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“Sorry, sir,” Willis said, as attentive as ever. “I’ve asked one of the guys to get you some real coffee.”
Hendricks nodded distractedly. He was consumed by the twin bombshells the doctor had dropped on him. Soraya with a serious concussion anda baby in her womb. How in the hell had this happened? How had he not known?
But, of course, he knew the reason. He’d been too preoccupied— obsessed, one might say—with the mythical Nicodemo. The president did not believe in Nicodemo’s existence, was only contemptuous of Hendricks’s allocating any time and money to what he called “the worst kind of disinformation.” In fact, Hendricks was certain that the president’s antipathy to the Nicodemo project was fueled by Holmesian rhetoric. There wasn’t a day that went by when Hendricks did not regret having helped Holmes up the security ladder.
The truth of the matter: Holmes had discovered that Nicodemo might very well be Hendricks’s Achilles heel, the lever by which he could, at last, wrest control of Treadstone away from his rival. Ever since the president had named Mike Holmes as his national security advisor, Holmes had proved himself to be a power junkie. Increaseand consolidatewere the watchwords by which he formulated his career. And he had, more or less, been successful. Now, the only major roadblock was Hendricks’s control of Treadstone. Holmes coveted Treadstone with an almost religious fervor. In this, he and Hendricks were well matched; both were obsessives. They clashed obsessively over antithetical goals. Hendricks knew that if he could smoke Nicodemo out and capture or kill him, he’d be rid of Holmes’s interference forever. He’d have won his hard-fought battle. Holmes could no longer whisper poisoned thoughts into the president’s ear.
But if his instincts failed him, if Nicodemo was, in fact, a myth, or, worse, an elaborate piece of disinformation, then his career would spiral downward, Holmes would get what he so desired, and Treadstone would be used for other, much darker purposes.
The search for Nicodemo was, in fact, a struggle for the very soul of Treadstone.
Harry,” Bourne said, “do you remember where you were born?”
Alef nodded. Bourne had returned to thinking of him as Alef. “Dorset, England. I’m thirty-four years old.”
Bourne softened his voice considerably, as if they were two old friends meeting after a long separation. “Who do you work for, Harry?”
“I—” He looked at Bourne helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“But you do remember that you were in Lebanon—specifically Dahr El Ahmar—to gain information about Ze’ev Stahl.”
“That’s right. Maybe I was doing a bit of industrial espionage, eh?”
“Stahl is Mossad.”
“What? Mossad? Why would I—?”
“Harry, tell me about Manfred Weaving.”
Alef’s eyes clouded over, then he shook his head. “Don’t know him.” He looked at Bourne. “Why? Should I know him?”
Bourne risked a glance at Rebeka, but Alef picked up on it. He had to turn almost 180 degrees in order to see her. When he did so, his eyes opened wide and he shivered. “What the hell is shedoing here?”
Bourne put a hand on his arm as Rebeka came toward them. “She’s not going to hurt you. She was the one who shot Stahl out on the lake while we were both almost frozen to death and helpless.”
“Hello, Ma
Even though she was looking directly at him, he looked around, as if searching for someone else in the room. “What’s she talking about?
Who’s this Weaving?”
“You are,” she said. “Manfred Weaving.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He appeared genuinely confused. “My name is Harry Rowland. It’s the name I was born with, it’s the name I’ve always had.”
“Possibly not,” Bourne said.
“What? How—?”
“Your network, Jihad bis saif.” Rebeka had crouched down beside them. “Tell us its goal.”
Rowland opened his mouth, about to answer when they all heard a sound from outside. It was half concealed by the suck-and-wash of the low surf, but it could have been the scrape of a leather boot sole. In any case, it was very close to the house, and Rebeka mouthed: He’s found us.
“Who’s found us?” Rowland said.
At that moment, the front door crashed open.
8
MARTHA CHRISTIANA found Don Fernando Hererra with little difficulty. After receiving her commission, she had hunkered down in her Parisian hotel suite with her laptop and spent the next eight hours scouring the Internet for every iota of information on the banking mogul. The basics were at her fingertips within seconds. Hererra, born in Bogotá in 1946, the youngest child of four, was shipped off to England for university studies, where he took a First in economics at Oxford. Returning to Colombia, he had worked in the oil industry, rapidly working his way up the hierarchy until he went out on his own, successfully bidding for the company he had worked at. This was how he had amassed his first fortune. It was unclear how he segued into international banking, but from what Martha read, Aguardiente Bancorp was now one of the three largest banks outside of the United States.
Further exploration turned up more. Five years ago, Hererra had named Diego, his only son, to head up the prestigious London branch of Aguardiente. Diego had been killed several years ago under mysterious circumstances that, no matter how she tried, Martha could not clarify; it seemed clear enough that he had been murdered, possibly by Hererra’s enemies, though that, too, remained murky. Currently, Hererra’s main residence was in the Santa Cruz barrioof Seville, though he maintained homes in London, Cadiz—and Paris.
When she had absorbed all the information available on the Web, she pushed back her chair, rose, and padded across the parquet floor to the bathroom, where she turned on the taps and stepped into a steaming shower.
By the time she emerged, she had the framework of a plan formulated. By the time she had dried off, blown out her hair, put on makeup, and gotten dressed, the plan had been fleshed out and detailed. Gathering up her coat, she went out of the hotel. Her car was waiting for her, its powerful engine humming happily in the chilly air. Her driver opened the door for her, and she climbed in.
Hererra lived in an apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, in the middle of the Seine River. It was on the western tip, high up with breathtaking views that encompassed the Pantheon and the Eiffel Tower on the Left Bank, Notre Dame Cathedral on the adjoining Île de la Cité, and the major buildings in that section of the Right Bank.
Martha Christiana had discovered that Hererra was a creature of habit. He liked to haunt certain bars, cafés, bistros, and restaurants in whichever city he was currently inhabiting. In Paris, that meant Le Fleur en Ile for breakfast, lunch at Yam’tcha, and di
Martha Christiana had decided on the concert for several reasons. First, Hererra loved Bach, as she did. From her study of him, she surmised that he loved the strict order of the mathematical music, which would appeal to his precise banker’s mind. Second, Sainte-Chapelle was his favorite place in Paris to hear music. Third, the chapel was small, the audience packed together. This would give her ample opportunity to find him and figure out the most natural approach. It would also provide a number of topics—music, architecture, Bach, religion—in which to engage him in conversation that would be both i