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He was preparing himself to block her way when she veered off. She wasn’t headed for the alley that led to the synagogue after all. But because of their interrupted discussion over di
Grabbing Boris, he headed down the street after her.
Boris pulled back. “Are you crazy? You’re going to screw up everything.”
Bourne turned back to him. “It’s a matter of trust, Boris.”
Hesitating only a moment, Boris nodded, then followed Bourne as he headed left, down an alley that ran more or less parallel to the one leading to the synagogue.
Up ahead, Bourne saw Rebeka vanish to the left. He picked up his pace, Boris right behind him. When he reached the spot where Rebeka had disappeared, he saw a passageway no wider than shoulder-width. He plunged in, summoning up the plan of the ancient synagogue as Rebeka had described it to him.
Abruptly he came to the end of the passageway. A blank wall faced him.
“What the hell is this, Jason?” Boris whispered.
“We’re following a Mossad agent who knows another way into the synagogue.”
“How? Did she melt through solid stone?”
They were engulfed in darkness. Bourne reviewed everything he had learned about the synagogue from Rebeka. He knew where it was in relation to the passageway, so he turned to the left and felt along the stone wall, searching for a lever or handle. Nothing. Then he stepped back a pace, almost bumping into Boris, and his right foot scraped against a metal grate.
Both men backed up enough for Bourne to kneel down and feel around with his fingers. The grate was square, large enough for a human being to fit through. Curling his fingers through the holes, he pulled upward. The grate gave easily and he stood it on end against one wall. Then he slipped his legs into the hole. His shoes struck something.
“There’s a ladder,” he said to Boris, who had squatted beside him.
The two men climbed down. The ladder was made of iron, flaking off beneath their grip, attesting to its extreme age. They arrived at the lower level, which was carved out of the living rock. To their left Bourne saw a soft glow, and he and Boris followed it until Bourne was certain they were beneath the synagogue. A set of stone steps led upward, and Bourne and Boris took them, moving with extreme stealth.
At the top of the stairs was a narrow door made of hand-planed hardwood, bound with wide bronze bands. Cautiously, Bourne depressed the iron lever and pushed the door inward. They stepped across the threshold and found themselves in a section of the synagogue that was still in the process of being renovated. Sheets of striated marble and black stone lay against one wall or across rough-hewn sawhorses, where they were being cut to size. Curtains of undyed muslin closed off the area to protect the rest of the interior against the stone dust.
They crept forward until they were at the muslin curtains. Bourne listened for any sounds of a struggle, but heard only the hushed sound of footsteps muffled by carpets, the occasional word or two of Arabic, spoken softly but urgently.
Parting the curtains, they slipped through into the central section, renovated in the Arabic style.
“This Mossad agent is going to get herself killed here,” Boris whispered.
“The name she’s going by is Rebeka, Bourne said.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the SVR and Semid Abdul-Qahhar will kill each other,” Boris muttered as he stared into the middle distance.
But Bourne could tell by his tone that he didn’t believe it. Nothing in their world was ever so neatly wrapped up, there was too much rage and high emotion, too much blood already spilled, so much more to be poured out.
They moved forward. The great spaces the ancient architects of the synagogue had provided were now broken up into small rooms, all ornately painted and furnished, like a sultan’s seraglio. There was none of the desert Arab’s austere sensibility to be found. All the prayer rugs were opulent, woven of the finest silk in intricate, jewel-tone patterns.
“Where the hell are Beria and his lackey?” Boris whispered.
Bourne wondered where anyone was. He had no idea how many men Semid Abdul-Qahhar had with him or how heavily armed they were. He looked up and discovered a safe way to find out. The rooms were constructed with thick, hand-hewn beams of fragrant cedar that rose to a height of ten feet, well below the height of the original structure. There was no ceiling to the rooms, simply crossbeams to keep the vertical ones true, and swaths of fabric hung from beam to beam.
He signaled to Boris to go on ahead, then worked his way up one of the beams, finding footholds in the rough wood. The beams were massive six-by-sixes, allowing him to stretch out along them as he crawled from room to room. The fabric was sheer enough to make out figures, their positions in the rooms, and their movement inside them. He saw three of Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s men, one alone in a room, preparing to pray, but no sign of either Rebeka or Semid himself. He knew that she must be as focused on Semid as he was; the men were just a temporary roadblock.
And then, in the fifth room, he saw her. She was with Semid, but there wasn’t anything about the scene he liked.
Boris crept forward on little cat feet, as the poem went, one that he had memorized when he was a boy and repeated to himself each night before he went to bed, as if it were a prayer. Tonight, however, his heart was full of blood; all he could think of was Zachek and Beria. It occurred to him now that his line of work was defined by a chain of affronts and retributions. You just had to pray that you would survive them all… on little cat feet.
He entered a room where a man was kneeling on a prayer rug, his forehead pointing toward Mecca. A short-barreled assault rifle lay at his side. Boris could hear the muttered prayer, words falling like rain from the Arab’s mouth as his torso rose and fell. Boris waited until his forehead touched the rug. Then he stepped silently up to him and, putting all his weight into it, slammed his shoe down on the back of the man’s neck. He heard a series of sharp cracks, like someone puncturing bubble wrap, and the man collapsed.
Scooping up the assault rifle, Boris stepped over the corpse and continued on.
Two men were behind Rebeka. Bourne couldn’t tell whether or not she was aware of them, so he leapt off his perch, crashing down through the fabric. He landed in a crouch. The men turned, and he swung a leg out, catching one of them behind the knees. He went down in a tangle, and Bourne was on him at once with both fists.
Rebeka struck the second man on the side of the head. He staggered back, but managed to raise his assault rifle and fire off a barrage of shots. She went down at his feet, and he lifted the butt of the weapon as if to slam it onto the top of her head, but first she drove her fist into his crotch. As he doubled over, she drew a slender knife from beneath her black cloak and slit open his belly from one side to the other.
Even as his eyes opened wide in shock, she was leapfrogging over him, stretching out to grab the hem of Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s robe. He stumbled but used a wide-bladed dirk to cut away that section of cloth, freeing himself. He ran from the room.
Bourne rose from the floor and sprinted after Rebeka as she followed Semid out of the seraglio rooms and into the synagogue proper.
The moment Boris heard the rapid-fire blasts, he broke into a run. Beria and Zachek, both wielding AK-74 assault rifles, were spread-legged, standing side by side, as they mercilessly mowed down six of Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s men.
Zachek spotted Boris as he ran into the entry space and turned his weapon, firing indiscriminately. Boris retreated behind the doorway through which he had entered. The firing was so blistering he had to wait, crouched, heart hammering, before he could make a reappearance. By that time, only the bodies of the six men remained, twisted and bleeding from multiple wounds. No sign of either Beria or Zachek.