“CI?”

“I picked you up offa tha street. You were fucked up.”

“I don’t remember…”

The black head turned. “Yo, Deron, yo, yo, yo.” Then Tyrone turned back and spoke to Peter again. “The ambulance. Remember the ambulance, Chief?”

Something was forming out of the haze. “I…”

“The bogus EMS guys. You got yourself outta the ambulance, shit, still don’t know how.”

The memory started to form like a cloud building on the horizon. Peter remembered the garage at the Treadstone building, the explosion, being hustled into the ambulance, the realization that he wasn’t being taken to the hospital, that these attendants were the enemy.

“I remember,” he murmured.

“That’s good, that’s very good.”

Another face along with Tyrone’s. Tyrone had called him Deron. A handsome black man with an upper-class British accent.

“Who are you?”

“You remember Tyrone? He’s from CI. A friend of Soraya’s.” The handsome man smiled down at Peter. “My name’s Deron. I’m a friend of Jason’s.”

Peter’s brain took a moment to click into gear. “Bourne?”

“That’s right.”

He closed his eyes, blessing the good luck that had landed him in the safest place in DC.

“Peter, do you know who those people were in the ambulance?”

Peter’s eyes popped open. “Never saw them before.” He felt his heart beating and sensed that it had been working hard for some time, working to keep him alive. “I don’t know…”

“Okay, okay,” Deron said. “Save your breath.” He turned to Tyrone. “Can you get on this? There must be a police report on the shootings. Use your creds and see if you can get IDs on the dead men.”

Tyrone nodded and took off.

Deron picked up a plastic glass of water with a bendy straw in it. “Now,” he said, “let’s see if we can get some more liquid in you.”

Placing one hand behind Peter’s head, he lifted it gently and offered him the straw. Peter sipped slowly, even though he was parched. His tongue felt swollen to twice its size.

“Tyrone told me the whole story,” Deron said, “at least as much as he knew.” He took the straw out of Peter’s mouth. “It sounds like you were being kidnapped.”

Peter nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t…” Then Peter remembered. He’d done intensive research on Roy FitzWilliams and the Damascus-based El-Gabal, to which Fitz had had ties. Hendricks had been absolutely paranoid about security on the issue of Roy FitzWilliams. Peter groaned.

“What is it? Are you in pain?”

“No, that would be too simple,” Peter said with a gritty smile. “I fucked up, Deron. My boss warned me to be careful and I did some back-door research on a company computer, which runs through the government server.”

“So whoever was tapping in got scared and sent the extraction team.”

“Well, they tried to kill me first.” Peter described the explosion in the garage. “The extraction team was there as a backup.”

“Which speaks both of meticulous planning and an organization with influence and deep pockets.” Deron rubbed his jaw. “I would say you’ve got big problems, except for the fact that Ty tells me you’re director of Treadstone. You’ve got plenty of firepower yourself.”

“Sadly, no,” Peter said. “Soraya and I are still getting Treadstone back on its feet. Most of our current personnel are overseas. Our domestic infrastructure is still hollowed out.”

Deron sat back, forearms on his knees. Losing his English accent, he said, “Damn, homey, you done washed up at da right place.”

Bourne took the Vespa around a corner, speeding after the gunman. He could see him up ahead on the white Vespa, weaving in and out of traffic as he followed the road along the waterfront, heading south. It was difficult to make up ground, but slowly, by running the bike full-out, Bourne was gaining. The gunman had not looked behind him; he didn’t know that someone was on his tail.

He went through a light as it was turning red. Bourne, hunched over the handlebars, judged the vectors of the cross-traffic and, with a twist to the left, then the right, shot through the intersection.

Down the block the gunman had pulled over to the curb behind a black van. He popped open the rear doors and, with the help of the van’s driver, hoisted the Vespa into the interior. Then he slammed the doors, and both men climbed into the front. Bourne was still going full-out, and as the van pulled out into the flow of traffic he was no more than two car lengths behind.

The van soon turned off the sea road, heading into Cadiz itself. It followed a tortuous path down the city’s narrow, crooked streets. At length, the van pulled over and stopped along a street of warehouses. The driver got out and unlocked a door that rolled up electronically, then returned to the van. Bourne ditched the Vespa and sprinted as the van drove through into the interior. The door rattled down and Bourne dived through with just enough room to spare.

He lay on a bare concrete floor that stank of creosote and motor oil. The only illumination came from the van’s headlights. Doors slammed as the two men jumped down onto the concrete. They didn’t bother to unload the Vespa. Bourne rose to one knee, hiding behind an enormous metal barrel. The gunman must have gone to a switch box, because a moment later light flooded the interior from a pair of overheads, capped with green shades. There seemed to be nothing in the warehouse except more of the barrels and two stacks of wooden crates. The driver switched off the headlights, then the two men crossed to the crates.

“Is she dead?” the driver said in Moscow-accented Russian.

“I don’t know, everything happened too fast.” The gunman laid his pistol down on top of one of the crates.

“It is unfortunate that you didn’t stick to the plan,” the driver said with a tone of lamentation only Russians could exhibit.

“She came outside,” the gunman protested. “The temptation was too great. Hit her and run. You would have done the same.”

The driver shrugged. “I’m just happy I’m not in your shoes.”

“Fuck you,” the gunman said. “You’re the other half of this team. If I missed her it’s going to fall on both our shoulders.”

“If our superior finds out,” the driver said, “our shoulders won’t be supporting anything worth talking about.”

The gunman picked up his weapon and reloaded it. “So?”

“So we find out if she’s dead.” The driver squared on his companion. “And if not, we rectify your error together.”

The two men stepped behind the stack and opened a narrow door. Before he went through into what Bourne surmised might be the office, the gunman extinguished the lights. Bourne crept to the van, carefully opened the driver’s door, and rummaged around until he found a flashlight. In the rear, he went through a box of tools and picked out a crowbar. Then he stepped to the stack and squatted down so that the crates were between him and the rear door. Switching on the flashlight, he played the beam over the crates. The wood was an odd greenish color, smooth and virtually seamless. The beam slid across the surface, and he felt his heart rate accelerate. The crates were marked with their origin, Don Fernando’s oil company in Colombia.

Boris felt his blood run cold. “Cherkesov came here to meet with Ivan?” He shook his head. “This I cannot believe.”

The heavyset man signaled to one of the men along the wall, who stepped forward. Boris tensed as the acolyte reached into his robes, but all he brought out was a set of grainy black-and-white photos, which he held out to Boris.

“Go on, take a look,” the heavyset man said. “Because of the lighting, you’ll be able to tell that they were not doctored in any way.”

Boris took the photos and stared down at them, his mind working a mile a minute. There were Cherkesov and Ivan speaking together. A bit of the Mosque’s interior could be seen behind them. He took note of the date the camera had printed in the lower left-hand corner of the photos.