“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 connection and called his Indigo Ridge field operations director, who was already getting flak from Danziger.
“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.
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 dinner concerning the synagogue’s architectural plan, he knew where she was going.
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 s
hoes 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.
Keeping his rage and frustration in check, he took each room one by one, listening as well as looking. Then he heard another burst of gunfire and headed off to his left. A bullet tore into his left calf as he crossed a threshold. He went down, his left leg collapsing under him, but landed on his right shoulder, tucking it in so that he rolled, coming up onto one knee and returning fire. He nearly took Zachek’s head off, but the little prick pulled back just in time.
Boris moved, even though it pained him and his left ankle almost buckled. It was a good thing he did because Zachek’s head and shoulders popped up as he fired at the spot Boris had just vacated. Swinging his assault rifle around, Boris clipped the corner of the wall behind which Zachek hid. Wood and plaster splinters fountained up, and Boris moved again, this time in the opposite direction, and when Zachek appeared again, firing at the spot where Boris would have been if he had continued in the same direction, Boris drilled Zachek’s left shoulder.
As Zachek fell backward, Boris sprinted directly at him, holding his fire until Zachek came into view. Zachek squeezed the trigger of his AK-74 and more bits of wood and plaster blinded Boris momentarily. Still, he came on, knowing it was fatal to stay in one place.
Clearing his vision, he saw Zachek on the floor. His back was against a wall. Blood streamed from his shattered left shoulder. He was desperately trying to reload his weapon.
Sensing Boris, his head came up and he bared his teeth like a rabid dog. Then he grinned, threw the assault rifle away, and spread his hands.
“I surrender, General. Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed.”
Boris glimpsed the tiny derringer half hidden in Zachek’s right hand. But even if the little prick had been unarmed, Boris knew it wouldn’t have mattered. He pulled the trigger on his assault rifle and Zachek briefly danced like a marionette whose strings were being cut. In a mass of blood, he slipped sideways and his eyes went dark.
Something significant must have happened, Boris thought, because he saw that Beria had now begun his retreat from the synagogue.
Boris was intrigued. He deduced that Bourne had somehow altered the situation irretrievably, and that Beria was pragmatic enough to get out while his skin was whole.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Boris caught up with him in the entryway, already littered with six corpses. Beria, in full flight, chose the shortest distance between him and the front door. This route took him between two of the bodies. The instant he skidded in a puddle of blood, Boris, loping from behind at full speed, barreled into him. Something lurched in his left ankle and a javelin of fire scorched up his leg. The bullet from Zachek’s assault rifle had gone completely through his calf, which was good, but the wound was bleeding profusely. The leg needed to be elevated and the wound seen to. Boris’s leg gave way and he went down hard on one knee. A sea of pain swept through him. Beria, only partially recovered, swung the butt of his AK-74 across Boris’s chin, knocking him flat.
Beria aimed the assault rifle, about to pull the trigger when he heard voices echoing suddenly and frighteningly. Unwilling to give away his position by firing, he whipped around and fled the synagogue as fast as his legs would carry him.
Bourne saw Semid Abdul-Qahhar take a swipe at Rebeka with his gleaming dirk. She countered with her thin-bladed knife, then closed with him, slipping inside his defenses, slicing his left cheek from just beneath the eye to the corner of his mouth, which opened wide, but made no sound. He struck her in the side with his fist, then delivered a vicious kick to her ribs, which slammed her against a wall.
He came in hard and fast, leading with the dirk while fumbling beneath his robe with the other hand. Rebeka was defending herself against the stab of the dirk. She evaded it with ease, but only because it was a feint.
Bourne saw before she did that Semid gripped a Mauser in his other hand. He leapt at Semid, knocking him back, wrestling the Mauser out of his hand. As Semid turned toward Bourne’s attack, Rebeka contemptuously slapped aside the dirk and stabbed inward with her own knife. The blade penetrated Semid’s chest just below the sternum, and, with a surgeon’s deft hand, she twisted it upward and to the left, puncturing a lung, and then the heart.