By that time Boris had staggered to his feet amid a chaotic mass of shouting pedestrians, blaring sirens, and stalled traffic. People in herky-jerky motion were everywhere, their umbrellas clashing into one another. Faces peered at him, hands grabbed for him, beseeching him for answers: Was he all right, what had happened? The crowd swelled into a mob that spilled out into the adjoining streets. People seemed to be running from every direction, splashing in the running gutters.

Boris was busy wrenching himself free of the mounting chaos. That was when he spied the human machine knifing through the crowd. The human machine grinned at him and said something Boris couldn’t make out. It was Zachek, the mouthpiece for Konstantin Beria, the head of SVR. Zachek, who had detained him at Ramenskoye airport. What was he doing here? Boris asked himself.

“Believe me when I tell you that we can make your life a living hell,” Zachek had warned him.

In that moment he saw everything as if a curtain had been lifted, revealing the poisoned feast laid out on a table. As he reeled drunkenly away, clawing through the dense clusters of chattering gawkers, Boris knew that it was SVR. SVR was responsible for Lana Lang’s death, fucking with him here in Munich.

Do you ever think about them?” Kaja said.

Bourne, lying on the floor of the bathroom, stared up into her piercing blue eyes. She was sitting astride his stomach, one fist grasping the end of the nail file she had used as a makeshift knife. He felt very little pain. He suspected that the file hadn’t gone very deep, that, in fact, one of his ribs had deflected it from its path. He could have dislodged her, but what was the point? She hadn’t wanted to kill him, or even to hurt him badly. She had something to tell him, something he wanted—-possibly even needed—to hear. So he lay still, breathing deeply, his thoughts going deep, gathering his resolve.

“The people you’ve killed?” she continued.

And then, staring into her eyes, the past rose up and melded with the present. Her blue eyes became the eyes of the woman in the bathroom of the Nordic disco club. Lights strobed, music blared, and he was back there in time and place. She was sitting on the toilet, the small silver-plated .22—almost a plaything when it came to stopping a human being—aimed at him.

He did what Alex Conklin had sent him to do. He knew nothing about the woman, except that she had been marked by Treadstone for termination. Those were the days when he had done what he was told, as his training dictated. Before the incident when he had lost his memory, after which he had begun to question everything, starting with Treadstone’s motives.

Just before he had completed his mission, she had said to him, “There is no—”

There is no… what?

Kaja’s eyes, the dead woman’s eyes, the same eyes.

And then Kaja said, “I saw her. The police came and took me to Frequencies in Stureplan to identify her. She was sitting there, they hadn’t moved her, God knows why…” Her head trembled. “There was no reason for you to do what you did.”

“There is no reason.” That was what she had said just before he had killed her. “There is no reason.”

Soraya fell into darkness. She landed on Amun’s corpse, which, in death, protected her as Amun had done in life.

The man with the red polo was on her immediately, dragging her off Amun and throwing her to the side like a sack of garbage. For a moment, he stared down at Amun’s face. Then he kicked it. The jaw cracked and teeth flew everywhere. He kicked again and Amun’s nose collapsed. Then he went to work on Amun’s ribs, staving them in with kicks that became ever more vicious. He was panting like a dog in heat. His face was flushed with blood and his lips were drawn back from his yellow teeth.

Soraya, coming to, heard the man’s imprecations. Because they were Arabic, she became momentarily disoriented, believing she was back in Cairo. Then her gaze fell upon Amun’s ruined face and she shrieked like a banshee. The Arab was turning toward her as she landed on him, toppling him backward.

They hit hard on the bare concrete, and she grunted with a sudden pain flaring through her left side. The Arab tried to roll off her, but she dug in with clawed fingers. Despite an overwhelming dizziness, she held fast to him. He chopped down on one of her wrists, providing the opening she needed. Slamming the heel of her hand into his nose, she pushed herself off her left side and tried to knee him. He jerked away and she connected with his thigh instead.

That was all the opportunity he was going to afford her. He jabbed her throat with the tips of his fingers and she reared back, gagging, gasping for breath. Calmly and methodically, he drew out a switchblade, snikked it open, and prepared to slit her throat.

A pounding on the bathroom door caused Kaja to lock it.

Don Fernando’s voice could be heard through the door. “Is everything all right?”

“Perfectly fine,” Kaja said. “Jason and I are having a heart-to-heart.”

“Don’t do anything precipitous,” Don Fernando said. “He knows nine hundred ways to kill you.”

“You worry too much, Don Fernando,” she said.

He rattled the doorknob. “Come out at once, Kaja. This was a mistake.”

“No,” she said, “it’s not.”

“He doesn’t remember, Kaja.”

“So you told me.” Leaning down, her face close to Bourne’s, she said softly, “You won’t lay a hand on me, will you? Not until you learn what happened, and by then it will be too late.”

He wondered what she meant by that.

“Do you even remember her, Jason? Do you remember Frequencies, the dance club in Stockholm?”

Bourne was still engaged in a duel with her eyes. “It was winter, snowing.”

Kaja seemed mildly surprised. “Yes, the day she died it was snowing hard. The day you killed her.”

Full understanding bloomed. “She was your mother.”

For a moment, something dark and ugly swam in her eyes. “Viveka. My mother’s name was Viveka.” She leaned ever closer, their lips virtually touching. And all at once her face twisted with a demonic spasm. Her voice was clotted with emotion when she said: “Why did you kill her?”

The knife blade swung in a shallow arc. Soraya tried to lift one arm to fend it off, to protect herself, but still gasping for air, she lacked the strength. The Arab knocked her arm away as if it belonged to a doll.

Gripping her hair with one hand, he jerked her head back, exposing the long, vulnerable curve of her throat. He grinned. “Bitch,” he said. Then other words that made her shudder. His body curved into one long blade, a weapon bent solely to take her life, as if he had been born to that one dreadful task.

He arched up and Soraya said a prayer, for life and for death. And then the Arab’s head was surrounded by a pair of arms. A hand cupped his chin and, even while recognition came into his eyes, jerked his head to the right in the most violent motion imaginable. His neck cracked, snapped, and, as the hands let go, he slumped sideways, down into the darkness he had meant for her.

Soraya looked up as Aaron moved into the pale, fluttering light at the base of the stairwell. He reached down and, without a word, picked her up in his arms and took her out of the basement via the alternate route by which he had found his way in.

There is no reason.

He could tell her the truth or lie. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t listening. All she wanted was her pound of flesh, and now he knew what it was.

“She was a civilian. That was what my father told us just before he left us. ‘Whatever happens to me, don’t be concerned,’ he said. ‘You’re safe. You’re civilians.’ I didn’t know what he meant, until the day of the snowstorm, the day my mother…” A spasm of deflected energy went through her. Her face looked white-hot. “Why did you kill her? Tell me! I need to know!”