“Have a better one, Director Marks.”

“You, too.”

Moments later Peter stepped out into the garage. The low-ceilinged space smelled of concrete, gasoline, and new leather. His footsteps echoed off the walls and ceiling. There were very few cars in evidence. As he headed toward his, he dug out his key and, because of the chill, pressed the button for the pre-starter.

The engine roared to life. A heartbeat later the explosion knocked him flat on his back.

Bourne fell through the pine. Just above him came the crumpled helicopter’s circling blades. But as they hit thicker and thicker wood they slowed, and then the tree’s gummy sap began to work on the blades’ central mechanism, acting as a fast-drying glue, slowing them.

Bourne, scrambling down, half falling, half leaping, was cut, scraped, and bruised in too many places to count, his eyes, mouth, and nose filled with wood chips, sawdust, and tiny bits of metal. But in the end the beautiful pine became his ally, its sturdy lower branches holding the wreckage above him long enough for him to swing the last several feet down to the ground.

Coughing and gagging, he ran to the house. Inside, he stuck his head under the faucet in the large soapstone kitchen sink, letting a continuous stream of cold water cleanse and revive him. He found the keys to the second jeep right where Vegas had told him he’d left them. Because of Vegas’s often dangerous work in the oil fields, the bathroom was almost as well stocked as a hospital dispensary. He grabbed bottles of disinfectant and rubbing alcohol, and a roll of sterile gauze on his way out. In the main room, he poured the alcohol on the pile of wood by the fireplace, then stood back, lit a wooden match from a box in the kitchen, and chucked it onto the woodpile. The resultant whoosh of flames was gratifying. For good measure, he set the kitchen curtains aflame. The fire spread greedily. Satisfied, he left the burning house.

Outside, the pine that had protected him was in ruins. It, too, was burning. A piece of one of the helicopter’s rotors, sheared off by the tree, had struck the second jeep, crumpling the driver’s-side front fender but leaving the engine unharmed. Putting the vehicle in gear, Bourne backed out, turned, and took Vegas and Rosie’s path, veering off to the left of the driveway, into the thick copse of trees.

He followed what he sensed was a hunting path through the woods. He drove cautiously, acutely aware of the path’s tortuous twists and turns as it wound steeply down the mountainside. Every now and again, through a gap in the trees, he could see the steep drop-off, and he noted how close the path came to the near-vertical plunge down into the lower country at the foot of the Cordilleras.

He could hear birdsong, which heartened him. Birds were the first to fall silent at any threat, whether real or perceived. If he had to bet, he’d wager that the two copters were the extent of this attack on Vegas. Why would the Domna think any more firepower was needed?

After thirty minutes or so, the dirt path emerged from the woods into a clearing, a small meadow filled with tiny wildflowers. Beyond rose another stand of even taller trees—pines and firs, but also, as the woods continued down the mountainside, an increasing number of deciduous trees, even some tropical varieties in the hazy distance. The smoke from the mounting house fire played over this part of the mountainside like a noxious industrial smog, obscuring the rising sun, graying out the high sky.

Cutting diagonally across the meadow, Bourne could make out the tracks of Vegas’s jeep. He followed these precisely. On the other side of the meadow, the tracks plunged through the woods for a short distance before veering to the right. Bourne could see why. Off to the left, the cliff face dropped off, possibly the result of a gigantic rockfall sometime in the past. Continuing straight on would mean certain death.

This new trail was narrower and rougher, the jeep jouncing precariously as it twitched and whipped branches that sometimes obscured Bourne’s vision. Fifteen minutes of this ended just as abruptly as it had begun, and Bourne found himself on a snaking two-lane paved road. He recognized it as the one he and Suarez had taken up to Vegas’s house. Another jeep, with Vegas and Rosie in it, was waiting for him on the gravel of the inner shoulder.

“¡Fantástico! En verdad, me sorprende.” Vegas was grinning. Fantastic! Truly, I’m surprised.

Rosie smiled at him. “Pero yo no lo soy.” But I’m not. “You’ll have to tell us about your escape.”

“But not now.” Vegas slapped the palm of his hand against the jeep’s door. “Anyone left alive?”

“Not from their side.”

“Cada vez mejor.” Better and better. He squinted up the mountainside to the plume of smoke. “Big fire.”

“Your house,” Bourne said. “This way no one will know whether you or Rosie are dead or alive for days, maybe weeks.”

“Excelente.” Vegas nodded. “Where to now, hombre?”

“The airport at Perales,” Bourne said. “But both the federales and FARC have set up roadblocks on the main highway. Do you know a shortcut?”

Vegas’s grin spread across the entire width of his face. “Follow me, amigo.”

Marlon Etana, having arrived by private charter plane in Cadiz at more or less the same time Jalal Essai drove in, stood dreaming as he looked at the beautiful ancient facade of Don Fernando Hererra’s seaside house. Here in Cadiz, Etana felt the terrible weight of history in the palm of his hand. Marlon Etana—in fact, all the Etanas—were serious students of history. Marvelous businessmen in the purest sense of the word, they had the knack of spinning the knowledge they gleaned from the past into money and power. It was the Etanas who had founded the Monition Club as a way for Severus Domna to come together in various cities across the globe without attracting attention or using the group’s real name. To the outside world, the Monition Club was a philanthropic organization involved in the advancement of anthropology and ancient philosophies. It was a hermetically sealed world in which the sub-rosa members of the group could move, meet, compare work, and plan initiatives.

The Etanas had envisioned a cross-cultural cabal of businessmen, spanning both the Eastern and Western worlds, whose combined power and influence would eventually dwarf those of even the largest of the multinational corporations. Duco ex umbra, influence from the shadows—that had been the motto of the Etana family from time immemorial.

Marlon’s great-great-great-grandfather—a giant among men—had laid out long-term plans for Severus Domna, a way to help the world grow together rather than splinter apart. It was a noble dream and, certainly, if he had lived long enough it might have come to fruition. But human beings are fallible—worse, they are corruptible, and influence is the great corruptor. Exceedingly rare is the man who can ignore its glittering temptation, and even some of the Etanas succumbed. Not the least of these was Marlon’s father, who was weak-willed. In order to fend off a threat from a group inside the Domna, he had forged an alliance with Benjamin El-Arian. Rather than becoming his savior, the clever El-Arian happily arranged for the man’s downfall. El-Arian had already lined up a rival group within the Domna and, with its help, proceeded to toss the elder Etana aside. Soon after, Marlon’s father took his own life—a terrible sin. For an Islamic, the lowest level of hell is reserved for suicides, because Allah has forbidden it in many verses of the Qur’an. The one Marlon had memorized, upon looking at his father’s blank face, was: “And do not kill yourselves. Surely, Allah is Most Merciful to you.”

Marlon did not know whether his father believed that Allah had been merciful to him, or whether he felt he had been abandoned. All he knew was that he’d used what little strength was left inside him to cause an uproar inside Severus Domna, to cause outrage and, hopefully, out of that outrage the beginnings of a difficult debate concerning the soul of the organization.