She started as Amun came racing out of the shadows. The older of the Arabs turned, a switchblade already in one hand. He stabbed outward, forcing Amun to change direction. The younger Arab smashed his fist into the side of Amun’s head, knocking him down.

Soraya dropped feet-first from the beam, her knee catching the younger Arab in the small of the back. He went down, his head striking the concrete, which shattered his front teeth. Blood spattered from his split lip. He groaned and lay still. Amun scrambled away from the older Arab’s knife, and they both vanished into the darkness.

That left Soraya and Donatien Marchand. He stared at her with the fixed intensity of a trapped wolf. His eyes seemed yellow with hatred.

“How did you know where I was coming?” When she didn’t answer, he glanced around. “Where’s the Jew? Too timid to make it down here?”

“You’re dealing with me now,” Soraya said.

Before she could say another word, Marchand bolted away. She tore after him, back toward the stairs. Part of her mind was with Amun and his fight with the Arab. Were there more down here? But she couldn’t think of that now; she couldn’t let Marchand get away.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and leapt upward, faster and more agile than she had expected. She pounded after, through the wan, gritty light, up through patches of darkness, past the tiny landing, ascending the second part of the staircase, up toward where the bare bulb emitted its waxen light.

Marchand was running so hard he hit the bulb with his shoulder. It swung back and forth on the end of its flex, casting wild and disorienting shadows across the stairs. Soraya redoubled her pace, closing the distance to her enemy.

All at once Marchand stopped and, whirling, drew a small .22 with silver grips. He fired once, wildly, and then again as she closed, the second bullet tearing through the shoulder of her jacket but leaving her unharmed.

Barreling into him, she drove the edge of her hand into his wrist, knocking the .22 out of his grip. With a series of bright, hard clangs, it bounded down the stairs and lay half in the shadows.

Soraya grabbed the front of Marchand’s coat, drawing him to her, but he had reached up and, before she knew what had happened, looped the electrical flex around her neck. He pulled tight and she gagged. Her hands reached up to loosen the flex, but Marchand, standing behind her, only pulled it tighter.

Her fingers scrabbled futilely at the flex cutting into her neck and throat. She tried to draw a breath, but it was no use. A moment later she began to lose consciousness.

16

BOURNE ARRIVED IN Seville with his two passengers without further incident. Interpol hadn’t been waiting for the plane in Madrid, and in Seville the trio passed through the arrivals terminal unnoticed.

As promised, a rental car was waiting for them along with an Internet address. Bourne entered it into his cell phone’s browser and up came a map of the area from Seville to Cadiz. A purple line indicated the route Essai expected them to take. At the end was an address in Cadiz, the place, he assumed, where Don Fernando Hererra was waiting for their arrival.

They climbed into the car, and Bourne started it up then drove them out of the airport. He had spent the air time trying to figure out Jalal Essai’s game. There was no doubt that Essai had fed him a brew of truth and lies, so whether he was ally or enemy was still to be determined. Bourne had also spent much of the time brooding over his friend Boris Karpov. If it was true he had been ordered to kill Bourne, he hadn’t shown up yet. But would he? Essai wanted something from Bourne, something he knew Bourne wouldn’t do if Essai asked him straight-out. Did it have to do with Boris? Bourne felt a vast net beginning to tighten around him, but as yet he had no idea of its size or origin.

Someone wanted him—but why and for what?

“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” Rosie said from the seat next to him.

Bourne smiled, staring straight ahead as he navigated the road. He was concerned about tails, but so far the traffic behind them appeared normal.

“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Dios mio, Rosie,” Vegas said from the backseat, “stop peppering him with questions.”

“I’m only making conversation, mi amor.” She turned to Bourne, but her eyes did not meet his, sliding away into shadow. “I know what it’s like to be alone—really alone, crouched in the shadows watching the sunlight.”

“Rosie!”

“Hush, mi amor.” She addressed Bourne again. “Here is what I can’t understand: Why would someone do this voluntarily?”

“You know,” Bourne said, “you don’t speak like someone from the backwater of Colombia.”

“I sound educated, yes?”

“I admire your vocabulary.”

Her laughter was deep and rich. “Yes, someone like you would.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“No? You are alone, always alone. I think this is the essential thing about you—it defines how you think and everything you do.” She cocked her head. “You have no answer for this?”

“I don’t know a single thing about you.”

She touched the scars on her neck and chest. “But I think you do.”

“The margay.”

“She was so beautiful,” Rosie said, “but I got in her way.”

“No,” Bourne said. “You frightened her.”

Rosie looked away, out her window at the passing scenery, which was nothing much, a series of hypnotically undulating hills, some covered in groves of gnarled, dusty-looking olive trees.

Bourne glanced again in the rearview mirror. There was a red Fiat he was keeping an eye on, though he doubted any professional tail would be driving a red car.

“Stumbling over a margay’s den,” he said, “that doesn’t sound like the kind of behavior I’d expect from someone who was born and raised in the Cordilleras.”

“I was running. Crossing a stream, I slipped on a mossy rock and hurt my knee. I wasn’t looking where I was going; I was frightened.”

“You were running away.”

“Yes.”

“From whom?”

Rosie tossed her head. “You’re always running. You should know.”

“I was told you were running away from your family.”

She nodded. “That is true.”

“I’ve never done that.”

“And yet you’re alone, always alone,” she said. “It must be exhausting.”

Vegas leaned forward. “Rosie, for the love of God!” He turned to Bourne. “I apologize for her.”

Bourne shrugged. “The world is full of opinions.”

“I know why you run,” Rosie said. “It is so nothing will touch you.”

Bourne’s eyes flicked again to the rearview mirror, the red Fiat, then to Rosie’s face, but once again her eyes were averted.

“I suppose there’s not much call for a psychologist in Ibagué,” he said. “Is that where you were born?”

“I am Achagua,” Rosie said. “From the serpent line.”

Bourne, an expert in comparative languages, knew that the Achagua had named their different family lineages after animals: serpent, jaguar, fox, bat, tapir.

“Do you speak the language—Irantxe?”

A slow smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Nice try. I’m impressed. Really. But no, Irantxe is its own language. The Achagua spoke any number of Maipurean dialects depending on whether they lived in the mountains or the Amazon basin.” Her smile broadened. “Please tell me you don’t speak any of those languages.”

“I don’t,” Bourne said.

“Neither do I. They were spoken a very long time ago. Even my father had no knowledge of them.”

Bourne’s eyes returned to the rearview mirror. He could no longer see the red Fiat and, instead, began to concentrate on the black van up ahead. Over the past fifteen minutes, it had had several opportunities to change lanes and speed, but it hadn’t done so. Instead it had maintained its position four vehicles ahead of him.

Checking his side mirror, he waited for a break in the traffic, then, without signaling, shot forward into the left-hand lane. Within seconds he had passed the black van. He watched it firmly planted in his rearview, receding slowly from view. Then it changed lanes and accelerated.