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Say what you wanted about him, when it came to his trade he was a first-rate practitioner. The trouble was that too often his trade included methods of interrogation and torture that would make even those ru
―The destruction is terrible,‖ he said.
He wasn‘t kidding. Soraya watched as the forensics team put on plastic suits, slipped shoe coverings on. Kylie, the explosives-sniffing golden Lab, went in first with her handler. Then the task force split in two, the first group heading into the burned-out interior of the plane while the second began its examination of the ripped-open edges in an attempt to determine whether the explosion had been internal or external. Among this latter group was Delia Trane, a friend of Soraya‘s and an explosives expert from ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Though Delia was only thirty-four, her abilities were such that she was often on loan to various federal law enforcement agencies desperate for her expertise.
Dogged by Chalthoum, Soraya headed into the circle of death, skirting bits of metal so black and twisted it was impossible to determine what they had once been. Fist-size globs that looked like hail on closer inspection turned out to be plastic parts that had melted down in the fiery conflagration. When she came to a human head, she stopped and crouched down.
Almost all the hair and most of the flesh had been scorched to ash, which pocked the partially revealed skull like gooseflesh.
Just beyond, a blackened forearm rose at an angle from the sand, the hand above it like a beckoning flag signifying a land where death ruled absolutely. Soraya was sweating, and not just from the brutal heat. She took a swig of water from a plastic bottle Chalthoum gave her, then proceeded on.
Just before the yawning mouth of the fuselage, a team member handed her and Chalthoum plastic suits and shoe coverings that, despite the heat, they put on.
After her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she took off her sunglasses, peered around. The seat rows were canted at a ninety-degree angle; the floor was where the left bulkhead would have been when the jetliner was right-side up and everyone inside had been alive, chatting, laughing, holding hands, or foolishly arguing until the final moment before oblivion. Bodies lay everywhere, some still in their seats, others thrown clear on impact. The explosion had completely disintegrated another section of the aircraft and those in it.
She noticed that wherever a member of the American team went, he or she was shadowed by one of Amun‘s people. It would have been comical if it weren‘t so sinister. Her companion was clearly determined that the forensics team would not make a move, including relieving themselves in the dizzying heat and fetid stench of the portable latrines, without him knowing about it immediately.
―The lack of humidity works in your favor, of course,‖ Chalthoum said,
―slowing the decomposition of those bodies not incinerated beyond recognition.‖
―That will be a blessing to their families.‖
―Naturally so. But really, let‘s not mince words, you haven‘t given much thought to either the passengers or their families. You‘re here to find out what happened to the aircraft: mechanical malfunction or an act of extremist terrorism.‖
He still had the utterly un-Egyptian knack of cutting directly to the quick. The country was a bureaucratic nightmare; nothing got done, not a single answer was forthcoming until at least fifteen people in seven different divisions were consulted and agreed on it. Soraya debated only a moment as to how to answer. ―It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.‖
Chalthoum nodded. ―Yes, because the world wants to know, needs to know.
But my question to you is this: What then?‖
A typically astute query, she thought. ―I don‘t know. What happens then is not up to me.‖
She spotted Delia, signaled to her. Her friend nodded, picked her way through the debris and hunched-over workers, with their bright task lamps, to where she and Chalthoum stood just inside the roasting gloom.
―Anything to report?‖ Soraya said.
―We‘re just begi
―It‘s all right,‖ Soraya assured her. ―If you have anything, even if it‘s speculation, I need to know.‖
―Okay.‖ Delia‘s mother was an aristocratic Colombian from Bogotá, and the daughter carried much of her maternal ancestors‘ fiery blood. Her skin was as deep-toned as Soraya‘s, but there the similarity ended. She had a plain face and a boyish figure, with blunt-cut hair, strong hands, and a no-nonsense ma
―So, what, a mechanical failure?‖
―Kylie says no,‖ Delia said. She meant the dog.
There was that hesitation again, and it made Soraya uneasy. She considered pressing her friend, but then thought better of it. She‘d have to find a way to talk to her without Amun hanging on their every word. She nodded, and Delia went back to her work.
―She knows more than she‘s telling,‖ Chalthoum said. ―I want to know what‘s going on.‖ When Soraya said nothing, he continued. ―Go talk to her.
Alone.‖
Soraya turned to him. ―And then?‖
He shrugged. ―Report back to me, what else?‖
It was very late by the time Moira was ready to leave the office. With a weary hand she switched off CNN, which she‘d had on with the volume muted ever since the news of the airliner incident in Egypt broke. The incident u
Meanwhile the press was having a typically monstrous field day—talking heads on TV speculating terrorist attack scenarios. And that didn‘t even count the more out-and-out fabrications posing as ―the truth they don‘t want you to know‖ on thousands of Internet sites, including the toxic chestnut trotted out since 9/11 that the American government was behind the incident in order to advance its own casus belli, its case for war.
As she took the elevator down to the underground garage, Moira‘s mind was in two places at once: here with the new organization she was building and in Bali with Bourne. His grave wounds had made it more difficult to separate herself from him. What had seemed so simple when they‘d discussed her future in the pool at the resort now seemed nebulous and vaguely anxiety producing.
It wasn‘t that she felt the need to take care of him—God knows she would not have made a decent nurse—but that within the eternity when his life had hung in the balance, she‘d been forced to reassess her feelings for him. The possibility that he would be snatched from her filled her with dread. At least, she assumed it was dread, since she‘d never before felt anything like it: a suffocating blackness that blotted out the sun at noon, the stars at midnight.