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“They’re useless in the field, the young ones. They’re always looking for shortcuts.”
“For keys to unlock the next level.”
“That’s right. They don’t think for themselves.”
A cooling wind snaked down the street, bringing with it the scent of spices. The muezzins started up, the amplified calls to prayer drowning out all other noise. The street drained of people.
“The key was a test,” Bourne said.
Boris nodded. “To see if Cherkesov was trustworthy and obedient.”
“He failed.”
“Miserably. But Semid Abdul-Qahhar doesn’t know that yet. And Beria doesn’t know I’m waiting for him.” Boris put an arm across Bourne’s chest. “Hold on. They’re coming.”
Bourne saw two men approaching. They wore long coats that reached down to the tops of their shoes, a clear indication that they were carrying long-barreled weapons. The older man was short and feral looking, the other younger and taller, with a face that looked like it had been put through a meat grinder. Bourne smiled as he thought of Boris’s fists making vicious contact with the technocrat.
“I want these cocksuckers,” Boris said. “They tried to kill me.”
“It looks like they’re carrying some heavy weapons,” Bourne said.
“So I see.”
Bourne was preparing himself when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure in a black robe and hijab come stealthily down the street from the other end. It was Rebeka.
The security for Indigo Ridge once more set, Hendricks did precisely what Skara had asked him not to do: He went looking for her. First, he tried her cell phone, but got a Chinese man who told him to go to hell in Mandarin. Next, he had a private conversation with Jonathan Brey, the head of the FBI. He and Brey went back a long time; they exchanged favors regularly.
“Anything you want, Chris,” Brey said, “it’s yours.”
“I’m looking for someone who’s dropped out of sight,” Hendricks said, consumed with shame, humiliation, and the singular anguish of a jilted lover. “She may have already left the country.” He paused. “She entered as Margaret Penrod, which was an alias, but I have no doubt she’s now under another assumed name.”
“Any idea what that might be?”
Again, those terrible emotions washed over Hendricks. “I do not.”
“Photo?”
“I’ll have one sent over.” The government vetting process must have one, Hendricks thought, otherwise I’ll look even more like an idiot. “Right now, though, I need two of your best investigators.”
“Done,” Brey said.
Hendricks met the agents at Skara’s apartment. When the doorbell went unanswered, the agents broke in, sidearms drawn, even though Hendricks told them that wasn’t necessary. Procedure, they said in almost robotic unison. Once they had secured the premises, they retired to the doorway, as Hendricks ordered, lurking like a pair of leashed guard dogs.
Hendricks took a tour around the small one-bedroom apartment. The living room was depressingly bare, exuding the stale air of abandonment. There was nothing to tell him that she had been there. Ditto, the tiny bathroom; only lint lay like sand on the narrow shelves of the medicine cabinet. The toilet tank held only water, the bathtub had been washed clean of sediment and hairs.
He stepped into the bedroom and immediately smelled her. He went through the drawers of the dresser, which were all empty. Pulling them out, he turned them over, looking for something taped to their undersides. The closet was occupied by an assortment of hangers, nothing more. The bedside table had one drawer in which he found two paper clips, a card for her fake business, and the nub of a pencil.
With a heavy sigh, he sat down on the bad, feeling it give just the way her body gave under his weight. Wrists on knees, he bent over and stared at the floor. He missed her, there was no denying it. A hole gaped open inside him. He thought he had made sure he’d never feel that way again. His eyes swam out of focus, his thoughts swirled like water down a drain. At that moment his cell phone burred.
“Hendricks.”
“Mr. Secretary, this is CI agent Tyrone Elkins.”
The words slowly penetrated Hendricks’s muzzy mind. “How did you get my number, son?”
“I have a message from Peter Marks.”
Hendricks’s brow furrowed and tension came into his shoulders and arms. “Where is Peter?”
“He’s safe, sir. He’s been under attack. He needs to talk with you.”
“Well, put him on.” There was a pause. “Peter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am, sir.”
“What the hell has happened to you?”
Peter recounted the near miss with the car bomb and his escape from the ambulance with its impostor crew. “It was sheer luck that Tyrone was behind me,” Peter concluded.
“Where the hell are you? I’ll send people to—”
“All due respect, sir, after the breaches in security you warned me of and the breach at the Treadstone building, I’d rather no one know where I am for the moment. Soraya found me through Bourne.”
“Bourne?”
“Both Soraya and Bourne know Tyrone, sir. That’s all it’s safe to say at the moment.”
“And Soraya?”
“Still in Paris. She found out who ordered the murder of her contact. Benjamin El-Arian. He’s dead.” He continued on, telling his boss about the intel he had found that had triggered the attacks on him. “You’ve got to send a team to bring Roy FitzWilliams back to DC for questioning ASAP. FitzWilliams consulted for this Syrian mining company, El-Gabal, and failed to report it when he was vetted.”
Another failure of the vetting process, Hendricks thought. It was a wonder this government was still standing.
Peter said: “We’re looking at an imminent threat on US soil.”
“Remember me when you are protecting Indigo Ridge,” Skara had said.
“Indigo Ridge,” Hendricks breathed.
“My thought exactly.”
“Good work, Peter.”
“Sir, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. You were right about assigning me Indigo Ridge in this roundabout way.”
“I’m just happy my decision didn’t lead to your death.”
“Your job is no bed of roses,” Peter said. “But you do it well.”
“Thanks.” Hendricks thought a moment. “To maintain security until we have this situation nailed down, have Tyrone phone me every day at noon. I’ll let you know as soon as FitzWilliams is in custody. You deserve to be in on the interrogation.”
He closed the co
“Forget about him,” Hendricks said. “I want you to take a detachment and take Roy FitzWilliams into custody.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Assign your best man to fly him back to DC ASAP. I’ll have an air force plane waiting for you. I want him delivered directly to me, is that clear?”
“As crystal, sir. Consider it done.”
Hendricks called an air force general of his acquaintance and got him to authorize a jet to stand by. As he put his phone away, his gaze fell on Skara’s card, lying in the drawer of the bedside table.
“Your job is no bed of roses,” Peter had said.
Into his mind swam an image of Skara as he had seen her the day they met, kneeling in his tiny strip of a garden, tending his roses.
He snatched up the card. There was a rose planted squarely in its center. With his heart pounding, he jumped up and ran out of the apartment, leaving the bewildered FBI agents in his wake.
Rebeka no longer looked like a flight attendant; there was a certain intensity about her, sharply alert and purposeful. Her eyes were eager, her cheeks flushed, as if she were about to hurl herself at Fate head-on. She had transformed herself into an avenging angel. She had changed clothes since he’d left her in the restaurant, confirming what he had suspected: She had her own agenda concerning the occupants of the synagogue. All she’d been lacking was the trigger, which he himself had provided when he had given her the identity of the Arab who was desecrating the Jewish house of worship alongside which she had chosen to live. He now suspected that she was Mossad, but in the end it didn’t matter. She was out to infiltrate the synagogue and assassinate Semid Abdul-Qahhar. The trouble was she was walking blind into a lethal crossfire between Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s men and the SVR. He had to stop her.