“¡Madre de Dios!” Vegas cried. “Is my poor heart still beating?”

Rosie released her grip on the handle above the door. “What Estevan means is thank you.”

“What I mean is I need a drink,” Vegas muttered from behind them.

The day was spent, the sun, yellow bordering on orange, pressed down against the hills in the west like a fried egg. Twilight swept across the olive groves, lending their tortured branches a spooky aspect. They were racing west, toward the darkness of night and a sprinkling of first-magnitude stars.

The atmosphere in the car had altered. Bourne could feel it as surely as you feel the onset of winter, a drop in the pressure, a tiny shiver of a premonition. Following their escape from the box, a subtle shift in the balance of his two charges had occurred. It was as if Vegas, the competent oil man, felt like a fish out of water away from his mountains and his oil fields. Whereas their journey away from Ibagué had caused Rosie to blossom like a flower in sunlight.

He thought about the elaborate box, which had the hand of the Domna all over it. The Domna had tracked him down. Had Jalal Essai told them? Bourne wouldn’t put it past him. Essai remained a complete mystery to Bourne.

Painful as it might be, everything Rosie had said was true: He was running away from everything and everyone. And of course, it was clear why. Once, he had cared deeply for a handful of people. Now all of them save Moira and Soraya were dead. Perhaps some of them, because of him. No more, an insistent voice inside of him cried. No more. His new philosophy, developed without his even being aware of it, was simple: Keep running. He knew he couldn’t get hurt running. But the downside, the collateral damage that Rosie had so cleverly pointed out to him, was that he felt nothing. Was that living? Was he even alive? And if he wasn’t, what was the state of being in which he found himself?

To distract himself, he turned to Rosie. “Why were you running away?”

“The usual reasons.”

She had a knack of answering questions as he would have, without revealing any pertinent information. “There are no usual reasons,” he shot back.

This made her laugh, a sound he found intriguing. It was deep and rich, launched from her stomach. There was nothing shallow or phony about that laugh. “Well, you’re right about that.”

She was silent for some time. Bourne caught a look at Vegas, asleep in the backseat. He looked drawn, exhausted, as if he’d traveled from the Cordilleras to just outside Cadiz on foot.

“I was not a good girl,” Rosie said, after a time. She was staring out her side window. “I was, what do you call it, the black sheep. Whatever I did made the people around me angry.”

“Your family.”

“Not just my family. There were friends affected, too. That was one of the things my family couldn’t forgive me for.”

They rode on in silence, the wind cracking and moaning through the car. Rosie pushed her hair back behind her ear, revealing a small tattoo on the inside of one of the whorls.

“I see you keep a serpent with you at all times,” Bourne said. The snake was striped orange and black.

She touched the pink shell of her ear. “It’s a skytale.”

“It looks mythical. Does it breathe fire?”

“Huh! I’ve yet to hear about a creature that breathes fire.”

“You haven’t met some of the Russians I have.”

That laugh again, filling the car as if with perfume.

Bourne hesitated only a moment. “But you have met some bad people.”

The wind floated her hair over her ear, obscuring the tiny dragon. “Pretty bad, yes.” Before he could follow up, she said, “Why are you running?”

“I pissed off some very powerful people. They had plans and I got in the way.”

Rosie gave Vegas a quick glance over her shoulder. “If it’s the Domna, then good for you.”

This brought a wry smile to Bourne’s face. “What do you know about Estevan’s involvement with them?”

Rosie hesitated, possibly considering whether or not to violate a confidence. Then she said, “His involvement wasn’t voluntary, I can tell you that.”

“How did they trap him?”

“His daughter.”

“I thought she ran off with a handsome Brazilian?”

“Who told you that? Suarez?” When Bourne said nothing, Rosie shrugged and went on grimly. “That is the story Estevan decided on. It made sense, it was plausible. But the truth is the Domna kidnapped her. Where she is, I have no idea. Every week, Estevan received a photo of her holding a dated newspaper so he knew she was alive.”

“But Estevan rebelled,” Bourne said.

She ran her hands through her hair. “Essai told him that the Domna didn’t have his daughter. They had taken her, but long ago she escaped. No one knows how or where she is. The only thing that Essai could tell Estevan was that the two men who had kidnapped her were found dead, their throats slit. The rest is a complete mystery.”

“And the photo they sent him every week?”

“Photoshopped. They apparently used a girl built like her, then put Estevan’s daughter’s head onto her shoulders.” She shuddered. “Ghoulish.”

“I assume Estevan has never heard from her.”

“Not a word.”

Bourne turned off the highway at the exit for Cadiz. “Not long now.”

“Thank God,” Rosie said under her breath.

“She must have had help,” Bourne said thoughtfully.

“Estevan and I talked about that a lot.” She shrugged. “For all the good it did.”

Bourne could see the city up ahead, like a shining ball of Byzantine brass. He rolled down the window all the way and drew the rich scent of the sea into his lungs.

“How much does Estevan know about the Domna?” Bourne asked. He remembered Essai telling him that if Estevan couldn’t tell him what the Domna’s new plan was he would surely know someone who could.

Rosie shifted in her seat. “The fact that he had to be coerced into working for them should tell you all you need to know.”

“He was a cog in a wheel.”

“Everyone except the directors is a cog. It’s safer that way; compartmentalization provides complete security. In Estevan’s case, he provided an invaluable service.”

“Which was?”

“Oil rigs are under constant stress, parts wear out, clog, snap. New parts are always on order, the older ones being shipped back to the various manufacturers, you get the idea.”

Bourne did. “What was Estevan smuggling in and out of Colombia for them?”

Rosie shrugged. “Drugs, weapons—for all I know, human beings. Honestly, it could have been anything.”

“Estevan never told you?”

“He never knew. The sealed crates came and went. They were marked in a certain way. He was prohibited from opening them. He was simply the conduit.”

“Curiosity is part of the human condition,” Bourne said. “He never peeked?”

“They were sealed in a specific fashion. Anyway, if he found a way in, he never spoke about it.”

“Would he keep something like that from you?”

“As you have seen for yourself, Estevan is extremely protective of me. He would die rather than expose me to danger.”

When is a response not an answer? Bourne thought. When Rosie provides it.

They had entered the streets of old Cadiz, ablaze with light and sharp shadows. The filigreed architecture of North Africa was all around them. It was as if they had immigrated into another world, one suspended on the ocean, balanced between East and West, part of both, belonging to neither.

The light of day looked fatigued; the sharp odor of a storm was in the air. Night was already beginning to gather.

They drove on, down crooked streets, hearing the calls of street vendors in Spanish and Arabic, inhaling the incense of history.

Where did you learn to pilot a boat?” Marlon Etana said as he sat on the sailboat’s bench.

“I’m full of surprises,” Essai said. “Even to a man like you.”