Now he began to look for the box, a tailing maneuver extremely difficult to shake since it involved vehicles in front and behind.

“What’s happening?” Vegas said.

Bourne could feel the anxiety radiating from him like waves of heat.

“There are people on this road who shouldn’t be here,” Bourne said. “Sit back.”

Rosie gripped the handle above her door but said nothing. Her face was set in neutral. She knew when to keep quiet, Bourne thought.

The black van had established a position a car’s length behind him. Apparently, the driver understood he had been made.

Bourne checked ahead, but saw no other black van. He saw two-seater sports cars, a bus full of Japanese tourists, cameras held in front of their faces, and sedans with families. There were also a wide variety of trucks, including a semi, but none of these vehicles seemed likely to be part of the box.

He tried varying his speed, noting how each vehicle in front of him reacted, but he got no definitive read. He thought it interesting—and worrisome—that though the black van had announced itself, the second vehicle was still incognito. He wondered what that meant because it wasn’t part of the box playbook, which dictated all-in or all-out. Once one of the vehicles in the box was made, usually the two vehicles either peeled off or closed in.

Suddenly the black van made its move, coming up on Bourne’s left. He switched into the center lane and, moments later, it followed. He kept going, into the right-hand lane even though the semi was now in front of him. If the black van followed, he could always swing around the semi’s left.

With a burst of speed, the black van cut off a chugging sedan as it swerved into the right-hand lane behind Bourne. Bourne looked for a break in the traffic to switch to the center lane, but even as he plotted vectors the black van came up dangerously close behind him. He accelerated, and, at that precise moment, the rear of the semi slammed down, its edge casting off a shower of sparks as it dragged along the roadbed.

The moment Bourne saw it, he understood. The rear panel had been retrofitted as a ramp. The black van then gently rear-ended him, urging his rental car farther toward the ramp and the yawning empty interior of the semi, the box’s second vehicle. These people never meant to tail him, never meant to kill him: They meant to capture him, seal him in, and take him out of the field permanently.

Soraya, struggling to stay conscious, dug her heels into the grit of the staircase. At the same time, she swiveled her hips to the left, moving them out of the way of her right elbow, which she drove into the soft spot in Marchand’s throat.

Marchand reared back, so shocked that he took his hands off the flex to belatedly protect his vulnerable throat. With her right hand, she tore the flex away from her throat. She slammed her knee into Marchand’s crotch. He gasped, bent over double, and she wrapped the flex around his neck, pulling on both ends so hard he collapsed to his knees.

He made little gasping sounds like a fish on the deck of a boat. He looked up at her, his watering eyes bloodshot and bulging. He tried to swipe at her with his right hand, then his left, but her grip on him was terminal.

She bent over, shoving her grim face in his. “Now, M. Marchand, you’re going to tell me what I want to know. You’re going to tell me now or by Allah I will take your life and your soul and I will grind them both to dust.”

He stared at her. His face was becoming bloated, dark with pooled blood. Tears of pain spilled out of his eyes. She could see the whites all the way around.

“Ak, ak, ak” was all he could manage.

The moment she loosened the flex the smallest amount he lashed out at her, but she slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose, resulting in a spray of blood that covered his upper lip, cheeks, and chin.

“Now talk,” she said. “Who did you call after we left your office?”

His eyes opened even wider. “How… how did you know?”

“Tell me.”

“Why bother? You will kill me anyway.” His voice sounded sodden, as if he were speaking to her from underwater.

“And why not? You were planning my death,” she said. “But unlike you, I might have a measure of mercy inside me. That’s the chance you’ll have to take.”

All of a sudden his shoulders slumped and he shrugged. “So I tell you. What does it matter? You won’t get out of here alive.”

Soraya had had enough of him. Her desire to break him into little pieces became overwhelming. Taking his broken nose in her hand, she turned it like a water faucet until new tears sprang from his eyes and he was panting like a pack animal about to collapse. Then and only then did she loosen the flex sufficiently.

She stared hard into his eyes. “Five seconds, four, three—”

He jabbed upward, his fist connecting with her left breast. Soraya saw stars and, staggering back, almost pitched off the stairs. Seizing his moment, Marchand sprang at her, his face purple, his cheeks blotchy, and his breath sawed raggedly from his throat. His hands throttled her, bending her backward as he attempted to pitch her off the staircase down into the blackness at the bottom.

Also struggling for breath, Soraya cursed herself for letting down her guard, while working to spread his forearms and mitigate his attack. But Marchand was out for blood.

Soraya punched and punched, but she lacked leverage, so her blows were having a minimal effect. Lights were bursting behind her eyes and she was having trouble thinking. She struggled mightily, but that only seemed to worm her deeper into his grip. Slowly, inexorably, he pushed her backward against the railing, until her back was arched painfully.

Light and shadow danced spastically, eerily, as the bulb swung to her ever more desperate movements. She found herself staring at the light bulb, a miniature sun emanating from the coils. Then she blinked. She was at the tipping point and felt him marshaling his energy to heave her over the side. Her arm shot up. Grasping the base of the bulb, she slammed it into Marchand’s left eye.

He screamed as the glass shattered, piercing his eyeball. Soraya, feeling the pressure come off, shoved the broken base deeper in.

The corona of the electric shock spun her backward like a giant hand slap. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths, desperate to return oxygen to her system. She felt harrowed, hollowed out.

Then she smelled burning flesh and almost gagged. She stood up straight, groaning, every muscle in her torso sore and aching. Marchand was on his knees. His hands were glued to the base of the bulb, which was buried in his eye socket. Muscles jumped and spasmed even as he fell over, his heart short-circuiting.

17

THE ONCOMING BLACK van was behind Bourne, the semi ready to scoop them up in front. To the right was a two-foot shoulder ending in a galvanized-steel guardrail, beyond which was a steep drop-off into an olive grove clinging to the side of a hill. On his left was a convertible Mercedes, the oblivious driver bobbing his head to the music pouring out of his speakers. There was no time for thought, only instinct forged by years of training and hard experience.

Bourne accelerated, closing the car’s-length distance between him and the ramp. Then he was on the ramp itself, the nose of the rental car pointed up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vegas shouted.

Halfway up the ramp Bourne turned the wheel hard to his left and, at the same time, stamped the accelerator to the floor. The car shot up and off the ramp. Airborne, it passed over the Mercedes, the undercarriage clearing the driver’s head by inches even before he instinctively ducked. Horns blared, brakes screeched. Bourne clipped the rear end of the car in the far left lane, regained control, and kept going. Behind him, cars piled into one another in a chain reaction, but the rental car was free now, accelerating away from the semi and the black van, both of which were caught in the expanding chaos of a massive crash.