Realizing this, she asked Aaron to hang back while she went to fetch Amun.

“Who the hell is he?” Amun said as he hefted his carry-on.

“Hey, we haven’t seen each other for what, over a year? And this is how you greet me?”

“Yes, over a year and you show up with another man, and not a bad-looking one at that, considering he’s French.”

“It’s business, Amun. That’s Inspector Aaron Lipkin-Renais of the Quai d’Orsay.” The moment she said Aaron’s full name she knew she had made another mistake.

“What’s a Jew doing in the Quai d’Orsay?” Amun’s black eyes looked hard as marbles. He was a tall man, trim, but well built, with wide shoulders and powerful arms. He was both charismatic and forceful in his opinions and orders. His men obeyed him instantly and unquestioningly.

“He’s a Frenchman who also happens to be Jewish.” Soraya leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. Then she linked her arm in his. “Come along and meet him. He’s smart and quick. You’ll like him.”

“I doubt that,” Amun grumbled, but he allowed her to lead him across the concourse to where Aaron was patiently waiting.

To Soraya’s dismay, the energy between the two men seemed both electric and toxic, and she knew that she had brought oil and water together trusting that, contrary to the laws of physics, they would mix. No such luck and, as the three of them walked in silence to Aaron’s car, she felt her heart sink. A triangle had already formed, with her at the crucial axis point.

During the equally silent ride back into Paris, Soraya had time to observe this thoroughly distasteful side of Amun. True, he had been trained as a clandestine field agent, ordered to break up spy rings, including, she had to assume, those controlled by the Mossad from Tel Aviv. But having been born and raised in Cairo, he had been inculcated from a very early age in a hatred of Israelis and, by extension, all Jews. The Jewish question was a topic she had never bothered to bring up with him. Or, she wondered as she squirmed in her seat, had she deliberately shied away from the topic because she did not want to face what must inevitably be his bias? The possibility shamed and diminished them both. She felt sick at heart.

It was then that she felt the loneliness assail her. She had chosen this life, no one had forced her into it, but there were times, like now, when she felt as alone as an old woman at the end of her life.

Aaron’s voice cut through the uncomfortable silence. “I think we ought to drop Mr. Chalthoum at his hotel. We have an appointment to keep.”

“I don’t have a hotel,” Amun said in a voice that could freeze a charging rhino in its tracks. “I’m sleeping with Soraya.”

“Then we’ll drop you at her hotel.”

“I’d rather come with you to this interview.”

Aaron shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. This is Quai d’Orsay official business.”

Allah preserve me from male pissing matches, Soraya thought. “Aaron, I invited Amun here because I thought his perspective might be valuable.”

Aaron frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“The organization Laurent wanted to talk to me about is international. Its tentacles are everywhere, especially in the Middle East and Africa.”

“We are talking about another extremist Islamic cadre—”

“We’re not, and that’s the point.” Soraya was looking at Aaron, but she was keeping track of Amun’s expression and body language out of the corner of her eye. “Laurent was able to tell me that this organization has brought elements of East and West together.”

“That’s been tried several times before without success, but in this current climate, I’d say it was impossible.”

Soraya nodded, happy that the tone of the conversation had dropped below a simmer. “I would have said the same thing, but something about what Laurent said convinced me that he wasn’t lying.”

“And what would that something be?” Clearly, Aaron was skeptical.

“Septimius Severus, the Roman general, was born in Libya. It was Severus who increased the size of the Roman army by adding soldiers from North Africa and beyond.”

Aaron shrugged, but Soraya could feel Amun leaning forward in the backseat. She had grabbed his attention.

“General Severus was married to Julia Domna, a Syrian, whose family came from the ancient city of Emesa.”

“Go on,” Amun said, his eyes alight.

“Laurent told me that the name of this organization is Severus Domna. If we heed history, its name tells us that Severus Domna has somehow managed to meld elements of the East with the West.”

Aaron bit his lip as he contemplated the implications. “Could any secret cabal be more dangerous?”

Everyone in the car knew the ominous answer.

The second helicopter rose and shot toward them. The side-mounted machine guns started chattering, the air heating up, dirt, mud, and metal parts flying like shrapnel all around them.

“What the hell happened?” Bourne shouted over the noise.

“I don’t know. I think the launcher is jammed!”

Vegas had the launcher off his shoulder and was peering hard at it. Bourne grabbed him and pulled him down to the ground behind the jeep as bullets pinged all around them. Then he took the launcher away from him.

“Go get Rosie and get the hell out of here,” he said.

“We’ll never make it!”

Bourne was keeping track of the swooping helicopter. “I’ll distract them.”

“You’ll have to do more than that in order to escape.”

“Let me worry about that.” Bourne gave Vegas’s shoulder a squeeze. “Now go, hombre. There’s no time to lose.”

Vegas tried to stop him, but Bourne hefted the launcher onto his shoulder and sprinted out from behind the jeep, heading for a stand of tall pines to the west of the house. The moment the pilot spotted him, the helicopter veered off in his direction.

Vegas used this opportunity to scuttle, crouched over like a spider, from the jeep toward the house. But before he got there, Rosie flew out the door and met him partway. She was carrying a small leather case that looked like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. Vegas put his arm around her shoulders, guiding her lower, and together they ran back to the jeep. Climbing in, Vegas started the engine and, reversing hard, turned the wheel, changed gears, and shot forward along the side of the house. But instead of heading down the driveway, he lurched off to their left, following a hunting path he used. Soon enough they were engulfed in the trees, out of sight of even the copter pilot.

“Where is Bourne?” Rosie said.

“Protecting us, I hope.”

“But we can’t just leave him there.”

Vegas was concentrating on keeping the jouncing jeep on the narrow dirt path. Pine branches whipped at them, slamming against the doors of the vehicle, and every once in a while his vision was occluded by foliage whipping against the windshield. Had he not known the path so well, traveling it many times at night without a flashlight, he surely would have crashed by now.

“Estevan,” Rosie prompted.

“What would you have me do? Turn around and go back?”

She said nothing, just stared straight ahead.

“We must trust him,” he said. “Just as we trust Don Hernando.”

“I think maybe you put too much trust in people, mi amor.”

“Not people, friends.”

“You put a great store in friendship, mi amor,” she said.

“Without friendship what are we?” Vegas said. “We are set adrift without either obligation or responsibility. And when the storm comes—as it inevitably does—where are we to go?”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “This is why I love you.”

He grunted. But it would be clear to a blind man that he was pleased.

A double line of tracer bullets tore up dirt, grass, and the thick mat of pine needles on either side of Bourne. He made it into the relative safety of the trees with seconds to spare. The young pine right behind him crashed down, sawn in half by the rip of machine-gun fire from the copter. Once beneath the branches, Bourne knelt down and checked the launcher. Vegas was right, it was jammed, and he hadn’t the time to try to fix it. Instead he ejected the missile. It was an SA-7 Grail, with a powerful fragmentation warhead, an older version, Bourne saw. The warhead used a 370-gram TNT charge. Carefully, he took apart the missile, separating the TNT and the container of rocket fuel.