“A suicide pill?” Peter said. “I thought that went out with the NKVD.”

Deron rolled the tooth between his fingertips like a marble. “Apparently not.”

“But it is Russian in origin.”

Deron nodded. “So now we know the country of origin of your kidnappers. Does that help?”

Peter frowned. “I’m not sure yet.”

Deron activated the phone, added a package of minutes, and handed it to Peter. “You have twenty minutes of time, overseas included,” he said. “After that it’s trash.”

Peter nodded gratefully. Deron knew his security backward and forward. After Deron left the room, he punched in the cell number of Soraya’s contact in Damascus whom he’d called days ago when he first read about El-Gabal, the defunct mining company Roy FitzWilliams had consulted for before he was hired by Indigo Ridge.

“Ashur,” he said when the voice answered, “this is Peter—”

“Peter Marks? We thought you had been neutralized.”

A trickle like ice water rode down Peter’s spine. “Who is this? Where’s Ashur?”

“Ashur is dead. Or nearly so.”

Peter felt a prickle at the nape of his neck. Using the suicide tooth as a cue, he said, “Kahk dyelayoot vlee znayetye menya?” How do you know me?

“Ashur told us,” the voice replied in kind. An evil chuckle. “He didn’t want to, but in the end he really had no choice.”

What the hell are Russians doing in Damascus? Peter asked himself. “Why did you try to kill me?”

“Why are you interested in El-Gabal? It’s been out of business for years.”

Peter’s anger kicked in, but he was careful to keep it in check. “If you kill Ashur—”

“His death is already assured,” the voice said with a maddening serenity.

With an enormous effort, Peter put Ashur aside and gathered his thoughts. As a stab in the dark, he said, “El-Gabal isn’t defunct. It’s of too much importance to you.”

Silence.

I’m right, El-Gabal still exists. “I have the suicide tooth from one of your men. Once I pried it out of his mouth, he talked. I know El-Gabal is the center of everything.”

More silence, hollow and somehow eerie.

“Hello? Hello?”

Dead air pulsed in his ear. Peter hit REDIAL, but got nothing, not even Ashur’s voice mail. The tenuous line of communication had been cut.

Your friendship was with the girls’ father, not their mother,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando nodded.

“And you never told them.”

He took another sip. It might have been a trick of the light, but his eyes now seemed to be the precise color of the brandy. “I only know Kaja. The truth is far too complex for her to—”

“She’s been looking for answers to who her father was all her adult life,” Bourne said with some force. “You should have told her.”

“I couldn’t,” Don Fernando said. “The truth is far too dangerous for the girls to know.”

Bourne disengaged his hand from the older man’s. “What gives you the right to make that decision?”

“Mikaela’s death gives me the right. She found out; the truth killed her.”

Bourne sat back, regarding Don Fernando. He was like a chimera. Every time you thought you had him figured out, he changed shape the way Bourne himself changed identities.

Don Fernando, gazing deep into Bourne’s eyes, shook his head. “At least give me a fair hearing before you find me guilty.”

Your eye looks terrible,” Boris said. “I’ll get you a steak to put on it.”

“No time,” Zachek said, closing the connection on his cell phone, “Cherkesov was spotted going through security at the Munich airport.”

Boris stepped to the curb and flagged down a taxi. “Where is he headed?”

“Damascus,” Zachek said as they climbed in.

Boris told the driver their destination, and he headed toward the nearest entrance to the A 92 Munich–Deggendorf Autobahn.

“Syria.” Boris sat back against the seat. “What the hell is he doing in Damascus?”

“We don’t know,” Zachek said, “but we intercepted a call on his cell phone. He’s been given instructions to go to El-Gabal, a mining company on Avenue Choukry Kouatly.”

“Curious.”

“It gets curiouser,” Zachek said. “So far as we’ve been able to ascertain, El-Gabal has been defunct since the 1970s.”

“Clearly, your intel is wrong,” Boris said drily.

“I’ll try not to revert, if you don’t,” Zachek said.

“We made a deal that’s satisfactory to both of us,” Boris said. “That doesn’t mean I have to like you.”

“But you have to trust me.”

“It’s not you I worry about,” Boris said. “It’s SVR.”

“You mean Beria.”

Boris stared out the window, relieved that he was getting out of Germany. “I take care of Cherkesov and you take care of Beria. It’s a straightforward bargain.” But he knew nothing was straightforward in their line of work, where lying was not only endemic, but necessary for survival.

“It’s a matter of trust,” Zachek said, punching in a coded number on his phone. “It always is.” He spoke into it for several moments, then disconnected. “We have a ticket waiting for you at the airport. Cherkesov took the four PM flight. We got you on the six forty. You’ll arrive in Damascus just after two tomorrow morning. The good news is your flight is shorter. You’ll have an hour in Damascus before he arrives.” He was texting a message. “We’ll have a man waiting to take you to—”

“I don’t want one of your men looking over my shoulder.”

Zachek glanced up. “I assure you—”

“I know Damascus as well as I know Moscow,” Boris said with such finality that Zachek shrugged.

“As you wish, General.” He put away his phone and cleared his throat. “We are putting our lives in each other’s hands.”

“That’s not wise,” Boris said. “We scarcely know each other.”

“What’s to be done about Ivan Volkin?”

Boris understood Zachek’s point. Boris and Ivan went back decades. Their friendship had not protected him from Volkin’s betrayal.

“You won’t be safe until he’s planted,” Zachek said in such an offhand manner that Boris laughed.

“First things first, Zachek.”

The other man smiled. “You called me by name.”

Bourne willed himself to relax. “Go on.”

“Almaz was born during the dark days of Stalin and his chief enforcer, Lavrentiy Beria.” Don Fernando cupped the snifter, inhaling the brandy fumes before drinking again. He did it slowly, as if it was a ritual that calmed him, brought him back to himself. “As you doubtless know, Beria was named head of NKVD in 1938. From that moment on, the secret police became the state-sanctioned executioners Stalin lusted for. At Yalta, Stalin introduced him to President Roosevelt as ‘our Himmler.’

“Beria’s bloodthirsty ways are well documented, but, believe me, the truth is far more dreadful. Kidnappings, torture, rape, maiming, and death became the order of the day for his enemies and their families—women and children, it was all the same to him. And as the months turned into years there were those within the NKVD who became disgusted with the unrelenting cruelty and violence. It was impossible to voice their dissent, so they went underground, forming a group they called Almaz—diamond—because diamonds are hidden, created under tremendous pressure deep within the earth.”

Don Fernando’s eyes were blue again, glinting like the morning sea. He had finished his brandy and he poured himself another.

“These men were clever. They knew their survival depended not only on the absolute secrecy of Almaz, but on expanding it beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. Allies were their only long-term hope, both in terms of power and influence, and also as an escape conduit should the need arise to flee the motherland.”

“That’s where your father came in,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando nodded. “My father started in Colombia working the oil fields, but soon became bored. ‘Fernando,’ he used to say to me, ‘I am plagued with a restless mind. You are forbidden to follow in my footsteps.’ He was joking, of course, but only slightly. He shipped me off to London, where I took a First in economics at Oxford. But the truth was, I enjoyed physical labor, so when I returned to Colombia, much to my father’s horror, I went to work in the oil fields, working my way up. I found great satisfaction in eventually buying my former bosses out.