Don Fernando stirred, clearly uncomfortable. “There’s always the possibility that Jason is wrong.”

Kaja laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. “Sure. Thank you, Don Fernando, but I’m long past the age where I can believe in fairy tales.” She turned to Bourne, hands on her hips. “So. Any ideas?”

Bourne knew she meant who, specifically, her father might have worked for. He shook his head. “Since he was a foreign national working outside Russia, the SVR—Russia’s equivalent of America’s Central Intelligence—is a possibility. But frankly, he could just as easily have been recruited by one of the grupperovka families.”

“The Russian mob,” Kaja said.

“Yes.”

She frowned. “That would, at least, be a more logical choice for him to make.”

“Kaja,” Don Fernando said, “I caution you against trying to apply logic here.”

“Don Fernando is right,” Bourne said. “We have no idea of your father’s situation. For all we know, he may have been coerced into working for the Russians.”

But already Kaja was shaking her head. “No, I know this much about my father: He could not be coerced.”

“Even if your life and the lives of your sisters hung in the balance?”

“He left us flat.” Her expression was set firm. “He didn’t care about us; he had other things on his mind.”

“He killed for a living,” Bourne said. “It takes a special kind of human being to do it, an even more special kind to be successful at it.”

She engaged his eyes with hers. “My point exactly. No pity, no remorse, no love. Full disconnection from humanity.” She drew her shoulders back, defiant. “I mean, that’s what makes it possible to kill not once, but over and over again. Disconnection. It’s not so hard to put a bullet in the back of the head of a thing.”

Bourne knew that she was talking about him as much as her late father. “There are times when killing is necessary.”

“A necessary evil.”

He nodded. “Whatever you choose to call it doesn’t make it any less of a necessity.”

Kaja swung back to confront the night, shimmering dimly just beyond the panes of glass.

“Leave Christien Norén to the unknown,” Don Fernando said. “Trust me when I tell you that his life, his fate, are over and done with. Kaja, it’s time for you and your sister to move on.”

Kaja gave a dark laugh that was more like a bark. “You try telling Skara that, Don Fernando. She has never listened to me, and I can assure you she won’t start now.”

“Do you know where she is?” the Spaniard asked.

Kaja shook her head. “When we parted, we swore an oath not to look for each other. We have had no contact in more than ten years. We were children then, and now…” She turned back to him. “Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.”

“It would be tragic if that were true. At least, for you.” Don Fernando unfolded on creaky knees and crossed the room to stand beside her. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “There is hope for you, Kaja. There always was, I sincerely believe that. As for Skara…” His last words hung ominously in the room.

“She’s doomed, isn’t she?”

Don Fernando looked at her, a terrible sorrow informing his features.

Bourne stepped toward her. “Why do you say that?”

Kaja looked away.

“Because,” Don Fernando said, “Skara suffers from dissociative identity disorder.”

Kaja’s eyes locked on Bourne’s. “My sister has six distinct alter egos, all of them as real as any of us in this room.”

Any meeting with M. Errol Danziger was fraught with both tension and peril—the man had a hair-trigger temper and all too often took offense at even the smallest perceived slight. For some reason he could not quantify, Hendricks felt unprepared, and so he put off the meeting until late in the afternoon, when he knew he should have taken Danziger to lunch.

He took Maggie to lunch instead. This meant—because she requested it—picking her up outside The Breadline on Pennsylvania Avenue, where she had bought enough food for their picnic on the National Mall.

The hazy sun moved in and out of the cloud cover as they walked through the grass. Hendricks’s security detail, none too happy with their boss’s choice of venues, nevertheless dutifully followed orders, staking out a suitable patch of grass around which they formed a strict perimeter.

Hendricks and Maggie sat facing each other, cross-legged like kids. She spread out the food she had bought. He was almost giddy with the child-like delight that comes from playing hooky. Here he was with Maggie, eating sandwiches, drinking iced tea, and basking in her smile and her scent.

“You surprised me with your call.” She took a small, precise bite of a ham and Brie with jalapeño mustard. Her golden hair was drawn back in a thick ponytail. She was wearing a scoop-neck black-and-white polka-dot dress cinched with a wide black patent-leather belt. She had taken off her low heels, her bare toes wriggling in the grass.

“I’m just glad you weren’t tending to my roses,” he said.

“Who said I wasn’t?” she said with a wry smile. She took another bite, small and precise. “I would have come anyway.”

This statement so pleased him that his sandwich caught in his throat. He took a couple of sips of tea to wash the food down. Looking at her now in this idyllic setting he realized that he was falling in love. His first instinct was to be skeptical, to admonish himself for being foolish, adolescent, and, worse, possibly vulnerable. And then the thought was washed away. Looking at her now he experienced the sensation of falling, of a delicious weightlessness that he associated with his dreams, though he could not dredge up any one in particular. He was happy, and in his life happiness was the rarest of commodities.

Maggie cocked her head. “Christopher? What are you thinking?”

He set his sandwich down. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I was thinking about a meeting I scheduled for the end of the day.” Hendricks hesitated. It occurred to him that a fresh perspective might help him get a grip on dealing with Danziger and the president. “The individual I’m meeting with is extremely difficult.”

“That can mean so many things.”

Hendricks could see by Maggie’s expression that he had her undivided attention, and he was pleased. “He’s an egomaniac,” he said. “He’s come up in the world riding other people’s coattails—mainly my predecessor’s.” This was as specific as he planned to get with her. He might seek her opinion, but he was also unfailingly security-conscious. “Now a situation has arisen where he’s insinuating himself into a position of power on an initiative of mine.”

Maggie looked thoughtful. “I don’t see a problem. A man who makes his living riding other people’s coattails can’t be very competent.”

“But that is the problem. If he gets what he wants he’s sure to screw the pooch.”

“Then let him.”

“What? You must be joking.”

Maggie carefully rewrapped the uneaten half of her sandwich. “Consider, Christopher. This man screws the pooch, as you so colorfully put it—”

“But it’s my pooch he’ll be screwing.”

“—and you ride in to the rescue.” Maggie took out a chocolate chip cookie and broke off a small piece, which she held between her fingertips. “The people who are backing this individual will be so humiliated they’re sure to withdraw their support of him.” She popped the bit of cookie into her mouth, chewed slowly and luxuriantly. “In chess it’s known as retreating one square to take the board.”

Hendricks sat back, watching as she broke off another piece of cookie and handed it to him. He chewed thoughtfully, the chocolate melting in his mouth. What she was proposing ran against every protocol he had set for himself. Give in? Give Danziger his head? What a hellish thought.

He swallowed, and Maggie handed him more. But then again why not? he asked himself. After all, it was what the president wanted. Not only was the POTUS’s head on the block, but so were those of Marshall and Stokes. Hendricks thought it would feel mighty fine to take them all down a couple of pegs, especially the two generals who were a constant pain in his ass. And think of the humiliation Danziger himself would suffer.