“As long as it’s quick,” Boris said.

“We’re all professionals here.” He pulled Boris’s arms behind his back, but instead of tying his wrists, he placed Boris’s Tokarev into his waiting hands. Then he moved back smartly and stood to one side, so that both the gunman and the driver, leaning casually against a crumbling pillar, were in his line of vision. He, too, held his hands behind his back, slipping a Taurus from beneath his jacket where it had lain inside his belt.

He raised his voice. “Any last requests, General? Never mind, there’s no one to pay them any mind.”

The gunmen chuckled as they raised their weapons. Boris brought his right arm around in front of him and squeezed off two shots. As both gunmen fell, bullets through their brains, Zachek shot the driver through the heart.

In the smoking space, amid the deafening silence that comes after gunfire, the two men stood looking at each other. Zachek’s eye was still closed, the flesh around it multihued and puffy. He was the first to lower his weapon. Boris followed suit, walking toward the other man.

“What is it about little pricks,” he said, “that makes them so reliable?”

Zachek grinned.

When Robbinet arrived at the hospital where Aaron had taken Soraya, he discovered that the doctors who had treated her were all off shift and had left for the night. He looked at his watch: It was the hour before dawn. He asked for the best neurologist on staff, was told he was busy, and then produced his credentials. Within five minutes a dapper young man, with longish hair that marked him as something of a maverick, appeared and introduced himself as Dr. Longeur. To his credit, he was already leafing through Soraya’s chart.

“I don’t think she should have checked herself out,” he said with a frown. “There are a number of tests—”

“Come with me, Doctor,” Robbinet said crisply, leading him out of the hospital. He told Longeur that Soraya was missing. “My job is to find this woman, Doctor. Your job is to make sure she is physically sound.”

“It would be best if she returned to the hospital.”

“Under the circumstances, that may not be possible.” Robbinet scanned the dark streets. “I have to assume she will be unwilling to return.”

“Is she phobic?”

“You can ask her that when we find her.”

Together they questioned the area habitués, people who, Robbinet was sure, had been there when Soraya had fled. Robbinet showed them a photo of Soraya.

“These people need help. Some desperately,” Robbinet said.

Dr. Longeur shrugged. “The hospital is already overloaded with patients in worse shape, what would you have us do?”

They went on with their interviews. Finally, they found a disheveled woman who claimed to have seen Soraya and the direction in which she went. She held out a trembling hand and Robbinet gave her some euros. He turned away, disgusted; it was impossible to know whether she was telling the truth.

They sat in his car while the driver waited for instructions. Robbinet called Soraya’s cell phone again and got no answer, but then he wasn’t expecting any. The patrols Aaron had sent out had yet to find her. He didn’t think they would. She was a highly skilled field agent. If she didn’t want to be caught, she wouldn’t be. He sensed that she was following her own lead, that after her friend’s murder she didn’t want to be encumbered by anyone, even the Quai d’Orsay. He didn’t agree with her decision, but he understood it. Still, he feared for her life. She had been near death and had lost someone close to her. It seemed likely that when it came to her own condition she was not thinking clearly.

He gave his driver the address of the Monition Club, but when he arrived the place was lit up like a Christmas tree and there were so many Quai d’Orsay and police personnel around, he knew she hadn’t come back here. Where then?

He glanced at his watch again. The sky to the east was lightening. He reviewed the situation. He knew everything Aaron knew, but it was possible Soraya knew more. She had been certain that the murder trail led back to the Île de France Bank, outside of which her contact had been run down. He tried to put himself in her head. If she had a goal, why go to ground? Maybe because at night she could not gain access to wherever she needed to go. He leaned forward; his gut told him where she was headed. He was taking a gamble, but he did not know what else to do.

“Place de l’Iris,” he told his driver. “La Défense.”

It was where he would go if he were her.

Jason, please step away,” Don Fernando said. “I won’t ask you again.”

“This is a mistake,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando shook his head, but the muzzle of the Magnum never wavered. Bourne took a step back and Don Fernando fired. The bullet struck Etana between the eyes. He was thrown back so hard he flipped over the railing, tumbling into the sea. The water darkened with the spread of his blood.

Bourne glanced over the side of the boat. “Like I said, a mistake.” He looked back at Don Fernando, who was advancing toward him across the dock. “He could have told us a lot.”

Don Fernando stepped onto the boat, the Magnum held at his side. “He would have told us nothing, Jason. You know these people as well as I do. They have no conception of pain. They have suffered all their lives; martyrdom is all they think about. They are only shadows in this life; they are dead men walking.”

“Essai?”

“Etana slit his throat before he leapt out the window.” Don Fernando sat down on the wooden cowling. “Etana came to kill you, Jason, for what you did in Tineghir last year. Essai tried to talk him out of it, but Etana was a stubborn man. So Essai and I hit upon a plan. I’d keep you out of your room while he slipped in and waited.”

“He was waiting for Etana.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a pity Essai is dead.”

Don Fernando passed a hand across his eyes. “There are too many deaths on my plate these days.”

Bourne thought about the shipment lying in the warehouse across the city waiting to be delivered to El-Gabal in Damascus. What was in those twelve crates, who was the real sender—the Domna or the organization Christien Norén had worked for—and was Don Fernando a member of that same group? It seemed the answers lay at Avenue Choukry Kouatly.

He tensed as a police cruiser appeared, heading down the dock as slowly and purposefully as a shark approaches a dead fish.

Don Fernando took out a cigar, bit off the end, and lit it. “Easy,” he said as the cruiser slowed to a halt. “I called them.”

Two uniforms and a detective in a suit piled out. Don Fernando directed them to Etana. While the uniforms went to inspect the corpse floating by the side of the boat, the detective headed straight to Don Fernando, who offered him a cigar.

The detective nodded, bit off the end, and lit up. He made no attempt to inspect the murder scene or glance Bourne’s way.

“The dead man’s a foreign national, you say.” The detective’s voice was deep and phlegmy, as if he was fighting a chest cold.

“In Spain illegally,” Don Fernando said. “A drug dealer.”

“We have very harsh penalties for drug dealers,” the detective said around a cloud of smoke. “As you know.”

Don Fernando inspected the end of his cigar. “I saved the state a lot of money, and you, Diaz, a great deal of time.”

Diaz nodded sagely. “True, Don Fernando, and for this service you have the gratitude of the state.” He let out another cloud of smoke and stared up into the spangled sky. “Let me share my thoughts as I was driven here. Our precinct is a poor one, Don Fernando, and with the debt crisis, budgets are cut and then cut again.”

“A sad state of affairs. Please allow me.” Don Fernando reached into his breast pocket and drew out a folded wad of euros, which he pressed into the detective’s hand. “Leave the body to me.”