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When there was no response, Bourne called Arkadin’s name again, this time more urgently. “We have just over two minutes to find our way out of here.”
“So Idir would have us believe.” Arkadin sounded distracted. “Why would he tell us the truth?”
“He was terrified for the life of his son.”
“In the land of the blind,” Arkadin shot back, “there is no incentive to tell the truth.”
“Leonid, come on! Let it go! You’re wasting time.”
There was no response. The moment Bourne showed his face in the pentangle, Arkadin fired at him. His torch sparking and sputtering near its end, Bourne sprinted back up the corridor the way they had come. Halfway along, the torch guttered and died. He threw it aside and kept on, his eidetic memory guiding him unerringly to the base of the spiral staircase.
Now it was a matter of outru
Returning to the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed another torch, lit it, and sprinted back up to the top. Twenty seconds wasted. A minute and a half remaining. At the top of the staircase, he held the torch up to the door. It had no handle on this side. Not even a lock marred its smooth surface. But there must be a way out. Leaning in, he ran his fingertips around the edge where the door met the jamb. Nothing. On all fours he probed the lintel, found a small square that gave to the pressure of his fingertip. He jumped away as the door opened. Just over a minute left to find his way through the maze of concentric circles and out the front door.
Along the curving corridor he went, fast as he could, holding the torch high. The electric lights had been extinguished when Idir had thrown the switch turning off the generator. Once he paused and thought he could hear footsteps echoing behind him, but he couldn’t be certain, and he pressed on, spiraling outward, ever outward toward the skin of the house.
He went through the two open doors and was in what he was sure must be the last of the corridors. Thirty seconds to go. And then the front door was ahead of him. Reaching it, he hauled on the handle. The door wouldn’t budge. He battered on it, to no avail. Cursing under his breath, he turned back, staring down the windowless, doorless corridor. “Everything in the house is an illusion,” Tanirt had told him. “This is the most important advice I can give you.”
Twenty seconds.
As he passed close to the outer wall, air stirred at the side of his head. There were no vents, so where was it coming from? He ran his hand over the wall, which, he surmised, must be the outside wall of the house itself. Using his knuckles, he rapped on the wall, listening for an anomalous sound. Solid, solid. He moved farther back down the corridor.
Fifteen seconds.
And then the sound changed. Hollow. Standing back, he slammed the heel of his shoe into the wall. It went through. Again. Ten seconds. Not enough time. Thrusting the torch into the ragged hole, he set it afire. The flames ate up the paint and the board behind it. Dropping the torch, he covered his head with his arms and dived through.
Glass shattered outward, and then he was rolling in the street, picking himself up and ru
At first he was struck deaf. He picked himself up, staggered against the wall, and shook his head. He heard screaming. Someone was screaming his name. He recognized Soraya’s voice, then saw her ru
“Jason! Jason!” She ran up to him. “Are you all right?”
He nodded but, examining him, she was already shrugging off her coat. Ripping off a sleeve of her shirt, she bound his bleeding hands.
“Badis?”
“I let him go when the house blew.” She looked up at him. “The father?”
Bourne shook his head.
“And Arkadin? I made a circuit of the building and didn’t see him.”
Bourne looked back at the fierce blaze. “He refused to leave the notebook and the ring.”
Soraya finished bandaging his hands, then they both watched what was left of the house being consumed by the fire. The street was deserted. There must have been hundreds of eyes watching the scene, but none of them was visible. No Severus Domna soldier appeared. Bourne saw why. Tanirt was standing at the other end of the street, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips.
Soraya nodded. “I guess Arkadin finally got what he wanted.”
Bourne thought that must, after all, be true.
31
DIDN’T I TELL YOU,” Peter Marks said crossly, “that I didn’t want to see anyone.”
It was a rebuke, not a question. Nevertheless, Elisa, the nurse who had been looking after him ever since he’d admitted himself to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, appeared unfazed. Marks lay in bed, his wounded leg bandaged and hurting like poison. He had refused all painkillers, which was his prerogative, but much to his a
“I think you might want to make an exception for this one.”
“Unless it’s Shakira or Keira Knightley I’m not interested.”
“Just because you’re privileged enough to wind up here doesn’t give you the right to act like a petulant child.”
Marks cocked his head. “Yeah, why don’t you come over here and see what it’s like from my point of view?”
“Only if you promise not to molest me,” she said with a sly smile.
Marks laughed. “Okay, so who is it?” She had a gift of excavating him out of even his darkest mood.
She came over and plumped up his pillow before elevating the top half of the bed. “I want you to sit up for me.”
“Shall I beg, too?”
“Now, that would be nice.” Her smile deepened. “Just make sure you don’t drool on me.”
“I have so few pleasures here, don’t take that away from me.” He grimaced as he pushed himself farther up the bed. “Christ, my ass is sore.”
She made a show of biting her lip. “You make it so easy for me I can’t bring myself to humiliate you even more.” She came over and, taking a brush from a side table, neatened his hair.
“Who is it, for Christ’s sake?” Marks said. “The fucking president?”
“Close.” Elisa went to the door. “It’s the defense secretary.”
Good God, Marks thought. What can Bud Halliday want with me?
But it was Chris Hendricks who walked through the door. Marks fairly goggled. “Where’s Halliday?”
“Good morning to you, too, Mr. Marks.” Hendricks shook his hand, pulled over a chair, and without taking off his overcoat sat down beside the bed.
“Sorry, sir, good morning,” Marks stammered. “I don’t… Congratulations are in order.”
“That’s the spirit.” Hendricks smiled. “So, how are you feeling?”
“I’ll be up and about in no time,” Marks said. “I’m getting the best of care.”
“I have no doubt.” Hendricks placed one hand over the other in his lap. “Mr. Marks, time is short so I’ll cut right to the point. While you were overseas Bud Halliday tendered his resignation. Oliver Liss is incarcerated and, frankly, I don’t see him getting out anytime soon. Your immediate boss, Frederick Willard, is dead.”
“Dead? My God, how?”
“A topic for another day. Suffice it to say that with all this sudden upheaval, a power vacuum has formed at the top of the pyramid, or one of them, anyway.” Hendricks cleared his throat. “Like nature, the clandestine services abhor a vacuum. I have been following the systematic dismantling of CI, your old bailiwick, with something of a jaundiced eye. I like what your colleague did with Typhon. In this day and age, a black-ops organization ma