms of damage. The one as I have already mentioned is physical.” He tapped the oscilloscope’s spikily juddering line. “The other was electronic.”

“What do you mean?” Aaron said.

“I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” M. Probst said, “but there is a strong indication that the card was subjected to an electronic pulse that wiped it clean.” He cleared his throat. “Well, almost. There was only one thing salvageable,” he said. “There is no doubt that it was entered after the electronic pulse, but before the phone was rendered useless.”

“You mean in the instant before Laurent was struck by the car,” Soraya said, and immediately regretted the interruption.

M. Probst glared at her as if she were a rat that had crawled into his sanctum sanctorum.

“I believe that is what I said,” he said stiffly.

“Moving on,” Aaron said, gamely, “let’s get to what you salvaged.”

M. Probst sniffed like a character out of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. “It’s a good thing you came to me, Inspector. I very much doubt anyone else could have brought up so much as a kilobyte of information.”

For the first time, a smile curved M. Probst’s bloodless lips, thin as a miser’s coat. It was clear he felt he had put the interlopers in their place. “Here is what was transferred to the SIM card in the last moment of the victim’s life.”

On the laptop screen, a single cryptic word appeared: “dinoig.”

Aaron shook his head and turned to Soraya. “Do you know what that means?”

Soraya looked at him and said, “I’m starving. Take me to your favorite restaurant.”

Miles away from La Línea, Bourne pulled off the highway into a dense copse of trees and overgrown brush. Exiting the jeep, he came around to the other side and hauled Suarez bodily out of his seat.

“What are you doing?” Suarez said. “Where are we going?”

He was a mess. The right side of his head was bloody, a huge bruise, standing up like a fist, scarred his forehead, and he cradled his bruised and swollen right hand.

Bourne dragged him along, hauling him to his feet when he occasionally stumbled. When they were completely hidden from the road, Bourne shoved Suarez against the trunk of a tree.

“Tell me about your role in Severus Domna.”

“It won’t help you.”

When Bourne came at him, he held up his good hand. “All right, all right! But I’m telling you it won’t do you any good. The Domna is completely compartmentalized. I move goods for the group when and if I’m asked to, but I don’t know anything else.”

“What kinds of goods?”

“The crates are sealed,” Suarez said. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

“What are the crates made of?” Bourne asked.

Suarez shrugged. “Wood. Sometimes stainless steel.”

Bourne considered for a moment. “Who gives you your orders?”

“A man. A voice on the phone. I never met him. I don’t even know his name.”

Bourne snapped his fingers. “Phone.”

Suarez dug awkwardly in his pocket with his left hand and drew out the phone.

“Call your contact.”

Suarez’s head moved spastically back and forth on his shoulders. “I can’t. He’ll kill me.”

Bourne took Suarez’s swollen right hand in his and broke the pinkie. Suarez screamed and tried unsuccessfully to pull his hand away. Bourne shook his head and took hold of the next finger on the hand.

“Five seconds.”

Sweat was rolling freely down Suarez’s face, staining his collar. “Dios, no.”

“Two seconds.”

Suarez opened his mouth but nothing came out. Bourne broke the second finger and the commander nearly passed out. His knees gave out and he slid down the tree trunk. Bourne slapped his cheek. Suarez’s eyes watered and he turned and vomited onto the ground.

Bourne imprisoned his middle finger. “Five seconds.”

“¡Basta!” Suarez cried. “¡Basta!”

All the color had drained from his face and he was shaking in reaction to the trauma. He stared at his cell phone, clutched in his sweaty left hand. Then, as if snapping out of a trance, he looked up at Bourne.

“What… what do you want me to say, hombre?”

“I want his name,” Bourne said.

“He’ll never give it to me.”

Bourne tightened his grip on the middle finger of Suarez’s ruined right hand. “Find a way, hombre, or we continue where we left off.”

Suarez licked his lips and nodded. He punched a button and a number popped up on the screen.

“Wait!” Bourne said and, reaching over, killed the connection.

“What?” Suarez said in that slightly dazed tone of voice that had come out of him ever since his fingers had been broken. “What is it? I did what you asked. Don’t you want me to call him?”

Bourne sat back on his haunches, thinking. He knew who Suarez’s contact was. He recognized the digits. Suarez was calling Jalal Essai’s satellite phone.

9

CHEZ GEORGES, THE restaurant to which Aaron took Soraya, was a block from the Bourse—Paris’s stock exchange. As such, lunch was attended mostly by suits, talking stocks, bonds, options, derivative swaps, grain and pork belly futures. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was Old World Paris before the advent of the EU, the euro, and the slow disintegration of French culture.