Don Fernando shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Then I can start with you. Why are you friends with him?”

“Not friends. Business partners. He’s a means to an end, nothing more.”

“And those ends?”

“He makes me money. Not drugs.”

“Human beings?”

Don Hernando crossed himself. “God forbid.”

“He’s a liar,” Bourne said.

“True enough.” Don Hernando nodded soberly. “He knows no other way of operating. It’s pathological.”

Bourne sat forward. “What I really want to know, Don Fernando, is the nature of your connection with Severus Domna.”

“Also a means to an end. At times, these people can be useful.”

“They will compromise you, if they haven’t already.”

Don Hernando’s smile was like a slow signal waxing. “Now you underestimate me, my young friend. I should be offended, but with you…” He waved a hand, dismissing the thought. “The fact is, ever since they formed an alliance with Abdul-Qahhar’s Mosque in Munich, I felt it incumbent on me to keep an eye on them.”

Seeing Bourne’s expression, he chuckled. “I see I have surprised you. Good. You must learn, my friend, that all knowledge doesn’t reside with you.”

Rosie stepped into the shower and was immediately wrapped in a column of steam. The water cascaded down her shoulders, her back, her breasts, and her flat stomach as she slowly turned. Closing her eyes against the spray, she felt her muscles melt into the heat. Lifting her arms, she ran her fingers through her hair, moving it back and off her face. She turned her face up to the spray, and the hot water streamed against her eyelids, nose, and cheeks. Slowly, she turned her head to one side and the other, the jets massaging her muscles. The water hit her ears, creating a roaring sound that reminded her of surf, the vastness of the sea, and for a time she lost herself in this image of unplumbed depths.

The hot water struck the small tattoo on her ear, rat-tat-tatting against it, and gradually, the color began to fade and run, the serpent seeming to uncoil as it dissolved into a tiny pool of water tinged by the dye, running down her neck like tears, swirling down the drain.

Don Fernando contemplated the glowing end of his cigar.

“It all started with Benjamin El-Arian,” Bourne said, “didn’t it?”

Rain had come at last, hard and tropical in its fury. It beat against the windowpanes, whipped the palm fronds in the atrium beyond the glass. A gust of wind rattled a loose tile on the roof.

The old man stood, unfolding like an origami, and stepped to the French doors out to the atrium. He stared out, one hand at his temple.

“I wish it were that simple,” he said at length. “A simple villain, a simple goal, yes, Jason? It’s what we all crave because then we are free of complications. But we both know that life rarely affords us time to wrap things up so neatly. When it comes to Severus Domna—nothing is simple.”

Bourne rose and followed Don Fernando, standing next to him. The rain sheeted down the glass, bounced off the paving stones. Runnels of water sluiced out of the copper downspouts, overrunning the grass and plant beds. The earth was black as pitch.

Don Fernando heaved a sigh. His cigar sandwiched between two fingers, all but forgotten.

“No, I’m afraid there is a terrible kind of circular logic at work here. Listen, Jason, it all started with a man named Christien Norén.”

Don Fernando turned, peering into Bourne’s face to see if the name triggered a spark of recognition.

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“I don’t remember ever hearing the name Christien Norén. Tell me about him.”

“That’s not for me to do.” Don Fernando placed a hand on Bourne’s shoulder. “You must ask Estevan’s woman.”

“Her name isn’t Rosie,” Bourne said, “is it?”

Don Fernando stuck the cigar in his mouth, but the ash was cold and gray. “Go find her, Jason.”

Clean and ruddy, Rosie stepped out of the shower, swaddled herself in a thick bath sheet, then wrapped a smaller towel around her hair, making a turban and tucking the end under. Wiping the fog from the mirror with her fingers, she leaned in over the sink, pushed up the makeshift turban, and stared at herself.

Her hair was now its natural tawny blond, the last dregs of the dye ringing the shower drain. Holding her head still, she plucked the contact lens out of her right eye. There she was, one eye dark as coffee, the other the cerulean blue she was born with. One half of her in one world, the other in a second. Swinging open the mirror, she found inside the medicine cabinet everything she had asked for: nail clippers, file, an array of face scrubs and moisturizers. She removed what she needed.

And that was how Bourne found her, as he opened the door to the bathroom. Rosie stared at his reflection in the mirror.

“Don’t you knock?”

“I think I’ve earned the right to come in on you unannounced,” he said.

She turned slowly around to face him. “When did you figure it out?”

“In the car,” Bourne said. “You’d never look at me directly. Then, when you turned to check on Estevan, I saw the edge of the contact lens.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I wanted to see how it played out.”

Cupping a hand, she bowed her head, popped the lens out of her left eye, and threw it in the trash can under the sink.

“Is that your real hair color or another dye job?” Bourne asked.

“This is me.”

He stepped closer. She seemed utterly unafraid. “Not quite. Though the snake tattoo is gone, you still have a nose typical of native Colombians.” He peered more closely. “The operation was masterful.”

“It took three separate reconstructions to get it just right.”

“That’s a lot of trouble to go through to pass for an indigenous Colombian.”

“Hiding in plain sight, my father used to say, is hiding completely.”

“He’s right about that, your father. Christien Norén, is that right?”

Rosie’s eyes opened wide. “Don Hernando told you then.”

“I suppose he thought it was time.”

She nodded. “I suppose it is.”

“So, then. It’s you, not Estevan, who is so important to Don Hernando and Essai.”

“It was me those people on the highway were after.”

“Who are they?”

“I told you I was running.”

“From family, you said.”

“In a way, it’s the truth. They’re the people my father worked for.”

Bourne stood very close to her. She smelled of lavender soap and citrus shampoo. “What shall I call you?”

She gave him an enigmatic smile. She came toward him, so close there was scarcely a handbreadth between them.

“I was born Kaja Norén. My father was named Christien, my mother, Viveka. They’re both dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re very kind.”

Kaja laid one hand on his cheek, stroking it gently. With the other, she drove the nail file she had palmed through skin and layers of muscle.

Book Three

19

CLUTCHING THE HIGH-HEELED shoe he had ripped off Lana Lang’s foot, Boris attacked the bullet-shattered windshield just as the truck plowed into Lana’s car. The front and side air bags deployed, saving him from a dislocated shoulder. Still, he almost lost consciousness. Pulling himself together, he hacked at the windshield, using the heel like a hammer.

The truck driver slammed on the brakes, but the momentum of the two-ton vehicle was too much. The truck dragged the car along with it. The brake pads started to smoke, something fell out of the bottom of the car, sparks flying as it scraped the wet roadbed.

Arms crossed over his face, Boris sprang through the ruined windshield, the crack and tinkle of safety glass in his ears. The car shuddered beneath him like a shot deer. He rolled across the hood, then dropped awkwardly down onto the road. Pain stabbed briefly through his foot and up into his leg. Rain beat down on him, soaking him instantly. The car and truck, now one grotesque unit, continued on, slewing heavily, overheated, tortured metal screaming. The truck’s brakes seized up and the mass skidded, like a planet thrown out of orbit. Then truck and car both jumped the curb and plowed through a plate-glass storefront. With a horrendous sound like an animal screaming in pain, they smashed the interior to smithereens and impacted the rear wall.