“First it was the Germans, then the Dutch,” Aaron said. “And now we are encircled by what amounts to refugees from North Africa with no hope of integration, jobs, or prospects. It’s no wonder they want to burn Paris to the ground.”

They were sitting at the long banquette, facing each other, eating hanger steaks and the establishment’s astonishing frites.

“The homogeneity of the French is under siege.”

Aaron looked at her for a moment. “This is how we do,” he said, using the English slang of American cops. This is the way we do things.

She laughed so hard she had to put a hand to her mouth in order not to spray food all over her plate.

His eyes crinkled nicely when he smiled. Despite that, the smile made him look younger, like a little boy whose joy is unadulterated by life’s responsibilities and concerns.

“So.” He put down his utensils and steepled his fingers. “Dinoig?” He spread his hands. “You have an explanation.”

“I do.” Soraya licked salt off the tips of her fingers. “The word is an anagram.”

Aaron stared hard at her for a moment. “A code?”

Soraya nodded. “Admittedly a crude one. But it was meant as a fail-safe. In case my contact got into trouble.”

“Terminal trouble.” Aaron took a sip of the Badoit mineral water; he’d very kindly refrained from ordering wine.

Soraya dug in her handbag, pulled out a pen and a pad, and wrote “dinoig” on it. She looked at it for several moments before she said, “Since the anagram begins with a consonant, let’s start with the assumption that the word begins with a vowel. Two i’s and an o. There are only six letters, so the chances of both i’s being in the center are virtually nil.” Beneath “dinoig,” she wrote “I.” “Now it becomes easier because of our choices for a next letter; n makes the most sense.”

Now the second line read “In.”

“There.” She looked up at Aaron and turned the pad around so that it faced him. Then she handed him the pen. “You finish it.”

Aaron frowned for a moment, then he wrote down the next four letters and turned the pad back for her to read.

“ ‘Indigo,’ ” Soraya read aloud.

Peter’s back was killing him. He’d been working nonstop on Hendricks’s files, opening the folders one by one since they were only marked with numerical designations: 001, 002, 003, and so forth. They were filled with memos, to-do lists, even reminders of birthdays and anniversaries. The files were remarkably devoid of anything interesting. He rose from his computer crouch, put his hands at the small of his back, and stretched backward. Then he went off to relieve his aching bladder. Peter liked to think while he peed. In fact, some of his best ideas had come to him while his bladder was emptying. There was something about the physical feeling of relief that set his brain to wandering down fruitful paths.

He stared at the wall. His eyes roved among the multitude of small cracks in the plaster, finding fanciful shapes as if they were clouds passing across the sky. Except these shapes were permanent. That being so, some of them had already become friends. There was the Roaring Lion, the Boy Holding Balloons, the Boxing Kangaroo, the Old Man with Drooping Earlobes. And then there was Houdini, the man with what to Peter looked like a lock around his waist.

“Good Lord!” Peter cried all at once.

Shaking and zipping up, he hurriedly washed his hands and virtually ran back to his computer terminal. Now, instead of going folder by folder, he scrolled down, looking for a file locked with an electronic encryption.

Sure enough, there was one, at the bottom of the folder tree. When prompted for a password, he typed in: “servers.” Nothing happened, not that he was surprised. It would have been extraordinarily stupid for Hendricks to use the same password twice.

Peter twirled a pencil between his teeth, sat back, and considered his next move. What word would Hendricks use to safeguard this file? He tried Hendricks’s birthdate, the date he was appointed secretary of defense, his address. Nada.

He sat there so long without moving his cursor that Hendricks’s screensaver came on. He was looking at a beautiful green-eyed woman with high cheekbones and an open, smiling face. Fifteen seconds later the image faded out and another of the same woman appeared. This time, she was seen with Hendricks. They were holding hands on a bridge in Venice. The woman was Amanda, Hendricks’s third wife. She had died five years ago. The scene changed again to a shot of Amanda in a formal gown, on the terrace of a huge stone mansion.

“Idiot!” Peter thought, smacking his forehead with the heel of his hand. He typed in: “Amanda.”

Open Sesame. He was in!

The file contained two long paragraphs and one short addendum. The long paragraphs seemed to be notes Hendricks had taken after a recent meeting he’d had in the Oval Office with the president; General Marshall, the Pentagon’s chief of staff; Mike Holmes, the national security adviser; and someone by the name of Roy FitzWilliams. Peter was immediately reminded of the conversation between Hendricks and Danziger at the Folger he’d overheard piecemeal. “We weren’t ever going to meet in your office,” his boss had said, “for precisely the same reason you weren’t invited to the meeting in the Oval Office.”

From what Peter read, the briefing concerned the extreme strategic importance of rare earth metals. The president had decided on an interagency task force, code-named Samaritan, to safeguard the Indigo Ridge mining operation in California. Apparently, the president had put Hendricks in charge of Samaritan and had given it the highest priority.

Peter had reached the end of the second paragraph and was wondering anew why his boss hadn’t briefed him and Soraya regarding Samaritan when his gaze fell on the last, short addendum. With a shock that went through his body, he discovered that the paragraph was addressed to him:

Peter, I know you’re reading this; you’re more curious than George the chimp. There’s something about this FitzWilliams character that disturbs me. Can’t put my finger on it, which is why I want you to investigate him. Strictly down low and off the clock. The POTUS has read us the riot act about noncompliance with Samaritan. The work I’m asking you to do certainly falls into that category, so I urge you to be exceptionally careful. I know you will be. If you’re wondering, you’re the only one I trust with this. DO NOT use any of the normal channels to contact me re: your progress. Your findings here, ONLY. I can’t stress enough how important your conclusions could prove. Good luck.

Estevan Vegas.”

Bourne, having consulted his map, calculated that they were less than five miles from Vegas’s home. He’d had to make a decision as to whether to try finding him at home or at the oil field. The long, dusty afternoon was fading, the sepia light like that in an old photograph. The day was dying, and, in any event, he wanted to approach Vegas in the presence of his Indian mistress.

“Who?” Commander Suarez said in a voice bleary with pain, fear, and the sour aftermath of adrenaline. “Am I supposed to know this man?”

“He’s a member of Severus Domna.”

“So what?” Suarez couldn’t even shrug his porcine shoulders without wincing. “I told you, everything inside the Domna is tightly compartmentalized.” He smacked his lips. “I need a beer. I’ll bet you could do with one, too.”

Bourne, driving very fast, ignored him. They were still climbing through the Cordillera mountains. He had rolled down his window. The air cooled the jeep’s stinking interior; Suarez sweated like a wild boar.

“If you tell me one more time that you don’t know who Estevan Vegas is,” Bourne said, “I’ll stop the car right now and throw you down the mountain.”